Flat Water, Not Much Breeze

Do you like that picture? I hope so as it took approximately four hours to upload (or is it download?) because here on Dog Island we don't need no stinkin' wireless.

Well, actually we do need it but I can't see that happening in the near future. Dog Island is like a third world country only without the corner tienda or the availability of cable or el policia.

Oh, you can get the law over here, but it takes awhile. The same is probably true of satellite but we're not here enough to need satellite and hopefully I won't be needing the police, either.
There is crime on the island sometimes and let's not pretend otherwise! I would say that approximately 80% of the people driving on the island could not pass a sobriety test, and if you can reach the gas pedal and see over the steering wheel, you can drive, sober or not. The newsletter we get from the Dog Island board always cautions folks not to let their children drive if they don't know how but they seem to be a lot more het-up about the crime of letting your dog go unleashed.

Speaking of dogs, I did not bring one. It's sad to think that I have four dogs and yet, not one of them pleases me enough that I'd want to spend a week alone with him or her. I need say no more about that.

The picture you see is one I took in the house here on the island. That's most of the living room, looking through to the kitchen and also the hallway. The only things you can't see are the bedrooms and the bathrooms which are off the hallway. Note the lovely shaggish carpet. I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to put carpet in a beach house but I'd say, judging from the vintageness of the carpet that he or she is dead by now. We plan to eventually replace this carpet but I think that really my husband and our partner in the house are afraid to tear the carpet up because of what they might find underneath it. It's one of those situations where if you really started to work on the house, it would never end until the entire house had been rebuilt from the bottom up and why? It's sort of a shack, albeit a lovely and light-filled shack, and one with air conditioning that works so what the fuck? It is completely adequate to our needs, which is to have a place to stay while on the island, to cook in, to relax in, to sleep in. What more do we need? Well, running water that you could drink would be nice, but there again, we're like a third world country.

It's not quite noon and I have been up for quite awhile and I have taken a good walk on the Gulf where the water was flat and a bit murky. I saw one other human and she was digging for bait. We waved but did not speak. A small plane passed over and waggled his wings, which made me smile. I walked on the bay some, too, and there is not much to report today. I saw some dead fish but that was about it. Even the birds seem to be lazy today. I have heard the osprey, but not seen it. I do, however, have neighbors, which I was not expecting. The house next door, which is almost always empty, is filled with a group of people who are doing a lot of beachy things and also making use of their boat. I can hear them quite clearly and it's a bit disconcerting but not annoying. It will become annoying if they decide to party as the day rolls into evening, which frequently happens at the beach.

I am not sure what I will be doing next. This is a funny thing about coming to the island- one feels as if one should "accomplish" something, if one is me, but really, what is there to accomplish? I suppose I could wash my cereal bowl. It takes a few days to relax into the Zen of it all, to truly realize that the hours of the day may be spent in any way one wishes and it also takes a few days to figure out what exactly it is one wishes. I suppose this is true of any vacation that doesn't involve tour groups and an itinerary. If I had an itinerary it would go something like this:

Get up, drink coffee, check out the water.
Eat breakfast while sitting on the back porch with a book while checking out the water.
Go for a walk beside the water. Check it out.
Come home, drink a lot of water.
Check the e-mail and the blogs I read. This can take awhile with the dial-up connection. While you're waiting for things to download, wander about and check out the water. Also, the sky.
Post a picture and write something.
Eat lunch on the back porch while reading and checking out the water and sky.
Contemplate a nap.
And so on.

I know I need to make some bread today because somehow I forgot to bring the loaf of five-grain sourdough I bought at Publix. This is not a tragedy in that I do love to make bread and
I have plenty of time to do it.

Eventually, it will be time to watch the sunset and have a drink. That is the highpoint of the day.

And so it goes, here on Dog Island. I have had no epiphanies, I have not died of loneliness, and if I feel a bit melancholy, well, I think I would be feeling that way at home, too.
I tend to have a melancholy heart but I know that there is always the possibility for contentment and peace and even happiness and I will be watching out for all of those as I watch the water, as I watch the sky.