I’ve written about my crazy neighborhood that I kind of love. This feeling was validated recently when a beloved cat went missing.

The neighbor across the street enjoyed a wonderful vacation with her husband and son to the Grand Canyon only to return home to learn that the pet sitter had allowed their cat to get out and now Kenny had been missing for more than twenty-four hours.

I was in the middle of doing the dishes when the son rang our doorbell to show me Kenny’s picture. I immediately followed him across the street, dishrag still in hand, and joined his distraught mom in the yard of a nearby vacant house. We made our way through the overgrown yard searching for Kenny.

The radar of a pet lover on the block must have gone off because she came running over when she saw us all in the middle of the street. “What happened?” she asked. Another neighbor returned from his search with no good news, but I was heartened by how my neighbors sprang into action.

Then it started pouring rain and Kenny’s mom headed down the street, umbrella in hand calling out for her ten-year-old cat. That night on the advice of the neighborhood cat expert they put food on their front porch and left the doors to the screened in patio cracked open with a litter box, some of the owner’s clothes, and the cat’s bed, and lo and behold at 4:30 that morning the ring cam went off and Kenny was home.

Don’t you just love a happy ending?

Nobody does nuggets of encouragement better than Wordle.

Admittedly, I am not someone who likes games. I remember back in the 70s when someone in our neighborhood got a video game called “Pong” for their television. Most people were enamored with this cool new invention, but I never saw the attraction.

Although they represent two completely different eras of game development, Wordle and Pong are both simplistic. But somehow Wordle appeals to me. Maybe it’s the nerd element (Nerdle?). Or maybe it’s the encouragement factor. I’m a little embarrassed to admit how good it feels when I get the word in three tries and my Wordle screen flashes, “Impressive!” Better yet is the elusive “Magnificent!” for getting it in two.

(By the way, how great is the word Magnificent?)

But I have to say I kind of disagree with the Wordle gods. Does getting a five really deserve a “Great!”?

I’m thinking more like, “Meh.”

Apologies to my non-Wordle playing readers…

Recently I was on a walk with my nieces when they heard voices coming out of my butt. Now I admit I may have “talked out my ass” once or twice in my life, but this was different. Apparently, I butt dialed someone. And this was no ordinary butt dial. This was a six person Facetime call.

I’ve had a cell phone for about twenty years, and I’ve never butt dialed anyone before. Now that probably means one of two things: either I’m officially old, or my butt is getting bigger because the phone was in my back pocket.

As you can imagine, neither of those sit well with me until I realized that it could actually be both of those things.

Anyway, consider yourself warned if you’re in my list of contacts.

I discovered the quote, “None of us get out of here alive,” in a book I read recently. The book was forgettable, but my mind will not let go of the line.

The quote is attributed to many people, but the oldest reference I found was in the lyrics of Five to One, by the Doors, and the name of Jim Morrison’s biography, “No One Here Gets Out Alive.”

Who knows what the enigmatic Morrison was trying to say, but social media has cannibalized the quote in every way imaginable.

My interpretation is simple: Go easy on yourself. All this is temporary. You are doing the best you can.

Cruising is a little more accessible for Floridians, so I’ve been lucky enough to experience a variety of these floating vacations. Years ago I went with a group of friends after one of them heard a radio ad for a cruise for $150. As it turned out it was a gay cruise (not that there’s anything wrong with that). That’s the cruise that had us in a bar in Mexico where they put a plastic tarp over you and pour sangria down your throat. Needless to say, hours later we found ourselves running down the dock yelling “Wait!” as they were pulling up the gangway.

Now, hubby and I like cruises where they have a quiet deck for reading and there is a sea of walkers/scooters outside the dining room for the four o’clock dinner. Sometimes there are cooking classes, maybe even a lecture. Family members scoff saying, “Those are the old ships.”

So we recently tried one of the newer fancier cruises…the ones that look like someone took a giant crane and lifted Las Vegas off its tectonic plate and dropped it on a floating barge. This ship was spectacular with an Aqua Theater that had the best show I have ever seen, which included high-dives and acrobatics synced to great music. There was also a fantastic ice skating show and the Broadway musical Cats – just to name a few of the many “diversions.” All big fun and a great way to vacation with family as our group of eighteen included seven kids.

But there was no quiet deck, and they did away with our favorite bar – the one with the classical guitarist and the floor-to-ceiling windows with a 270-degree panoramic ocean view where you sit high above, sipping cocktails while watching the shenanigans being played out on the decks below.

Honestly, though, it’s all a bit “pinch me” to think of younger days when I spent Saturday nights watching Captain Stubing and the gang on those “exciting and new” adventures at sea, all of which seemed only for the rich and famous.

The late, great Robin Williams said, “Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’”

Can’t you just picture him running around on stage, arms waving in the air imitating a partying flower in that high pitch hilarious voice?

I realize how fortunate we are in Florida that we don’t typically experience the really cold weather that kills everything green. But this year was different and now everything is brown and sad, and much has died.

But one of my trees that I so hoped would survive is starting to show signs of life. I think I heard a whisper of “Let’s party” when I was out there the other day.

I wish Robin were still with us to spread that contagious joy as only he could.

Happy spring! 🌻

I never got to say how much we enjoyed knowing George, and how lucky we feel to have had him in our lives when I first wrote about him in “Mailing A Leg.”

The way we met George pretty much sums up the type of person he was. Hubby was checking his mom into “rehab” after a fall. Unfortunately, these places are filled with folks who have nowhere to go, most with advanced memory issues and a few perfectly fine mentally, like George. He came wheeling in with his walker like the welcome committee. He showed them the ropes and said to hubby, “Come to my room and I’ll give you the list of channels.” Admittedly, hubby’s first thought was, uh oh. But then he realized, he does only have one leg; I can probably outrun him.

George is gone a year now and we still reminisce about him, like how he would sometimes put the entire email message in the subject line; how he would steal Golf Digest from dialysis for hubby; and how he would be all set up with napkin in lap and fork in hand when hubby arrived with food. And we still quote his favorite expression, “Yeah, right.” (Said with great northeastern sarcasm as George was from Connecticut.)

Another sweet memory is when we had George over to make onion rings, as cooking was the thing he missed most. He planned it for months and insisted on buying all the ingredients – the biggest size of everything with the hopes of doing it many times.

George loved watching cooking shows and had us order things on Amazon to try to improve the food in the rehab. He even talked of starting his own YouTube channel, “Cooking with Nothing.”

We have great memories of George and feel fortunate to have known him. His infectious enthusiasm was outweighed only by his appreciation for every little thing we did, which was evident the first time I went to his room. “Look around,” he said, “everything I have is because of Joe.”

I miss going to the movies. It makes me sad that a pastime that was so revered when I was growing up is slowly disappearing. I get it. With 85” televisions, why would anyone pay the ridiculously increasing cost of a movie ticket to sit in a freezing cold theatre, with annoyingly loud sound, equally annoying commercials, and even more annoying neighbors when at home you can throw a pillow at someone who is talking and pause the movie when you have to pee. It’s kind of a no brainer.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but think about the lengths we went to just to see a movie. I made fake IDs to get into R-rated movies; we hid people in the trunk so four of us could see the drive-in movie for the price of two; and we sometimes walked five miles (once in a blizzard!) to the theatre. (I remember it being a long walk, but I was shocked when I recently mapped it.) And the trunk thing is unbelievable especially since now I’m the one who gets nervous just sitting in the passenger seat.

But movies were all we really had. Not only that, but once you missed a movie, chances were you’d never get to see it. If you were lucky, you might catch it on network TV years later, poorly edited for television with tons of commercials.

I guess we’ll always have the memory of our movie going days, which unbelievably also included smoking in the theatre.

It’s posts like this that make me think, how old am I? And, was I a juvenile delinquent?

I wonder why some folks refuse to call 911. Recently, one of our neighbors had a medical incident and drove himself to the hospital. Well, he tried to drive himself to the hospital but instead he drove into a ditch. That’s not what this is about though. This is about our neighborhood. I’m beginning to think it’s weirder than most.

Ironically, that guy lived next door to the French woman who called 911 constantly. She would stand waiting on her driveway with her purse on her shoulder until the EMS guys had to tell her, “That’s not how this works, Ma’am.”

Then there’s the house where the 500 lb. potbellied pig lives. Freckles walks on a leash but won’t budge unless you give him a treat.

There’s the old German woman with the dog that always ran (well, wandered) away. Thankfully everyone knew Tasha and would bring her home. We went by once and Tasha was lying on the front lawn. Our neighbor had gone to Home Depot forgetting to put her in the house. (Hubby wanted to take Tasha home to teach mom a lesson, but I wouldn’t let him.)

There was the older couple who insisted on driving to New Jersey. They actually made it there but had a fight and the husband got out at a stop light saying, “Have a nice life.” The NJ police found him sitting on someone’s lawn and called us since we were the only names he could remember.

There’s the ex-ballet dancer who walks with a limp and has a three-legged Great Dane. She disappears for months at a time, most recently returning without the dog.

There’s the bicyclist who rides up and down for hours every day. (In full cycling gear I always thought it was a woman, but I learned recently that there’s an ongoing debate among the neighbors about this.)

There’s the “Californians” who moved here years ago with California tags so that’s how they’ll always be known. We don’t really know them. They just wave when they walk by with their dog in a stroller.

Then there’s the house where the barefooted hillbilly lives. When they moved in there was a tree house in their backyard until one night they found the previous owner up there drunk and quickly tore it down.

It’s not me, right? The neighborhood is weird.

Funny thing is that I kind of like it and have felt comfortable here since I started bringing my cat and dog for weekends at “Club Joe” almost thirty years ago.

I don’t think it’s too late to say Happy New Year. (I still laugh at the Seinfeld clip where Elaine was disgusted when she “got happy new yeared in February.”)

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I read only one blog* besides my own, which is Tommy Tomlinson’s “The Writing Shed.” (And yes, ironically, he has what would have been the perfect name for my blog.)

Tommy found his way into my heart with his memoir, “The Elephant in the Room” about being overweight in America. His writing is what mine would like to be when it grows up.

Tommy’s new year post included a sign in the Milwaukee airport that says, “Recombobulation Area.” I love this word. 

“The airport director installed that sign in 2008 because he knew how weird and disorienting it can be to go through an airport.” So, he provided a place for folks to stop for a second, take stock, and clear their heads.

My wish for us all in 2026 is to recombobulate.

*The Writing Shed is part of Substack, which is kind of next-level blogging.