2001-07-10 - 10:27 a.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Tainted Love", brought on by repetitive honking from a car alarm gone awry in the parking lot.

Sunday, July 1

Okay, so, I slept all day today, because today was the day we drove the boat down the Intracoastal to Coconut Grove. I managed about half an hour on the sun deck before passing out.

We went out on the ocean for a while, since we can go faster out there. On the Intracoastal it's all "Manatee Zone. Idle Speed. No Wake." The people in Florida are very, very concerned about their manatees. Every single speed limit sign mentions the manatees. I have never seen a single manatee, except in pictures. What I want to know is, how did sailors mistake manatees for mermaids? They must've been drunk or desperate (and neither is outside the realm of possibility).

So anyway, the ocean was rough. The chair I was in kept tipping backwards. Finally I moved to sit on the floor and the motion threw me back, hard, onto my ass. I laughed myself silly and then sat down and read my book (Edge City) in a secure spot on the floor.

Later I told the folks that I was sitting on the floor because I was afraid I'd go tumbling out the back and land in the water. Papa said, "Don't worry, we'd come back and get you."

I told him I was less worried about falling in than in ruining the $2000 worth of hardware I'm wearing. That is, my hearing aids. I have regular nightmares about falling into the water and ruining them. This is completely irrational of me, but there it is. It's caused less by a fear of having to fork over $2000 again than it is the idea of having to wear my backup hearing aids or go without for however long it took to get replacements. That would really, really suck. I depend very heavily on what little hearing I have left.

We ate dinner, went for a skate. Didn't see a damn thing. The Coconut Grove marina area is boring, people. I heard later that it's where all the rich people live to get away from the freaks in downtown Miami and South Beach, which explains it. Rich people hide in their secluded houses and their expensive cars, to keep away from the smelly sweaty skating hoi polloi like me.

During my shower, Poindexter had to sit on the bed (which is less than three feet from the shower) and talk me through my claustrophobia. The shower stall is very, very small, and completely cylindrical (3 feet diameter, if that), and it has a smoked glass door that feels like a wall to me. I did not want to close it. I managed. But it's like a cylindrical coffin.

At bedtime, he told me that when I was napping and they were cruising along the Intracoastal, his mother asked him if he was on "thong patrol". (There are people in bathing suits all over the place, on the shore and on other boats.) She kept pointing out women she thought were in thongs, and he kept saying they weren't, and he was always right. "How can you tell?" she wanted to know. He wasn't spilling his secret to her, but he told me his theory: women in non-thong bathing suits make a little adjustment in the back when they stand up, making sure they're getting full coverage back there.

I'm not certain that this is entirely correct -- there's adjusting to be done with a thong, too -- but it was funny.

Backstory, for future reference:

Point one: Being in dock (at this particular marina, anyway) is very calm compared to anchoring. The boat doesn't pitch and roll much at all; in fact, it hardly moves. I forget that I am on a boat.

Point two: I have a lot of dreams in which I'm in a building that collapses. The whole building will tip sideways. It's like those hurricane videos when a house on stilts just falls over when the waves hit it. I have no idea why I dream this. When I'm being whimsical I like to think it happened to me in a former life.

Monday, July 2

Today was busy.

Monday morning we went to Villa Vizcaya, which MIL and I are madly in love with. It's a huge old Italian-style villa on the bay, made of limestone. The limestone is pitted and worn, which gives it a very romantic air, and the landscape along the drive is all lush and overgrown, so that it seems like a hidden castle. It even has a "secret garden" -- a walled garden with vines growing on the walls.

The house is set in a U-shape around a limestone courtyard with plants and a fountain. The fourth side is open to the bay. It is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous and I want to live there. Any mix of stone and overgrown trees and plants is going to make me happy. There is a big limestone barge as a breakwater in the bay, too.

The decor, however, is a little frightening. Every room is filled with busy furniture, busy chandeliers, busy wallpaper, busy paintings, busy tapestries. It's all dark and rich, completely at odds with the warm, sunny location. There's no place for your eyes to just rest. I did get to see a rug that supposedly Christopher Columbus walked on at one point, which is kinda neato.

For lunch we went to Monty's, which served -- I kid you not -- buttered stir-fry. It was horrid. Horrid, horrid. We all tried to put it out of our minds. Papa and Poindexter felt ill in the evening. How can food be that bad?! I mean, butter is good, but not on stir-fry!

Later that day I skated to the library nearby to check Zagat.com for good restaurants. "Good" meaning "has a Food rating of 24 or above." I found a bunch in South Beach, where we were headed the next day, but only one in Coconut Grove (Baleen). We know where to go next time.

I enjoyed my skate to the library. I love using skates as transportation.

In the evening I went to CocoWalk with the 'rents. Poindexter wasn't feeling well (he never eats butter, so it really didn't agree with him) so he stayed on the boat. The weather was absolutely perfect for a walk, though: just the right temperature so that I was comfortable, but not hot, and a cool ocean breeze blowing. It was wonderful. Southeast coastal Florida in the summertime is just heavenly. Beats the hell out of the Northeast.

CocoWalk is an upscale, outdoor mall with lights. It was okay. There was a Sephora makeup store, which is like a drug to me, because it has every shade imaginable in lipsticks and nail polish, in rainbow order. I am a freak about colors (one of my favorite things in the world is the box of 64 Crayolas) and about multiple shades of a single color, so I was enthralled. I could stand there and look at the lipstick display for hours and hours. I doubt I would ever be able to choose one, either. I need to find a store near me so I can just go and stare.

On the way back we noted some of the "local color", as MIL likes to call it:

- Shrimp boats with deeply tanned, physical people on them (as opposed to the pasty atrophied computer geeks and politicos that surround me here in the DC area)
- A man sitting on a bench with an iguana on his shoulder
- A junky shack boat (I couldn't call it a houseboat) -- dirty, cluttered -- named, of all things, Marcus Aurelius. It literally looked like a tiny shack sitting on a tiny barge.
- A deeply tanned man with dirty hands and a hairy face (think Tom Hanks in "Cast Away") who turned out to work at the local shipyard and live on his impressively well kept sailboat (a boat you could take anywhere, the 'rents said). He'd been in the Navy and had lived all over the country but loves South Florida the best.

While getting ready for bed, I was reading bits of Edge City to Poindexter. For one particularly long passage, I handed the book to him, but he said, "No, I like it better when you read to me." When I asked why, he said, "I don't know ... you read with such passion. It's fun." If I read with passion it's cause I'm excited about what I'm reading. I had no idea it was something special for him. I read snippets to him all the time, out of the paper or my book or whatever. It's a way to share. I hear that Ernunnos and his wife read entire books to each other, which I think is very cool.

So I'm standing there lathering up in my shower, not feeling too claustrophobic, and suddenly the shower stall begins to fall over.

I nearly screamed, but settled for a bunch of "Oh my god!"s when common sense kicked in and I realized what had happened.

You're sitting there, thinking, well, yah, she's on a boat and the boat is rocking. Most likely another boat had gone by and created a small wake. But I had forgotten that I was on a boat, and the sensation I had, particularly being cooped up in that tiny, tiny coffin shower stall, was the same sensation I have in those dreams I mentioned. That the building was falling over. It was quite surreal.

Poindexter was bossy that day. Usually he isn't. He's like a jellyfish, floating along with the tides of other people's choices, except for when The Foot Speaks. This is not a wimpy thing; it's just that he is very content and interested in everything and annoyed by very little, so doesn't have particular preferences about what to do. Sometimes I tell him he should be more assertive and boss me around more.

So, this particular day, he was bossy. I suggested something related to bedtime and he said, "No, we're going to lie in bed and read and you're going to tickle my chest."

Well, I could hardly argue with that.

Later, in bed, we were facing each other talking and I had his one knee between mine. He had to get up, so he said "Let go my leg. You're trapping my leg. Let me up." I gave him a long look.

Poindexter: What? What's that look?
Evie: You're being awfully bossy this evening.
Poindexter: Well, you tell me to be more assertive.
Evie: [another long look, then a sly grin] I didn't say I didn't like it.

He threw back his head and laughed. Trademark Poindexter laugh, and one of my favorite things about him.

Tomorrow: Porpoises, Stiltsville, South Beach, and the best restaurant the 'rents had ever eaten at.

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