Our world has turned upside-down and sideways, but I still feel like me, and Andrea still feels like Andrea. Still both twenty-something. For me, that's lasted a bit over 40 years. Not so long for Andi. Me, though, I feel like the last man standing. Mom died a couple of years ago, and my younger brother David kicked off the day before his birthday in 2010, the same year my dad broke his neck at C2. The fall didn't get him directly, but it prevented him from following up on a pre-cancerous bladder condition, and that did the trick. He died in August of 2011. I miss them all, every day. On the other hand, Lindsey, my only granddaughter, survived a horrendous bout with . . . well, nobody knows. She had been intubated for months. We were told that she would never take another breath on her own without a lung transplant. To our everlasting joy, she is now fine, attending college to become a nurse. My grandsons are both doing extremely well, one in college, one getting close.
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Andrea still enjoys her job as a Staffing Pool ICU nurse. "Staffing Pool" means
that she goes from ICU to ICU . . . Med/Surg, Cardio, Neurotrauma, etc . . . wherever
she is needed. She cut down to part-time (two 12-hour night shifts per week) to save
her sanity, and that has worked out very well for us. In fact, her ability to choose her
own schedule allowed her to spend a lot more time with me this past winter.
I'll explain: After Dad and David died, I ended up with a couple more properties
in Florida. One in Tavernier (the Florida Keys) and one in Lighthouse Point (adjacent to Ft.
Lauderdale). For a number of reasons, it was advantageous for me to become a Florida Resident,
so I spent the winter in the Keys fishing, drinking, and splashing around. Andrea set
her schedule so that she could spend two weeks with me, one week in Asheville . . . back
and forth.
It was the best of both worlds. I was never a big fan of Asheville
winters; they are icy and windy without the benefit of great snow for skiing and
other sports. So I stayed warm while I worked on the house, and I still
had twice as much time with Andrea as without her.
My schedule didn't allow me to continue my enrollment in the MLA program at UNCA. Completion would have allowed me to become an adjunct, and my friend Mike Ruiz had indicated that they would find a place for me teaching in the Physics Department. That would've made six degrees for me: Marketing, Management, Finance, Biology, Physics, and a Master of Liberal Arts. (Put 'em all together, though, and you still wind up with a Keys bum.)
We love the
Keys house. It features an open architecture and high Dade County Pine
ceilings. There is lots of glass and a tiki in the back. I bought a
boat, of course. The built-in davits are perfect for it and I am actually learning
my way around the back country a little. Best of all, there is a private
one bedroom apartment downstairs so family and friends can visit. We put a
lot of effort into it: new furniture, new paint, new appliances. We
both wanted it to be even nicer than our digs upstairs. We had many
visitors and hope for many more.
There's a lot of maintenance work, of course. In Asheville, we have this monster garden, with maybe two
cultivated acres. The Keys place doesn't have nearly as much land, but it is in the Keys, and it's filled
with trees, bromiliads, orchids, ferns, palms, and anything else that could be stuffed onto the property.
The solution? A gardener (named, appropriately, "Gardner") for Asheville and a landscape maintenance
team for the Keys. What a difference it makes, allowing us to enjoy the properties instead of being slaves to
them.
Then there's Dad's place, a 14 room townhouse in Lighthouse Point. Fabulous place, best location, elegant in every way. It's one too many places, though, so I intend to market and sell it this winter. Maybe I'll get lucky; the market seems to have turned around and there are no others like it. It's probably the best address in Lighthouse Point; photos of it are used on the phone book, it's the subject of postcards, paintings, touristy knickknacks like mouse pads and T-shirts. We both love the place, but it's just not us. You can look it over here.
One of the things in the Keys I have enjoyed more than I expected was re-kindling of friendships
with guys that were really more David's friends than mine. Bob Fennesy and John Cheek come immediately
to mind. Bob is a dive boat captain in Key Largo, and is an avid blue-water fisherman. We had a ball
together this past season. John Cheek goes back a long, long ways. He and David were the closest of
friends, and now we really enjoy getting together with him and his wife, Rainy, whenever they visit their
Keys house, not two blocks away from ours. John has a plan for murdering Yellowtail by the score, and
we're going to implement it next fall.
There are other unexpected pleasures, too. I have gotten so see my daughters, Tracy and Melissa, much more
often. They live just north of Ft. Lauderdale, so when I'm in the Keys we're only an hour and a half apart. They
have both stayed at the Keys house with us with their families, and we had the best of times.
Last Fall, we especially enjoyed the company of Andrea's sister, Brigitte, and her family, who spent a couple of weeks with us. It was the first visit to the States for her two children, Melanie and Fabian, and we all enjoyed sightseeing, snorkeling, and many cold beers. I had set up a little surprise three day cruise on the Majesty of the Seas, departing August 24 and returning August 27. We were supposed to go to Cococay and Nassau. Instead, Tropical Storm Isaac blew through and the only thing the ship could do was head to sea, due east from Miami. No port calls for us! Instead, we followed sunshine, ate, drank, saw some great shows, swam im the pool, drank some more, ate some more and in short, had a ball. The kids loved the ship and didn't care if we made port or not. I felt the same. We returned at about 5 PM on the 27th, about 12 hours later than originally scheduled, which gave us another full day at sea. (The Port of Miami was closed by the Coast Guard.)
Andrea has continued her running, often racing 10 miles at a time. She looks like a million dollars
before taxes. At the moment, she is taking twice-weekly running
lessons from the Chi Running Group.
Here, she is pictured with some buddies from the Asheville Racquet Club. They all ran in the Sunset Stampede, one of the toughest races in Western North Carolina. It winds its way up 10 miles of steep mountain roads in mid-summer. Whew! No way I could even think about such a run. Come to think of it, I can't remember a time in my life when I could have done it.
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