Only One Go Around

I love that I am living in a neighborhood that has pick up trucks, a John Deere tractor, palm trees and sailboat masts! Seriously, this little community really banded together to help with all of the clean up. Len worked four days straight helping out various neighbors. It was three days without power. This was the scene all over the neighborhood, post Hurricane Irma. Between the evacuation beforehand, the power outages and clean up afterward, FSW was out of school for two weeks. When we finally went to the campus on Wednesday when classes resumed, we passed this at the airport. It was an old military plane that was a 'living museum'. Not anymore.  It was completely destroyed.  The town of LaBelle (which is the town closest to us at 12 miles away) also suffered more damage than we had in the country.Though school had resumed, I had students still without power, and this was twelve days after the storm. This time of year it is in the mid-90's daily,...

After working on hurricane and house clean up, it was time for a fun project.  This table was given to us several years ago. We thought we would tile it, then we thought about refinishing it. However, the Made in China table was mostly made of mdf board. The only real wood was the legs, so we decided to salvage them. I sanded them down. We had a used door we had taken out of our house in the big renovation. We needed a dining table for six for our glassed in back porch. Because our porch is only 7' 6" wide, a standard table of 42" x 60" was too wide- it didn't leave room to pull out the chairs.  The 30" door was going to work perfectly. We glued and screwed and clamped it all to dry :) On one of our many trips to town for building materials, I bought 12 pieces of remnant flooring for 50 cents each. I thought I might use it one day! Len is great at figuring out how to put it all together. Len then ripped two 1" x 2" x 1...

Willis is a well traveled cat, like his momma.  He loved living on Marquesa, except for that one time he went overboard. He loved hanging out in the mangroves, and sneaking off to the Kit Kat Lounge with One Eyed Jack. Dern cat was always stealing my laundry money to go out cattin' around. Oh, that Willis.  He is going to love sailing again on Kantiya :) Well, his momma up and moved to China for three years, so Sissy Elliebug took him in.  They road tripped to Arkansas together, where he and Maxwell Todd became best friends. When Ellie took a news reporting job in Ft. Myers, they all packed up in the UHaul truck and made the move south.  A year later, when Ellie left reporting to get married and move to Oregon then Okinawa, Willis road tripped to Indiana this past spring. There he moved in with his other Sissy Emily Tess, until momma returned from China this summer. Finally, momma was settled in Florida, with her new boat Kantiya, and it was time to go get W...

When you only get one go around in life, you want to experience as many firsts as possible.  At least, I do.  There is always something, someone, some place, to be had.  You just never know when it will be your last first. Hurricane preparation?!  That was a first.  One the one hand, if you choose to make your home in south Florida, I guess that is to be expected.  However, Len and I intentionally chose to make our home in Turkey Creek. It is clean, country living and a boater's paradise because it is known as a "hurricane hole."  We are literally out in the middle of nowhere, thirty miles west of Lake Okeechobee, forty five miles east of Ft. Myers, twelve miles from LaBelle (the nearest town), and one mile from the Ortona Lock.  Many seasonal boaters choose to put their boats 'on the hard' up river at Glades Boatyard during the late summer and early fall months as there has not been a major hurricane event here since 1926. And for that reaso...