Oh. My. Gosh. You are soooooooo smart.

This week I had the misfortune of spending time with a man whose ego is so large he probably has to check it as extra luggage when flying the friendly skies. Wallowing in his own sticky brilliance, he is his own most delicious dream.

I've learned that the best way to navigate through the long stuffy halls of condescending dialogue is to humor myself...by sitting back, listening to the twisted world of superiority and nodding my head as if to recitate, "Man, you are a freaking genius! If I EVER get the chance to meet someone by the likes of you again...wait there is NO ONE who possesses the intellect, the power, the supreme ability to over-utilize jargon, pointless theory..."

You get it.

If I can find it funny, I can get through it. Just let them think they're transmitting the almighty word and then move on to quiet laughter in a corner of my mind reserved for just this very thing. In a way, I thoroughly enjoy that the joke is on them.

This person to which I'm referring is so profoundly insulting and demeaning. It's not my opinion alone. It's shared by most who interact with him.

In the end, perhaps it's not my misfortune. It reminds me of the type of person I never want to be. Ever. I hope my friends and family will let me know if I start to cross a doorway into this type of narcissistic abyss.

Until we meet again, I'll say a prayer for him that an awakening occurs. For if you peel through the obnoxious layers, you may find a real person--one who is smart and deserving of praise but one who does not insist we bow before it while acknowledging what hopeless dummies we are in comparison.

The Sounds & Sights of Hope

This has always been one of my favorite songs; I get a smile from ear to ear when it pops on the radio. It instills a reminder that even if things are tough, I can choose to find hope, happiness and simplicity just around the corner.



These sunflowers from Husband's garden make me feel the same way.

What sounds and sights bring you hope?

When Nothing Is Funny...You Can Always Go for a Diversion

This adequately covers the some of the stupidity of BP.


Unfortunately, it still doesn't solve the problem.

Sanibel Treasures

My only hesitation in another beach posting is that readers who aren't from Florida get the shore stereotype reinforced. So I'll preface the sandy photos with a comment that there are many treasured ecosystems in our state--from pine flatwoods to cypress hammocks, saltwater marshes to turkey oak sandhills. It's a beautiful state.

So that said, let's give it a whirl. Here are some photos of the beautiful, untained-by-oil beaches of Sanibel Island. Get there if you can. It hasn't been spoiled...yet. I'm praying for it.

A frothy surf glides over thousands of years of broken shells and sand leaving a few delicate bubbles--

not to be confused with those hideous Bubble Room bubbles.

A Florida fighting conch's egg case sits on the sand with glimmers of salty film. Damn, laying that many eggs must suck.

White ibises, one adult and one immature, harvest tiny mollusks from the sand. These guys have it right. Never understand the ones you see in urban yards and retention ponds behind big box retailers. What are they THINKING?

Basking in Weirdness with a Giant Pinch of Hot Creepy

Florida is full of beauty, surprises, transplants from faraway places, agriculture...and weird, weird roadside attractions and unexpected dives.

You can't call the Bubble Room a dive, but weird it is. And so chocked full of memorabelia this restaurant with the wobbly roof is, one wonders if the occassion to dust and clean ever comes around more than once in a very long time. Situated on a charming spot on Captiva Island, the Bubble Room is quite possibly the strangest place you'll ever grab a bite to eat. ...If you don't count the Linger Lodge here in Bradenton, which is bathed in a very odd assortment of badly taxidermied mammals and rattlesnakes spelling out words on the walls. I diverege from the subject at hand...

To me, there isn't much that can be creepier than monkeys, monkeys with instruments and oversized rabbits on the front porches of doll houses.

...except maybe clowns--clowns that look mean, like something out of that movie that ran on HBO for two centuries in the late '80's, Killer Clowns from Outerspace. Remember that jewel? Brother used to love it.

Then again, I can't say enough about statues of ravenous animals like a llama that belongs on Poltergeist--looking at you with a creepy stare as if it will soon come alive and attack with its bizarre pink and black lips...

...and a hippo head the wild Nile River has never seen the likes of--jaws thrown open 180 degrees.

Where the HELL did these things come from. And did Stephen King have a hand in their creation?

I can't forget the cage from a circus side show, inhabited here by a local writing Goddess and Gropius reader. 

Despite my apparent Bubble Room bashing, it's such a cool place to visit. The pop history you find within these walls nearly blinds you from too many detailed movie posters, action figures, faded postcards and worn stuffed animals, vintage stuff that could or could not be worth millions in Antique Roadshow.  You can't possibly imagine all of the oldie moldy collector's items, including a giant filthy Micky Mouse from the Macy's Day parade, looming over the tables; dolls with frozen cries on their faces; metal ferris wheels; Alice in Wonderland's real life tea party; a room filled with aquariums and nautical treasures; etc. etc. All of the tables have glass tops under which a myriad of Christmas treasures and random bits of creepiness are mixed together.

Now you simply cannot be in this part of the world without having a meal at the Bubble Room, or at least stopping for one of the 70 pound slices of cake.

A coconut cake slice one of the six friends took home stayed wrapped in the hotel room overnight, followed us through hot car rides around the island the next day and was finally eaten with a shared fork in the car just before we pulled off the highway home.  Ah, friends. Nice to have a bizarre place to share an adventure. Tomorrow I'll post photos of the gorgeous natural treasures of Sanibel/Captiva. They won't be nearly as creepy.

Did I Ever Do Anything So Stupid?

Probably. And thankfully, I erased it from my immediately accessible memory.

Teenagers: they are treasures but do the dumbest crap just to impress their peers. I remember feeling my own obnoxiousness when I was that age and hated it--especially in the younger teen years. I didn't enjoy middle school or much about my part in the whole spectacle of it.

I laughed hysterically when a sweet co-worker emerged from her computer this Tuesday morning to tell me about the misgiving of supervising her young teen and 3 of her closest friends for 20 hours over the Memorial Day weekend.

One of the girls--thankfully not hers--has a reputation for "acting like a dork," a behavior that is evidently magnified when she's around more than a couple of people.

This time, co-worker walked out the back door to find her tied around a thick tree trunk with the other 3 girls pouring soda and emptying Pixi Sticks on her to "see if she would attract ants."

Nice one.

Isn't it easy to laugh at someone else's kids? 

What stupid things did you do for attention at that age?  Do tell, as they say in the South.

The Crime of Inaction

Driving out to Anna Maria Island on Memorial Day, I saw every pump occupied at the BP station. I hated them for being blind. At the same time I wondered if the station was the pride of a small business owner who doesn’t have any more to do with the oil crisis than I do for purchasing gas. And even with a concerted conscience focused on punishing BP, I had stopped at one of their stations to fill my car up last week and realized it half after I had been standing at the pump for over 4 minutes.
The beach was beautiful. During a fast paced walk I enjoyed seeing the families sitting in the sand, a toddler sloppily carrying a full bucket of water to the tiny castle he was building, the brilliant layers of blue-green meeting the cloudless sky…

The knowledge of the big “it” out there—the spill that keeps coming out beyond what any of us can comprehend every minute, hour and day--was a weight for everyone on the shore.  Instead of carrying that heaviness with me, I said a prayer with every step in the surf. I had to feel that somehow my calling of all the Goodness that is seen and unseen would be heard.

Besides that imminent concern and small answer, this time of year I’m especially alert to the beach nesting birds. They depend on a clean beach, undisturbed dunes and the grace of God to hatch and raise their young. Every year, the number of successful least terns, black skimmer and snowy plovers diminishes. More harm that one can possibly imagine is done by the trash on the beach attracting predators, the quick footed tourists and locals who can’t be bothered to look where they step, and unknowing children who chase the energy strained adults mustering everything to feed their chicks.

I loved watching a skimmer dip in the shallow waves, following them in a line down the beach with a grace and precision hard to believe. Another one came. And another. On my walk back, I watched a young man with his girlfriend coming in the opposite direction. I misjudged him as one who couldn’t care less about a bird, but then I saw him turn. Stop. Watch the skimmer with a look of fascination. It made me smile and feel hopeful.

Approaching the entrance to the beach I used, it was impossible not to see a large area where a group had left over 30 bottles, cans, wrappers and used bottle of sunscreen. I felt sick. In the midst of the largest environmental disaster to ever face our country, here was a deliberate act of laziness and disregard for everything. Everything!

Even on Memorial Day? Our veterans sure as hell didn’t make their sacrifices so that Americans could treat our own country like a pig sty. Sick and angry, I collected as many pieces of trash as I could and went to the garbage bin. A couple settling down to sit in their chairs remarked about how angry it made them, yet when I returned with a bag from my car, they hadn’t lifted a finger.

I collected everything, putting the sandy refuse in a Whole Foods bag made from recycled bottles. I was pissed. I know from years of experience that some people will always litter. They’ll always have shameful behavior without being ashamed.

But what I wasn’t prepared for were countless groups of couples and families on the beach who would stay right where they were, watching. Just watching. It didn't occur to them to clean it up before, and seeing someone picking up the mess, it still didn't occur to them.

As they hear news of the oil spill at night, do they shake their heads with sadness, change the channel, or pray for the sportscast to come?

Do you know people who roll over on their beach blankets and look the other way. What is in their conscience? What's the difference between their inaction and the inaction of those who left the trash to begin with? I'm not sure there is a difference.