I was the one who lost jewelry, from the cheapest of plastic toy baubles to my first birthstone ring given to me by my stepfather for my eighth birthday. As the years went by, I was given other rings and pins and bracelets, most of which ended up missing just when my parents would ask why I wasn’t wearing one of said gifts. When I graduated from college, my stepfather told me he wanted to buy me a ring, but, given my history, thought a train ticket to travel across country was a better option. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and was relieved not to bear the responsibility and inevitable blame for yet another jewel torn asunder from my keep.

Decades later, when my grandmother passed, I was given a gift that left me awestruck–the very old and very beautiful engagement ring worn by her mother, my great grandmother. The ring had been given to my great grandmother by her second husband, when he proposed to her just as the Great Depression had begun. He was a doctor; a patient in need of his care offered him the ring as payment for his extensive services. I am not sure if it was a straight barter, or if he paid a nominal price for it in addition to providing the care. I do know, however, that despite its obvious value beyond anything paid, it felt priceless to all involved and dated back to the 1800s.

“Wear it, enjoy it, love it as she wanted you to,” my aunt said when, during a brief break from the sad chore of cleaning out my grandmother’s home, she gave me the glittering, most beautiful ring I had ever known.

I briefly hesitated. Then I reminded myself that I had managed to not lose my own engagement ring for multiple decades. My wedding pearls also remained secure in their black velvet box, tucked safely away. Surely, I had outgrown my childhood “loser” moniker and graduated to being worthy of keeping this gift that I would ultimately pass along to RG Daughter when the time was absolutely right.

Right?

And for three years I did just that. I wore it everywhere, except at work. I kept it with me at all times when traveling, lest the house burn down or someone burglarize my apartment. When people whom I didn’t know well complimented it, I told them that it was a fake. “Amazing how real it looks,” they’d say. “Yep, amazing,” I would agree, and then change the subject.

Last weekend, after much planning and begging others to cover our shifts, my great guy and I managed to take two full days and nights off together for the first time in months. It was literally my first day off in 18 days and 22 shifts. We didn’t look back as we headed off the rock, booking the pups into Rouletta’s former canine “country club and spa” for two nights, and treating ourselves to an oceanfront luxury hotel in Fort Lauderdale.

As always, I packed my heirloom ring in a little jewelry pouch, along with two pairs of earrings. I zipped it into an inside pocket in my purse and left it there, untouched. When we returned home, I quickly unpacked everything, both of us in a hurry to work night shifts, and I forgot to remove the jewelry pouch from my purse. Two days later, in horror and self-chagrin, I remembered. I dug through my purse, and there it was, the mesh pouch safely zipped away as I had packed it.

Except that it wasn’t exactly as I had packed it. When I shook the contents into my palm, only the two pairs of earrings fell out. Okay, so the ring must still be in my purse, I thought. But it wasn’t, despite my pretty much ripping the lining out of the thing to make sure the nightmare unfolding wasn’t happening.

I dug through every corner and crevice of my suitcase, on the off chance the ring had somehow ended up there, which I knew was impossible. I removed all my cheap earrings and $20 rings and two-for- $30 bracelets from my jewelry box and ran my hands over and over the velvet lining.

Nothing. Nada. It was gone. Vanished.

My heart pounded and I felt certain of two things: that I could no longer breathe and that I was going to throw up. Not that ring. Not that ring. Please, please, please not that ring.

I could not admit this loss to a single person, I decided. Not to my daughter, not to my aunt, not to anyone. After work and after a midnight dinner and two glasses of wine, I told my great guy.

“I’ll call the hotel in the morning, and we’ll go through the car and suitcase and everything again,” he calmly said, because he didn’t know my history–nay, my very identity–as a hopeless, dumb-ass, habitual jewelry loser.

I plodded through the following day at work at the place where I work the most shifts. I poured drinks and made conversation, and all was fine until I remembered the ring–which I remembered about every 15 minutes.

Over the next two days, I went through my jewelry box multiple times. I searched the floorboards of my car. I shook my purse out over and over again. And still, the ring remained missing.

“The hotel security office is looking into it,” said my great guy on the third day. “But nothing has turned up yet. You are absolutely sure you packed it when we were leaving for Fort Lauderdale?”

Hell, I could have unknowingly vacuumed up the thing if the ring had never made it into my purse in the first place. And if it had, and somehow it had dropped out of my purse in the hotel room, well, aloha my coveted and so-very-special ring.

“Can I talk with you?” asked one of my favorite regulars the following day–day four of the ring loss. She is an always-smiling, energetic woman who will do anything for you and does everything for everyone else. She constantly matches those with an excess something–be it clothing, an apartment, or even a broken AC unit–with those in need who are down on their luck or have to move tomorrow or know they can fix anything.

“Sure,” I said. I was doing the final paperwork before I left for the day. “Give me one second.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you at one of the deck tables, where it’s quiet,” she said. Hmm. Odd.

“What’s up?” I asked her a few minutes later.

“You know how I used to take care of my friend, the older woman?” she asked, which I didn’t really remember, but it didn’t surprise me. “Well, when she died, she didn’t have much, but what she did have I am sorting through and giving away.”

Okay, I don’t need anything, I am sure, I thought, wondering where this conversation was really headed.

“She would have loved you had she been able to meet you, because you are so cool and funny. And you wear similar jewelry to hers, believe it or not,” my regular continued. “So, I want you to take these gifts from my friend. She would have wanted you to have them and would have loved seeing you wear them.”

In my hand she dropped a tiny silver pinky ring inlaid with sapphire chips, and a pair of of dangling, antique silver-mesh earrings. I was stunned.

“But I never knew her!” I exclaimed, almost embarrassed. “Surely she has other friends, children…” I stuttered, feeling awkward.

“No, no, she had no one. Please take them, for the good karma,” she insisted. “They need a little cleaning up, but aren’t they beautiful?”

Yes, indeed. Incredibly beautiful.

“Look what one of my customers gave me,” I showed my great guy later that evening.

“Nice,” he smiled.

“Yeah,” I sighed. The gift was wonderful, but it made the reality of my lost ring more poignant. “Okay, one more time I am going through everything in my jewelry box to look for that ring,” I told him. I placed the jewelry that had belonged to a woman I had never known carefully on the coffee table. I’d add them to the jewelry box contents after I’d searched it for the umpteenth time.

I brought out the silk-covered box that had also belonged to my great grandmother and balanced it on my lap. I put on my glasses, opened the lid, and decided to take out every single piece of jewelry one more time. I reached for one of the two pairs of earrings I had packed with my ring, earrings I had already moved around in the jewelry box multiple times during previous searches. But this time, as I carefully picked up the pair, there it was–where it had not been for all the days I had been looking for it–acting as a kind of clasp holding the pair together.

“Oh my God, I found it!” I cried. “It’s right here, right here!” I exclaimed. I was utterly shocked, amazed and surprised. I had looked at those earrings so many times over the past few days. How could I have missed the ring being attached to them?

I glanced over at the sapphire pinky ring and delicate silver earrings that had belonged to the woman I had never known. And I knew right then, with complete certainty, that the spirit of this woman whom I’d never known had somehow arranged for my heirloom ring to finally be placed in plain view for me to find.

“Wow, you must not have seen it mixed up with the other earrings,” said my great guy, clearly happy and relieved for me.

“But, I had held them, moved them…” I started, then decided to let it go. Sure, sure. I must have simply missed and overlooked the ring throughout all my frantic searches. Yep, that was it.

How do you thank someone you never met, who passed before you ever had a chance to know her? How do you tell her you will cherish her tiny ring and beautiful earrings; and how they are both of a style you love and will frequently wear? And every time you wear them, you hope she hears your thanks for helping a perfect stranger find what had surely been lost forever.

Then there is the Celiac Disorder issue, which makes cooking even more of a bore. Dining out is less of a bore, but far more risky and too expensive. Just when I think I know all I need to know to safely eat out, I find out that even fresh veggie sushi–without the soy sauce or any sauce, for that matter–makes my stomach ache and my chest and stomach break out in hives. Thank you, distilled vinegar. I might as well have eaten a donut.

After one particularly bad gluten attack from a mystery source, I noticed one of my hives didn’t go away. As days turned into weeks, this hive grew bigger and became a tad uncomfortable. Nice. When it got to the point that I stopped wearing any of my T-shirts except those with high enough neck lines that covered up the damn thing, I called one of the local dermatologists and begged for an appointment before work.

“We need to biopsy this,” said the doc.

“But it’s just an infected hive or something, right?” I asked for the second time.

“No, I don’t think it is. It’s not a melanoma, but I suspect it’s a skin cancer,” he said.

Sure enough, he was right, and I was wrong.

A week later I was back in his office, again feeling the sting of the numbing agent before he took the nasty thing off and singed the spot to kill it for good. As he scraped away (”It’s deeper than it first appeared.”), I re-lived the halcyon days of my thirteenth summer, when iodine-laced baby oil and album covers covered in foil were the norm for any of us girls trying to tan our skin darker than our friends’. This was followed by use of a Ban de Soleil product described as “orange gelee,” the smell of which immediately conjured up spending summers at the beach with those same friends as all of us tried in vain to keep the sand out of the greasy stuff.

The next morning, a little tender from the procedure, I was grateful to have at least the day off before I had to work a night shift. As I made coffee, I developed an incredible urge for fruit-filled muffins, which was immediately followed by a lesser urge for oatmeal-raison cookies.

I pulled out every bag of gluten-free baking products I had stashed in the kitchen, tossing out the ones that were out of date as I tried to piece together muffin and cookie recipes from the remaining product labels. I gave up, wandered to the living room and perused the long-ignored collection of cookbooks I had finally unpacked after several years and placed on the bottom of a bookshelf. I opted for Betty Crocker, substituted flour for flour, and cooked up a batch of mediocre raspberry-blackberry muffins. By then, the allure of adapting an oatmeal-raison cookie recipe–and actually trusting the gluten-free oats I had bought months ago to be gluten-free–had dissipated.

As I returned Betty to her dusty place on the bookshelf, I knocked over a small notebook-style collection of recipes I didn’t remember. Had I bought it at a yard sale? As it turned out, I had re-discovered my great grandmother’s dessert cookbook–a sparse collection of hand-written recipes categorized by those from whom she’d copied them–Mrs. McNeil, Mrs. Williams, and now and then a first name such as Marion. They were simply a collection of ingredients and minimal instruction about how to mix them. Not one included an oven temperature.

I spent an hour reading through each recipe, wishing I had looked here first and tried making a batch of Beulah’s carrot pudding or adapting ingredients for Mrs. Chapman’s Whipped Cream Cake.

It’s a cinch those ladies made a point to stay out of the sun in order to keep their skin fashionably pale and pretty and smooth, even as they aged. They cooked and swapped recipes, wore white gloves to luncheons and always kept a hat on outside. My great grandmother was a beauty right up until she died at age 82.

She would be 122 if she were alive today. She would scold me for my lack of desire to cook and my sun-kissed skin. Then she would bake me a batch of Mrs. Franklin’s spiced cookies and tell me to work less, cook more, and not worry about a skin cancer that is the easiest type to treat. Aging, she would tell me, is inevitable as much as it is fraught with the inevitable.

Be grateful. Be thankful. Take a baking day, now and then.

I am not complaining at all. I am grateful to be working and finally paying my bills with a little left over.

I have many stories in mind, however. Soon, I know, I will eek out the time to write them.

In the meantime, peruse the archives and enjoy stories from the past four-and-a-half years.

Yours truly, living that dream,

RG

My great guy and I exchanged glances as we sipped our cocktails. The bartender saw us exchange the glances and, in turn, glanced at us.

“I can’t even imagine it,” said the customer, now wistfully speaking more to himself about the Keys life he imagined he could live far away from his reality’s rush hours.

The archetypal dream to live where one vacations cajoles as it lulls, torments as it taunts, and sometimes–if the timing is just right in one’s life–captivates as it convinces.

Flip-flops replace dress shoes, shorts replace slacks, fishing themes emblazoned across T-shirts replace striped collared shirts. On the rare occasion when “dressing up” is encouraged–say, at a wedding–you can still wear the flip flops as long as you toss your tropical-motifed linen shirt in the dryer for a few minutes to make sure it’s relatively wrinkle-free after living in the back of your closet for months on end.

Trays and tables replace anonymous cubicles, bottles and blenders replace coveted corner offices, ready cash replaces dwindling credit as you slowly but very surely unwind from what and where you used to be.

Without exactly knowing how, you will quietly be absorbed into the local realm, although you will never be considered a local. You will be okay with that, however, because after a few months of living your new stress-free life, you will pounce on perfect strangers visiting from your former city or work life and eagerly share what you have in common as you beg them for news from your shared former reality. These strangers will, at first, be equally eager to chat with you, until you spend that one minute too many with them and they smile and ask if you could check on their order, “When you have a second.”

You will marvel at your quirky new co-workers as you let go of concerns about your future and simply live for the next day. One day, however, when several of these quirky co-workers come to work an hour late if they show at all, hammered or high or both, and you have to cover for them for the third time in as many days, you will marvel less and fume just a little. Because you notice that despite their proclivity for enhancing their stress-free lives, they will still get the prime sections and schedules, and you won’t.

You will, however, eventually discover that you live and work amongst some very hard-working co-workers and managers and others who embrace their stress-free lives as you do, but still maintain a modicum of a decent work ethic. You will befriend these people and they will become the circle in which you play and laugh and share the highs and lows of your stress-free life.

Until the day that one or several of these persons disappoints by allowing loyalty to ever so subtly seep away with the tides. You will then reach out to your closest friends from your former life and beg for their analyses of your stress-free reality, because you continually can’t decipher what is acceptable and understandable behavior on the part of your new friends here in this stress-free reality, where all the rules are fluid and mostly upside down.

One day, as you don your flip flops to walk to the bank to make a cash deposit to cover an overdraft and catch up on past-due bills, you will acknowledge to yourself that you and you alone chose this stress-free life in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, where the weather is sultry and soothing and the water is a brilliant blue-green.

You will acknowledge that human beings are human everywhere, in all their goodness and with all their failings. That work is still work, and that the rent must still be paid, even in slow season.

You will not immediately run from this stress-free life, as you have in the past. You will simply accept it for what it is, for all that it is, for right now. You will be surprised by nothing, and you will learn to expect just about anything. You will be smarter and savvier as you realize nothing too grievous has been committed here in your stress-free life. That all is okay, just not as perfect as one would hope a new stress-free life should be.

It’s real life when you live where you once vacationed. Ah, if only we could just live on vacation, instead.

Today it rained and rained and blew, and then it rained some more. So much for the day off I had planned–one that included running past ocean-front estates followed by heading to my beautiful “neighborhood” beach that is actually part of an exclusive resort, but one to which I supposedly have access because I live in the ‘hood.

Instead, I woke up on time to get to work on time on my day off. That would be 6:00 a.m. Instead of running, I tossed the dogs down the back steps of my house and willed them to ignore the downpour and do the business. Instead of reading the final pages of my customer’s book at the beach, I opted for a dog-hair encrusted sofa and On-Demand movies. As a nod to getting dressed, I pulled on the jeans I’d worn to work the day before and didn’t bother to change the XXL T-shirt I’d slept in that screams the name of a local restaurant. Why comb my hair when I could braid it? Why wash my face when last-night’s make-up could be covered up with cover up? Yes, I was a vision.

My great guy had to work a weird afternoon/night shift. I am confident, however, that he had no problem leaving this vision behind, plunked as I was between two soaking wet dogs and sporting the aforementioned braid and yesterday’s smudged makeup.

I could have snuck in a run in between raindrops, but I didn’t. I didn’t even pretend to try. Instead, I spent an hour on the phone three different times with Comcast to get the On-Demand working, and then I didn’t budge when it finally did.

Did anyone out there actually pay to see “2012″? I did–$4.99 to be exact–and I was actually glued to the TV as it played on and on for two-plus hours, periodically wondering how earthquakes and tsunami waves would take out my tiny rock while I marveled at using the “pause” button to sneak a smoke on my wet deck.

How about “Up in the Air”? I expected a dumb, over-rated movie, and instead found myself remembering the heyday of frequent-flier miles and perks and being a pro in the security lines and all of the rest that really isn’t airline travel today. I liked the not-quite predictable twists in the plot. I liked the unsatisfying ending. Hell, I just liked languishing on my sofa and gorging out on movies and doing absolutely nothing productive all day.

Because work is suddenly a bizarre mix of unexpected everything, and all is not quite as it seemed yesterday, as much as I love my curious world of curiously great customers. Because one of my kids has just bought his first property in a real ‘hood that sort of scares me, and the other is moving to her own city ‘hood that worries me, even though it shouldn’t.

Because life and death and all the rest in between is happening at lightening speed these days, and I can’t seem to catch my breath to absorb it all. Because I often go 24 hours and more without seeing my great guy, given our work schedules. Because I live in a vacation paradise and really just want to go on a vacation to a city and wear real clothes and pretty shoes and eat food prepared by a chef, not a cook.

Meanwhile, why get dressed on my day off? After all, I survived the end of the world; I didn’t have to be a part of one handsome man’s meaningless life. And for five straight hours, I didn’t have to think about a thing except how to make the remote work to escape all the rest.

I covered all things small-town in a rural southern county–from city council meetings to holiday-decorating events–and I was utterly confident that these fine examples of my writing would convince any school to ignore the straight-C average I’d barely maintained during my previous two years in college. That’s right, even Duke. Especially Duke.

Of the three schools I applied to, one wait listed me, one accepted me outright, and one returned my typed application along with my application fee. That would be Duke–a school so unimpressed with my credentials that it couldn’t bring itself to cash my check. You could say I could take the hint. So long Blue Devils; hello Hoyas.

This also began a long RG tradition of vehemently rooting against Duke in any sport, particularly basketball. Not that I held a grudge or anything….

“Hey guys, I bought the NCAA package for us so we can watch the tournament,” I told my regular daytime customers a few weeks ago.

“Football’s over, right?” one asked the older man sitting next to him.

“Tournament?” another asked me.

“You know, March Madness!” I said, thinking for sure this would encourage my regulars to put aside their requests for the History Channel or “The Three Stooges” reruns.

No one said anything for a half minute or so.

“I hate basketball,” said one.

“I’ve never watched a game in my life–why would I start now?” asked his pal.

“You actually spent money to watch sports on TV?” queried another, thoroughly puzzled.

“Oh, come on,” I scolded them. “Don’t even pretend you don’t know about this tournament. And yes, I paid good money so we can watch it–four games at once on one TV.”

Again, silence.

“What, you’ve never filled out brackets for a pool, either?” I laughed, astonished at their very real disinterest in something I look forward to every year.

No answers from anyone. Great.

The next day, I brought in three blank brackets for them to fill out.

“I told you, I don’t even like the sport!” fussed one.

“I’ll do it later,” growled another.

Really. No, I don’t think so. Not on my watch.

“Look, I’m in an awesome pool in D.C. I’m entering a bracket for you guys. On me, no problem,” I smiled at their blank looks.

“Too much trouble to fill out,” grumbled one I figured I might have on my side.

I poured three drafts and placed the icy mugs in front of each. “Humor me and the beer’s on me.”

For the next half hour, I called out first round match-ups and told each to pick a name without thinking about it. Once we got past the “Who’s ever heard of THAT school?” and “I can’t spell that one’s name so I’ll go with the other team” comments, I had a completed bracket that I nicknamed “Keys Boys.”

In a tournament of crazy upsets, with my beloved Jayhawks bowing out way too soon, my Keys Boys chugged along quite nicely amidst the 200-plus entries. Old Dominion, really? Baylor? Butler? The further I fell in the rankings, the higher they climbed.

“You realize you’re annoying the crap out of me,” I told them when it was Final Four time.

One laughed: “Yeah, but we’re not even watching any of the games. Don’t want to jinx it.”

Very cute.

But, despite their seeming disinterest, one perked up when I told him his brackets might place in the top five.

“So, who would we have to root for?” he asked.

“Repeat after me,” I instructed. “Go Duke, then no Duke. And Michigan State or Butler all the way.”

“What?” asked my great guy when I was explaining the amazing place the Keys Boys were in. “You gotta root for Duke so I can win something in my pool.”

“You know why I can’t,” I explained. “Besides, I have to live with these guys.”

“You live with me!” he laughed, but not really.

“Right, of course,” I smiled. “But I know I see more of them than I do you, given our schedules!”

Nothing like a little March Madness to bring out true love.

I also think my Keys Boys finally watched a game–the final last night–and yep, they likely jinxed it.

In the movies, I’d have sailed through Duke’s application process and gone on to graduate with honors. In another movie, Butler would have made that last shot at the last second last night.

In my world, I did just fine at Georgetown, which somehow started me on a path that led me to tend bar in the Keys–something I am sure my theology professor, may he rest in peace, would be appalled to know. In my world, my Keys Boys didn’t end up in the money, even though they were on the money so often in their care-less brackets.

I owe my great guy a dinner. I have to switch the Direct TV box back to The History Channel. My Jayhawks T-shirt is carefully folded away until college football starts months down the road.

And damn Duke wins–again.

My Aunt J refers to this as being “journey proud,” as in excited, nervous, and all the rest about an upcoming journey. Throughout the years, I have arrived exhausted many times at her beach house, suffering from a kind of journey-proud lag, and always, it seemed, with two very well-rested kids in tow. Over those years, she never hesitated to take a toddler in hand or accompany a 10-year-old on the bike path and tell me to “go collapse on the sofa.” I love my Aunt J. She is the mother figure in my life and a wonderful grandmother-like great aunt to RG Son and Daughter.

“The babies are coming tomorrow!” I told her on the phone, yesterday.

“Oh, they got time off together? Wonderful!” she exclaimed.

It’s been almost a year since I have seen RG Son. I have missed every birthday and holiday with both my “babies” over the past year. When RG Daughter called to tell me she had unexpected time off this week, I booked flights for her and called her brother to beg him to join her–high-season prices and a total lack of cash on my part be damned. What’s another few hundred on plastic?

Thus, on my one day off yesterday, I cleaned and straightened the apartment, shoving unpacked but not-put-away stuff in closets and propping up unhung mirrors and framed prints on tables and cabinets, all in a vague hope to make it seem almost like home–one both kids will want to come home to, again.

“You sure you don’t mind picking them up?” I asked my great guy. I have to be at work this morning. He has to work tonight. This is our norm, living on opposite schedules.

Thus, during his few hours off, my great guy will spend those hours in the car, navigating several hours up Route 1, the Stretch and the Turnpike to pick up his girlfriend’s kids whom he’s never met and is a little nervous to do so, turn right around and drive back several more hours down the same boring highways to deliver them to my bar and then attempt to make it to his job on time. This is why he is my great guy.

I woke up at three this morning in a panic about how it’s all going to work out–not just about today’s logistics–but about everything:

–Will they like my great guy?

–Will they think I seem tired and haggard from the weird early hours and longs days working in my bar?

–Will they like my great guy?

–Will they think the apartment is okay, being a far cry from any place I’ve ever lived?

–Will they like my great guy?

–Will they think the fat new pup is cute, in all her neediness for affection?

–Will they like my great guy?

–Will they think all is fine in my life that I am living far away from Key West in this quiet fishing town, where Bingo is the big event of my week, and where I’m not sure I can scrounge a boat for them to spend even an hour on the water because it’s peak season?

–Will they like my great guy?

The babies are coming today! I have never felt so journey proud in my life.

When you live in the land that Spring Break never forgets, your local world dramatically shrinks as throngs of college kids, families, and snow birds converge on your otherwise favorite spots to eat and drink. That place is mobbed all day. That one and the other one are insane at sunset. And forget about breakfast without a long wait there, there, and there.

The crowds are warmly welcome, however, especially after we coveted space heaters and old college-logo sweatshirts through one of the coldest winters in history in these otherwise temperate Keys. Throughout January and February, those in the colder northern climes either got snowed in by their own heinous winter weather and canceled their trips, or they eyed the Weather Channel predictions for freeze warnings and wind chill temps as far south as Miami and just didn’t feel like spending the money to shiver along with us in paradise.

Slowly, we are warming up. Finally, we are well into the Spring Break bonanza that pumps money into the hands of all those in the hospitality realm as long as it doesn’t blow 25 to 30 mph off the bay or ocean side and your restaurant/bar is fully exposed. Really, it is the nick of time for the perfect weather we haven’t seen in months.

So what to do, where to go to get away from it all after working crazy shifts through it all? Some evenings, it boils down to Bingo.

“No really, it’ll be fun,” I said to my skeptical girlfriend.

“Sure, RG. Let me call my grandmother. She’d love to go with you,” my girlfriend said, shaking her head in semi-disbelief that was truly suggesting this as a potential pastime.

“What else is there to do right now?” I asked her. “Everyone else is working and every place is packed. Come on. Just humor me.”

“I don’t even know any of the games! Don’t they do all kinds of weird patterns for some of them?” she said, trying to sound adamant, but I could sense that it wouldn’t take much to convince her to join me for a night of a couple of cheap drinks in a smokey hall a few miles up the road.

“I know the games–do not judge me on that–and they always explain the rules to newbies like you, anyway,” I smiled. “I’ll even spot you your first cards.”

She hesitated, just a little. Our guys were both on doubles, we felt like getting out, and there was that odd allure of winning the big pot on the “cover all.”

“Okay. Fine. But just for a few games, then we’re outta there.”

Uh huh.

I often consider the phrase, “If anyone had told me five years ago that I’d…” and its various and astonishing completions: “…be tending bar in the Keys,” “…have lived in and reviled Key West for two short months,” and now, “…be playing Bingo at a spot very far off the Spring break byway.” When I play this mind game with myself of late, I acknowledge that nothing I do or see or muddle through seems quite so astonishing anymore. My life, set in such a quirky part of the Keys, is evolving into what may just may pass for “normal.” Okay, as normal as normal is down here.

Thus it was that we wandered into the land of multi-colored dobbers, good luck charms positioned at angles just so, rubber chickens poised to squawk when B 11 (chicken legs) is called, and the new-found knowledge that numbers under 50 and above 30 are each “a good year” to somebody.

We played the “small picture frame” and “Bingo the hard way” (no free spot), we got crazy and played three cards of three games at once (and realized it’s easy to miss a called number), we voted the “crazy L” as the most fun game. Then we won, each of us, back-to-back games. We were grudgingly applauded, being the slightly out-of-place strangers that we were.

Thankfully, we did not win the progressive pot of gold at the end of the evening. It would have been inappropriate at the very least. Give us a few months to play Monday night Bingo there or Thursday night Bingo at the other place. Let us establish our regular seats and finally understand what “the kite” game is.

Let the season come and go, let the coffers replenish. Let these busy days, hilarious nights, and tranquil times suspend themselves in frozen time. Let B 9–the “good news”–visit often.

I used to own… I used to have… I used to be…

“Here’s what I want to say,” said one.

“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you say this,” said another.

“I just can’t spell worth a damn, but I know what I want it to look like” said a friend as he furiously scribbled notes.

“What’s up?” I asked as I tossed a bucket of ice into my tiny bin.

“Gotta get a notice in the paper,” said the one who said he couldn’t spell.

“In ten minutes,” laughed the other.

“Maybe next week,” smiled the third.

“Well, um, maybe I can help a little,” I said, wondering why I had spoken up. “I used to do some writing and editing back in the day,” I said, wondering why I felt compelled to add even a shred more information.

Blank stares.

“I mean, you know, in my former life,” I laughed, wondering why I had to excuse myself and my knowledge.

“You did what?” asked the one I know the best because we are of the same age, but whom I really know nothing about.

“I, uh, I used to be a writer and editor–but really small time, nothing big, nothing great,” I said, feeling extraordinarily uneasy. “So, maybe if you need a hand with whatever you’re doing, you know, maybe I can help?” God, shut up, I scolded myself.

One shoved the legal pad toward my side of the bar. The other laughed. The third looked to the smoky ceiling and mouthed a silent “thank you.”

I scanned the notes, seeing immediately that it was a notice for a local event to raise funds for a local need.

“Can you make it, I don’t know, better?” asked the one I knew as much as I did not.

“Well, how about a headline that reads…” I said, and jotted my own notes atop his.

In a few short minutes, with very few changes, the notice was written to everyone’s satisfaction. One produced a computer from a backpack, logged on to someone’s nearby wireless, and the newly typed notice made its way through the breezy airwaves to a local paper miles away. Deadline met.

“Awesome, RG, thanks!” said the one I really don’t know.

“I barely touched it,” I laughed. “You guys did all the work.”

“Yeah, but…”

But nothing.

Later that night I dreamt I was back in D.C. tending my locals bar that had, in the way that dreams contort reality, become a D.C. bar.

“Hey RG, phone call,” said my boss who never answers the phone in real life, but who answered all the calls in my dream.

“Hello?”

“RG, ABC News here. We’d like to offer you a documentary producer’s position–for specials we have in mind that match your talent.”

Right.

“RG, phone call!” said my boss again.

“Like your style,” said the publisher. We see a book, a screenplay. We’ll up ABC’s offer. How soon can you be up here?”

Huh? What? Really?

And then I got lost in my city trying to find their offices, wondering whom I should pit against whom in negotiating a network salary vs. a screenplay advance, all as I signed a lease on a basement apartment that wouldn’t allow dogs, so I’d have to sneak them in, if only I could find a place to park so I could make the ABC interview in time–and should I tell them about the potential other deal? Because my great guy had to work a double and he didn’t know I was even in D.C. negotiating this unbelievable offer all because of a newspaper notice, except they said they knew all about my writing and I was the one, their one….

“RG, here it is!” smiled my customer a few days later.

“You made it look good,” said the other.

“Guess this was pretty easy for you,” said the third whom I will never know.

“Looks good, guys. You did all the work, though,” I said, scanning the one-paragraph blurb. “I just tweaked it a little.”

The one I wish I might someday know stared for half second, then held up his empty mug. Which I filled.

Someone wanted lunch. Another wanted a Beam and Coke. Three out-of-towners asked directions to places I didn’t know.

ABC. Screenplay contract. I laughed to myself. What crazy dreams I had, just the other day.

Life has a way of becoming quite full:

–I work a 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift. In reality, it’s 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. when you figure in the time to wake up and commute almost an hour. Mornings? everyone wonders. Days? Isn’t the money to be made at night? Yes, mornings. And yes, money is to be made during the day. I asked for the day shift after dealing with drunks who’d been knocking back booze all day before I came on the night shift. Nothing like cutting someone off at 5:31 p.m. The result–I have full-time day shifts, am building a nice following, and am happily content.

–This past Saturday night, the other girl no-called/no-showed, so it was a long, long double, followed by doing it all again Sunday morning to cover her shift. Not that I am complaining, because the money is always welcome. The bonus: I now permanently have her Sunday morning shift.

–Then there was the ill-fated watching of the Westminster Dog Show. What, no Bostons in the final group? Which led to my wondering whatever happened to Rouletta’s puppies, which was followed up by my contacting the breeder from whom I’d gotten Rouletta to ask about those puppies, which ended with my hearing that Rouletta’s puppies were doing well on the show circuit–and my agreeing to take on another 6-year-old retired female show dog.

“She’s a little overweight after her last litter,” the breeder warned me. “And be careful getting her and Rouletta together right away. It’s been two years, and they probably won’t remember each other.”

A most rotund bowling ball on legs arrived arrived at Fort Lauderdale Airport this past Sunday evening, just as the hockey game went into overtime. I hauled her out to the curb as my great guy patiently circled around listening to the game on the radio, Rouletta in the front seat with him.

When I freed her from her crate, Miss Fatty huffed and puffed and snorted and sniffed. But the minute she saw Rouletta, it was kisses all around. Who says dogs don’t have long memories? Fond memories.

Thus, I now have to transform another kennel dog into a house dog, which I had conveniently forgotten about doing with Rouletta. So far, so good, but a lot of work to do.

Meanwhile, the stories are swirling about in my head, and I’ll write them soon. As my aunt said during a recent phone call, “You have three different books in you; at least write one of them.” I will. And I hope to soon post more frequently as well.

But first, I have to get a pork chop pup in shape.