Eighty degrees in the middle of the night outside. Cool in the house and fairly pleasant sleeping with the air conditioner on. The daytime temperatures are heading toward 90 degrees with the humidity inching up as summer approaches. The sweat has started to drip off my face, a forewarning of more of the same over the next four months.
This is most of Florida in the middle of May. The Canadians have all left to go back home to a cooler spring and summer. They’ll be back in October or November just in time to avoid the snow and cold up there and enjoy the amazing fall and winter weather here in Florida.
We’re here to survive our second summer of heat and humidity. We were here in this same mobile home park during the Covid summer of 2020 when travel was risky and the country had pretty much shut down. It was a scary time of watching television seventeen hours a day keeping track of the daily death in this country and around the world. It was also the summer after the insurrection storming of the nation’s capitol January 6, 2020, when the political scene was also scary and unpredictable.
We ventured out occasionally to the grocery store to replenish our supply of Tillamook ice cream and had Domino’s pizza delivered. We ate. We worried. We ate some more. We sat glued to the television. And we ate. There was comfort in pizza and ice cream. All the amenities in the mobile home park had shut down so there were no activities to participate in every day. So, we soothed our worries and depression with pizza and ice cream.
The result of all this was, we each put on a lot of weight, which we eventually took off.
This time around we don’t have Covid to limit our activity. We don’t eat much ice cream or pizza, and we get a fair amount of exercise. I’m wiser this time around for the challenges of living through a Florida summer.
I have a plan. The extra bedroom is the office, music room, and art studio. This is my retreat from the heat and humidity, a sanctuary of peace and cooler temperatures. I will still do some gardening and butterfly tending early in the mornings, but the middle of the day will be spent in this peaceful place of creativity. Here, I will write, practice the piano keyboard, and dabble with my watercolors, colored pencils, and acrylics. I have a 2026 Christmas card to create if nothing else emerges from my art it will be that. Maybe flamingos with jungle bells. Maybe palm trees with sparkle lights. Maybe Monarchs on poinsettias.
I’m ready!
Deb’s Blog 