Palmer's image of a man without hope in Miami summed up my day today with Ditmar.

With Ditmar? Well, he coaxed me to go to Downtown today to advise on the purchase of a large amount of fabric. I agreed, although with great reluctance, but I did know the best fabric stores: the Spanish ones if you want something a little gaudy and affordable. Everyone knows my dislike of Miami, the city, and I wasn't proven wrong.

Traffic is a nightmare even though the thinking is that the twenty new skyscraper condomiums in Downtown will add little stress to a city that was laid out by dyslexic drunkards in 1910. Some streets go East at 3 PM and the West at 5 Pm. After finding a garage in which we wouldn't be knifed because we found a spot on the first floor, we ventured out into a Twilight Zone. While billion-dollar buldings are going up on virutally every other corner, the cheesy "novelty" stores, the discount cha-cha shoe emporiums, and the "$4.00 Buffest, All You Can Eat" bodegas still thrive. (Their leases are coming up, no doubt.) Mexican pinata music confused my staid mind with the next business's hip-hop blare.

I wanted to run like Tippy Hedren. We purchased the fabric easily enough (I DO know my fabric), and--therefore--why I was brought to suffer this pain, but I became disoriented trying to find the way back to the garage; and I MUST be forgiven. If you go to Downtown Miami, bring a Xanax for the panic, a Vicodin for the pain of walking on unfinished sidewalks, and an attitude of "Tomorrow we die? Oh, no; it is today on Flagler Street."

Store after grimey store was blaring something I can only describe as "foreign" and I started to have a panic attack. There are no crosswalk lights for pedestrians; at one point a well-dress old lady said, "Well, I guess we are going to have to make a break for it." The noise of the constant drilling and hammering of these scryscapers was gnawing at my nerves and after nearly tripping on an unfinished sidewalk, started repeating, "I hate this city, I hate this city, I.....(again)" Ditmar finally cut me off and exclaimed, "Stop it! Stop it; you are becoming hysterical."
When we finally got in his car and was on the road to home, Ditmar stalled the car and said, "I can't believe this is happening". That was when I lost it and before I jumped out of the car and begged for a ride to safety, he said, "Gotcha!" What a wise-ass.