If you can't take the heat, get out of Miami

Hello.

I was born and raised in the strange town/metrapolis/suburban spraw/big city of Miami, Florida.

Oh Miami, one day I will write a book about you.  I'm not quite sure there is a city on earth as amusing as you.

When I was little I loved splashing in the ocean and spending my entire summer with my head under a water hose.   I love listening to the thunder, laying in the road in the middle of the night staring up at the stars, counting them for hours, feeling the tropical wind around me, and pondering the mysteries of the universe as I looked at the expanse of the heavens.

I splashed barefoot in rain puddles all year long. I went to the beach.  I swam in swimming pools. I walked up to the 7-11 to buy candy. I praised God when it got to be warm enough to turn on our little space heaters, which were probably fire hazards.

This summer I had the opportunity to go to my home of Miami to visit my family.  In August.  Who goes to Miami in August?  Only crazy people apparently.  I think even the people who live there don't go in August. It has been over 10 years since I've visited my home town in the middle of the Summer.

I had....forgotten......ugh.

And here I was, in the land where makeup melts off your face in a puddle. Where even when you try to cool off by going to the beach, you realize that the water has been baking in 90 degree weather plus humidity for two months and isn't quite that refreshing.

It is a time of year when you either sit in your air conditioned house, or go to the air conditioned mall, or swimming.  And....that's.....it.

No wonder when we were kids we coined the term "Fall Fever" as opposed to "Spring Fever."

None the less we managed to have a great time reuniting with our long lost family.  We watched movies and attempted at going to David Fairchild Tropical Gardens in the heat (traumatizing our poor children ha ha.) and we went to Aunt Mary Lou's swimming pool. Oh how grateful I am for her lovely pool!

Some silly observations.

We live in a very weird world. Think about this:

We spend most of our days staring into little boxes, scrolling around with our index finger.

We often bring everyone we've ever known along with us to experience what we ate for lunch, dinner and we sometimes bring them on our family vacations.

We are able to experience tragedy that happened around the world, often before we even recognize the tragedy that might be going on under our own roof.

Everyone is famous, at the click of a button.  What does it mean to become famous if pretty much everyone is famous?

Our guiding light in the world is based on the next trending thing that is going to shock us, make our jaw drop, or our blood boil.

Everyone is out fighting for a cause. And I mean fighting.

People read books on a screen.

And best of all, today I saw kale super food lotion at the store.

Yes, we live in a very weird world indeed!

Headquarters Salon in Eugene

I've been going to the same Hairstylist for 7 years!  She is an awesome stylist and I never knew she was also such a great interior designer.  Have fun looking at her new salon at Headquarters Salon in my pictures!

Ten Minutes

I am trying to practice writing again.  For ten minutes each evening I have been writing everything I can think of about a particular word.  This evening, was Isaiah's word of choice.  I said "Isaiah, what's the first word that comes to your mind?" He answered: 

Mug

I think Isaiah just picked it because there was a mug sitting next to him. He is not being very creative right now.  That's probably because he is working on our budget and going through lots of receipts, which apparently can cause cancer if you touch them too much.  And no I don't know why the text on this one section is smaller than the others.  But an easy solution to fixing the problem would be to throw my computer out the window and never blog again. 

But back on the mug thing.  Mugs are funny, because many people collect lots of them and don't really do anything with them.  People buy mugs that have silly or sentimental writing on them and often just keep collecting them, usually so that they can sell them eventually at a garage sale so someone else can keep collecting them and then pass them on to other collectors someday.  That's why many Americans have very random mugs in their house that say things that truly have nothing to do with their current life. 

We own an absurd amount of mugs for two people. None of them say anything on them, but all of them came from somewhere at some point and signify an event in our past. I think most of them are actually kind of fun to look at.  Last summer I purchased 5 fiesta wear mugs at a yard sale for five dollars.

Mugs can be comforting.  They make me think of happiness and of cuddling up on a cold dreary Oregon day.  Or a cold Miami day, because cold Miami days bring back the happiest of memories.

The end. 

One of my favorite mug memories had to do with my Childhood's best friend's father, who had a handlebar mustache.  It was quite a pronounced one.  It seems like it was sort of his trademark. But anyway, I remember that he had a mustache mug that fit his mustache to keep it from getting into his coffee.  That always made us chuckle. 

On that note, its strange to think that the grownups in our lives at that time were about our age now. How does that change my perception of the kinds of people they were looking back?  Its an interesting thing to ponder....

San Francisco.