What The Heck, Florida?

I’m moving to Florida for the warm weather. The joke’s on me!

What the heck, Florida?

We closed on the Florida house late last week. I stayed down here to set some things up – internet, lawn service, utilities, etc – and because i knew I’d be here for a few days, I had some deliveries set up. Most of the items came assembled but this thing below came in many parts and friends, the assembly almost killed me.

memory foam seating!

Certainly it killed two perfectly healthy fingernails. And if that wasn’t enough – I assembled this the next day:

saddle stool  (Note the wrapping paper held down by canned green beans in the dining room beyond 🙂 )

This was actually harder to put together than the white office chair. It’s temporary seating until the actual counter stools get here. Those need to be assembled, too. Frankly, I’m over the assembly thing. This might not seem like an extraordinary activity to you, but I haven’t done anything of the kind since I married Sami. So I think It’s fair to say that I am #1 traumatized and #2 calloused but yet #3 motivated by the need to sit down. I have the counter stools scheduled for delivery for tomorrow but I think ‘ll just let them simmer inside their boxes until I get the heart back to have at it again.

All of this assembling is keeping me from my main activity here: laying out wrapping paper footprints of the furniture arrangements that I have planned. Here for instance is a small credenza and a 30″ pedestal table with 2 dining chairs. Heck, now that I can see it I might spring for a 36″ table. there will be the pathway from the kitchen to the rear sliding door in front of this arrangement, with the sofa/love seat and big TV to the front of the pathway. This is working out very nicely.

This is thrilling to me to realize that my theoretical size calculations are correct.

I set the temporary stool up directly across from one of the most entertaining and beautiful features in the whole place: the coffee counter. You are looking at an electric kettle and the world’s most beautiful French press. The kettle is a riot. It boils up very quickly, lights up blue while it does it and then just when you are thoroughly hypnotized, it shuts off very suddenly leaving you wanting more. Like a 25c peep show.

Here’s a video. Note the tiny green light on the electrical outlet above the kettle.

Wasn’t that great?

The people here are so polite. No matter what the setting,  their age or the circumstances in which we meet, they are outstandingly polite and just ma’am me to death. I like it. These two characters below though – I don’t know. I saw them as I was driving out of the Home Depot shopping center and noticed the sign first, then the white curls of what I assumed to be a helpless grandmother being wheeled in the noon day sun as a marketing device to garner donations. As I made the turn, I saw that it was a white dog in the wheel chair. [Ed. note: i saw them in the same place two days ina row, only on the second day the dog was out of the wheel chair looking for a place to poop.]

See all those pick up trucks in the photo of the dog wheelers? I have never seen so many BIG pick up trucks ever in my life. And they usually have kids or dogs riding in the back. Mostly kids.

I’ll be here for another day or two before I have to go back to NJ. Right now, I’m off to battle the only enemy i have here (so far) – the super fancy and completely inscrutable motion-activated kitchen faucet. I haven’t mastered it yet. Sometimes there’s such a thing as too much technology.

 

 

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