Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Living in Florida has its advantages...




The biggest one of course is the weather and the disadvantage too can also be the weather...but not so often! Plus both my parents had passed away and that is why I finally agreed to leave dear old NJ.

Now that Hubby and I are truly seasoned Florida dwellers for nearly twenty-eight years as of August 19. 2014, and yep, no one is ever a native Floridian, i.e. unless you have to be born here.

The weather had been at the forefront of our reasoning of our move here, back in 1986; a true paradise within the United States of America.

And sure after living here for nearly eighteen of those years we had gotten a direct hit from a hurricane, but it took those eighteen years for it to find us and for us to have moved from the east coast of the state to the west, and that was only nine years after the fact...

When we arrived we landed in Ormond Beach a direct neighbor to Daytona, which most know from the 500 NASCAR races, Spring Break etc. Our sons even graduated from high school in Daytona, circa 1986 to 1995.

Hubby had gone to the police academy in Daytona and had gotten the job here with the Charlotte County's Sheriff's Office in 1994 to start January 1.1995, thus the move. Fortunately, number one son was nearly twenty three, had graduated college and was working but still living at home, and our younger son was in Tampa at college at USF and had an off campus apartment, which number one eventually shared.

Our accommodations were too small for any adult children anyway.
We had traded our Bayliner for an Airstream for Hubby to live in at a mobile park, while our home was on the market, little did we know that we would eventually lose a fortune on the sale that took nearly two years to happen with us receiving a fraction of what we had put into it due to the addition becoming flooded, and that alone was more than 40K out of pocket our take was a little more than half of that when all was said and done from our nearly thirty-five hundred square foot home on the east coast, four bedrooms, and three baths and two car garage with carport, fireplace in the den, six hundred feet from the ocean...The addition we put on was 24'X28' with that third bathroom including shower with a door leading outside for our surfer boys, it was a game room with a fifteen foot bar and pool table was in there with stereo and speakers as well as card table. That's where our younger son's band used to practice, Sound Seduction.

And so we even bought a fifth wheel to live in temporarily and that was an additional year, almost two that we did that.
I was also gun shy, since we had helped with Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the devastation was palatable, I wanted to be able to be mobile to take all our belongings with us if threatened ever again...
So we divided our furnishing amongst our sons and number one even got a storage unit for all the other stuff, including a piano and pool table too!

He became engaged and bought a home and most of the stuff did get placed there, although after they broke their engagement, he rented that home out that was north of Tampa and bought another closer to work, where he lives now.

It wasn't until our younger son joined the Navy and decided that he would give us his dog and cat when we already had a tiny dog and a cat and a cockatiel that we knew we had to buy another home.
So we looked and looked and even with that horrid memory of Hurricane Andrew, we chose to live on the water and found a home in our skimpy price range, with believe it or not no down payment at all!
That meant using our monies for improvements which we did.

And we moved into our new 1958 home on December 31. 1998!
It was our third home owned in Florida, we had had two on the east coast, at the same time that we had our restaurant as well. The first one that we spent over 30K to put a pool and spa in with a very deep nine foot depth, due to it having a diving board and our sons loving to dive that was back in the fall of 1986. That home was our three bedrooms /two baths, one car garage home, hardwood floors and slate den with fireplace, ten houses away from the one we bought after, across from the ocean. After we rented it out for a couple of years we sold it with only one open house for nearly 20K more than it cost and put that into our larger home, which we bought due to so much company coming to visit!

That’s why I love this tiny landing place of ours, and even though we did many improvements prior to being hit by Hurricane Charley on August 13. 2004, a Friday. Stucco over block and new windows, and turning the carport into a garage and the laundry into indoors and wood floors and a pantry from the old carport window etc...After the hurricane we got to do a lot more, sure the beautiful gazebo Hubby built was gone with the wind and our sheds except the ones on our side yard made of stucco and our wood floors were water logged and our roof was made into minced meat.
But it gave us the opportunity to rebuild our electric and plumbing and enclosed our screen porch which is where I am now writing this!

So even so... weather is a problem, we have shutters and next time we will evacuate, if it is coming near... last time it wasn't supposed to... but we are again well insured and so getting out of Dodge is not that sentimental, because when it really comes down to it, all that's important is living creatures, family, friends and pets... the rest is just stuff!
But of course it does give us an excuse to redecorate, and what woman doesn't like to do that on occasion, hmm?


On those vast notes of our story of living here in Florida, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Speaking My Mind: Which way will the war go?

Speaking My Mind: Which way will the war go? :   My eyesight is going again... in case you missed it... Netanyahu snaps back against growing...