Day 1 ends or Day 2 begins?

It's very green here. It's green and hot and humid. It can be 90 degrees -- as it will be this weekend -- and raining.

It would be easy to criticize this community where Eric's parents live. It's not what Eric and I would consider "cool". It's not diverse. It's 2000+ households of aging, New York, Jews at their own sort of Disneyworld. But, as always, I'm impressed with how happy folks are here.

The apartments are beautiful and spacious... the grounds are well kept... the facilities -- indoor and outdoor pools, restaurant, game room, movie theater -- are all nice and well maintained. People are happy, even if what makes them happy is discussing their ailments.

Everyone talks and laughs and tell stories about operations, grandchildren, cruises, and the blintzes they had last week.

Eric and I are constantly reminded of the retirement we won't have. Our retirement wouldn't have looked like this. We had our own vision, if not plans. We were working on it, refining it... slowly, because we thought we had years.

Not that we haven't had fun all along.

We went to bed at 8:00 PM. Now it's 3:00 AM and we're up.

There are pictures of me all over this apartment. I think that every picture I've ever sent them is framed and on display. I believe they have in their possession more photographs of me than my parents ever had.

They introduce us to their friends as "our children".

I make them laugh, particularly my mother-in-law. Even when I must have seemed an alien creature to her -- crazy, make up-less Californian girl -- I made my mother-in-law laugh.

No one's said the word "cancer". She looked at me once and said, "It's not fair," and I knew exactly what she meant, and silently agreed.

3 AM and we're wide awake. Oy vey.