In the Moment

I’m savoring every minute with my husband here on vacation with him in Ft. Rucker, Alabama as he trains to deploy for Iraq soon. Having been here a week with another week remaining, I have finally adjusted well-enough to the incredible heat and humidity that is common here this time of year. The horrible heat is surpassed only by the aggravating driving habits of the rural inhabitants of the surrounding towns and countryside.

We drove to a beach resort on the Florida panhandle this weekend to do some sunning and swimming. We enjoyed the local scenery and food, but although the seafood was obviously the freshest I’ve tasted, I still prefer the Red Lobster in Dothan, AL where we ate my first day here. I’m not sure if it was the thrill of dining alone with my husband or that the food there was so much better, but it tasted as heavenly as any seafood I’ve ever eaten. Although we’ve patronized many restaurants here thus far, I still want to go back to that Red Lobster for more of their cheesy seafood fondue, shrimp scampi, and coconut shrimp. Yet, Joe's Crab Shack in Destin, Florida was hands-down the most entertaining restaurant I've ever seen with their singing/dancing waitstaff that are so lively the crowd often even gets into the act.

We managed to see a couple of movies over the weekend that were both terrible. We watched “Brokeback Mountain” in the hotel room one night and back in Ft. Rucker on Sunday evening, we saw “The Happening.” They both had decent-enough plotlines that engrossed us sufficiently to wait for “the good part” to begin, but we were quite disappointed in them both. At one point during “Brokeback Mountain,” I suggested we turn off the TV and just go to sleep but my husband, who had awoken from a nap halfway through, said he wanted to see how it ended. So, we finished it only to be stumped by the pointless, nonsensical ending. We left the theater wondering if our luck in picking movies was turning sour, but the new “X-Files” movie is due out this week and we’ve both been eager to see it. We can only hope it will be more entertaining than the last two movie experiences have been.

This life of leisure I’ve been enjoying during my visit has filled my soul with warm memories that will be wonderful to revisit when my husband is off across the pond (i.e., in Iraq). Still, I do miss our farm, home, and animals. I picked up a book titled “Watchers” by Dean Koontz and enjoyed it thoroughly. One of the main characters is an intelligent golden retriever named Einstein that so reminded me of our dog, Lucky. Reading through its pages made me feel I was enjoying the dog’s company just as if I had Lucky beside me. It also made me realize my instincts about getting Lucky a mate are right on target because all species want someone with which to share their lives.

This week, I plan to visit the Ft. Rucker pool often and picked up a couple more Dean Koontz books at the local Wal-mart to read poolside. The base has a nice recreational pool and another lap pool. I have wanted to go to the lap pool to exercise, but somehow haven’t made it there yet. I’m guessing the locals fortunate enough to have their own backyard pools use them for exercise as much as recreation as I haven’t seen many outdoor joggers/runners here. Must not be many bookworms either as bookstores are nowhere to be found but, ironically, cosmetic dental surgeons are everywhere.