“No! Just leave us a phone number. We’ll call you if you win!” he says.

“You have a great chance,” pipes up his helper. “No one in the Keys wants to spend $25 on a raffle ticket, even if it is for a paid trip to Hawaii.”

Really. I can sell anything to anyone: Space heaters to South Floridians in July? No problem.

“How many tickets have you sold tonight?” I ask them both.

“Yours,” they laugh.

Love the odds, but feel a need to make it legit.

“If I can help you sell at least two more tickets, the karma alone should guarantee my win,” I laugh back.

Of course, I help sell three. And then two more.

“You’re really good!” says the organizer’s sidekick.

I know. Trust me, everyone at my tables wants dessert even when they don’t–and buys one–every shift.

“I await your call,” I tell them. We all laugh.

A week later, I report for my slowest shift of the week. The busser, per usual, announces upon arriving that he’ll be leaving within an hour. My coworker, a sweet girl who’s always in turmoil, says she’d love to be cut first, to which I agree. Both are gone by 8 p.m., which nets me $100, thanks to a late push.

It also nets me a ton of sidework to do by myself.

Roll the silver, scoop the sauces, bleach the cutting boards, and so on–for about a half hour longer than I should have been on the clock.

Because I am pretty much a dumb ass, I follow the rules at work. Everyone else keeps their cell phones in their pockets, their aprons, beside the computer, charging. I keep mine in my purse, locked away and hidden in my car, far away from any potential to distract me while I’m on the floor. Seriously, who needs to hear a Facebook update ding when pouring wine or slinging wings?

Yeah. Perhaps rules really are made to be broken.

An aside: My great guy has a premature bucket list, of sorts. Because he is a great guy with a great job, he has knocked off quite a lot on his list in the past year, and always with a twist. Take his golf outing at one of the nation’s best courses, for example, when his buddy somehow managed to hit the course’s designer, Pete Dye, in the foot on a green with a second shot. Photos all around and laughs and pats on the backs later, my great guy tries to buy Pete a beer in the club house. His answer: “Hell no! That guy hit me with a golf ball!” So what if it wasn’t my great guy who hit him? What a great bucket-list story!

More on the aside: My great guy wants to play golf in Hawaii, on any or all of the islands. What better way to thank him for all the financial and emotional support this past year than to “give” him an all-expenses-paid-winning trip for the two of us to number 7 on his list? I have been to Hawaii many times; I don’t care if I ever travel there again. But I’d love to give my great guy the trip of his lifetime. And I have a pretty decent shot at doing just that.

Except I don’t keep my phone handy while working. Because I am, clearly, a dumb ass.

When I get off work, my great guy and a recently relocated great D.C. girlfriend pal of mine are at the bar waiting for me. I love it when they come into work just to hang out until I get off. It feels as great as they are. Because they are the great people in my life here in SoFla.

I grab my purse from my car. I order a drink from the nice bartender with whom I work. I chat with my great guy and girlfriend for a few minutes.

“Gotta go chain smoke outside after my shift,” I laugh. “Oh, yeah, and check my phone. Except you’re both here, so God knows no one has called me.”

Uh huh.

One missed call from an unknown number. One message from said unknown number: “Hey RG, I’m calling from the Keys to say you’ve won the trip to Hawaii!”

OMG. I love a raffle. My great guy and I have won all kinds of stupid stuff in raffles–makeup for me, a spa robe, Florida Gator cups and jerseys. That’s right, we’re winners! And now, Hawaii. Life is SO GOOD.

Ha ha ha. Maybe I should listen to to the rest of the message.

“You have ten minutes to call us back or we give the trip away to the next winner!” Which was 20 minutes ago.

What? A time limit? What? WHAT?

I run inside to my restaurant’s bar and scream at my great guy to call the Keys bar we had enjoyed so much a week ago. “We won the trip!” I say, doing a modified up-and-down jump.

“Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Sure, yeah. No, I understand,” I hear my great guy say into his phone.

Okay we can upgrade our seats? Sure, it’s all good? You understand…what the hell do you understand?

“They gave the trip away,” my great guy says to me, nonplussed. “You didn’t call back in time.”

In time? You mean, the time I took to cover my coworkers’ early exits? The time I took to look at my cell phone at the end of my shift because I am the only dumb ass in the entire world of serving who doesn’t break the “No Cell Phones on the Floor” rule? No. And no. This is my time. Or, at least my great guy’s time to go to Hawaii.

Yeah, no.

“The organizer said that if it’s any consolation, the trip went to a combat medal winner who served in Afghanistan,” said my great guy, still calm.

“But, I won!” I say, almost crying.

“But you didn’t call back in time.”

“If I’d known there would be a time limit, I’d have given them my work number!”

“They called everyone they could think of to reach you or me,” says my great guy. “Why didn’t you give them my number?”

Because I am the dumb ass who thought if I won, I won; who thought a call to my number to tell me I won was good enough; because I am the dumb ass who never breaks the rules, but probably should start doing so. Except it’s too late. For Hawaii, anyway.

“Fight it!” say many commenters on my personal Facebook page when I regale the sad tale.

“Was it printed on the ticket that there was a time limit to respond?” say many more.

“Sue the bastards,” say a few more.

Yeah, no, again.

See, it’s the Keys. Kind of like “Chinatown.” I know the organizer. I know his sidekick. I know their past, their present and future baggage and sad stories and all the rest that makes them tick in Keys time. You don’t fight a damn thing in the Keys. It’s all that close to home, no matter where you call home.

“My parents have a timeshare they never use in Hawaii,” says my great girlfriend.

“You never know when good fare will come up online,” says the astounded bartender hearing all this unfold, who barely knows me although we’ve worked together for a month.

“Yes! And then you and your great guy can go!” says my great girlfriend.

We all consider this in silence as I sip my drink.

“This is why we don’t live in the Keys,” my great guy finally says.

“But…” I start to say.

“Let it go,” says my great guy. “It’s just a Keys thing. It’s just the Keys.”

I won. I lost. My mother. My sister. Only Chinatown. Just the Keys.

The frickin’ Keys.

“We have to go see them,” she announced one afternoon, and in true RG Daughter fashion, she already knew the D.C. concert dates, times and pricing.

Being cheap and dreading the thought of seeing musical icons gone old-man band, I bought us obstructed-view seats off to the side. Surprises were in store, however: Our so-called obstructed-view seats were right on the edge of a side portion of the stage down which Mick and the boys played more than not, and no musical old men were they. We were so close to them, I could count the deep wrinkles in their 60-something cheeks, but what a show they put on. What unexpected fun.

Last night, my great guy bought us tickets to see Aaron Lewis’ acoustic show at the Hard Rock. I have avoided concerts at the Hard Rock at all costs. Imagined parking horror, angst over crazy crowds, parking, parking and more parking nightmares have made me steer very clear. Although I will admit to attempting to get into the Kiss concert on St. Patrick’s Day in somewhat of a tipsy moment when my great guy had free tickets to the Improv that evening, of all evenings to be out, at, of all places, the Hard Rock. We declined the multiple scalper ticket offers, however, decided to bail on the Improv and ended up dancing the drunken swirl for hours at Murphy’s Law. What unexpected fun that was, too. And trust me, I don’t do St. Patrick’s Day, ever.

But still….

In my mind, concert watching is akin to movie watching in a theater: the potential for stupid noisy people surrounding me and ruining the entire experience is pretty great. And in anticipation of our big date-night concert, I regaled my great guy with my past concert fun.

“My first concert was the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead,” I told him as we crawled through rush-hour traffic heading west from the beach.

“That’s cool,” he said, paying more attention to the line of cars stretching ahead of us as one light after another turned from green to red to green several times before we could inch through various intersections on our “short cut” to avoid traffic.

“No, actually, it wasn’t,” I said, remembering every awful moment of that day when I was barely 18, a day that started with trying to save money by parking in a neighborhood close to DC Stadium (later called RFK Stadium) and being threatened at knifepoint to give up all the cash in my friend’s wallet. This was followed by dropping a gallon of Gallo jug wine I’d hoped to sneak in–the red wine, vintage yesterday, splashing everywhere as the thick jug glass splintered in tiny pieces all over me and everyone else around me. I also vividly remember thinking I was dying of heat stroke at that all-day concert, that, if memory correctly serves, was held on one of the hottest, muggiest, sunny July days ever, and our “seats” were on the shadeless field.

I think The Dead played only three songs, but each song lasted two hours. By the time the Allman Brothers came on (yep, the Dead was the 6-hour opener), I was huddled under the sheet we had brought to sit on, desperate for water, and trying not to make eye contact with every drugged up loser that stumbled over or on top of me. Oh yeah, and then there was the anticipated walk back to the far-away parked car.

And that, as it turned out, was the last concert I went to until I was married with children and stood in line at 6 a.m. at a Ticketmaster box office at the back of a now-closed Hecht Company for Back Street Boys tickets for RG Daughter and her posse of 11-year-old giggling girlfriends. I took full advantage of the “parent lounge” at that one.

Lest I forget, I did see one of my all-time favorites, Al Green. RG Son, had bonded with Mr. “Let’s Stay Together,” when RG Son had visited Memphis on yet another of my kids’ school-related projects that hardly resembled any field trip that I ever took.

An aside: When you have kids and they reach a certain age and study what you once enjoyed as pure entertainment when you weren’t studying, it puts much in the way of an age perspective.

A group of wealthy white kids, mostly Jewish, traveled to Memphis to connect with the musical roots of American blues and all that followed. On a Sunday morning, they visited the Reverend Al Green’s church. To say that many fish were out of water on that day is a vast understatement. Amidst the many “Amens!” and all else during the lively service, Rev. Green welcomed all the out-of-towners, including the group of pubescent white boys from D.C. RG Son, knowing this was THE Al Green his mother listened to on the oldies station, led his group in answering the welcome with a kind of “Hell Yeah!” answer.

“And then, after all the religious stuff, he started singing the songs I knew, you know, because of you,” he told me.

“Really, in his church?” I asked, both jealous RG Son had seen one of my favorites in such an intimate and non-commerical setting and surprised that one of my favorites had belted out his greatest hits in church. But hey, it was his church.

Months later, Al Green scheduled a concert at Constitution Hall.

“We have to go,” RG Son said.

“Of course we do,” I concurred.

Our seats were good, the crowd of middle-aged, mostly African-American patrons was all about fun, but that’s where the good stopped and the “Huh?” began. Because Al Green was tired, out of his element, and apparently voiceless. From the start, he’d start a song everyone knew, then hold his microphone out to the crowd that happily sang the song for him. For hours. For every song. I could have done that at home for free, and danced, too, when no one was looking.

Chalk up another no vote for concerts.

And yet, there I was last night, in the midst of rush hour, headed to a concert to hear a person I only vaguely knew, but that my great guy said I would love because it would be acoustic. He even played a selection of Lewis’ greatest hits on his iPhone while we sat in traffic.

“Oh, I know him,” I said, and I did. Sort of.

“Staind,” said my great guy. “He was lead singer.”

Right.

Our seats were good. I was off work the next day and could enjoy the night, and that was good. The crowd was fine. I was even dressed properly after two years in the Keys–jeans and a dressy top. Cool.

Aaron Lewis is a masterful singer-songwriter. I get that. But the first half hour of his concert was nothing more than what I refer to as “Don’t Jump!” ledge songs. I hate my life, I can’t live without you, I hate myself even more for not being able to live without you. My God, I have an iPod ap filled with “ledge” songs that I only listen to when I am at the beach and need a good cry when no one is looking or caring.

Meanwhile, the crowd continually called out names of Staind songs Lewis said he wouldn’t be able to “get to.” But here’s a song from my new record.

A very large man appeared stage to accompany Lewis. “He’s got more talent in his cankles than I ever will have,” said Lewis, and then referred to this large man’s ability on every cool musical instrument ever constructed. I only wish the first half hour of the concert, and maybe even the second, could have featured more of the big guy on those various instruments.

By the last half hour, Lewis seemed to get his crowd and answered their neediness for gravel-voiced songs they knew when he was part of a group. He also looked at his watch three times. Is it over yet? he seemed to think.

He sang two more songs that I both recognized and love. Both songs made it worth the rush-hour push to get there and listening to the previous plethora of numbing “ledge” songs. Bye bye. Concert over.

Not so fast. Every concert has to have its encore.

“Mudshovel!” “Epiphany!” the crowd shouted.

“Shut the fuck up!” Lewis told us. “Shut up in 30 seconds or I won’t play.”

With that, he unplugged one of his many acoustic guitars, pulled his stool away from the microphone and waited for all of us to shut the fuck up.

Which we did.

To which he responded with an non-amplified, beautiful song I don’t know and will never remember the name of, except to say it was exceptional, unbelievable, real, honest–in all its unplugged, heartfelt angst and ledge-ness. That one song, that one last song, made this a concert. A very good concert.

Kind of like the time I saw James Taylor sing a benefit at a tiny Martha’s Vineyard community hall, when he was still married to Carly Simon, and she joined him to sing along in this very special, incredibly intimate venue.

Now that was a concert.

So was last night, at the very end of the night.

I’d go see Aaron Lewis again. But I’d rather invite him and the big guy to play, unplugged, in my living room. And that, I am confident, would be the concert of all concerts.

I knew, of course, the weather was horrible throughout the southeast. I also knew the horribleness was about to spread to the northeast. When you live in Florida–especially SoFla–you become captivated, nay mesmerized, by The Weather Channel’s minute-by-minute updates on awful winter weather that you are no longer enduring. I figure it’s an even exchange for sweating out our summer temps and humidity and the equally mesmerizing “Tropical Updates” and “Hurricane Preparedness” reports from June through October.

My new job is tending a SoFla hotel bar and lounge. It is very corporate and very demanding and very white shirt and black pants and so, so serious. One Sunday I was wearing flip flops and jeans and a T-shirt to work; the next evening I was, to quote my great guy, dressed up “like a Boston Terrier.” I love the new job for its corporate benefits. I loathe the new job for its corporate triple management structure and constant comments from the management trifecta to “sell more food!” What? Booze doesn’t make the profit? And you want me to prep my salads and soups and all the rest that the multiple servers in the restaurant prep? Huh?

Given this love/loathing reality, I rarely have enough time to talk with guests as I pour them another, and rarely do I pour anything anymore in a timely fashion. Sorry business people swilling Crown and anything carbonated at warp speed. I have to make a Caesar salad and wash a soup bowl and prep a shrimp cocktail after I slice tomatoes and cucumbers. Gotta be outta the bar and into the weeds and eons away from being able to chat you up.

I used to be a good bartender. I used to be a good server. I am neither when I have to do both at one time with no food runner, no busser, no nobody but me to handle 14 tables of four and 22 bar stools. Oh sure, I saw these lounge tables and bar stools when I interviewed for the job. I just never imagined they’d fill up all at once all the time. And this ain’t “Keys time” no more, sweetheart. Oh yeah, and the bar has one blender to serve the never ending customers who ask, “What frozen drinks do you serve here?” And today we introduced a mojito special. I consider this my punishment for ordering these tasty beverages when I am out at a tourist bar–even if I only order these minty concoctions when the bartender has few customers and much free time to muddle the damn things.

Thus, yesterday evening, when no one was getting out of South Florida with a connection to anywhere (or, for that matter, direct to anywhere else, it seemed, except to South America), I pouted in solidarity with those stuck in my fair state and left only with options to enjoy the hotel’s refreshing pool and soothing sounds of its multiple waterfalls, play the slots and tables at the nearby casinos, and pretty much totally relax in our balmy temps. Yeah, boo hoo. Mojito, sir? You’re trapped here en route to Minneapolis by way of Atlanta? Sure, just as soon as I chop some lettuce for your girlfriend’s salad.

So we’re the only state in the union–or maybe even the only state, period–without snow on 1-11-11? Suck it up and man up, people. I’ll get that pink drink to you as soon as I can. The snow shovel and rock salt will be waiting for you, soon enough.

“Really?” I asked, knowing this would be quite a trek for him.

“I’m getting on the bus and going there to be alone when I remember,” he nodded. “I don’t think they even have anything planned as a memorial!”

Funny how, without knowing this customer at all well out of the context of my bar, and without his telling me the specifics, I knew him well enough to know exactly where he was headed and why.

“Get one of your buddies to drive you down,” I said, because his buddies drive him around all the time anyway, and the bus would take forever.

“No,” he said, “I’m doing this alone.”

“I don’t think you’ll be alone,” I told him. “I am sure there are events planned.”

“No,” he sort of growled. “There’s nothing going on, and I can’t believe it! So I’m going alone to pay my respects.”

Okay.

Labor Day weekend marked the 75th anniversary of a deadly, unnamed (because they didn’t name them back then) hurricane that made a direct hit in Islamorada and the Upper Keys, reportedly with sustained winds of 200 mph, and the lowest ever recorded barometric pressure reading of 26.35 inches. Hundreds of WWI veterans working on a nearby project and many other local residents lost their lives in the nightmare storm. A memorial was built in 1937 by the WPA, and the ashes of those who perished are buried in a crypt at what is locally known as the Hurricane Monument.

Of course there would be at least one tribute or ceremony to mark this dark anniversary. Right?

A small canopy tent popped up on Saturday morning. I stopped by to check it out and briefly chatted with a woman from the Matecumbe Historical Trust. She gave me a glossy brochure titled “A Guide to Historic Islamorada” and photocopied tour information and a map with numbered sites and descriptions of each.

We have that much history beyond fishing and Key lime pie and over-played Jimmy Buffet songs?

I am embarrassed to admit that I have never looked beyond the here and now of this area of the Keys that I love one minute for its quiet beauty and barely tolerate the next for its seemingly one-dimensional world of boats and booze.

I bought a hurricane memorial T-shirt to support the Trust’s efforts to educate me, and, tour map in hand, wandered down the Old Road I usually drive and was, quite simply, amazed. That place used to be a hotel? This one was a grocery store and later a restaurant and bar? The Red Cross and WPA built so many of the simple concrete houses that dot the town? There’s a cemetery on the property of that luxury resort?

Cool.

Later in the weekend, a small crowd gathered for a short wreath-laying ceremony at the Hurricane Monument. I know this only because I happened to drive by as people arrived for it. Later that afternoon, I drove by again, and this time I stopped for a moment–having the place to myself–and watched the ribbons on the flower wreath flutter ever so slightly in the breeze. Standing there alone, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the loss of life memorialized at this very spot. I said a quick, silent prayer.

Okay then.

“I did it. I made it down there and paid my respects,” said my customer on Tuesday following Labor Day.

“Oh good!” I said. “So you saw that they had several events going on, right?”

“No, no they didn’t,” he insisted. “Not while I was there, anyway. But it doesn’t matter. I wanted to be there alone, and I was.”

“Did you see the wreath?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I did,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.

“I thought it was beautiful,” I said, emptying his ashtray.

“I just wanted to pay my respects,” he said, not really to me. “Alone.”

Which he did. And in an unintended, unexpected way, I guess I did, too.

“Everyone has them, battles them,” I was told over and over again by Fort Lauderdale friends.

Not this gal. I kept everything a bug would crave locked up in airtight containers–from dog food to sugar to salt and pepper. A cardboard box or container had less than a five-minute lifespan in my house before being tossed in the outdoor dumpster. Same with grocery bags.

The one time a Palmetto tried to make my place hers, she met an awkward death at the end of an almost-useless can of bug spray.

“They’re going to get in sometimes. It’s the tropics,” my great guy would calmly and annoyingly say when I threatened to torch our Key West house rather than live in what felt like the Palmetto Bug Hotel.

My discovery and purchase of a gallon-sized jug of Ortho “Home Defense–MAX,” however, was nothing short of a life-changing experience. I became empowered by the hand-sprayer attachment that allowed an accurate sure shot behind the stove and under the refrigerator. I became the hunter instead of the hunted based upon an “effectiveness guarantee” and a promise to “keep on killing” for months in between sprays.

It worked, sort of, in that we kept the invasion down to a weekly attack. But the Key West house, like Key West itself, was just another train-wreck movie that constantly replayed during our brief attempt to call the place “home.”

Now that we are back in the Upper Keys, however, I realize that those pesky Palmettos merely represent the front line of what lurks in these parts. Sure, they try to breach the outside perimeter I drench with my liquid gold “MAX” every two weeks (obviously, I don’t believe in waiting months between sprays), but they simply encounter the interior barrier that I re-saturate almost as often.

Which means, the only bugs I see in my place are the dead ones that never make it past the door jam or window sill.

Turns out, however, that my beloved chemicals don’t do much to scare off the rest of the Keys menagerie that clearly exists to torture me.

“I’m sure it just came in when we moved in,” said my great guy when he confessed that he had killed a scorpion in the guest bedroom while I was at work. Not very comforting, since he killed said scorpion three months after we moved in.

“How about that one?” I said a week later, pointing to the large black shape with the curly tail that dangled from the top of the opening to our outdoor laundry closet. (As an aside, what is it with Keys homeowners who think placing laundry facilities outside–so you can sweat to death in the heat or get drenched in a downpour as you fold your work clothes–is somehow a genius solution to limited-space issues?)

“What the hell,” said my great guy, who looked a little like a possessed crazy man as he swatted the life out of the thing, while I calmly sipped my wine from my rocking chair on our back deck.

Later, I soaked the laundry closet inside and out with my sprayable courage, even though the Ortho label said nothing about the product’s ability to slay scorpions.

I considered it real progress in my maturation process, however, that I didn’t pack up my belongings and move out the next morning.

“It was just a frog,” said my great guy, laughing, as he shared his afternoon escapade that had unfolded while I was, as always, at work.

I understand how, in most realms, the idea of a slimy frog perched on one’s toilet seat could be considered somewhat humorous. And upon hearing that said frog eluded my great guy for several minutes while it hopped down the hall and into the bedroom, with the dogs in hot pursuit of the thing–and who knew if it was poisonous–the image could elicit a chuckle.

Unless you are me. And every day you notice the ever increasing number of slimy frogs of various sizes invading your backyard and living under your house.

Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. What’s good for the Palmettos is surely good for all the rest of the stinging, hopping critters.

“Please tell me that’s a large mouse,” I said to my great guy one recent evening as I watched a long-tailed creature scurry up the trunk of the too-close-to-our-house-in-the-event-of-a-hurricane palm tree and perch on an overhanging frond and begin a two-minute stare-down with me.

He knew better than to answer that one.

But last night, when the same long-tailed creature got into a hissing match with the dogs, claws bared, I lost my mind and began screaming for my great guy to come outside and save us all.

Brandishing the red cover of our 14-inch grill like a gladiator’s shield, it only took him three seconds to slam it over the still-hissing whatever-it-was and trap it.

“Now what?” I almost cried.

“Take the dogs inside and close the door. You don’t want to be outside for this,” he said, calmly grabbing a two-by-four plank from under the deck.

Oh. Gross.

But at least it’s dead–and gone with today’s trash pick-up.

Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. Can’t hurt to spray a little more of the “Max” around the yard.

Just keep all lighters and matches away from me for a while.

At the year-and-a-half mark of my living in the Keys, the following pathetic statistics bear witness to my landlocked life here: I have been fishing once, never snorkeled, and can count on one hand the number of times I have been out on a boat.

“We’re going to the Sandbar on Sunday,” said a friend with a big boat on which he lives and a little boat on which he plays. “You want to go with us?”

The Sandbar? On a Sunday? Where, smack in the middle of the ocean, a lengthy strip of visible sand lures boaters by the dozens, their skiffs crammed full of beer and booze and those who will imbibe both to extreme excess?

“Go with them. You’ll have fun,” said my great guy who had to work, as always, on my day off.

The Sandbar? On a Sunday? Where every stereotypical image of the Jersey Shore meets that of Venice, Calif., resulting in a kind of waterlogged, beach-town boardwalk on steroids?

“Good, we leave at 11 a.m.,” said the friend who took my great guy’s comment as my acceptance of his invitation.

Guess I was going to the Sandbar. On a Sunday.

There is nothing quite like being on the water in the Keys. You see everything you drive past every day from an entirely different perspective: That ugly concrete garage backs up to a beautiful bay-front estate; that tiny, nondescript road-side motel boasts an ocean view to die for–and a huge pool.

As you slow here and speed up there, as you take the cut through the mangroves over there, you are continually amazed by how much you never see from shore.

“How about here?” said my friend as we slowly puttered into a spot between two larger fishing boats. His girlfriend agreed, and seconds later the anchor was dropped. We were wedged in with the other hundreds at the Sandbar. On a Sunday.

Dogs floated by on rafts being pulled by their owners. Inflatable coolers pulled up the rear of a line of 20-something guys cruising the shallow waters for 20-something gals. The terrible sound system blaring country music on one boat tried to outdo the terrible sound system playing salsa-style tunes on the boat next to it, which prompted the guy with a tiny skiff and a huge sound system to drown them both out with pounding urban sounds.

Kill me first, I thought, rather than stay here another second on the Sandbar. And never again on a Sunday.

“You’re at the Sandbar?” asked RG daughter, when I called to report my latest escapade. “I saw something about it once on the Travel Channel.”

On a Sunday?

I watched my friend’s girlfriend lounge about in the shallow water on a floating raft tied to the boat, a glass of wine in one hand and a book in the other. Okay, I told myself, get over yourself and enjoy the day.

I plugged my headphones into my ears, played my own music to drown out the competing tunes trifecta, and stretched out on a towel the bow of the boat. I snoozed a little; I relaxed a lot. At the Sandbar. Even on a Sunday.

Three hours, two Gatorades and one slight sunburn later, we were headed back to shore.

“I need a boat,” I blurted out.

“You?” laughed my friend. “Didn’t you say this was your first visit to the Sandbar, and how you are a little afraid of boats and big water?”

“That’s why I need a boat,” I said. “I have to get over all my stupid fears.” And live what is clearly the other major and very cool part of life here.

“Why don’t you and your guy just borrow my skiff tomorrow,” he offered. Because he thought I was kidding about getting a boat.

Whatever the Sandbar may be on a Sunday, it isn’t on a Monday.

On Monday, the Sandbar’s calmer, more sedate twin sister greets a handful of boaters who prefer the sounds of birds calling and waves lapping over that of screeching canned music. On Monday, this Sandbar’s alter ego allows her azure water to teem with tiny fish and maybe a ray or a turtle, or two.

On any Monday, you will be completely captivated by the Sandbar’s unique spell, and you will immediately give in to the notion that if you had a boat of your own, you could explore all the other beautiful sandbars and all the other parts of the close-in Keys waters that, until this day, were something vague and unreachable and simply “out there.”

On this Monday, with me, my great guy and my dogs aboard a borrowed boat, I finally understood what all the fuss about living here is all about.

My regulars grudgingly looked up and silently acknowledged his presence, then immediately turned back to their styrofoam cups of dark coffee.

“Can I get you something from the bar?” I asked.

“No, no. I’m here to introduce myself,” he repeated, smiling as he fumbled with his attache. “Here,” he said, handing me a postcard-sized something.

The brightly colored, glossy card felt awkward in my aching fingers, which are perpetually cramping from too many shifts during which they are formed into a bartender’s grip poised to pour yet another shot of spirits.

“That’s me!” he exclaimed, smiling as I tried to make sense of the picture and message emblazoned across the front of his card.

“Well, yes it is,” I said, pretending to read it while waiting for his pitch to hawk booze, nonalcoholic teas, colorful bev naps or just about anything else this one of three places I work would never purchase.

“I’m running for the mosquito board,” he said, now very serious.

One of my coffee drinkers looked up at this comment.

“And I was told that if I want to win this thing, I need to visit every single local bar in the Keys.” Oh, that smile. “Well, and other places too. You know, restaurants and all the rest.”

File this place that I love and hate–and for reasons unknown to me to which I remain ever loyal despite the horrendous lack of money I make and the cast of characters I never thought I would ever, ever know, much less really get to know–under “all the rest,” I thought. I may not know much anymore, but I do know that this one place qualifies as everything that defines the ultimate of Keys “local.”

“Wait, there’s an actual mosquito board that one has to be elected to?” I asked, kind of curious. My locals breathed a collective sigh of relief as I asked this. Now they didn’t have to engage with this guy; it was all me and all him. Their coffees, their thoughts, and their quiet morning time was safe for another few minutes.

“In this county, yes,” he said, that smile still everywhere on his face.

“So, okay. But why you?” I asked, harking to my D.C. days, when I cared enough to vote in every single local election, based solely upon carefully thought-out reasons based on who-the-hell-knows what, now that I really think about it.

“Because I own a resort down south and the mosquitoes used to be under control and now they aren’t.”

Fair enough.

“It’s affecting my guests. My livelihood.”

I guess so.

“So I’m running for the board.”

My locals pretended to be disinterested. But I knew they were listening to every single word my mosquito man and I exchanged.

“You know what?” I said more than asked. “You have absolutely got my vote.” My God, any guy that drives more than an hour north to campaign for election to the county mosquito board deserves to be elected.

“Thank you!” he smiled more broadly than before. “Here!” he said as he handed me a pen.

Wait, a pen? With his name on it? A pen that actually writes? Ask any server or bartender. We covet pens. Give me a pen and I am your best friend. Give me two pens and I will give you a drink. Give me a handful of pens and I will not only vote for you, but I will tell everyone who walks through this local door as well as the doors of my other jobs to vote for you. Hell, I’ll be your campaign manager. No, seriously, you just met your vote-getting mama. Do you have a few more, pens that is?

“Just remember me on voting day!” he said, smiling that same ear-to-ear grin, as he walked out after dropping more pens on the bar.

“Are any of you registered to vote?” I asked my coffee-clatch gang, figuring I had a 50-50 shot at an affirmative answer.

“Does ten years ago count?” asked one.

“I never vote,” said another.

“What’s the point?” echoed his pal.

“Yeah, well I am registered,” I said. “And God help me that I am because I have to continually beg to get out of jury duty because I can’t afford the time off to serve, and I am on my third deferral as we speak.” I was rambling. “Anyway, if you can vote, vote for this guy.”

Blank stares from my regulars.

“Think about it. This is the mosquito board. That guy just drove an hour or more north to introduce himself and plead his worthiness as a mosquito board candidate right here, in this place!”

More blank stares.

“Well, all I can say is that he has my vote. And he better have yours!”

I was clearing my coffee bar.

“No, really!”

And they were going, going, gone.

So be it. I saved my candidate’s cards, however, and I have told anyone and everyone at my three jobs to vote for him.

On the eve of a tropical storm, the reaction to which screams first-snowfall panic in D.C., and as I smoke a last smoke for the night and swat more mosquitoes on my deck than I ever imagined would congregate around a citronella three-wick candle, I wish everyone in any kind of power could be more like my mosquito man: He drives miles to introduce himself; he has a personal connection to the problem he wants to correct; he really wants to get the job done.

I wish I had more of the guy’s cards. He needs a landslide, and I want to help make it happen. And no, it’s not about the pens. Okay, maybe it is, but only a little.

“Damn, it’s too hot for June,” he said two days ago.

So it is that we feel cheated again by the fair-weather gods in this quiet corner of paradise:

2010 Winter: 40s and more 40s.

2010 Barely Summer: 85 degrees and a heat index by 8 a.m.

2010 Winter: Felling cheated out of the perfect weather we usually enjoy.

2010 Barely Summer: Knowing we are still being cheated out of the perfect weather we never got to enjoy.

2010 Winter: Cranking up AC to 87 in hopes that blowing tepid air takes the edge off icy temps in house.

2010 Barley Summer: Feeling guilty about turning down AC to 75 at night, when utilities are included in rent.

2010 Winter: Rouletta won’t lie down on the cold tile floor.

2010 Barely Summer: Rouletta won’t move from the cold tile floor after a 5-second walk outside.

2010 Winter: Ordering a space heater online because the entire Keys is sold out of the things for weeks.

2010 Barely Summer: Buying battery- and crank-operated TV, radio, lanterns, etc., while still on the shelves, because if it’s this hot this early in the summer, what will the storm season bring?

2010 Winter: Tourists cancel vacations in droves because of snow storms up north and “winter” down south.

2010 Barely Summer: Tourists talk of canceling vacations because of oil-spill worries, visit the Keys anyway, then complain about the excessive heat.

2010 Winter: Layers and more layers that are never enough.

2010 Barely Summer: You want me to wear THAT and THAT and then work outside in the sun for seven hours?

2010 Winter: Locals lose their suntans because it’s too cold to go to a pool on a day off.

2010 Barely Summer: Locals lose their suntans because it’s too hot to go to a pool on a day off.

2010 Winter:

2010 Barely Summer: