Yesterday was our Eightiversary, celebrated on the 8th of each month, also know  as the Eddiversary. (See Post #1592). This is month #270, twenty-two-and-a-half years since we first got together. It was at the end of my first marriage and became the start of a second chance. Admittedly, I was too young and immature to be a good husband and father the first time around, but it somehow lasted for twenty-seven years. This month I turn 70 and have a hard time imagining 80, but maybe ten years from now we’ll be celebrating Eightiverary number 390?

We went to the beach yesterday, so my skin is a bit red today. I used sunscreen but I still tend to turn red before I turn brown. We were there a few hours, without much of a crowd. It’s the end of the Red Tide and although the beach has been cleared of dead fish the water is still contaminated with e-coli. There were still a few people swimming despite the warnings, just like you found those without masks a year ago. We sat in the shade of our stylish Tommy Bahama umbrella on matching chairs and watched the waves roll in. It was a beautiful way to look back on 270 months together. 

The nice thing is that we could do the same thing today and tomorrow, the true benefit of retirement. This weekend we’re headed to Riviera Beach on Singer Island on the Atlantic side of Florida. It’s just a three hour drive where we’ll meet one of my wife’s old college friends for dinner and stay at the Oceania Palms, a Marriott Vacation Club resort. Another old friend of my wife’s will join us for Saturday night before we head back to Venice on Sunday. Tally will stay with her schnauzer buddies for three nights, so she will not have to endure perhaps some unexpected fireworks like our last regional excursion. (See Post #1761). We’ll come back to Singer Island for a full week with just the two of us in April 2022 to celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary – just after Eightiversary number 278.