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Jose was amused when he found me yesterday, still in the same dress as the day before. The famous "almost Maya dress" from Dollar General. I nearly hadn't slept as my pal from Cleveland had tracked me down.

"Between your vaunted siestas, snorkels, 30 peso haircuts (how much is that in euros?) and unusual dishes, are you going to be in the book?

John Tidyman

A pleasant man, but still a wise ass."

And John knows how to suck up to this woman. He enclosed a photo. John and Harry, friends for a lifetime.
John is the author of two golfing books and "Cleveland Cops," an 'as told to' book which many of the guests at Zina's Guest House have had pushed on them because it's a great read with lots of little passages organized by subject and attributed to the teller. Stories cops tell to each other. Well, that's how he's doing the newspaper reporter book.
I am with my clip books, digging into the recesses of my brain for the stories behind the stories. When I took the buyout, I left the newspaper where it belongs on Superior Ave. in Downtown Cleveland.
But since I was the first buyout of about 450 and 38 more jobs being cut this week, I owe my stories. The book is almost an advance obit, biography written while the subject is still alive, to be hauled out when it's time. Well, it's still got some years and appears to be doing well on line, but its heyday is clearly over.
So, I'm up in the middle of the night, reading and thinking again, answering questions in emails as passages of an "as told to book."
John, meanwhile, is organizing the retirement party for Emil Ceilic, Cleveland's oldest cop for a decade now, who at the airport 5 years ago, said, "Buy the book!!" He, his son and brother are all in it.
Emil and I met at an accident scene that was also a shooting scene. For decades, he was in the accident investigation unit. He noticed I walked funny.
"Do you have MS? Because my daughter does." That started a longtime friendship in which I coaxed his daughter into taking the weekly injection that has kept me walking, albeit kinda funny, for nearly 20 years.
From the day I met Emil, I had no trouble at crime scenes. Cops would let me into their cars to warm up, chauffer me around during their investigations and treat me like a sister. Maybe that should go into the book!