Minority Report

Jacob likes to point out that "some of us have left the small, college-town bubble and joined society". He's right--I've lived in college towns my whole life and Miami is nothing but a huge rude awakening. 

The biggest surprise has been how WHITE I am. In most places, I am the only white girl.  I've noticed that there are some Euro-Latin mixes from Argentina or Spain or who knows. I look like one of those. White skin, dark features. It took me a full week to figure out why people would randomly speak to me in Spanish. They thought I was a fluent native. I've started responding in a really bad American spanish accent just to see their reaction.

I could spend a great deal of space writing about the nightmare that has been HOUSING. But I'm tired of my complaints, I'm tired of rental agreements, and frankly, I'm just really tired. So I'll write about some happy things. 

Like THIS BOOKSTORE!!!! OH MY GOODNESS, FRIENDS!!!! Come and visit me for the sole purpose of the most fantastic bookstore in the country! We spent three hours here and ended up staying for a book signing by a local author. This bookstore is so hot stuff, in fact, that Chris Colfer from Glee came on Thursday. They have celebrity signings almost monthly. Seriously, folks, this place is hot stuff. AND they have the absolute best key lime tarts I've ever had. I will never, ever eat Kneader's again. I was blind, but now I see. 

Coral Gables is a little town south of Miami with a whole ton of character. We loved the Biltmore hotel, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why there are red snail sculptures in front of it. 

"What IS this place?!"

Here's a little sneak peek of where we're moving into--if we pass the homeowner's interview, that is. It's two story, two bedrooms with three bathroom, two living room, a GREAT laundry room and 1600 square feet. I'm so darn excited about this place that we can't live in yet.

Too many options. Do you want to go to Biscayne, Everglades, or the Keys? All of the above.

We took time on Friday to do something fun and enjoy our last day of freedom before Jacob started rotations. We went snorkeling on the Key Largo Reef at a protected reef site--the boat captain kept saying, "Under no circumstances are you to pick up shells or even try to stand up on the sea floor." We saw some barracuda, parrot fish and a lot of other cool stuff. Ooh! I also got stung by fire coral. The captain said, "It's like a jelly fish sting. It'll go away in an hour." I thought it was pretty painful, but he was right. Important safety tip: Coral stings.

Everybody, sing with me now:

This is the moon over Key Largo! It was much darker--I musta had my flash on. But the pic turned out great, I thought. 

Not pictured: We ate RAW TUNA. We wound up at a fancy schmancy restaurant (accidentally) and what we thought would be a seafood dish turned out to be seared tuna on pasta. I seriously had to put my big girl panties on to swallow that guy. It was good, once I got over the barf factor.

I wasn't going to include this picture but our faces could not be more revealing. Jacob started working in the hospital today and I had to muster up a LOT of support to watch him leave and start another round of long hours, tests, stress, and more long hours. Another big girl's panties reference feels appropriate, but who wants to talk that much about underwear?! He's starting in surgery and will do well and for heaven's sake, this is why we came here. I guess I didn't anticipate that after spending the past 8 weeks, 24/7 with each other that I would actually be very sad to see him leave. Maybe I was a little spoiled--this very attentive, care taking personality was so focused and hard at work to take care of family needs for the past few months, and now it's time to take a backseat and let him channel all that energy (really, there is a lot of this energy in that body of his) into taking care of sick people. And maybe it's hard to admit that my independent, do-it-myself single mom attitude got relaxed around a very capable, creative individual. We don't get tired of spending time together and seriously, this man makes me laugh until I am crying ugly tears and wetting my big girl panties (stop saying that phrase, self). I keep wondering when/if this phenomenon will wear off. I won't have a chance to find out, though. There is a common term among dr wives: Medicine is a jealous mistress. I thought it was the perfect set-up--I could take care of the kids, he would be gone all the time, and we would love married life because we were old enough and jaded enough to realize that married people get sick of each other. I didn't realize the pure friendship part of it and how much fun it would be. Silly, naive self.

There's also a raw, kindling fear that keeps growing and it's called, I gotta grab some employment PRONTO. More about that later. 

Good grief, somebody slap me out of my pity party.