Visitors

My dear friend, Sally, was here for a week and just left yesterday.  Sally and I go way back.  We used to work together and in the late 1980's, we both went through divorces, and rather bonded over that. And though we have kept in touch, I haven't seen her since around 1999, so we had 17 years of catching up to do!

Between catching up, we caught some sights including these manatees, lazing about in the bay:

The manatee in the forefront is rolling over, you can see his flippers.

We also did some shopping, went to the beach and all around had a great time.

Another visitor showed up in the early hours of dawn on Friday when I was startled awake, and saw my digital alarm clock flashing the time "12:43" a.m.  Now the thing was flashing, like it does when there is a power outage or power surge -- but when that happens it's always "00:00" that is flashing not "12:43".  So this is rather odd.  And odder still, I remember having woken earlier to see the time as "1:48" and falling back to sleep.  So basically the clock went backward in time and stopped and started flashing...  Odd, that.  I turned on my nightstand light and reset the clock to the right time, which was 5:48, and then I turned off the light, laid back down to try to catch some last minute sleep, when suddenly a lamp in the kitchen turned on.

And it was not just any lamp, but a lamp that Bob had painstakingly restored long ago.  That lamp stayed on.  It didn't just flicker.  It just snapped on and stayed on, causing both Kona and Ripley to look up and regard the light coming from the kitchen.

I got up, thinking maybe Sally was up already and had turned the light on, but no one was there.  I turned the light off and noticed the microwave which also has a digital clock was working perfectly, no flashing numbers there.

And then I knew it was certainly Bob who was paying me an early morning visit.

That day, Sally and I hit the beach, but before we left the house, Sally called out, "Bob!  We're going to beach!  You wanna join us?" And we both laughed.

At the beach, we rented a cabana and while Sally went on a long shell hunt, I lounged and read a book, looking up occasionally to admire the endless Gulf of Mexico and, above that, the too blue sky without a cloud in it.  I asked Bob to give me a sign that he was there with me, something like maybe a cloud or a bird ---  And a few minutes later, I looked up again to see one small wispy cloud had appeared, directly in my line of vision and that cloud quickly formed into the shape of a face, then, just as quick, disappeared.

Then Sally returned and we were pretty much dive bombed by a flock of seagulls.  Though that could be maybe explained by someone nearby having food.....

Right now, I'm resting up for my next visitor, Jenn, who is due to arrive in March.