Island Living

We live on an island. That's not nearly as exotic or romantic as it sounds. I had a telemarketer once stop in the middle of her spiel when she caught the name of our address and ask, "Do you really live on an island?" Then she went on to tell me how cool she thought that would be. I didn't set her straight. For one thing, it's not an island like you think of Hawaii or the island on Gilligan's Island would be. It's just a big area of land surrounded by lots and lots of marsh. And there are only two bridges to the mainland and downtown, both of which are only two lanes. One of them is a drawbridge. If there is an accident on one bridge, just count on it backing traffic up on the other one, too. I am not looking forward to seeing what it will be like when we ever have to evacuate for a hurricane, because we are in a mandatory evacuation zone if one ever bears down on us. To get to the nearest beach, we have to travel about 20 minutes and cross a few more bridges, but it is nice that it's close enough to be able to enjoy it pretty often. Also, due to the fact that there are only two bridges off this island, it takes us about 20-30 minutes to get to places that aren't really all that far from us as the crow flies, but we have to get past all the water. Oh, and when we first moved here, we called a local pizza delivery place for pizza and were told that they do not deliver to "the island." It's all considered part of the same town, but we are somehow too far for them to deliver. Supposedly we're getting a pizza restaurant closer to our neighborhood, but it's been "Coming Soon" for months now. I'm not holding my breath. When Hubby was in Guatemala for his Army Reserve duty, he could have Domino's delivered to the base there by a little guy riding his bicycle. But back home in the good ol' small town, no pizza delivery.

So, why am I going on about this tonight? We have dinner at church on Wednesday nights, then prayer meeting for adults and RA's for the boys. Since we've had Boo, I've been taking her to dinner, but going on home with her after that because it bumps right up into bedtime. Hubby comes on home later with the boys. Tonight I took Boo home like usual, and, for some reason, traffic was worse than usually, and Boo was not a happy camper. She was ready to have her bedtime bottle and be in her bed, but here we were driving in the bridge traffic taking 30 minutes to get home. You have no idea how hard it is to drive the speed limit when your 6 month old is screaming herself hoarse in the backseat and you've finally gotten past the slowpoke drivers and made it to "the island." But I've been convicted lately that I must not speed, so I really try to keep my foot light on the pedal. Besides that, the driver-side window on the van's automatic control is broken and it would be really embarrassing to have to try to explain to a policeman who pulled me over why I won't put the window down. So, we made it home, finally, she had her bottle, spit up about half of it on me, went to bed and sang herself to sleep a moment ago. AHHHHHH. Hubby and boys will be home any minute, I'm taping Jericho to watch later with Hubby, and the tea kettle just whistled. So, I think I'll take advantage of a few quiet minutes and go drink my vanilla caramel tea.