Saturday was my birthday and our wedding anniversary, so I checked out the Tarpon Lodge and they said, yes, wear masks, and told me they were observing seating distance. So I made a reservation for three, to include Sol, and we went to a fabulous dinner and sat in the covered patio. Outdoors, no air conditioning, but it was breezy and lovely. Sol had the catch of the day, triple tail, and Ed and I had strip steaks. The meals were wonderful. The Lodge was a treat, as always. It was a dark ride back and Ed drove it – a narrow, deeply winding road, through deep woods. The only sour note was that my margarita straight up was served on the rocks in a tall glass. I won’t do that again. We went a little early so Sol could see the view – it’s on the bay, and a huge lawn goes down to the dock area, and there is a gazebo, an idyllic spot.

Today Sol and I were chatting and somehow the movie, “The Wizard of Oz” came up and she had never seen it. I found that amazing. So we got it on Amazon prime and she loved it. It was released in 1939. I was 8 years old and the people who operated my grammar school thought all the kids should see it, so they arranged with the local movie house, The American Theater, to show it for free before opening for the paying customers. My sis and I, totally mesmerized by this knockout fantasy, wanted to see it again so we stayed in our seats. The usher came and asked us to leave to make room for the paying customers. But we snuck back in from the lobby. He left us alone after that, a kindred soul. The next day we walked to school singing, “We’re off to see the Wizard”.

Sol is in the process of finding a house to buy, convenient to us and to her new job at a hospital in Punta Gorda. She goes for orientation tomorrow and is three feet in the air with excitement. We’ll have her for a while because house buying takes time and that is fine with us. She gave up her Naples apartment, put her furniture in storage, quit her Naples hospital job and went to New York (West Islip, L.I.) with her boyfriend and realized after spending a month there, that it was a mistake. So she broke up with him and feels euphoric to be starting over without him. She drove back and will be with us until she gets her house. She was nonplused to learn that her friends in Florida were making bets on when she would be back.

xx, Teal