Hi. I am Tom, Kate's Dad and partly responsible for the way Kate has turned out. The vacations we took to Florida around Christmas time were part of that partliness. I have just returned from another successful trip to the Keys with Gretchen (2nd wife) Nick and Emily (step-kids). It was successful on several levels.
First of all, prior to going down, I had read a book called "Essentialism" by GregMcKeowm. Now the motorhome has seen better days and gas prices (except for the recent dip) has made it rather uneconomecal to drive, so I proposed sleeping in a tent. There was a wee bit of resistance to overcome but I am happy to report that it was an overall successfull outcome. We need to take two twin size air mattresses next time instead of one queen and cover them with the mattress topper to eliminate the argument about the firmness of the mattress (my back likes it softer) and in a perfect world I need to engineer a ceiling fan for the tent. But overall, we stayed dry during the one drenching all night rain and the breeze was lovely. We could do NOTHING about the New Years partiers at 330am.
One of the places Gretchen, Nick and Emily visited this year was the Turtle Hospital. It is located in Marathon Key and cares for Green and Loggerhead turtles that are injured by boat propellers or by eating plastic. Gretchen said the stories of the turtles make you never want to buy things in plastic again. They were very interested and sent pics to Anda (Kate's Sister) who was a "Turtle Tech" on Cumberland Island and who once saved Grechen and I from tenting there a second sweltering Georgia July night-part of that resistance mentioned above.
Key West and the street performers were seen by Nick and Emily for their first time. One of the performers has been there for at least 10 years doing the same show. He said "If it still works, why change it?" The show lasts for about 10-15 minutes, he passes the hat and he goes home. He says that he pays 600/mo to the city of Key West in fees (20 bucks a night) I don't know if he has a day job too. He is entertaining. Another show featured a man with a trained pot bellied pig which was ummmm...a bit less thrilling. If I had a sidewalk "talent", I could easily see myself become a high class bum. (I would have a pension)
Gretchen and I did fight on this trip. The book "Unbroken" about Louie Zamparini, a WWII POW, was on the Kindle and the book "Boundaries" was in paperback. I was hogging the Kindle. If you read about Louie and the things he endured you will really have a hard time convincing yourself how anything you are facing is a problem. You will also have a hard time understanding how inhuman we can be to each other.
I find that the more frazzled I become before vacation, the more I want to withdraw on vacation.......from the world. Returning home, we were getting breakfast in the microtel lobby and CNN news was on the TV. Some story about a missing airline and wreckage was playing. It made absolutely no difference in my life other than disturbing my recently reaquired Keys calm. Garbage in, garbage out. We finished eating and headed backed to the car. On long road trips an old duker like me is easily impressed with technology like Pandora, smart phones and automobiles that allow you to play them through your car speakers. So after listening to show tunes, 70's rock and classical music, we put in some Zig Ziglar. There was one road trip when Kate got to listen to Tony Robbins all night. I don't remember anything in particular that Tony said, but Zig said a few things worth repeating. Probably a few things I was guilty of NOT doing enough. He spoke of having to
hoe several rows of beans (8 miles long :) ) as an 8 yr old. He rushed through it and had to have his mother inspect it. She said he had done a good enough job for most kids, but not for her son. He was better than that. He could do a better job. Zig said that she had critisized the performance but praised the performer. He was glad to have learned the difference at a very young age. I am an old duker, but better late than never. That sort of goes along with the other thing he said about anything worth doing is worth doing poorly..........and by that he meant that no one is expert at anything they try doing for the first time.
Zig also likes to talk about prosperity, but I've decided that without understanding, prosperity is over-rated. I have this poster titled What is Life? with 75 or so quotations on it about life and one is from Soren Kierkegaard. Can't say I ever heard of him before but he said "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards". Now I did get an "A" in Logic in college and I think if true, that quotation means that we are pretty much going to be confused our whole lives.
I think the trick is not to worry about it too much.....and if you do worry too much....go to the Keys for a little while.
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