I should have been figuring out how to make some money in this market but since I’ve been home all I do is tidy.  All that time painting and with the island in the great room and all its contents stacked in other locations I just got used to living in disarray.

That’s the thing about staying in a hotel; everything is where it’s supposed to be.  And clean.  The guy who housesat for me — I might not have mentioned him and he’s so boring I won’t — must have spent every spare minute cleaning and organizing.  And I’m talking the yard, the basement, the garage. 

Only thing is when I woke up the next morning and went out to the garage where I keep the dog food, I noticed all his stuff.  I told him early on I wasn’t going to rent a room to him but he must not have believed me.  I’d call him from Florida to see how things were going and he’d be “I cleaned up the stuff by the side of your house.” 

My carport fell down in the snow storm plus Derek just piled the stuff he took out of the bathroom back next to the shed so this guy takes it upon himself to divide it all up into three big piles:  steel here, plastic there, wood all leaning up against the house. 

Well, the stuff is all going to the dump as soon as the fucking floor gets done and Derek can put the bathroom back together.  I’m sorry I got sidetracked.  The whole point I wanted to make was that I have been living with piles but after being in a clean and tidy environment it will no longer do.

I have gone from room to room, porch to deck, and fluffed as my sister would call it.  Not the crazy one.  She’s moved again, by the way.  While I was gone I guess there was some dispute with one of the other housemates “that may have involved alcohol,” according to my brother. 

But back to my house.  That guy even cleared the forest and made a big pile of brush by the fire pit.  It’s all ship-shape, everywhere I look. I love it here.

Both my parents grew up in the midwest but moved to the Pacific Northwest in their teen years.  Maybe my dad was younger.  My mother moved to Seattle and my dad moved within a mile of where I live now.  His sister grew up and moved to Berkeley so as a family pretty much the only places we traveled to were Seattle, California, and the Oregon Coast. 

And that’s great but where I think I belonged was Florida.  Specifically, Lake Worth.  That’s where I want to live.  At least part time.  I was with my youngest, in the Tiki Hut out by the pool, when along came a young man with a friend who was more my age.  I think all the tables were taken so he sort of planted himself at our table which was the tall kind with the bar stools so it didn’t seem like he was inviting himself into our space as much as just happening to stand in the same vicinity.  Once he set his beer down, which wasn’t until the second one, his friend took a seat, bringing a look of disproval from the young one. 

I’m going to call him Samial, the young one.  Anyway, I’d been there a week and now the youngest had joined me for the weekend.  I am gushing about how much I love it there when Samial says, “You should get a little place.  Spend half the year.”  I tell him “I couldn’t afford anything around here” and that’s when he tells us about Lake Worth.

I get confused about where he says it is, so he gets my cell number and says he’ll send me an address and I can use my GPS to find it.  I forget all about it but the next day my daughter says my phone, which she has had to borrow as hers is somehow broken, has a text.  I never text and don’t have my glasses so I tell her to write something back.  He responds and she responds and then we leave to go swimming.  The next day I take her to the airport and on my way back he texts me that I should come for reggae.

He had said to us at the table that we should come out with them but I waved it off saying we couldn’t possibly, and that I’d bought grouper I needed to go cook.  But on the way up to the room we both said we thought it would be fun.  She told me I should go if he asked me again.  Well, you know how I love to dance and you just don’t get good reggae around here so I went. 

He seemed different, definitely drunker.  He’s a great dancer and lots of fun.  Great conversationalist when he’s not too drunk.  I think he’s a good guy but it’s hard to tell.  He says all the things a woman likes to hear which trips my radar.  But he seems genuinely like a good person so I have continued to stay in touch, mostly texting. 

He left for the Indy 500 the night before I left to go to Pompano and is with a bunch of friends but he still texts me every day.  It’s kind of addicting. 

I’m leaving shortly for Florida.  Back in two weeks.