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.

Countdown

Of all Mother Nature’s gentle and endearing creatures, I most identify with the groundhog. He waits patiently underground all year, feasting on delicacies and delights, only to appear in the gloom of a February morning while all the world waits to discover his secret. Then, in a burst of media attention, his single accomplishment of the year is over in the flash of a newsman’s camera.

For the groundhog, fate balances on the turn of a sundial. If the way is clear, we will throw open the windows and welcome in the twinkling sunbeams of spring. But if the groundhog sees his shadow, he runs to hide his face and we trudge into a tunnel of deep, dark, depressing days, trailing our winter boots and woolen scarves behind us.

I feel the same way when I try on bathing suits.

During the winter months, I while away the demi-days of the season gorging myself on cream-filled snack cakes and marking off blocks on the calendar with a tube of decorator icing. Something happens to me in between the time when the autumn leaves start falling and the spring seedlings begin to sprout. Cold weather brings the opportunity to stir up sweet snow cream and savory soups. Winter holidays that taste of cornbread dressing and pumpkin pie whip past, and before I know it I’m two Ho-Ho’s and a Ding Dong away from fitting into my stretchy pants.

And so, I dig in my closet to the bottom of the pile of Things Left to Die, past the leggings, past the belly shirts, past the sports bra, and pull out—gasp—last year’s swimsuit. It took three paramedics and the Jaws of Life to remove the thing last year, and it will probably take my weight in bacon grease to get thing wretched thing to slide on now.

And suddenly Puxatawney Phil pops up to remind me that the days of carrots and calorie counters are waiting just around the cold front.

And here I am without a recipe for groundhog pie.

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.

Nailed It!

I can't take your call right now. I'm over at Stage of Life sawing and cutting and figuring out where I went wrong. Check out my handy guide to Do It Yourself home projects. But if you're squeamish, stay right here and browse through old pictures of the Captain. See there, doesn't he clean up nicely?

Facing Off

A Simple User’s Guide to Changing Your Privacy Settings on FaceBook


Step 1: Go to Account and click on Settings. This action leads to coded instructions in the form of a detailed transcript of the 1969 John Wayne movie, True Grit, written in a secret font legible only to flamboyant cuttlefish. (Luckily I am fluent in cuttlefish, having once taken a class in Oceanic Languages as an elective when demographic knitting was unavailable.)

Step 2. Click on the information you want to change.

Step 3. Click repeatedly on the same field when Facebook denies access for change.

Step 4. Place index fingers of each hand in your ears and try to make them touch.

Step 5: Put your right foot in.

Step 6: Take your right foot out.

Step 7: Put your right foot in.

Step 8. Shake it all about.

Step 6. Swear mightily and creatively in an open letter to the FaceBook founders.

Step 7. Using the big toe of your left foot, press the power button on your computer.

Step 8. Place your head on your desk and sit quietly until the teacher says you can sit up.

Following these detailed instructions will either launch a nuclear warhead or change your privacy settings. I deleted my birthday and five pages of status updates from public view, performed a magical keystroke that changed my picture to a shot of a cunning gopher lunching on a banana sandwich, and erased the child restriction settings that prevented me from viewing old Michael Jackson videos.

My homepage retaliated with an immediate status update sent to all of my relatives, the entire population of non-English speaking countries, and the Queen of England, that said, “This user is a gopher! Lock your doors! Hide your children!”

The Queen responded by immediately withdrawing as my neighbor on University Farm Zoo City Co-Ed Island, where she had previously harvested my crop of watercolor cows with impunity. All I can say is I’ve sprinkled her sugar maples for the last time.

It’s possible that I went astray in the directions. Next time perhaps I’ll put my left foot in.

And walk right out.

Sloppy Seconds Saturday

Thanks to Carole at Irrational Propensity for sharing me around today on Sloppy Seconds Saturday. Join us for the fun over at Carole's where we're rediscovering that my hips don't lie. No matter how much I wish they would!

Top Tense

We're in cahoots - or careening into divorce court. Join the Captain of my Canoe at An Army of Ermas where he shows why we do everything together. . .separately.