Making the Lists & Checking Them Twice 5.30.2010

Chop and I just got back from a thoroughly relaxing vacation this past week celebrating our son's first birthday with our families back home in Florida. The easiest part of the trip was enjoying a chocolate-on-chocolate homemade Pirate birthday cake between genuinely lazy days by the pool and beach. The most difficult was keeping our Key West secret!! We are both very close with our families, so the idea of holding back on something like this stirs about a fair share of guilt, but sharing the details while we still have more questions than answers only invites the potential for understandable retaliation. There is one exception. Ally.

Ally is Chop's gorgeous, intelligent, and incredibly funny sister who is more than willing to help us with our plans. She is a confident risk-taker with an appreciation for new ventures, which is exactly what we need for moral support this early in the process. Now, lest me be accused of favoring one sister-in-law over another - or even one family member over another - Ally happens to be flying solo these days and under no obligation to conceal family secrets from another better half. As I suggested in my earlier posts, the fewer in the know right now, the easier for us to wiggle around this grand plan, zig-zagging through pertinent information as we sort through our options. We need a logistical partner-in-crime, and I need one very surreptitious travel buddy!

Ally happens to live a hop, skip and a jump away from the Keys, and Chop and I have a lot of questions that can only be answered on-site and in person ... and without the rose-tinted sunglasses of the quintessential tourist. Realistically, he can't leave work right now and our son is too little for this kind of trip (yet!). But I do need to explore the real Key West ... the love of the locals, the pride of the island ... sooner rather than later. I want to stop by the School Board, meet the principals, visit the schools. I want to walk the neighborhoods, chat with day care centers, and pop by the post office, pet shop, local gyms. Really, I just want to talk with anyone willing to let me pick his or her brain. Let's face it, chasing the dream is one thing, living it ... well, we do still have errands to run and productive lives to live! As a complete outsider, I can use all the help I can get!

Next week, I am boarding that plane and flying down yonder. Coincidentally, I also happen to have some other business to attend to in Florida, and the timing couldn't be more ideal. I've never minded a little creative multi-tasking when efficiency is in order (wink, wink!). Ally is meeting me in Ft Lauderdale, and the trip will be a quick one, jam-packed with lists, appointments and minds-wide-open. She'll be her brother's ears, his eyes, and his wit as his substitute. And, if our errands happen to take us meandering down Duval Street at any point of the day or evening, well ... we'll be the mischievously observant tourists at the end of the bar ... grins on our faces and margaritas in hand. It is Key West, after all!