Whirlwind Visit

For many years my brother would come visit from Boston to help us with the Halloween Howl and for our father's birthday (which happened around the same time).  Then Dad stopped having birthdays and we stopped doing the Howl so those visits slacked off.  Instead, I took to visiting Boston in the fall (about the time I  get really sick and tired of the endless hot sticky summers here and ready for New England crisp cool weather).  But last fall there was That Storm and things to do here, so I didn't go.

But Mike is a person who enjoys experiences--and every time we talked, I would end up talking about The Storm and what it had done, and I finally told him that he should just come down and see for himself.  Which he did.

When we get together for a visit, it's usually for three days.   That doesn't seem like much, but there is the old saying that "fish and guests grow stale in three days."  That's not exactly the case with us.  We do more of a feedback loop--you know when you get a microphone too close to a speaker and next thing there are loud screeching noises?  We don't necessarily screech, but we do make noise.  As in talking--a lot.  Continuously.  We never seem to have those pauses where suddenly there is nothing to say.  We start talking around 7:00 a.m. when we get up and pause about 10:00 when we go to bed.

By the second day I think I saw blood trickling out of Bob's ears . . .   It's just that Mike is interested, enthusiastically and vocally, in *everything.*  It's what I find delightful in him, and what makes me happy that he's my friend as well as my brother.

Day One was Storm Sightseeing.  Things are pretty normal in Tallahassee now--you still see some downed trees and blue tarp roofs,  but nothing that couldn't happen in a normal bad storm.  Then, as you go west and south, it just keeps getting worse and worse.  90% of trees snapped, more and more remains of buildings.  It can't be described, just experienced.

So we visited Amanda and family (who get to move back into their house this week, 7 months later) and on to Mexico Beach to visit Della and Don (they have walls now, and electricity, but months to go before they're out of the RV).    Mexico Beach has been cleaned up to an amazing extent, but then you look at rows of concrete slabs and realize that those used to be houses (One slab still had a couple of toilets in good condition).  The public pier is gone.  There is no gas station or grocery store yet.

[Eight months ago you could rent one of these posh houses on the beach for $1500 a week]

Then you keep going east and in less than an hour you're back to normal again.  We went to the little town of Carrabelle to eat at the Fisherman's Wife, where Mike was so enamoured of the shrimp that he trotted back to the kitchen to compliment the cooks--and try to get a sneak peek at how the shrimp were cooked.  (and yes--the food is caught by the fisherman and the restaurant is run by his wife--we've met her) The cooks looked grateful but confused--they grab a handful of shrimp, toss it in some lemon pepper, and pop it on the flaptop for a couple of minutes. That's it.  Mike couldn't figure it out--how come they tasted so amazing?  I had to explain that the restaurant owns it own shrimp boat--they were fresh-caught local shrimp.  It's the difference between a vine-ripened home grown tomato and one from the grocery story.

Monday was Take Your Brother to Work Day.  I could have taken off from my volunteer job at the museum but Mike wanted to see what I do.  So we cleaned cages, fed the deer (which brought out the little kid in him when I handed him the bucket and said he could let the deer eat out of it if they liked and he said "but I thought that people weren't supposed to be the animals" and I told him that people in general weren't but today he was an honorary keeper).  He got an extra bonus later when he overheard a couple of the staff talking about a short in the electric wire in one of the habitats.  He speaks electricity so he went off to help.  At one point he was asked to go check on it, and realized that he was walking into a habitat with a bobcat about five feet away from him.

Then we went home and he got to go play in Bob's room with the models for awhile because I had to make an emergency run to the vet with Stumbles whose face was badly swollen (infected tooth--she's fine now)

Tuesday I had planned to take him to Marianna to see the caverns  - - and more storm damage - -  but it turns out that the park is still closed and will be for an indefinite time.  They got hit pretty hard.  So we went to Apalachicola instead--a pretty little town, fun shops and good Southern food.

And then it was over.  Took him to the airport Wednesday morning and with a bit of sadness bid him farewell.  He had a long day getting home.  I went to work, joined Bob for a swim, and then went home, sat on the couch, and totally crashed.  I hear he did likewise.

Miss you, bro.  Can't wait until we get together again.