Birthday Tomatoes and Sadness

Story-time -  Way back when I was just a little tot, my mom got a tomato plant for her birthday in May. Apparently I was less than impressed with this birthday present that wasn't a toy until my mom told me that the plant was magical in that it made food. Food? FOOD? Even toddler me loved food. I was fascinated and woke up every day asking if it had made food yet. So my mom told me that it would make food by my birthday in August and I should go watch it grow. So I'd sit there for hours watching the tomato plant grow while my mom did grown up stuff like shower and cook and take care of my infant sister.

My mom was so grateful for that toddler break that for 28 years, I always got the first tomato of the year, called my birthday tomato. It's probably one of the weirdest family traditions ever but I just grew up knowing that come summer, I'd get a birthday tomato and my mom would take a picture of me eating it like an apple with salt and pepper and that's just the way it was.

Then I moved to Florida. For the first time in my memory, I didn't get a birthday tomato. And just in case you don't understand how sad that moment was, think of some little family thing you guys do. Maybe for Thanksgiving, Aunt Bettie always makes her pumpkin pie, or after dinner you play a card game and the losers have to do dishes. If that suddenly stopped, you could go buy a pie or divvy up chores on your own but . . . it's just not the same.

I was bummed. Eventually I decided that it was time for me to grow my own darn birthday tomato so I'd never have to go another year without. I've been planting and growing tomatoes with my mom since I can remember so I knew how to do it, I just didn't know Florida's climate. So I did some Googling and found that in Florida, I can grow tomatoes twice a year. Whoa.

So I bought a plant and it was doing great. So many flowers that grew into perfect little green tomatoes that slowly started turning red. It was glorious. I even got to eat my first tomato and I had about 14 more tomatoes to go. And it was still flowering too!

Then disaster struck. I noticed an itty bitty hole in one of them and some obvious chew marks. I'd been using an organic spray up to that point but decided to up my game to spraying every day. It did nothing. First one tomato was eaten to the stem, then another.

It was caterpillars and those monsters are unrelenting. I spent ages trying to comb my plant and pull them off to no avail. I even paid the neighbor kids to come over and hunt for them. For every caterpillar they found, I'd give them a dollar. They found one. I knew enough to be afraid of hornworms which are flipping huge but these caterpillars were tiny little things. About the size of a grain of rice and an exact match for the color of the leaves. Basically impossible to see.

By the time I moved on to the big guns of caterpillar pesticides, it was too late. Those suckers ate my plant to death in a little over two weeks.

I'm going to keep trying but I'm not going to lie, it kinda discouraged me from Florida gardening. I've grown basil inside and an onion that started sprouting and that went well but . . . sigh. It was sad.

I guess the good news is, I did get my birthday tomato this year?

What kind of silly family traditions do you have? I know I can't be the only one with a tradition that has to be explained!

Thank the Florida Sun

So the first week of school in August, I got my hair cut to my shoulders. Yesterday, I had to cut almost seven inches to get it back to my shoulders.

My hair grew SEVEN inches in six months.

What the heck Florida?

Strange Obsession

I'm not sure what is in the air but I have wanted to go camping so so bad for over a year now. I haven't gone in probably a decade but when I was a kid, we went camping a lot. And even when we didn't, my stepdad threw a tent up every summer for us kids and I would sleep outside pretty much every day from the middle of June until August.

If I could, I'd drop everything and go tonight. Unfortunately, two things are stopping me. One, I no longer have any gear and I don't have camping friends nearby to borrow from. Have you seen how expensive some of this stuff can be? The other thing stopping me is that my fiancé hates the idea of camping. It took me over a year of regularly bringing it up before he'd even consider it. And I had to bribe him. I think the only thing that finally got him to consent was I found a campground that is right on the beach and it has an off the leash dog park/beach. And it's close enough to our house that if it starts to rain, he could turn around and go home.

I could go two ways with this. Get the bare minimum that I personally would be fine with and probably never see Fiancé camp again. Or I could try this whole glamping thing and see if I can get him to actually like camping. I've been looking around Pinterest for ideas and it seems like small, inexpensive upgrades could make it a lot more fun for both of us. A little extra comfort, romantic lighting and cute touches I could bring from home seems doable.

I doubt we will be able to go anytime soon but I am going to start haunting craigslist to see if I can find some starter gear. Maybe if I start now, we can go next year. Besides, that'll give Fiancé some time to get used to the idea.

If you were a non-camper, what would make it more fun for you? And please don't say "staying at home!"

The next best thing to a visit home

So I've now been in Florida for a year and a half now and haven't even made one trip back home. This week, I don't feel so far away. We had two friends from our undergrad visit only a couple days apart. One came directly from Washington but the other moved to Miami long before we ever considered moving here.

We had a ton of fun showing our never-been-to-Florida friend around town. I'm pretty sure he took over a thousand pictures and he just couldn't get over the warmth (it was the coldest temp we've had all year but he thought it was warm. I was freezing!) and the palm trees and the beaches. It really reminded me how lucky I am to live in paradise! While he was here, I think we managed maybe 4 hours of sleep over three days. Maybe 5. Maybe. We'd sleep a couple hours and then he'd drag us back out to the beach.

Our Miami friend was great to see too! We didn't do the touristy stuff with him for obvious reasons so we just hung out and talked all weekend long. It was awesome. He couldn't get over how cheap drinks were compared to Miami so we went to more than a couple bars. I really should have been preparing for classes on Monday but I managed to get a day or so done before he got here and I'm going to work on it all day today. So it could have been worse and it was so so so worth it.

Now I'm off to watch a video for my Cuba class. I need to find a Florida/Cuban connection that I want to discuss with the class. Hmmm.  Any ideas?

Florida Broke Us

So all last year while Fiancé was in Washington and I was here in Florida, he made fun of me for turning on the heat the second it dropped into the 60's. And I got it. He was dealing with 12 degree weather and two feet of snow. However, I also tried to explain to him how quickly Florida breaks your internal concept of cold. Long story short, he didn't believe me until this week when it dropped to the 50's. He's only been in Florida since the end of August but that was apparently enough time for Florida to do it's thing.

He has been freezing right along side me. We are the idiots wearing coats and thick wool socks in the mid-60's. They make memes after us. Two years ago, I would have been right there laughing along. Somehow it just feels so much colder when you're not used to it. One week it was 80, the next, 50-60 degrees. In my head, I know that it isn't that cold. But my fingers and nose and toes disagree. My teeth even chatter!

Florida, what have you done to us???

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I'm still waiting on Fiancé to wake up so we can open our stockings. We limited our gifts to only stockings this year but really, that's my favorite part anyway. My Grandma continued to send me a stocking every year even after I moved to Florida but told me that this year, she couldn't. I promptly told her "No problem Grandma" and then got off the phone and told Fiancé that I've made him a stocking for 6 years now and if he didn't make me one, I'd cry. Luckily enough, he thought it was a great idea. YAY! I'm on a 30 year streak of always getting a Christmas stocking!

It's still feels strange to celebrate Christmas in a place where there is zero chance of snow. And this is from a person who hates snow! I went through it last year but this is the first time Fiancé is experiencing a December where is still occasionally gets to 80 degrees out. Everything just seems off. The street lights are all decorated with light up trees and bells and such and people string lights on their palm trees but it just doesn't feel right. I wonder how long it will take before this feels normal?

On the other hand, our hometown is getting buried in snow. My Facebook is covered with pictures of half covered cars, car wrecks and snowmen. Brrrrrr. Actually, my hometown has had much too much extreme weather this last year. Over the summer, they had one of the worst fire seasons in ages. My niece and nephew couldn't go outside for weeks because there was so much smoke. Then right before Thanksgiving, they had the worst wind storm on record. Hundreds of thousands of people without power for days. My mom and stepdad were without power for a week and my aunt's roof blew off. Crazy. It was kind of funny trying to explain the damage to my Florida friends down here. To them, the wind gusts seemed extreme but not hurricane extreme and they pretty much universally decided that the power company must have really sucked to let all these people go without power for so long. I tried to explain to them that Pine trees don't react to wind the same way Palm trees do and a single tree can take out blocks worth of power, but they just couldn't comprehend it. Eh. To each their own. I know I'm going to panic the first time I have to sit through a hurricane so I can't talk too much smack.

Anyway, I'm off to go make us brunch, have a great Christmas!  

Law School Makes You Unable To Do Basic Tasks

Like pay your rent.

Seriously you guys, I have been either paying rent or my mortgage for ten years now. I've never just forgotten to pay it! Until this month.

I don't even have a good story or excuse. The last few months, my landlord has happened to need to come by for various reasons and so I just gave him the check. But he's out of the country right now and so I had to go back to depositing it to his account. And I just forgot to go to the bank. I don't even know what to think right now.

Thank God my landlord is the nicest guy ever. And he's slightly impressed with the whole law school thing. He apologized TO ME. "Hey, I'm really sorry to bug you when you're so busy but . . ."

I need a wife. Or a new brain. Either one.

Observations on Florida

Okay, this post took about four months to write. I started it when I first got here and any time I noticed something about Florida I just wrote it down and saved it. Each paragraph was written at a different time. So it's random. And weird. And makes me look like an idiot at times.

The drivers truly are awful. People keep telling me it is because of all the old people here but they are fooling themselves. Everyone speeds about 20 over which on its own doesn't bother me. However, they also follow about two and a half feet from the car in front of them. Added to the fact that no one uses turn signals or stops for stop signs and it all equals to a lot of totaled cars here. Not going to lie, the freeways scare me.

I've been told that it is not illegal to talk on the phone while driving which shocks me to my very core but even if that is not true, no one bothers to put down their phone when they drive by a cop. So at the very least, it is not enforced.

Also, there seems to be a very lazy attitude about DUI's. All my neighbors seem to have no problem driving to the store half toasted and at least a few of my classmates have driven completely drunk without feeling like they were lucky not to get arrested. Coming from a state where you can get a reckless driving ticket for driving after drinking EVEN if you are way below the legal limit for a DUI, well it freaks me out.

On second thought, I definitely don't believe it's the old people that cause all the accidents here. It's the young and stupid, talking on their cell phones while being half drunk. Good Grief.

On a different track:

The laundry rooms in a lot of houses are outside! It makes sense when you realize that you don't want it heating up your house but doesn't make sense when you hop out of the shower and realize you need that shirt you left in the dryer.

Coming from a city where most of the year you had to turn on the heat, the fact that all the vents are near the ceiling is a weird change. I understand that it's because most of the year we have the central AC on but it was strange not having to arrange my furniture around the floor vents.

Also, I turned on my furnace for the first time the other day and it set off my fire alarm. Why did it set off my fire alarm? Because my landlord installed it four inches from a vent. Not a problem when the AC is on, very big problem when the heat is on.

It is five degrees in my hometown right now and 70 here in Florida. That 70 degrees, which only a few short months ago would have been beautiful weather has left me freezing and wearing sweaters and wool socks. I'm pretty sure I am broken for life.

There is something that looks like a shower rod in every shower. At first I was like, why would someone put the towel in the shower, it'd get all wet. Floridians are stupid. And then someone told me it's for the bath mat. Okay, I am the stupid one. Sorry Floridians. And also, the humidity here makes everything moldy ridiculously quick. I opened up a bag of beef jerky, zipplocked what I didn't eat and three days later I had a fuzzy green science experiment. So if you are in Florida in the summer, eat ALL the beef jerky in one sitting. And don't leave the k-cup in the keurig until your next cup of coffee. Bleck! And hang up your bathmat after your shower.

If you live in Florida and it gets down to 50 degrees, your professor will joke that his hands are frostbitten and all your classmates will be like "OMG really? Are you okay?" And you'll be sitting there going "It's 50 degrees! There is no frost!" Don't get me wrong, I'm freezing at 50 degrees but it's not going to kill me or give me frostbite!

The lizards here are suicidal. They will be perfectly calm, just chilling on the sidewalk. Until you walk by and then they dart right under your shoe. Those suckers can move fast! I've become the designated lizard watcher for a friend because she has a really bad habit of squishing them underfoot.

I miss basements. Basements are perfect for storing random crap that you don't want to see but can't bear to throw away. It wouldn't be so bad if there were garages but at least in the area I live in, they are rare. So I have boxes of stuff in the corner of my living room and a bike blocking my way to the spare room closet.

Most of these things are not complaints. I love it here! The drivers are crazy but I live five minutes from the beach. This is something I can live with. <3 <3 <3

The Cold Bothers Me Elsa

One of the big draws of going to law school in Florida is that I HATE the cold. I am always freezing and back home, I would often wear my winter coat long after my friends moved on to shorts and flip flops. However, winter back home would drop down to zero and if it was warmer than that, we got snow. I assumed that when Florida had a cold snap I would be in a better place than the people born and raised here. Nope. Nope. Nope. It's been in the fifties all week and I've pulled out all my winter gear. Fluffy coats, hats, gloves and scarves. We are all complaining about how cold it is and how annoying it is to have to turn on the heat. My professor even complained about frostbitten fingers. Which is not possible when we are still twenty degrees above even getting frost but okay professor. I'm still more cold than everyone else, I even turned my heat up to 85 just to fall asleep last night. I am broken and I should just buy a battery operated electric blanket to carry with me at all time.

The only person worse off is my dog. Every time I shoo her out the door to go to the bathroom she looks at me reproachfully. As if she's saying Mom, you promised me that if I survived that awful eight day car ride, I would never be cold again. You lied Mom. You lied. 

I shouldn't complain because if I hadn't have moved here, I would be in Washington where it got down to five degrees last week but I can't help it. I need to move to a place where it never drops below 70 degrees. Good grief.