Today was a rest-up day for all of us…even though the trip isn’t very long, it does take the wind out of one’s sails. But the term rest-up might be a bit misleading when you’re visiting Gramps’ house as there is always something going on and mischief is always available. If there is mischief to be found, our little one will find it!
Early in the morning, we had a big storm blow through the area (what is referred to as a gully washer) with gusts upwards of 40 knots. That’s actually unusual for the area…the storms in the summer usually arrive in the Daytona Beach area round 1635 hours and are regular enough that you can set your watch by them. More often than not, you might get a little pre-dawn shower due to ambient moisture and lift generated by the sea breezes. But the hallmark of Florida weather is that it’s usually violent and short-lived.
Later, Nicholas renewed his acquaintence with the anole lizards that make Gramps’ garden their home. These lizards make Terminix and Orkin look like a bunch of poseurs…if there are creepy crawlies about, they’ll be a quick snack for the lizards. Florida has quite a few nasties that are unique to the peninsula including what are called palmetto bugs by the locals. Imagine your average cockroach suddenly bulked up by anabolic steroids and given wings…not that they fly all that much, they much prefer walking along your ceilings or crawling out of your pipes. That is until they’re a right tasty meal for a lizard or the coral and indigo snakes that also make their home in Gramps’ garden. Gramps also has buckets of feed corn mounted on the back fence covered by el-cheapo umbrellas which keeps the squirrels happy and out of his attic! Due to the storm, one of the umbrellas had to be replaced but knowing Gramps, that probably only put him out a dollar at most. 🙂
Grandma Carol came round to visit with the little one and they got on well as usual playing many games and having a grand old time. We introduced her to a game given to us by Ms. Linda at Christmas called Sequence. If you want a game that will stir the pot a bit, this is the game for you. The board has images of playing cards on it, two of each card except for jacks. The play is rather simple, play a card in your hand, put a token on the matching card on the mat, draw a new card. The goal is to get one or two sequences (depending on how many players are involved) of five tokens in a row (or four plus one of the wild spaces at the corners). The jacks are special: two-eyed jacks are wild and one-eyed jacks allow you to remove another player’s token which really hurts when you’re doing that right as they have four tokens in close proximity. And then the recriminations start…especially if you’ve been hoarding more than one jack!
But it’s all fun in the end and rematches were almost certainly going to happen… 🙂
