Damn! Look at the fish I caught!

This update is dedicated to all the great findings here in the last days of my residency.



My new fishing buddy Aaron is perhaps the youngest living male in the City of Englewood at the ripe age of 27. Too bad I'm married huh? This is the snook he caught this morning. Because they are protected (spawning season), he threw it back.



Here's a snapper we caught! A bit small but still good to eat! It was the first fish that I have eaten straight from the water. I don't know why Aaron's shorts look like they are falling down like that in this picture. I don't remember them doing that in real life. (Oh the mockery of this cat lady. Oh the mockery.)



But boy, do I love having all these adventures with my wife! She's so much fun!


But it was no easy task to clean a fish! Yuck! Check out this video of him cleaning the fish.... That thing wouldn't die!





Before cooking....



After! The snapper was actually very small and very bony. So we got all of two bites of fish in each filet.



I'm still kinda crap as a fisherwoman. My new show, CAT LADY that premieres next week uses a lot of fishing (a great way to excuse all this leisure time as "research"). Here is some once live bait I used that got a huge bite on it's side. I'm all bait and no bite I tell you.




We also got a great full moon sunset out here where the tide was so low that sand dunes appeared. Places where the water normally goes to your waist or higher, you could walk right through.


Watch as I narrate the sunset. On full moon nights there is a rare burst of green light that appears when the sun goes down. You can't see it in the video but it's still gorgeous to take in everything else you can get from the video.





See how low the water gets?


I thought this was a good picture of Sonja doing what she does best. Photography!

Later that full moon night we went looking for sea turtles laying eggs. We thought it best to split up and each patrol in a different direction. I saw two fresh sea turtle nests and Sonja saw one. But we didn't see the turtles. It's nuts because they lay eggs in holes that they make at least 18 inches deep and then they cover them before going back to the water. So they must have worked fast because we totally missed them. I think I saw a turtle as she was leaving the nest she made. I think I saw her back as she disappeared in the tide.




This is what a fresh sea turtle nest looks like! You can see two sets of tracks (one going from the water, and one going back to the water). The little mound is where the turtle dug, laid, and buried her eggs.



In the morning, Sonja and I woke up super early to watch the sea turtle patrol dig up nests that were past gestation. The patrol is made up of cool volunteers who dig up nests, then count the numbers of non-viable eggs and hatched eggs. They also keep track and protect the area around new eggs. Sometimes they find live or dead baby turtles in the nests they dig up.




Here are the eggs they dug up. A lot were not good, but the ones that still might hatch are reburied closer to the surface where they will get more heat and the babies will have an easier time digging their way out.


When a new nest is discovered by the patrol, the nest is marked by a stake that records the nest number, date of laying, and the initials of the people patrolling. This is the nest Sonja found the night before. The "KW" is yours truly!


Here are two geckos, mocking me with their lovemaking.

Here is a video I made of them. It's not very clever. And moves as much as the above photo. Gecko penises are red btw.



Sonja knows how to handle my camera better than me. Here I am in the gulf with the Hermitage House behind me. Today the water was so clear we could see our feet at the bottom.



I also have made a lot of crafts while here. The local wildlife has inspired a lot of new animal shapes.



If my fishing skills suck, at least I can improvise!



Here is a dead mouse I'm using in Cat Lady.


And of course! Sea turtles! If I can't spot them live, I can at least make them. This is for the woman who nominated me to come here.



Come on, you know you want to see another sunset photo! It feels like every sunset is so different here.

independence day

Oh, that was a bad idea to drink all that wine by myself.  I am here with crackers (the kind you eat, not the kind that live in Florida) trying to make this headache go away.

On an up note, being totally inebriated last night allowed me to call and text half the names in my address book and tell people how much I love them.  I actually almost drunk dialed my folks.  That would have been interesting.

Yesterday I was thinking how it's so odd that I'm not even friends with my friends anymore on Facebook or Myspace, but with their wedding photos, their babies and TODDLERS.  It's like when they say that people's identities change when they become parents... their lives literally become the lives of their kids.  

And my identity, is a this nutso artist who is listed as "Married" on her profile... but my photo albums reveal that I am married to myself and that my babies are my shows and my art.  And while my friends are doing grown up stuff like checking out daycare programs and getting baby seats, I'm teaching myself how to fish, eating cheese and crackers with the iguanas, and toasting my wine glass to the Gulf of Mexico.

There is this funny episode of Sex in the City where the four of them are at a wedding, all wearing black, smoking cigs and being fabulous and single and Carrie says, "And then there's us... we're like the Witches of Eastwick."  That's how I kinda felt yesterday, wandering to my beach cottage with a wine glass and the wine bottle tucked under my arm.  Stumbling a bit in the dark, the geckos jumping around me, the crickets chirping, I could scream and nobody would hear me.  

I'm like this lone crazy witch.  On a beach.  Brewing up trouble.

What a great life.

Roach Killah!!!

The exterminator came today but still these roaches roam the bathroom here. So today I decided, if I can't beat them, cast them. I tell you, it isn't easy to shoot, star, and kill in your own short film. These are both pretty good. The second one is more dramatic. Bug killing makes for the perfect subject for a short film. Characters, conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution.

Film #1




Film #2





Today I went to the local playhouse to watch how they do community theater out here. The local playhouse is all volunteer run and their theater building (which used to be a funeral home) is getting too small for just 99 seat audiences so they are moving to a 300 seater. It's amazing to see how many people come out for theater on a weekday because they want to and what else is there to do really? I definitely began to see how I am pretty much staying in a retirement community. I think the median age there was 106. Everyone was so sweet. The actors were pretty good, and some of them sell real estate on the side! They even let me draw the raffle ticket winner before the show.

The craziest thing happened. There was a big thunderstorm during the show and this lightning struck and the lights went out in the theater. At first it seemed like an amazing cue. We think the lighting hit the transformer by the theater. They kept the show going by having their tech people shine flashlights on the actors. It was pretty incredible how pro they were about it.


Equal opportunity commode!!

One of the members of the Board of Directors was like, "You should do your show at our playhouse." He obviously has not seen my work. I can imagine doing a show there. Doing a fake orgasm on the stage for the seniors? My crazy ass at a playhouse that does strictly Neil Simonesque plays? Oh boy.

No need to rush the inevitable, really.


I am so into these collage posters for their plays. When is the photo collage coming back?!!? Screw Adobe Illustrator!

I also saw Asian people for the first time today at a restaurant. I wanted to talk to them and ask them about their lives and ask them if they ever miss home or want to get pregnant and smoke and drink six months in.

I told the Board members today about the smoking bartender and the shoddy selection of men out here. They were really funny about it. One volunteered that the locals were "neanderthals." They told me that local Floridians are called "Crackers." Like the title of this painting below that was for sale at the theater.

I want to save every fetus in Florida. I really do.

Saving a Fetus in Florida from kristina wong on Vimeo.
So now my videoblogs are getting so long and windy that I actually have to host them on Vimeo! Anyway, this one is good! I hope you will listen to today's big moral debacle about whether or not to save a child's life by speaking up or shutting up. Today, I chose to shut up.

As a result, a one eyed four legged child will come into the world... and she will probably be named "Kristina" after the woman who decided to use "the law of attraction" to save her unborn life, rather than a good ol' fashion tongue lashing.

I am so sorry Baby Kristina....



On an up note. I saw a turtle today on the side of the road. I think turtles can hiss. Here is the turtle I sang to.

The Writer's Blocked Life

This is what it looks like over the gulf right before the storms come in.

I'm so so so so close to finishing this commencement speech. It's killing me. It's taking me days to articulate and filter down what I want to say. It's hard when I can't rely on my old stand-bys to get me through this speech-- no profanity, no strap on vag, no-strap on weiner, no battery powered unitard or karaoke machine, no excessive costuming or super interactiveness... Just words. Encouraging words! UGH!!! So hard!!!

But I feel quite close and I think I can have something by the end of the day.

I am practicing reading this to people. If you want me to read this to you. Email me (k AT kristinasherylwong.com) and I'll read it to you by phone.

I'm also not sleeping well here. Well, I will go to bed listening to the waves but feel unrested when I wake up and have all sorts of weird dreams. This morning I woke up with this nasty crick in my neck and now I can't turn my head to the left all the way.

I will just accept it as me detoxing from city life.

I had my first "race incident" yesterday. It'd been a while since I'd experienced something like this. I decided to go for a walk in the nature walk across the road. Mostly because I wanted to look for iguanas and lizards which I haven't seen since the first day here. And I was actually quite freaked out on the walk because there are these really loud bugs in the trees and you can hear things scampering, like geckos, but you can't see them.

Anyway, so I get out of the walk and there are these leather skin rednecks (there are a lot of them in Florida) drinking beer in their truck. There are two guys and one girl. And I just walk past their truck to cross the street and I hear, "Oh yeah! Chinese... Japanese... Yeah..."

And I turn around and glare and he says it again!

"Ooh.. Chinese Japanese. I'll take them all."

I so badly wanted to flip the bird, or scream something (which I love doing), but they were scary rednecks in a truck with beer cans and I was Kristina Wong with flip flops and house keys.

So I sucked it up and just walked back to the beach house. It's alright. Their lives are so sad with their bright red skin and tattoos that have lost all definition. And my life is great with my air conditioned beach house.

I told my friend D'lo about this. And D'lo says the next time that happens, I should look at them really seriously and be like, "I have Herpes and Clamydia."

I thought that was funny.