We spent an afternoon visiting Joe Patti's Fish Market in Pensacola. I didn't get any photos in the market because honestly there wasn't much to see. If you like to see fish on ice or shellfish vacuum packed and frozen then I apologize. Maybe next time I'll take some pictures. After we purchased the fish and packed them on ice in the cooler, we decided to take a walk around Pensacola's downtown and grab a few geocaches. It was a perfect day for geocaching and we managed to drag my sister and her husband around and found 4 caches. In the course of stumbling around looking for caches we discovered several cool things:

1. The 9/11 memorial. It was located in what was described as a small intercity part. It was more a median than a park but the monument was decorated in ceramic art.

Note the symbolism of the alpha and the omega in the photo above.

2. We went window shopping. There was a very trendy clothing store that catered to the GQ crowd. My nephew went in and I'm guessing that the prices were prohibitive. The mannequin in the window looked like a younger rendition of the butler, Lurch, from the Addams Family. I wanted to take a picture as it was so unusual. Just my luck I ended up with an "artsy-fartsy" photo. I couldn't have captured this image with the reflection if I'd have been trying...

3. My sister's neighbor, Brian, keeps an eye on the Tiki House when there are renters. He works from home and can see the house and back yard from his office. He came over to visit and was telling us all the things he's observed! You would think that people would have some decorum. Then again he does have a pair of rather high powered binoculars with which he can look into the windows!

One of the interesting things about driving is that you get to see unusual things. As we were tooling down I75S toward Atlanta I made a couple observations.
1. Tennessee drivers think the left lane is for driving slowly instead of like the rest of the states where is it a passing lane. This leads to a long line of cars desperately trying to pass semi trailers at 55 mph while the trucks are moving at the posted speed limit of 65 mph.
2. Braking results in a 2 mile slowdown in a chain reaction of braking.
3. Accidents mostly happen in threes. The first one is a legitimate accident. The second is due to slowing down to 30 mph to rubber neck the accident and being rear ended. The third is because the ambulance and or police car lights mesmerize the drivers and they just keep going toward the lights - even if that means going into the ditch or crashing into a guard rail!
4. A cardboard box or a plastic garbage bag on the side of the road can result in a backup of traffic while every driver slows down and debates whether to stop to open it to see if it contains something of value or to keep going! This was especially true in Kentucky, Alabama, and Georgia!

As you can see this is quite the traffic back up. The culprit was a cardboard box. This slowdown had us crawling at 15 mph for a half hour. I am glad to live in a city where it doesn't take me a long time to get to work!!

I wanted to title this post "Looking Chicken" but that doesn't quite capture the experience. As we were driving to Pensacola Beach we had need of sustenance. I was getting hungry enough to eat road kill so when the suggestion was made to stop at Bates House of Turkey I had no objections. Now the name was a little off putting, I mean the name Bates doesn't give you a warm feeling. Especially in the middle of nowhere Alabama. In a car with Indiana plates. We've visited Alabama previously and the ideal of Southern Hospitality is a myth if you are from a northern state. At least that was my experience. But I digress. Sparky, my sister and her husband were hungry and I was ravenous.

We entered the Bates House of Turkey with no great expectations. Seems they only serve turkey from their turkey farm. Sparky was in tryptophan heaven. I ordered the Barbecue Turkey basket served with a pickle and potato chips.

Sparky got the special - a hickory smoked turkey sandwich with cranberry salad and chips and a pickle and carrot sticks. My BIL got the straight up turkey sandwich. It was OK but he really wanted the barbecue after having a bite of my sister's. I had asked for extra sauce so gave him some for his sandwich.

All in all an economical meal and almost "Fast Food" in that we had our meals in just a minute and were able to get back on the road in short order.

I was so lucky to be able to get together with xangan Crystalline and her sons while in Pensacola Beach! They came over to the Tiki House and had dinner with me and the rest of the family. I had a very good time! We played a card game called Fluxx that was nothing like I'd ever played before. I am still not sure how I managed to win... the rules keep changing! Then we played some online games from Jackbox.TV that my nephew had purchased. There was Quiplash, Tee K.O., Fakin' It, Trivia Murder Party, and Guesspionage. We played Quiplash and Tee K.O. Everyone had to have a smartphone or tablet or computer to play. We signed in with the code for the game and the game walked us through the rules. Easy peasy. With Quiplash you were given phrases and you had to fill in the blanks. The game would select two responses and we'd all vote on which one was better. You scored points based on how many votes you got. I laughed so hard my sides ached. Then we played Tee K.O. where you had to draw a picture - anything and submit it. Then you wrote as many phrases as possible. The game would give you 3 pictures and 4 phrases which you selected one picture paired with the best phrase. Then they would be be put up 2 at a time for voting. Some of the pictures were funny by themselves but when paired with the phrases they were hysterical! Again I was in tears laughing. Crystalline's boys are quick wits and have great senses of humor. All in all I wish we could have had more time together... maybe next time I visit!

Here are a couple photos that Sparky snapped of us in front of the giant Tiki statue in the living room. Thankfully the photo was before we played games and my eye makeup was ruined giving me the appearance of a zombie or a rabid raccoon!

Hands of Pain

Sharp shards scatter
Sharp they cut the hands
Hands may try to gather
Hands will fail the tasks
Tasks undertaken
Tasks to piece together
Together we scoop the glass
Together we bleed
Bleed from tiny cuts
Bleed and drip red
Red sticky blood on glass
Red glue to mend the broken
Broken glass and hearts
Broken glass and spirits
Spirits are fragile
Spirits easily shattered
Shattered dreams
Shattered into pieces
Pieces of tomorrow
Pieces missing and lost
Lost sharp edges
Lost in the carpet
Carpet the floor in tears
Carpet over the break
Break the cycle
Break what violence broke
Broke and bruised
Broke and bleeding
Bleeding money and time
Bleeding away life
Life is in tatters
Life has points
Points that pierce
Points for the pointless
Pointless to cry
Pointless to rage
Rage against the bleeding
Rage until tears flow
Flow and mingle
Flow like blood from cuts
Cuts deep
Cuts to the quick
Quick to staunch the blood
Quick to point a finger
Finger the gaping wound
Finger in the pain
Pain of disappointment
Pain from the loss
Loss
Disappointment

With the joy of Christmas still lingering in the air, I am aware of the pain and brokenness of this world. People near and far are hurt and dying. Lives are broken and futures destroyed by acts of violence. Some are lost in wars and some are lost amid their own personal battles - with drugs, alcohol, and senseless acts of brutality. There are those people who by their own hand destroy their lives. And then there are the people who are innocents and lose their lives. It happens suddenly like a glass that slips from the hand and smashes on the floor. There is no warning. A life is simply gone. No amount of science or medicine can yet bring them back together and return the soul to the body. Before Christmas I saw the videos from Aleppo. I felt helpless. Then Sparky accidentally knocked over a display stand that held 6 of my orbs. The orbs fell and 4 were destroyed. It seems we are all made of glass and without warning we break or are broken.

The poem is a blitz poem. It has 50 lines where the first word of each couplet is the same until line 49 which is the last word from line 48 and line 50 is the last word from line 47. The title is the first word of line 3 followed by a preposition or conjunction and then the first word from line 47.

I rarely watch TV anymore but Sparky lured me into watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with him. It was better than I had remembered. However what struck me were the commercials. All of the ones that aired were geared toward kids and they touted the need for the latest and greatest electronic gadget and game. What happened to the toys that required imagination? I was struck by the pre-fabricated stories in the games. There was no need for the player to make up their own scenario, invent their own villain or hero, and certainly no requirement to populate the game with creatures from the depths of their own imaginations. And it was a subtle yet effective message that to be cool, popular and even physically attractive you just had to own this game console or system. Quite the "hard" sell to pre-teens and insecure teens. Growing up I have to admit to playing with Barbie dolls until I was in Middle School. Once I outgrew the dolls there were other games and other toys. My best friend and I would play jacks for hours. There was tether ball, four square, and of course plain old basketball. Nearly every driveway in my subdivision had a hoop.

When did we loose sight of the simple pleasures? When did electronic games take the place of cards and balls and make believe? We used to make up games all the time. One that was a favorite involved a jump rope, basketball and a bucket. The object was to get the basketball into the bucket. However you couldn't touch the ball unless you were touching the rope. Usually there were 3 of us playing. There were no teams so if you were holding the rope the others were pulling you away from the bucket, sometimes spinning you around! It was loads of fun and we got lots of exercise. And when the weather wouldn't permit those outside activities we had books. We would read falling into the story. Then we would trade books and eventually discuss the stories. Little did we know but we had our own version of a book club. We made up dances and wrote our own plays that we acted out for our own diversion. Now the kids don't know how to pretend. They have lost sight of whimsy and the simple pleasures that you can find playing charades. No one builds doll houses out of sticks, leaves and flowers to be inhabited by imaginary fairies and snipes...