Big Daddy

Tammy is doing better the past couple of days. Her lipase is back down to 300 or so. She told doc she wants to finish the prednisone (she has 6 weeks left) and if that doesn't improve things she will do the exploratory surgery through her back. In the meantime she is looking at getting moved into a new place that is both ground floor and independent of either of her boyfriends as of May 1st: a place she can call home, where she can rest and recuperate if she does have the surgery. Doc says this may end up being a chronic condition for her so she needs to learn to live with it. She's been vomiting so much the past 6 months her teeth are in bad shape, she is having 2 pulled next week and she's being encouraged to consider getting dentures. She's only 36. How awful.

I've been suddenly grinning the past week, remembering something that heppened in Key West. I want to write it down so I don't forget it... though I'm not sure I would forget it.

The Dutchman is rather reserved with people he does not know well, but Tammy and I are enough alike (and yet so very different!) that I think he found it very easy to be comfortable around her. That, and she has a talent for making people comfortable. Its her business.

Hers is a cash business, and she does not use credit cards, so she brought a significant amount of cash on the trip. When we headed out on one of the first days, she handed him her cash and asked him to carry it for her. She, like me, is very graceful (not!) and also has a tendency to be absentminded and lose things. Like her purse.

She had kept some cash her, and eventually, in the course of entering each shop we passed on Duval Street, she spent it all. We were standing, I believe, outside a stall that sold shell necklaces, when she turned suddenly to the Dutchman, batted her eyelashes at him and said: "Big Daddy, can I have some money, puhleeeeez."

Laugh. The expression on his face was priceless. He looked a bit like a surprised cat. And the expressions of the people passing by were quite fun. One man glanced at the Dutchman with a "lucky guy" look on his face. Another person, a woman wearing a bikini top and shorts, looked Tammy up and down, and then gave the Dutchman an assessing glance, as if considering whether or not he was wealthy and worth stealing from Tammy. Meanwhile, she just smiled her gamine's smile and waited for himto fork over some cash.

I do so enjoy people-watching.