Hurricane blessings

You might have heard of Hurricane Irma, who recently visited our lovely state. We watched in awe of her power, concerned for the wreckage she left behind in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Then she set her sights on my home state, Florida. By then, we had already gotten our provisions together and were making plans to leave our home if we needed to.
I have a brother, sister, and a cousin in the Fort Myers area of Southwest Florida, where we grew up. My cousin lives in Fort Myers Beach within easy walking distance from the Gulf of Mexico. I and two more of my sisters live within less than an hour in three directions from Orlando in Central Florida. We were glued to the Weather Channel and the local weather for days leading up to Irma's U.S. landfall, hoping above hope that she would turn before she got to Florida and head out to the Atlantic. It was not to be.
Florida is very flat. The highest point in the state, Britton Hill, is only 345 feet above sea level. That location is on the panhandle and practically in Alabama. The rest of the state is barely above sea level at all. Most of the coastal areas and a lot of the way inland, are about three feet above sea level. Three feet. A big wave can practically take stuff out. Fortunately, at least on the Gulf side of the state, you can walk out from the beach for quite a ways before it begins to drop off at all, making it hard for waves to get very big most of the time.
Then you get a hurricane.
Hurricanes come during our rainy season. The ground is already saturated and here comes a foot more of rainwater in just hours...not to mention the driving winds. Storm surge comes right up the waterways without much to impede its journey. If you read my previous blog about hurricane season, you have a feel for what it's like. Widespread flooding. Wind damage. Huge trees uprooted. Power out. Often water is out or even if there is water, boil notices (when you have to boil any water used in cooking or drinking or even brushing your teeth).
We watched and waited. We had a plan. We had clothes and provisions packed for ourselves and our two little four-legged girls, just in case. All the hatches were battened down and everything stowed the best we could. We had planned to ride it out here at home, but then Irma changed her course. When the order came for us to evacuate, we decided to take heed and bug out. Fortunately, a friend's niece had rented her a nice two bedroom condo-type furnished place in Orlando for the duration, and she invited us to come stay with her. We figured that would be safer and farther away from Tampa, where the eye was supposed to hit.
We were wrong. Irma decided to take another turn and drive the inland route. Practically the whole state got it.
The worst part of the storm came right over our house and where we were staying. In the middle of the night rain started coming in around the kitchen window, flooding the floor. Fortunately, that part of the floor was ceramic tile. Maintenance came up to our third floor place with what looked like fifty towels and mopped it all up. More towels went at the bottom of the window to catch the rest. Our bedroom window only leaked a tiny bit, thank goodness. We could deal with that.
Then when it was still dark I woke up just in time to watch a huge bright green burst behind the hotel across the street. It was pretty for a second, then the power was gone. It wasn't till daylight came that we could see the major power lines over where that green light originated. It appeared that a transformer had exploded.
The loss of power in a place like that is awful. Not long after daylight, it started getting quite warm in there and we couldn't open the windows to let in fresh air. We had prepared for a power outage and brought little lanterns to turn on so we wouldn't be totally in the dark, especially in the bathrooms. But they couldn't help with the stuffy air.
On Monday, as soon as we got word that our house was intact, we decided to go home. There was no power but we could at least open the windows. We hauled our things down the service stairs from the third floor, then went back up them and carried our dogs and the last of our stuff down them again. I'm not twenty any more. I was breathing hard. The ones I really felt sorry for were the ones on the nineteenth floor. One bank of elevators was supposedly working, but we couldn't see any evidence of that. Those poor people had to haul their stuff much much farther than we did. Of course, some of them were staying on because they couldn't go home yet or they were stuck because they were on vacation and there wouldn't be any flights out for a couple more days. I felt sorry for them, too.
The drive home normally would've taken about forty minutes. It took most of two hours. I-4 was clogged up and we inched down the road most of the way home. But we made it.
When we turned into our RV park, the devastation was immediately evident. Downed trees, debris all over the roads and every site greeted us. The lake had overflowed and several sites were well flooded. Then we were home. Our home. It was a glorious sight, still intact with no damage at all and well above any flooding. We were lucky that the water was still on and usable and counted our blessings for that.
Within just a few minutes, we had the windows open and were back outside, hauling big branches out to the road. We were able to free our golf cart and clear the driveway. Then we went around checking on houses we had keys to here in the park. Another blessing, we didn't find any horrible damage. Only one house still had a rather large branch on it, and we didn't move it to go inside in case their insurance company needed to see it first. One place we don't check had half a tree leaning on it, where it had split during the storm. My heart went out to the owners, who fortunately were still up north.

This picture was taken today, after the roads are pretty much cleared here in the park.

I can't tell you how many times we absently hit light switches, just to be reminded we had no power. The park we live in has a rec hall with a gas stove. The park paid for ingredients, and three ladies who live here made a spaghetti dinner on Monday night. It was the only warm food we'd have that day. We were told to come back Tuesday night for burgers and hot dogs, again paid for by the park. With hot food in our tummies, our moods were much improved. By dinner, we had cleared out a whole lot of our own debris and the place was looking much better. Still no power, but at least we were fed.
At exactly 12:50 am Tuesday, our heads shot up at the sound of our air conditioner coming on. It's right under our bedroom window, and let me tell you it was the most wonderful sound. We jumped out of bed and ran around closing all the windows and turning on the ceiling fan. Then I heard the refrigerator running. The second most glorious sound. We were like little kids running around grinning. I finally got to sleep once the house cooled down. I don't think I've ever been so happy for those noises in my life.
On Tuesday we went to check on my partner's customers' properties on the other side of town. The development had been too flooded near the front gate to get into Monday afternoon. When we drove in we could see the high water marks on the roads and golf courses. Some houses looked like nothing had happened, others had parts of roofs ripped off. There were carports and storage sheds mangled or destroyed, but the houses themselves seemed solid and there was no water inside, thank goodness. Like our place, there were downed trees and debris everywhere.
I feel very blessed to have everyone in my family safe and sound, with homes they can still live in. We are grateful that our friend Carolyn shared her place at Westgate Palace Resort in Orlando with us during the storm. Every single staff member at Westgate was very helpful and pleasant, even when they were under a lot of stress. Our RV park fed us when we had no power. Our friends kept positive thoughts and prayed for us. Lakeland Electric has been working around the clock trying to get everyone's power back on and our lives back to normal.
All in all, we were lucky.
Let's not do this again for a long time, okay?

Love Bug Season is coming!

If you live here all year in Florida, you're aware of Love Bug Season. It lasts roughly three to five weeks twice each year in May and September and has nothing to do with those little round Volkswagens. You're most likely to encounter these miniscule lovers smashing into your windshield and your car paint.

Love bugs are tiny flying insects related to flies and gnats. They don't bite and they don't carry disease. They're mostly a nuisance, but as larvae they also clean up dead vegetation.

If you're fascinated by bugs, their official name is Plecia nearctica Hardy. They're called love bugs because the adults mate and then fly around hooked together end to end for up to twelve hours. Well, that is unless and until they plaster themselves to your car's paint or windshield while you were happily driving down the highway, minding your own business.

Love bugs tend to swarm over the interstate or highways when they emerge, apparently attracted to a chemical in engine exhaust and the heat from the road. Their only function as an adult is to mate and lay eggs so the next generation can do the same thing. Rough job. The adults only live about four days or so, according to the University of Florida entomology department's online information. If you want more, go here: http://ipm.ifas.ufl.edu/community/Lovebugs.shtml.

Love bug mating flights:
--Occur in spring during April and May and again in fall in late August into September.      No one will have to tell you it's love bug season. Believe me, you'll know.
--Cover 25% of Florida's land area and can extend several miles into the Gulf of Mexico
--Can reach altitudes of 1500 feet
--Occur between 10 am and 4 pm as long as the temperature is above 82 degrees Fahrenheit.

So basically, they're out when you are. They fly around mating, have no shame whatsoever, and apparently do not require any kind of privacy. They're so busy doing what they're doing in swarms that they just hang around and wait for someone to run into them.

Okay, now that you've got love bug guts all over your bumper, hood, headlights, and windshield, not to mention the backs of your rear-view mirrors, how do you get them off? First of all, you'll want to get them off right away. Carry some extra windshield washer fluid in your car - you're going to need it. Rain-X windshield washer sprayed on the windshield beforehand does seem to keep them from sticking as bad and it does help to get it off. Some have said an extra coat of wax on your car can help protect your clear-coat. If you can get to it right away, some warm soapy water and a rag will take care of the stuff on your paint.

If you can't get to it right away, God help you. I've always heard their innards can eat paint. I'm not sure if that's true, but here are some helpful ideas to get them off. Wet the area well so the bugs are moistened and some of it may just fall off when it's saturated. Then go for the bug and tar remover stuff and spray it on, let it sit for about half an hour, spray again and rub lightly with a soft-scrubbing sponge. Or try a wet dryer sheet - but again, don't rub hard. It'll take several applications and rubbings to get it off, no matter what you use. You have to be patient, or you'll scratch your paint.

The only other option is to stay home while this is going on. Usually not an option. Or get someone else to drive and afterward pretend like you don't know anything about how to get the stuff off the car, telling them how bad you feel for them. Probably not going to work more than once.

The best option is to be ready. Keep an extra gallon of windshield cleaner in your trunk. Seriously, I know someone who went through a whole gallon of the stuff on a two hour drive, just trying to keep his windshield clean enough to see the road. Keep some bug remover and several rags as well. You do not want to be at a rest stop trying to get that stuff off with those scratchy brown paper towels and water from the restroom.

Just remember, love bug season doesn't last forever. It just seems like it.

PS: My father, Reverend William Leslie Phillips, Junior, would have been 90 today. Happy birthday, Dad. I think of you every single day.

Snowbird Season

Yes, we do have seasons here in Florida. We have the usual: winter, spring, fall, summer. But we have other seasons, too. We previously mentioned hurricane season, but another one is Snowbird Season.

Snowbird Season is defined by the time the northerners come down here for the winter, and when they go back. Around here, it generally starts in October or November and ends no later than the beginning of May. The beginning date depends on how bad the cold weather gets wherever they come from and how soon. The ending...same thing. They aren't going home until the snow is gone.

We live in an honest to goodness resort. It says so on the sign out front that includes the words RV. Yep, an RV resort. We live in a stationary home - a small manufactured cottage that was built to fit onto an RV lot. It's called a Park Model. Everything is built in, as if it was an RV. But it's not. We added onto ours, giving us an extra room and a really nice big covered porch. Maybe fifteen percent of this place has houses similar to ours, and a lot of them are Snowbird-owned. Not us. We live here year round.



But we're in the minority here. Right now, in the summer, the park is fairly empty. Most of the place is taken up with spots for recreational vehicles, or RV's. These are mostly not the little trailers or pop-up campers you see people pulling along the interstate with cars or suv's, although we do get a few coming and going. No, these are the expensive Class A things that look like huge buses with slide-outs that make them even bigger inside.



The other RV's we get a lot of are called Fifth Wheels. They are those big things towed behind heavy duty trucks with special hitches resembling those of commercial trucks that take up their beds.



These people are not campers in the traditional sense. They practically live in those things. Some have washers and dryers and even a second bathroom.

We love our Snowbirds. They come in lots of shapes and sizes and from all over the United States and Canada. They're fun people who just like to be where the weather is better.

I grew up in southwest Florida, where the annual influx of Snowbirds was extremely noticeable. Suddenly it was harder to get a table at a restaurant, especially if you wanted to eat at a reasonable time. It was more crowded at the grocery store. The roads were clogged with those huge cars that older people drove back then, and we had to endure their slow driving and failure to use turn signals. We always assumed they were lost and would turn or stop suddenly, which they did a lot.

Today's Snowbird is rather different. I think they look younger than they used to (maybe that's because I'm older?). Yeah, they still seem to like those early bird specials at the restaurants. But now they drive smaller cars and they drive faster. Ours seem to like karaoke and line dancing. In the winter months here at the RV park, there's a quilters club and several card clubs, but there's a bicycling group as well, not to mention the Disney annual pass owners (we aren't far from Orlando). Snowbirds are not what they used to be--at least not around here.

In other places, Snowbirds own or rent condos, mobile homes, or cottages on the beach, and I'm sure there are some in this area that do the same. But ours are special, especially to us. They are friends that only live here five or so months per year - and a lot of them bring their houses with them!

Right now, as I said, the few of us who live here year round pretty much have the place to ourselves except for the summer campers who come on vacation. In a few months, though, our Snowbirds will start flying south again and the place will fill up. The activities and group trips will be posted again outside the rec hall or on fliers in our mail boxes. Friday nights will mean concerts or karaoke in the rec hall, and there will be pot lucks and other gatherings. We'll welcome them back with open arms and hugs and enjoy them until it's time for them to fly away again.

Hurricane Season

Hurricane season is more than the title of my first book. The book was inspired by the annual hurricane season we have here in Florida which officially begins June 1 and goes through November 30. Yes, that's six months--half a year--under hurricane possibility.

I grew up mostly in Florida, Southwest Florida in particular and in a town called North Fort Myers which lies along the north bank of the mile-wide Caloosahatchee River. We lived in a mobile home on a lot my grandparents owned which was close enough to the river that you could easily see it, and if you were a major league pitcher, you could probably throw a baseball into it. My mom's dad and his siblings owned several lots at the end of a road that ended at that river. Every year my great aunts and uncles would come down to their little cracker-style houses for the winter and it was like a big family reunion. They came down right after Christmas and always left before Easter, so they were never in Florida for hurricanes while I lived there.

That wasn't always so. Back in the "old days" before they bought all that land for the family compound, they came every year after harvest in Kentucky to Sanibel Island. The guys camped out all winter while the most of the women stayed in the one of the local boarding homes. The boys and men in the family all fished or worked locally to earn money during the winter. That's my granddaddy in the middle with two of my uncles.

One year when my mom was still quite young, they were on Sanibel as a family when a late-season hurricane struck. My mom told the story about how her dad tied her and her mom to palm trees to keep them from blowing away during the storm. The story goes that it was that storm that made my great-grandfather decide that they needed to move inland for safety. That's when the family bought that property on the north side of the Caloosahatchee. He was being extra careful so they could evacuate safely if they needed to.

The first year we were living in that mobile home on the North Fort Myers property, a hurricane struck. It wasn't fun. The winds rocked that trailer, even though it was tied down. Mom had all of us kids lying on the floor during the worst of it and we told stories and sang songs to keep our minds off the howling wind and heavy rain that was going on outside. Due to storm surge, river water was knee deep outside our house for quite a while after the storm was gone, so Dad had to put on rubber boots and carry us out to the car when we went anywhere. I particularly remember some guys in pickup trucks who came down our road hunting snakes. They had dead cottonmouths and rattlesnakes laid across the hood that they said they killed just up the road along the canal. To a kid (me), it was quite scary and the image has stuck with me all these years.

By the time I was a teenager, we were living in Estero, which was back then barely a wide spot in the road south of Fort Myers. My father had become an ordained minister and was pastor of the Estero First Baptist Church. Our church building was made of cement block and designated a hurricane shelter, so when another one was coming, we moved all our important papers and so forth from our house into Dad's office and we opened the church up for shelter. Mom emptied the contents of our fridge and freezer and she and some other ladies used the church kitchen to cook up every single thing we had so we could feed people who sheltered with us. The only luxury we had was taking turns napping on the sofa in Dad's office during the night. A radio ran constantly with updates on the location of the storm, and Dad put me in charge of charting the longitude and latitude they announced frequently on a chart the newspaper had published just days prior so everyone would know where the storm was.

The last major hurricane I went through was Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/outreach/history/#wilma). I lived in a ground floor apartment in Fort Myers with my little Yorkie, Mija. Mom would've been proud of me. I had frozen gallon jugs of water and cooked everything in my freezer, since I knew cooked items kept better than raw. I had bags of ice stowed in my freezer. I had things I could eat that didn't need cooking. I had a first aid kit, lots of dog food, and had refilled my meds, all kept in zipped up plastic bags. I had a full tool kit including heavy gloves (in case of broken glass), plastic sheeting to cover windows, and heavy duty tape to hold it on. I had battery powered fans and a little battery powered television, with tons of batteries. I had my laptop and cell phone all charged up, and left plugged in until the power went out. I even made sure I did all the laundry and took a nice warm shower and washed my hair and made myself as comfortable as I could. Yes, I knew I was ready. I wasn't scared, but I knew if that storm started getting worse than we thought it was going to be, I was going to have to make a run for it to my brother's house, which was on the other side of the river and made of cement blocks. He also had a generator for his wife's oxygen machine.

I didn't go to my brother's. By the time it worsened it was too late to chance driving across the river, so Mija and I rode it out alone in our apartment. I had pulled my car up as close as I could to my bedroom window to protect it both my car and that window. Halfway through the storm, everything calmed down as part of the eye passed over in the dark. Still had power and trees were still upright. Yes! But then the other side of the storm struck and the wind came from the opposite direction. That's when the real damage happened and we lost power. I was lucky my apartment didn't flood and my car was safe. But the tree right outside my front door fell right where my car would have been if I hadn't moved it. When the storm was over and daylight came, I could see a huge tree across the green belt had come down, its root feet sticking up and a huge hole gaped where it had lived for probably a hundred years. Some other residents weren't quite so lucky when that tree fell on their cars. If I remember correctly, only one local man died. The story was that he was in a shelter and was stupid enough to go outside for a cigarette during the storm.

By the time I went through Wilma, I was already a writer. I wrote emails to my friends and kept a hurricane diary on my laptop during the storm so I could remember what it was like. A little bit of that wound up in Hurricane Season.

As you can see, hurricanes are part of my family lore. We all survived them. Loss of power or other inconveniences were just that--inconveniences. Okay, they were very uncomfortable inconveniences. But as Mom and Dad always said, as long as all of us were safe, that's all that mattered.

Thanks Mom and Dad, you trained us well.

Hurricane Season Snowbird Season

Ah, Summer Living in Florida!

If you don't live in Florida, or don't live here year round, you've probably heard tales of what it's like to live here in the summer. Some of it's true. OK, a lot of it probably is.

What you hear: Summer starts in March. Uh, well, yeah, sort of. Like the rest of the northern hemisphere, summer actually does start officially in June. But to tell you the truth, it feels like summer much earlier--for sure by April. Snowbirds aren't fools. They're out of here by the beginning of May, if not sooner.

What you hear: Humidity in summer is legendary. Okay, that's true. When I was growing up here, and this is giving my age away, nobody we knew had air conditioning. It was mostly for stores and movie houses. Those places had signs out front that said "Come on in! We're Air Conditioned!" As teenage girls, we owned those bouffant hair dryer things with a cap hooked to an air hose and sat under them to get our hair (wrapped around plastic rollers) to dry. It would never air dry in summer.

Summer humidity is still high--that hasn't changed. Sometimes on an August afternoon there's so much moisture in the air I feel like I'm leaving a wake when I move, like a boat does through water. Florida makes up for this by having a beautiful dry season in winter and into spring.

What you hear: It rains a lot here in summer. Pretty much true, too. We can pretty much measure rain in feet. Statewide, we average about 54 inches a year. That's a fairly large amount. We are also the lightning capitol of the world. Just about every single day during the rainy season we have at least one thunderstorm, maybe more, but they usually happen in the afternoons. Mornings and early afternoons are great beach days. We welcome the storms because the air cools down very noticeably while it's raining. A rainstorm can start suddenly and go from zero to car wash heavy in seconds. One thing to remember, though: If you even think you hear thunder, get inside right away. Our parents and grandparents drilled that into us, and I still abide by it.

What you hear: Florida is famous for summer hurricanes. Yes we have them. Not every year and not all of them are destructive. Sometimes, they're little more than tropical storms. Most of the time they miss us entirely and fizzle out over the Gulf or the Atlantic, leaving us with something that resembles an afternoon rainstorm, but with some palm fronds down in the yard. One thing we do not take for granted is that we won't get one. If you live here year-round, you have a hurricane kit and restock it every spring with water, non-perishable food, batteries, and the like. We're like the Scouts: Prepared.

Don't let me scare you off from visiting our beautiful state in summer. Come to our beaches, where it's simply stunning white-sugar sand for miles. The breezes off the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean are wonderful, making Fort Myers, Sanibel/Captival Islands, and St. Petersburg beaches amazing. Tampa and Orlando have all those outstanding theme parks (everyone knows about Disney, but there are tons more, like Busch Gardens in Tampa). I didn't even get into Daytona or Miami. I'm sure they are great, but I'm from the west coast and more familiar with those.

We love tourists here. Come experience our Southern Hospitality. Just don't laugh too much when we say, 'y'all.' If you stick around long enough, it'll rub off on you!


You can leave a comment below, if you like. I'd love to hear from you, especially if you have a great Florida summer or vacation story.