A Wisconsin Yankee in Walt Disney's Court

We’re finally moving from the luxury apartments from hell, near Orlando proper, to a house a little farther out in Apopka. The only interesting thing of note I’ve seen in Apopka so far is this vintage shopping center sign on the outskirts. This was once the center of town but is now home to a bargain grocery, bargain auto parts store, and lame thrift store. I think the rest of the run-down neighborhood around it was bulldozed for the new surrounding highways.
I’ve mentioned Florida’s ubiquitous tiny lizards that are even more abundant out in the boonies, but we also have strange white frogs that climb the walls and think nothing of peeing on you from 20 feet up as they dive to the concrete if you disturb them. Plus, joy of joys, we found a shed snake skin in the front yard already.
Better yet, according to the Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology, 2 three-foot monkeys were spotted here in 2000, and monkeys have been captured in the state park across from our subdivision. But the best part is that Apopka and the Wekiwa Springs State Park have had numerous Skunk Ape sightings over the past 50 years– the wackiest and the only detailed one I can find is here. I can look forward to spending my evenings in a swamp with a camcorder waiting for Bigfoot– how awesome is that.
I spent a couple of late nights painting junior’s room with her favorite animals, manatees.

Every morning, when I ask what she dreamed about, she says “Manatees!” It’s probably not true, but she thinks it is, and I guess we’ve assured that they’ll haunt her dreams until long after the next repaint.

She didn’t really like that the “mommy” manatee is kind of mean looking, but it matched the model I had and the eye came out too nice to retouch. She likes the (more) cartoony baby manatee, of course.
I’m not even sure why or where her obsession started, just that it wasn’t long after moving down here. She’s seen them in captivity a few times, but not in the wild. And she only has one or two manatee toys. Her bigger obsession is probably puppies, actually, but big grey blobs are easier to paint, and if you see any flaws on it you can just say “That’s where a boat propeller hit the poor bastard; they’re endangered, you know.”