Does life have its own plan for us?

Also, I'm looking for tips to entertain my 9 y.o. niece... help!

Aug 01, 2025

Hey friends,

For the last 18 days, I’ve been living solo in a cute little apartment that’s nestled between Big Daddy Oaks dripping with Spanish moss in hot and sunny Ocala, Florida. Well, mostly sunny, with a side of thunderstorms. The other evening, around dusk, I sat at the living room window watching neon pink and white lightning bolts zigzag across the dark grey sky, a beautiful and unexpected view. There wasn’t a drop of rain outside my window, but I could see and hear the storm in the distance.

This Airbnb kinda feels like visiting your grandma who loves thrift and antique shopping. This is not from the day I saw the storm, but it’s the living room window I was referring to.

I had already planned a trip to Ocala for two weeks in August to visit my mom and to hang out with my 9-year-old niece. But in early July, when I found out that my mom had fractured her hip and would be on bed rest for four to six weeks (poor thing!), waiting in Amsterdam for news had me riddled with anxiety. I’m glad I came early.

Spending time with my mom has been nice, but it’s also difficult and boring at times because of how much her Alzheimer’s has progressed. She hasn’t been able to formulate sentences for a while, so I visit at times when I can help her eat a meal or when I can join her at an afternoon activity, which mainly consists of the amazing activities coordinator trying to get a bunch of elderly women to sing-along, play jeopardy, or clap their hands if they’re happy and they know it. It honestly all feels extremely bizarre, but I’m grateful that my mom has the care she needs. Fortunately, she was cleared from bed rest early and has graduated to a wheelchair, but there’s still a lot of recovering to do, and she may never walk again. It’s all just a big mind fuck, but meh, that’s life.

I’ve been working and writing at a coworking space and the public library, and I’ve been pumping iron at a strength and conditioning gym, which is something I’ve been wanting to get back into (especially after writing a piece for The Midst about longevity and aging well). Not having access to padel here in Ocala seemed like the perfect opportunity to get into a new workout routine.

I finished Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking. There are too many nuggets of wisdom about grief and life packed into it to list everything here, but something that stood out to me is this…

“Time is the school in which we learn.”

Time heals, fixes, clarifies, reveals, etc., but also, time is not linear. It zigs and zags, just like the lightning in the sky. It often feels like events unfold one after another, in a straight line progressing from past to future, but when you look back, it was never a straight line. I think that’s the beauty of it, though.

I’m not a religious person, I’m not even sure if I’d consider myself spiritual, but I do believe that, to a certain degree, life has its plan for us. We make choices that take us down one of the many possible paths, but a lot of it is out of our control.

Solo Drunken Noodle dinner with my Kindle. Does anyone else love traveling and dining alone?

When this trip concludes in mid-August, it will have been the longest period (five weeks) that I’ve been in the US since I moved to Amsterdam in September 2019. Speaking of looking back and reflecting on life, I’ve been feeling nostalgic during this trip. I don’t generally miss living in the US. I miss friends and family, of course, but I love the life I’ve built so far in Amsterdam. It feels like it’s where I’m supposed to be at this time in my life… my life is going according to its plan. But what’s funny is that I only become aware of the little things I miss when I’m here, back in the US. Or maybe not what I miss, but the history I have here, which is something I haven’t yet spent enough time in Amsterdam to build.

The things that I’ve been feeling nostalgic about are extremely random, like…

Spotting Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs on the grocery store shelf and thinking of weekend ice skating trips to Bear Mountain, New York, with my dad. I’d zoom around the rink until it was time for the Zamboni to clean the ice, then wobble inside and stick a few coins in the vending machine and wait for it to heat up and deliver Chef Boyardee spaghetti through a small door at the bottom of the machine. I know, I know, it’s packed with sodium and unhealthy, but I couldn’t resist, I bought a can and heated it on the stove the other day. I can confirm, it doesn’t taste as good when you’re 39. Lol.

The small lizards that scurry across the grass and sidewalks here in Florida remind me of family trips to Florida when I was a kid. We’d all come down, my granny and grandpa, aunts and uncles, and cousins. I remember taking tennis lessons, learning how to make jewelry from a woman named Judy, and swimming at the pool. I had always tried to catch the lizards back then, but they were way too fast. Adult me doesn’t even try anymore. Maybe I should?

There is no such thing as a “deli” in Amsterdam. There are sandwich (or broodje) shops, but it’s just not the same. I found a deli in Ocala that makes sandwiches on Kaiser rolls with thick stacks of deli meat. They also serve bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. It’s still Florida and not New York, but it’s better than nothing! When I was in high school, and old enough to drive, most mornings, I’d stop at the deli near my school to pick up a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a Kaiser roll. I think it was something like $2.50 back then. Ah, the good ol’ days. Now I sound like a geezer.

I haven’t found English Muffins in Amsterdam, but I’m sure I could at an international supermarket. What’s funny is that whenever I see them at the market in the US, I’m always reminded of weekend mornings at my dad’s house, where I ate toasted English Muffins slathered in butter and topped with Hagelslag (Dutch chocolate sprinkles that you eat at breakfast or as a snack). In the Netherlands, you don’t put them on English Muffins, but it’s still my favorite bread choice for Hagelslag because the butter melts into the nooks and crannies, and so do the chocolate sprinkles. I should have packed a small box of Hagelslag, but there’s always next time!

Having a slice of pizza for lunch was something I did often in high school, college, and when I worked in Manhattan. It’s cheap (or, at least, it was) and tasty, and boy, do I miss it! There’s a place called Stacks Deli in Amsterdam (ok, I lied, I guess there are delis in Amsterdam). Anyway, it’s next to Stacks Diner, an American-style diner. Every other Sunday, they serve sliced pizza at the deli. It’s decent, but it’s not New York pizza. The point is, you can’t find a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria on every other corner in Amsterdam. That’s something I miss about New York, and I was reminded of that the other day when I made a pit stop for a slice and garlic knots on the way to see my mom. Florida pizza also doesn’t compare to NYC, but I’ll take what I can get!

My niece is arriving in Ocala this Sunday for two weeks to hang with me and my brother — her cool aunt and uncle (I hope).

I have this idea to write different activities like painting, bowling, roller skating, going to the library, swimming, and so on on small pieces of paper that we can fold and stick in a jar. Then she can pick one each night as the activity for the next day. As a kid-free person, I might not realize how little control I’m going to have over how these next two weeks go. Part of me wants to embrace it and fly by the seat of my pants, but I also want to keep her entertained and happy (and create lots of fun memories together). Anyone with kids reading this, please help me out in the comments!

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