Decades of living near the west coast of Florida have granted me a certain sangfroid about, oh, you know, Florida things. (www.etymonline.com/word/sang-froid)

With the daily exception of cars and fire-ants, most of the hazards have proven to be hypothetical, rhetorical dangers for me. The stories circulate, and one thinks, airily, it's the price one pays to live in this humid paradise.

Oh, well, you tell yourself, shuffle as you walk on the beach. If there's red tide, stay inside. Tread carefully in tall grass. Watch for the glint of the gold chain on the guy driving the cigarette boat, because he's not looking for you.

Avoid night swimming. Be cautious strolling with your dog around a retention pond. Never lick a toad. Shake out your shoes before putting them on.

At least we don't have to shovel snow.  

Every so often, however, even the most chilled-blood of us all is taken aback by the casual violence of the place.  Two hurricanes, for instance, each with a wide eye glued on home base—that's enough to unsettle a native. 

Then you begin to think about the stories: throwing a line around oneself and making a human sandwich between a couple of mattresses while a tornado pulls the roof off. Being chased upstairs, then to the attic, and then tearing one's way out of the roof when the flood waters rise, then clinging to the topmost branches of the oak tree as the waters swirl. Riding the top of the dining room table as it bobs and nudges against the sliding glass doors.

Not my stories, but told by pals who survived Katrina and Maria. 

You wonder if maybe it's better to skip town for the season. 

We were away for Helene (another North American title for my favorite skipper! Hurrah!) and missed the flooding, but we spent Milton sheltering with Mamma Pat.

As dark fell, and the electricity went out, and the wind howled, I kept asking myself, "Does THAT sound like a tornado?" "Wait, how about THAT?"

It was not a tornado. It was a foot of rain and winds close to 100 mph.

We were overall so very fortunate:  No lives lost, material losses that can be recouped, and ready options for where to stay and how to get around.

​Many, MANY of our neighbors were not so fortunate.  

​According to one of our sailing friends in the Florida Keys (Hi Jim S!), it will be about six months until people generally forget what the hurricane was like, or really, even that the storms happened.

I hope so, but I also hope not. 

I went solo—a decision for which I was profoundly grateful on Day 2 of my walk, when the unending descents and ascents of slippery rock staircases were certainly NOT on the menu when I'd tried to lure my friends to come along.  
​

There's a lot to unpack for me about the stretch of doing something quite new without companions. It was profoundly rewarding to—like any 2-year-old will say—accomplish this myself.  ​

I hiked around 28 miles across three days. ​

Inspiration for book two was discovered.
Complaints and old-man noises were made.
​I checked my heart-rate kind of a lot. ​
Shelter was taken during the inevitable rain (ask me about my Tyvek rain skirt!). ​

Sandwiches involving watercress were eaten al fresco with sheep as audience.  KT tape became a trusted pal. 

And it was over all too soon.

Knock wood my physical plant and my pocketbook will allow a repeat.  Maybe the Cumbria Way walk. Or a bit of the 670-mile-long South West Coast Pathway? Jeepers. Wait, the Pilgrim way to Lindesfarne—ooooh.

This hike was sandwiched between a few days in London and Newcastle. Not enough armchair adventure? Find me @amysmithlinton on Instagram for more about the trip.

Really, Planters Peanuts? This is the new packaging.

​https://www.killingussoftly4.org/

My gardening heros, the Davises from Denver, used to send me homemade jars of rhubarb in exchange for some favor or another.

​I don't remember the chore, but I do remember the treat: that nearly chalky, stringy goop with a sour/sweet flavor that reminds me so much of springtime in the North Country. 

I know, sounds delish, right?  But no, it is.

Consulting my notes, I see that it took me until 2017 to put in rhubarb plants at the Farm. It takes them a couple of years to get their feet under them, but they've done quite well.  Enough for us to have a half dozen or so desserts in the last couple of years. 

But is that really enough Rheum rhababarum? No.

Obviously.

Still, it was an extra surprise bonus that we acquired another patch of rhubarb this past summer.

The nearest small town (pop. 650 people) did earn a mention in a Neil Young song, but frankly, the Would-Be Farm is located somewhere just this side of Beyond. The wild-and-wooly frontier nature of the place is mostly lovely, but it does have the occasional drawback. 

For instance, our former neighbors just to our north...nice folks, perhaps, but considerably more gun-happy than makes us entirely comfortable. Sure, fire your gun at a target, a varmint, dinner. But random gunfire? Combined with a LOT of empty bottles and very loud (and frankly awful) 1970's rock'n'roll? Oh boy.

So for the past couple of years, when these neighbors were in residence, my favorite skipper and I simply avoid the north section of that one field. Discretion being the larger part of not catching a piece of lead. 

It's not generally part of the culture out there near Beyond to call the coppers. Or at least not until things have escalated to the sort transgression that does deliberate physical harm. Holding a hootenanny at midnight on a Tuesday, well that's annoying, but live and let live. Letting your toddlers run loose at night –– well, that goes too far.

Anyhoo. Those lively neighbors with the large supplies of ammo moved along, leaving a "For Sale" sign behind them.

Things sometimes work themselves out.   

Which is how the Would-Be Farm grew a little over the summer.  We gained an additional 40 or so neglected old apple trees, an open field, and a honking big patch of rhubarb.

Okay, so everything has changed.

​More or less.

Less in some states. 

But for many people, especially those with a healthy respect for both the science of infectious disease and the preservation of our elders, this summer seems like the start of a not-so-brave new world.

So here's what I am missing.

In photo format, because nobody wants to hear that tone of voice.

With vintage photos, because it does seem like a long time ago since we went out dancing, or hung out without a care with multiple generations of the family ––or not-family –– or planned a trip, or hugged people, or shared aprés-sailing stories...

But all this aside, please be sensible and gentle with one another. We're all trying our best –– even when it's not that great, it's likely all the effort we can manage. 

​That is all. For now.

Everyone knows someone who is irrationally (well, that's all in the perspective, right?) afraid of, say, legless reptiles or eight-legged wall-walkers.

​Not just slightly averse to these creatures, but seriously, panicky, clawing-a-way-out-the-window fearful.  

Each of my parents had one. For my father and his siblings, having survived a canoeing accident as children where they and their mother clung to an overturned boat while long strands of seaweed brushed their legs, the fear was snakes.

I never noticed Mumsie's issue until that first summer at the cottage. We'd gone to take a quick look at what they had purchased –– waterfront! as is! Bill Bailey blue! furnished with toys and musty furniture! –– on the shore of Lake Ontario. We ended up just staying all summer. Daddo went off to work downstate during the week while the three of us swam and read books and played with the neighbors (each according to her tastes. Mumsie was not much for running around pretending to be horses).

Naturally, given the body of fresh water, the long Northern summer days, and the untenanted nature of the cottage, there were spiders.  But it was a summer cottage. When sweeping, you directed the little pile of debris down that knot-hole in the floor in the hallway. On Thursdays, before Daddo came up, we'd eat ice-cream for supper. It was a Platonic ideal of summer cottage life.

Except for the spiders. One morning, we all scooted out of the house while Mumsie sprayed some sort of aerosolized poison. We must have been gone all day. Or maybe it was stormy when we returned, because while my sister and I, diminutive then, walked into the shadowy cottage without incident, our mother entered to a suspended carpet of deceased arachnids. All hanging at about eye-height from the ceiling. The horror. The horror.

Eventually, she dredged up a memory for me. "It might be this," she said, draping her paperback over her knee. "When I was very little –– on the farm in Springville –– I was playing in the creek."  [The word "creek" in the geography of rural northern Pennsylvania was pronounced "crick." A thing I miss from her.]

She turned her head in the same questing way as when she was trying to recall the details of a dream. "I was splashing the water with a stick and there was an enormous water-spider. I hit it and it burst open and dozens –– hundreds?–– of baby spiders spilled out."

Gulp. Okay then. 

My sister shares the distaste for spiders. We've often agreed that should there be an unfortunate single-car accident in her life, it's a near certainty to have involved a spider emerging from under the dashboard and landing on exposed skin.

​As for spiders?  I understand they won't actually kill me, but I find it hard to casually look away once I've noticed one nearby. I find their globular bodies shudderingly distasteful.

Be that all as it may. I actually meant to write about weird phobias. There's no shortage of oddity in the world.  And phobias are the most common of mental illnesses.

Mental illness. Huh. ​

​I've felt claustrophobia. Couldn't get into an elevator for two years.  It was a side-effect, I think, of a dreadful boyfriend and asthma.

Once I nearly fainted –– and me a farm kid! –– at the vision of a big splinter protruding from someone else's finger. All the blood and guts in the world, and I was about to keel over from a splinter. I couldn't even help her yank it out. 

But that's pretty mundane stuff. What's more intriguing is the fringier fears.

Mr. Linton has been fishing pretty regularly, though because of last summer's red tide, he can't bring anything home. Social distancing is easy on the water. 

And naturally, he has a lot of boat-work to fill his days on shore.  

The two 2.4 Meter boats (one fresh, one experienced) are slowly coming into alignment. Jeff's re-rigged the older boat so that it's indistinguishable from the newer one. Fresh paint, fresh lines, carbon-fiber bits and bobs. He orders stuff on-line and obsessively checks delivery times.  He splices lines while watching Bosch in the evenings.

Given that many of our upcoming regattas have been cancelled, he seems content.

And me, I'm always looking forward to a chunk of time in which to write but as it happens, I've been distracted by real life. It's hard to make up a story more exciting than the news right now.  

So instead, I'm doing a lot of reading (check out my goodreads shelf for the bookwormy details).

​And making stuff.

We're avoiding the grocery store –– taco Tuesday involved some freezer-burned ground beef that I might normally have donated to the fishes, but it tasted fine with the fresh greens from the garden –– and keeping our IRL social distance from the world. I've become a big fan of FaceTime right now for actual social interaction. Yay internet!

I'm hoping to settle into whatever this new normal is and get back to my keyboard sometime soon, but in the the meanwhile, as they say in one of my favorite movies, "Rule #32: Enjoy the little things."

Wishing you safety and kindness from here...

The President's Fitness Test. An annual event of anxiety and entertainment that amped up the usual mood of gym-class through my youth.

The opportunities for hilarity –– always close to hand in a mixed-gender high-school class where the gym teacher had a tendency to turn nearly purple with emotion when anyone did anything vaguely teenager-esque –– were legion.  I don't remember much pantsing going on, but there was definitely some flatulence (both inadvertent AND deliberate), and the odd fainting.

My buddy, Judy Hall –– she had green eyes and lived in the farmhouse that my great-great grandparents once owned –– was a wiry farm kid, astonishingly fast with the sit-ups, always in the top rank. My own best skill was hanging on. I could suspend myself overhand for what seemed like ages, thinking about something else.

Which brings us, by a wide-ranging path, to a writing warm-up.

*No surprise, since the country grows ever less fit, that the test was discontinued in 2012.  

Story #1
His husband said it over and over: Damont couldn't take a picture to save his life. And this one, the last image on his trusty GoPro, was no exception.

According to several witnesses, Damont was attempting a selfie, holding the camera at arm's length, squinting into the sun. Possibly hungover –– he was vacationing in the Keys with his family after all –– his hand wavered visibly, so his last expression is lost to us. 

And then came the curious chain of events that led this tourist from Detroit to his unlikely demise at the fangs of a spray-painted king cobra on the beach in Key Largo early one Easter morning.


Story #2
"Ain't that the truth," Theresa said as she snapped the picture. 

Susan snorted dismissively, but Bobbi laughed with her usual abandon, one big hand on the straining knot of her sarong, the other inching down her sloping belly. Catching her breath after a long minute, Bobbi managed to wheeze out, "Falling! Coconuts!" 

Theresa shrugged, but Susan could tell that she was inwardly pleased. Theresa played tough, but the woman loved an audience.

"Cuckoo for coconuts over here." Theresa made as if to order drinks from the non-existent pool-boy. Bobbi was inching the sarong back up her formidable front and didn't hear the quip. Susan pretended she wasn't listening. You couldn't just give her the laugh. 

"Ooh, look!" Bobbi said, pointing with her free hand. "Freaky pool float!"

Later, Susan thought it might have been the funniest and most gruesome thing any of them ever said, but then Theresa was running into the water, yelling "Call 911! Call 911!" in her paramedic's voice, and Susan was pawing at and then upending her straw satchel, trying to find the goddamn phone. 

I posted this blog back in March of 2017. How I wish it were not still apropos.
 
I was tootling along in my innocuous Honda minivan, possibly singing, when my life flashed in front of my eyes.

As it does.

A montage of really good stuff, actually. Kind of like the Sports Center Highlights Reel, only the soundtrack wasn't great: just my own voice, repeating a filthy variant of "Oh, fiddlesticks!" 

I didn't injure my shoulder doing my sailing thing.

Well, maybe it was a little injured from sailing. But then while pushing the chunky Scuppernong around on her trailer, I lost my footing and caught myself –– and my shoulder made a distinctly unpleasant crunching sound. Ouch.

Sports injury. No big: ice, rest, anti-inflammatory meds, and give it a week or so off. Two weeks later, yoga class.  And straight home to make an appointment with the local shoulder doctor. Or, ideally, with the local shoulder doctor's PA.

Oddly, I got right in. I wonder if they keep track of how many Linton shoulders they have dealt with? Do we get a volume discount? Is it like a frequent buyer deal?

The shoulder doctor's PA –– a young guy with a cheerful straight-arrow bedside manner –– came in, moved the ouchy arm around, and looked at my x-ray. Then he laid out my options.

I would need an MRI to be sure, but either I'd have some minor injury in muscle x or tendon y, or else it was a torn rotator cuff. He made a face and summarized the latter, "In which case, you're pretty much fucked."

He would know. 

Fast forward to this morning, the shoulder doctor's Fellow –– another personable young guy with good people skills –– walked us through the results of the MRI: the usual wear-and-tear on the ball-joint for someone my age (!), excellent cartilege margins, good-looking subscapularis tendon with no tears, muscles look good (why thank you!), infraspinatus looks fine, supraspinatus tendon no tears. In short, an intact rotator.

Yay!

However, he said, pointing at the grey image on the screen, where the supraspinatus comes into the arm –– where it should be clear and defined –– (I nodded, though it was like admiring someone's sonogram photo. It always look a little like an inkblot) –– it appears, the Fellow said, "a bit frayed."

Wisdom of the body: when things get frayed, inflammation steps up and says, "No, no, bad dog!" In order to keep the stubborn user of the frayed tendon from continuing to overuse the damn thing, inflammation ladles up a heaping dose of pain and weakness. Which causes one to remember to ice, rest, and anti-infammatory the snot out of oneself.  

Did that mean I should NOT sail next week? I asked. He laughed. Well, if you mean sailing with an umbrella drink in hand while he –– nodding at my favorite skipper –– does all the work? Sure. 

Icepack at the ready, ibuprofen at hand, I will be on shore for a bit.

​Andyman to the rescue!