Hola, Jupiter
When I woke up this morning just after six o’clock, Rose was getting out of bed. Rose, who won’t get within a yard of anyone on purpose. But we ended up being bunk mates anyway. A few minutes later, I noticed some blob sitting on the blanket next to me. As I explained to Carrie-Bri…
“Rose left her headphones case on the bed between us last night. I’m not sure if she meant for that to be a barrier or… We brushed elbows a couple of times in the night though.”
“Scandalous.”
It was another hard nine hours to Jupiter, Florida. And by “hard”, I just mean almost total solid driving. No real sight-seeing along the way, except for some of the girls to have their face photographed in the man-sized pecan at a roadside fuel station, the same one from last year.
Green, bright, bright green. Wild oranges. Black cattle. Palm trees. We must be in Florida. Except for the cows; that always throws me.
When we pulled into our little nook-and-cranny sixty-some-odd-year-old motel, Rose found a little brown lizard roaming the roses and hibiscus. She joined me in splitting a room with Linnea-Irish and her buddy while Carrie set up shop with Mom and Grandma a few doors down. Carrie got her own bed because, according to her own words, she “sleeps like a sea star”.
Before we drove out for sustenance to last us the next week, we had more towels and a light bulb added to our room while I caught up with my boys, hiking three miles in the sunshine, geocaching, and Chick-Fil-A-ing together.
So while I loaded up on Kashi strawberry granola bars, peanut butter, and plastic spoons for a week’s worth of breakfasts and lunches, Mom and the girls split all over the store for what they needed. I added a Simply Apple apple juice waiting in the produce section with Mom: more varieties of root vegetables/potatoes then I had ever seen before, avocados almost too fat for me to hold with one hand, giant aloe vera leaves. A lot of Spanish spoken up and down the aisles; good for my language training. Before we left, Rose added one more thing to her list – a house plant “for the week” – giant shamrock.
We walked to Howley’s for dinner on the patio: grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, omelet, rueben, fruit salad. They had us covered, even if the wait-time was still twice as long as back home. Even the fuel pumps half-speed down here. I’m not even kidding.