where we pause

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Me: Hey where is the deli I would walk to?

Mom: It's gone, not there anymore pandemic. There's the other place over there where I use my card I have now.

Me: What card? For the laundry part of your complex?

Mom: No, for sleep.

Me: Wait you don't take sleeping pills anymore?

Mom: No dr said I can have the medical thing like you.

Mom.. that's amazing so wait there's no deli? You get flower and gummies?

Mom: No other store there, and then the gummies other side. No smoke flowers, gummies for sleep.

Me: Ok that's kind of cool actually.. can I see the packaging of what they're putting out for this side of Florida?

Mom: Sure here the box in my China.

Mom: Other kind of gummies. a trainer one time gave me from California said it's...connection.. I don't know what he means.

Me: Mom that is not going to be for you.. I mean it's strong, let me see it.

Mom: Oh I don't take it, I just put it away and tell the man I will take it he always asks, you know men. It's been there a year.

Me: Let me look at this as well, the packaging is insane and a knock off from actual CPG gummies.. mom this is just funny. A year you've had this?

Mom: Peg... can the people do that?

Me: No mom this is, what I am always working on. It's wild wild west cannabis things, nothing new. People do what they can, real businesses know better. I'm taking your clubhouse keys, I need to finally work this week.

Mom: Have fun, bye go swimming after too if you want.

Me: That's really annoying they got rid of the deli, it was there forever mom. I loved getting a huge sub with pasta salad and slamming a cannoli. Hey... leave the gun, take the cannoli...Godfather...

Mom: Yeah it is, I remember they had good Italian food. I don't know the movie..

I went to the Lake Worth Lagoon, putting visuals to reality where I feel tethered to the earth.

A man with his cart rolled through the park, my sister Connie picking up two sno cones and it making me smile to see the Princesa lettering on his cart.

A child on the playground dropped the top of her sno cone in dirt and came crying down a slide.

Her older sister quickly offered what candy she had and her dad coming in swiftly to help her.

“It's okay baby, I'll buy you another..don't touch that.. " he adjusted himself and got to task, the girl wiping her tears and now getting back to eating a new sno cone with her sisters.

The audio would take time to decipher, as it poured through on a busy Saturday.

The music, where is it coming from?

People sprawled out on the grass, laying under banyan trees.

An El Camino cruising through played music, and then there was a boat docking Snooks Island.

Two men also walked through on the path, one playing rap off a portable speaker and rapping along.

A woman's overweight terrier came running up to us, as I looked around now at a sea plane in the sky and an osprey diving into the water.

I pet the dog with my sister, gushing over how sweet it is.

"What's your dog’s name?"

"This is Lola Bella! She doesn't like to walk."

The comment made me laugh, having seen two dogs in strollers already, but Lola Bella was standing tall.

"Wow, Lola Bella! Lola son... un Princessa? Or maybe thinks she is a Queen?" I pet the dog and laughed with her trying to figure it out.

When she talked the words unraveled in fun ways.

We were talking about horses.

She told me about seeing horses run wild from a balcony when her husband was stationed somewhere for the military and how it was her favorite part of her day.

She was painting visuals for me with her words, such a delight to be around an older Latina like her.

You mention it, she said it and then some.

We all smiled, pet Lola Bella goodbye, met another dog, and kept walking on the path.

(Weeki Wachee Springs mermaids)

Sleeping Princess (from Edison in Florida, The Green Laboratory by Olav Thulesius)

The Edisons felt threatened in their tropical paradise. After the completion of the Tamiami Trail, the trickle of people coming south became a flood of tens of thousands. The boom was on. According to Suniland magazine; "Lethargy was forgotten. The sleeping princess [Fort Myers] was awake- and madly in love with the good-looking prince. Prices began that sky-rocketing process so typical of Florida towns."

The same issue contained a cartoon with the capiton: "Gamblers, note!" It showed pirates climbing up from the sea threatening to take possesion of Florida with arms and shovels.

In a single day, August 12, 1925, $2,528,000 worth of real estate was sold. Edison liked privacy. Although he enjoyed publicity to promote his ideas and inventions, he wanted to be able to escape, to hide.

Edison wanted "the oblivion of still life" and to be in control of all aspects of his work. On his first visit he learned that he could have access to the International Ocean Telegraph line that passed through the sleepy town on the way to Punta Russa. In fact, in the 1880s Fort Myers was one of the few places in Florida that could provide this luxury of modern communication.

Okay, they requested the story about the Apt B Pizza. Well, first of all, this is underground pizza.

Underground doesn’t mean it is physically underground, it’s just not something everyone knows about.

Oddly, I was thinking about this story the other day while at an underground soda lounge, sipping upon mixed sodas.

You think it’s weird, I think… theme park memberships are weird and how they offer something like this underground soda club.

It's Seattle, 2010, I'm looking around in this packed in, dirty, but creatively interesting, apartment.

“Apt B pizza? What is that?!” I ask D, looking at the all kraft box with a slick, logo stamp in the corner.

“Oh you don’t know about Apt B Pizza?”

Ah, this is made for this type of cool, marketing moment.

She moves her Bette bangs, grinning, “It’s underground pizza.”

Well, let’s explain D. She is.. involved in my work with my boyfriend and our company.

At my day job, my coworker M is an East Coast girl like me with an immigrant mother.

She’s from Jersey, her mamasita is from Jamaica.

M and I have an awesome routine at work. We regularly will swing the door and do alternating improv routines making fun of each other, coworkers, our managers.

I bring her a gigantic cinnamon roll most mornings from a coffee shop near my apartment.

We just have a good routine, the comedy, the work, the friendship.

One day, M saw D riding through dropping off some random fast food order I’d never pick.

“Yo Peg.. D is like.. she is your arch nemesis right?”

I watch trash reality TV, so this reference is beyond me.

I think about it though. “Wait a minute..she called me Pam.. she gives my boyfriend all those stupid scifi books.. she ordered that weird burger I’d never get... M, you are right! D isn’t trying to take me to sesh and sauna... she is my arch nemesis!”

“Hmm.. not good Peg..what are you going to do about?”

“Destroy her? No… I will watch her like a hawk, I will destroy her when I need to.”

“Good plan.”

Back to her apartment.

“Okay D, yeah what’s the deal with the pizza? I want in. It is a.. speakeasy of pizza? Where do we go, what is the password?”

“No..Apt B pizza.. my friend C handles the Delivery and you have to Email him.. I’ll Forward his Gmail.” “What does the guy not have a proper kitchen or something?” “Right.” “Okay this makes sense.. what does he send?”

“Fridays he drops the menu first thing, you email him, PayPal him, he delivers the pizza in his Subaru.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes!” She is excited, I am excited now, but.. I watch her.

The pizza guys… wow. It was perfect to have had, for it’s moment in time before going away, given to me from an arch nemesis.

"The elevator to recovery is closed, please use the steps."

Me: Wow, S, that's... kind of an amazing sign. Was that made for everyone at this rehab?

It's 2009 and Peg works night shifts at a busy Palm Beach drug rehab, with 30 day stays for something like $30k, where patients after being marketed to through stock photography of beaches and jet skis are now being corralled in by white limos. IDs and every detail from a person, checked in through paramedics.

Feels...like an adult summer camp? Peak "I'm going to rehab" reality with the producers running around, it's maybe funny but also your job while trying to plug away at school?

S, a Jamaican nurse always has her hands on her hips. She sucks her teeth.

S: No Peg, the elevator is broken again. Are you clocked in already? We had 4 AWOLs earlier and the techs are bringing them back now from a Publix so get ready to break down charts baby girl.

Me: Aw man not this again this week!

S: What did I tell you?

Me: In one ear out the other like RBG says?

S: No...

Me: My vagina is a temple?

S: Yes... but no.. baby girl.. you need something to your name!!!!!

Peg rolls her eyes, grabs stacks of charts, find a comfortable nursing unit on a top floor like a resort.

Did I learn the lesson?

No. Usually after that happened with S, I would try to DJ music where I could while scanning and breaking down medical records. (Tight crowd for a DJ set, mostly early on Lady Gaga, light Abba and a tiny bit of Elvis Crespo for dancing with my friends like I demand.)

Someone would lean over, every shift, asking the same.

"Can you cut off these filters?" (I had the scissors, safety first, you can't have scissors when you're all checked in paying tons of money to get better at this stage or in this setting.)

Then shortly, the lean over from an assortment of types from reality shows to randoms from youth, "Hey how did you get your job?"