I started on this Monday morning. Since then, this all feels silly and stupid. I angrily want to scream at the top of my lungs. That said, I don’t have the energy to proofread this. Sorry. Hope it holds together.
1) Independent Bookstore Day
Let’s be honest, for a lot of readers Indie Bookstore Day is a big deal. I suspect there are two things that play into that: Having an independent bookstore nearby that feels like “home” and being attracted to “events.” Personally, I used to adore The Book Cellar in Lake Worth, but it closed a few years ago. I love Books and Books, too, but it’s far. The store in Coral Gables has a great size and I’ve always liked how easy it is to order books and either pick them up or have them shipped. My favorite Books and Books, though, has been the one at the Arsht Center. I used to walk over there during the Miami Book Fair (or any other time I’d found myself downtown Miami) to grab a bite to eat, a beer, and a few books. I also attended a great workshop there with Lynne Barrett years ago.
It really feels like the last two years, in some ways, just disappeared. Poof.
It’s made my usual “time slippage” problem more pronounced. I call it time slippage because that’s what it feels like in my head. One moment I can be sitting at my desk teaching math and then for a moment, I feel like I’m in the Keys. In that small moment, I can feel the sun on my face; smell the salty, marshy air; see the Bay stretched out before me or the pastel roadside buildings. And then I’m back at my desk. Given plane ticket prices lately, seems the cheapest way to travel.
2) FATVillage Art Walk
Speaking of local things that have closed… Saturday was the last art walk for a while. (Supposedly, there’s construction going on until June, but we’ll see. The Arsht Center bookstore was supposed to reopen when the Arsht Center started up their performance schedule again. Yeah, I know. Obsessed much? It was the right size, not overwhelming, and in the cutest historic building. I’m into that.) We’ve gone to several art walks since Florida decided the pandemic ended, but it’s been very hit or miss. Part of that has been the ebb and flow of the pandemic numbers and whether we feel comfortable being in a crowd of unmasked people.
My favorite things about the art walk have been:
Mac Fine Art – As a high-end gallery, they had excellent art and they’d open during art walks despite most of the crowd being the opposite of their usual clients. Basically, it was like visiting a small contemporary art museum. I always got inspired going in there and being able to stand so close to such great an innovative art. (They haven’t been participating in art walk since the pandemic.)
Arts and Crafts Social Club – This was a great paint-and-sip kind of place run by a very cool, very sweet artist. They closed before the pandemic because lease prices were increasing and running the place wasn’t leaving the owners enough time to work on their own art. If you need art to start a revolution, Steph has your back.
Art Attack – Another Stephanie, this small gallery hosted monthly battles between local artists and hosted a parking lot full of artists creating live. They moved a few blocks away, but it doesn’t have the same feel.
The warehouses – Parking over near the original warehouse galleries has become such a nightmare that we haven’t been that way during an art walk in years. Mass District had easier parking up until a few months ago. Once upon a time there was a trolley that ran between the two areas. Honestly, I haven’t looked into it in the past year because I’m still iffy on being that close to strangers.
3) Duck Update
Joy is doing much better. She had her follow-up appointment with the vet last week and got a thumbs up. I forgot to put a puppy pad in the carrier with her, so she was all poopy by the time we got there. (Ducks don’t have sphincters like cats and dogs.) I offered to wash her off in the sink before the assistant took her off to get weighed. She said she was planning to bring the scale in because she had such a hard time getting Joy back in the carrier so that worked out.
The assistant tried to get her on the scale after the exam and Joy decided to fly across the room instead. I might have taught these weirdo ducks that they can just stand on my hand like parrots or something, so I scooped my hand under her feet, carried her over to the scale, and basically asked her if she wanted to stand on the scale. She weighs about four pounds.
She’s also gone back to being broody and cranky at home and uninterested in cuddles. On the other hand, June (who was so excited for her return from the vet), has been all about the cuddles.
If you want more duck cuddles than you get on Twitter and Instagram, I have a Patreon level that’s basically ducks. I’m working on adding more and more stuff to Patreon.
4) Reading Goals
Speaking of Patreon, I also have a reading club level. Since no one’s part of that level yet, I get to pick May’s book. My reading goal for the year was 50 books in an effort to get myself back on track. I’m already up to 32, but I realized as I was setting up a spreadsheet (because I am a giant dork) that most of the books I’ve read this year came from the library. That is doing nothing to get me through the massive TBR piles all over the house. So, I’m using May’s reading club to power through some books from the TBR.
I’ve been enjoying quite a few audiobooks this year when I clean on Fridays and when I go walking instead of running. I realized if I speed them up to 2x their normal speed, I can pay attention instead of letting my mind wander while my legs are.
What are your reading goals for the year? How’s it going?
5) Mangroves
We checked out the Anne Kolb Nature Center yesterday and Husband was amazed. Somehow, he’s never been there. I’ve been there several times with a friend and with a biking crew I used to pant heavily while chasing years ago. (They mostly had hybrid or road bikes and I had a mountain bike. No amount of peddling makes a mountain bike as fast as a road bike.)
I struggle to keep the three Florida mangrove types straight, so we decided to keep quizzing each other as we walked the trails. Red mangroves are the ones you often see in photos from the Florida Keys. They look like they’re on stilts and always kind of seem to me like they’re going to walk away.
Black mangroves like the same sort of area the red mangroves do, and a lot of books show just the leaves as examples (and the leaves look way too much alike). Black mangroves, though, grow these little pneumatophores that look like small, naked trees around the roots and can get pretty dense. The red mangrove trunks often have a reddish appearance similar to gumbo limbo trees, through the props often get bleached-out-looking in the sun and salty water. White mangroves are usually found in drier conditions, but that could be a few feet from the other mangroves because minor differences in elevation (like, inches) can change an ecosystem in places like the Everglades and similar wetlands around southern Florida.
One cool thing about mangroves is the way they deal with salinity in water. They expel the salt through their leaves leaving a crust that’s visible if it hasn’t rained in a while. Great way to get a little salt if you’re out hiking and forgot to bring the chips. (Please don’t eat the mangroves. And, if you’re in a heavily-trafficked or industrial area, licking the leaves might not be a good idea either.)
We also saw several hundred mangrove tree crabs. They are adorable. One had gotten itself stuck on the boardwalk, so I helped it back into the trees. As with so many animals and insects that I help get out of sticky spots, this one was a bit reluctant to leave its new pasty-lady host.
That happens to be a lot. If I try to move an insect or reptile to a safer place, they often decide they don’t want to leave. Husband says it’s because the animals know I’m a safe space. I find that difficult to believe. I think they just get confused.
Anyway, totally need to go back to Anne Kolb and rent kayaks (because our canoe is way too hard to transport) and do that longer trail that goes under the bridge.
What kinds of exciting things did you get up to this weekend?
Substack refuses to let me upload the images of the crab or the mangrove leaves today.
I skipped out on Indie Bookstore day. I am sort of bookxhausted? I need to catch up on what I have. I know, that's ridiculous to attempt, but I am just burnt out with publishing lately.