Author: Tim Smith

We are about to embark on a long, perilous journey, and ahead of us lie speed bumps and detours, ugly scenes and beautiful images, frustration and delight.

I’m talking, of course, about remodeling our bathroom.

Not much has been done to enhance our bathrooms since we bought our house a … um, few years ago. A new toilet here, some cosmetic improvements there, but nothing much in the way of major upgrades. We’ve talked about it for years, but always decided the money would be better spent on traveling – usually to places which, as a bonus, had much nicer bathrooms than ours.

Our so-called master bathroom is a tiny cubicle with a plastic shower. Think about a bathroom in an RV, except not as big. Our other bathroom is bigger and marginally nicer, and nearly as close to our bedroom, so once the kids departed the house years ago, F has used that one.

We’re gutting the master bathroom and I have to admit there are things I will miss. I mean, not many people have an avocado green toilet. Or wallpaper on the walls. Or the classic, massive medicine cabinet.

What I won’t miss is all that stuff under the sink. Much of it hasn’t been disturbed since the last century. And much of it is a bit weird; who knew we were collectors of miniature motel shampoo bottles, the contents long since congealed into something unimaginable but perhaps capable of spawning some new kind of life form.

But even more traumatic than cleaning out and saying goodbye to my bathroom – where, it must be said, I have spent so many hours of my life – is the fact that we are taking over my closet as part of the remodeling. So we get a bigger bathroom, but lose half our closet space.

You know what that means: we have to clean out our closets and get rid of lots and lots of our clothes.

The process goes like this: gosh, I haven’t worn this in years, so I should get rid of it. But I always liked it and I don’t know why I haven’t worn it. Maybe because it just got shoved to the side of the closet rack to make way for something newer and spiffier. That’s not its fault, and that’s not really fair. I think I’ll hold onto it for now because I might wear it again now that I know it’s in here. Maybe. Eventually.

Or there are all those clothes that no longer fit, probably because they spontaneously shrank just hanging in the closet. I love this shirt, I think to myself. All I have to do is lose a few pounds and I’m sure it will fit. I’ll put it over here in the pile of clothes I’m not throwing out because one day I might wear them again.

And so it goes. 

While I shudder to think of the inconvenience of having major construction going on pretty much in our bedroom – and we’re not going to talk about what innovative construction techniques and creative plumbing they might find behind the walls of the bathroom – and as much as we’re looking forward to having a nice, new bathroom, we’ve yet to come to grips with what this all might mean.

After all, we’re going to now share what had been my bathroom. And as much as F and I have in common, we could not be more different in our bathroom accessories and products. Part of this is a natural gender preference for products, so we will make room for his and hers shampoos and soaps and shaving accoutrements. But what will we do about the toilet paper divide? We each are partial to our own brand, so do we alternate rolls? Do we have two rollers, hers on the left side of the commode and mine on the right? Do we – by which I mean I – compromise and go with one brand?

Decisions, decisions. I see a certain amount of friction ahead, and I don’t mean from using her toilet paper. But we’ve been together a long time, and I don’t think sharing a bathroom again and combining our closets will cause too many issues.

Unlike, say, her next project, which is to paint the entire upstairs.

‘Twas not quite the night of that famous date,
But the wordsmith realized it was still getting late.
Where’s the holiday poem, faithful readers beseech;
But no rhymes were composed ‘cause he lazed on a beach.

So calm and so peaceful, no stress and no strife;
How many times did we say “this is the life!”
Sunshine all day, brilliant stars at night,
And swimming with the fishes is a constant delight.

Palm trees strung with lights; it’s the holidays you see.
Imbibing fruit cocktails and food fresh out of the sea.
Island time with the rhythm of how we should live,
And where people who have nothing have plenty to give.

No news and no TV, they say ignorance is bliss,
But it beats always wondering why we’re not better than this.
‘Cause there’s way too much bickering and fighting and hate,
And home we must come where the old problems await.

Same old rushing around, life hurrying by,
And worrying just why we are no longer so spry.
Everything seems broken, nothing works right;
This beautiful old world seems a terrible sight.

No coming together, no meeting of minds,
Just too many people showing their behinds.
Public safety traded away for political health,
And of course to increase a few people’s wealth.

But don’t give in to the gloom and despair;
Instead figure out how to do better and care.
Feel good about yourself, spreading love is the aim;
Behind all the differences, we’re unique but the same.

Sometimes it seems hard to do the right thing,
To slow down and hear the birds as they sing.
But whenever I think the magic’s beyond reach,
I just close my eyes and I’m back on the beach.

There are are several things to remember when traveling to what are generally considered less civilized parts of the world.

One of those things is how difficult it can be to get to somewhere uncivilized. Take the family vacation that we booked several months ago when COVID was in full retreat and we naively assumed people couldn’t possible be so selfish and stupid as to not get a simple shot to further contain the pandemic.

So the five of us took a two-hour car ride to get to the airport, where we waited for another two hours because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you fly. After a three-hour flight, we took a short taxi ride to the ferry dock, where we waited for another three hours (this time in a bar) to board the ferry, which then sat for another 45 minutes before departing for a one-hour trip to finally allow us to disembark to the end of a very long line to have swabs stuck up our noses despite having had that done three days before and then waiting in another lengthy line for a surly customs officer to stamp our passports so we could catch another taxi to another port on the island to catch a water taxi to our final destination.

All this took 16 hours, so when we arrived at our tiny island paradise, it was past 9 at night and the restaurants were all closed. Except one, which graciously agreed to feed five hungry travelers no matter how late it was. (Many thanks, Ali Baba.)

By this time we knew we had passed the boundaries of civilization because, after all, what businesslike establishment in, say, America would do this?

Another thing to remember is that island people are different. They move at a different pace, a different rhythm: the famed island time. They’re not in a hurry, so you need to adjust your pace and slow way down. The people are friendly and appreciative. They’ll stop and chat. When they say to have a nice day, somehow you know they really mean it.

And it took a while, but we finally figured out that when the few other cars on the island blew their horns they didn’t mean “get the #$*& out of my way!” they meant “hello!”

And the food. Not a fast-food restaurant in sight. No frozen stuff, either. If you wanted fish in the restaurants, you might have to wait while they cleaned and filleted them. If you wanted local lobster, you had to order it earlier in the day so they could go catch one. Plenty of places didn’t even require shoes, so you sat there with your toes in the sand. And unlike most of the beaches I’ve been to, they actually had bars and restaurants right on the beach, and they didn’t care if you walked around on the beach drinking local libations.

That kind of thing is just not done on more sophisticated beaches such as those in North Carolina where you’re not even supposed to have a beer in a cooler and are supposed to drink, I don’t know, iced tea or something while you watch your skin turn red and wonder why you didn’t bring anything more to eat like a sandwich or something.

We even had a guy come by every morning in a boat, pull it up on the beach in front of our house, and sell us freshly made empanadas. Who does that? (They were quite tasty, by the way.)

Naturally, the island had very few of the amenities that we have and take for granted. No huge stores so you can buy stuff you don’t really want and definitely don’t need. No storage units to rent for all the extra stuff you bought last year.

There also is no hustle, no bustle. And very few clocks were in evidence.

They do, however, have one thing in common with us: bureaucracy. It is slow, unreasonable, absurd, and irrational, just like ours. Thus, after an unforgettable week of fun and relaxation, it took us another 16 hours to get back home.

Back home, we had to remind ourselves, to civilization.

So there seems to be some technical glitch with the blog in which e-mail subscribers did not get the last two posts. Rest assured our crack team of tech wizards is working around the clock to fix these problems.

In the meantime, you can visit the actual website – www.stillfindingfun.com -to read the posts.

So we decided to take a break from the beach, our decision helped along by the overnight rain and cloudy skies, plus the decidedly murky forecast for the day that turned out to be completely wrong, and head out to see some nature, of which regular readers will know we are big fans.

Our choice for our nature getaway – if you have not been keeping up, we are currently in southwest Florida – was Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, specifically Janes Scenic Drive. This is a beautiful if unpaved 11-mile road through, basically, a ginormous swamp, otherwise known as the Everglades.

The signs on the drive boast that you might see such wildlife as alligators (it’s the Everglades, duh), bears, snakes, otters, birds and the like. We did see lots of birds – egrets, herons, vultures, others that were white and grayish, big ones and smaller ones, and one who seemed to sadly have some sort of wing defect and who just sort of hopped, skipped, and jumped but couldn’t quite fly down the muddy road who we felt really sorry for but at least didn’t run over.

What we did not see was any of the other aforementioned wildlife, so we bagged the other 8 miles of the drive, turned around, and drove to the park’s scenic boardwalk, a half-mile walk or so into the swamp where you could get up close and personal with all those swamp critters we didn’t see on our road trip.

We gamely started slip-sliding down the muddy trail to the boardwalk, eagerly anticipating coming upon the odd alligator or python or turtle. Alas, a hundred yards in and all we encountered were swarms of pesky mosquitoes – I killed three with one swat – and, with blood on our hands, we decided to make a hasty – well as hasty as we could in the slippery conditions – retreat.

So our attempted encounter with the native wildlife was disappointing until later, when F wisely pointed out that, personally, she was perfectly fine with not encountering an alligator or bear or something slithery while on a trail. I, of course, put her trepidation down to the fact that she knew I could outpace her back to the safety of the car.

Not to be outdone by our aborted nature outing, we headed into the real wilderness – the city – to do some shopping.

Talk about your wildlife. People madly pushing and shoving and almost running you over in shopping carts – and that was just in the parking lot. Being inside the store made us appreciate the great outdoors, except for the mosquitoes, although at that point it was open to debate as to which was more annoying, the shoppers or the skeeters. The only thing civilized was the air conditioning, although I thought the valet parking at one of the shopping malls we drove by was an interesting touch.

Thankfully, we concluded our necessary shopping and bolted from the city; okay, actually it was pretty stop and start bolting what with all the traffic and hitting every stop light, but you get the idea.

It was with great relief that we got back to our little outpost on our peaceful and calm little island where the wildlife consists mostly of miniature owls and burrowing turtles and leaping dolphins and diving pelicans and fellow beach lovers and realized that, hey, perhaps nature and civilization both need to be taken in moderation.

Or at least with some bug spray.

So on our annual pilgrimage to our special place of beach, biking, sunsets and serenity, we stopped at the Ringling Circus Museum. It was an amazing glimpse back to the days when the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus was truly the greatest show on earth.

The highlight, to me, was the 44,000 piece, small-scale replica of the circus in its heyday, including the trains that transported everything, tiny figures depicting the performers and animals and customers, and of course the big top. The main tent was massive, featuring the famed three show rings with the trapeze high above and capable of seating some 10,000 people. The scale model provided some insight into just what a complicated, sprawling, awe-inspiring undertaking it was to transport, set up and put on a show of that size.

I got to see the Ringling Brothers Circus years ago, but it was in an arena and not the tent. Nor did I get to see the parade of performers led by the elephants (yes, I know one of the reasons the circus closed was because of pressure to eliminate the animal acts, particularly the elephants). But it was still spectacular.

Thinking about all this makes me appreciate all the entertainment I have enjoyed through the years, and reminds me that it’s awfully hard to beat live entertainment. We are fortunate to have an endless variety of entertainment at our fingertips with our TV remotes, but it just doesn’t compare to live stage shows, live musical performances, or real live circuses.

And live entertainment comes in many forms – if we just take the time to enjoy it. So now I sit here at our aforementioned special place and I realize that, with all due respect to Messrs. Ringling, Barnum and Bailey, for my money, this is the greatest show on earth:

One thing people never compliment us on when visiting our house are the countertops in our kitchen.

They are not trendy, they are not cool (except in winter), they are not fashionable, and they are not expensive. What they are is Formica, or some such laminated product.

The beauty of them – to me – is I don’t have to seal the surface, or buy something special to clean them, or worry about spilling something on them. Oops, I dripped a bit of battery acid on them; I’ll just grab a paper towel and wipe that right up, maybe spray a little Windex on there.

While no one admires the beauty of our countertops – okay, probably for good reason – I have been asked why I don’t rip them out and put in some granite ones. The answer is, well, I have better things to spend ridiculous amounts of money on. Also, because they are functional and sometimes function champions form. I don’t need to see some artistically stunning stuff while I’m in the kitchen busy, you know, cooking; if I want to see great art I can go in the living room and look at F’s quilts on the walls in there.

Besides, why would I want a countertop that you could find in the Flintstones’ house? Sure, nothing screams ‘50s and ’60s style more than Formica, but granite is downright Stone Age.

Obviously the stone and rock industry has some pretty good marketing people, but I trace the rise in popularity of granite countertops to the proliferation of all those TV shows about houses: how to renovate them, how to buy and sell them, how to redesign them, and how to keep up with the latest fad like painting everything in a room a nice monochromatic white so that it looks like you’re living in an igloo.

But I’m kind of tired of watching people consider buying a house and react in abject horror to find no granite in sight; they’re like “Oh my goodness, I can do with the toilets that don’t flush and the holes in the roof and – gulp! – no hardwood floors, but no massive slab of stone in the kitchen is just too much to take!”

And like other fads and trends, you have to ask yourself what’s next. Crystal countertops? Hardened beeswax? Or how about some nice petrified wood?

Having said this, I’m not completely indisposed toward granite countertops; I’ve seen many that were absolutely gorgeous. If I were to buy a house that had them I certainly wouldn’t rip them out and replace them with Formica.

Unless, of course, retro is back yet again and that’s the new style.

I learned to have fun from my parents, who worked hard but never passed up an opportunity to have a good time.

My father was a naval officer and we traveled around a lot when I was a kid. We endured many long trips in the car – me, the youngest, relegated to the middle seat in the back with unrepentant siblings poking me in the ribs from both sides – but my parents always made the trips like a holiday, visiting scenic sights and touristy places along the way, and making sure we always stopped at a motel with a pool. 

Even though my dad was often gone, flying off to exotic ports of call, he always made sure to bring us presents when he returned home and to spend as much time as he could with us. He even found time for us to have fun while he was working, such as taking us to watch the famed Blue Angels – and then afterwards letting us meet the pilots. One of his duties at a naval base was as a sort of welcome officer; he used to take my brother and me along to officially greet the ships coming into port. The ship’s captain would get some lucky sailor to take us kids on a tour of the destroyer or submarine or aircraft carrier while he met with my father. Invariably my dad knew at least one of the ship’s officers from the Naval Academy and would invite them all out to the house that night for drinks and dinner. But then he was always inviting people over for drinks and dinner, much to the head cook’s chagrin.

Before he had kids, he flew around the Caribbean visiting any number of islands – always picking up some of the local rum – when he wasn’t deliberately flying into storms as a hurricane hunter. I’m sure my poor mom didn’t have much fun when she had three children in diapers and a husband off flying for days or weeks at a time, but when we got older – she raised us well, as one of us was a perfectly behaved child while the other two were mostly behaved – she got to enjoy being an officer’s wife.

I remember many nights my parents would go off to some official function or party or whatever social soiree the Navy required of its officers, or simply partying at the officers’ club, mom dressing up with perfume and pearls ready for a night out without kids.

They were a happy couple and good parents and we never lacked for love in our house, even if it was a different house every couple of years. Looking back, I was always happy when they were happy, and they were great role models in how to live life.

After my dad retired from his second career as a university librarian, finally well settled in one last house, my parents spent their golden years doing what they loved best: having fun. They would travel, spend time with their family, and simply enjoy each other’s company. My dad never met a stranger, and never gave up his penchant for inviting people over for impromptu parties. He loved sitting on his porch with a glass of rum, telling me or anyone else who would listen some old Navy story that I had heard at least 40 times.

My father died last week, a couple of weeks shy of his 99th birthday. Somehow he outlived my mom by 13 years, and was quite happy living by himself in his later years, taking his regular swims in the intracoastal waterway and listening to big band music and living life his way.  

Maybe sadness will come later, but right now I am happy for him. Because I know he and mom are off somewhere now having a good time together, still finding fun.

So this is the first blog post I’ve written in a while, and I could give you dear readers any number of excuses as to the absence of pithy prose and dazzling wit over the past few weeks, but the basic fact is that the muse seemed to have deserted me temporarily. Either that or I’ve just been lazy.

Anyway, I am back for good or bad, just brimming with great stories and observations to share, but first – you knew there would be a “but” – I wanted to share something I wrote nearly 30 years ago.

. . .

It was love at first sight.

This was no mere childish infatuation, mind you. This was the real thing: a blinding, boundless, till-the-end-of-time type of devotion. Needless to say, it was all quite unsettling for a happily married man.

But then who would feel differently upon first setting eyes on their baby daughter? Concerns that a wife and son were using up the full quota of love evaporated in an instant, for birth brings with it a profound appreciation for the human heart’s astonishing capacity for love.

But new life also brings mixed emotions. Watching a brand new person struggle to adapt to a new environment makes you wonder what she will grow up to be, and what the world will be like then. Will she make it a markedly better place? Will her life be better then mine? Will she be at all like me? More to the point, will she like me at all?

And what of my life? How will she change me? Can I look at the world in the same way now? Can I even look at men the same way now, knowing my little girl will one day be a woman?

Will she alter my outlook on life, professionally speaking? Can someone who paces the hall with a crying baby at 3 in the morning still find humor in the human condition? Can someone who gently pokes a soft baby belly while making silly sounds still with a straight face skewer the body politic? Can the muck and mire of a nasty political campaign seem so bad after yet another dirty diaper?

Closer to home, what of the changes on the domestic front? Sure, major lifestyle alterations were made to accommodate my son, but he’s a guy. With a son, a dad can play baseball and basketball, wrestle on the floor, and begin to understand the mythic appeal of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But with a girl….

With a girl, a dad has to adapt in ways radical and strange. You can’t just leave her to mom to raise; it just won’t work to say: Here, dear, you take this one and I’ll take that one and we’ll see you in 18 years.

No, a dad still befuddled as to the ways of women after years of marriage to one has to start his lessons into the mysteries of femininity all over. You have to learn, for instance, the difference between mauve and fuchsia, not to mention the fashionable implications behind the subtle yet limitless shades of pink.

Too, you have to understand the appeal of lace and ruffles, and why a person absolutely cannot get along pretty well in life with just the two pairs of shoes. You have to buy dresses instead of pants, blouses instead of shirts, purses instead of wallets, girl things instead of guy stuff. Goodbye Turtles, hello Barbie.

Already I’m looking down the road, and it’s with a great deal of trepidation. The years to come will be full of pigtails and freckles, headaches and heartaches, girlfriends and boyfriends, makeup and breakup and all the rest. How will she feel, I wonder, about not dating until she’s 21?

And let’s not forget sibling rivalry, with all the fights and jealousies and complaints. Then there is the threat of favoritism. As the brother of a sister, I know full well the pitfalls that parents so easily stumble into in futilely trying for evenhandedness in the face of feminine wiles, which are amazing well developed at the earliest of ages.

Surprisingly, my son is taking in stride this rather rude invasion of his hitherto peaceful and peaceable kingdom, over which he has reigned with serene sovereignty for nearly four full years. But then kids are awfully adaptable. And, like me, he’s fallen instantly in love with this beautiful, joyful, wondrous little girl.

Also, like me, the poor child hasn’t a clue as to the remarkable adventure upon which we have embarked.

. . .

Happy birthday to my little girl.

So I wake up in the middle of the night and feel a little cool with just a thin sheet on me. But most of the covers are waaaaay down at the foot of the bed, so far down that they’re almost falling off because my feet got hot with all the extra weight on them so I kept kicking them off.

Now I want them back on, but I don’t want to have to sit up and reach down, fumbling about in the dark down at my feet with what are sure to be twisted and tangled covers by now since I’ve been thrashing around half the night.

Plus, everyone knows that if you sit up in bed or do anything that simulates being awake then you are doomed to be wide awake for at least an hour. (Just like everyone knows that if you toss the covers off and leave anything more than an arm or leg exposed to the dark night then … well, I don’t know what happens, but probably something bad.)

It’s not like when you wake up just enough to turn over because one whole side of your body is numb while the other is creaking with aches and pains, so you sorta pretend you’re still mostly asleep so you don’t start thinking about the things you didn’t do the previous day or the things you have to do the next day or, even worse, you really gotta go pee.

So there the covers are, down at what might as well be the ends of the earth for all the good they are doing. Is it really worth the effort? Sigh. Yes, all right, here we go. Okay, here’s some corner of some type of cover, but of course it’s snagged on the edge of the bed. I’ll just give it a yank. Ooops, I sure hope F over there doesn’t need any of these. Well, she’s always complaining about how hot she is, so I’m really just doing her a favor by keeping these covers out of her way. 

There. Nice and snug now. Back to sleep. I really don’t understand why someone doesn’t invent a device that pulls the covers up and down on the bed with a touch of a button. We have phones that work practically everywhere on the planet (although the signal does leave a lot to be desired at my house), but no way to automatically pull up and retract your dang covers on your bed. Surely Einstein or Edison had the same problems at night; couldn’t they have spared a sleepless night or two to invent something?

Whatever. The deed is done now. The covers are up around my neck, my head is on the pillow, dreamland beckons, and all is right with the world.

Except now I’m getting kinda warm.