Look Out, Gallbladder!

It's Fried Everything Day at the SeeWee Restaurant in Awendaw, South Carolina - although as nearly as I can tell, every day is Fried Everything Day at the See Wee. And God bless 'em for it, because if you and your alimentary canal can withstand it, the fried everythings at the SeeWee are absolutely finger-lickin' delicious. The basket of hushpuppies is on the house and brought to your table without your having to ask, just to tantalize you while you're perusing the menu.

Here was my lunch:

That's fried catfish, French fries, and fried okra. You could also have had fried green tomatoes and fried pickles, just about any kind of seafood fried, and a fried gallbladder on the side. And then there's this:

Truly one of the best red velvet cakes I've ever had, with 3 layers of light, barely-chocolatey cake and honest-to-goodness fluffy cream cheese icing. I couldn't even finish it. I would have taken a picture of the hubster's warm bread pudding with caramel sauce but he demolished it before I could even pull the camera out of the bag.

I say with love and respect that the SeeWee is pretty much a roadside dump, by which I mean that it is very down-home and unpretentious and the bathroom, which is a 1-holer, is outside and around the back of the place. It's a bit more of an adventure than I'd like to have when needing a ladies' room, but that's how it is. I think there are around 20 choices every day from the "sides" and the desserts are just ridiculously amazing. The waitstaff is young and incredibly cheerful, including our server who told us when he brought the condiments that "the 'c' is for cocktail sauce and the 'k' is for ketchup and that's as complicated as it gets around here."

Gotta love that.

Getting to the SeeWee is a bit of a pain, because Highway 17 appears to be under 50-odd miles of traffic-choking congestion, so if you plan to go, you may need to pack some emergency snacks for the drive. On the good side, that part of Highway 17 is called "Sweetgrass Basket Alley" or something like that because both sides of the highway are dotted with little shacks where people sit weaving sweetgrass baskets for sale to the tourists. You will have plenty of time to admire their handiwork and even to make comparisons among the artisans since you'll be sitting in traffic before getting to the SeeWee. But it's all part of the adventure of getting there.

From Seabrook, we had to drive to Charleston, then over the big bridge to Mt Pleasant, and then 11 more miles or so to Awendaw. So it was a bit of a schlep. But I was aiming for something authentically low-country and un-touristy, and on both those scores, plus on the deliciousness meter, the SeeWee was a home run.

Newtered!

The state of South Carolina, my putative adopted new home, has officially been Newtered. Yesterday Gingrich slaughtered Romney in the Republican presidential primary. Which makes me wonder: what the hell is wrong with these people?

So I am an unapologetic left-wing liberal Democrat, and I think everyone should be, but unlike the right wing I do not attempt to impose my ideology on anyone else. (I just think they're wrong, but I keep it to myself. Except for blog posts.) But even allowing for differences in people's political views, I have to say that I totally do not get it with Gingrich's "appeal." He is a gasbag, a hypocrite who led the charge against Bill Clinton for philandering while he himself was philandering in a Major Way, an elitist and, in my opinion, a racist. He wants to put underprivileged children to work as janitors in public buildings. The only good thing I can say about him is that he likes zoos and dinosaurs.

But good for you, South Carolina. And good for you, Republican party. Go ahead and anoint Newt as your nominee. I think this only makes President Obama's path to reelection easier. 

Them And Us

See this guy? I am now about to unload on him, which I feel especially confident in doing because I think there's only one person aside from myself who reads this blog. (Hi, Jenni!)

Last night the Hus and I went to Seabrook's annual "soup supper," which was highly touted as one of the premier social events of the year (which says an awful lot about Seabrook's social scene, really.) It's sort of a higher-end potluck dinner in which the participants are asked to bring a crockpot full of their best soup, and/or a dessert, and everyone gets to sample lots of different things and share companionship. When I say everyone brings a crockpot, here's what I mean:

If there should be some sort of national crockpot shortage crisis, the invading forces should make directly for Seabrook Island, South Carolina. Those in this picture are but a smidgen of all the crockpots - not to mention the crackpots, as will be discussed further below - at this event.

Before you get too judgmental about this event and condemn it to the ranks of Utterly Stupid Shit I Would Never Attend Even if my Life Depended On It, take a look at the scenery from the front porch of the beach club, where the dinner was held:

Yeah, pretty darn nice. Anyway, we went, armed with a crockpot full of chili, a homemade hot milk cake, and optimistic attitudes about meeting some new people.

There were hundreds of people at this event. Literally, hundreds of people bearing crockpots and/or desserts. And let me say right up front: both the zillions of soups, and the zillions of desserts, were fantastic. People brought their A games for sure.

In fact, desserts are so good that they have to impose restrictions on when you can start hitting them up:

(People largely abided by that rule.)

Like everything else in Seabrook, this event was a well-oiled machine with a very structured system for dropping food off at the door, where it was met by a crew of volunteers who transported it inside the venue and set it up:

And they had the grooviest little 4-well plates so that everyone could sample four soups of their choice:

It really was a well-run event. However...

Of course we knew literally not a single soul in the room aside from each other. So we knew going in that it could prove challenging socially. Not long after getting inside we began to notice that many of the large tables had "reserved" signs on them, so we began picking our way through the room trying to find a table where we would be allowed to sit. It wasn't easily done, and as we wended our way through the room lots of people were eyeing us with suspicion. Perhaps this was due to the fact that our name tags literally bore our names, and an asterisk. The asterisk designated us at "outsiders" or "non-members." Or, as I came to think of it, the asterisked name tags were sort of a less pernicious (much less pernicious) version of a yellow star or a pink triangle. Our name tags marked us as "other."

Finally we found a table without a reserved sign and with empty chairs, and we grabbed two of the chairs and stood behind them, smiles pasted on our optimistic faces. (Did we look enough like we were saying "Please talk to us"?) But in short order I noticed a couple of people standing nearby who were growing increasingly agitated, their whispers more fervent, their heads together as they gesticulated and spoke animatedly to each other, while casting nasty looks in our direction. Eventually, the guy depicted at the top of this posting told us we had to leave, because he had "saved" the seats we were claiming. "Um," I said. "There was no one here when we got here, nobody at this table at all, and no reserved sign on it." His reply was, "Well, there was literally no one sitting here, but we had reserved these seats." I suppose he had done that with his brain waves, and I suppose we could have refused to move, and I am more than 100 per cent certain that he was too old and feeble to pick my carcass up and move it, and I am sure my former Marine husband could have stood his ground and ensured that we would remain where we were, but it wasn't worth it, especially in a community which we are contemplating joining (or maybe not, after last night), so..we moved. 

All's well that ends well. We landed at a table with some actually super nice people who were much more our own ages, and we had a really fun evening after all. But there is no question about it: here on Seabrook, there is a very definite Them and Us mentality. Interestingly, our tablemates last night were busting on Kiawah, our neighbor island just up the road, for being snooty and clique-y, so I'm not sure the Seabrookers have looked in a mirror recently. Just another thing to think about when we think about whether we want to move here.

(That's the Evildoer in the orange sweater, again. The lady he's speaking to was one of the Highly Agitated Ones who wanted us to move.)

In our neighborhood at home, we live in ancient houses with rich traditions, among people who are super-wealthy (and some who are not so super-wealthy), and nobody tries to be exclusionary, and nobody looks down upon people who are new to the neighborhood. In fact, everyone is very live-and-let-live in Roland Park, and happy to welcome newcomers. I am liking my hometown all the more, having experienced an evening where people wanted to pull up the drawbridge and not let us in.

The Politics that got in the way of my Buying a House

The South Carolina Republican presidential primary will be held this coming Saturday. I find that weird in the first instance because I've never heard of any kind of election being held on a Saturday. 

But that's the least of why the upcoming South Carolina Republican presidential primary is weird. Since we've been here we've been inundated with political ads on tv that spew the most vitriolic venom you can even imagine. Ron Paul wants to "drain the swamp." Newt Gingrich says he's "the only one who can beat Obama." Not even President Obama - just "Obama." The ads play back to back to back like some hideous montage. And today as I was driving dog and cat to the groomer, I passed a church - a church, I point out - with that sign out front: "Vote while you still can."

Subtext: Better vote now, Mr and Mrs America, because the socialist Obama agenda wants to strip you of your right to vote.

Last night I woke up in a cold sweat because I remembered that in South Carolina, they fly the Confederate flag at the State House. By morning I had talked myself out of believing that, but then the pesky internet verified my nightmare - the stars and bars do indeed fly at the state capitol. So it's one thing for a majority of residents of this state to have terrible political views, but it's another thing entirely for an atrocity like that Confederate flag to be officially sanctioned by the official state government. 

How can I even consider moving here?

Househunting

We've been househunting. And wondering whether we are putting the proverbial cart before the horse, because we haven't resolved the philosophical questions that we brought with us when we came down here a couple of weeks ago: what about the terrible politics here? What about our aging parents? What about the isolation of living on an island?

Well, we started looking at houses anyway, those questions remaining largely unanswered. Maybe they're not answerable, or maybe we won't ever answer them. And we have found a couple of houses that we are absolutely in love with. Those houses carry a pretty big price tag, and we're not planning to sell our home in Baltimore for a while, so that would mean two sizeable mortgages and a lot of debt.  And that would further mean taking all the remaining vacations of our lives, most likely, here at Seabrook. No more dreams of Italy or of returning to France or Spain. Where we've been is where we'll have been by the time we die, because there won't be extra cash around to finance those big trips anymore. Am I ready for that? For all my remaining vacations to be in South Carolina? Never to see Rome? 

The house we love most is big, it sits on a lagoon, it has a Wolf 6-burner gas stove and hardwood floors throughout the house, marble bathrooms, and four bedrooms. All that while still looking beachy and informal. Huge palm trees line the driveway and the lot size amounts to just about an acre, most of it natural and untamed. This dream house has three decks, two fireplaces and a screened-in porch. There's an enormous two-car garage with an enormous 650-square foot room on top of it which could be used as an office for Mr Big or, since it has a modern, full bathroom and a small kitchen area, as guest quarters or an "in-law apartment."

But who would be our friends? Would we just be sitting in our snazzy house looking at each other and the cat and the dog? Would our families visit? Would our politics shift? Do I really want to live in a state that still flies the Confederate flag at the statehouse?

Send in the Flying Monkeys

Who has a better husband than this: knowing that my bicycling skills are, to put it kindly, rustic, yet knowing that I would really like to join my fellow islanders in tooling around on an "island cruiser" bike, mine went out and not only bought me the most adorable Tillie-green machine, but also bought a pair of adult-sized training wheels (not easily found) and installed them. 

Here's the backstory: growing up in a working class family, I had a bike, but it was of the "cruiser" variety, which is to say, it was just a stop-and-go bike with no gears. In fact, I think I was in college before I was even dimly aware of the existence of bicycles with gears. Those were for the rich kids. And since I also very early on in life developed quite slug-like habits, preferring to lie rather than sit, sit rather than stand, stand rather than walk, and walk rather than run, I didn't really ride my bike very much anyway. And my parents really tried hard to propel my butt outdoors, and strongly encouraged me to ride my bike, but largely to no avail.

But here in Seabrook, everybody rides bikes everywhere.  The terrain is very flat, and on the island the maximum speed limit is around 25 mph, and the broad streets are in excellent shape, so it's sort of an ideal situation for bikers.  Lots of people bike up to the local grocery store, buy a few things, and tool home to make dinner - I like thinking of that as a sort of French way of doing the marketing. I like the environmentally friendly nature of biking around, too. And the most hardcore Seabrookers bike to the gym, work out, and bike back home - I'd like to be one of them. But a couple of years back, while vacationing on Kiawah (where everyone also rides bikes everywhere) I tried to hop on an island cruiser and nearly cracked my head open; so I'm scared. (*Note: I didn't actually come close to cracking my head open; I just felt like I was going to do so at any moment.)

Knowing that I want to better myself by re-learning to ride a bike, my awesomely fantastic husband scoured the internet and found adult-sized training wheels. (Your local bike shop is not likely to have them, for those of you who are as bike-challenged as I am.) And he and the dog installed the wheels on the bike last night while watching the football playoffs.

(She contributed encouragement by wagging her tail, as you can see in the photo.)

Today, when the going got tough during the Ravens game, and my nerves were shattered, I pulled the bike out of the garage and, like a second grader, rode shakily around in the driveway. Luckily for me, the neighbors who live across the street and would otherwise have had a great view of that comedy show, are not in residence at the moment. I had fear of looking like Arte Johnson from Laugh-In and just pitching over sideways while trying to ride, but my training wheels held me up.  Of course, the adult-sized training wheels stick out so far on the sides that my bike will essentially take up the entire width of the sidewalks, but I don't care - hopefully I'll get my confidence going in pretty short order and will be able to take the wheels off soon.  (The wheels also realign the bike in such a way that even if I put the kickstand down, it doesn't touch the ground!)

I've already planned to tell people "I have a head injury" if anyone looks askance at me on my comical bike, but people here are pretty (outwardly) nice, so I'm not expecting many questions. (Maybe some local gossip, but not many direct questions.)  The husband also bought a very awesome wicker basket that can actually be removed from the handlebars and taken inside for shopping; just call me Miss Gulch from The Wizard of Oz! I have to start practicing saying "And yer little dog, too!"

Another Reason to Love Charleston

Four Hours Later.....

Here's my "before" hair:

Here's my "after" hair:

See the big huge difference? The big giant enormous difference that was worth my having spent FOUR FREAKIN HOURS in the stylist's chair? No?

Me neither.

The color is slightly lighter. The cut is slightly choppier. I like both the cut and the color, but I liked them before, too. And I spent four hours in the guy's chair while he told me how crappy my hair was when I came through the door. (I don't like it when stylists run down other stylists. Is that really necessary?) 

Anyway...at least I look neither like a big-haired idiot (any more than I usually do) nor like a menopausal lesbian (ditto).  And my heroic dog "held it" the entire time I was gone. Maybe she is making amends for having puked in the back of my car this morning.....

The Higher the Hair, The Closer to God

I believe it was John Waters who so famously dubbed Baltimore the hairdo capital of the world. To be a true female Baltimoron, one has to have suffered through at least one semester wearing "Baltimore bangs" - bangs which are long enough to be curled and pouffed out with the use of a round brush, a curling iron, and/or a ton of hairspray.  Denise Whiting, owner of the Cafe Hon (who earlier this year famously pissed off the entire city by having trademarked the word "hon"), created the annual Honfest in Hampden, where cat's eye glasses and extremely high bouffants are the uniform.

Most Baltimore ladies of the 21st century, of course, have foresworn such extremes of hair - including me. But it still takes a lot of work to look this natural, from color to cut. And I am very very picky about my hair. So when I had my last session of 2011 with my hometown hairdresser, whom I love, I asked her to write down my color formula, and I am carrying it in my wallet. 

My game plan for finding a hairdresser down here was to look around at the hair on the ladies I see in my little community, and when I find one with good hair, ask her who her hairdresser is. The problem is, I haven't seen any hair that's looked good. This is partly because most of the people here in Seabrook at the moment are middle-aged or older, and hair does not appear to be their priority. In fact, many of them are pushing the envelope of female baldness. A very very nice lady who's a passing acquaintance was very enthusiastic about taking me into her beauty shop out here on the island and introducing me to everyone - and everyone looked like they were sitting in God's own waiting room. Strike two. Meanwhile,  I've been getting grayer by the day.

So I had to go to Plan B for finding a temporary hairdresser: internet search. I put in the usual search terms (like "best" and "salon" and "Charleston," the latter because that is the nearest big city) and came up with several repeats, so I just took the plunge and chose one. Called, and, knowing nothing about any particular stylists, could do no better in choosing one than to ask for a "senior stylist" or a "master stylist" - this minimizes the chances that I'll get some kid fresh out of beauty school. They've given me to a guy. I am dubious. Haven't had a lot of tremendous success with male hairdressers except for my beloved Benny, who cut my hair gorgeously for years, until he fell down the steps inside his apartment in a drugged-out fog one night and died of head trauma.

Anyway, tomorrow is the big day. I am armed with my iPad, with photos of the cut I want (not much different from what I have now, and how much damage can they do in two months' time, really) and as for the color, I'm kinda sick of mine so I'm going to let him do whatever he wants. My hair has been just about every color known to nature except flat black, anyway (no blue, no pink, no green - I mean normal hair colors), so I'll probably like whatever color it turns out to be. The shlep into Charleston from here is going to take about an hour, so I hope the journey will be worth it. I'm a little bit nauseated thinking about it, to be honest. I do not want to come out of that shop looking like a big-haired idiot from Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (ok, if I could have their bodies, I'd accept the big hair.) Nor do I want to come out looking like a post-menopausal lesbian. (When they start cutting your hair short, ladies of my age all have the tendency to start looking like Barbara Mikulski, a nun, or a truck driver.) Told you I was picky. Pray.

77 degrees in January

How YOU doin'?

This was our morning at the beach: sunny sky, warm temperatures, miles and miles of open, pristine beach, and...a flock of deer!!

Can anything possibly top today?

Nemesis

No, those are not World War II mines planted in some European harbor.

This hideous spiky creature is the "goat head thorn." It is a byproduct of a grassy vine that grows on the ground down here - and the most pernicious thing is, you can't really see the thorns in the grass until it's too late. They adhere to everything, and if you have a dog, they are a constant danger. My poor little Lola got them embedded in all four paws yesterday on her way to the beach, and when she sat down because she couldn't walk, she got them in her tail, her legs...everywhere. There's nothing to do but pull them out, which is miserable for her and for me (because in yanking them out, they get stuck in my fingers!) They are everywhere. So I have to try to find some rubber-soled shoes for my dog...which she is gonna hate.....

Here's a video called "The Goat Head Thorn And You!"

They're a little bit firm in their views down here....

Week One's Highs and Lows

We've been here nearly a week, and it's remarkable how quickly I've lost my devotion to my "real" house at home, my possessions there, or much of anything back in my hometown aside from my parents and the Ravens. Of course, we have a housesitter keeping an eye on things back there, so it's not as though I've just left the doors unlocked and hung a sign on the door reading "burglars welcome." But the house we're in here at the beach is so lovely and so well-appointed that we lack for nothing. In fact, I think this must be the most well-appointed kitchen this side of the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian.

There have been a few surprises. Today I learned, for example, that the island is in the midst of a coyote assault. Some ladies I met this morning were talking about having heard the coyotes howling and then the husband of one of them actually physically encountered the coyotes while walking their dog last night. Coyotes! I guess they're here for the deer, of which there seem to be hundreds. There are certainly hundreds of piles of deer poop everywhere. But I wasn't expecting to have to BOLO for coyotes!

I also learned that talking only to one's spouse for days on end gets old. Don't get me wrong: I love my spouse. And he is a very interesting person. But I was feeling a little bit isolated for a day or so there, not having anyone else to talk to. I don't really know anybody down here other than the two realtors who helped us arrange for this rental. The houses here aren't on huge lots, but they are situated so that you really never see your neighbors. Here's our house:

You just don't see anybody to the right or left of you, shielded as you are from the neighbors by stands of enormous live oaks and palm trees. But today I went to a group class at the gym and met a lot of nice people, and even though I wouldn't say I have become fast friends with any of them, they were someone else to talk to, and I felt a lot better after that. After all, without them, I wouldn't know the first thing about the coyotes!

It does indeed seem that everyone's politics down here are more conservative than mine (Romney and Santorum were in Charleston today, I think), but, to hell with it, I put my Obama car magnet back on my bumper this afternoon. Let the chips fall where they may.

I've also learned that for some strange reason, there are a lot of Ravens fans here in Seabrook. On our first day here, as I was heading to the grocery store I encountered an enormous clan of people all wearing Ravens shirts! And when people have asked me where we're from, and I say Baltimore, they all light up and ask me about the Ravens. I'm not sure why there should be a high quotient of Ravens fans in Seabrook, South Carolina, but there are.

It's been a tough week from the perspective of having left my parents back home, since my mother had a bad episode that could have proven very serious this week. In my absence, my cousin was pressed into service for doing the transportation around to doctors and the hospital. Thankfully, mercifully, everything turned out fine, although I learned that it is not the optimal way to learn that your mother is having a cardiac procedure to read it on your cousin's Facebook page. (She didn't have my cell #. I'm not blaming her and it was really creative of her to think of reaching me that way! I'm just saying that I don't recommend firing up your Facebook page while you're working out at the gym as the best way to learn that your mother is having a potentially life-ending cardiac procedure at that exact moment.) 

We are not any closer to reaching a final decision on whether we'd like to live here permanently, but it's only the first week. It got pretty cold for a few days (in the 40s during the day and in the 20s at night) but it snowed a bit at home; still, they do definitely get a version of winter here. The first few days we just ran around like crazy and got ourselves settled in. Now settled, we should be able to develop a routine, know a bit more where things are, and be able to inch a bit closer to knowing what we're likely to do. Because we've definitely had great moments like this:

We are not gloating because they are having snow at home!

Totally not gloating. (Besides, they were only flurries.) But here's how we spent our first day in Seabrook Island, South Carolina: frolicking with our dog Lola on the beach. She, and we, had a blast.

Life definitely is moving at a different pace for us here, at least so far. The husband ensconced himself in his man cave (it's actually a bright and airy room built over the garage, with the most enormous tv mounted on the wall, a fridge (because walking down the 4 steps that lead to the kitchen is apparently too much for the people who built this house!), its own full bathroom (working in the man cave must lead to sweat, which requires showering), and - best of all - wireless internet) and he works all day from the aerie, with his weird telephone ear bug in place. The dog and I do what the dog and I do at home, except that we don't know where anything is here, so we go on at least one daily jaunt to find stuff - like good grocery stores, the dry cleaners, a Petco. It's very disconcerting not to know where stuff is. And then of course there is the daily insult to my senses as I drive past countless Republican Presidential campaign signs, all for candidates who are, in my view, repellant. Mitt Romney runs tv ads constantly here, because the South Carolina primary is coming soon. Fortunately, I don't watch much tv.

This morning I found a pile of deer poop on the deck next to the pool. I found this very unsettling, since the deck lies up a set of stairs and behind a locked fence. How the deer got up there I have no idea, but I don't think I want to see deer that can do that.

There is absolutely no nightlife here. None. As I was walking Lola around the lake this evening, it was already pitch dark by 630 PM and there wasn't another human soul visible anywhere. This may be a function of its being "off-season," but I am strongly suspecting that people here just don't go out at night. Out here on the island, it's a bit of a haul into downtown Charleston, so over the next two months I'll have to decide if I can handle living in a place where the roads are rolled up as soon as the sun goes down. Not sure about that. Not that I live such a wild nightlifestyle at home! But I could if I wanted to, and here I cannot.  That's a good reason to try out a place before taking the plunge into moving there...

It's Diffurnt

Never ever ever in all my born days have I seen such a foodstuff as this tube of something squishy that I encountered this morning at the local Piggly Wiggly. First let me say that I love a store that dares to name itself "Piggly Wiggly." And this particular chain also has its own tee shirts - which are pretty awesome and which I am pretty sure I am going to buy one of, the next time I go. And when they make in-store announcements, they begin with "The pig" (says buy this or that....) Love. It.

But WTF with this tube of offal? In fact, there was practically an offal section in the store - with bags of pigs' feet and chicken hearts and gizzards. I think if they had a section like that at Dean & DeLuca, they would charge an offal lot (haha) for it and have a sign saying "as seen on Iron Chef..." But this morning I encountered this tube of something in the store, just down the road past a million Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich signs. I am in Indian country now..... As my first mother-in-law used to say, "It's diffurnt."

The Loveliness of a Car Trip South on I-95 from Baltimore to South Carolina

It's been a long time since I've driven this far - last year we drove to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but this trip is longer than that; and my days of driving my daughter to college in the Berkshires of Massachusetts or in Ithaca, New York are well past. And as much fun as she is, the dog isn't exactly the most brilliant of conversationalists, so it was just me and my wandering thoughts (and my iPhone) on the roughly 10 hours of straight, flat road between Baltimore and Seabrook.

But the roadside attractions were enough to make me despair of possibly living in this part of the world. Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the dog and I spent New Year's Eve, seems to equal Fort Bragg plus a zillion strip joints. (Plus one really super awesomely nice Marriott Residence Inn, where the dog promptly flaked out on the floor while I uploaded pix and worked on the blog.) Getting to Fayetteville took us past the obligatory 10,000 billboards for South of the Border (they make it seem so seductive there!), a tantalizing sign advertising the Ava Gardner Museum (loved her), and countless establishments that my husband refers to as (if you have children in the room, shield their eyes now) "titty bars." I guess the military installations sort of dictate that the t*tty bars follow, but jeez. What would Ava Gardner think?

Anyway, here's how I spent New Year's Eve 2011:

So I was on the road by 6 AM headed for Seabrook and as soon as I got here, I could feel the tension start to slip away. Everyone here is wearing shorts! In January! And the realtor reassured me that I need not fear alligators eating my dog - but I should keep my eyes open for the bobcats, who've been known to take out the unsuspecting deer.... BOBCATS!!!  I guess these deer, whom the dog and I encountered on our mid-afternoon walk around the neighborhood, don't know about the bobcat threat:

(City girl, me, thought they were statues - until they moved.....)

Well, here we are, then. Let the grand experiment begin!