Last week Shirley and I took off for Florida. The trip began in Longboat Key where we stayed at the Zota Beach Resort. I use to feel bad leaving our kids with the in-laws when they were younger, but now that all they need is electricity and someone to make sure they get on the bus I don’t feel so bad. The first day there we landed and went to Budget to pick up our rental car. Shirley had rented a Toyota Camry (or like car) and we ended up with a Chevy Malibu which is nothing like a Toyota Camry, sure they both have four wheels and an engine, but that is where the similarity ends. Upon arriving at the beach resort I was unable to turn into the parking area due to orange cones being in my way. Turns out at the Zota Beach Resort you have to valet. There are two primary reasons I hate to valet. The first is paying someone to do something I am perfectly capable of doing, retrieving my vehicle. Secondly, I want instant access to my car because I like going places, even when I am in unfamiliar territory on vacation. In addition, what is the protocol? There is no way I am tipping these mother fuckers when they get my car and when I give it back to them. So, whenever I don’t tip them, which I decided was when they handed my car over to me, it was extremely awkward. I will say this, the fact that I had to pay every time I wanted to use my car really kept my comings and goings to a minimum.

The initial leg of the journey, which was spent in Longboat key, was fairly uneventful. I had planned on going to play pickle ball somewhere but never actually got around to doing that. I know this is kind of weird, but I really enjoy going grocery shopping in other states and discovering the differences each state has in its food shopping experience. When I am in Florida I always go to Publix, partially because I can call it Pubelix, but also because I think it is the best grocery shopping experience Florida has to offer. The only troublesome thing about Florida grocery shopping is that the liquor is in a whole separate store, they make alcoholics put in that extra effort to keep their habit moving forward. In addition, I think they tax everything in Florida, at least it felt like it. I went to Pubelix each day because going to grocery stores in other states makes me feel alive. Friday of the trip was my 50th birthday, I was glad to be spending it on foreign soil where I would get little actual in person attention. (it took Shirley until mid morning to even say Happy Birthday, and that’s why I love her so much, she doesn’t really notice or pay attention to me). We went out to eat and I will say this, being 50, I still felt young and vibrant compared to most of the patrons eating out that evening.

Saturday morning was check out and we were on our way to Orlando for some health law conference Cara was attending that was taking place at the Ritz Carlton. Her aunt and uncle were on the way to Orlando. I like her aunt and uncle, but I knew it would be incredibly depressing to stop and see them. They are like most of the old people that live in Florida, they don’t really do anything. I managed to kill roughly an hour after dropping Shirley off by getting Starbucks and breakfast. When I got back we all just kind of sat there and stared at one another. Eventually, and because she has been married to me for fifteen years, Shirley realized I was getting antsy and needed to get out of there so we said our good byes and continued on our way to Orlando. Shirley had warned me that she wanted to stop at a particular outlet mall that was close to her Aunt and Uncle’s so instead of taking a route to avoid the mall, I, being the dutiful husband that I am, drove her to the mall. It was your typical outlet mall for the most part but it did have a Billabong outlet and I picked up a new pair of board shorts and a new pair of regular shorts that are now my favorite shorts, had I known I was going to buy them prior to the trip I wouldn’t have packed any other shorts. They also had a Polo outlet, how is that brand even still a thing, I haven’t seen anyone wearing polo clothing in decades, is it just a front for the Chinese to infiltrate our country by setting up shop in every outlet mall across the entire United States?

After what seemed to be an excruciating amount of time we finally left the outlet mall and headed on our last leg of the journey to Orlando. I4 seemed to be the logical route to get into Orlando until I realized it was basically like trying to drive through a parking lot after a sold out concert but for roughly 25 miles. Yep, it took close to an hour to go 12 miles. Apparently there are so many people that want to enjoy nice weather that they are willing to endure this type of gridlock on a fairly regular basis. While Michigan sucks in the winter it does have the advantage of not attracting unwanted guests for most of the year. We rolled up to the Ritz in the Chevy Malibu, it fit right in with the Lambo, Bentley, and a number of other exotic cars parked in the valet area. I wanted to let the valet know it was supposed to be a Toyota Camry, but I don’t think it would have mattered to him, besides, rolling up in a Malibu sets the tipping expectations quite low.

Once again I was flummoxed by having to valet. Shirley thought valet parking was not mandatory but I knew better. We ended up asking and found out it was mandatory and that if we wanted to park on our own, we could go to the JW self park lot where we would be charged $35 a day. Valet was $60 plus the tips you had to throw out, so a win from a financial standpoint, but a real pain in the ass to have to run over to the JW to get my car. We had dinner plans that evening with a couple that Shirley had attended law school with, I don’t think the wife works anymore, and the husband took over the family business running a tree farm and doesn’t have to be a lawyer, in fact, I’m not sure he ever had to be a lawyer, which is complete bullshit to me. This tree farm isn’t a Christmas tree farm, it seems to be the type that is actually profitable and in Florida if you are putting up a new house you have to have two certain types of trees in your yard to get the occupancy permit, and he just so happens to sell both of those types of trees.

Our dinner plans were at a Michelin restaurant, not sure what quality dining has to do with tires, but I went with it. I think the place was called knife and spoon and it was all way too much pomp and circumstance for me. The number of people tasked with waiting on us could have staffed an entire jumbo jet, seemed completely unnecessary to me. Now, I feel like steaks are a waste of time at a restaurant because I do a great steak, but they had Wagyu filet on the menu. I went ahead and ordered it and the other women with us ordered the regular filet (there was a $30 price difference). Turns out the Wagyu is better, not sure why, maybe they let it have as much a sex it wants, but it’s just better. Shirley went with the five course tasting menu and I just kept drinking as a coping mechanism to tolerate the pretentious nature of the entire experience. Had I not had a lot to drink by the time the bill arrived I probably would have had a mini stroke, but I handled it well and only yelled “holy fucking shit!” at the top of my lungs when I saw the final price tag for our meal. The good news is that they had a bar in the basement that had shuffleboard, and it was free, I love shuffleboard, not the kind old people play the kind where you slide pucks across a board that has salt/sand on it and you try to get it as close to the end without having it fall off. Shirley was surprisingly good at it, but I think it was because of the booze.

On Sunday I decided we should go off site for breakfast and found a place called Flapjack Joes near our hotel. When we arrived in the parking lot there was quite a bit of garbage the appeared to have been there for a while and it looked like there were a bunch of Trumpers dining in the restaurant. I was shocked that a place called flapjack Joes could appear to be so mediocre even though one of the reviews indicated that a hair had been found in their scramble and they only knocked $4 off his bill, so I should have known better. I am guessing if he could have proven it was a pube he may have been able to secure a free meal. Shirley insisted on going back to the Ritz for breakfast and I obliged. Upon sitting down and looking at the menu, risking a hair, even a pube in my scramble would have been a better option. The cheapest thing on the menu was $28. In addition, they did not list the price of the breakfast buffet, and Shirley and I were too embarrassed to ask what it would cost, we just went for it. The buffet was underwhelming, and unfortunately, even though I left and let Shirley take care of it, I asked her how much it was a day later. (I did not make the same mistake with the Harry Potter wands she bought her and the kids at universal studios five plus years ago, I still have no idea what those things set us back) When you pay what we paid for the buffet there better be some amazing shit to eat and a hand job at the end of the experience. I’m sure I could have negotiated a handy in the parking lot of flapjack joes.

After the buffet I headed out to play some pickle ball. The park I picked out was about a half hour from the hotel and it took me traversing 9 different highways to get there. That’s the thing about Orlando, they have more highways than theme parks and it can be a bit overwhelming. After pickle ball I hit the pool. One of the things about a five star hotel is everyone wants to fake help you, what they really want is you to give them a tip, but they have to pretend like they can be of some kind of service so they can justify that tip. At the pool I went up to get a towel from the towel cart, which was surrounded by employees, and after grabbing a towel an employee asked if I needed help. Was I supposed to have them carry the towel back to my chair for me and then give them five bucks? I managed to doze off and was awoken by some girl asking me if I wanted aloe, I wanted to respond by saying leave me the fuck alone.

Earlier in the day I had received a text from the tree farm guy indicating that I needed to do the cold plunge that was in the men’s locker room of the workout facility. He also indicated that I needed to stay in there for at least 120 seconds, normally it would take a few drinks for me to last that long, but I felt I was up for the task. I had scoped out the work out facility earlier but it didn’t have the right vibe for working out, it was nice, but I wasn’t feeling it. There was no locker room leading off from the floor of the work out area, so I made my way up some stairs and some more stairs and discovered an area that was probably not open to every guest of the hotel. At this point I was in my board shorts, tank top, and flip flops. Around the corner was an area that contained a hot tub, a sauna, steam room, and a magnificent shower. It also contained a cold tub. As I was taking my tank top and flip flops off a guy in a robe appeared and asked if I was going to use the shower, I told him I was hitting the cold tub and he went into the shower. I didn’t get the vibe that he wanted me to join him, but it was not out of the realm of possibility. The instant I began to acclimate to the cold tub out of no where appeared an employee who asked me my last name. I thought to myself, that can’t be good. He was Latin and could have easily been gay or maybe not, I think it all depended on what type of mood he was in. Its pretty easy to shrug off kind of gay people, so I just kept talking, asking him about how it all worked, how much it would cost for a day pass (I almost shit in the cold tub when I found out), and other things that allowed me to stall him as my Apple Watch was counting down the seconds. Once it hit 120 I was out of that cold tub as if it was filled with flesh eating piranha. Him escorting me out of there was a bit awkward, especially when I took a couple wrong turns, but totally worth it knowing I had saved myself $100.

It’s always amazed me how differently my family handles birthdays as opposed to Shirley’s family. When I was growing up we would lump about 12 or 13 people’s birthdays together, spanning the course of 3 to 4 months, get a cake from this bakery that made a Bill Knapp’s cake seem like a delicacy, and then do it all over again in another 3 to 4 months. I am not sure how they determined the cut off for when one’s birthday was lumped in with other birthdays, but it accomplished the ultimate goal of seeing family members as little as possible. Now, what I just described was the Jansma side of my family, the Rozema side typically did not acknowledge birthdays, and if it did it was celebrated with a bowl of Shop Rite (For those unfamiliar with Shop Rite, take Family Fare and immerse it in poverty and you have Shop Rite or just go visit the Family Fare on Fulton and Fuller) vanilla ice cream and possibly a card. Shirley’s family on the other hand, will actually have a dedicated party for only one person. On top of that, and this always gets me, there is a family text string where they wish happy birthday to people, and frequently those people are not even on the text string. A lot of this I like to attribute to my mother in law, her birthday is in June, not just one day, she’s decided that instead of the typical day a person gets to commemorate their coming into existence, she gets an entire month. (she just asked me what we are going to do to celebrate my 50th birthday later this month, my response was “nothing”)

Needless to say, my kids have benefited greatly from the fact that we don’t do birthday’s the Jansma way. Parker had his 11th birthday party this past weekend, his 11th birthday was on Tuesday and was sandwiched by the family party last weekend (he did have to share the spotlight with his cousin Noah) and his friends party which was an overnight from Saturday to Sunday. Growing up, I remember none of my friends wanting to come over to my house because they were scared of my mom, heck I was scared of my mom until my late 30’s, but our house seems to be the hub for a lot of activity. The neighbor kids often come over to our house after school due to the fact that they can do whatever they want, their mom is a stay at home mom (what do stay at home moms do all day when their kids have reached school age?) and is typically home regulating their behavior. A few weeks back Aiden had a friend over and I was yelling at him for something that was probably well warranted. He was in shock that I was yelling at him when he had a friend over. My parents never held back on the rare occasion I had a friend over. His options were, have a friend over and get yelled at or not have a friend over and get yelled at. Obviously, there is a third option, don’t do dumb shit that gets you yelled at, but that third option is less likely to occur than CBS not showing Taylor Swift every time Travis Kelce did something even semi noteworthy during the Super Bowl. 

I think it has been indicated that Shirley and I see each other for roughly 11 minutes during the week, and none of those 11 minutes are spent coming up with a plan for anything, so I had no idea what was going on for Parker’s party. What I did know is that I had pickle ball on Saturday from 2-4 and tennis from 4-6. Probably should have alerted Shirley to that fact, but why would I change my normal course of behavior on the weekends? the kids coming over were in fifth grade, pretty sure they didn’t need my help with anything. At 1:30 I left under the guise that I was running errands for the party. (I did move my tennis match to Sunday morning because that’s the kind of sacrifice I’m willing to make for my favorite kid, had it been Aiden’s birthday I probably wouldn’t have made it back home until 8 or 9pm) When I showed up home with a bunch of craft beer (Meijer had a buy one get one half off sale) and ice cream Shirley was a bit incensed. In my defense, I suggested pizza but Shirley wanted to do a taco bar. (I did make chocolate chip cookies and brownies when I got home, as well as get a campfire going) After the kids finished dinner and Parker opened his presents, they went outside to play capture the flag. Unfortunately, they only had 7 kids so I was roped into playing, instead of sitting inside drinking my newly purchased craft beer. When I was a little kid the adults would play capture the flag out at Green Lake on our 55 acre property (my grandfathers purchased it in the 30’s for $3,800). I was always left out of the contest because I was too young. That version of capture the flag involved two handkerchiefs and nothing else. This version of capture the flag involved wrist bands that either had a red or a blue light on it to signify which team you were on, as well as a blue and red lit up jail and blue and red cube for the flag. 

Shirley eventually made her way out to sit by the fire and the kids were surprised how much effort I was putting into capture the flag, Shirley told them all, Mr. Jansma wants to win at everything. To be honest, I am still kicking myself for not coming away with the flag when all the players were distracted and engaged with one another, and Max and I were able to make our way around the perimeter through the woods and had ample uninterrupted time to get the flag and make it back into our territory, only I couldn’t find their flag prior to the other team getting ours. I was sprinting, army crawling, and almost took a header on multiple occasions, but it was worth it to actually get the flag in one of the scrimmages and heroically make it back into my territory yelling “we won! we won!” as if I had just secured a gold medal at the 24 Paris games. At one point we were taking a break and I was rehydrating with a craft beer by the fire. Shirley mentioned the fact that I was about to turn 50 and one of the kids said their uncle just turned 50. Shirley asked if his uncle would be playing capture the flag if he could, his response “No, he’s fat”. 

Back to my competitiveness, Shirley picked up a new game called splendor duel that involves a head to head battle that is similar to the game splendor but can only be played with two players. Thursday night I had lost three times in a row, I was so incensed I almost didn’t want to have sex, almost. But I wasn’t going to give Shirley extra incentive to win. I was vindicated on Saturday with back to back wins, the first in landslide fashion. What amazes me is the joy of winning never comes close to matching the agony of defeat. The next morning I headed out to play tennis and in my first set received a call from Shirley. She was wondering where I was even though she knows I play tennis every Sunday morning. She was quite upset that she had to go to the store to get eggs and make breakfast for the kids that had attended the party (basically the stuff I do 90% of the time). Obviously, I did not mention that fact and sent her this text before heading back home “This my fault I have taken advantage of the freedom that I have and need to reign it in. I’m sorry I should have communicated to you last night what was going on.” When I got home breakfast was made and I had a plate. I could really get use to having breakfast ready when I return home from tennis every Sunday morning. While I realize this is getting long, I will quickly let you know that I canceled pickle ball for that afternoon from 2 to 4pm with the following text to my playing partners “I’m going to need a sub, my wife is going to lose her shit if I tell her I’m playing pickle ball from 2-4. And I don’t need anymore craft beer or ice cream so I can’t claim I”m running errands.” I ended up playing some of the best pickle ball I have ever played. In the third to last game I was at a 4.5 level. 

6 or 7 years ago, on Mother’s Day, I did something I never thought I would do, pretty sure I probably blogged about it, I let my wife and kids talk me into getting a cat. For the first year or two, Jasper, our black cat (that’s relevant for later in the story) hung out on the top bunk of my kids bunk bed, neither one of them slept in the top bunk at the time, nor did they ever. He is an indoor outdoor cat, but most of his time spent in our house lately has been him trying to avoid our two dogs. When we just had Max, Japer seemed fine with it, but now that we also have Murphy, he has no desire to socialize with the two legged members of our household either.

We are use to Jasper being gone every night, even for nights and days at a time, but typically he goes out before we go to bed and when I get up in the morning to go play hoops or tennis, he’s waiting for me to let him in. However, in early December, when we had a stretch of unseasonably warm weather, he was gone for an extended period of time. I didn’t think much of it, because I could give two shits about Jasper, and the mice seemed to be staying away. Mice were the primary reason I relented on the no cat policy, and Jasper has done a hell of a job keeping mice away, as well as killing chipmunks and bunnies. He has a skill, and he loves to show it off, frequently leaving parts of animal carcasses around for us to find and on one occasion, while we were at a campfire, proudly prancing by us with a bunny in his mouth. Shirley, on the other hand, was genuinely concerned that Jasper had met his demise and sent a Facebook post to the neighborhood inquiring as to the whereabouts of Jasper. Plenty of responders to her request, some people even sent photos of Jasper hanging out at their house. At some point he came back for a day, but then was gone again, and this time it seemed for good, because temperatures had dropped significantly, and it was unlike him to stay gone that long when it was that cold. Again, I didn’t care, I just wondered how long it would take for word to get out in the mouse community that Jasper was gone and it was time to go rape and pillage the Jansma house again. Shirley, the soft hearted soul that she is, was a bit more concerned than I was but she hid it well. She continued to probe the neighbors as to Jasper’s whereabouts but this time no one had seen him.

Two Fridays ago, Shirley heard through the grapevine that Jasper had been catnapped. Someone in the neighborhood below us had been feeding Jasper and then wouldn’t let him out of their house. This someone was the sister in law of a woman who was friends with Shirley’s third or ninth cousin, who happens to live just across the road from us. She told Shirley’s cousinish person that her sister in law had Jasper. This led to the sister in law who had clean hands, telling the cat napper that she needed to let Shirley know she had our cat. The sister in law who has clean hands is a jog walker, she actually has completed a marathon jog walking and her jog walking consists of her upper body moving really fast and her lower body moving barely at all. The kids and I always make fun of her when we see her doing this, because it is the right thing to do. Jog walker told the cat napper to piss up a rope and eventually the cat napper came clean and let Shirley know she had our cat but gave no indication she was going to release him from his captors. Not last Friday, but the Friday before, the kids and Shirley were at Fujijama where it was determined they were going to get Jasper back. Once this decision was made, Aiden said “let’s get our black pussy back” (he is my son after all!). Shirley and the kids went down to retrieve the cat only to find the cat cuddling with the cat nappers 15 year old son who was referred to as a retard, which made me realize Shirley was truly upset by the cat napping. I’ve never heard Shirley use that word, so the kid must have some serious abnormalities, probably would have been the humanitarian thing to do to let him keep the cat. However, we were now past the point of turning back, at lest in Shirley’s mind, but to add insult to injury, cat napper quipped in as Shirley was walking out with Jasper, that she was a bad pet owner for letting Jasper out in in-climate weather (too bad it was warm when this bitch cat napped jasper). Jasper did jump out of Shirley’s arms and try to get back into their house, but I’m sure it was only because he felt bad for the retard who was now cat-less.

When I returned home from Pickleball I heard all about the post Fujiyama fireworks. I then heard Shirley call at least 12 maybe 13 of her closest family members and friends to retell the story. Once she got off the phone we discussed it a bit more. I told her I was surprised that she was making such a big deal about it. That is when the water works started and she went on to tell me how she thought Jasper was dead, I wanted to say so did I, but you don’t see me crying about it, but I was hoping to have sex that night so I kept my comments to myself. What I did tell her was that Jasper is a survivor and I knew there was no way he was dead, he’s been living with worms for at least four years now. We purchased deworming pills for him but good luck getting a pill down that asshole’s throat. Also, he’s way too smart for you to put it in his food and have him actually eat it. This, along with the fact that a cat will eat you if they run out of a food source and a dog won’t, is something that separates a cat from a dog. Dogs have no idea that there is a pill hidden in their slice of cheese or ball of raw hamburger.

For the next week Jasper spent 99% of his time in the basement, apparently he really missed his retard, and our mildly retarded dog Murphy wasn’t enough to fill the void. Shirley bought him a cat perch that she wanted to secure into the wall because it seemed too unsteady for Jasper to want to use. The reality is the thing was so unsightly, that that, and the two dogs, were what was likely keeping him away. Eventually, Shirley went down to the basement, retrieved Jasper and placed him on his perch. Jasper immediately went to the basement once Shirley took the dogs for a walk. This week, I decided to let Jasper out, figured by now it was on him if he wanted to be a Jansma or a retard. He chose retard and the cat napper contacted Shirley to let her know Jasper was down there, but this time they weren’t letting him in because they had purchased their own cat. The reality is, black pussy does what black pussy wants to do.