No One Gets Out Alive

Remember, clicking pictures usually makes them BIGGER.

More friends came to visit us recently. We enjoyed a little lunch at Zudy’s cafe in Seward yesterday before returning to Anchorage. Zudy deserves her recent shout out if for no other reason than her homemade Key Lime pie! Not only yours truly’s favorite dessert, but favorite food, period. Happy Wife discovered this on our first date night over nine and a half years ago now, the night she invited me to her house and asked what I would like to have her make us for dinner. Key Lime pie! Okay, I can make that for dessert, she said, but how about dinner? Key Lime pie!

Okay okay, how about mushroom ravioli? And so it was, she made us both, even squeezed (squoze is not a word) the tiny key limes herself. I brought the wine and my charm. Dessert that night, it turned out, involved more than Key Lime pie, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

As the four of us are variably into the 2nd half century of our lives, our conversation naturally turned to whether or not we’re going to make it out of this alive. We all agreed we wouldn’t. Nobody gets out of life alive. What about medicare part D? Nope, you’ll pay and pay but it will not save you from the inevitable. What if we get a supplemental policy! Nope. It may help reduce your out-of-pocket copay but eventually it will only make you poorer faster. I found the discussion disquieting. By then all of us were looking down, watching our feet and rolling our toes, each of us lost in thought and wondering, I suppose, what would be our individual fate.

I talked with my mom on the phone for about an hour and a half (hi Mom!). She and my father recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary. What’s that sappy song by Captain & Tenille, “Love Will Keep Us together.” I looked it up and discovered it was co-written by the equally sappy Neil Sedaka. To avoid the risk of giving you a Brainworm I won’t even ask you what your favorite Neil Sedaka song is.

Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain…

I’m sorry!

Seriously, though, how else to explain 62 years of marriage, to the first and only person you ever married? Remarkable.

Pleasant weather lately but a tad on the cool side. We did get some much needed rain that helped douse the wildfire that had been burning out of control on the Keani peninsula. Smoke is gone now, and I’m glad for that, especially since we’re just weeks away from the great Alaska bike tour. Oh, it’s going to be deliciously fun. Happy Wife, my lead sag driver, has promised to purchase a moose pooper to dispense candy at the sag stops, and suggested we hold a drawing on the last day of the tour and give it away. “Perfect!” I said, “This is exactly the kind of out of the box butt thinking I expect from my crew.”