And it's the first one we've had without him here. I remember so much about my father every day. Today is special, though.
The first story is about my father, his friend and my brother. It was the summer of 1966 and my mother and I were abroad, my brother had just graduated high school. One afternoon, Daddy and his friend started talking about great food, and one thing led to another, and the upshot was that they all took a road trip to Miami for scrambled eggs with kosher salami at Pumpernick's up on 63rd and Collins.

Except, remember that this was 1966, and a 100-plus mile road trip for scrambled eggs was hardly a thing to be embarked upon on a whim. But that's just what they did.

When I came home from Europe and heard that story, I would have given it all up for having been able to be home for that. What a lark it must have been. Mr. Rickmann and my old man gassing away in the front seat, and smoking nasty pipes or cigars. I don't know what they drove, I imagine it was Daddy's '53 two-tone Chevy. Powder blue on the bottom and white on top. Sigh.

And then there's the one about the time Daddy was at a party and calmly swallowed a tablespoon of Tabasco Sauce on a five buck bet. Didn't turn a hair, either.

Of course there are the other stories, too. The ones that are too personal even for me to relate. The ones that make me cry and miss the old fart so much. There is nothing in the world, I always told my male college friends as they became fathers to daughters, as deep and as pure and as everlasting as a little girl's love of a good father: they will worship the water you walk on until the day that they die. Don't fuck it up.

My father didn't.

Oh, I do love the farmers' market. The RLA and I took a road trip down to the market on Saturday, and I came home with the most wonderful treats.

I bought cherry tomatoes for a dollar a pound, and they even taste like tomatoes. For three dollars I got 15 eggs; big, double-yolked, brown ones, fresh from the hens.
And there were fresh garbanzo beans. Fresh, people, not dried. I'm going to roast them and make hummus. There was a guy with a machete and a pile of green coconuts on ice. Yesh. I had a coco frio and loved every second of it. There were heaps of tiny finger bananas, and we bought a hand. Fresh green beans, radishes complete with greens, giant green tomatoes, mysterious greens that I had no idea what they were, acres of dried peppers in a variety of shapes and shades of red. There were baby red potatoes, smaller than shooter marbles, and I roasted them last night, to go with a steak and fresh spinach. I bought a bag of fresh chicarrones and ate half of them before I came to my senses and buried the rest under some particularly stinky garbage, thus preventing myself from retrieving them.

If you have never eaten chicarrones, what can I say? In redneck America they are called fried pork rinds, but that hardly does them justice. They are fatty and crunchy at the same time. They taste of pure essence of pig. Earthy, primal. Greasy. Cholesterol on the half shell. And I love them. Once every five years or so I allow myself the pleasure of such forbidden food. The RLA merely looks on in horror and won't touch them. Good for him.

Tonight I'll make a casserole with the fresh green beans, a can of condensed tomato soup and ground beef, topped with a crust of corn bread. This was one of my mother's recipes from the 50s and one of my childhood favorites. It isn't hard, it isn't haute and it is so very, very warm and filling. She made it with canned green beans, and I use fresh, so it's a little different, but here it is:

Mom's Hamburger Corn Crust Pie

1/2 cup chopped onion
1 lb ground beef
1 lb can cut green beans, drained
1 can condensed tomato soup
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1 box corn muffin mix

Pre-heat oven to 375

Saute onion until tender and slightly golden. Add salt (if using) and meat. Brown lightly. Add beans and soup and heat through. Pour into greased 10x6 baking dish. Top with corn crust. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

Mix crust according to directions using half the liquid. Spoon in pencil thin lines over filling like a lattice.

I woke up to the bleeping of the heavy machinery's warning thingy.

Things went downhill from there.
The tiny, one-lane road in front of my house is being double laned because of the new construction in the empty lot across from me. They are building what I like to refer to as "Strip Mansions". This would be townhouses, but two- to three-thousand square foot townhouses going for more than $200 a square foot. Do the math. It's still only got windows on two sides, people. And less than six feet of grass between your back door and the wall that keeps the riff-raff like the neighbors out.

So, this being Florida, that meant that they had to dump crushed coral rock onto the road bed and then steam roller it into submission. Five or six times. Until there was a foot of substrata.

My house was rattling like there was an earthquake. I had to move all the glassware around. Then I walked past my miniature cabinet. Those items not previously shattered by falls were dancing around on the shelves like water on a hot griddle.

I trotted outside and asked the very nice driver if he would cease and desist for five minutes so I could empty the cabinet and make my tiny treasures safe. He said to come and get him when I was done.

It wasn't even lunchtime, yet.

I spent the rest of the day working on redesigning the rest of Girlyshoes. It amazes me how much I can forget about computers when I'm not writing code all day long.

I tried to watch De-Lovely. I've been trying to watch it for four days. No sooner do I drop it in the DVD then the phone rings, or an errand needs to be run, or the dogs need to go out, or the cat throws up. I finally saw the end. I should have stayed with Cole in Paris, because life definitely took a down turn after the horse fell on him.

Finally sat down to eat dinner, and the Drunk Neighbor came over with a dog he'd found in the street. Said dog had a collar with a phone number on it, but the Drunk Neighbor couldn't be bothered to call it himself. It would be more fun to drag the little dog over to our house so the Noble Dog Nails and Miss JoJo could work themselves into a tumultuous uproar over the sight and smell of a stranger in their yard. Besides, the Drunk Neighbor said that he couldn't call because his wife was drunk.*

So the RLA and I called the number. It turned out to be the people who live on the corner--next door to the Drunk Neighbor (and his mortal enemies). Of course, they couldn't be bothered to actually come and get the little dog. No. They left him with us, and my dogs barking non-stop for another hour. Until I called again (third time) and said if they didn't come get him, I'd walk him down to them. RIGHT. NOW.

Another ten minutes and they DROVE!!! out of their driveway, and two doors down. Except they are too lame for words, and parked in the driveway of the house between us. Lame. Lame. Lame.

Then there was the obligatory complaints about the construction, and the notes of who's selling now that the construction has started, and the damned woman would have stood in the neighbor's driveway all night and chatted except the RLA and I insisted that dinner was getting cold and left.

And that was life in Miz Shoes neighborhood.

* His wife is ALWAYS drunk. Ugly, stinking, screaming, channeling-the-snake-god drunk. She's not allowed in my house, anymore.

That's what I was shrieking out of my car window as the woman in the gold SoccerMom van put it in reverse and started backing down the spiral up ramp at Dadeland Station Mall.

No. Really. In. Reverse. On an UP-RAMP. With me driving a stick right behind her. And a really big Mercedes behind me.
REVERSE!!!! On an UP-RAMP!!!

Are you insane or just stupid? I don't know the answer, because, although I was screeching that and more out of my open windows, she had hers closed and was totally oblivious.

She got off the ramp on the same floor I did, but whereas I parked, she merely circled the (empty) level and then went back on the ramp and went up another leve. Which was a pity, because I was ready to go nose to nose with her and demand the answers to my questions.

1. What the fuck is wrong with you?
2. Where did you learn to drive?
3. Are you insane or just stupid?
4. Were you on a cell phone, too?

This is the same mall and the same ramp where just two weeks ago I saw a woman stop. STOP. Like, park. On the up-ramp and change her baby's diaper in the back seat.

Oh, yeah. What is there to add to that?

Yes!!!! Tonight there is a special on what the "divas" are doing now, and tomorrow another round starts on ANTM.
That's America's Next Top Model, but I am such a ditz, that during Cycle 2, when the girls had to sell a make-up line called ANTM, all I could see (or hear in my head) was Auntie Em.

It is so not easy being blonde.

Man, if I were 30 years younger, 30 pounds lighter and about 4 inches taller, I would be all over that show like white on rice. Or not, seeing how I feel about reality shows in general, and actually being on one in particular.

But this show is my secret vice. OK, not so secret. My vice, though. Oh, yes it is. I L-U-V this show with the heat of a thousand suns. I cuddle up on the couch with a jug of plonk and a gallon drum of popcorn and I watch every minute of it. I even tell the RLA to leave the room if he's going to be scornful of my taste in trash TV.

Speaking of the heat of a thousand suns, Miss Bliss wrote something the other day that just made me spew martini on my monitor. In reference to holding hate in her heart, she said that she knew "it just makes the sweetbabyjesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish."

I ask you, has a finer phrase ever been crafted?

I thought not. I am stealing that puppy so fast your head will spin around like Linda Blair's. And with a Southern accent? Honeychile, you just best be watching out.

I'm back in Miami, back in my house, back in my neighborhood. And you know what? I don't care. I had such a wonderful time in my childhood home, that I want to go back there and live.

Which is pretty damned funny, actually, since for the past thirty odd years I've been saying that my hometown was a great place to be from, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Except, last week, I'm walking JoJo down a dark street at night, and total strangers were passing in the other direction and talking to me as they passed. Even more amazing than that, the things they said were in English, and did NOT include the words "money" "life" "hand over".

I could see the stars at night, and smell the moist and salt in the air. It was quiet. Quiet and dark. Dark and quiet. And there were small animals, like rabbits and squirrels and racoons wandering around in the dark. I saw them, and not just their remains in flat, fuzzy lumps in the road.

I saw people that I haven't spoken to in more than 20 years. And I even enjoyed it.

Nope. My home town was looking pretty damned good to me this time.

People were concerned for me, being in the house alone. Why? I asked them. There was nothing in there but love, and how could that be scary in the dark?

Then I got back here, and had to delete more than 100 spam hits for cialis, viagra, on-line poker and betting. People, people, people... Do I ever talk about sex? Or poker? Do I seem like the kind of writer who would want to play poker on-line? Huh? Do I? No. Nor do I have any need, desire, or even vague interest in sexual enhancement drugs. Do me a favor and keep your fucking spam bots off my site.

Like that will do any good.