Love and Lawn Care

As hurricane-driven rain pounded the windows, I scanned an advertisement for getaway packages to my favorite hotel located on the shore of my favorite beach.

“Look,” I said to the Captain of my Love Boat who was staring out the window as the mole holes filled with water. “They have a holiday package for Jingle Bell lovers, a Paws package for Floof lovers, and a Romance package for. . .”

“Great Gophers! Can you believe that!?”

“So much for romance. What is it?”

“That guy next door is working on his yard again. In the middle of a Category 3!”

My guy doesn’t normally escalate above tropical storm level. He’s so cool, the ice in his tea doesn’t melt. The last time I saw him this upset was when the same guy took his new lawn tractor for a spin in our yard. I called it being neighborly. He called it trespassing and threatened to border our yard with the kind of spikes that make hay out of John Deere’s tires.

“He wants to make sure his yard looks nice come spring.”

“He wants to make me look like I learned lawn care on a seaweed farm.”

I waved the hotel brochure like a white flag.

“Why don’t we take a nice trip where someone else takes care of maintenance? They have a romantic getaway with chocolate covered strawberries and rose petals.”

“They have chocolate covered rose petals?”

“No, they sprinkle them around to look nice.”

“When they’re sprinkled around our yard you make me rake them up.”

“We could get the Paws Package and take the dog.”

“Remember when we let the dog sleep with us? It smelled like burning tires in our bedroom for a week.”

I tossed the beach brochure in the recycle-when-we-remember bin. "Let’s just order pizza delivery for the guy next door and turn in for a nap when he stops mowing to gorge on pepperoni.”

“Now that’s a romance package. I don’t have rose petals, but the rosemary in the yard is going to seed.”

It goes to show. The weeds in your garden just might be the spice of life.

 STEPPING OUT

"I do what?"

“A half step. Like a baby step. But with bigger feet.”

The Captain and I are standing face-to-face in the living room. We’ve decided, after a half century of ignoring choreographed moves, that we should learn the proper way to do the Carolina Shag, the official dance of the South Carolina coast. Around these parts children learn to Shag before they learn to blame broken dishes on their little brother.

Just now we’re stuck at the most difficult part. Getting started. The Captain can slow dance smoother than morning fog on a bass pond, but when it comes to following directions, it's like asking a cat to walk a straight line.

“Which direction do we step?”

“I guess toward the beach.”  We are presently five hours and six more weeks of winter away from the shore. We pause and gaze serenely eastward in honor of the ocean.

“What are you doing?” The Captain wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his Jimmy Buffett t-shirt and peers at me.

“I’m gazing eastward.”

 “You’re gazing toward the kitchen.  East is the other direction.”

 “It’s the thought that counts.”

 “You’re thinking of the cheesecake in the refrigerator.”

“It reminds me of the beach”

 “Because it’s round like the sun?”

“Because they both remind me my swimsuit doesn’t fit.”

We observe a moment of silence in honor of the good things in life and traitorous swimwear.

He takes my hand.  “So where were we? Half. . .”

“Step.”

 “Okay.”

We immediately step in opposite directions, then back, then smash each other’s toes into the biological equivalent of strawberry jam. Our arms are locked around each other and we’re stuck together like purse-bottom postage stamps. Every time he breathes, my glasses fog up in a half moon shape.

I glare at him through a sliver of light at the bottom of my right lens. “The men on the video were light on their feet.”

 He grimaced and limped to a chair.  “I wish you were light on my feet.”

 “You need to practice. You’re supposed to look like you’re hovering just above the ground.”

“The last thing I saw hovering was just above swamp level in a bad science fiction movie.”

 “What happened in the movie?”

“The hovering thing got beat up before I got the butter on my popcorn.”

“So you don’t want to learn the Shag?”

“I’d rather line the bed of my truck in taffeta and throw an afternoon tea for the Sugar Tit chapter of the Hell’s Angels.”

 “The only motorcycle in town belongs to Old Man Pirkle, the Volunteer Fireman and Assistant Mayor.”

 “We could just watch You Tube demos and eat cheesecake.”

 “Turn on the laptop. We have six more weeks to buy a swimsuit.”

Good Friends and Ghiradelli

There are friends and there are friends. There are friends who will pull you out of the burning wreckage of your car and stay with you until emergency assistance arrives. There are friends who will loan you money when the sure thing pulled up lame at the race track.

And then there are friends who will invite you to their beach house and feed you chocolate, which in theory could turn out to be a stalker scenario, but is definitely worth the risk. I don't know about you, but

when the chips are down and you've defrosted the last pack of freezer burned hamburger in fridge and you don't know if your dinner plate will be empty the next time the clock strikes half past supper time, I know which friends I want to have rally around my hunger pangs.

Chocolate wins every time.

So while other folks took their seats at a table full of the trimmings of a dreary turkey dinner basted in tradition one Thanksgiving, my companions and I tucked into bowls full of designer chocolates. The only catch? We were supposed to guess which chocolatier originated each confection. That's like choosing which animal has the spots. The one with the cheap dry cleaner. No problem.

Okay, so I scored low on the test. The consolation prize was still sweet.

But to choose which one I like best? That's like choosing Shakespeare over Tennyson. Renoir over Van Gogh. Marvel over DC. I have a multi-level palette. When the chips are down it doesn’t really doesn’t matter if it’s Spiderman or Superman that keeps your cookies crisp. I can appreciate them all.

So if trying out chocolate samples to see if Godiva can beat Ghiradelli off the line while I’m peering out through a bank of windows that reveal sunlight sparkling on the sea is the ultimate challenge, I have to think that I'm willing to pay the price for friendship.

Chocolate. For the win!

Happy Birthday, David.

Who's Birthday? No, It's Wendy's!

Especially for the N.C. gang. Because today is Wendy's birthday (Happy Birthday to one of our very favorite folks!) and because “that Vernon guy; he’s funny!” (Son of humorist to his mother, who is essentially liver mush in the great buffet of life.)

Did Somebody Say Shark Week?



Last summer we vacationed at a beach house with two other families. Vacation is an old English word meaning “No, you can’t bring the jellyfish home. Because he wants to stay with his Mommy jellyfish in the ocean, that's why.”

The rooms were awash with the sights and sounds of breaking waves, sparkling sunshine, and the pitter patter of assorted feet as folks stomped about searching for sandals, swimming suits, and suntan lotion. To some people any space that is filled with sibling rivalry and random whining might be unsettling. Add kids to the mix and it can be daunting.


To me it felt like home.

I come from a family with four children, which in kid math, what with adding a Little League team, several random Girl Scouts, and carrying a neighbor’s kid, equals 642 youngsters fighting over the last Kool Pop. The children in the neighborhood where I grew up traveled in hordes, like fire ants, but with Barbies and GI Joes, tunneling through various living rooms in search of something to do. I never saw a house with empty rooms until I married twenty years later. Then I went from room to room searching.

Where have all the people gone?

So Memorial Day last year saw me up to my baggy eyes and borrowed bathing suit in little people who still think the day begins while the sky is dark and who consider the fast lane in life a bicycle path. Toss in my two guys, who will remain teenagers as long as the punchline holds out, and who could sleep six days straight without draining their Black Ops health points, and you come up with a cross between Dr. Who and reality TV: Survivor: Time Warp Narcolepsy.

When it comes right down to it and the Special K Red Berries hit the bowl, the scene at the beach house could be a present day kid invasion or a scene from 40 pre-pixel years ago when I would be awake before the dew reached the saturation point and Mom gave up hoping I would ever sleep through the night. (Imagine my surprise when I discovered years later, after the first screaming bundle of No-Doze came along, that 9PM was the new midnight.)

After a few mornings when the kids rose an hour before the sun, I found I could nap with my face in a bowl of cereal that stayed crunchy even in milk, propped up on the couch watching exciting animated adventures, or reclining in a tidal pool at the shore (Wendy, that’s us!) surrounded by tiny fishes who have no appreciation for personal space.

Turns out that napping is my superpower. So I had a wonderful vacation and discovered my superhuman strength all at once. James Bond can have his fancy gadgets; I can sleep when the tide comes in and I’m up to my neck in sand dollars and seaweed. So bring on the sunrise; I'm a kid again.

Because James Bond had one thing right. You only live twice.

Talking Turkey

Two years ago, facing a diagnosis of “your internal organs are going to explode,” the Captain lost enough weight that he could send some to underdeveloped countries, such as Japan, where no one is ever overweight except Sumo wrestlers, the people who wear the least clothes.

Come to think of it, it’s that way at the beach, too. And, of course, Wal-Mart. Why is it that people with the most to show wear the least to cover it up? I’m certainly not the poster child for the “Feed the Runway Models” campaign, but I sure don’t want to have the seat behind the Sumo guy when he does his warm-up stretches.

Anyway, Cap also practically emptied his blood stream of triglycerides, a medical term that means “the fuse to the bomb that will make your internal organs explode.”

He did this all by himself. While he was very busy with the sort of advanced mathematics that deals with less than, greater than, and the sort of cholesterol level that voids whole sets of fat grams, I busied myself roasting turkeys, steaming vegetables, and skimming fat from by-products.

Eventually the Captain’s math resulted in the need for a belt to hold his pants up, and life returned to normal on the poop deck.

Until yesterday. One simple stretch and the button popped off his pants with enough force to put another hole in the ozone layer. Either his pancreas exploded or his body is rejecting artificial fasteners.

That little button also blew a hole in my holiday planning calendar for the next few months. I’m back to skimming, steaming, and roasting.

Luckily, my house is full of turkeys.

Surf's Up!

A five-hour car trip to the beach is tough enough to accomplish if you’re Superman and have the gift of looking great in tights and that showy flair for flight.

If you’re a family of four with at least one kid who can’t sit still long enough to blink, it’s a little more difficult. Especially if the kid inherited the fidgety gene from his mother, who is piled up in the front seat braiding the road map.

We packed the car, wedged in a couple of kids who have seen enough in the way of growth spurts to resemble the Incredible Hulk after a Breakfast of Champions, raced to the end of the driveway, and braked to a gravel-spewing stop at the mailbox.

Kid Two rose from the backseat like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He has the eerie blue glow that comes from extended exposure to computer light. This kid’s idea of unplugged is a wireless Internet connection that is so fast it has déjà vu when he turns it on.

“How much longer?”

“Five hours,” the Captain responded gleefully as he put the car in gear and plowed through two rows of daylilies by the curb. “We’re on the way!”

“Five hours! My battery pack will never last that long. I can’t believe you made me go on vacation. ”

“We’re going to the beach. It’ll be worth it.”

“The beach is three hours away.”

“That’s a different beach.”

“There’s more than one beach?”

“Yep. Check with Google. You learn something new every day.”

“I learned my parents are forcing me to go to a five-hour beach. Nobody else’s parents are that mean.”

“Keep it up and we’ll make you go out to eat, too.”

This kid thinks any restaurant that doesn’t offer chicken nuggets or pizza is a terrorist racket designed to kill us with vegetables.

“At least I can use the high speed Internet access when we get there.”

“Sorry. Vacation means we’re there to enjoy ourselves. There’s no Internet access.”

“Not even dialup?”

“No, but there are herds of wandering Triceratops out back.”

“And bar soap and rotary dial phones, too. Right. This is a museum trip, isn’t it?”

Five hours later, we unfolded ourselves and tumbled out of the car, performing the happy dance to the beat of ocean waves on the shoreline.

Kid Two stopped, sniffed the air and climbed back in the car.

“What’s the matter, Bud?”

“According to Google Maps, we’re five miles from the nearest McDonald’s. They have food and free Internet access. The way you people drive, we’d better start now if we want to get there before I lose power.”

What can I say? We might be in for sun fun at the beach, but this kid still yearns for the smell of salt on French fries and has the overpowering urge to surf the Web.

Broadband or Bust

Because life isn’t exciting enough living with a pair of lively Labradors and their minions, the cast of the Jungle Book, the Captain and I decided to crawl into the Pony Express Age and install cable television and high speed Internet access in the house.

Actually the idea for the high-speed Internet came from the boys. When they offered to share the password-protected lock they installed on the bathroom door, we agreed immediately. We’re reasonable people after all.

Just now, the Captain and I are sitting in the living room. Alone, a suspicious circumstance because it's never happened before. “It’s quiet.” I can’t help remembering the “Let’s dress the Dachshund in a tutu” fiasco of ’98. “Too quiet.”

“Enjoy it.” The Captain of my Hobby Shop is a computer technician by trade. He could hack into Bill Gates Christmas decorations and install an Apple tree topper without tarnishing the angel’s halo. He has just put in a wireless router so that we can all share the broadband. This works about as well as the North and South Koreans share airspace, but he’s done his part.

Tonight for the first time since building blocks gave way to bandwidth, I haven’t had to ask permission to use my computer. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Me: “My turn to use the computer.”

Random Youth: “What’s for supper?”

Me: “Nothing if I don’t get a turn on the computer.”

Random Youth: Sigh. “Fine. Let me kill this guy first.”

Twenty minutes later, the guy is still alive and I’m wondering who’s going to make the sacrifice in his place. Maybe I can talk the dog into taking one for the team.

But tonight the house is so quiet I can hear dust mites tatting lace in the living room drapes.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. Nothing gets to a Mom faster than “that infernal racket” or absolute silence. “What do you suppose they’re doing?”

“Holding hands and humming I’d Like To Teach the World to Sing?”

I followed the day-glo light of laptap monitors down the hall. To my bedroom. The only room in the house with matching sheets.

The boys, who can’t share the back seat of a beachbound minivan for more than a two-minute warning are piled up in neutral corners of the sleigh bed turned Internet Café, watching THE SAME You Tube videos and instant messaging one other. I tiptoed back to the living room.

I might not be happy with the details, but I’m content that all those news reports about families growing apart are wrong. As long as my guys are wireless, I don’t have to come unglued.

Sunrise, Sunset. . .What's the Difference?

I’m of the opinion that if you don’t see the sun rise over the ocean at least once in your life, you can’t get into heaven. It might not be on your bucket list, but it deserves a place on your sand pail and shovel agenda.

The Captain says today’s sunset is tomorrow’s early sunrise, so there’s no need to get up when dew is forming on the newspaper just to see one. If you’re upset about the direction, look at it in a mirror.

Our priorities are different. His are wrong.

Vacationing at the beach, I undertook to secure him a spot on the scenic side of the pearly gates when he finally goes to the big place computer techs go when they die, and although I’m uncomfortable mentioning gates and windows in that context, I don’t mean a big room with lots of windows and a high speed Internet connection and a billion users that know how to synch their own Blackberry.

It was 7:00 a.m. The sunlight streamed in the window like it was on a video loop. The Captain’s face was one with the pillow and held the relaxed, peaceful air of a summer firefly in the meadow.

Time to get up.

But how to facilitate the waking process without also calling the enemy to battle? He doesn’t always show the proper appreciation for my efforts to initiate husband-wife bonding time. After the last unpleasantness, I decided not to use the car alarm ploy again. The policeman that issued the warning seemed adamant about the possibility of a future fine.

Law enforcement officers that have gone all white around the mouth do not always make their point clear, so I’ve never been sure if the greater infraction was disturbing the peace or indecent exposure. And the fire was already out when they arrived, so that wasn't a factor.

I sat in bed, resting against the wicker headboard, celebrity magazine in hand. I try to improve my mind, even when my body is on vacation. You can’t fight too hard in the fashion battle, and this issue focused on Jessica Simpson’s shoes. Flipping pages like they were fan blades, I glanced over at the Captain. I’ve patented a look that will freeze jalepeno poppers, but to be considerate, I set my eyes to stun.

No response.

I cleared my throat meaningfully.

No response.

I repositioned myself repeatedly due to an uncomfortable wrinkle in the linens.

No response.

Inspired by the sheets, I succumbed to a previously undiscovered allergic reaction to thread count.

With a snort, he turned to face the other wall.

Somewhere on another street, possibly in another town, an unknown hand flipped a switch on a small countertop appliance, and a dark beverage began a slow drip into a pyrex pot. Nobody gives a wake up call like Mr. Coffee. Captain Caffeine sensed the change in the atmosphere immediately. If they could train him to sniff out bombs like he can track down freshly brewed coffee, he would always have a job as an airport monitor.

He sat up, sucking in air like Smokey the Bear on the trail of a forest campfire.

I padded to the kitchen and back bearing a cup filled with the drink that never sleeps.

He burst from the bedclothes like Superman from a 50’s era phone booth. “So, wanna go see the sunrise?”

“Sure, but you’d better gas up the car.”

“Why?”

“Because we’d have to travel three time zones toward the west to get a glimpse.”

He took a long drink from his mug. Some women go their whole lives without the caress that the Mickey Mouse on that cup was getting. The Captain leaned his head back and closed his eyes with a look of complete serenity.

“That’s okay. We’ll catch the next one tonight. Got a mirror?” He took a draw of coffee that made Mickey’s ears stretch and shot a boyish smile at me from across the room.

Just my luck. I have a plan to get to heaven and he finds the door right here on Earth.

Pirates, Prom Gowns, and Putt Putt

Buying a new bathing suit is like selecting an alias for the Witness Protection Program. You want something that fits and has flair, but that will keep all your hidden assets locked away where no one will ever find them.

In my experience, the main function of a bathing suit is to gather oceanic sand in the lining of the crotch while you’re trying to balance on the retracting grains of an outgoing wave without spilling your drink-filled coconut. With my typical lack of coordination, my coconuts take a dunking every time.

I went shopping with my sister and my niece, Knockout. This girl could wear an oven mitt and have guys follow her into deep water. I was painfully aware that my thighs had expanded to the Outer Banks and my behind had relocated to the subtropics. No wonder my temperature light keeps flashing.

We’re at Wal-Mart, browsing through the racks. It’s the only place I can get support hose, Sugar Smacks, and sinus medication without having to change parking lots. Presently my buggy is loaded with a month’s worth of Friskies and the floral pack of Hanes Her Way Full Coverage. Nothing says party like a well-fed cat and chubby sized underwear.

While Knockout was slipping on bikini tops over her clothes, I was fumbling through the racks looking for something with sleeves and a bib. I couldn’t fit a bathing suit over my clothes if I had the Jaws of Life to help me dress.

“What about something with a little sarong to cover up problem areas?” Knockout suggests, flattening an invisible wrinkle in her belly button.

I couldn’t fit a sarong over my shin with a shoe horn.

“Do they have anything with a hoop skirt instead?”

I’m headed to the seashore for a weekend away from the Labradors. All I’m going to do is pick up a few seashells, eat some fish without having to share, and play a round of beach putt putt. I shouldn’t have to use up the gross national output of latex to get a hole in one at Shipwreck Cove. Actually, the closest thing I ever got to a hole in one at putt putt golf was the time I chipped a shot into the Diet Coke of the Paris Hilton clone in the parking lot, but that’s All Star stuff and I can’t do it every time. The ensuing altercation is still a topic of conversation among local law enforcement officers. Whoever said golf is boring never saw my follow-through.

Besides, I figure if I can’t see it, it’s not a problem. I’ve played hide and seek with my navel for 35 years. Once I passed 40 and realized I’d need a topographical map and a satellite signal from NASA to find my waist, I declared myself the victor and began looking for my original chin. We might have to call in the Mars Rover for that one.

“What about a cover up? You like retro.” She held up a tye-dyed washcloth, swirling with all the colors of a bowl of breakfast cereal.

“It looks like something you used to clean up a chemical spill. Besides, I have a doily on the back of my couch that hides more than that thing.”

I wandered across the aisle to a rack of likely-looking house dresses. My idea of coverage is mountains-to-sea. I’m not interested in anything that leaves the foothills or the Great Plains out in the open. I untangled a handful of spaghetti straps and pulled out a prospect. “What about this? It’s almost long enough to cover the coast at high tide.”

“That’s a prom dress.”

“How can you tell?”

“There are sequins on the thong.”

“I thought that was an armband to hold my IPod.”

“There’s a clip on the tiara for that. See, there’s a secret compartment behind the disco ball.”

Three dozen prom gowns and I pick the one that needs John Travolta in a white suit to complete the package.

“Here’s an animal print. You’d be right in style.” Knockout whipped a bikini bedecked with pink and green peace symbols off the rack and held it up with a flourish. A trail of leopard prints the color of blush traipsed through the peace fields.

“The leopard is already embarrassed and I haven’t even tried it on.”

She flipped through a few more prospects. “There’s nothing left on the rack but old lady swimsuits.”

To this kid, Paris Hilton is ancient history.

With a sigh, I tossed the sequined thong and tiara selection into my cart. I may not be Queen of the Prom, but I’ll be the best dressed gal at the Pirate Ship Putt Putt course.

GPS or Busted

Asking our GPS for a destination is sort of like writing a letter to Santa. You express your heartfelt wishes and desires and hope that you’ve been good enough to get results. My GPS makes me address it as if it were the deity in charge of merge lanes and yield signs. Forget about Rest Areas. You’re better off packing an empty coffee can and a Do Not Disturb sign.

The Captain of our compact Conestoga fired up all four cylinders at the same time recently and to celebrate, we decided to take an actual trip.

Me: Oh great GPS, would you direct us to the path that leads to the beach?

GPS: No.

Me: Please? I won’t ask for anything else. Ever.

GPS: What have you done to deserve this trip? I get no respect. You even put my batteries in upside down.

Me: Sorry. But I didn’t put hair remover in the Captain’s shampoo for April Fool’s Day this time, and I didn’t mention the ferret in the dishwasher.

Captain: There’s a ferret in the dishwasher?

GPS: There WAS a ferret in the dishwasher.

Kid One: You found my ferret!

Me: The point is, I’ve been good. Please tell me how to get to the beach.

GPS: Did you pack a towel?

Me: Yes.

GPS: And clean underwear?

Me. I can buy new ones when I get there.

GPS: Read the fine print. It’s against my Code of Ethics to take you anywhere without clean underwear.

Me: Fine. (I leave the car and return shortly, having taken a precautionary pit stop.) Now will you tell me?

GPS: You left the overnight bag in the guest bath.

Me: I also flushed the house key by accident.

GPS: Did you jiggle the handle?

Me: Yes. Can’t I just buy underwear when I get there?

GPS: Oh sure, and I guess you’re going to parade around all day in that thing you call a swimsuit. Did you pack a cover up?

Captain: You’re not taking underwear?

Kids One and Two: You’re going to wear a BATHING SUIT? We’re not going.

GPS: Don’t talk to your mother that way. That’s my job.

Captain: You’re not taking underwear?

Me: I have to take that bathing suit. It’s the only one I have.

GPS: That might have been a bathing suit in 1975. Today it is a rubber band with sand in the crotch.

Me: Fine, I’ll look for a new one when we get to the beach.

Kid One: Can we take the ferret?

GPS: That ferret won’t be going anywhere, kiddo. Not after a spin through the potscrubber cycle.

Kid One: MOM!

Me: The vet says he’s going to be just fine, honey. He said he’d never seen anybody give CPR to a ferret before.

GPS: CPR? That was more like LOL. That ferret looked like a sprinkler hose.

Kid One: MOM!

Me: He’s kidding. The vet will have him all patched up in no time. Let’s just hit the road, shall we?

Captain: You’re not taking underwear? Are we staying in the same room as the kids?

GPS: And what about that ratty bathing suit? It looks like a freeway-bound retread just before it leaves the tire.

Me: You take that back!

Captain: Sorry. I just thought separate rooms would be better.

Kid One: Can we go by the vet’s office on the way out of town?

Me: No, honey, we don’t have time.

Captain: How much time does it take to get a room?

GPS: I sure wouldn’t stay in a room with a woman in a ragged bathing suit and no underwear.

Me: He just needs a little extra care.

Captain: That’s what I’m saying.

Me: Not you. The ferret.

Kid One: How much?

Captain: That’s what I want to know.

GPS: That’s it. Find your own way to the beach. I quit!

Me: Fine! I’m giving these new batteries to the iPod.

And that’s how we ended up staying home during vacation time this year. Although we did download a vacation planner and mapping application, and bought new underwear for everyone in the family online. We also got a new GPS.

One that’s guaranteed not to talk back.

Thirteen (A Reminiscence at Graduation Time)

Having babies is rather like bringing home a carton of eggs. You find a safe, temperature-controlled environment for them and you handle them carefully for the first couple of weeks, but after that they lose their freshness, begin to smell and you just wish you’d gone to the Waffle House and let somebody else worry with the details. At the very least you should have invested in Egg Beaters instead, and you have that sinking feeling that neither of you will age gracefully.

My niece and I both have children who are given to food fights, who exist on a diet of cold cereal and Oreos, who run screaming through the house naked at bathtime, and who wear their favorite shirt until the animal logo withers and dies of old age. Her son is three years old. Mine is thirteen. Here is a child who went to bed with Ozzy Nelson’s personality on the last day he was twelve and woke up the next morning as Ozzy Ozborne. Our lives went straight from Happy Days to Survivor: Hormone Breakout. Whoever first said that thirteen is an unlucky number must have had a new teenager in the hut.

It’s not that I’m unaccustomed to teenagers. I’m perilously close to exhausting all reasonable excuses why my oldest child shouldn’t be allowed to operate a moving vehicle. Before long the state will license him to drive a car, which will terminate my rights as a citizen by turning my pursuit of happiness into the impossible dream.

I’ve grown accustomed to walking alone like an escapee from Happy Valley Farms when we go to the mall. I know not to wear clothing designed to draw attention to myself, such as jeans that come all the way to my waist or blouses that are large enough to camouflage my behind. I’ve been trained not throw my hand up in a friendly greeting or act like I’m a blood relative if I happen to see my child at a football game, and I know not to say the word potty in public.

At least with my older son, I was given fair warning. With Mutant Human 2, the transition was like Dr. Jekyll and Martha Stewart, the jailhouse years. At school he took it personally if asked to participate in undesirable group activities, such as lunch. Teachers who expected him to complete homework assignments EVERY day, and who indulged in summer reading lists that didn’t involve Japanese animation were trolls. When subjected to standardized testing, he hyperventilated, experienced Suddenly Sullen disease, and threatened to move to Montana and indulge in steer wrestling.

I don’t know if it’s his perpetual smirk or the 360-degree eye roll when I speak that barbecues my potato chips. Perhaps it’s the nagging idea that he managed to restructure my nervous system into an alternate design made from rolls of bubble wrap. And he’s popping all the bubbles.

I’m comforted by the rumors that there are parents, alive in captivity, who survived the teenage years. Sure, a great many of them now have facial tics and are given to muttering to themselves and staring blankly into space for long periods of time, but they’re alive, hold responsible jobs, and can open their own mail. I am personally acquainted with parents who know not to wear spandex at the beach or brown socks with Birkenstocks, who can successfully record the message for the answering machine, and who can figure out by themselves how to pay at the pump when they get gas for the car, providing they have chosen the gas option instead of saving their pension for retirement.

They say if I make it through the next ten years, I’m home free. They also say that the worst part of having a teenager is the bizarre Hulk-like mood swings. Of course, I’ve heard that with hormone therapy and proper rest, I’ll get over it.

But I have to wonder if there’s money to be made in steer wrestling.

No Holes Left Behind

Holey Sand Castles!

Fill ’er up? We may not hear that question at the gas station any more, but that might be the question of the day on the South Carolina coast before long, proving a day at the beach is no day at the beach.

From the state that brought you possible leash laws for cats, comes talk of a new law designed to protect your pursuit of happiness and ruin your vacation.

Apparently flagrant and widespread sand castle building is endangering the health and well being of the good people of South Carolina and the visitors to her sparkling shores. Couples walking on the beach at night are sometimes hurt when they come across holes in the sand left by unscrupulent castle-builders.

At least they don’t have a problem with crabs.

The Isle of Palms City Council is not just going to sit and watch. No! In the spirit that made this country great even at the expense of a load of Earl Gray in the Boston Harbor, the last time it was acceptable to serve unsweetened tea, they’re going to do something about it.

Normally I try to avoid the news whenever possible and stick to factual stories like they have in celebrity gossip magazines. But some stories are so compelling that they demand attention, and I mean besides the age old question, “Why is Heather Mills going to judge the Miss USA Pageant?” You can bet your Rodham that Hillary’s not the only one dodging bullets.

It has come to my attention due to diligent research when I dropped jelly on the funnies and had to take the newspaper apart, that a proposal is under consideration that would result in fines for evildoers (Mom, Dad, and the pail pushing shovelers they call children) who do not fill in the holes they create while building sand castles. Before they leave the beach, all divots, moats, and shallow graves must be returned to their normal state or Junior is going to be spending his allowance trying to buy Get Out of Jail Free cards from the locals.

God only knows the penalties clams will incur.

They say the No Holes rule will be difficult to enforce, since the police must watch the alleged instigators build the alleged sandcastle and then leave the alleged hole unfilled, and then serve the warrant before the tide fills the hole back in.

Considering the time between low and high tides and the amount of time the family remains on the shoreline, the average policeman would be required to spend hours at a time on the beach.

The entire population of the Isle of Palms, Charleston, and Summerville has volunteered to serve on the police force.

Personally, I’m willing to do my part. On my next trip to the beach, I plan to return all the shell fragments, sand dollars, and shark’s teeth I’ve taken over the years. Vast numbers of seagulls have undoubtedly spent their lives with sprained ankles from tripping over the tiny holes I left behind. I’ll feel better knowing that I’ve made retribution.

But what do I do about the sand in my swimsuit?