On Christmas Eve afternoon, my wife and I flew out of Atlantic City to visit some relatives in Florida. We were going to see her mother's side of the family, on the east coast. I have some relatives on the Gulf coast from my mother's side of the family, but this was a short, spur-of-the-moment trip - and, as it turned out, one fraught with danger and excitement.

The flight down was uneventful. I tried to sleep and ended up writing things in my head. I also thought about the traffic for my weekly blog. Visitors range from 10 to 20 daily hits.

However, one week the blog had 50 daily hits for a few days. It was an okay column, but not one of my more compelling ones. I suddenly realized that the title - "My Wild Weekend" - had probably attracted people casually Googling for stories about wild weekends of another kind. Imagine their bewilderment when they read about my wild weekend of painting two canvasses.

We landed about three thirty, and dropped in on Uncle Frank and Aunt Cecilia. Then, we headed over to my wife's brother's house, where we were welcomed by my brother-in-law Adam, sister-in-law, Faye, and niece Fiona.

Then we headed over to Faye's sister's house for a Christmas Eve dinner of various fishes, and pasta. I was called upon to make pitcher my world-famous Cosmopolitans. Because of my recipe, in the state of New Jersey, I am a registered anesthesiologist - a word no one can spell (or even pronounce) after downing one of these concoctions.

We stayed at Faye and Adam's overnight, and the next day, Christmas, we were visited by Adam's daughter Jamie and her youngest son, a year-and-a-half-old named Yul. She came with her husband, Sam, and five of their six other kids. The subject of toilet training came up, and someone remarked on how hard it was with boys, especially when they were making "number one".

If you call to a three-year-old boy, he will usually turn his whole body - not just his head - to face you. When he is standing in front a toilet, the results can be disastrous. There is also the problem of teaching him to aim. My wife remembered that she taught her two sons by dropping a few Cheerios into the toilet, so that they would have targets to shoot at.

I said that I had learned by trying to sink my father's cigarette butts that he had thrown into the commode. Usually, I could score a hit and little bits of tobacco would stream out into the water, like lifeboats.

That night, we stayed at Uncle Eddy's empty apartment. He had invited us to stay there, as he was going on a cruise.

"Where is the cruise going?" asked my wife.

"I don't know. Might be the Panama Canal. Could be the Erie Canal, for all of me. I don't care; I just like cruises."

The next morning, my wife awoke with a stomach-ache. It continued to get worse through the day and she began to feel nauseous. Finally, at seven that night she agreed to go to an emergency room. I called my brother-in-law Adam, who said, "Bring her over, and we'll go to the Medical Center here."

And so we waited for almost three hours in the waiting area as my wife continued to get sicker and sicker, and I worried. At one point, she got up for a few minutes, with her back to us, and Adam - noticing how her sweat pants were hanging on her, said, "Sister, I hate to tell you this, but you've got a wedgie!" It broke the tension for a few minutes for all three of us.

Finally, at twenty to eleven that night, she was admitted. After a battery of tests, it was discovered that she had appendicitis. Now that we knew what was what, my brother-in-law and I could relax a bit. They gave her something for the pain. She fell into a troubled sleep and I took Adam home. Then, I returned and slept in a chair next to her bed while we waited for a room.

At seven, she got a room and was scheduled for an appendectomy later that morning. Adam called to see how she was doing.

"So, it's her appendix, eh? What side is that on?" he asked.

"This is what they call a 'runaway appendix'," I said. "Sometimes it's on the right, and sometimes it's on the left; they're trying to follow it now."

He hesitated for a minute before realizing I was putting him on. At nine, they came to collect my wife for surgery. I kissed her good-bye and told her Dr. Adam would be consulted about her wedgie. Later, Adam and Faye arrived to wait with me while they operated. The operation was done lapriscopically; they went in through the navel. The appendectomy scar will soon become a thing of the past.

She was in the hospital for four days. One evening, Faye brought me supper; a generous helping of pasta and shrimp. My wife was content to sleep and rest and chat on the phone with well-wishing friends and relatives.

To pass the time, I read a biography of Montgomery Clift. (As a child, I thought "Montgomery Cliff" was a place, probably somewhere near "Winston Churchill".) It was a sad story of a depressed man who self-medicated himself to death. I was surprised to learn that two of his closest friends were Nancy Walker (AKA Rhoda's mother) and Jack Larson, who played Jimmy Olsen on the old Superman television show.

This wasn't our first trip to Florida. However, on this excursion, we were more conscious of the elderly for some reason. It was Thurberesque in a way. Like the shuffling zombies in Night of the Living Dead, old people wandered through parking lots trying to remember where they parked their cars.

In our remaining days, we looked up some old friends from New Jersey, met the two-year-old son of my wife's cousin, and very briefly visited Coconut Grove. The day before we left, my wife had an appointment with her surgeon. Her question to him was, "Doc, my best feature is my belly button. Tell me it's going to return to its former glory!" After he stopped laughing, he assured her that it would.

Our last night there, we took and Faye and Adam to dinner at some mall in Boca Raton. While we waited for a table, Adam twice pointed out two different women who were walking their dogs through the mall in dog strollers.

Dog strollers?

It was time to go home.