One Car

The Girls Celebrate National Pink Flamingo Day  

We have sold Grant's beater with 1 day to spare before his birthday and having to pay for another year's registration. The ad read:

        "For Sale: 2007 Honda Civic
         180k miles, runs well
         No AC, power steering leaks
         Passenger door cannot be opened or fixed
         $1,000 or best offer."

We shed no tears when a person handed over $850 and drove away with the car and title.

Then:
We have always had her car and his car. I drive my car. I like my car. I do not share my car.  Since Grant commuted 350 miles every week, I did the family driving on the weekends. When we went on driving trips, we took my car because it was always the nicer car, and I drove. I like driving.Our children assumed that moms did the driving. One of them once remarked, "Look, there's a daddy that can drive."

Now:
We have our (formerly my) car. This will be an opportunity for me to learn to share and for me to learn to ride while someone else drives. To that end, we've decided that we will share the driving equally, mile for mile. Today I drove to the turnpike plaza where we met our daughter to pick up our granddaughter to visit for the next couple of weeks. Old habits die hard, so even though Grant was to drive home, he automatically got in the passenger's side.

In a way, it is exciting to try this experiment of 1 car. And it is reinforcing that we will not be paying insurance, gas, repairs, and registration on 2 cars. And I can learn to relax while someone else drives. It will be a good thing. It will.

The Girls Have Settled

The Girls Sit On An Amazon Box  

A temporary solution to setting up the girls. Since we don't have any large pots, I'm not sure what I will do for the long term. Immediately turtle William and cat Annie came over to check out the newcomers. Always looking for food.

Spider On Underside of Flamingo  

Before I set them up, I discovered a hitchhiker from the old house: a spider guarding her eggs. The balcony is screened, so I decided the best course would be to let her go in the bushes next to the parking lot. She can lay more eggs. After checking with my entomologist friend, I learned she was probably a brown widow spider, introduced from South Africa and now introduced to our parking lot by me. Unintended consequences reign. One more in a series of humans thinking they were doing good when they introduce a new specie to an area, and yet, it turned out to be a bad idea. Maybe one of the mocking birds will eat her. 

Introduced plants and animals are everywhere. The village of Key Biscayne is planted in what Grant calls resort landscaping with lots of palms and flowering plants in lush, well-tended beds. Everything is neatly pruned, swept and mowed by city employees who always turn off the blowers or mowers when I walk by. They are unfailingly friendly when I greet them. 

Even with all their work, a few unplanned natives have sneaked in. I walked to the post office today and noticed whisk fern, (psilotum nudum) growing in some sable palm boots. There is ball air plant (Tislandsia sp) on tree trunks. Some ferns growing in cracks of rock walls. I will look at them more closely next time I walk by.

The rest of the key is pretty much native habitat with Crandon Park on the north side and Bill Baggs State Park on the southern end. When I was a child, Crandon Park Zoo, predecessor of Zoo Miami was located on the key, and I remember mostly Australian pines (Casuarina sp), although I may have that mixed up with Hollywood Beach. We came over one time to go to the zoo, and we got to hold and feed newborn lions. Really.

We plan to ride our bikes to both Crandon Park and Bill Baggs this weekend. Perhaps I will see flamingos on the mud flats. In recent years more and more have been spotted in Florida, and researchers now think there may have been a native population rather than just escapees from Hialeah Race Track. The girls would be pleased.

I Did It

Just The Echos Are Left  

Just one more trip, and I have a flat tire. Well, not completely flat, just a low-tire warning as I got on I-95. Can I just ignore it? Yes. No. Yes. No, that's crazy. What if it goes flat before I get to Fort Lauderdale, and I have to sit on the roadside waiting for AAA? Sigh.

I didn't want to take the exit to Miami Beach or the one to the airport. Next one is Martin Luther King Avenue. Fine. Rats, a residential neighborhood with no gas stations at the exit ramps. Fortunately, there is a convenience store on the north side with an air/vacuum machine out front. I inflated the low tire (found the screw embedded in the middle of the tread) and drove on.

Before going to the tire store, I took another load to storage and retrieved 2 cases of wine glasses (one of which my son will use when he completes the rack he is building; the other he can pass along) and 2 boxes of champagne flutes that I'm donating to Poverello House Thrift Shop. Back home, I loaded the rest of the donation items, a chlorine container, the internet connectors, and 4 boxes that are just too big for our recycling. Two of the boxes were from bikes we bought 15 years ago and stored in our garage since then. For what, exactly?

Off to the pool store, back home to throw the chlorine in the pool. Then stopped by my friend's house to drop off the boxes for her recycling bin and on to the tire store. While they fix my tire, I carried the internet connectors to UPS which will ship them back to ATT since we have cable at the apartment. My friend picked me up, and back at her house, we decided it was too hot to cut up cardboard boxes. Dear friend will do them in the cool of the morning.

A nice break chatting while we wait for the tire store to call. I hadn't entered these 2 hours in my schedule, but a treasure to sit with my longest  (we don’t say oldest) friend in Fort Lauderdale. I haven't discovered how I will cope with the loss of being close. 

Tire fixed, I made the thrift store drop-off, then back to the house, picked up the chlorine bottles and 2 car carriers we had and returned them to the pool store. I just wanted them gone. Owner insisted on returning our deposit made at least 20 years ago. I'll recommend them to the new house owner.

It was time for the final, final, final packing of the car. And I did it. Like a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, I got it all in and left a place Grant could tuck in the kitchen shelf package we'd had sent to his office. At 5:30, I headed south.

Flamingos Are Ready For The Move