Gloating Bites Back

So my gloating about being in “sunny” Florida is rebounding on me, biting me in the backside, as well it should. It’s been very rainy the past couple of days, with areal flood warnings as well as a tornado watch. While we haven’t been impacted by a tornado, it has been very wet. And windy. The Tampa area has had about 4” in the last three days from what I can cobble together from the weather service.

While we are a little ways from there, I’m pretty sure there’s been about the same amount here. Our daughter isn’t the weather geek her father is, so sadly doesn’t have a weather station to record all the data. She doesn’t even have a rain gauge. Her attitude is “whatever.” The last big hurricane scare had them boarding up windows. The only damage they had was one frond on a palm tree broken down in front of the house. That cemented that attitude for her.

A short note about that word “areal.” It isn’t pronounced “a real,” as it looks, but “air-e-al,” meaning in the area. It took me aback the first time I saw it, as it did our daughter when the warning showed up on her fitbit-type device. We shared the same joke about now it’s a real warning, as opposed from those fake ones in the past. But while shopping, I did overhear a woman complaining about having to take several detours due to roads being under water before she could get to the mall. So some people were inconvenienced. And of course, it being so close the Christmas, there’s a lot of traffic as people are out trying to get all their gifts purchased.

Obviously, I’m not cooking nor am I gardening while here. I did see that one of the plants I was babying for my daughter is still living. In fact, it looks much better than it did when I first arrived over a month ago for my actual sitting of the grandsons trip here. So perhaps I helped it. And maybe it is one of those “practically indestructible” plants that’s living up to its billing. I haven’t searched for the other plants that were failing, but I suspect they’re gone.

The first couple of days here were very nice, at least in our estimation, coming from the much more chilly northeastern Montana. We’ve walked the dog, a cute little dustmop named Benji, through the neighborhood. He got very excited each time we encountered others walking their dogs, but didn’t get to interact with them. One man, as he approached with his two-large boxer-mix dogs, announced, “Not a good idea!,” so I tightened up Benji’s leash. He’s small, but doesn’t know it, so wasn’t able to drag me towards the big dogs. We have seen several cranes being majestic in the neighborhood and heard them honking while flying overhead.

Tonight our grandsons have an ice hockey game, so we’ll be heading out to Brandon to watch that. We knew this was a distinct possibility, so packed some warmer clothing. But it is nowhere nearly as cold as watching the Ice Dogs in Glasgow at the Valley-Event center! Just long pants, real shoes as opposed to flip flops with socks, and a light jacket are all that’s required. Tomorrow morning, their championship roller hockey game should take place. It was rained out last weekend. We might need a little more than a light jacket for that game, as it will be outside. (This might count as more gloating. Does it?)

The boys’ last day of school is today, so we won’t have these quiet, relaxing mornings the rest of our stay here. They do have lots of friends, though, so I’m sure there will be times they go to their homes. And times those friends will be here with all the attendant noise that groups of young boys can engender. The room where we are staying upstairs, sleeping on an air bed, is normally their play room. So quite often, there are some young guys bouncing on that bed, playing Xbox games. Last evening it sounded a few times as though they might fall through the ceiling into the living room.

Well, it’s time to go with our son-in-law to retrieve his pickup. He had the brakes replaced. He needs the truck to go get the new bicycles the boys are getting for Christmas. We’re contributing to the cost of those bikes. I think Dennis and Matt are also going to go shop for new hockey nets in Tampa. The one they have (they use a couple upended buckets to mark the other one) has seen better days. There’s a lot of “street hockey” played out front. It’s a calm neighborhood with lots of young children, so drivers are always mindful of that. It’s nice here.