Paul Johns

About two weeks ago, my mom called me to encourage me to fly to Florida to visit my grandmother.  Recently, my maternal grandmother fell seriously ill with some sort of benign growth inside her ear that was pushing into her brain.  After a few painful procedures, she apparently decided that enough was enough, and she doesn’t want to go through any more agonizing pain in order to continue to try to prolong her life.  She is at home now in Miami, Florida, resting in her own bedroom, with my uncle Lee and my aunt Lucy staying with her day and night.  She seems to be in good spirits, but from what I am told, she may not be alive much longer.  Although Amanda and I didn’t have any money saved up, and we weren’t really in a financial position to go on a cross country trip, we felt it was best that we did.  I offered to go alone, but Amanda, being the great wife that she is, wouldn’t hear of it, and decided to go with me to support me, and to show love and respect for my grandmother, and my entire family.  Amanda is the perfect wife for me.

So, we each called our respective jobs and begged and pleaded for a week off to go to Florida.  Eventually, both of our jobs agreed, and we purchased two round trip plane tickets.  My sister, Lorraine, who lives in North Carolina, and my mom, who lives in South Carolina both made plans to be there at the same time as well.

We arrived to a slightly overcast Fort Lauderdale at about 6pm, EST.  We rented a Jeep Compass and got a bite to eat at a nice little Mexican restaurant right on the beach.  Two guys were playing live music with an acoustic guitar.  It was a pretty pleasant experience, except for the fact that we were exhausted after flying for over six hours, if you include the layover in Georgia.  We killed time until 10pm, when my mother arrived at the airport, and we went home to my grandmother’s house.  I talked for awhile with my uncle Lee and my Aunt Lucy, who I hadn’t seen in years, then we all went to bed.  At this point my grandmother was still in the hospital.  She came home about two days later.

The next day, after very little sleep and plenty of jet lag, Amanda and I, along with my mom, went to visit my grandmother in the hospital.  My aunt Carmen was already there, having spent her week long vacation away from work to attend to her mother.  We spent little time in my grandmother’s room, since she didn’t really want to be seen by us.  I was more than a little disappointed, having gone through so much to be there, and being rejected by her.  Later, I was given an apology by my aunt from my grandmother, who told her to tell us, she just feels bad, and doesn’t wish to be seen in such a weakened state.  I had already gotten over it.  Who am I to argue with a dying woman?

While there at the hospital, I met up with my cousin Chris, who I love very much.  He has always been like a brother or sometimes a son to me, and we were very glad to see each other.  I hadn’t seen him in about five and a half years, so it was a very happy experience.

(From l to r) Chris, mom, Lorraine, Amanda and me.

Later that night, the usual away team of myself, Amanda and my mom brought along Chris to go pick Lorraine up from the airport.  Now the little family was complete again.  As least as complete as it had been since my parents divorced when I was four.  The rest of the day was kind of a blur.  I forgot what we did exactly.  I remember hearing lots of reports that a hurricane was coming to plague us throughout our visit.  Throughout the whole week, the most evidence we saw of that was a few light showers and some dark clouds.

On Saturday, Amanda and I woke up after not getting much sleep again, and everyone except my aunt Lucy had already left to see my grandmother in the hospital to see about taking her home that night.  At this point, we ate a little breakfast and went to Hard Rock Casino to kill time, and waste money, though at the time, I thought I was going to make money.  Oh well.  Throughout my wins and losses, I only lost seven bucks.  Not too shabby, but I’m a low roller anyway.

Later that night, we had a taco dinner extravaganza at Chris’s place.  We hung out for a long time, played some Tekken 5 on the PS2, played a little guitar, and generally just had a great time.  I also got to know my cousin Chad (Chris’s brother) more since I had never really spent that much time with him before.  We got along very well.  People kept saying he looked and acted just like me at that age.  I’d have to say I agreed.

On Sunday Amanda, Lorraine and I took the Jeep and went to visit my dad’s side of the family in Plant City.  After a five hour drive, we arrived at my paternal grandparent’s house.  We were met by my dad, my grandparents, my aunts Jan and Joan, my uncle Kevin and my cousin Aaron.  I hadn’t seen my cousin Aaron in a long time, and we really got to catch up and get to know each other a lot, which was really fun.  When I saw my Uncle Kevin, I was amazed at how great he looked!  He had lost 50 pounds just by making better food choices.  I am very proud of him.  He actually looks younger!

That night, we all went out to the Golden Corral, which isn’t the classiest place in the world, but considering we had ten people to feed, it was a good choice.  I gorged myself until my abdomen was distended.  Must have been something in the air that night.  The food was pretty good, the fish wasn’t bad, and I had lots of vegetables.

The next day we went to my former employer Hungry Howie’s for a buffet lunch.  It was interesting to see that some people who had worked there before I did as a teenager were still working there.  A bit surprising even.  The food was as good as I remembered it which is to say that it was about halfway decent.

Nothing says class like taking a family photo outside of a pizza buffet in Plant City, Florida. (From l to r) My grandfather, my aunt Jan with my aunt Joan hiding behind her, my cousin Aaron, Amanda, me, Lorraine, my dad, my grandmother.

We left there and went to the cultural center of Plant City, Wal-Mart.  I hate Wal-Mart.  It was hot in there, and it’s gigantic, and it just sucks on so many levels.  More than I can encompass in a single blog post.  Even this extremely long blog post.  We left there and visited my Uncle Johnny in a retirement home.  For my sister, it was a very emotional experience.  She felt so sad for all of the people who don’t have any one to care for them, and spend their days just waiting to die, filling their time with television, magazines and smoke breaks.  It felt good to see my uncle again, and I could tell that we brightened his day a little.

Throughout the rest of our time in central Florida, we spent time with everyone, including spending one night at my dad’s house with his very sweet wife Tracy and their dog, Belle.  Amanda and I took a trip to Hudson to visit her maternal grandparents for the better part of a day, and while there, spent time with her aunt and uncle.  Her grandmother had made a nice lunch, including beef pot roast.  I actually ate some, because I didn’t want to be rude by stating that I only eat fish.  Her grandmother is so sweet, I just didn’t have the heart.  So down the hatch it went.  That was a one time deal.

We didn’t get to do everything we wanted to, like go bowling with my cousin Aaron, but all in all we had a nice time, and it was great to see everyone that I hadn’t seen in so many years.

We drove back to Miami on Wednesday to be with my mom on her birthday (this was a very eventful week).  We went to Chili’s to celebrate with my cousins Chris, Chad and Chelsea (cute naming convention), my aunt Carmen, my sister and of course, my mom.  We were pleasantly surprised to find out that they were having buy one get one free margaritas after we purchased two.  That made four.  Yay for free alcohol (I didn’t have any, as I was driving, but yay anyway).

We got another three hours of sleep that night, woke up at 4:30am and went back to the airport.  We dropped off the car, took a bus to the airport, and had yet another exhausting, tiring, anxiety-inducing flight (with a layover, of course) back to beautiful Los Angeles.  It’s the city of angels, you know.

Amanda and I are still tired from this wild and wooly adventure, and we are just trying to take it easy, overcome our jet lag and basically chill out as much as possible.  We are very groggy people at this point in time.  I still have tomorrow off, then it’s back to the grindstone for me.  This wasn’t a relaxing vacation, it was hard work.  But it was so nice to reconnect with my entire family in one week.

Well, you made it to the end of this post.  Congratulations!  Go have yourself a beer.  Or better yet, a margarita.  Chili’s is having a two for one deal.  You don’t want to miss that.