What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I didn't knit as much as I would have liked for a couple reasons. First, it was pretty humid in Florida (bad combo with yarn). Second, our condo neighbor was a smoker.

I knew we were in trouble the minute we got out of the car and started unloading the car. We didn't even have the trunk open when the guy next door started asking where we were from and how long we were staying. We didn't even have the key in door to the condo and we already knew he was from Dothan and that his uncle owned the condo they were in. We were in for a long week.

The guy was about 85 years old, weighed about 120 pounds and smoked like a chimney. He sat on the front porch all day long and smoked. But who could blame him? He and his wife were accompanied by their three grandsons...ages 4 to 8. Good grief.

I knew my morning ritual had to be altered so instead of taking a cup of coffee and my knitting out on the porch each morning, I took a cup of coffee and a book, and I read. I hated to seem unneighborly, but by the first evening, I already knew that he'd had 8 operations, what prescriptions he was taking and what he could and couldn't do while at the beach. I'd walk out onto the porch, say a polite good morning and dive into the pages of "World Without End." It was my only way of escaping.

The mornings were spent rather peacefully. There was a nest of mourning doves and they provided a nice melodic cooing that was only interrupted each 4 minutes by the flick of a bic cigarette lighter. Dude could suck back some butts!

Like I said, I didn't knit much, but I devoured "World Without End" by Ken Follett. I highly recommend the book. It's set in the 1300s in England. (It's been years since I've written a book report.) The main characters are a builder and a nun who battle serfdom, the plague and the priory. It takes place about 200 years after Follett's "Pillars of the Earth", which is about cathedral building. (That's another great book that I highly recommend.)