When living in South Florida during the summer season one encounters storm events on an almost daily basis. Weekly, I do the wash and then hang it out on the line to dry. There are loads of dos and don’ts associated with this drying technique such as, the sun will bake the clothing, the water is soft so it makes it hard to get anything clean. But I won’t bore you with the details. I refer to my weather application daily and always see the symbol for a storm. I think that is reported, as they know it will at some point in the day storm, That way if it doesn’t they would only be wrong occasionally.


One day I saw the AP change the prediction from rain to sunshine and back to rain again. I was glad for that knowing at least someone is paying attention. This Morning I loaded the lines with laundry and was dismayed to see the ominous black to the West. More black than usual I set about removing the still wet laundry from the lines. In the meantime I also carried in the lawn furniture and poured myself a cup of coffee and as the thunder began to roll and it does roll (like God bowling) to sit on the couch with the dogs that were by now beginning to shake and look for me for security. I opened the drapes to view the bird preserve across from us. to see the palms, swaying in the wind. The lightening strikes were spectacular as the storm moved over the house and went on to the East. It’s amazing to hear the rumbles over the house as they shake everything, each dog pressing into me and panting in nervousness. I say, “its ok be still” and so on in attempts to sooth the animals. I try to imagine what it must be like not to understand the great booming noises. I also wonder if they can see the strikes of the lightning? Sometimes it will rumble all day and not even get dark and like today the storm moved off after a tremendous show with very little rain. So…I will have to water tonight. When I moved here I went a little wild with the plantings. I am in love with palm trees. There are so many varieties. I was able to get a few smaller generic palms on my budget and plant them around. They need a lot of water and fertilizer or their under leaves turn brown and die. I found a recipe for a homemade brew fertilizer that everyone swears by, which includes a can of beer. What is it with the beer? It makes everything better? It sure works here in Florida as often people are working in stifling heat. People are either drinking it or watering things with it including their food. Beer chicken. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/beer-can-chicken-recipe.html






Doing anything physical here has been a real challenge for this Yankee. I used to make fun of people who lived their lives indoors. From the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car, to the air-conditioned store and so on, but whoa! I understand completely now. I understand how a person can just be sitting not even doing anything and break out in total perspiration. Everyone who has any money or is smart leaves for this season. Many homes sit empty. The people who leave are called snowbirds. However, you do not have to go far to escape the heat, and they come back before the snow fly’s anyway. I have begun to long for my old 4 seasons life. I also have been practicing with the air conditioning: 76 and 77 is too hot and 72 is too cold. I have not reached a middle range yet. Pajamas were flannel bottoms and a T now I am down to the T without the flannels. My mum sleeps in the buff.


I usually retire with a washcloth on my head and sometimes also on my neck. I like to tell this to my daughter as she always asked me earlier when she was growing up why do you buy washcloths? I would review my hygiene lessons to her and then threw in the cloth on the head and neck thing, which left her oddly confused. It was only recently did I realize I had been doing this because I was from Florida originally and developed such habits early on. Also, why I have always slept with on leg out of the covers and why I cannot stand a pile of blankets on me, Florida is the reason.


I ran across a picture of me when I was about 8 all sacked out with my little chintz animal pattern jams with my one leg hanging out of the sheet, just to the right of the air conditioner, a washcloth on my head. We were living in Florida.


But to make a long story short and I will skip the part about me ditching school for the first time here by stepping back into the palms as the bus arrived. (A habit that followed me all my life)….


And skip to the part where I am singing. “The National Anthem, Oh tis of thee, and America the Beautiful, plus: “ The “Florida State” song. It’s about waking up in the morning where the orange blossoms grow, and a drifting back to Florida the orange blossom state.” Then leaning forward to spit on the boy in front of me in the choir line (?). A childhood filled with riding my bicycle with no hands against traffic on cool fall mornings, walking barefooted to the 7-11 for an icy and a small penny bag of candy, hopping from grass patch to white pavement to grass patch. Races in the street with my pigeon-toed friend, by the way, who was faster than me even with her feet turned inwards. We would run and jump into swimming pools throughout the neighborhood as Marco Polo extended itself from pool to pool. Each day ended with a sundown session of the garage band, with me on tennis racquet singing, “Hey, Hey with the Monkees.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzzx6lKBpHQ






My Florida childhood spent playing, was also the Florida of my mom’s discontent. She lay on the beach day in and day out for a long time. I do not remember going to school at all. Just body surfing and eating in beachside shrimp shacks. Finally, my grandmother came to live with us and I went to a counselor to make leather wallets with braided plastic on the ends, and twisted key chains. Not that anything strange was wrong with me, just a kid that had lost her daddy and was subjected to being a beach bum. Apparently, I had drawn some pretty awful pictures showing caskets and black flowers. Causing my mother and grandmother dismay.


Mom cried a lot missing my dad who had been mutilated in a terrible car crash back in our home state. She had buried him, sold everything and moved us to Florida. I had learned to care for my little brother making him fried egg sandwiches, (imagine that using a frying pan at 6,) and teaching him to swim. My grandmother, she cooked and created order and routine. She made creamed chicken on toast with bore those little red things called gizzards and other floaty parts, which I picked out, yuck! (That generation ate everything due to the depression, which caused them to be very frugal. Or so I have been told.)


I had the mumps and she made creamed chicken. I smelled it from my bed and threw up as I imagined those floaty chicken parts all flowing around in the creamed pea sauce. To this day I can smell it. At night my very normal pencil sharpener became a bust of John F. Kennedy that gave speeches to me through the walls, however, it was only the TV in the living room speaking to me from the other side of the wall. Those were the days of high imagination, where the creature under the bed could reach out and grab your arms or legs so… I would jump in the dark into bed and never, never let my arms hang over.


Then one night I was awakened by a scream and jumped out of bed to meet my grandmother in the doorway of her room right across the hall, then seeing my mom and her boyfriend fighting on the sofa. I followed my grandmother’s lead to beat on him to get him off of her. We beat him right to the front door and out. Everyone screaming. He shoved me back and I hit the stacked stools by the door and they ripped at the wounds that had had formed on my knees by constantly falling off my bike.


I sat down bleeding and watched as my grandmother left me in charge rushing my mom to the hospital. He had tried to grind out her eyes with his thumbs!


He was a drunk, a condition at 8 I did not comprehend yet, and obviously my mother had chosen to overlook in her intimate relationship with this man. I did not know that at the time, but that was the beginning of the end. After her eyes got better, they were bandaged for what seemed like months as grandmother and I tended to her every need.


The phone rang and he was at the door all the time. My grandmother threatening to call the police. He would beg for forgiveness. I was not of an age to really ascertain the seriousness of the situation. We just packed boxes and a for sale sign went up on the house. Apparently, the house sold right away, and we moved West never to grace the Florida’s coastline again.


Yet, here we are. It’s so hot here I am wondering why?


Florida is obviously a poor state, they have a really low minimum wage I worked for 8 $ an hour in some of the most terrible conditions I have ever endured. It has taken me a week to recover from one week of slave labor in horrible heat. I saw so many violations that labor and industries would cringe where I am from. No breaks, working in unimaginable temperatures for long hours around dangerous machines. People drinking alcohol on their lunch breaks and even a shift boss leaving to go to the liquor store so he could drink on the night shift. Then these drunks get on forklifts. After the company showed we newbies a film depicting the dangers of forklifts, gory and horrific injuries recreated for us to watch. They send us out to work in the exact conditions that were depicted as Never Dos.


No floor supervisors or anyone making sure people are safe and the labor laws are upheld. Right away another employee told me that my own supervisor was drinking on the job! I suppose it is one of those, if I am doing it how can I reprimand someone else situations. I became acutely aware of where those forklifts were and who was on them! After one of the drivers placed a skid of papers right near me boxing me in so that when I turned around I gouged my leg on a sharp piece of the pallet and that same day falling down as I was exhausted from the heat and the long hours catching myself on a dangerous machine cutting a hole in my middle finger. And then another day a drunk man I was working with had been trying to show me how to stack came back from lunch smelling of alcohol, began to stack incorrectly blaming me in a stern voice. “Don’t you get it yet, this way and then that way!”? Then he jumps on the forklift yelling at a young black man working near us calling him a nigger and that if he got hurt he did not give a shit or maybe he said Fck.



I began to think about my now aching arm, which had been healed from a previous injury, and my knee, which I had damaged and had surgery back in the 90s now aching and keeping me sleepless at night. Not to mention my feet and aching back. Also, how my hands were swollen when I got up in the morning, and I could no longer close them completely. Combine that with inadequate working conditions, which allowed for the smell of the toner, (which I was supposed to get used to) permeate the premises’ and not be removed by the fans they supposedly sold.


After a rotten day of injuries I tried to report and when I tried to speak to my supervisor he waved me away saying, “not yet.” Hugh? Not yet?” How is that a way to speak to someone? I have worked for companies that would be sued by someone with injuries like mine so I got a Band-Aid and left. After another frustrating day of watching my line manager try to fix a machine over and over again, injuries, light-headedness from heat exhaustion and chemical smells, I quit.


I cannot imagine how I get myself into those kinds of jobs. I guess it is my willingness to try anything. Coming from a similar work environment I was surprised to see such negligence. They are a lawsuit and I mean a huge lawsuit waiting to happen. It’s a miracle no one has sued them as I am sure they deserve it with the turn over they have seen. I found a list of names on an old schedule from a year back and only one persons name was the same. Before I left I did some research for that very person to help her realize she should move on finds somewhere to work that would better appreciate her many skills and talents. Life doesn’t have to be so hard.






I have a good resume, lots of experience in human services, I am educated beyond most holding degrees in Journalism and Psychology. I am looking to work with a kinder gentler people. I need people in my life that care about others, are concerned about not only about the quality of their own lives but that of others too. I do not want to be around rough and tumble people anymore.


Years ago Showtime had a series called “Dead Like Me.” One of the characters was named George had a Job in a place that was called “Happy Time. “ She had a neurotic boss who had a heart of gold and loved her cat that she took on adventures with her.


George moved up quickly even with her negative sarcastic personality. Which I do not have, but seem to attract. Help!


So if you know of a place like this, a Happy Time that has an opening let me know I want to work there.



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Unfortunately, the series came to an end. It got weird, to much F this and F that and not enough real dialogue, (which Showtime has the tendency to do.) and some strange ad lib murder plot where the reapers kill their boss after the one they liked gained enough points to move forward to heaven. They lost Mandy Patinkin http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001597/their signature actor and it all went downhill from there.