MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE TO DEAR MISS
MERMAID
Hey Miss Mermaid. Me the pest . Get a couple of glasses of wine in me and I
get the e- m's . Ha do you remember what we used to call the L-D's ? after too
many drinks, we'd call friends long distance ?? So now I get the e-m's . lol
Seriously though I'm really sober.
So we have been covered in the thickest haze
today!! Truly limited visibility from Penns Landing out to Cooper.
Wow. You've been around longer than me so help me out. What the heck ? I
had to use my inhaler today (which I rarely need) been sneezing etc. Talked to a
friend who said her sinuses were acting up. Went to my tennis lesson at the
sports club and it poured rain and I had instant breathing relief. The
word around the club , not reliable, was that the haze was due
to "African dust" --- not Saharan desert dust but African dust. So -
okay I'm just a yokel from outside Chicago. What the heck do I know. We
don't get dust in Chicago. We get wind and snow and then pollen, and then
tornadoes and then wind and snow. Just like that.
Hope you can fill me in. Went on to the weather underground satellite view
and it definitely shows our whole area covered in "white" .
Hope you are well.
Missa Lissa
Dear Missa Lissa,
You could never ever be a pest, so never ever think
that way, I love your emails! Ah yes, the L-D's, new term for me, but very
familiar LOL, get drunk and call all the missed ones long distance
LOL!!! Back with Fable and Fireless charged $4-8 per minute, this could result
in some horrendous phone bills and why the island used to sprout pay phones on
every corner like overgrown weeds; so few could afford home phone service, after
a few drinks and the "L-D's"
The good news is the Sahara Desert is located in
Africa. So that's why some folks say it's the Sahara dust and others say it's
African dust or maybe you totally misunderstood and they were really saying
'Frickin' dust!
That reminds me of my friend who had a 4 year old
who was learning to read English with some phonetic program where you sound out
the words. Mother and child went to the zoo one day and the child astonished her
mother by saying "Look mom! A freaking elephant!" Well, mom was a
tad surprised and disturbed at her baby's unusual vocabulary and asked
"Where did you learn that?"
The 4 year old said "From the sign, mom! I read the
sign!" and pointed. The mother looked over where she pointed and sure
enough there was a sign that read "African Elephant".
Now that 'Frickin' dust could very well be my old
neighbor who was having a love affair with his jack-hammer. The one that
was building his house with plans scribbled on a matchbook. One day he
would pour concrete and the next day he would jack-hammer it back out again. It
created this horrible teensy tiny dust that is horrendous on the lungs. So are
they building around you again? Maybe it's the jerk-hammers making all
that dust.
On the other hand, the islands have too many drug
dealers, maybe one of those gasoline powered go-fast boats full of cocaine
exploded and sent white powder everywhere! Ha ha! Then again, the Tortola
incinerator is none too popular and malfunctions often, maybe it's their dust
from another malfunction.
Then there is the volcano dust. But I checked
the
volcano ash
advisories and it seems it hasn't been updated since the 19th and this is
the 26th, by my calculations, so maybe you are getting dusted with that and they
just haven't updated the reports lately (couldn't see from all the dust).
I must admit, I am breathing a lot easier since I
temporarily left the islands. I sorely miss my cyclonic Hepa filter vacuum
cleaner, those are the best and all other vacuum cleaners should be banned and
outlawed. Mine was one of the first Hepa filter cyclonics on the market,
and it was a
Euro-Pro Shark vacuum cleaner
. Mine picked up miniscule dust, including Sahara dust,
Afrian dust, Volcano dust, concrete jerk-hammer dust and general frickin' dust
all around. When I sold and gave away my stuff (storage rates were
ridiculously overpriced, so I had to just let go of stuff) a lady with a
new baby came over and grabbed my treasured Shark so her floors would be
spotless for her baby to crawl on.
Matter of fact, I used to vacuum so often, (just
loved that vacuum cleaner) that one day when I had just vacuumed, my friend
stopped over, kicked her shoes off at the door, then walked to the kitchen
to make a drink. She said "Oh, your floors feel so wonderful! You must
have just mopped!"
I was too embarrassed to admit, I hadn't mopped in
weeks, because that Shark kept my floors so spotless.
If I were rich and famous (ha ha ha) I would open a
store in the islands carrying nifty island items, stuff you can never ever find
on Tortola, like that wonderful
Euro-Pro Shark vacuum cleaner, the automatic dishwasher that only uses 3 gallons of water
and it optionally plugs into a regular outlet and hooks into your sink faucet
(so apartment dwellers can have one), the quiet
portable inverter generators and so on. So many nifty items out there on the world
markets and they are perfect for island life, but strangely, aren't
available on the islands.
However, I will give Radio Doc in Road Town,
five stars, because when I last checked they were carrying some of that
silicone bakeware, and silicone anything is perfect for the island kitchens. No
more rust! Yippee! Actually, I had gone there to inquire about a
steam mop, another wonderful invention we should have had eons ago, but they
didn't have any of those. They also didn't carry any apartment size washing
machines, you had to special order those. With a zillion apartments on
Tortola you would think... something like that would be useful.
Well, AH...AH...AH...AHCHOO!!! Oh my
gosh, that dust is getting ME now. Good grief.
When I come back to da islands, I be having my new
baby with me.
