Smaller Dosages

 Our dear friend Elizabeth's yahrzeit is May 25th -- come that date, she'll have been gone 4 years. A memory of her was triggered today -- on my am constitutional, my neighbor Bob was telling me that Perry's Steakhouse had a promotion going -- they were selling diners, I think, $8 pork chops to honor their anniversary in the Gables -- the first 100 diners. Bob scored one last week.

It reminded me of one July 4th -- may have been 2010 or 2011. D1 was in grad school living on Brickell, and our plan was for dinner at the Palm followed by fireworks from her balcony. I believe Norman and Deb were with us -- Elizabeth definitely was. And the Palm offered NY Strips for $17.76 in honor of the holiday. Man, that was great eatin' and a great offer!!

Elizabeth, never much of a steak eater, enjoyed it, as I recall. And another charming thing about her, despite advanced degrees, was her occasional use of malaprops. One she used a lot was inserting the medical 'dosages" for the more general "doses," as in "I can only take her in small dosages."

We'd never correct her, but took that one on for ourselves, like the way I have adopted the very Miami "supposably" instead of "supposedly," and adopted another late friend, Alan's, neologism: "tensosity."

I really miss Elizabeth. She was so wonderful to our whole family, and she and I used to enjoy long talks -- especially during Covid, when I was putting 10 miles per day on my New Balances, and she had downtime from work at Orlando Regional.

She was the picture of health -- major exerciser, and ate clean -- never even a little overweight. But she had awful genetics -- her parents died within weeks of each other, both in their sleep, from heart attacks. She had seen a cardiologist for a rhythm disorder, and got the overnight monitoring, but probably the heart doc should have ordered a calcium score, too, which may have shown blockages in her vessels. Who knows? All I DO know is that she was a beautiful person, inside and out, and she's gone coming up on four years.

My nephew of another mister Scott is in town, and asked if Wifey and I were free for dinner tonight. We are indeed, and so will meet Barry, Donna, and their firstborn at Basilico in Doral -- 30 minute drive for each of us. 

Next weekend D1 and the boys are coming Saturday -- Wifey and I will babysit BOTH of them for the first time while D1 attends her friend's birthday event in Palmetto Bay -- and Sunday is Mother's Day. I remind everyone that I ain't HAD no mother since 2013 -- this will be the 12th MD for me as an orphan. In other words, Wifey gets to choose what we do.

Meanwhile the meter on moving is back to its default setting: staying put. Every time I picture a nice but 1/3 sized house in the Shores, my gut tells me no -- stay in my little (ok, not so little) slice of heaven. Another option, if Wifey insists on being closer, is to rent a condo in a development called Quayside -- blocks from both Ds. Quayside was THE place in the 80s, and it's still nice -- sort of like the Grove Isle of North Miami Dade. I would never buy a condo, but maybe a rental would let us have easy access and give Wifey a coveted "view of the vater," like her late Mother demanded.

For the ease of renting, that might/well could be a compromise -- and hell -- if I really loved it there, we could rent a BIGGER unit, sell Villa Wifey, and become renters. As we age, that actually sounds better and better -- let someone else worry about repairs, and if a hurricane gets a bull's eye on Miami -- well -- we leave and say to the owner "sucks to be you, pal."

We'll see. Right now, our trip is less than 3 weeks away, and hopefully we get a lot of living in before and during that trip. Fun -- that's best in HUGE dosages...