Outside, the roosters crow. I look at the time display on my cell phone within reach. 4:30. A.M. As hard as I try, I cannot fall back to sleep. The continuous crying sounds of the roosters are foreign to me and grate on my nerves.
Finally, I pull myself out of bed, throw on some workout clothes and softly pad down the stairs outside my room.
I sit in the dark, the only light coming from the screen of my laptop computer. As my fingers move quickly across the keys, the light of day appears, surprising me with its sudden takeover of the night.
The sound of cars in the street join the constant noise of roosters calling to one another. My nose picks up the familiar aroma of yeast dough wafting from the kitchen.
Early each morning, an employee of the Angelina Guesthouse, where I'm staying in Key West, Florida, opens the kitchen in the early morning hours of darkness, while most of the guests are still deep in their slumber. On this morning, Nodira, a beautiful woman originally from Uzbekictan, pulls two batches of plump unbaked cinnamon rolls from the refrigerator and slides them into the oven.
Just for fun, close your eyes. Picture Zsa Zsa dining at Bistro Garden or Liz at Chasen’s – bejeweled and pleasing to the eyes. Imagine charming George Hamilton tanned and natty in his double- breasted blazer table-hopping his way around the room. Now open your eyes. If the vision remains, then you must be in Palm Beach! And, guess what! You’ll still see charming George tanned and natty in his double-breasted blazer table-hopping his way around the room – along with Jimmy Buffet, Rod Stewart, Donald Trump, Vic Damone, Dina Merrill, Susan Lucci, the indomitable Dame Celia Lipton Ferris, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
On the second day of our Florida trip, we dined at one of our favorite,
always good, “coming home” restaurants in Apalachicola: The
Apalachicola Seafood Grill. Located in the heart of “downtown”
Apalachicola (within spitting distance of the town’s solitary traffic
light) , The Grill offers a simple menu, The World’s Largest Fried
Grouper Sandwich, an impressive assortment of beer (you get your own
bottle) and the motto “No Whining.” We have been eating at The Grill at
least once a trip since Sam was two and threw a sippy cup at the front
window. We’ve not been disappointed. I have had everything on the menu
that I want to try, and the Grill is not the kind of restaurant that
changes it’s menu. There are fresh shrimp, oysters and fishes fried,
baked, broiled, in soups, stews and chowders, in sandwiches and/or in
baskets. City folk can have a salad with seafood in it, if they insist.
If I arrived at The Grill to discover that they were offering a terrine
of langoustine on a bed of microgreens with a Guiness reduction, I
would burst into tears.
Our friend, Shiny Sheet Society Editor, Shannon Donnelly, can masticate on purple prose as well as any one I know: we are naught but a chew toy impaled on the incisors of the Cosmic Hellhound of Wall Street (from a "society" editor, no less). She was catching our attention to suggest that bad times should equal better manners – and why not; we can never over-spend on Grace. Course in this case Grace is the "slightly-hung-over" Doyenne of the Etiquette of Denial. From her delicious SOCIAL GRACE'S GUIDE TO GETTING THROUGH ALL THIS, comes Rule Number One which forbids the use of the word "new" unless it is followed by either the (interchangeable) "grandchild" or "shelter dog." And, forget any conversation that touches on "bling" or "leveraged buyout." That will be a challenge to most Palm Beachers, but not to us as we now "have permission" to cross Worth Lagoon at will and treat the whole experience as just one of life's many broadening experiences. Crossing Southern Bridge leads to West Palm Beach – an exotic land to be sure.