Hory-Smokes Batman!
Every time we leave our destination to hit
the airport and head North, the pseudo stress seems to work it's way out
through my intestinal tract. Seriously, I may hit the porcelain 3-5 times in
the morning before I get out the door. I think I'm done now.
Anyways at the moment we are
in the Tampa Airport and the guy next to me is on his cell phone talking full
volume. It seems he wants everyone to know what a shrewd businessman he is. I'm
about 15 seconds away from spilling my hot coffee on him, "Day Trade that
Sparky". V is next to me doing bible trivia with Gigi and I just warned
Jude that if he lies face down on the carpet one more time it will complete the
burrowing process of the Northern Florida Carpet Worm and enable it to make its
way into his eyeballs. He just sat up like he was hit by lightning.
Zech is immersed in his
Nintendo DS. He knows that our tight rules on video games will begin again as soon
as we set down across the border. Right now he's like a junkie heading to
re-hab blowing as much smack into his veins as he can needle, knowing this'll
be his last uninhibited high perhaps forever. Weekend use for our kids only.
Our time was good, we had condo 11 and our
friends had condo 9, both were lent to us by cabin 9's good friend. Thank you
once again "good friend", don't know if we would have made it without
this last 10 days.
Life has hit us with a hammer for the
better part of mine and V's 10 year marriage and we knew that the first REAL
vacation we've had in 4-5 years is a need and not just a want. I was hoping to
get a bunch of stuff organized in my skull; maybe set some goals so as to avoid
this rolling log of burnout, but i fear I might be too late.
I was warned by an
acquaintance in Seminary (no I haven't finished yet), to slow down, as he was a
cancer survivor and he noticed the same signs of overdoing it, in me.
Anyways, put away the
hankies, and forget sponsoring a park bench after me, I'd rather talk about
other things.
Florida is different.
We enjoyed our time. I
'walrussed' in the shallow waters of Indian Shores as much as I could. And when
not on the beach, I was in the pool drifting like a soggy loaf of bread or else
inside the air-conditioned condo watching countless episodes of Law And Order
(building as much paranoia into me as possible).
Half way through the time we made our way
to Busch Gardens. That is the Busch of Anheuser Busch, yes the maker of
Budweiser. It was a good time, but I couldn't help wonder if I was just in a
pimped-out Duff World (The Simpsons).
Nonetheless, I did the
coasters. Like real rollercoasters; the ones you have to crawl under the
rollercoaster tracks when you are done, and somehow
One of many things I have to say about
Florida is that the humidity is otherworldly. Last year, when going across the
US Midwest, we crossed the Mississippi River where the humidity was so dense,
we had to keep the wipers on to clear the windscreen while driving. This was
super humidity as well as super heat; it’s as if we were cruising the bottom of
a giant crock-pot. Thank God I tanned before we went and suffered only one
scarring burn. I guess that’s why the pool and the beach were so nice (and
necessary). But truth-be-told, even the pool and gulf water were getting to the
point of being a little too warm (something that in all our travels I’d never
experienced before).
We visited the Tampa
Science Center as well. Back in Alberta there is quite a bit of ‘brown note’
put into the science centers. And the price of admission proves it. But in
Tampa, although the outside of the building resembled something ‘Gugenheimish’
the inside was quite under par (like a candy bar wrapper hiding a
brussel-sprout). Every second exhibit was closed for “maintenance” and the
guides reminded me of guys that would get thrown out of amateur comedy clubs or
were on work release programs. One guide must certainly have been coded with
what I would guess as “Clinical OCD”, as we were approximately twenty-four
inches away from the “proper entrance” to the self-driving car and apparently
this must have been bad enough for us to be chastised with an additional wait
five minute wait (just keep smiling JG). His personality reminded me of maybe a
serial rapist on CSI who collects porcelain doll heads. He also took an
extremely strange interest in the Star Wars shirt I was wearing; he couldn’t
stop looking at it as he ‘guided’ us (like he was witnessing a really gruesome
car wreck or something). One look at the display; one gravitational pull of his
head to my shirt. Perhaps it was Vader summoning him.
The
planetarium was hosted by Jose’. The presentation was, ‘Meh’ and it was obvious
by Jose’s humour, the bad jokes were a corporate problem at the science center
and possibly the reason they were so bad was they were each other’s critics (I
can just hear all the donkey-bray laughter and ‘gargley’ snorts as they traded
knock-knocks about “sublimation”).
One of the kid’s
highlights was the Clearwater Aquarium. Clearwater Aquarium is home to local
Star and resident amputee Dolphin “Winter”, from the hit Movies Dolphin’s Tail
and Dolphin’s Tail II.
What
is unique about the Clearwater Aquarium is that almost all (if not all)
critters there are disabled in someway and are rescue projects. It was made
quite clear to us that if a injured animal is rescued, they rehab it and only
keep it if it is unable to live unaided in the wild. There were sea turtles
missing flippers, paraplegic otters, Winter herself (with her prosthetic tail)
and some pelican who was in the movie (who reminded me of some old back alley
drunk…stumbling around and all that). Down stairs was the animal hospital where
we witnessed a baby sea turtle without use of any of its limbs. The vet was
giving it a syringe in the neck. Most people went past, stopped and then “Awed”
at it. I just wondered if they were actually euthanizing the poor little fella
or maybe shooting him up with Morphine before his trip to the septic tank.
Another thing about
Florida is the amazing amount of billboard advertisements for Lawyers and
Plastic Surgeons. Every km or so you’d get 10 by 20ft caricatures with painted
on smiles and glossy eyes telling you that you should sue someone or perhaps
get a vasectomy. It was kind of unnerving especially because there were SO many
liquor and gun stores in between (I’m fine with the legal sales of arms).
Picture
this:
Go
get hammered; go get a skin tag removed. Because you were so wasted when you
went to get rid of the skin tag, you got talked into a vasectomy or a sex
reassignment operation. You wake up without that mole on the side of your nose,
but you now have to sit down to pee. You go find that billboard with the number
to that greasy lawyer, sue the clinic and win big bucks. But that lawyer that
described himself as “for the People”, is taking his cut of 70% of the settlement….back
to Liquor World and off to that gun shop we go!
Sunday we decided we
would try and find a church to go to. Opened up the ol’ Macbook to search out a
place to worship. I found one Catholic Church and four pro gay churches in our
area…nothing else. I have to admit, I was grieved. I know that judging by the
amount of liquor stores around that there are some big patches of partiers, but
where were the Christians?
I
felt like this should be a missions target area; like someone needed to break
ground there and plant a church that actually follows the bible. With all the
secularization going on under the Obama Administration, I wondered how many
more areas in the US of A were becoming playgrounds for the devil. If you know
how into politics I am, then you know this is a call to my brothers and sisters
in Christ in America to deny apathy and fight the good fight.
Perhaps the best thing
about our getaway was this: it was a getaway. Aside from checking my email five
times a day to see if I would be writing for a certain column in the US, I
tried to forget the maddening monotony of scratching out an existence in
Calgary. Don’t get me wrong, we love Calgary, but since coming back to the West
from pastoring in Ontario, we have been repeatedly backstabbed by people
supposedly close to us (many in the ministry). This has left us with what I
would call a ‘spiritual sunburn’ (don’t touch me!!), in which we still have the
utmost faith in God, but really couldn’t trust people to treat us fairly if
they were paid in raw 2lb diamonds to do so. People are selfish and Christians
don’t think of what the results of their actions may be. Worse they trust that
they will be forgiven 70 x 7 times (because it’d be sinful for us not to
forgive them!) and so decide with their emotions and not with their ‘grey matter’.
SO getting away from
it all; not caring if (well maybe caring a bit) if the house dropped into a
hole, the ministry was taken over by a Word Faith whacko or one mile of snow
covered Southern Alberta……was nice for a change.
But
we are on our way back and some big changes are-a-coming!
Stay
Tuned!
