Everything's Quiet on President's Day

So we gave Shula's in South Miami a nice bit of business this weekend.  I went Friday night with my buddy John, and the next evening Wifey and I met old friends Diane and a different John there.

John and Diane are engaged to be married, and the poor guy suffered some kind of medical issue last April, and has been fighting to get back to normal since.  He still stays at a rehab place and is in a wheelchair, but his mind is sharp, and his humor great as always -- we talked about his grandkids, and the Canes.  Although he's a Brown alum, and a Southie, his company has close ties to the U, and he sits on some pretty high level committees, and it's cool to hear about background things I otherwise never would.

After dinner, we walked Diane and John back to the rehab center, just down the street from Shula's, and wished them well.  Diane volunteered to let Wifey park in her Grove condo today for the Arts Festival -- an event we always attended until it got, in the great words of Yogi Berra, so crowded that nobody goes anymore.  We plan to today, with blue skies and mercifully cooler temps after a few days of record Winter heat.

Yesterday Wifey and I hung around most of the day, watching old movies.  I finally got to finish the excellent bio on Warren Buffet I had started to watch in NYC with D2 and Jonathan.  Then we caught a late 80s film about the Manhattan Project, "Fat Man and Little Boy," starring Paul Newman.  Since I had read Rhodes's fine book about the Project, I enjoyed the movie, and filled in the historical gaps for Wifey, about General Groves, played by Newman, and his attempt to herd cats in the form of super genius Oppenheimer and his band of fellow scary smart colleagues.

In the afternoon we headed over to LOL, for lunch, and then our usual visit to see the ancient mother in law.  She's recovering from her latest fall -- last Monday.  She got up to go to the bathroom and fell into the shower, and stayed there 12 hours until rescued by Gloria, her aide, the next morning.  Wifey came over, and my mother in law proved simply too fat for the two women to lift, so the helpful paramedics came and did the job.  No broken bones this time, so it was simply a matter of flipping over the inverted huge tortoise and letting it go on its way.

There was comic relief, as usual.  Wifey sits next to her mother on the couch, and when the old woman bellows, it's right into Wifey's ear, and she cringes from the blast.  Speaking of blasts, when the suegra stands up from the couch, there's typically a thunderous fart, which also sends Wifey cringing.  As Wifey whines, I guffaw, and the old woman asks "Vat's so funny you laugh so much?" which only makes the laughing more profound.

We coerced her to walk to the pool, and sit for awhile, but she's getting to the point where walking is harder and harder.  Wifey is ordering a simple cell phone and a lanyard for her mother's neck, so she can call next time there's a late night fall.  The old woman is completely deaf, so the typical "I've fallen and can't get up" systems are worthless for her -- a simple cell phone programmed to call Wifey and the aide Gloria might do the trick.

So today beckons -- no ancient suegras on the schedule, at this time.  Only the Grove, with its people, and art, and maybe even a sampling of festival food -- I'm sure former Canes great George Mira will be there with his conch ceviche -- a lunch even dietitian daughter D1 would approve of.