Author: Restaurant Gal
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Bye Bye Love
A reporter recently contacted me and asked for my “unique perspective” about why the area in which I live–The Keys–has the second highest divorce rate in the United States. In the end, she didn’t use any of my quotes, preferring instead to cite actual professionals literate in matters of marriage and divorce. Go figure. But…
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Where’s My Game???
This may come as a shock to some, but people have been known to move to the Keys to hide from their previous lives. They don rubber flip flops and wrinkled T-shirts and and grow long, gray ponytails or dispense with highlights and blow-dried styles, and then they assume the escape to paradise is complete.…
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Every Day
“I just want you to know I had THE best day of work yesterday since I started,” RG Daughter told me, a smile apparent with every word. I listened to her tell me every detail of every successful minute she had enjoyed, and as happy as I was for her, I ached to see her…
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Keys Karma and All Things Good
If I hadn’t wandered into a dive bar across the street from my Fort Lauderdale apartment a year ago, I wouldn’t know the very cool owner of that dive bar. I also would not have met the day-at-a-time boy who would break my heart a few months later. If my life in Fort Lauderdale had…
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While You Were Out
“We were all holding our breath for a week while you were out sick.” Oh, thank you, I think. “Because we were sure we’d all get the flu from you. But no one did! Good thing, too. Anyway, you feeling better?” Feeling the love, mostly. *** “Oh, you’re back, finally? Hope you’re feeling better. You…
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Maybe You Should Stay Home….
I woke up this past Saturday morning with itchy eyes and a stuffy nose. Allergies, of course. No more Claritin in the house, of course. My guy and I decided there was no better way to spend a rainy Saturday morning in paradise than to shop every aisle at CVS. I needed the allergy meds.…
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Get-Away Clothing
Most of my local clientele has gone away. Some for a month, others for a week or two. There’s a reason to bank money during season–mid-August through September looms large and quiet. But I wondered, when you live in a vacation paradise, where do you go on your own vacation? Palm trees and water and…
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That Time of Year, Again
About once a year, I wonder if Restaurant Gal has perhaps seen one day, one post too many. This is usually sparked by several unrelated events: a seemingly absent muse and the feeling that I have no more stories to tell, a busy work schedule with barely enough time to do anything else but work,…
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Vacation Rental
When I was looking for a place to live here seven months ago, I saw “For Rent” signs all over the place–some in front of cute houses downtown, others advertising luxurious homes on the water. No problem finding a place, I figured, with so much property for rent. A hybrid, however, repeatedly got in my…
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Cut Me Off
When you work at a local bar, you have to find your own local bar in which to decompress and let it all drift away. The first place I thought was such a place ended up being anything but after the owner fired everyone who knew me as a local. So goes life in the…