if you are a judge and...............

your phone rings for gods sake run the other way!!! Don't answer the phone - leave your voice mail to answer and it should say "OK yep I'm a judge but nope I dunt wanna be a Supreme Court nominee for the Dope in the White House, please call someone else". I'm sure it would be an honor and hard to turn down ,but come on folks the Dope nominates you - what a frickin nightmare. stay tuna'd......................

we're home again........and this better be the last time I have to say this

because I am removing the word evacuate from my vocabulary. Never want to do this again.
8 named hurricanes in 14 months. Now understand I am very sympathetic to my fellow Floridians but I am just not wanting to be a Floridian anymore. Even though Jeb Bush, who is the Governor of this state, and yes the dopey presidents bro, is doing and has done in the past a wonderful job of getting it together. All the other hurricane prone states should take lessons from Jebby and his staff. Now I was thinking maybe we should make Jeb in charge of FEMA. I'm not saying the temp guy is bad, after all he too lives in Florida Broward County to be exact, but Jebby is just more astute to our woes.
I was verbalizing this scenario to my sis and happen to say that maybe we should put Jeb in charge of Homeland Security, since the dope that is in there is a big fat LIAR!!! Sis told me I was going a little too far, the idea of putting any Bush human being in charge of Homeland Security was a bit much. But seems that he couldn't do a lot of damage as the FEMA director.
But then again we are moving and going to Arizona - do they have anybody like Jeb in Arizona? Oh I know there is John McKay, Senator of Arizona so that could make me happy. Senator McKay better behave......................stay tuna'd

OK now what.......

A couple of days ago I did the humid happy dance, meaning the humidity went WAAAAY down. And if y'all live in Florida you know what that means and how happy you can be over such a dumb thing.

Now the humids are back because of WILMA who is supposed to make her appearance somewhere around Saturday nite and Monday nite. Go figure - in this day and age we are not closer to predicting a storm such of this magnitude and who's picking these names for gods sake...................stay tuna'd

crap, crap, crap, crap, WILMA bitch, bitch, bitch

Well I got that out of my system. And I am sick to death of this for us and all the many, many thousands of friends and neighbors.

We are in the hurry up and wait mode.........so stay tuna'd.

does it mean I'm getting old when someone asks me to google something and just for a moment it sounds a bit obscene

buddy ruined my lunch yesterday..............buddy is our 11 year old black cat. He's been known to be a little on the ornery side but he can be a very sweet cat.
Here's how he ruined our lunch........yesterday we were finishing up painting the living room, let's here it WOO HOO!!!, and I got a little hungry, told Norm I was going to stop and make lunch. How bout a tuna salad sandwich, sounds tasty, big glass of iced tea. OK I'm on it. Open the can of tuna, Norm only eats albacore packed in water, who knew he was fussy, anyhoo, and usually when I open a can of tuna Buddy is right there thinking I'll let him lick the can of the juices. Looked around no Buddy - hmmmm!! Went on about my lunch duties called for Norm and then I said bring Buddy I saved the can for him. He's not spoiled really. Nope I haven't seen him so he must be in the closet sleeping. He can do that ya see. Almost done with lunch and now I'm getting concerned that he didn't come out when he heard our jaws flapping. Norm go see if Buddy is in the closet of under the bed please...........OK I called him, Norm called him and nuttin. Now we are getting concerned. Earlier, a couple of hours ago Norm had the door to the garage open and was bring things in to the house thru the garage door. Buddy, the evil cat could have snuk out. So here's the drill, Norm gets in his truck and drives the neighborhood and I start walking, Buddy, Buddy, Buddy. Nope no Buddy.......well I get back to the house and Norm pulls up in the truck, he gets out with tears in his eyes and no Buddy. Oh we feel so bad boo hooing all over the place. Isit down and say Norm go look in the closet again just to be sure. He comes out looking like the cat swallowed the mouse, and he is laughing. The damn cat was up on our bed stuck way behind in all those pillows up on a bed. The little bastard was so sound asleep. Needless to say we were happy.........but..............he still ruined my lunch. No tuna for Buddy.

humid happy dance........................

yeeeee hawwwww!!!! woke up to the temperature BELOW 70 degrees!!! Actually it was 67. I dreamt for early mornings to be in the 60's Kinda dumb huh??? But when the temps are stuck on humid and in the high 70's low 80's for morning temps .................well I did the bye bye humidity happy dance.

Trust me it won't becuase there is a tropical storm out there, which will cause the humids to come back, named WILMA........................geeeeeeez is there no end to this.

he's on a roll.......

I'll tell ya builder Norm is really going to town. I come home from getting my haircut and he has completed framing the arch in the living room as well as framing up the entry way closet, the remainder of the carpet removed and is beginning to mud the walls. He said the tile would be in next week so he is trying to get ahead some.

So all is well in the neighborhood, I got a great haircut and the builder is happy.

in the beginning.....

OK retirement IS all it is cracked up to be and more. None of this rocking chair, sitting watching soaps and eating ice cream, well maybe ice cream, for us Oh NO!!! We gotta re-build a house! What were we thinking?

It all started when the property values in "the Keys" aka the most southern peninsula of Florida. Anyhoo the property vales a couple of three years ago just started catapukting their way UP. So my dear husband, Norman, says ya know a hurricane could just come along and wipe all of us right off the map. Sobering thought for sure. Let's see about selling this condo we have had for almost 20 years take the $$$ and run to I don't know where???

So we got in our car that weekend and started driving, knowing that we did not want to be on the east coast of Florida, aka the plywood or blue tarp state and yes some people do call it the Sunshine state as it states that very phrase on my license plate. I digress. We head over to the west coast of the state to just poke around and see what we might like. Naples is very pretty, beginning to be a bit over built and $$$$ pretty pricey. Traveling north, Ft Myers is way too crowded and a horrendous traffic problem. Mind you we were used to one road in one road out kind of living for sometime. We came upon an area Called Charlotte county, sleepy kinda area with potential. So we stopped stayed there a couple of days drove back to the Keys and on the way back we had confirmed that we would list our condo and head over to the west coast.

Now mind you I had a job that I dearly loved and we had many friends in the community as well. Norm and I were ingrained in this community as we had retired once before and came to the Keys, got bored and opened a business.....what the hell were we thinking!!!! So 13 years after opening the business we decided to sell it and then Norm could really retire.....NOT!!! He went and got his captains license and became a backcountry guide and a very good one I might add. I continued my employment as the operations manager for a weekly newspaper and all was well in the world. Well so we thought until Norm came up with the idea to take the $$$ and run. And so we did!!

Now fast forward to early 2004, friends from Canada were visiting and we wanted to show them around. I especially wanted to show them this cute little area that I liked and Norm had not seen either. We drove into the area and immediately saw a sign that said rent to own. I don't think so but I asked Norm to go and see what the paper work said that was at the door. While walking back from the house a fella was out front and asked if he was looking to buy. "Well yeah maybe I am, why? I might be selling my house in a couple weeks. I heard that and was over to him in a flash. Show us I asked. Nah I'm a batchelor and it's a mess. Who cares let's go see." I persuaded him to take us to his house so we could show our friends that we visitng. We walked in the front door, I asked "how much" he told me and we bought it right there on the spot. Now our friends hadn't made it thru the front door hardly when we told them we bought it. They were hysterical laughing "no way"!!!

Needless to say we had some kinks to iron out. We had a condo we had just finished re-doing and we needed to sell that. Which we did in a week. Thank you very much. But all in all it was just meant to be. The guy we bought the house from is a sweetheart and we remained friendly and even did some business together at a later time.

Now flash ahead to July 2004. Prior to that we had taken a couple of trips, bought some property as an investment with maybe the idea to build on some day. And we thought it would be a wise investment to add on to the house we had just purchased. Always thinking about resale value ya see.

So we came up with some plans, took them to an architect who in turn had them engineered. All ready now the plans are set to be taken to the county for permitting. Woohoo - we shall get started on the slab in the next few weeks.

Ok it's August 11th, 2004 and there is a hurricane out there hmmmmm. Being from the "Keys" we know to keep a weather eye on the storm. As we went thru Andrew in 92 andevacuated for a few others whos name I cannot/chose not to remember. No one around us is the least bit concerned, "haven't had a hurricane here in years, just years", they were saying. There wasn't even but a few people at the new Home Depot buying plywood for the windows. Those fancy, weather machines all the local tv guys are saying it's going to Tampa, it's going to Tampa. OK now it's the late nite of the 12th we go to a terrific weather site called accuweather. Norm used it all the time when he was guiding and learned to trust them. On accuweather the storm, Charley as it is now called, had shifted some and the dang TV weather dudes had not yet said that. I immediately called a hotel in Vero Beach on the east coast, and made a reservation, just in case. We decided to go to bed get up really early, who slept anyway, and see what accuweather was saying. Bingo, the dang storm shifted and was headed directly towards US !!

Holy crap we gotta get outta here. We were prepared from the nite before, had everything in the truck, all we did was throw Buddy (the cat) in the truck and off we went at 4:30 in the a.m. headed for Vero Beach.

Long, long story short we made it to Vero Beach just in time to turn on the weather channel and watch the storm make a direct hit on Charlotte County. We came home the next day to not a shingle gone from our house. How lucky we were!!! Mind you my car was in the driveway and a tree had fallen on it but hey if that's the worst woo hoo!!! But it seemed like every tree in our neighborhood ended up in our yard. So there was a lot of chain sawing going on. We could not stay in the house as there was no power or water. So we stayed up in Tampa , excuse me, where the storm was supposed to go, and drove back and forth for 6 days. No sooner was Charley out of the way and Frances started showing her/his ugly face. What the hell we evacuated again, but this time we went to Canada. Norm grew up in Cambridge Ontario and good friens of ours, the Boults, live there. The border guard thought it was pretty funny we were evacuating allllll the waaay to Canada.

During that trip was when we decided we would come home start the addition and sell the house and get the hell out of this state. When we finally did come back in late September we could not get permits yet as there were two count em two more storms lurking. Praise the lord we did not have to evacuate for Jeanne or Ivan. Well the two more storms convinced us to get this addtion done and get the hell outta here.

We started pouring the foundation late October of last year and as of this very moment we are almost finished. We will put the house up for sale the first of the year. Get in our 5th wheel trailer and big ass truck and hit the road.

Our intention is to leave Florida and head to Southern Arizona, around Tombstone, spend the winter and spring there. Locate a piece of property we can build a house on, are we glutens for punishment or what. This will be the last house so we need to get it right. Then once we decide on the property we will get on the road and head to Alsaka.............yikes can't believe I said that. It has been a long time dream of Norms to do that and hey he deserves a trip like that. So Alaska it is and of course many places along the way.

So that is why I have started this blog is to actually keep a journal of sorts. Up until a short time ago I didn't even know you could do this. My dear sister Deb has her own blog and she introduced me to this. And I am thankful she did. Stay tuna'd...................................