I bought a condo on the Redneck Riviera and am perplexed by tourists from Missouri . . .

Dear you,

After my exile from the family Inlet Beach home, I bought a condo down the road, a county highway you may know as 30A, a smoke-and-mirrors zone doing its best to attract visitors with more money and more teeth than our average guest.  The complex is called Beachwood Villas in the Seagrove Beach zone.  I knew very few owners actually LIVE here, but I was in denial.  It is a cute place and I don't have to take care of the pool!  How bad could it be?  The guests are chilling on "vacay".  Most have small children, so the odds of them taking over the pool and blasting gangster rap at 2 A.M. are non-existent.

Nine months after purchase I can tell you this:  I would prefer pool partiers who blast gangster rap at 2 A.M.

What we have here is 50/50 mix.  Half of the guests are normal or even fabulous.  The other half is, well, deplorable.  And having studied the range of visitors for a while, I have compiled a top 5 "worst" list; it ranks the states who send the Villas the scariest people ever:

1. Missouri 

2. Texas

3. Georgia 

4. Louisiana 

5. Tennessee

Now, I am not including city people in this judgmental game.  And I am not generalizing about everybody in those states.  However, it is what it is.  Let's focus on the "winning" state, coming in at number one.  Why Missouri?  Because their representative visitors are maniacs who jam a "family" of ten into a condo.  Maniacs who have lots of emotionally whacked children.  Maniacs who throw their garbage bags ON TOP of the dumpster or just leave dirty diapers, pizza boxes, and "Naty-lite" beer cans in the parking lot.  Maniacs that I have to run out of the pool area at night because they can't read the "closed at 10 P.M." sign.

I am being unkind.  I know that.  But it is TRUE!  I know if I was visiting their state, I would bring my best self and be respectful.  But why would I vacation in Missouri?  Even if I could ignore their latest anti-choice/anti-female rulings and not boycott the state, why would I go there?  Other than the city of St. Louis, what draws the tourists?  I thought about this and decided to give the state another chance.  To find out where to go in good old MO, I "Googled" around for a while and found the following (compliments of insider.com):

Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail and Museum in Weldon Spring, Missouri

 

"This giant pile of rocks is essentially a mound of nuclear waste.

To be precise, it's 1.5 million cubic yards of hazardous waste entombed to create a small mountain that marks the spot that was home to the country's largest explosives factory turned uranium ore processing plant until 1966. After being left abandoned for over two decades, the US Department of Energy decided to cover it with rocks. Now, it features a museum and covered up TNT, asbestos, mercury, radium and radioactive uranium. Enjoy!"

A giant pile of radioactive waste.  Well, that would be an adventure.

I am not going there.

However, perhaps we locals experiencing the shock and awe of these "show me state" invaders can find ways to upsell that nuclear waste trail and museum. [What the hell is in that museum anyway?] If we dump money into their advertising attempts and build a big Nuclear Waste Adventure Swimming Pool next to the museum, then these Missouri folks might just "vacay" close to home.  And leave us alone!

We could do that!  Or we could just stop selling "Naty-lites"; that would be a deal breaker for our maniacal guests.

That is all for now.  I have to go clean the parking lot.

Happy June 26 to you all, even those in the top 5 list! 

Love,
Joyce

Happy Birthday in the rearview mirror!

Dear you -
 June 12th, I turned 64 and am happy to be on planet Earth (even as she melts and rages at us for being destructive jerks).  Procrastinating today and veering away from my little online-writing-tutor-gig, I googled fitness options here in my 30A/Seagrove Beach zone.  A website for a yoga-heavy joint to the west contained bios of instructors.  This one killed me.  I am a grown ass woman and (supposedly) not bothered by other people's eye-popping resumes/biographies, but this one made me feel really Type-B:

Prudence Bruns

Prudence followed an early interest in meditation and yoga in 1966 at the age of 18 when she started Transcendental Meditation®.  In 1966-67, she studied with Swami Satchidananda to be a yoga instructor, eventually opening and running the Integral Yoga Institute in Boston.  In 1968, she went to India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and was made a teacher of Transcendental Meditation®.  It was at this course that she met the Beatles and they wrote the song “Dear Prudence” about her. After marrying and while raising a family, she began working in film as Art Department Coordinator for Woody Allen, and as a producer with artists such as Andy Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel, award winning directors Bruce Beresford and Alan Bridges and Tony award winning writer Hugh Leonard.  She is best known for originating and developing the feature film Widow’s Peak, starring her sister, Mia Farrow, Joan Plowright and Natasha Richardson.  She received co-producing credit. While continuing to teach Transcendental Meditation® over the many years, Prudence’s interest in yoga never wavered.  After raising 3 children, she returned to school receiving her PhD in South Asian Studies, Sanskrit, from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007. She has published her memoir,Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song, a book on Ayurvedic pulse diagnosis along with articles on South Asian studies, world religion, Ayurvedic medicine and healthy living for academic journals and magazines.  She has presented at numerous conferences such as at Harvard University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Hawaii, University of California at Berkeley and taught courses at UC Berkeley and Rutgers University. She and her husband live in Seagrove Beach and have three children and four grandchildren.

The Beatles wrote a song about her.

All the other stuff might be mind-blowing to others, you know, like the PhD and Woody Allen thing, but I envy that muse moment!

Dear Prudence, good for you.  Now, can you please help me find a workout that has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOGA AND TRANSCENDENCE????!!!

Love,
Joyce