An old coworker colleague of mine, someone I’ve kept in touch with over a social network, was bragging about her life. She has two beautiful children and has been able to keep her amazing figure. Her husband is still a hottie even after all of these years and, frankly, she had much to boast to about.


She mentioned in her posts, “The life I prayed for is now here.”

I got it. I understood her on several levels. I got it.

I live in Florida now. I have a beautiful husband. And though I might look pregnant, I’ve been able to keep this figure too. And as a bear, that’s a good thing.

But I had to talk a little about living out your dreams. For eons, I had noticed, I dreamed of living next to or nearer to a Disney Park. Any park really. I spent tons of money to see them and when I did, I hurried through like a kid on a sugar rush hoping to enjoy the moments in a buzzed blitz.

But I never had enjoyed the parks.

Trust me, all those trips with all of those friends were worthwhile and totally perfect. And I would not be able to make such a statement until I lived here. Now that I have a Walt Disney World Premium Annual Pass, the “Diz” world is totally different.

And I never had totally enjoyed the parks.

I noticed it on my first day there. Sadly, it wasn’t with my husOtter. Instead, it was with some fascinating friends that got me in for free. We breezed down Main Street and though there were throngs of people, I didn’t feel their bulk. Not because I was hurried or focused; it was because my cares and worries were different. I could come back and do what I wanted later, so standing on a queue wasn’t so much of a burden anymore. I noticed the sounds of Main Street for the first time, as if awakening from some sort of long endured deafness. There was the stutter of the omnibus; there was the din of children still happy before the heat of the day tagged them into screaming by night fall.

It was as if I had walked into Disney World for the first time.

This emotion become clearer when husOtter and myself purchased those passes and decided the next weekend would be the perfect time to conquer Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I had stepped away to use the bathroom a good five minutes before the park opened for business. I wandered off alone to the Rainforest Café and hit the bathroom. I returned to find the gates were fully open. I had missed the initial collection of tickets.

And I was okay. My heart didn’t go crazy as I rushed the turnstiles. HusOtter had moved himself just inside and was waiting. There was no rush, no panic. The panic was on the faces of those families who had taken a loan to come down to Disney World and were about to run through the park at breakneck speed to get to everything. Not for my beloved and me. We stood there and Mickey and Minnie came to the front of the guests and welcomed us all to the Animal Kingdom.

And we WATCHED. In my skull, previously, I’d be screaming, “get these mice out of my way! I need my Everest FASTPASS!”

Instead, I plain ole laughed at the skit.

A tear rolled down my cheek and I hugged husOtter, hard. My dreams had come true. I suppose I could go ahead and this point and psychoanalyze why I’d not come down to Florida sooner, why I had refused to acknowledge why I wasn’t happy. I was content in Colorado. I had everything I needed.

So I thought. I guess I figured that happiness is measured, something monitored and calculated. And for some reason, my heart, after meeting David and having a decent boring job for a long time, was ready to keep it’s rhythmic pace. I had no idea that more could be had. That I could be HAPPIER.

Happier without doing drugs or drinking.

But here I was, able to do more with my life than ever before. And my heart soared. And, yeah, I cried a little. Lovebutton husOtter could rediscover the world all over again.

So thanks Disney.

Sure, I’ll become like those old farts that have gone over a thousand times to the parks. They complain about the color of the clouds over mid afternoon while completely ignoring the smiling parade of gay couples marching about. They are allowed, but I won’t listen to them. I look at it from the fact that I used to be a movie critic. I love movies. Yet I’m the movies harshest critic. Could it be it is my way of showing them my true caring? Those who poo-poo Walt Disney World really only do it out of love.

There’s a lot to see and do in Disney World. There are some great employees who smile back at you when you smile at them. There are wonderful characters that let you hug them even though you’re an adult.

And I’m loving it. I get it now.

There’s something here, however, I think I need to point out. When you prayed as a child, was the life you have now what you prayed for? Find out why not. It is surprisingly telling. I was so scared to be happy. My mother suffered such personal loss as I grew up and she did her best to let me know frequently. Maybe I felt I had to do the same.

The truth is: I know she’s happy now. And I know I didn’t have to suffer to by happy, at least not any more.

Zen Driving

Not really Buddhist, but it will help you get into the right mind frame....

My surprise today was that the person who almost hit me was not old. In fact, he was a teenager. Foppy Bieber hair edged his eyebrows as his eyes watched the other column of drivers; the column I was not in. In fact, he turned his tanned face briefly to face our Saturn and I breathed a sigh of relief. He was on his cell. I was nervous that I would have to label this youth some kind of automotive freak-someone who gets into accidents without the usual parameters here in Florida.

Are those cones? Or targets?

Perhaps it is my want-and-need to make this place work out, but I really, truly love it here. That means excusing faults inherent to the place and choosing the positives over the negatives. It also means picking my battles. And some are so large, they are hard to miss. My adaptation to my new homeland does have several snafus that if I do not recognize, people might caulk me up to some kind of selective insanity. So I have to mention one of the largest annoyances since I’ve established this beachhead.

Where ever you see gray or yellow are where the bad drivers are, stastiscally speaking, located....

Drivers suck in Florida.

I admit this freely as one of them. No, not as a Floridian driver, but as a sucky driver in general. I’m afraid to say anything, but though I’ve never really had an accident, my husband’s first comments in a negative sense when we started dating were, “you are kinda slow in the left lane;” and, “do you plan on getting there before the movie starts?” I could not drive quickly. I even once said to an officer who pulled me over for speeding, “really? Me? Can I back up and try again? I doubt that was me.”

I was never an aggressive driver. My stepdad was notorious for creating in me a sense of alarm when I was behind the wheel. He led me to believe that every driver on the road today had a vendetta, and they weren’t afraid to call you on it. Years of driving made me think that he was lying.

Wait, that isn't a steering wheel either...

Now that I’ve moved here, I realized he might have been correct.

I trusted him and his words because, in the years since 1982 when I became his stepson, I never once got the chance to drive any of his cars. I’m forty now. I kept my distance. My stepfather communicated to my low self-esteem that I could not be trusted.

But I also learned what a bad driver was.

Since arriving in Florida, I’ve found that driving here is a Zen existence. A true way of training yourself to living in the here-and-now. Zennists aren’t going to daydream about the potential the day might bring forth; they tend to look at what is happening in the moment and react accordingly. It’s surprising that this state is a red state, in the end. Had they looked at their driving on the 1-4 when the tourists arrive from Peoria, Illinois on a Friday night, they might have a different angle. They’d not see red or blue. They’d see a way to connect to their Buddha-self.

My first week here, I had four near misses. Each time the driver was in a larger car (three of them were minivans with fish—sidenote: In Colorado, since I saw this image frequently, I figured the fish meant they had too many children “a school” if you will and that’s why they drove so poorly!) and every time—on the phone.

Not just on the phone, mind you, but not even holding onto the steering wheel. I do not recall seeing them even touching the steering wheel. Now I get it. I live in a massively rural area and every person is a decent car ride away. People really make good use of their phones here. But to have so many near misses in a row with the same reason, I cannot afford to think about anything but the road and getting home in one piece.

How Zen is that?

The one thing is, my job depends on keeping my car intact! Zen or no Zen, this is serious crap. Now I remember in the movie “Cocoon” how they take away the driver’s license of WIlford Brimley (frankly I would anyway-the dude gives me the creeps and I don’t want him near me even if there was a windshield between us); I recall Morgan Freeman’s purpose was to have the voice of God in the front seat when Jessica Tandy got too old to drive as well in “Driving Miss Daisy.” So they’ve even made movies about this older individuals and their driving skills.

These drivers are the voting force of Florida. The AARP is their cudgel and they swing it at laws that would keep us all a bit safer. But it is too much to hope for. Instead, I have learned that the ‘hand wave’ here in Florida means just as much as a turning signal-even if the encouraging hand waves you out infront of them-and they then speed up and almost rear-end you!

This monkey business is the down side of my up-life here in my new found home. I cannot believe how happy I am for all these bad drivers. I mean, really. Now I get to connect to my inner self while taking that forty five minute commute to the south part of town. Amazing.

And thank you, phone youth. I was scared I might have found an new kind of killer-driver. The teenager. But you were smart. You were talking on your phone while driving. Whew. At least it was in Florida!

Restaurant Review

Athens NY Style Diner


18750 US Highway 441

Mt Dora, FL 32757-6723

(352) 385-3592

My family is from New York. Now, I don’t mean, they are from New York as in, they were born there but spent more of their life elsewhere—I mean even thou the entire community makes comments about their heavy accents, they refuse to give them up in suburban Colorado. It’s like a scar from a particularly exciting shark attack. They are so New York that people know that even before they get to experience the accent; it’s like they create a New York-vortex that causes W.A.S.P.s to suddenly swear and want to get very, very fat.

It’s this fat part I want to talk to you about. I live back in the East now, right here in Florida. Most would say that isn’t the East, but when you count the snowbirds and Old World seniors that are starting to float down from Boston and NYC, they bring with them not only that East Coast cynicism, but they bring their palates with them too. So I lucked out. See my family, when asked, and they are always asked, “what do you miss most about New York?” They answer with the speed of a pizza delivery:

“The food.”

The last time I was in New York City, for example, my husOtter and I basically ran from restaurant to restaurant to meet the local family-folk and, well, ate. Even when my best friend, before I discovered which shows he enjoyed, I had to know, “What and where did you eat? How was it?”

It’s borne of the fact that New Yorkers share a huge chunk of the Old World, in that they are directly linked to those cultures they left behind. They celebrate that connection, and have for eons, by creating dishes that use local means to get the desired flavors from their varied homelands.

And we get the spoils.

Why the history lesson? I’m here now. It’s not New York, so a meal is just that here—usually in New York, I’d be visiting family or heading to a show of some sort—but I get to sample a bit more than I ever did in Colorado.

And judging my rotund figure? I like me good eats. That’s what brought me to this restaurant tonight. Let just say when the owner seats you and talks about his little island “Xios” near Turkey, you know you’re in for something halfway decent.

And like my parents, he held onto his Greek accent.

We started this meal with a Fried Greek cheese. Now we’re not talking the kind of ‘fried’ you find in state fairs across America. No. This is a chunk of feta that has been lightly sautéd without breadcrumbs and then covered with lemon garlic sauce and served with warm pitas.

Okay, feel free to reread that wonderment again. It was called sagamaki and was, in the words of my grande dame of a Jewish neighbor, ‘to die for.’

See, in those New York diners, place wasn’t key and this spot was the same. There were a few Greek columns. Some paintings of the Mediterranean, but squat elsewhere. See, here in New York, you’re supposed to be worried about the food. Wait. Did I say New York? I meant Florida. But with all these New Yorkers that were seated around me, I was a bit thrown.

I ended up getting a Mediterranean dish, chicken marsala. Yeah, it’s ubiquitous, served frozen as one of those frying pain meals-but here it almost tastes like candy, a decadent treat for taste buds. My husOtter had the standard gyro. I didn’t taste it, but I will say this-he took it home for lunch tomorrow.

Folks, he doesn’t eat leftovers.

So, for me, I’m now a bit prouder to have moved to Florida and to start tasting these wonderful places. And it helps me understand my New Yorker parents and family, displaced in Colorado, when they say, “we miss the FOOD.”

I hope I can eat enough to keep them happy!