Thursday, June 12, 2025

Miercoles Gigante

 It was a delightful mid week day for this cool, rockin' grandpa in the USA. After fending off the many questions of our comically old cleaning lady Miriam, who wanted details, in Spanish, about our vacation, I was able to leave. The funny thing is Miriam is convinced I'm fluent in Spanish, which I am NOT, but to be polite I struggle to get through our conversations. We really wish Miriam would retire, as she's past 70, but as Jeff pointed out decades ago, we really work for her more than the other way around.

Anyway, I arrived at D2's house and she and Betsy were SO glad to see me -- we caught up on the latest Shores news until it was time to fetch Little Man. We did, and that boy kept us laughing the entire way -- with his precocious vocabulary and adorable way about him. He made us guess his favorite sea animal -- turns out it's the narwhal, and made sure we know they don't have horns, but rather, tusks.

We stopped at Chick Fil-et and grabbed sandwiches for him, little brother, Wifey, and Lizeth, the lovely nanny who is in her final weeks before returning full time to her eye lash installation business. We got home to a happy house with Baby Man and D1 and Wifey, and played while they ate and I stole some of the delicious waffle fries. As the late Mr. Food said -- Oooo -- it's so good.

Around 6, I left with D2, and we dropped Betsy off and headed for Brickell. The party was at 60 SW 13th Street -- I knew that address. Sure enough, it was where my old boss Ed's building was -- next to an eye doc, David Sime's building. When Ed and Frank broke up, Ed offered to sell the building to Paul and me - -I think asking was $900K.  Paul was a bit interested, but I wanted no part of caring for a building, and the security issues of its location then -- on the edge of a rough 'hood. Well, SOMEONE bought it, and later sold for well north of $10M -- there's a 40 story condo there now. Eh -- win some, lose some in investments...

I pulled up to Trulucks just as Dr. Barry was walking in -- he had taken the train and People Mover from JMH. Sure enough, my man Victor was tending bar -- the remaining original staff member. We caught up and took a selfie -- the many memories of my time there came flooding back. It was truly my Cheers -- though 2 young women were sitting on "my stool" in the corner. Seems fair -- I hadn't been there for dinner since before Covid.

Dinner was great -- and the place was happily pretty empty -- a Wednesday night near Summer does that. Barry and I talked of ships and shoes and sealing wax.

I told him my new credo -- changing the pronouns in the Billy Joel lyric to "You don't care what I say anymore this is YOUR life." Adopting that has brought me so much peace.

We played a favorite game: "What if?" Barry remains more confident in his core values about life, marriage, parenting than I do. I allow for the fact that I may have screwed up more than I thought -- but that's ok. Everyone screws up.

All I know is, I savored the evening greatly -- so much so that I didn't mind the absurd traffic driving Barry back to the hospital. I jumped on 95 instead of sticking to the streets -- forgetting that the massive highway construction (they're adding a double deck on the 95- Dolphin interchange) shut down our way west. We went to 112, and came in from the North. Note to self: for the next year, avoid that area at night -- the construction will continue.

I glided home after the drop, and Wifey was up watching TV. We compared notes on our delicious grandsons -- she adores them so, as I do.

Yep -- pretty, pretty, pretty great Wednesday.

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