Simon says

I cringe as sweaty joggers run past me on my walk to breakfast.  Perhaps they could be relocated to a different beach so we don't need to watch skinny people exercising.

Today the maintenance staff is painting things green and I am watching a young man getting ready to do just that.  A square sheet of cement on the edge of the property with a large lidded cistern sunk into its middle is his assignment. Sun-baked mud around the sides and in one corner a small, algae-filled puddle.  The brush strokes go on smoothly incorporating mud and puddle into a green swirl of paint. No prep necessary, such is Jamaica, all is green.

I return from the bathroom to my ocean side table at the elegant Italian restaurant and there is a tall, loose-limbed young man dressed in white linen vigorously pumping my husband's hand. When he sees me he comes to attention and I swear I hear his heels click as he gives me a small, curt bow. He has a very European way about him, all flourish and attentiveness.  This is Simon, Simon again only with the Italian pronunciation, the Florentine chef and he will give me the recipe for the lasagna Dave had ordered and swooned over.  I look at Dave incredulously and he doesn't bat an eye and I pull my notepad and pen from my purse and pretend to carefully copy down the instructions the young chef is spurting at me in half English, half Italian. The  bolognese sauce is followed with a rue of cream and butter and white wine and some grated Parmesan and oh, " cooooook  the carrots and onions with the ground veal until it is dry underneath them and then add the red wine"  and there is tomato paste and tomato sauce and I have never purchased ground veal.  I put my pen down and smile at him.  As he walks away I glare at Dave over my wine glass.  Chef-boy-ardee, for you my friend, chef-boy-ardee.

There are few things more comforting than the sound of ocean waves and some scientists say it takes us back to the womb and the sound of uterine fluids swishing past our embryonic ears, but those kinds of discussions make me nervous.  I walk the beach  picking up sea shells because this is what Midwesterners do.  We have no sea shells in Iowa so we  take them home and put them in jars and they become another dustable on the shelf.
Dave has met a lot of people  and we can no longer enjoy a quiet walk on the beach as every third person calls out to him. I am tempted to deposit his peach mango rum punch down the front of his trunks.