New Years with Slappy and Sylvie.

My wife and I, after having spent three days lotus eating in Mazatlan, woke up early Sunday morning and drove to the local airport.

From Mazatlan, it was a two-hour wait and a 45-minute flight to Mexico City. There, we have a two-hour flight to Miami after another two-hour wait amid the crowds and lousy wireless and even-worse air-conditioning.

When all was said and done, about 12-hours after we left our resort, we arrived in Miami. We went through customs, rented yet another bland Ford Fusion and drove almost an hour to see Aunt Sylvie and Uncle Slappy at their two-bedroom condo two down from the pool in their virtually pre-fab adult community.

I don't mean for an instant that the adults are pre-fab. The truth is they're almost all post-fab. That is, maybe they were fab 30 years ago, or even 40, but now they're little more than octogenarians who seem to spend their days waiting for their next meal.

Uncle Slappy and Aunt Sylvie, touch wood, are in a far better state than that of most of their neighbors. While they're not as spry as they were in years gone by, well, who is? Their minds, and again I touch wood, are as nimble and adroit as ever and both are inveterate readers of "The New York Times."

As Uncle Slappy likes to put it, "compared to me, Wolf Blitzer is a pisher."

Like I said, we arrived, weary from more than twelve hours of travel at the condo and we're more than a little done in.

"A seltzer you'll have in an ice-glass," Aunt Sylvie said meeting us at the front door.

"Maybe a coffee they'd like," Uncle Slappy countered.

"Laura doesn't drink coffee." Aunt Sylvie corrected. "I'll put out both, coffee and seltzer and maybe some lemonade, too, not from a mix."

I thought better of trying to get a word in. Instead I carried our bags to the bedroom in which we would be staying.

I then reconnoitered in the kitchen where approximately enough food and drink to provision the North Korean army was being airlifted from the Sub Zero to the eat-in kitchen.

"So how was your New Year," Uncle Slappy began.

"It was fine. It was quiet. To be honest with you, we were up and down with the sun."

"I believe they call that 'diurnal,'" said the old man.

"And how was your New Year?"

Uncle Slappy answered without skipping beat. 

"At our age, our life expectoration isn't getting any longer, so we decided to paint Boca red."

Aunt Sylvie chimed in: "We went down to from Schmear to Eternity, our favorite bagel place. Glenn Miller was playing on the hi-fi. And we each had an everything bagel with lox and smoked sturgeon."

"And the real cream-cheese. Not the tofu."

"The real cream-cheese," I said dumbly.

"Yolo," the old man said.

Then as one, Aunt Sylvie and Uncle Slappy left the kitchen. But not before giving each of us a nice warm kiss.

Yolo.