I spent the noon hour with my youngest granddaughter playing in the lanai pool. It took awhile to coax her in the water but eventually she wanted to ride on the inflatable unicorn. It was one of those endearing Granddad moments that I’ve missed all those years living so many miles apart. It was one of several bonding moments over the last few weeks of living in Florida. So far, it’s been all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns.

We’re down to under 50 boxes yet to unpack, maybe half-way done after 3 days of work. We deserve a few breaks now and then after forty-days and forty-nights of waiting for our possessions to arrive. Now that they’re here, it’s been box after box from morning to night, with a late night visit to the dumpsters for disposal of cardboard and packing materials. I caught another neighbor last night trying to be equally stealthy with a carload of crap. While my wife acts like it’s Christmas with each box she opens, I’m lugging in each one then being the trashman, painstakingly smoothing out the packaging, breaking down the containers, eliminating any potentially incriminating evidence that might be written on the sides, and hauling them out to the various construction sites once it gets dark. I’m spreading the wealth out to as many as six disposal containers to avoid over-filling or creating unwelcome attention from our association. 

There’s another granddaughter birthday yet to celebrate in May, the opening of the Indy 500 festivities that I’ll again observe from afar, Memorial Weekend in a brand new home (I’ve already found the flag), and baseball series featuring the Yankees/White Sox and Cubs/Cards. I’ll also pick up our repaired car next week that will be mostly dent-free and with a shiny new coat of red paint. It deserved a cosmetic facelift after getting all of us safely to Florida, through kidney stones, mountains, high temperatures, and 3,500 miles of highway travel. Soon, the reorganizing will be over and the painful relocation from coast-to-coast compete. I’m visualizing a future of strictly rainbows and unicorns!