Come on down!!!
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: The American Way
I wasn't sure if I wanted to put this post under "Livin' Large At Walmart" or "The American Way". Well you know how I went. ;)

Anyway, when I was a very little girl, there used to be a commercial on TV with this guy wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and goofy fishing hat, telling everybody how wonderful Florida was. And, he always ended the commercial by saying, "Come on down!" I guess back in those days Florida was desparate for people. Not anymore.

Today I was in Walmart and as I mentioned in a previous post, ours is a Super Walmart, so you can get just about anything there from grass seed, to clothes to food. I noticed several different people with carts piled up with buckets, mops, cleaning supplies, bedding sheets, trash cans, tea kettles, well...you get the picture. These people are definintely not here for vacation. In fact, you can always tell when people first move here, because you always see them pushing carts filled with all sorts of basic household stuff around the Walmart. They wander around, in no particular pattern, mostly because they don't know the store layout, searching for whatever it is they need to set up their new home.

I know this because...a little over a year ago, I was one of them, pushing my cart around, selecting this and that, spending lots of money in order to make my new house "mine". Its different now. I don't have to buy a bunch of cleaning supplies, I only have to replace them when I run out. And I don't have to buy bedding sheets, unless I want new ones, and I have enough garden decorations, so I don't have to buy any of those unless something strikes my fancy. Nowadays, my cart mostly gets filled with pet supplies, people food, and the occasional article of clothing that we may need.

Gone is the excitement, gone is the newness, gone is the exhilleration of thinking that we live in Paradise. Because...I know better now. This isn't Paradise and the only excitement I've had is the constant worry about how to make ends meet. This place has become simply...where we live. A house, in a neighborhood, in a local municipality, just like thousands of others here in the U.S. Its just...home.

Once you live here, you forget about The Mouse, you don't even want to go near the touristy areas if you can help it, because there is simply too much of...TOO MUCH!!!! Eventually you get used to it all, because its part of life, but you never perceive this area as the rose colored vacation mecca that you once did...at least I don't, and others I know who have migrated down here echo my feelings.

As for those Walmart shoppers today...I can only hope that those people pushing those carts around, have had the sense to line up a job already, and aren't thinking that they'll just get one after they settle in. Because it just ain't gonna happen...at least, that's the way of it for a lot of us who move down here first and go job hunting later.

Well, I hate to end this post on a down note, so I will say this...my hope is not gone. I still hope that one day I won't have to do this, to scratch out an existence and live with constant worry and struggle through sleepless nights, only to wake up and stay exhausted all day from doing...nothing.

One day things are going to change. One day maybe I'll feel like Florida really is Paradise and who knows, then...maybe I'll even be telling all of you to...

Come on down! :)