Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s late morning here in Lithia, Florida on Wednesday, April 6, 2022. It’s a warm spring day in the Tampa Bay area. Currently, the temperature is 78˚F (26˚C) under cloudy skies. With humidity at 94% and the wind blowing from the south-southeast at 7 MPH (11 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 75˚F (24˚C). Today’s forecast calls for light rain throughout the day. The high will be 89˚F (32˚C). Tonight, skies will be partly cloudy. The low will be 75˚F (24˚C).
Today I woke up at my usual time – around 6:30 AM Eastern. I still have not taken my new computer out of its Amazon box, so I had to come out here to the kitchenette, boot up my laptop, and follow my usual routine of spending time on Facebook while my brain also boots up. This is a habit I acquired when I was still living in my old townhouse in East Wind Lake Village, and good or bad as it may be, I’ve stuck to it religiously, only breaking from it on the rare occasions when the Caregiver and I went on brief out-of-town trips to Miami or to visit the theme parks in the Orlando area.
Speaking of the townhouse and Miami, this week marks the sixth anniversary of the start of my move to Lithia. As a matter of fact, today would have been the anniversary of my arrival were it not that I asked the Caregiver – who at the time was my girlfriend – to postpone my departure from the townhouse till April 9; I had ordered the Blu-ray of Star Wars: The Force Awakens from Amazon on the 2nd and back then Amazon Prime deliveries still took a week to arrive at the customer’s house. I only found out that I was moving after making the order, and since I did not trust many of my neighbors, I wanted to be at home when The Force Awakens Blu-ray arrived.
Looking even further back into my past, 50 years ago – in April of 1972 – the ball was rolling on another life-changing move: Mom and I – but not my older half-sister Vicky – were returning to my birth city of Miami after living in Bogota, Colombia for nearly six years. Alas, since this move was prompted by the cerebral hemorrhage that sent me to the pediatrics wing of Bogota’s Hospital Militar shortly after my ninth birthday, this part of my personal timeline is hazy, and I don’t have any “exact date” memories.
Sometimes I think we arrived at Miami International Airport in April of 1972; I have fragmented memories of attending a fair of some sort shortly after we arrived at the house of a Colombian family – the Valbuenas – who graciously took us in while Mom looked for a house to buy. It wasn’t a smallish neighborhood fair, either; it had rides on a midway, and vendor booths, and it was in the Westchester area, not too far from the Valbuena residence.
The Dade County Youth Fair is a 21-day event and usually begins in late March, so it’s possible that my stay at the Hospital Militar in Bogota and my recovery from the brain bleed occurred within a briefer span of time than I remember. The Fair starts either in late March or the first week of April, so even if we assume my medical “episode” took place a few days after my ninth birthday, even if we arrived in Miami on April 1, 1972, say, the Fair would still be ongoing then.
I do recall that it wasn’t long after I went to the Fair with Mom and the Valbuenas’ 14-year-old daughter Elsa – my first Miami crush! – that I had my close encounter of the worst kind with Caron, our host family’s Doberman. In fact, I think it might have been on that same night. (Elsa and I had posed for a photo together at one of those ubiquitous booths on the fairgrounds and it was delivered – frame and all – a week into our move to the apartment in Sweetwater that Mom found as a temporary residence while she looked for an affordable – and more permanent – house to buy.)
At any rate, it is interesting to note that two of the three biggest moves in my life over the past 50 years took place around the same time of year, 44 years apart.
I don’t have any new developments to share with you today, Dear Reader. I will do a bit of housekeeping in my room – I am not a fan of rearranging things or setting up new computers, but I still must do it! So, on that note, I’ll close for now. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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