Heights, Depths, and Fleas!

Alice’s and my vision was to get to a coffee shop to sit and blog for a while with the wifi flowing, but wifi is less plentiful here, and so are coffee shops. We went to Doe Doe’s Coffee Café in Bay Pines, Florida…one of Google’s hot tips. It was fantastic: Google thinks so and so did the crowds of people waiting in line, but there were no people sitting in the glow of their computer screens. We had a fantastic breakfast of eggs, meat, hashbrowns, and sliced tomatoes.

Now I sit in the shade of the puppet trailer with my computer on my lap! Birds sing in all the directions. Alice and I are camped at Rainbow Springs State Park. We visited the Headsprings of the Rainbow River late afternoon after we put up our tent. What a unique spot. The overlook above the springs revealed teal water with the bottom showing crystal clear. It looked to be fairly shallow, but when we got to the edge we were told that it was more like 8 feet deep and cold! The sunny side of the spring was a refreshing expanse of clearness away, and completely worth the swim. Floridians have a different sense of temperature than us loony Minne-soooo-tans.

Puppet world has hit the heights and depths! We had a lovely show at our campsite at Fort De Soto County Park with an enthusiastic audience of families and one older couple who came on their own. I always enjoy the adults who try out the puppet show, even without and excuse of bringing a child. Puppetry clearly is for adults too, but the world has not caught up to that fact! We aim to change that!!!! The Queen of Tea made an appearance as we had to disguise our show as a Tea Party. Read the last entry for an explanation of that turn of events! We served tea, and Alice, in her queenly character, read tea bags. She is  the queen of making it up as she goes! Rodney the clown made an appearance on my lap, Alice sang songs with folks, and then Ollie came along seeking clues for his treasure hunt. The show ends with Ollie singing THE MOST beautiful love song ever to individuals in the audience, “All the Things You Are” composed by Jerome Kern, words by Oscar Hammerstein. As Ollie sang, “You are the breathless hush of evening that trembles on the brink of a lovely song” to the older man, he just opened his arms out to the side and took a love bath! That is so touching to me, gotta say.

Now the depths!! We presented our show at the Wagon Wheel Flea Market. We paid for a 20-foot space outside for $9.00, and then went to set up. We were committed for about 7 hours because, once it is going, there are crowds and a ton of stuff in the way. Isaac, the young man who runs the market (been at it since he was learning how from his grandfather who started it) wasn’t sure it would be a good match for us, but I wanted to try. I guess there are 1400 venders at this market, and they are serious about their stuff. It is a living. Seemed like the way to go was to put out our sign and name particular times for our shows. That worked at the St. Pete’s Open Market. Not here! People will not stop for an instant. They are truly passing by; on the hunt, for what, they do not say when Ollie asked.  Someone even asked Ollie/me if I bought Ollie there! Really? Alice could have sold her singing bowl and tuning forks easily. “How much?” We learned that a one-line show was it. One kid stayed for a while to paw wrestle with Jack the Dog, and his Dad sent him back with a dollar for “That Box” our tip box. We also started doing shows on the run; following and talking to people as they poured over stuff! We made 8 dollars, and then went to the beach after our escape at almost 3:00. That is the consolation prize…..the BEACH!