The Sunday Salon

Lesa, over at Lesa’s Book Critiques, offered us a glimpse of her Arizona home for her Sunday Salon post for today so I decided I’d do the same!

I don’t live in Arizona, quite the opposite actually. I live on an island. Not a tropical island, but a waterfront community whose lives are so vulnerable against Mother Nature as was the case the past two days with tropical storm Hanna.

It is also a resort and that’s why I love it so.

Last March, we moved into a 3-story condo complete with ocean sunsets every night and two huge decks (one screened, one not) to watch them. There’s a dock off our yard right across the street which has become my daughter’s and my sanctuary.

Oh, let me tell you what you can do there. First, you can walk the dogs down it until you come to the very end where you can sit on one of the benches to recoup before you make the long trek back. Max, the male Cocker, loves it and has, in fact, jumped overboard when we weren’t looking which isn’t fun because that means we have to jump in and save him. Skylar, the Sheltie, loves it also and is no problem, but Cassie, the female Cocker has convulsions every time we take her down there – just doesn’t like it at all and starts to shake until we have to turn around and bring her back. I think it has something to do with hating baths.

Another thing you can do on the dock is catch crabs (which I don’t eat and which I don’t catch, but you can) and clams. Now let me tell you about the clams. They are either as small as you want or as large as you want and they’re all over the place underneath the mud a little bit. I don’t eat them either but my kids’ father likes to come over and load up.

It’s also a nice place to hook up the boat to which the kids love and it’s also a nice place to well just get away from it all.

I had my taste of what it was going to be like when this nice warm weather is over and I’m not going to like it one bit. When Hanna blew through here, the front decks were like wind tunnels so I have to hang out my back door to take a smoke break. Not the fun and not the same as sitting in my rocker watching the bikers or the boats ride by. The dogs all come out there with me and we have our “moment” before I have to run back in here and start working on tours.

And something else I’m going to miss are those bike rides. My son and I made a 14 mile round trip to the beach and back just after Pony Penning and that’s something else, man, Pony Penning week is the bomb here with all the tourists. They say you’re a real island native when you start hating the tourists, but it’s really neat watching the island come alive.

No, not looking forward to summer ending at all.

See you next Sunday!