Yesterday I went with my wife to the Pottery Barn at Palm Beach Gardens in search of bedside lamps for our new bedroom.
Finding none we thought suitable, we repaired to the Mediterranean Deli in West Palm to buy some Arab comfort food.
This is place is a stone’s throw away from where the toxic orange turd ball is now festering.
I was treated like a king, due to my name — and ability to speak Arabic.
We stood in line at the counter, holding our goods, while a deluded older Jewish couple carried on about Mediterranean food, in that rankling, obnoxious way of theirs, as if they were special, as if they not only belonged there, but were the tacit masters of the place.
One day.
We bought grape leaves, hummus, olives, feta, ful medammes, bakhalawa, and also had a fantastic lunch of felafel sandwiches while sitting in our Escape in the deli’s parking lot.
I was saddened to hear Tony’s news — the owner, who gifted us an extra dessert and some free bottles of cold water as lagniappe. We spoke briefly in the parking lot in Arabic, before I left, and I of course expressed my sorrow at hearing the news and wished him well.
I hope to be seeing him again for many years to come, insha’allah.
Today is yom el gomaa’ — Friday, our holy day — uncelebrated except by the few in the heathen wasteland that is Florida.
The paint guy is coming by our new house early this morning to provide a quote for finishing the job I started on the new house.
I just don’t feel up to risking my neck painting cathedral ceilings.
Later in the day, I will be tending my new roof install application to the architectural committee where I live.
It is going to cost plenty to replace the old roof, that, and all the other repairs I have to make to a house we have unwillingly lived in for eons — before putting it on the market sometime late this summer.
But I expect to recoup these expenditures, when I sell it by Fall.
At that point, I will have divested myself of two of the three houses we were carrying at great expense.
What a relief that will be!
In the meantime, we are still looking for those lamps.
Skimming over the headlines in today’s NY Times, I certainly hope the light of sanity will illuminate the path of America’s body politic as it enters the presidential season.
Fat chance.
Speaking of fat, I can happily report that I have commenced my weight training and spine flexibility exercises.
Nothing too intense at the moment. Just enough to get started on ridding my body of all the unwanted globules of fat I acummulated over the last ten years — each ounce of which represents the misery I experienced during that lost decade.
Once Memorial Weekend is over, and the Florida HOA where I live pretty much clears out, I will start to actually use the big communal pools I pay for here to do additional stretch and balance exercises.
I am dead focused on getting to 195 lbs by late October, early November.
This means losing 50 lbs over the 25 I have already gotten rid of.
Nothing else matters.
So let the chattering classes chatter, the right wing assholes plot, the masses of humanity go about their pointless business.
I care not.
I have my books, my house, a relatively healthy body, a functioning brain, and — fortunately, thanks to Allah — a few mellimes in the bank.
This is how things stand today, yom el gomaa’, on Dhu al-Qidah 6, 1444.
الله أكبر
Leaving Amerika 