Still Finding Fun

So the fun little bathroom remodeling project mentioned in a previous post is still going on, however many weeks later.

To be fair, I did predict that it would be a long and perilous journey and, sadly, I was correct.

While the contractor and the subs have been great, trying to get materials and parts has been a nightmare. Take the vanity we picked out. Or should I say vanities.

Vanity No. 1 was ordered in plenty of time, with the delivery due not long after deconstruction began. Alas, two days before it was to arrive, we received an e-mail notifying us that there would be a slight delay and it wouldn’t arrive for another six to eight weeks.

After cancelling that order, we awaited shipment of vanity No. 2, which was supposed to be here in a week to 10 days. And, we could track it! Oh, boy. There it is in California, enjoying the sunshine and warm weather while we sit here shivering in still-winter weather with a big hole where our bathroom used to be. 

After about a week of loitering out on the left coast, it materialized in Dallas. Halfway here!

After another week or so, it still sat in Texas. Until finally, it got to Charlotte. Where it sat. And sat. 

Three weeks after ordering, the shipping company called to say they were on their way and they would deliver it to our house provided the tractor trailer rig could get up our narrow, steep gravel driveway. Of course you can! I think you can! I think you can! I think … oh, who am I kidding. You’re not the Little Train That Could, you’re the big truck that couldn’t.

Plan B! Deliver to F’s office in town, where semis cruise past constantly. The contractor picks it up there and at long last, vanity No. 2 is at our house. It is unpacked and it looks absolutely gorgeous – if you ignore the three cracks in the marble countertop.

So, vanity No. 3. Or at least vanity countertop No. 3. We send pictures of No. 2’s cracks – no doubt from lazing at the beach in the sun too long in California – and the company says, no problem, we’ll ship you another one. Which they did. And it only took about 10 days. And it too was delivered in a big ol’ tractor trailer rig. And so we diverted it again to F’s office.

We get it home and unload it. F says, hmmm, the box looks pretty dinged up. Let’s open it and look. Let’s not, say I. See, it looks fine … except for that chunk broken off there on the corner.

Meanwhile, the vanity itself has taken up residency in our bedroom – right at the end of the bed, to be exact, so that we can run a nightly obstacle course to get to the other bathroom.

Okay. Vanity countertop No. 4. The company says they will ship yet another one, but it might be awhile. Or they could refund us some of the cost to buy a replacement locally. Ah … okay, but living in a small town means we have the one big-box hardware – excuse me, home improvement – store and while their website shows they have a replacement countertop that looks pretty much like the two broken ones, they don’t have them in stock and they can’t order them. Why not? Just can’t. What do you mean, you just can’t? Don’t know, just can’t. But the sister store 25 miles away has two. 

Great! Our contractor heads over there to pick one up, but has the foresight to ask them to open the boxes which he can see are dinged up and of course they are both broken.

And here I thought rock quarried from the earth was durable and strong.

So I start searching on the internet and find one at a store an hour away. I call and ask them if they actually have one and could they open the box and see if it is cracked. Yes and no, they say – yes, they actually have three and no, they can’t open the box.

So I drive the hour plus, get an employee to help and sure enough, he’s willing to open the box – sort of. It is packed in there pretty good, but standing on its edge, so unless we completely rip off the packaging all I can do is peer hopefully down into the box. I take the gamble and roll it up to checkout where I am asked whether I am going to need any help loading this 150 pound box encasing a slab of stone into my car. I look at the cashier. I flex my biceps. (No, no, just kidding. My biceps are not the flexing type.) Two people stronger than me join me out in the parking lot to load this beast into the car. Or maybe they’re not that much stronger; one almost drops his end, but they eventually heft it in. And I’m on my way, being extra careful to avoid potholes and sudden stops.

So I get home and the contractor unboxes the countertop. We carefully strip away all the padding and … beautiful. No cracks, no broken pieces, no scratches. They carry it up the stairs to the bathroom-to-be and gently settle it on the vanity. I let out a sigh of relief.

I blame a lot of this mess on the fact that we ended up with a marble countertop rather than some less fragile alternative. Faithful readers know my opinion on granite and other fashionable countertops, and that I have no problem whatsoever with Formica. But this is what we chose; we just didn’t know we were choosing such trouble. Who knew that real rock is no match for manufactured laminate? 

So that leaves the lighting, the faucets, and the toilet. But at least they’ve already been delivered.

Oh, and then the other bathroom will get a makeover.

Ah, well. As soon as summer gets here, I’ll be peeing outside and showering with the hose anyway.

So we’re dieting again in our household, continuing our endless cycle of eating, drinking and being merry contrasted with -for the time being – none of the above.

We’ve tried most of the diets out there and have had some luck on all of them. I really enjoyed the low-carb ones until I somehow got sick of eating bacon every day. We usually fall back on the counting calories method, which is a pretty guaranteed diet if you do the math properly. You can eat whatever you want provided it’s only a tiny amount per meal, which I find is about what you can fit in the palm of your hand.

I’ve begun thinking, though, about trying the Mediterranean diet, which basically is not a diet per se but a whole way of eating. This means adding more fruits, nuts, veggies, olive oil, legumes – which is Mediterranean for beans, peas, lentils and the like – whole grains and seafood to your diet. Obviously this is a diet coming from the Mediterranean region of Europe, and I can’t help but visualize fashionable people lazing around outside on a sun-splashed veranda with a glass of wine, munching on nuts and olives, and eating stuff fresh out of the sea.

Of course, this plan works a lot better if you actually live near the Mediterranean where all that fresh stuff can be readily found. But we are nothing if not adaptable, so I’m thinking of adapting the Mediterranean plan to a Mountain/Med plan.

It starts with eating nothing for breakfast because you want to save those calories for later when you will really need them. Have some coffee to get the ol’ metabolism up and running. If you must have something, eat a piece of fruit and quit whining.

Lunch is some seafood such as canned tuna, which I detest and will just dump down the garbage disposal so right there I’ve saved a bunch of calories. I’ll pair that with a piece of whole grain bread and maybe a salad or a veggie.

As the evening approaches, I will skip the obligatory glass or two of wine because I don’t really like wine unless I’m lazing around on a sun-splashed veranda and start with a couple of martinis because this way I can go on and get some olives into my system. I figure olive oil is just the squeezings of olives, so I’m just skipping the middle man. Plus, as an added bonus, while they are not a vegetable they count as a fruit! (Remember, a minimum of three olives per martini is suggested to get the full feel of the Mediterranean region.) Pair these with a handful of nuts as a snack to fulfill your nut quota of the plan, or you can switch if up and substitute a handful of beans if you prefer. 

Depending on how many, um, olives you have consumed, you may want to skip supper and hit the hay, thereby again avoiding those pesky calories that accumulate down there in the stomach region. If, on the other hand, you are still sober … er, awake and hungry, I suggest grilling an octopus or two because they were very tasty the last time I was anywhere near the Mediterranean.

If you can’t find fresh octopus – and they’re pretty scarce in the mountainous regions of the planet, unlike say, the famed mountain oysters – you can substitute some fish or shrimp. If there is no fresh fish at your local fishmonger or grocery store equivalent, then I would recommend a nice fish stick or two. (I’m a big malt vinegar fan on those puppies, but F makes a mean homemade tartar sauce that is also highly recommended but you will have to contact her personally for that recipe.) Then throw in another salad or some other veggies on the side and there you have it. 

Will you still be hungry at the end of the day? Of course. It’s a diet, you knucklehead. You’re supposed to be hungry. 

But then you are allowed a couple more olives for a bedtime snack. 

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.