Finally in Florida – my story continues

There was a part of us still caught up in the fantasy when we finally hit Florida. We’d spent a couple of days on the road in our new to us car, the dogs hanging out in the wagon and our favorite tunes playing on the iPod. It was as if we were truly at the beginning of our grand adventure: moving away from the hustling that we had to do in DC, on our way to land that was ours and a life that was less hectic. There were moments there in the car that felt so normal – the three of us singing, my husband and I having the deep conversations that are conjured up by miles of road.

When we hit town there was far too much to do to think about cancer. There was the marveling at our new house, a townhouse that had found us via Craigslist that was much grander in person than it was in the pictures we’d gotten from the landlord. It was the second time I’d rented sight unseen and I was pleasantly surprised by how big it actually was compared to the little old house we’d left in DC. When we first got in we ran around like giddy kids, exploring each room, each closet. My husband and I gave each other sly smiles when we saw the shower in the master bedroom – big enough for both of us and equipped with two shower heads.

Since we were waiting on our POD to arrive there wasn’t much to do in the house, so we visited with relatives and did some exploring. The dogs were quite happy to spend hours lazing on the cool tiled floors and we took little jaunts out in the car to see our new city. It amazed us after so many years in DC that people were still actually kind. We’d go to the Chick Fillet and rave about the service in the drive through. We were shocked when people let us merge without a fight when we were driving. Honestly, we might as well have had pan flutes playing in the background.

We mentioned cancer maybe once during the wait for the POD. I think it was one morning when I crawled myself away from the air mattress lamenting the lack of our bed. Originally I’d planned to have my surgery at Johns Hopkins before we left and would have had two weeks on the air mattress while we waited to go up for my follow up appointment. I’d actually thought that not only could I have slept on an air mattress post surgery, but that I could’ve been able to do so for two weeks. By the time I really started complaining I’d slept on it for about four days total, with a few days of hotel beds to boot. We laughed it off and talked about how we’d dodged a bullet. And then we let it drop and went back to being new to our city.

A few days later the POD was delivered and our mini vacation was over.