In August of 2010 me, my youngest daughter and a friend of hers headed down to Key West for a week for vacation. It was a great vacation and I spent the week smoking Cuban seed cigars, drinking at Ernest Hemmingway’s favorite bar, and chasing six toed cats around his old house. I hung out outside Jimmy Buffets recording studio hoping to drink a beer with the king parrot head himself. It never happened but the thought that it might was kind of cool. We did the Dolphin thing, went snorkeling, and the daughter did the parachute behind the boat thing. I spent hours drinking cold ones and reflecting on how after being divorced for 10 years I felt I had my life back and really felt good about everything in my life. My oldest has settled in Alaska and is as happy as I have ever seen him. He was living his dream working on a fishing boat catching thousands of pounds of Salmon and Halibut a day. I hate that he is so far away but knowing that he is happy makes it easier. A couple of months earlier I had gone to San Diego with my middle daughter and granddaughter and watched her run her first marathon and raise thousands of dollars for a Lymphoma and Leukemia charity. She has a great job and was working hard to be a great mother to my granddaughter. We went to Sea World and got to show my granddaughter the ocean for the first time. We had a great trip. Watching her finish that marathon was amazing and I was so proud of her. My youngest was preparing for her senior year in high school and I was so proud of the young woman she had become. Her and her friend were both 17 at the time so I was able to pretty much let them do their own thing around Key West, but I did follow them from time to time just for peace of mind. I did have to run them off of Duval Street one night; it gets a little freaky when the sun goes down. I had recently entered the world of online dating and for the first time in many years was dating again. I had met some very nice women and had been on dates with a few of them. I was excited to get back home to go on my first in person date with somebody who really had my interest. We did eventually go out and became an item fairly quickly. She was just perfect. A cyclist like me, had kids the same age as mine, and we really hit it off. My career had taken an interesting turn when I was asked to join a project with the company to upgrade some of our software. So for two years I will commute from Kansas City to Princeton, NJ two to three weeks per month. I love going to New York and this job would allow me to go quite a bit. I love my job and enjoy what I do. The travel gets old but I work with some great people and love the challenge. I had been working on repairing my relationship with the church and was attending again. Life was good.
