Slouching Towards 2025

 So Friday night we met Dr. Barry and family in Doral -- to celebrate Scott's 28th birthday, at Basilico, which is precisely halfway between our 2 houses. It was a lovely night -- all aglow with excitement about the upcoming March Big, Fat, D.C. Media Wedding, as I have labeled their nuptials. Scott and Sam were leaving early Saturday to watch the Canes in the silly Pop Tarts Bowl in Orlando, which they lost in a very silly way...

When Little Man was with us Mon- Wed, I noticed he had a night cough, and, sure enough, now Grandpa Dev has the cough. No biggie -- one of those URIs where I sound worse than I feel -- but hopefully it clears up by the end of this year -- no fun coughing into martinis.

I spent yesterday dodging our cleaning lady Miriam, here on Saturday instead of Wednesday since she was visiting family in Nicaragua for the Navidad holiday. I watched the game alone up above the garage, and then Wifey and I ordered Publix Instacart with delicious Pub Subs for dinner -- but they did NOT bring them, and so Wifey and I were forced to tear apart a rotisserie chicken like hungry hyenas. 

Today it's raining, and the Ds and their men are busy, and so the day holds home errands for me -- changing AC filters and flushing out/chlorinating the drain lines, and then probably the last Dolphins game at 4. They're still technically alive for the playoffs, in the way Karen Ann Quinlan was alive -- but Tua the QB looks unable to play, and the Fins should go down in Cleveland.

I still check FaceBook, but no longer comment on it, on account of a scare with mentally ill former relative I mistakenly contacted, and the memories came up today --a bunch of fellows last year at Gulfstream drinking martinis as we lost at horses, and 2 years ago Barry, Norman, Donna, and Deb with Wifey and me at Joe's. It struck me how much changes in a mere 2 years.

Also, it's Eric's birthday, and one of our all time favorite pics popped up -- from December of 1986. Wifey's bridal shower was at packed Victoria's Station in Dadeland, a restaurant located in old railroad cars, an in attendance were 3 groups of ladies: Wifey's mother's friends, all Holocaust Survivors, my mother's friends, all American Jewesses out of "The Nanny,", and Wifey's friends, modern (ish)20 and 30 somethings.

For reasons still unexplored by therapy, I got the inspiration to crash said party with most of my groomsmen -- in drag. Dr. Barry was up at UF Med school and was spared, but Eric, Mike, Jeff, and Mark all took part. The event was the source of MANY funny anecdotes -- like Mike and I, in our new lawyer suits, walking into the McCrory's on Flagler Street and asking the middle aged Cuban clerk for bras and panty hose for ourselves, and the clerk saying, deadpan, "Oh -- you need Queen Sized," which we bought, realizing we were not the first men to buy this stuff.

Eric took the lead, wearing one of his mother's dresses from 50s Brooklyn, which kind of looked like drapes, and I had borrowed a T shirt from my moot court partner Donna, a Wellesley grad whose shirt said "A Wellesley Woman is MORE Than a Woman." We invaded the outside patio party, falsetto voiced, and the reaction was truly tri-partate. Wifey and my mother's friends fell over laughing -- my suegra's crew were shocked -- was Wifey marrying some kind of deviant? Of course, listening to the rapid Yiddish explanations added to the hilarity.

Anyway, today I sent Eric a pic of the two of us in drag, and he noted that DEI really DOES work --2 ugly transvestites from the 80s ended up successful fathers and grandpas.

I like to take stock at the turn of the year -- both Rosh Hashonah and the secular one. What to leave in, as Bob Seger sang, what to leave out.

As the decline and disease of people we care about rear their heads, I figure the only thing to reasonably do is double down on what I love: sharing great times with my sacred family and friends. Those not inner circle get courtesy, but nothing more -- not enough mental real estate, to use a new term, to let them exist there.

So the plan for NYE involves again the Big, Fat, D.C Media Wedding prep. Barry and Scott have a tux fitting on Miracle Mile, followed by dinner at 6 at Motek. I plan to Uber over and have a few cocktails with them, and then Wifey can fetch me there to head to Joelle and Kenny's, $150 gift bottle of wine from broker friend Pat in tow.

We'll toast, and hopefully laugh, and make it home to go to sleep on faith -- that 2025 indeed comes while we're out. Or maybe we'll watch the Big Orange raise -- the Miami  party at Bayfront Park tends to be cooler than the one in Times Square.

But the time grows short -- to another milestone. Hopefully I get to pass many more of them.