Let me start this story by telling you another story.
Growing up, I went to Mexico to do a week of mission work for seven or eight summers in a row. We went to villages, shared the gospel, helped construct buildings, handed out food, worshiped our Savior together, etc, etc, etc. Amazing experiences, pointing to an Awesome Father.
We teamed up with a ministry stationed right on the border. They act as hosts to groups and bring them down into Mexico. They give the same exact orientation presentation before breakfast on the day your trip begins. They always hand out Flexi cookies.
When you're on these kinds of trips, you never know what will happen. Your bus could get stuck in the mud. The customs cops might take away things you're bringing to give away. You might have a plain bologna (we have got to get better about our pronunciations here in America...) sandwich for every meal. Like one year, there was a drought, so we had no showers- only bathing in the river (yay, environment!). SO the last thing the group needs is for someone to be inflexible.
That first day, everyone eats a Flexi cookie (sometimes it was a piece of pop-tart, etc. one time it was an oatmeal thing- GROSS. I only PRETENDED to eat that.) which will make you have the best attitude no matter what comes along (...fail on oatmeal bar day?)...
...now sometimes, the Flexi cookies don't work with every individual's chemical makeup. So, if someone is grumbling and complaining, you just nicely stroll by and remind them to buck up by saying "flexi flexi!" Sidenote: this is the LAST thing you want to hear when you're having a bad day.
If someone has been warned several times to be "flexi flexi" and if that just won't work, then they will be given another Flexi cookie. If THAT still doesn't work, then everyone gets to circle around the non-flexible person and pray for them. That never happened on any of the trips I was on, but I would be mortified if that happened to me. Actually, I don't think anyone was ever given an extra Flexi cookie, either. Hm. I guess we just had really good teams of people.
ANYWAY. So. I think because of that, I grew to be pretty flexible. If you can be flexible, then you can think on your toes and try different things when what you've planned isn't working. Although, I got so used to doing this that during student teaching, my planning went way down to the bare minimum.... Ha.
So - back to Florida, 2011!
After our celebrating and chillaxin', we headed down to Vero Beach for Tommy to sign some paperwork things. That wasn't until noon, so we decided to make an appointment with a realtor to see some townhouses and condos at 10 that morning. We had searched online before our trip, and found out that most of the townhouses, and even regular-type houses were much cheaper than they were in Gainesville. Some houses were even less to rent than our apartment! So, we wanted to see if these places were just dumps, or if we could get an awesome deal and finally get out of apartment living.
We met the realtor at the first of three places, and the sign to the community let us know that it was for "active adults" = old folks. Thanks, Realtor, who knew we were young, for telling us this, since we only have one day down here (sarcasm). We toured the clubhouse- and what do ya know, full of old people and their activities! A full water aerobics class, several teams engrossed in checkers, and a big television in the "theater" room. Of course, we kept our comments to "oh how nice!" and "that's great!" for the realtor, but our looks to one another communicated thoughts more like "seriously??" and "nope, nope, nope." When we finally saw the townhouse, we were pleasantly surprised. A nice big kitchen, clean and open spaces, and decent sized rooms. So Tommy asked if we were even allowed to rent here, being a 55+ community. Yes, we could, and we could have pets, we just couldn't have kids. Interesting.
So we headed to the next place- another townhouse. This place had a hugely tall living room space, but a tiny kitchen and several upstairs small rooms that we didn't need and that would waste our a.c. We didn't hate it, and decided to go ahead and see the final place before Tommy's meeting.
This was actually a house. We were so excited to see it- an actual house that was in our price range!? Walking in, we realized why. Teeny tiny master bathroom, old navy blue carpet, and oddly shaped bedrooms. It certainly wasn't the worst place ever, but the other two places, though they weren't houses, were cleaner, in better condition, and had more usable space.
We told the realtor we'd call her and let her know. We weren't in love with any of the three we had seen, and were counting on returning to VB and seeing what else was available. So I dropped off Tommy, and went to a nearby Panera to drink some sweet tea and play around on Facebook....
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