Today is Friday, May 13, 2022. I hope no one out there suffers from a bad case of triskaidekaphobia since today is Friday the 13th. Anyway, this is my first entry since Wednesday, May 4, since I flew to Florida on Thursday, May 5, with Elliot and just returned yesterday evening. I would love to say that the kitchen is indeed finished and ready for viewing, but it isn’t. In accordance with empty promises made to clients of contractors, I’m happy to report that I finally saw The Money Pit, that 1986 film starring a very young Tom Hanks and Shelley Long that I can easily relate to, as the line that is oft-repeated in the movie to Hanks and Long by the senior contractor is “The job will be finished in two weeks.” This line is stated several times by Phil Bosco as the lead contractor in the film and it is even uttered with a snicker, as if the person uttering it knows it’s a bald lie. That’s how we feel here with our interminable project that seems to have no end in sight. But we can hope, can’t we? There has been some progress, I must say, since the time we left, and that’s good. Well, enough of that!

Our trip to the Sunshine State was very restful and very entertaining for Elliot, especially, since he was able to schmooze with two sets of relatives in Boynton Beach and Margate about long-gone members of the family. One of the highlights of the stay was seeing a review called “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” at the Wick Theatre, in Boca Raton, which celebrated the songwriting virtuosity of the legendary Neil Sedaka. Our cousins “Rhonda” and “Raymond” treated us to the tickets and we went on Saturday, May 7. We had a great time eating at a 50s retro diner called Ellie’s 50s Diner and Flamingo Ballroom Catering, in Delray Beach, before the show. The place reeked of life-sized mannequins of Elvis Presley, James Dean, and, especially, Marilyn Monroe. The food was reasonably priced and humorously named for song titles out of the 50s like “Great Balls of Fire,” which was linguine and meatballs in a marina sauce, “Return to Sender,” which was boneless pork roast over stuffing and topped with gravy, and “What’s New, Pussycat,” which was chicken parmigiana served with pasta and provolone. I believe I had ordered “Who’s Sorry Now,” which consisted of roasted turkey and mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.

The play itself was a welcome surprise since I had anticipated seeing a revue of Sedaka’s songs, sung by a number of performers. Instead we were treated to an actual play set in the Catskills of the 60s where two friends hightail it out of Brooklyn after one of them is ditched at the altar; the songs of Sedaka were interwoven into the mood of what was being felt by the characters on stage. I thought this was an artful touch.

The next day we treated Rhonda and Raymond to a Mother’s Day dinner at the Station House Lobster Restaurant, in Lantana, Florida. This remarkable restaurant is noted for its fresh seafood. Rhonda and Elliot ordered lobster, while I had lobster pasta, something I usually don’t order in a seafood restaurant. I did have the lobster bisque that was quite good.

The rest of our trip was spent with another cousin “Mary” at her home in Margate. There we enjoyed sitting outside with Mary by her enclosed pool that overlooked a manmade lagoon that attracted all kinds of fowl and land animals like iguanas. I became familiar with a large kind of duck native to Florida, the muscovy duck, that hung outside Mary’s enclosed compound. At night, I would even hear the squawking of these ducks as they conversed among themselves in the wild. It was certainly different from hearing ambulance sirens all night right here in Forest Hills.

We also had some nice meals with Mary; one night we dined with her at Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurants in Palm Beach Gardens, where we had crispy Brussels sprouts as an appetizer. I believe I had the bourbon-lacquered BBQ pork chops, something I usually don’t order as well. One day, on Tuesday, May 10, our friend “Gene” drove down from Miami and picked us up at Mary’s house to take all of us to lunch at TooJay’s, a deli, in Coral Springs. The restaurant was located in a mall where there was a Barnes & Noble bookstore, which Elliot and I visited on Wednesday, our last day in Florida.

While we were in the Sunshine State, we kinda had a news blackout of sorts. The news wasn’t on constantly in both Rhonda and Raymond’s or Mary’s house, even though Mary did get Florida papers like the Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald delivered to her door every day. I cringed when I saw the picture of the governor, Ron “DeSant-ASS,” pictured prominently on one of those papers while we were ensconced at Mary’s residence. The article picturing him had something to do with his declaring some sort of holiday in Florida schools against the victims of communism and the ridiculous assertion he made about why it’s important to honor those who were brutalized by communists the world over; it seemed like the description he used certainly fit him as he himself continues to trample on the rights of gay students in that infamous “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that he gleefully signed some time ago and also on the rights of women in the latest attack against women’s reproductive rights in that leaked draft opinion from the current Supreme Court. I truly hope this odious man finally gets his comeuppance, one way or another. He can’t be the GOP’s “white knight on a horse” in 2024. He has no respect for marginalized groups at all and is an authoritarian figure altogether.

Since it’s getting late here, I must eschew writing about the political scene (I’m pretty tired of the same old thing, frankly). Trump is still not indicted, which many of us would hope and pray for before the next millennium. The GOP is still disgusting and authoritarian; it doesn’t seem to get any better with this cult party. The January 6 committee still hasn’t had its public hearings, which are scheduled for June 9. It has subpoenaed other repugnicans to offer testimony; I’m not sure if they will willingly appear before the panel. Where the heck is the Justice Department in all of us, if these reluctant testifiers snub their noses at these subpoenas? A week away certainly did not result in many changes in these developing stories, that’s for sure.

So it’s good to be back. I do miss the Florida sunshine, actually, but I hope the weather here will improve with time.

Stay safe and be well.