I'm on my way to K's grandmother's house on the coast for her 80th Bday. The entire family is coming down to celebrate. I have less-than-fuzzy feelings towards the Gram-in-law, she's the opposite of the grandmothers I grew up with. But, I'm taking one for the family team. Plus, it's a nice excuse for a five-day mini vacay in the middle of winter to a sunny Florida beach town.
K and I said last summer that if we decided against moving to LA (we decided against), we needed to make more family and friends trips to Florida in the winter to keep our sanity in the depths of the NYC winter. We hate winter. Hate, hate, hate. Unless we're on a ski trip, because then it seems worth it. But we love NYC and so we stay.
We are lucky to have a grandmother in Melbourne, Florida and an aunt, her partner and grandmother in Tampa, Florida. Plus, K's father and his partner own a condo in Tampa that we can use. Add that to a friend in Orlando and one in Miami and you have yourself enough warm places to get away during the cold, long, dark New York City winter.
I thought I'd be spending Vday with K, but her work schedule has kept her out of town and she won't be arriving until almost midnight tonight.
However, it's not all lemons, I made last minute phone call last night upon finding out that I was being re-routed through Orlando and was able to make an afternoon date with an old friend from waaaay back in the Dallas days. We haven't seen each other for five years, so it was great to catch up.
What kind of a friend is this, you call at 10:30pm the night before to say "um, hey, haven't talked to you in, oh a year, but I just found out that I'll be in Orlando tomorrow and well, I know that it's Valentine's Day and you have a job and all, but um, if you have any time, maybe we could do lunch?"
And what does she do? She not only picks me up from the airport, but we go have sushi, we go to Target (God I love Target but it's such good thing that we don't have one in Manhattan because I would totally buy stuff I don't need), we go to her house to play with baby animals (she's always rescuing something, this time a long hair chihuahua puppy she bought off a homeless man in Miami and a 5 week old kitten she found in the bushes...) and hang out by the pool. I mean, that's pretty much a perfect day to me.
Of course, the day got away from me and I didn't make the shuttle to Gram's until 5:30pm which raised panic because 5pm is COCKTAIL HOUR. You don't mess with Gram's cocktail hour. There are no gray lines with the time either. You cannot do it at 5:30 or 6:00 or any other time but 5pm. This also means that during your entire trip you will NEVER get to see the glorious Floridian sunset because of COCKTAIL HOUR. Feh.
So, I messed up her cocktail hour and then for the love of God, I screwed with dinner hour to because I didn't get there in time.
It's only the first day and I'm already on her bad side.
Feh.
Honey, get here soon, I can't do this alone!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment