I left out this tiny segment of our current trip to Spain, because it deserves a blog of its own.

  When our train had finally limped an hour late into Jerez de Frontera, where we’d planned to nurse our jet lag for a couple of days before taking a cab into Rota, it was after midnight. At this hour the taxi stand was void of pumpkins and at least four groups from the Prince’s Ball were lined up ahead of us. It was a half-mile hike to our apartment/hotel. Timing the trickle of cabs that were arriving as if they were food trucks being directed by the IDF in Gaza, Carol persuaded me we could walk and be snugly in bed before our turn for a cab would ever occur. She must have forgotten I was the one missing a slipper.

Later, as we were walking back and forth pointlessly looking for an apartment number cleverly obscured to the street by an obtuse angle never dreamed of by Euclid, we stood in front of our apartment door, now presently marooned by the fact the door code wouldn’t work.

  I don’t know where that woman gets her energy and aplomb at that time of night, after having been in planes and trains for more than thirty hours straight. But – stretching the Disney metaphor a bit thinner – Carol had alighted upon the street with the jauntiness of one of the Seven Dwarves (Happy) while a combination (Sleepy and Grumpy) trundled behind her like an overloaded turnip truck.

  I say trundled because there were times along those darkened and deserted streets that I felt it was the suitcases that were schlepping me. I huffed, I puffed, I staggered, I wept, I cursed. Ahead, increasingly way ahead, Happy seemingly continued along to the tune of Hi ho Hi ho. She’d occasionally stop and look back to see how far I’ve slinked into the gloaming, no doubt wondering why she’d agreed to have children again at her age. I was thinking that if my fate were to drop dead of a heart attack or stroke, I’d just arrived at the spot that Carol would later recount at the Celebration of Life.  

  Although my body had long since gasped its last, my brain remained in high gear, thinking completely irrationally of all the things that still could go wrong to prevent that snug bed scene I was hoping was only minutes away. The first was that we wouldn’t find the place, and the second was that the code wouldn’t work because it had expired at midnight. Carol’s GPS had pinpointed the address with the launch accuracy of a stinger missile, and whoever heard of a door code expiring?

  Later, as we were walking back and forth pointlessly looking for an apartment number cleverly obscured to the street by an obtuse angle never dreamed of by Euclid, we stood in front of our apartment door, now presently marooned by the fact the door code wouldn’t work. Luckily, as we were indeed woodsmen in a Disney cartoon, rather than characters in Waiting For Godot, two fairy godpeople suddenly appeared who used their keyfob to let us in.

  The concierge later confirmed she would have responded to a frantic phone call had that been necessary. 

  She also confirmed that, yes, quite true, door codes do in fact expire.

  Go figure.

  My luggage put me on the elevator and then unpacked me into bed, as Carol was somewhat balefully humming  “Someday My Prince Will Come,” as she slid in next to me.