Blowing in The Wind

*Today’s Blog Post is from DC Stanfa, my margarita partner in crime. She’s normally more snarky and sarcastic in her posts but today she is departing from her usually hilarious stuff to reflect on our current situation. It’s a time for introspection. Everything can’t be hilarious. 

Blowing in The Wind

I am grateful to have a home on a beautiful Florida canal. I think this often, as I sit inside binge-watching episodes of Food Network’s “Chopped” which I’ve probably seen before. I can go outside tomorrow, because the sun will come out tomorrow. It always does, Annie.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had to admit something to myself: I have gotten lazy, complacent, and possibly addicted to food porn. What happened to that twenty-year-old who drove fourteen hours to Assateague Island and Ocean City because—BEACH?

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time would tell you, “DC is the definition of a beach girl.” I fell in love especially with Florida and its beaches on spring break and spent every extra dollar I earned to travel back there frequently and put my starfish-tattooed butt in the sand.

Now that my dream of living near a Florida beach has come true? Well, I can count on my two hands how many times I went to the local beach last year. I’d just finally escaped the soul-crushing, all-consuming corporate career. So, I have no excuse other than I realize I can go to the beach anytime because I know it will still be there.

My husband, Tom, bought us kayaks as my retirement gift more than a year-and-a-half ago. I’m ashamed to say we’ve used them twice. I mean, they ARE huge, heavy and hard to handle. Logistically, we can’t launch them from our dock, but we could load them into the truck and launch them at several nearby parks or beaches.

Oops, not anymore. The beaches are closed, and I imagine the parks will be soon. The phrase “use it or lose it” comes to mind. In the corporate world, it’s called sitting on your inventory. In the bar business, that equates to unusable cash.

I’m reading stories of people dusting off treadmills and exhuming bicycles from garages, putting into action things they’ve been putting off. I do ride my beach cruiser bike, although sometimes weeks go by that I don’t, and the tires start going flat. Last week, my yoga studio closed (I only do “gentle flow” aka sloth yoga classes), so I rode my bike a few times.

On Friday I left the house at 4:45, determined to ride until 5:30—a respectable happy hour return time. I cruised around the blocks and decided to carpe the damn diem, heading down to a beach a few miles away. I was winded before I even got there. But, I assured myself that I was riding into the wind, which would be at my back to help me coast home.

The beach was barricaded and deserted. Sam’s Tiki bar was vacant. I’d told all of my friends about this cool bar—how I planned to hang out there as soon as we moved into the neighborhood. I’ve been there six times in as many years. Now, the bar was sitting on its inventory.

A wave of sadness hit me as I gazed out into the Gulf, thinking about my daughter who is quarantined a thousand miles away. I didn’t linger. I was suddenly anxious to get my “happy on” with Tom and some margaritas back on our dock.

As I started home, I realized that I’d make a lousy sailor. The wind was coming from the east, not the west, and had picked up speed. I sweated, struggled and wheezed my way home.

Lessons learned? Be grateful for what you have, but don’t take it for granted; complacency, and laziness equals missed experiences. Do the stuff you love and be with the people you love while you still can, because you never know what’s in the wind—and you can’t always be certain which way it’s blowing.

As soon as this crisis passes, I vow to carpe every effing diem! Tom has already figured out how to rig our dock davit to launch the kayaks. At least we can still explore our backyard.

What’s in your inventory, and how will you put it to good use when this blows over?

**DC Stanfa is the incrediblely funny admin/co-manager of “Midlife Margaritas” Facebook page and the author of ‘The Art of Table Dancing: Escapades of an Irreverent Woman’, and co-editor of ‘Fifty Shades of Funny: Hook-ups, Break-ups, and Crack-ups.’She is an expert on fun, and its by-product trouble, and has cahoonas the size of coconuts, per some people who aren’t even her ex-husband. dcstanfa.com

Her hilarious books are available on Amazon: The Art of Table Dancing: Escapades of an Irreverent Woman https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933197099/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_i9aGEb2Z0VEMN Fifty Shades of Funny: Hook-ups, Break-ups And Crack-ups https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A8S24I0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_V9aGEbB815CR8