My idea of paradise is a tropcial island, studded with palm trees and encircled by wide, white, sandy beaches. Actually, it’s more than an idea. I have visited many such places by boat, and know for a fact that the tropics get me all hot and bothered. I dream of these islands when I sleep at night.

So why is it that I keep ending up back here in this frigid winter wonderland? By the end of January, I’m depressed and hibernating, realizing that if I drink every time it snows, I’ll need rehab before spring. What in the heck am I doing in this frozen wasteland, when I could have been sailing among warm sunny islands this winter?

Florida is not a tropical island; in fact, it’s not much of anything. The Spaniards probably laughed all the way to the bank when they sold us that swampland. Stupid gringos. We made a bad thing worse by filling it with condos, chain stores, and very elderly people in big dangerous cars. The only thing Florida has going for it is that it isn’t freezing(usually) in the winter, and there are palm trees. I have a place to stay, and can drive there with my canvas business loaded into the car, having already lined up enough work to pay for gas. Also, I can take the dog, although I do still believe that FL needs to put up signs at the border that say “Welcome to Florida; no dogs allowed.”

So back I go to my fake tropical paradise, trying to chase the mid winter blues out of my system. Once I return north, the days will be longer, the temps shouldn’t be quite as cold, and soon I’ll have pollen season to look forward to. There’s something in New England’s spring that aggravates my sinuses almost beyond tolerable, whereas I have never, ever been allergic to a tropical island. And yet, I keep coming back here, and staying happily for long periods of time. For some reason, my heart is here, which I guess makes it home.

Nearly a dozen of us, including myself, are part of a close knit group of folks who have all sailed in by boat from somewhere else, and decided to stay. And while we continue to dream of winter escapes, with some of us actually making the break, we admit that there’s something here, something that satisfies our sailor spirits, something that we love and don’t want to leave. It may not be tropical, but it is our paradise. Snow covered and all.

Physic Advertising

Awhile back, I wanted a graphic of hedge trimmers to use in one of my posts. Not finding what I wanted in my piddling graphics program, I went online and stole an image off nextag, a site I never use in real life when shopping by internet. Since then, whenever I access my yahoo email account, there in the corner sits an ad from nextag, featuring gardening equipment. At first only a variety of hedge clippers were displayed, but when that didn’t entice me to buy, clipper attachments were thrown into the mix. Still getting no response, there appeared seeding machines and other unidentifiable lawn toys. My personal favorite was the electric snow shovel. Last night I saw a composter and a $1000 plow to attach to….what, my ford escort? Yeah, that would work about as well as that car goes in the snow. Luckily for me, my wonderful landlord plows me out after every snowfall.

Little do ‘they’ realize that not only am I against motorized gardening tools, preferring manual work with say, an ax, I don’t even have a yard. I have a pool of solidified snow all around my house, and even that isn’t mine. It’s rented, and I’ll be moving out about the time it all thaws out and starts to turn green.

So there’s your proof that it is very easy to track where you’ve been and what you’ve looked at online. Right now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m going to go back to nextag to type in ‘boats’, and maybe ‘tropical art’, in an attempt to get more appropriate, attractive advertising up on the screen. Gardening tools are an insult to a sailor!

Now that's instant service, and much better!

Last week it snowed, again, and then ice fell on top of it. The ground was still soft enough that the hard, crunchy snow hid the soft mud puddles underneath, so that you found them when you were suddenly ankle deep, or dog belly deep, in muck. Two mornings ago, when I woke up to find that all that crap had melted, I did a little dance of joy without getting all covered in slop.

This morning I woke up to find that the cycle had repeated, except that this time, the muck puddles are nicely frozen solid. I’m sure all you experienced winter folk are saying, yeah, so, what do you expect this time of year? Well excuse me for spending so many winters in the tropics that it’s freaking me out. And was it my idea to get a young dog at this time of year, who absolutely has to go out to run around, or parts of the house inside end up covered in teeth marks? Don’t answer that. When I decided to stay through the cold part of the year, I wasn’t planning to actually go outside. Leaving the house was not on my list of things to do this winter, except to venture to the mailbox for Netflix.

Right now the dog is plastered to the side of the woodstove after our most recent trip out, trying to melt the snow off herself, and I’m having dark fantasies about picking up a hurricane damaged boat in Texas, patching it up enough to float it, and sailing to the Yucatan peninsula, or somewhere, anywhere, where I can snuggle up to a nice toasty warm volcano until I thaw out. Watching documentaries about warm places is no longer doing it for me.

As soon as I tie up some loose ends here, like actually doing some work so I have a bit of travel money, and getting the car properly serviced, since all I’ve done since I bought it last year was to change the oil, put 35,000 miles on it, and flatten some tires, we’re off to the warmth of boring old Florida. Provided I can get the car unstuck from the driveway.

Save the Beer!

This is the rallying cry when the sh*t hits the fan during an afternoon sail. Sailing the Chesapeake, screaming thunderstorms would often appear quickly almost out of nowhere. The boat would heel over, sometimes knocked down or nearly so, and beer would fly everywhere.
“Spilling beer is a flogging offense!” the captain would shout.
Ignore the sails shredding in howling wind, forget the hail smashing the hatches, don’t worry about that guy overboard, SAVE THE BEER, and we’ll toss him a couple to hold onto until we can come back for him.
A friend who had been sailing a particular bay in New England for well over 20 years, once encountered a rock while sailing merrily along at five knots. His comment on the collision: “We spilled beer!”

Where am I going with this? Absolutely nowhere, just like I’m not going ‘out there’, where my yard is an interesting blend of mud and ice, hard to balance upon in the 40 knot winds. Which makes me miss those lovely summer squalls that only lasted minutes, instead of days and weeks and months like this crappy weather. And if there was beer on deck right now, it would freeze solid!

Recession, recession, recession

I keep hearing about how terrible it is. But despite living in the state with the highest unemployment rate, I simply do not see it. I don’t see long bread lines, masses of homeless lining the streets with begging signs, increased theft and looting. No long gas lines, no bare supermarket shelves, no empty mega stores. Maybe I’m lucky enough to live in a wealthy enough area that it’s simply not an issue. Or maybe, for the many, this recession simply means it’s finally time to accept that living in a five bedroom, four bath house full of gadgets, with an attached three car garage full of giant SUVs to cart around the two kids and all their toys, all of it mortgaged to the hilt on a factory worker’s salary, is simply too much stuff. Twenty years ago, the average working couple with two kids had a three bedroom house with a bathroom and a half. Everyone shared, sitting together around one TV, instead of isolated within the home, all staring at their own box and never coming out of their own bathrooms.

For quite a while now, I have wondered how long this pricey kite could stay in the air before crashing onto the sand in front of the expensive beach house. Didn’t anyone pay attention in history class? That the sure sign of a civilization about to tumble is rapid inflation along with an outward sign of increased wealth?

Everything goes in cycles. Maybe we’ve had our heyday; maybe it’s time to follow the Mayan history into obscurity, leaving behind symbols no one will understand for centuries, until someone finally decodes and reconstructs the language of text messaging.

Or maybe, if we’re really lucky, we’ll wake up and realize that the one with the most toys does not necessarily win. Those who come out ahead in the great game of life are the ones who can appreciate that time spent enjoying life's simple pleasures, such as taking a walk with the dog or your annoying little brother, far outweighs any material frivolity.