Significant Scribblings Before Dawn…

100_0640 How do we know what we are destine for? How do we know what Greatness we can achieve? I don’t… how can we? says the voice inside my head. But don’t tell that to my heart. My heart tells me I have something inside me that is bursting to get out. It always has. Perhaps “greatness” is not the right word. Greatness is a big word. Greatness to me sounds monumental, too big. I think Significant is more likely the word I am looking for. Significant has enough consideration but feels more singular, more personally noteworthy with enough room to color outside the lines.
   
When I was a kid. I would dream of ideas, or stories, or little vignettes. I would tell some to my best friend, some I wrote down, but mostly they lived in my head. They still do actually… 
   
I imagine a village of short stories, blogs, and poems. Tome Alley has cats and rats feasting on overstuffed trash cans of discarded concepts. Lanes with lawns to sprawl out on or picnic or write my painted pony. And if you know me, you know that my village has gardens full of unruly misspellings and dangling prepositions poking their heads through picket fences.
  
That neighborhood is sometimes forgotten. Adulthood can do that. We race through childhood, where kids rule and imagination is Queen of Prose and Poetry. Followed by adolescences, where I was absolutely convinced everything drama around me was the end of the world and/or the next best seller. And then adulthood, where most of us move to the suburbs of our brains… the neighborhood where we rewrite ourselves right into middle age mediocrity with perfectly paved walkways of reason without rhyme. Copy cats nibble on excessive punctuation, and of course the verge is neatly trimmed of its fragmented sentences. 
   
But I feel lucky. I wonder back occasionally. If just for a few moments before dawn, I take a stroll through the old streets. And to my delight if no one else’s, I drown myself in an excess of alliteration and hyperbole. This blog is just such a wondering. 
   
And who knows? A significant scribbling could be just around the corner.

Here Kitty Kitty…

thumbnailCA3OFH8Y This winter we have been offered a different path. Instead of returning Otwon we have joined the Naples Marco Island KOA in SW Florida.

It has been 25+ years since I have lived in a coastal Florida town not to mention a town surrounded by a nature preserve. There are a few things I remember but would rather not encounter... like alligators, no see-m’s, and rattlesnakes. Then there are a few I am not accustom to… armadillos, bobcats, and panthers.

Really! Cats! Big Ones! I was a little freaked out. I had traded hawks and bears of Maine for gators and cats!

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Florida… and to my sunshine native sisters like Lucy, Barb, and Dixie: I have not turned into a whining Yankee, I promise. Cross my heart! But Panthers and Bobcats? Really? I have dogs. Little dogs!

bobcats I had been forewarned by a few co-workers to be careful at night and not to let my dogs out by themselves. OK, this freaked me out a little more. Then, I realized I was getting my information from snowbirds… I would generalize and call them all Yankees but one couple is from Georgia (say no more about them Dawgs; lol) and another in from Carolina. Both would cut off my head if I called them a Yankees. So I suppose there is a difference between the “South” and “South Florida”. I needed the 411 from a local… a year round resident.

They are easy to spot. They are the ones in flip flops and a rugged tan. They informed me that although indeed there were critters to be concerned about… they had never seen the “cats” here at the KOA. And the rest was common sense Florida… which fortunately we have.

We have been here a week now and so far have only seen a raccoon or two… or three… or ten. I figure if there are coons around then the gators must not be. And the biggest issue we have is with the” no see-um’s” Help! Does anyone have remedy?

PS. Secretly I am hoping for a glimpse of a “Cat”. But that may have to wait for a trip to the Glades.
Until then… Peace, Luv, and Dreams of Cats, Here kitty, kitty…