Ten Things I Hate About Florida: November 19, 2013

This week was marked by slightly cooler weather, making a pleasant ramble through the neighborhood every morning a possibility.  Devon has recently learned how to ride a tricycle, so with two in the wagon and one propelling himself a walk with all three is a pleasant prospect for the first time in MONTHS!

A glance at the calendar reveals that we're two weeks from leaving Florida.  I hate to resort to cliche and say it's gonna go fast, but it is.  We've just finished hosting THREE separate rounds of company in the next few weeks, all brought to the area by our "Come see us and Florida before it's too late" SOS we sent out a month ago.  Sending paperwork and fielding phone calls about the move, our loan, and our home inspections are eating large swaths of time during my days.  Even on days where time is going slowly and I swear I'm looking at the clock every two minutes, I still look at the date and wonder why I think it's still the first week of November.

When I get a few moments I try to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for leaving Florida.  It's going to be a tough one.  Probably even tougher than leaving Kentucky, where all three kids were born.  Knowing how happy we've been here and wondering if they'll remember being little in the sunshine gives me a little stab of pain every time I think about it.  I'm writing this post to try and get myself into a leaving frame of mind.  After all, no place is perfect.  Even the state of sunshine and year-round beach visits has a very, very small dark side.  If you look hard enough....

1.  Jai Alai

The first time we drove by Craig's work, he showed me a green highway sign with the figure of a man holding what looked like a bent hockey stick with a ball cradled in it.  It showed drivers that a Jai Alai place was just a right turn away.  We had to watch a youtube video just to see what it was.  It's a highly competitive and athletic game where people wear a giant glove and catch and throw balls at amazing speeds.  The game looks exhilarating, intimidating, and a little bit dangerous.  I had never heard of it, but it's apparently pretty big in Florida.

So why does it bug me?  The attraction for fans isn't playing or watching.  It's placing bets on the outcomes.  So people show up to a place like the one pictured below, place bets, and then watch the play to see if they win or lose.  That didn't even bother me, as it would be hypocritical coming from Lexington where people do basically the same thing at Keeneland.  They're just betting on the people rather than horses.  It's not that the gambling bothers me, as people I know place friendly bets on things that do or don't require skill.  Golf tournaments.  Fantasy sports.  Poker games.  So what's my issue?  

What bothered me was that I eventually found out that people don't even play the sport at the Jai Alai place.  They show up, place their bets, eat and drink, and watch it on TV.  Now every time I pass the Jai Alai place I think of the people who go there and it seems sad and a little lonely.

And it's SO not a big enough reason to make me feel good about leaving Florida.  I'm going to have to do better, here.

2.  Fire Ants

Here's a good one.  These tiny red guys are NO joke.  Shortly after moving here, we were warned to always keep moving while walking through unfamiliar grass or terrain.  Stumbling over a fire ant mound is bad news, especially when wearing the Florida all-weather footwear (flip flops).  When their nest is disturbed, they swarm out and cover the offender, each one delivering painful stings that swell up and resemble acne.  Too many stings and the whole area swells, turns red, and tingles.  The marks linger for days, and Craig scars from them.

We haven't had too many incidents, but a few stick in my mind.  At a park last year, Melina took on a single mad red ant over the prize of a Cheeto she found in the dirt.  Eight stings on her poor little finger.  Mommy was so upset because when she started to fuss I immediately grabbed her and checked her pants and shoes for ants, not thinking that she might have reached down and gotten one on her little hand.  Poor baby!

Devon had one scary time in our neighborhood.  While running along the lake during an evening walk, he suddenly stopped and fussed as a swarm crawled swiftly up his legs.  Mommy acted quickly, grabbed him, shucked his shorts and diaper down over his ankles removed his shoes, and slapped the ants away with bare hands.  It was scary, but Devon escaped with two stings.  Mommy got six.

As if it wasn't bad enough to have those creatures outside, the past few dry weeks have sent some of them indoors.  Craig says they're looking for water and, of course, they'll stay if they find food.  Every trace of food has to be meticulously cleaned up.  Easier said than done in a house with three toddlers.  One discarded Veggie Straw can cause a major invasion.  A tantrum at mealtime is a special danger because the child's behavior takes priority, and when I finally have time to address the thrown food there could be a hundred ants crawling around in it.  It eliminates the possibility of natural consequences for the kids (if you throw food, you have to clean it up...).

I am so over fire ants.

3.  Frogs

Here is Ally kitty showing interest in one of my next pet peeves.  I don't mind frogs most of the time.  They're actually really cute when they perch on the windows and sing in the evenings.  It's adorable to see one of the kids approach one outside and laugh in delight when it hops away.

My problem with frogs is that when they get in the house, the same thing always happens.  They crawl under something.  They die.  They start to stink.  If I'm lucky, I sweep them out from under something a short time later, plug my nose, and dispose of them.  If not, the kids find them first.  I can't even say how disgusting it is to catch a baby in the hand-and-mouth-exploration phase playing with a dead frog.

Shudder.

4.  Construction on Highway 95.

Two years ago when we moved here, they were working on widening Highway 95.  They still are.  Sometimes I think they always will be.

5.  Sweet Ants

Yes, I CAN use up two of my ten items on ants.  And YES, hatred is not too strong a word to express my feelings about these nasty, nasty beasts.  We bait.  We spray.  We know all the right things to do, and there is no permanent solution.  They always come back.

This is our coffeepot after it was colonized by sweet ants around Christmas 2012.  With three littles in the house, we appreciate our coffee.  Anyone standing in the way of us getting some is not going to be appreciated.  I'd never seen anything like this before.  Sweet ants are aggressive colony builders, sending out queens and producing larvae in tiny spaces.  They love the warmth and moisture of kitchen appliances, but any dark space will do.  Behind an electrical outlet on the wall.  Inside a sealed cereal box, Kleenex box, or pretty much anything you normally stock in the pantry.

Of course, the first coffeepot had to be gotten rid of, so we replaced it right away.  Three months later, I couldn't help but notice that ants were always crawling around it.  I picked it up and there were ants under it.  A bad sign.

I took it out on the doorstep and removed the base plate to find a colony inside.  This time Craig and I weren't going to cave.  When he got home from work, Craig took apart the entire coffeepot and cleaned the ants, eggs, and larvae out of it.  When reassembled, we stuck the entire appliance in the freezer just in case we missed some.  I'm happy to report that the pot worked fine after that and I'm sitting here with a cup of coffee that doesn't have scalded ant parts in it.

Sweet ants are the most aggressive, invasive, and infuriating pests I've ever seen.  They take all the fun out of cleaning the kitchen, as I'll still wake up to find twenty investigating a freshly wiped and bleached countertop.  They take all the fun out of cooking, as they'll get to a cooling pan of cookies before I do.  They've totally ruined me on the idea of keeping a well-stocked pantry, as I've opened everything from a packet of ramen soup to a bag of rice to find ants crawling around in something the grocery store considered sealed.  Below is a picture of the latest nest we found.  It was in an empty cardboard box in the kitchen cabinet.  Cleaning house, we opened it and hundreds started pouring out.  Disgusting!!!

I've been told that our movers won't take ANY food since our goods need to be stored for a week, so I'm happy to report that not a single sweet ant will travel with us to Maryland.  I am SO excited to someday get to the point where I feel like cooking, stocking a pantry, or doing anything but eating meals outside so as not to leave crumbs in the house.  Words cannot express my frustration.

6.  The Vero Beach Library System

I love a good library.  Ripon had three within driving distance and they were all nice.  Lexington had eight in the city and they were all top notch.  Indian River County has three and they all pretty much disappoint.  I'm sorry to be the one who says it out loud, but they do.

I've never been a member of a library with a two week checkout period.  Since I had kids and my number of books read per year went from two hundred or so to, like, eight, I need more than two weeks to finish a book and I have too much on my plate to remember to renew online (if they even let me because there always seems to be a hold on the book I've gotten).  

I have so many fond memories of taking Devon to Bouncing Babies in Kentucky, a library program for 0-3 year olds that incorporates songs, stories, and fingerplays.  I looked around for one in IRC and there's nothing like it.  There's an older kid story time with a reader singing and reading to kids on a stage, but she's kind of cranky and I don't like the way she glares at my kids as I run every direction to keep them from storming the stage and running away with her books. 

Then there's the summer kids speaker series, which I tried to take the kids to when Devon was having his allergy issues and jumping out of his skin from all the meds.  All three kids acted so badly and were so hard to remove from the show without being conspicuous that I started to cry.  Nobody said or did anything sympathetic.  I left burning with embarrassment, cried all the way home, put the kids to bed, and cried some more.  I know the bad experience was nobody's fault, but still. 

I'm not sure why, but I always seem to meet cranky people at the library.  The desk clerk always refuses to check the restock shelf in the back for a book I want even though I ask nicely.  Last week when I was having a horrible morning and needed an hour away, I went there and missed the DO NOT ENTER sign in the parking lot.  My fault, blame state of mind.  An old lady in a sedan backed out in front of me on purpose, and sat there blocking me instead of pulling around me even though there was plenty of room.  I didn't want to back up out of the parking lot into moving traffic, so I gestured for her to please go around me.  She stopped her car, got out, and delivered a stinging indictment through my open car window.  "You're breaking the rules that all the rest of us have to follow!" she finished, chins wobbling in disgust.

I'm not going to tell you what I said back.  Like I said, I wasn't in a good mood.  It brings up my next peeve about the area, though.

7.  Cranky Seniors

Vero Beach is a well known senior Mecca.  I generally get along well with the elderly, so I didn't give it a thought.  However, sometimes people don't age too gracefully, personality-wise, and if they don't have enough to do with all the time on their hands they might resort to making perfect strangers' lives a little worse than they were before.  

Last week a disgruntled silver-haired New Yorker chased me down to yell at me for grazing his side mirror with a shopping cart.  Again, I was not in my best mood after a sleepless night, and in my hurry to thread the needle between two parked cars and get back to unload the kids I made contact with the edge of his mirror.  It didn't matter that it didn't leave a mark and I apologized through gritted teeth and entirely without sarcasm.  "Oh no.  You poor thing.  Are you all right?"

Okay, not without sarcasm.

The one that really got to me was the president of the HOA in our neighborhood evicting the kids and I from the tennis courts one morning as we were taking our exercise.  It was my habit to let the kids run around in the fenced area and play with toys, as the enclosure kept everyone safe.  Suddenly I saw him advancing upon me.  "Take these kids out of here.  This is NOT a playpen!" he shouted.

"They're wearing tennis shoes.  They're playing with tennis balls.  I don't see anyone else lining up to play tennis!"  I countered, calmly.  No, really.

I eventually wrote a letter to the vice president pleading my case and won, but I never took the kids back.  It made me sad to think that people got so bothered by the sight and sound of my children laughing in the sunshine.

8.  Toll Roads

 We'd been warned about them, and they still proved an irritation from the moment Craig landed in Orlando, rented a car, and set out for Vero to look around.  He got lost and burned through eight dollars at toll stations before he got going in the right direction. 

Toll roads aren't just an expensive and time consuming nuisance.  They put people to work doing meaningless tasks.  Someone makes a toll station so someone can sit in it and collect tolls.  The tolls pay for the person to sit in the toll station (and hopefully a bit more, too, but still).  Why not just pay people to dig holes and then fill them in?  At least the rest of us could go unencumbered on our merry way.

9. Personal Hygiene 

Stating the obvious here, Florida is hot and humid pretty much all the time.  Any outdoor activity requires athletic wear, sunscreen, a hat, huge sunglasses, and sometimes bug spray.  Add the presence of sand to all that stickiness and just straying out of doors makes me feel dirty.

As I review most of my outdoor photos taken with the family, we look pretty wilted all the time. 

Another thing: it took me way, way too long after I moved here to find my way to prescription strength deodorant.  Some of my shirts just need to be thrown away.

10.  CBS Construction

It's meant to keep your house still standing in a hurricane, so I guess that's a good thing.

 It stands for Concrete Block Stucco.  Walls are made of concrete with stucco over the top to look nice.  Since they're building again in our 2007 Market Crash neighborhood, we get an insider's view of what this means.

First of all, I'm not a fan because cinderblock weeps moisture, which is not a good thing in a wet climate.  Houses in our circle have problems with water infiltration.  Also, the wall spaces are ideal places for all the nasty pests I mentioned earlier.  Lastly, inner walls are framed with metal studs, not wood.  Imagine our chagrin the first time we brought out our trusty stud finder to hang a picture.  We found a stud, we pounded a nail... and... it wouldn't go through!  Heavy pictures and baby gates mean large wall anchors, and we've had those fail on us, too.  I'm sure if we had a major hurricane to look back on I would have made my peace with the unusual construction.

Devon is fascinated by this little structure on our morning walks.  I won't let him know what it is because I know what he'll immediately want to do in it.  I just tell him it's a very little house for the workers if they want to get out of the weather for a while and sit down.  He thinks that's a great idea, and he wonders why we can't have one, too.

Not a bad idea, buddy.