In 2010 we found ourselves, not entirely by choice, retired and living in Florida. This is an account of our struggles to survive in a place in which I never envisioned us.

Okay, maybe “survive” is too strong a word, but for the first six months I felt like I was barely getting by. Everything had happened so quickly. I thought I wanted to move to Florida, and I was trying to be spontaneous for once in my life, so I jumped on the swiftly spinning merry-go-round before it slowed to a halt and everyone went home. Then one day I found myself sitting in the downstairs bedroom/office of my new home, working a job I hated, and I realized I didn’t want to be there. This is why I’m not spontaneous. I’m a little slower than most to realize what I’m getting myself into.

It was mid-summer, and the heat was oppressive. I had lived in Florida at two other times in my life and knew what I was getting into with the weather. There really should be another word for the season from June through September in Florida. Summer, a season that I relished in New England, was not an appropriate name for the abysmal soup pot outside our door. I told myself, before I moved here, that I could choose to stay indoors in summer, just as I chose to stay indoors in winter in New England. Well, my house in Connecticut had a dog door. The house in Florida, being built to hurricane standards of impenetrable concrete block, stucco, and shatter-proof glass, is not amenable to such conveniences, and we were required to walk the dogs daily - five times daily, on average. 

Our choice. We realized it when we found the house, but we also realized our dogs wouldn’t be with us much longer. One was terminally ill when we left Connecticut, and the other aging. If I thought the summer heat here unbearable, at least I wasn’t walking around the block in 95-degree heat and 95% humidity wearing a fur coat. Connecticut was rapidly becoming the place where I left behind my friends, my beautiful house and yard, and any memories of healthy and happy dogs. And Florida eventually became the place where I lost my dogs to liver disease and stroke. But as I discovered, as the silver lining of all those summer thunderheads began to expose itself, it is also the place where we found the most amazing, compassionate vet. It was inevitable that I would lose my dogs. I was so fortunate that it was at his gentle hand.

And so the tide began to turn. Stay tuned for more stories of happiness and light, as our hapless heroine comes to terms with her new life in the Sunshine State.