I'm baaaaack!!

After a long and fairly uneventful flight from Grenada, I spent one day at my home in Asheville before embarking on another trip; this time, to Idaho. When I went to the airport that day, they informed us that our flight had been cancelled, due to strong weather, I guess. This flight is always very full and the ticket agent was trying to get everyone booked on alternate flights; even with other airlines. Fortunately, the other airline counters were rather quiet so they were able to help out. Anyway, we all got taken care of, one way or another; some people opted for other airports to see if they would have better luck. I got routed through Houston and had another uneventful flight all the way to Spokane, Washington, which is the closest airport to my destination. After collecting my luggage and renting a car, I was off to the beautiful countryside around Sandpoint, where my family lives.

Hello, everyone! It is another beautiful day in the tropics. It rained again last night but I think I was the only one awake at the time in the house to appreciate it. The rains are very short sometimes and end suddenly as if someone just turned off the faucet. No dripping afterwards! Strange. Anyway, I'm sure it will be hot and humid as ever here, but oh, the sun is shining and the breeze is blowing and the pool looks inviting, but not until later now. No more burns. I am celebrating the wearing of regular clothing again. One week was enough for me.

Oh, right, the picture! This is the scene on the other side of the wall from the house the kids are renting. The shadows are of a big tree next to the wall. We don''t see this from the house, as there is so much vegetation and the wall in the way, but it is right outside the gate. Look at the color of that water. Sooooo clear! Makes for very pleasant wading.

Moving On.....

Well, I was home for all of five days - just long enough for my dog to think that maybe I was home for good - but no, I was off to the sunny isle of Grenada. This island nation is not far from the equator so, yes, it is hot. But more than that, it is humid. What is it about me and humid areas, anyway? Kansas, Grenada, even North Carolina, where I live, and I don't particularly care for humidity. "Particularly care" is putting it mildly. The thing that gets me through it is air-conditioning and swimming pools. What wonderful inventions! But really, as long as I have access to those things, I can get by. And ceiling fans; gotta have ceiling fans to keep the air circulating. I can pretty much handle a non-air-conditioned room if there are well-functioning ceiling fans all over the place. So that way you can save the air-conditioning for the bedrooms, but you have to leave it on all the time because every once in a while you need to run in there for a few minutes of respite. And swimming pools; well, that's self-explanatory, I think. Anyway, as long as there are a few ways that I can cool down, I'm okay. Oh yes! And lots of water - cold water.

So I have been here a bit over a week now and I am sporting a new shoulder burn because the SPF50 didn't work on me and the last few nights have not been too comfortable but my son-in-law assures me that the pain should go away soon. It has been years since I last got this red, but it does seem to be letting up a bit. I am restricting my pool time to late afternoon/early evening.

I guess I should tell you why I came to Grenada anyway. My daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter are here as Matt is in medical school. They were here once before and I visited them twice then but this is my first time this year. It will by no means be the last as I can't be away from my family for too long. My granddaughter needs her Gramsy just as much as her gramsy needs her. They are renting a lovely little house down here that just happens to have a pool and it is right on the beach. They have a nice network of friends which I am getting to meet this time. They invite friends over for dinner or swimming and there are lots of tots for Gracie to play with.

Gracie, if you haven't guessed by now, is my beautiful 4 year old granddaughter. She is always full of energy and fun and we have wonderful times together. She comes in to greet me in the morning when she wakes up so that we can visit and talk about what we are going to do that day. At home I have a TV in my bedroom and she comes down the stairs every morning before her parents get up so we can watch childrens programs together. I really miss that when she is not there.

The beach is right outside their back gate and is a nice sandy beach with clear warm water. It is in a bay that opens up into the Atlantic but seems quite protected. The waves are not big crashers because this is the far end of a bay off the Atlantic, after all. You can, however, hear them when you are out in the backyard. There are cliffs to one side of the bay where you can climb around on the rocks and look for shells and little creatures. Because they are on the beach, there are a lot of crabs in their yard. Actually, there are a lot of crabs all over this island. Sometimes these crabs are red and hard-shelled and sometimes they are the soft-shelled blue crab. The blue crab is what inhabits their backyard. There are crab holes all over the place. Sometimes we wake up in the morning and find them in the pool . They are good sized animals and Matt catches them and either lets them go outside the gate on the beach side, or gives them to the neighbors. Evidently they are good eating; I wouldn't know.

The yard at this place is amazing. The owners hired a wonderful landscaper who really knew his stuff. It is a nice-sized area and flat with a slight curve to the drive and a nice turn-around in front of the garage. There is a high wall all around the property with arched gates at the entrance. The areas of lawn are not overly huge as they are cut up by the walkways. But the vegetation. Oh my. All kinds of palms, including coconut, dot the grounds and interspersed with them are papaya and mango trees, banana plants, key lime trees, almond trees, and local fruits that I have never seen or heard of outside of Grenada like wax apples, and a different type of cherry, something they call a golden apple that looks like no apple I have ever seen, along with passion fruit and I don't know what else. There are orchids and plumeria and bouganvilla and a large yellow bloom that grows all over the place here. There are red and pink and yellow blooms that look something like a cross between a bottlebrush and a mimosa bloom that grow on a bush that can be ten or more feet high, and thready, grassy plants that have tiny red flowers on them. Oh, yeah, remember the potted plants at the store that are tropical houseplants that we get in 4-inch pots and if we're lucky, we might get them to grow big enough to put in a 12-inch pot? I mean the plants with varigated oval-shaped leaves. Right, you know which ones I mean. Well, here they are about 10 to 15 feet tall and provide a lot of shade and privacy to the yard. I can only imagine how big the elephant ears would be if there were any in the yard. But it didn't always look like this, I am told. The landscaper brought in lots of special soil from up in the mountains and put it all over this place. About all that was here before he started were the bigger palms and I have no idea how big the plants were that he put in, but they are huge now and it has only been 7 years since everything was planted.

My kids tell me that the scuba diving in Grenada is great. They go when they can. Gracie stays with friends when they go. She does have her own set of snorkeling gear but I don't know if she has used it yet. She was practicing with it in the pool last night. I have never gone snorkeling (you won't see me scuba diving if I can help it) nor even tried on the gear so I tried on some while swimming last night. Interesting. Guess what. Pool bottoms are very boring. Marca offered to get some crabs to put in the pool. No, thank you, dear, I'm fine.

So maybe snorkeling wouldn't be so bad. I'm not fond at all of deep water but I am assured that you can snorkel in shallow water; but then, why would you need to snorkel? In shallow water you can already see everything. Which brings me to my next question: How shallow is shallow?

So now I am a few days from leaving and because of my sunburn, I still haven't gone anywhere except the grocery store and that was before I got it. But who needs to go anywhere when you've got such a beautiful place to stay and you are with the ones you love? I've got it pretty good for right now in spite of the raw feel to my skin and I can't complain.

One thing for sure, don't expect me to go swimming at noon any time soon.

I was watching a favorite TV show on travel and the host was talking about tea and how important it was in the particular country she was visiting. She was showing her TV audience how to make tea right and she said something to the effect of after boiling the water for tea, the person she was visiting always poured a tiny amount of the hot water into the teapot and swirled it around and then poured it out just before making the tea in it. And she said, “I don’t know why, but he always does!”

Here’s why. It’s boiling water. And he was pouring it into a glass teapot!!! If you have ever worked with glass, you know that you have to ease it into the heat. I have a feeling, from where she was, at the time that this occurred, that it was not very warm out. Having been in that general area, I know that the nights there are not warm and the days can be pretty nippy too. Which all makes the air temp inside a bit cooler. Which means that your teapot will probably be on the cooler side as well. And this applies to all kinds of teapots (except maybe the cast iron kind; I haven’t tested them yet). If you put something very hot into something cool, you’re going to run the risk of breakage. And if you’re using something very special, (ie: expensive, antique, a gift, souvenir, or in some other way, near and dear to your heart) you’re not going to want this to happen. Hence the hot water swish first. (Another thing that this does, by the way, is that it rinses out any loose particles of dust, soap, or whatever in the teapot.) Now you may say, “That’s not why we do it at all.” -or- “That has nothing to do with it.” Okay, you try making tea without doing that and see what happens. You may get lucky, then again, you may prove my point. Better to be safe than sorry.

There is however another way to do this. Simply fill the teapot with the hottest water from your faucet (providing it is more than just lukewarm and NOT boiling), put the lid on, and let it sit while you heat the water for tea. When your water is ready, turn off the burner (or whatever you’re using to heat it with), let the boiling water sit while you empty the teapot and put in your tea leaves or bags. Then pour in your hot water. Sometimes you will read that you should let the boiling water sit for a minute or two. That’s a good idea and essentially what you are doing.

Now here is something that goes right along with that. A lot of homes today are having granite or stone-like countertops put in. For some reason, they tend to be a bit cooler than the older formica kind. (Maybe because they are natural stone composites?) And since we especially like our hot tea or coffee or cider or hot chocolate when it’s cooler outside, then that means that yep, the air temp inside affects the counter temps as well. And don’t forget the teacups. Oh yeah. If you are using a teapot or coffee pot, you don’t have to worry about the teacups as much but sometimes we just make our brew directly in the cup. I have broken a few teacups because I poured the hot water directly into the cup that was sitting on a cool granite countertop. Here you have a nice crack-free teacup, solid, not flimsy at all, and as soon as you pour the hot water into it, there’s that little pop and your precious hot drink is flowing out from the bottom of this cup all over the counter……. and onto the floor. Mop, please.

Enter the hotpad. Yes, the hotpad, that lowly, essential, right-hand (and left) man (and woman) to every cook in the kitchen. The ones that selflessly give up their right to be clean at all times, that bear the marks of the burns received in their pursuit of duty; the ragged, stained…… Shall I go on? Okay. You know you have them like that. And you haven’t thrown them out yet because they still work and the next ones will look like that pretty quick anyway.

Look. You don’t put a hot dish right out of the oven on your good tabletop without using a trivet or a hotpad, do you? Well???? Right. Who wants that awful burn on there? Or that scalding mark?

But you don’t want the trivet for your cup because trivets are usually made of something hard. And we’re back to the cooler air temp, cooler hard surface thing again. Use a hotpad!!! Works for me!

Another tip. Coffee and tea stain. Badly. So if you do have nice hotpads that you keep for table use, don’t use those. Why? Have you ever met a coffee pot that doesn’t dribble? So here’s the solution:
1. Go to your friendly neighborhood discount store.
2. Pick out some of those thick terry dishcloths that come in about five or six to a pack, preferably white.
3. Buy them.

These are perfect. I keep one on my counter laid out nice and flat all the time. Then when I want a hot drink or a pot of tea, I put the pot or the cup or the bowl for my instant oatmeal on the cloth. It’s thick enough to be a insulating barrier between the cool counter and the pot or the cup or the bowl. If it gets stained, so what? There are more of them in a drawer right there. Use it to wash the dishes that you can’t put in the dishwasher. (Yes, they still make dishes that can’t go in there……even on the top rack.)

Then put out a clean one. Besides it’s always there to help clean up a drip or two . But do keep it clean. Don’t worry about the stains. You know what to do for that. Anyway, the thick terry cloth, by it’s very nature, is insulating and creates just what you need.

By the way, if your cup should still leak, you have an automatic sponge. Oh, yeah. Here’s something else. Don’t put the sugar for your drink in a cup (or bowl, etc, -especially a glass one) without something to mix with it (like milk) before you put in the hot liquid. It could explode. Literally. Really. It’s happened to me. Big mistake.

Another segue. I’m sure you’ve all heard that you have to be careful about spills on your ceramic stovetop. If you get sugar on that hot surface, it can crack it. No, I didn’t do that. But the manufacturer will tell you that and I’ve heard of it happening.

I think for right now we have exhausted that subject, so I'll let you go make that pot of wonderful, fragrant tea. I think I'm going to brew up some luscious strawberry tea or maybe blueberry, or maybe a good mango tea..........