Sarasota

I am now finishing my second summer in Sarasota, having abandoned our large garden by the seashore in Massachusetts as the work of gardening finally became too taxing and the garden lovingly built up over ten years was too ravishingly beautiful to consider demolishing so as to make life easier.  No, it had to be given one last kiss, then turn the head away, just like all those tearjerker lovers' partings in the black and white films of my youth.  Life down here is lived indoors much of the year with central air.  My doctor cautions me against prolonged exposure to the extreme heat and humidity but I see old geezers hobble out onto the courts at the tennis and exercise club we belong to, so I don't quite understand.  My walking is done on a treadmill, however, in air conditioned settings which is just as well as I can get up some steam by holding on to the side rails, whereas otherwise I am too tipsy to keep erect whilst walking.  Walking near our condo is not really a safe option even if one is erect and stable since the intersection of what are laughably called streets down here actually merge two super highways with nominal pedestrian crosswalks, a hazard at best considering that turn right on red is the law and half the people doing so are texting or otherwise electronically engaged. Not to mention that half the drivers are, I assume. southerners out in pickup trucks with a loaded revolver on the seat next to them---this is all surmise, but nothing about their looks, political attitudes expressed in the paper, would lead me to imagine otherwise.  I could set up the regime of walking the two or three city blocks through a parking lot to an adjacent shopping mall and arrive at an air conditioned concourse where I could walk daily for half an hour, what the docs say we all must do. Well, we chose to live in an area that is scruffy, close to shops, near an urban bus network, but it wasn't exactly urban in our sense.  Still, I have become rather old and tipsy, and get most of my exercise, my so called "work out" with a trainer at the gym and a balance instructor at a balance clinic.  Now if I could just hit that mall twice a week I would be the latter day Jack LaLaine or whatever his name was.  Florida, land of sunshine.  Ahem, you will note that I never go out of doors, but if you would study the medical records of my dermatologist you would see why this skin cancer ridden old carcass is strictly enjoined from taking in the sun.