Ampersand

Category: Miami

  • Well Wishes

    Iā€™ve been planning this trip for six months, and now, finally, we leave tomorrow. Iā€™m going to the States for the first time since my mom died. Itā€™s been about two and a half years. I meant to go last year, but then I got this job that was supposed to only be for twelve…

  • Her Pink Room

    If sheā€™d been able to leave us at home on the island, I think sometimes. (ā€˜Sometimesā€™ means ā€˜once.ā€™ ā€˜Sometimesā€™ means ā€˜I thought that once, a week ago, and I am still thinking it.ā€™) If I hadnā€™t come back to Wellington for those five months last year, if she hadnā€™t moved to Tampa as sheā€™d planned…

  • Barrier Island

    Yesterday was my last day on the island. I had a couple of days on my own after the memorial: after all the family had been and hugged and cried and gone, after we all went out on a boat in Biscayne Bay on a sunny, windy, rainy Sunday. Mostly I slept and did errands…

  • The Pause On The Side Of The Road

    Momā€™s memorial is this weekend so tomorrow we leave for Miami: my sister, brother-in-law, nephew, the two cats, and me, packed into two cars for a five or six hour drive across Florida. Iā€™m finally all packed up and am sitting here in the hotel room where I have been staying (with the cats) for…

  • Tempting

    There was someone to pick me up at the airport. My fridge had been filled with soup and carrots and hummus and my favourite kind of breakfast toast and some Early Grey were on the kitchen bench. There was a loaner humidifier and a whole new floor lamp in the lounge. It was one of…

  • Lucky

    We are so lucky, we all say. My mother, my sister, all our friends, all the radiation techs and nurses and neurologists and social workers and clinical psychologists and registered dieticians and cancer clinic receptionists and schedulers. Everyone: ā€œWe are so lucky.ā€ Let us count the ways: She was over 65 when she got this…

  • Waiting In Vain

    After our road trip to Tampa to see what Iā€™m referring to as New Places, because I cannot bring myself to say the words ‘Assisted Living Facility,ā€™ the car is the last place I want to be, yesterdayā€™s mind-numbing drive across Alligator Alley being what it is. Radiation is still at 10:15 five days a…

  • Get It Done

    Up at 7:30, breakfast at 8:30, morning pills by 9:20 and in the car by 9:30 to make it to treatment in Miami Beach by 10:15. ā€œOkay, Mom,ā€ I say, ā€please get started on your protein smoothie. Okay, Mom, please check your chart. Okay, Mom, please let this dissolve on your tongue and then rinse…

  • It’s Gone Fast

    Chemo is two pills, taken at home every day. Radiation is a machine, five days a week at the hospital. I have written this information down (along with her contact information, her doctors, her medications) in a little notebook for my mother to keep in her purse for when she forgets. She looks through it…

  • Let Us Know If There’s Anything We Can Do

    You are doing so great. You are doing amazing. She is lucky to have daughters like you girls. I donā€™t pay attention when someone says something like this, I donā€™t even hear it. I check my phone and go on to the next thing that needs doing. The side effects will be. You should be…

  • How Was Your Trip?

    Iā€™ve been back from the States a weekā€”I got in off the plane last Thursday morning, paid an exorbitant cab fair home to Mt. Vic from the airport, fell asleep in my clean-sheeted bed, and woke up in time to have buddies over for tea and biscuits before work the next day. ā€œHow was your…

  • Tonight’s My Last Night

    Itā€™s been so busy since Iā€™ve been in Floridaā€”Iā€™ve been here for about ten days, most of it here in Miami, where I am spending my last night of this trip, but of course some up in Tampa to meet my my nephew and to make my sister and brother-in-law vegetarian lasagna. Since Iā€™ve been…

  • One Last Bike Ride

    I went for a last bike ride to the Quiet Gardens yesterday afternoon, after spending most of the afternoon sorting and folding and packing all my stuff. I get on the plane to New York in a few hours but it still seems so unreal. All week people have been asking me if Iā€™m excited…

  • Supposed To Be Packing

    Iā€™m supposed to be packing but I had to make dinner and I had to ride the bike to the Quiet Gardens to take pictures of ibis and sandhill cranes, I had to drink tea, I had to read a book I borrowed from my sister. Iā€™m supposed to be packing but I got a…

  • A Few More Weeks To Go

    This time next month, with all due consideration of time changes and the International Date Line, Iā€™ll have just got into Wellington from San Francisco. Iā€™ll have a couple of weeks before I start work–a couple of weeks to hug all my friends and to see if I recall how to get around the city,…

  • Contingency

    The last week or so, I guess, after I had to resubmit the visa, I was just starting to allow the concept of not going back to Wellington to lick at the edges of my brain, quickly and cautiously, nervously. After yet another paperwork-related mistake last Wednesday that involved panicked calls to the New Zealand…

  • My Way Back

    I have been trying and failing to write an entry that will adequately describe to you how I felt when I got the call yesterday offering me a new job in Wellingtonā€”the job that will get me there, that will expedite the residency application process, that is actually something Iā€™m excited about career-wise. I was…

  • Waiting

    Itā€™s been so quiet lately. I have a cold so I have had to miss out both on Halloween and on phone banking, but at least the temperature has dipped into the low 80s so I can sometimes wear jeans outside at night now. Iā€™ve picked up a little more work and if I can…

  • In No Particular Order

    Ten Things I Eat A Lot 1. Dark chocolate (preferably Green and Blackā€™s 70% but Iā€™m not picky) 2. Ginger snaps 3. Marinated tofu 4. Sun dried tomatoes 5. Olive oil 6. Bell peppers 7. Feta cheese 8. Earl Grey Tea 9. FAGE 0% Greek yogurt 10 . Whole wheat pita with hummus Nine Things…

  • Thunder

    Itā€™s been a long time since you heard thunderā€”you donā€™t get that on the west coast and you’re pretty sure you never had any in New Zealandā€”and itā€™s coming down steady now, outside in the wet dark green. Itā€™s the middle of the night and you are wide awake, deciding whether to sneak downstairs in…

  • Where To Begin

    Where to begin, with this week. I got my new Florida driverā€™s license, registered to vote, went on a job interview that consisted entirely of my taking a practice SAT for the first time since 1992, finished a rib-knit scarf I began in 2006, received my official multi-page Invitation To Apply for New Zealand residency…

  • My Time And Place

    I still have New Zealand Google as myā€¦Google, I guessā€¦and yesterday the icon had little flowers for the double OO, and when I rolled over it said ā€œHappy first day of spring!ā€ Thatā€™s what theyā€™re having in Wellington now, springā€”theyā€™re occasionally taking off their coats outside and still getting grit blown into their eyes from…

  • Things I Always Forget About Miami

    Ants! Ants, ants, ants. Everywhere you go, all different shapes and sizes and colors (excluding, so far, fire ants, thank heavens). Spraying vinegar directly upon them does not faze them one bit, nor, worryingly, does accidentally microwaving them. Sweating in a tank top, at night, outside. Ibis and snowy egrets head-down in the grassy road…

  • Shouldn’t

    Okay, so weā€™re not evacuating. From what the news says, it looks like the Keys are going to get it, and Cuba is going to get it (for the second time in two weeks), but we personally are not going to get it, at least not too bad. For most South Floridians a Category 2…

  • Layers Of Time And Incidence

    Since I last wrote I have certified as an Advanced Open Water diver and been stung by fire coral in the process, spent a lot of time with my friends and my friends’ children, got some new bras for half-off, made that thing for a dinner party, texted Italy at least twice a day, chatted…

  • Wednesday In Miami

    Feel free, my mom said as she was driving me to the mall to meet my best friend, to tug my coat if you feel like I’m treating you like you’re thirteen. I don’t mean to, honey. It just happens sometimes. She pulled over at the light and I hopped out, saying, Mom, it is…

  • My First Kiss

    My first kiss was when I was sixteen years old, and was with my best friendā€™s cousin on her living room couch. I had just beat him at Tetris. The end. No? Background? Okay. Letā€™s start with the ā€œsixteen years oldā€ part and get it right out of the way: I was a very late…

  • That Old Address

    Itā€™s been easy to believe since Iā€™ve been here that this is all there is in my life, that when I got on the plane I wasnā€™t just leaving my friends and family behind but that they were just going to sort ofā€¦stop while Iā€™m gone. I think of my life in Seattle as in…

  • Is That A Good Thing?

    One of the things my mom and I talked about when she was here was what she wants to do with the next ten years. She turned sixty this year and has been thinking, for quite a while, about retiring (which for her would mean going down to just one job, probably). Last year was…

  • The Cognitive Dissonance Is Breathtaking

    It is a little known fact that a totally hardcore thing to do is to get home from your trip to the East Coast at three-thirty in the morning, go to work late, leave work early, go to two grocery stores because heaven forbid you go a week without your organic sweet potatoes and your…

  • Christmas in Miami Pictures

    So here is a picture of one of my favorite signs in the world. I may not have taken the kind of pictures that give you insight into the psychic depths of my time at home, but by hokey, I had the wherewithal to warn you against feeding or molesting the crocodiles at the Quiet…

  • Points of Interest

    The House There used to be a bayonet palm out front and I used to get scratches on my arms all the time whenever I brushed past it going in to the house. Now thereā€™s a cactus garden where the hibiscus was in front of my old room and a hammock and some sort of…

  • I’m In Florida Now

    Iā€™m back in Miami now, having successfully navigated Heathrow Airport with Tom and Ashley and made it back home to the island. Iā€™m writing this from Marahā€™s house; Iā€™m babysitting as we speak, actually. After I post this I plan to order a pizza, watch Growing Pains, and call the boy Iā€™m going steady with…

  • Before It Happens

    My mom was supposed to come visit me this weekend for Labor Day. Sheā€™s been wanting to come out for a while but between her schedule and my schedule there hasnā€™t really been a very good time. Iā€™m going to see her in Michigan in November when we go to visit my grandmother and we…

  • Hurricane

    My sister evacuated from Tampa last Thursday to avoid Hurricane Charley. She was down in Miami for the weekend, where, my mom reports, ā€œwe didnā€™t even get rain.ā€ The storm turns out to have bypassed Tampa altogether and has devastated areas that didnā€™t expect it, people who didnā€™t have time to evacuate. I have heard…

  • The Lowest-Key Christmas Ever

    After we opened presents this morning, ate the worldā€™s smallest panettone, which came in a box greatly inflated compared to its size, and gave the mice some wrapping raffia (which they like okay but not as much as the yellow legal paper) we decided to go for a bike ride to the state park. I…

  • The Quiet Gardens

    Well, Iā€™ve checked off a couple of items on my To Do While At Home On Vacation List, youā€™ll be happy to know. Iā€™ve run into one of my elementary school teachers (Hi Mrs. Yehle! Love your nose ring!) at the grocery store, eaten delicious fried plaintains for dinner, and biked to the library (where…

  • A White (Mice) Christmas

    My mom brought home her schoolā€™s white mice for the holidays. Theyā€™ve been sleeping all day but got very industrious at about ten this evening. In general I am not a fan of things that live in cages, nor things that have red eyes, but I sort of like them anyway. Iā€™ve been experimenting with…

  • Remember: Sandals!

    I leave for Miami tomorrow around noon. Before then I have to: Clean My Damn Hole In The Wall I do this all the time, clean right before I go on a trip. When Iā€™m home? Happy to clear a trail through the clothes on the floor from the bathroom to the bed, much like…

  • The Reunion To Which I Am Not Going

    I got a message on my machine yesterday from the president of my high school graduating class, asking if I was going to be able to make it to our ten-year reunion over Thanksgiving weekend. Iā€™m not. I am going home for a big chunk of December and canā€™t justify going to Miami twice in…

  • Your New Year’s High Resolution…

    …is to see pictures of me! Right? Okay! Remember that kljhdofih lhfougwed I got Carl for Christmas? It was a digital camera. See my smartness here, folks? I got him a camera and now he’s going to use it to take pictures of me. All part of the plan. Go ahead and click on the…

  • Eleven Days

    Hi everyone! Happy New Year. I’m back from vacation, and I hate Seattle. Maybe I don’t really hate it. It’s just that it’s rainy and dark and cold and I have to go to work and sit in an office for eight hours a day. My mom is nowhere to be found to make me…

  • Noche Buena

    Happy Christmas Eve, everyone. It’s so good to be home. It’s 81 degrees right now. I have had a lot of croquetas and have spoken Spanish in the grocery store. Lighted palm trees everywhere. I’m on my way to the beach as soon as I’m finished writing this, and the odor of roasting pig is…

  • It’s such a perfect day…I’m glad I spent it with you

    I’m still on vacation, since my very first journal entry yesterday, in which I was also on vacation. It’s great. Five more days here. Today has been spent reading, making brunch for my mom and my newly-returned-from-New York-visiting-our-dad sister, and taking a nap. I just woke up and ate a large bowl of out-of-season corn…

  • First entry, featuring alligators

    So I’ve been here in Miami for over a week now, as I have the kind of job (you know, the low paying kind, without benefits) that allows me to take time off if I don’t mind not getting, like, paid or anything. It’s been nice. The weather is gorgeous in that Miami-in-winter way, I’ve…