New Year's in Forida

Some people think I decided to visit my father in Florida over New Year’s because it’s 21 degrees in Ohio and it’s a fine 75 down here.  Let me put the rumor to rest.  It’s true.

It’s also the best time to fit together the holidays and my vacation from 2013 and 2014.

People I rented to pose by Christmas tree

He lives in independent care so he has a little one bedroom apartment.  He has a small ship’s galley-like kitchen, dining/living area as well as a nice bedroom and big walk-in closet.

The complex gives new meaning to warehousing the old.  The facilities are very nice, very clean and filled with healthy elderly.  They have assisted, but no hospital care.  Get to the final stages of life and you’ll find yourself on the curb.  Since they don’t take Medicare money they don’t have to provide the required beds for the terminal.  Things may change; I understand they are building a housing unit for Alzheimers.

The complex, which shall remain nameless, has several large buildings surrounded by small houses of various sizes.  The facility provides at least two meals a day which are part of your monthly rent and rent is in the $2800+ per month range.

My father is in the ‘hotel’ area of complex.  The hallways sport art work on the walls and the residents place decorations by their door alcoves that brighten the hallways.  You find Ohio State flags, teddy bears and statues of dog and cats, at least I think they are statues.  So far no groundhogs.

A neighbor's door

Me?

I’d have a little IDPA target on a stand with moveable bullet holes.  Assuming my wife would put the kibosh on that, I’d buy a taxidermy dog, preferably a beagle.

We are staying in guest quarters in a second, but connected building.  The central core is an open air atrium so the apartments are entered from a covered walkway and face outward to the park-like grounds. 

Very nice in a spooky kind of way

Most of them have screened-in porches, a nice feature in what can be overly sunny Florida.

The central core is decorated with living plants and flowers. They and my wife and I might be the only living things in the building.  We haven't see a single person coming in or out, much less walking around, in several days.  Where is anyone???

The building has a metropolis of death feel to it.  We have not seen a seen another living person.  It’s like living in a mausoleum.  I assume people live behind the doors we see, but I could not swear to it.  

What does it mean when vultures roost on your house? 

One might find, if you could open any door, the dried desiccated remains of former inhabitants carefully stacked on shallow bunks lining the rooms.

We sat out last night on a bench facing the apartment mausoleums and enjoyed a second beer. 

An excellent beer!

It was a little spooky.  Kind of like whistling when you walk through a graveyard.

In the hotel side they have rooms set aside for specific purposes.  You have to be careful not to play scrabble in the women’s craft room, even if there is a complete absence of crafts at that moment.  The residents have a highly developed since of propriety.  The complex has a card room and on one night, one specific night only, they play a game called Hand and Foot.

I’ve played this game for 30 years.  The rules are a bit complicated; different cards have different values and it’s a bit like canasta, requiring you to meld, create runs or books of cards.  I expected the game to have slightly different rules.  Different location, different culture and so different rules.  I wasn’t disappointed in that respect.

So we played.  My father wanted us to play, in fact it’s all we heard about since we arrived.  I was looking forward to a couple nice games with my dad but when we got there he palmed my wife and I off on two older (there are no younger people here) women.  They were very nice, but I’ve never seen someone wear a green-tinted accountant shade to play Hand and Foot before. 

There wasn’t any money involved, but I was reminded of the scene in “The Seventh Seal” where the knight plays chess with death to give everyone in the castle a chance to escape.    These women took it that seriously.

Me?  Well I kept looking for Captain Kirk.  I figured we were playing Fizbin. 

The rules had changes so much that it wasn’t the same game I knew.  Basically the only similarity was we were playing with cards.

We played a couple hands, escaped to my Dad’s apartment for a beer (see above picture)  while we waited for him to finish playing cards with his friends.  When he came back we grabbed two more beers and that’s how we ended up drinking back at the mausoleum.

Post script:

Happy New Year!

I never thought I’d be sitting outdoors (central atrium) and typing.  This is way too nice.