Tough to Peel Away

So it's Memorial Day in Miami, and there's a ton going on.  The notorious Urban Beach Weekend is taking place, and this year, though the city denies it, they've added a US military airshow and some kind of gay olympics to , um, dilute the urbanity of the weekend.  It seems to have worked -- so far only one shooting, and not even fatal.

I prefer to stay home on holiday weekends.  I'm very much like my Dad, but a key thing I inherited from my Mom is absolutely falling in love with my home.  My Mom did, and at a cracker box condo in one of the ugliest developments I ever visited: Kings Point.  KP was essentially a huge parking lot with small islands of concrete block garden apartments.  The design was post War Soviet.  My Dad used to meet fellow residents, and ask which cell block they were from.

But Mom LOVED her little unit, 145.  After Dad died, she traveled the world -- China twice, Israel, Europe a few times, and all over the Caribbean, but then she preferred to stay home -- her cocoon, she called it.  She'd sit in her small "Florida Room" watching a small black and white TV, and then read in bed, and avoid, as much as she could, going too far.  Even when the Ds were little, and I'd fetch her and bring her to our big, happy house, after a few days she wanted to return to her home in the cell block.

I'm lucky -- my house is, at least to me, quite a bit nicer.  We're on an acre of tropical hammock, and so I can hear neighbors as they go by, but don't have to see them.  We have zero curtains -- each window looks out on the property -- quite a contrast to Mom's view of cars in a parking lot -- that drove me nuts whenever I'd peek outside at her place.

Mornings here are so peaceful -- I drink coffee and read the Herald, next to a pool and patio dappled with sun rays shining though the foliage.  I really don't want to leave.

Yesterday, I never got farther than out mailbox.  Wifey visited her mother, and I stayed home and watched "Walk the Line" in Public television, the great biopic about Johnny Cash.

Today I have one of the few events that would peel me away -- Eric and Dana's girl's wedding.  We're leaving in the afternoon, and checking into a pink Boca hotel, and then driving west for the 5 pm ceremony.

And of course we WILL travel.  We booked a Pacific Northwest week, in late July, and there are always NYC trips to go see D2.

So I guess it's a blessing and curse to truly love where you live.  Wifey wants to move -- be closer to the city -- drive less than we do now.  I'm not sure what that means, as I just checked the odometer on her more than year old SUV and it shows less than 4K miles.  But there's no winning an argument with a wife's logic, as I've discovered.  And I guess change is necessary.

In truth, Wifey is the engine behind most, of our trips, and I end up savoring them when I'm away, and thanking her for dragging my lazy ass out of Miami.

Maybe that's what the future holds, when we finally decamp from my beloved abode.

For now, though, I'm going to enjoy staying put...