What was I thinking????

It is 11am and I think there should be an alarm when anyone under 65 walks through the doors at Publix at that time of the morning. "Beware ... shopping carts on the prowl with white haired people behind them." (Well, natural hair color, that is!) Driving those carts ... well, at least part of the time when they haven't abandoned them for a little while to check the price of their favorite item. Don't move the cart or they may forget where it is ... they already have a post-it note inside their purse or pocket indicating what row their car is parked in.

This morning was one of those days ... and I realized that I really wasn't that far away from joining these precious old folks. (They are precious for the most part -- until I've waited about five minutes to get through an aisle. Usually, I end up turning around and going around to get what I need!)

It's October -- I should have remembered. I have a red spot on my forehead for hitting myself so hard. Duh!! It's "snow bird" time and we, for the most part, celebrate that time. We love for our northern friends to come down and become winter residents. It keeps our prices down and except for having to stand in lines to get into restaurants (and the challenges of shopping at 11am in Publix or Walmart), we love 'em. I can't wait to hug them when I see them in church and already dread that they will not be here for the whole year. We sometimes do a countdown and might greet each other with, "Hey, you still have another six weeks. Do you really have to go back up there??"

Okay ... so I've told you how much we appreciate our Snow Birds. But, it is not without challenges. For us who work in Florida and cannot consider ourselves retired (although all the tourists think you have to be retired to live here), we try to refrain from honking when they drive so slowly. We try to smile at them because, in all seriousness, many of them are facing issues in their lives so they need a smile as much as we do. And quite frankly, they don't move to Florida to die -- they move to Florida to live!

So ... you never know what you might see from our Snow Birds!! You might watch one buzz by you on a golf cart and hope they know where the brakes are. Or they will beat you to the beach any day, loaded up with sun screen and umbrellas -- and hats. Lots of hats ... all kinds of hats.

I say all of that to say this ... I have a vision of what life will be for me in not that many years ... will I be one of those 'standing in the way' in the grocery store? Will I be one that can't quite maneuver the grocery cart around a corner without bringing down a whole stack of stuff? Somehow, I'm afraid I will be right there with them -- and then if I look around, I'll probably see 'me' in someone else's body ... wondering what all these old people are doing at the grocery store at 11am in the morning!

It has been that way as long as we have lived here ... and I doubt it's gonna change now!! So, as we've heard before, I tell myself to "live with it!"