What have I not yet learned about sunburns?

Jack Tripper walked through the door during this photo shoot and hilarity ensued.

On Saturday afternoon I decided I was going to achieve tanned legs. (Much like greatness or a pleasant buzz, tanned legs are a state of being, the likes of which are achieved, as in the case of the former, over the span of a lifetime or, as with the latter example, in the 45 minutes before your husband's office party.) Despite never having had so much as even a jaundice-hued kneecap, I decided that on pure will I could manage this feat in two hours of afternoon sun. (We were heading to Boston for the night and I wanted to wear a dress without looking like a body balanced on two tampons.)

Tanning my legs has always been difficult, particularly given the fact that they have not been exposed to sunlight in over 15 years. While my shins catch (but fail to absorb) the occasional ray, my thighs have been in vampire-like hiding since I was about 13. As a kid, I started off wearing boxers over bikini bottoms during bathing suit season and then when waterproof board shorts started showing up in stores, I felt a relief similar to what I imagine the flat-chested teenager feels when she discovers the padded bra. (Or the 29-year-old.) This "nobody has to know" attitude about my perceived teenhood flaws never really left, such that over the years my thighs have come to rival the late J.D. Salinger in their lack of public appearances. (I once recovered a second grade journal in which, in response to a writing prompt asking what three wishes I would lay down before a genie, "thinner thighs" was on the list. The other two? A date with my eight-year-old crush "and we would kiss" and infinite more wishes. Smart kid...also self-conscious and horny, apparently.) (This last aside could be depressing if you think about it too hard, so don't.)

I write this, of course, not as a call to arms regarding our culture's warped obsession with body image (or mine alone). That is another essay for another day, perhaps for another another writer. Maybe when I have a little girl someday on whom I want to impress the importance of self-acceptance, I'll put some energy towards this and get all Kirstie Alley on your ass, baring all on Oprah. (By then TV won't even be called TV anymore, it'll just be called Oprah.) But for now I will continue to cover my thighs---if I could have them walk three feet behind me I would---and embrace the fact that I'm helping neither the women's movement, nor the little girls of America, nor myself in doing so. (Instead of being all Kirstie Alley, I'll just be all Mel Gibson and say, "They may take my bra, but they'll never take my flowered sarong! Or I could be all Whitney, "No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my lower extremity mo-des-ty!")

The point---because I swear to God there was one (albeit not one of particular importance or even interest)---is that my attempt to become a golden goddess before sundown was more like painting the white roses red a la Alice in Wonderland. For two hours I lay face down in the grass and now my near transparent paleness has been replaced with throbbing redness. The skin is so taut with burn that a slight scratch of an itch feels like I'm slashing my back with my nails. (Not pictured, reddened backs of thighs and knees. I thought the bizarre picture up top---there's sort of a plucked chicken thing going on there, right?---best served my purpose. Plus, I would rather feature a live stream of my yearly pap smear than post pictures of my thighs.)

I have learned this lesson about sunburns so very many times. As a kid, my mom once had to lay me between two oversized towels that had been soaked in cold water to help cool me down after a full-body blistering burn. Just last week I made an appointment with a dermatologist to have a scary freckle (I think that's the medical term) looked at (on the back of my thigh, no less). I have had burns so bad I couldn't sit. I've had burns so bad I couldn't sleep. And if the pain wasn't enough to teach me about my weak Irish skin, you would think the fact that a sister of mine once had melanoma would. (I'll say it again...genetic cesspool.)

But some lessons need to be learned and relearned apparently, and my refresher course credits have been issued for the summer of 2010. Like the hippie who finally embraced the condom, so too will I embrace the SPF. So, return to the airbrush spray tan I shall and never again will I stray.

Because the greeeeeatest tan of all is easy to achieve
Learning to paint it on
makes for the greatest tan of all.

I got asked out today!

And it wasn't by an 80-year-old man, which is my target demographic. (I'm not kidding, old men---thee of the giant, hairy ear--love me. If I had a little Anna Nicole in me, I could make a life of it.)

But this was not an old man. In fact, if I had to guess I would say that he was in his mid-twenties. A young, fresh-faced bachelor. Because of how rarely I have been the recipient of the advances of the young, fresh-faced bachelors of the world, I need to celebrate it.

It should also be noted that I called Dan directly following this to recount the event in giddy detail.

"Your wife just got asked out!" I said when he picked up the phone and then, after a moment of reflection added, "Am I not supposed to tell you that?"

Sometimes I'm not sure where the line is between Dan my husband and Dan my best friend. When something silly happens---like being asked out on a Tuesday by a random dude---Dan is the person with whom I want to laugh about it. It may not be the most compassionate move but he can rest, utterly assured, that my compulsive honesty will keep me from keeping this species of secret from him. (Though I'm pretty sure my honesty will be less appreciated when the phone call starts with, "Your wife just had a nooner...") I've been with Dan for nine years---I started lusting after him even earlier, at the age of 19---so the theme of my lack of worldliness when it comes to dating, having committed myself so early, is something that sits on the surface of our relationship. Basically, I have the dating experience of a child bride so it is with something like anthropological awe that I take in the foreign cultural phenomenon that is being asked out.

Today's near mating ritual occurred at a hospital lab where I went to have blood drawn per my doctor's orders at my physical this morning. After entering the building, a guy in a suit allowed me onto the elevator before him, a chivalrous move that I appreciate at a most basic level. (The prey did not yet realize that the predator wanted into said pants.) We engaged in the paltriest of small talk, though during our travels from the first floor to the second where he got off, the following facts were exchanged: He was tired and working and I was going to have blood drawn at the lab on the third floor.

I'm going to stop to say this: Had I even a modicum of interest in an elevator stranger, all horny would be lost the second he told me he was going to have blood drawn. I would be thinking, "Eww, I wonder what he has..."

We both said a courteous goodbye as the elevator doors shut and I continued to the third floor.

The next thing I knew he was entering the lab waiting room. I was quickly chauffeured to have my blood drawn and as the phlebotomist (Really, is there any better word in the the English language?) thread the needle through the vein and my blood spurted into her vials, I began to get suspicious of his presence there. I quickly dismissed this notion and then laughed at my seeming conceit after I saw Suit Guy talking business with the office clerk as I walked past them and through the waiting room back towards the elevator.

And then he came heading to the elevator too. Huh.

On our trip down to the first floor and our walk to the parking lot, I learned that he had just moved to the area for a job but had gone to college at Salve Regina, a sort of fancy pants school in Newport, RI which is a couple of towns away from where I grew up. We stood in the parking lot for a few minutes finishing our chat about this common ground and by then I was hoping he would notice the wedding ringed hand that I made sure to leave out of my pocket.

But he didn't. And as he was leaving he handed me his business card which he had scratched the word "Coffee?" onto, apparently while I was giving blood. (Much smoother than "Drop 'em," which was Dan wrote on his business card...)

It was then that I told Suit Guy that he had made my day but I am Sadie, Sadie, Married Lady. (To be clear, I didn't actually quote Funny Girl though I strive to do just that on a daily basis.) I almost just took the card and ran but I felt bad thinking of him wondering why the girl from the lab, who had a taped bandage on one arm (and also a Band-Aid on the other from a tetanus shot that morning),---come to think about it what was wrong with that girl?---didn't ever call.

He was a gentleman about it though and asked if my husband was good-looking because he dug dudes too. I kid. (He did however say that my husband was a "lucky guy," a part I emphasized when I told Dan the story mere moments later.)

"The ol' girl's still got it," I said. And then Dan and I both laughed, acknowledging that whatever it is, I neither have it now, nor had it then. I've never been the kind of girl with it which is exactly why Dan is amused by these stories rather than angry or jealous. (For the record, I am absolutely the jealous one in this relationship and would probably have some sort of tantrum if a girl ever gave Dan her number and he was dumb enough to tell me about it. Ultimately though, I think I'd be turned on. It would feel like the chase/hunt was back on...)

The whole thing has been a fun running joke between Dan and me all day. When he called later this afternoon and didn't get me on the phone he left a message saying, "Are you out to lunch with your boy toy?"

And then when he told me he was on his way home, I pretended to freak out, "You're coming home now?" And then, whispering off to the side, "You have to go now...he's coming home."

Just now he charged through the door exclaiming, "Aha!" He pretended to be looking around the apartment for a fella before joining me on the couch (where I am writing now), putting his arm around me and saying, "I don't take you for granted."

Then he went off to make dinner, leaving me to my writing.

I don't take you for granted either, bud.

Now, drop 'em.

Dear Jillian Michaels, please show up unexpectedly at my door. Wednesdays work for me.

I took this picture and was, thus, also awake at 4:45/4:52am, having not yet gone to bed on Saturday night. (Pictured above: Kate Perotti, captain of Bust A Move, reigning 2010 Trivial Pursuit champion team and sibling Tara "Yeah, I know who Jim Bakker cheated with" Mellow.

I can't remember the last time I did an all-nighter and though I know I should feel shame, I'm mostly thinking, "Yup. Still got it."

This past weekend my sister Becky invited a bunch of her friends, most of whom she's known since kindergarten, up to NH for a party/reunion/getaway. Having known these girls myself since, well, many of them knew me when I was a baby, I attended along with a couple of my other sisters. I thought for sure I was going to be fighting to stay awake past 10pm...turns out the only sleep we three amigos got was between 5:30 and 7:30am when we moved to the couches to "just shut our eyes" for a bit. I've never been more grateful to be so very childless as I was yesterday when I was able to return home and completely blob-out.

It was a great visit though and a great party. We chatted and laughed and reminisced and looked at photo albums and the hours-long Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit game (Who's turn is it again?) was tight. (Team Poker Face, I think of it as a tie.) Bec has a PhD in hosting so there was nary a moment when food wasn't on the table or drinks weren't being poured. She served up buffalo chicken dip, cheese and cracker platters, chips and guacamole, dishes of caramel popcorn and chocolate-covered almonds, bagels with cream cheese, smoked salmon, sliced tomato and thin strips of red onion as well as a hefty order of Chinese food. Then there were the homemade calzones and seven-layer and spinach dips that the rest of the group brought in addition to all the tequila and Fresca for Palomas. I ate it all.

And then during blob-out Sunday I managed to throw down an egg sandwich and sweet potato home fries (courtesy of a very empathetic Dan) and a pepperoni pizza for dinner.

Now, I want to die. As much as I know that this kind of food hurts me (we're talking serious wounding), I can't seem to resist it lately. I'm boozing on sugar and grease. Yes, the weekend after weekend of this kind of behavior has caught up with me and the scale seems to go up a bit each time I check.

Today, I am trying to locate that goddamned wagon again.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with cinnamon, ground flaxseed, blueberries, almonds and walnuts.

Lunch: A can of tuna with light mayo and a diced apple (no bread).

Let's see if I can keep it up. Of course, later today I'll be picking up Molly for a little auntie/niece jaunt to the movies which presents the biggest of dietary hurdles for me:

Milk. Fucking. Duds.

I can do this. I'm strong enough. And if I'm not, Molly is. I will rely on her resolve after I give her a little pre-movie chat.

"No matter how hard I beg, don't share your snacks! When I tell you that I'm going to leave you at the movie theater, it will be an empty threat."

Wish me luck (and Molly too)!

Helluva day.

I love this boy.

Woke up and had coffee talk with GiG at the kitchen table.

Accompanied her to nephew Ben's pre-school graduation.

Off to daily radiation appointment where I met and chatted with my mom's "radiation friend," a warm and lovely teacher who has two children under the age of seven and is on the better side of a battle with breast cancer.

Lunch at Reidy's where we chatted with an ageless Sherry who's worked there since before I was born. We talked mostly about Paula, another of the Reidy's family and Sherry's best friend, who used to serve me mugs of hot chocolate that would turn out to be filled to the top with only whip cream and would always send me out the door with a lollipop (even throughout high school). Paula died almost three years ago of lung cancer. Sherry shared her story with us (after cautiously and kindly asking us if we wanted her to) with all the love and tenderness that she felt towards Paula and with which we needed to hear it. "Thank God for memories," she said.

Walked with my mom on the beach and then sat with her in the sand and talked a while longer.

Headed home for more coffee and a game of Scrabble. (She whooped my ass).

Headin' to bed feeling grateful. Thank God...

I found it!

Like the best weekends, this one has been centered almost entirely around food. The church pictured above? A restaurant.

I have to admit that on Friday night when Dan told me we were going to eat dinner at a place a) called Holy Grail and b) inside a former church, I was skeptical to say the least. My apologies in advance for the offensive nature of this next statement (and of this entire entry) but, with the exception of very few sweet little ones, I don't like churches. All the candle sticks and somber-faced stained glass give me the creeps. Plus, I always feel like I'm trying to "pass" the whole time I'm in there. I'm always a second behind in all the standing, kneeling and peace be with youing . As the daughter of parents who chose each other over their religions, I was taught God, not church.

But I think my sorry soul has finally been saved. I worship at the altar of the Holy Grail Irish pub (specifically the Irish Nacho; thick sliced potatoes fried and topped with corn beef, cheese and scallions and served with a horse radish sour cream). Despite its external churchiness, inside, the place was a hoot. Still very much a former church with its high ceilings and stained glass windows in tact, it now has a giant bar in the middle of it. (It is right to give this thanks and praise.) It was actually built very cleverly with pew-like booths and a grand stairway leading to the balcony (which Dan advised me was more the stuff of restaurant safety regulations than a feature of the original church.) It also had a a huge mural of an Irish village painted on the concave wall above where the altar would have been back in the late 1800's when the church was built. It was all just so neat. I've been to a lot of Irish pubs and this is the only one to which I would willingly return.

Dan questioned the restaurant's theme, citing the English connotations of the search for the Holy Grail---you know, all the Spamalot stuff---and it being an Irish pub. A little googling told me that some believe the Holy Grail's mythology has Irish roots but this doesn't explain the note on the menu which read, "Ask about being a knight at the round table!"

None of it mattered to me as I downed a glass of red wine (the body of Christ) and an Irish (French) dip (the body of Buddha).

I don't think it's the last supper we'll ever be having there.

Then yesterday, we headed out to a Farmer's Market where we bought some fresh salad greens, tomatoes, radishes, spinach, scallions and strawberries as well a pound of grass-fed ground beef from a local farm. This, before heading to a chowder festival at Prescott Park in Portsmouth where I gorged on so much creamy-broth concoctions that it may be off the menu for the rest of the summer. (Alternative ending: I gorged on so may creamy-broth concoctions that it felt like high school all over again.) It should be noted that even though our personal chowder favorite, that of Bob's Clam Hut in Kittery, didn't get the popular vote of the masses, it was voted number one by the judges, leaving Dan and me feeling justifiably superior to everyone there.

Then we napped ('cause what else do you do after 89 bowls of chowder?) Plus, a bout of insomnia had me up from 3:30 to 6:30 the night before so by the time 2pm rolled around I was getting loopy. After catching some zzz's we headed out to my sister Bec's house which is 45 minutes west of us to have dinner with her family (minus teenagers) and my parents, sister and nephew who are up for the weekend for Molly's dance recital. We ate hot dogs (turkey dogs, nitrate-free, holla atcha Bec!), hamburgers (buffalo ones were also featured), corn on the cob, thick cuts of tomato and mozzarella layered with shreds of just-picked basil, a tossed green salad sprinkled with Gorgonzola, and potato salad. For dessert I made up some individual strawberry shortcakes using the strawberries I bought at the Farmers' Market, homemade whip cream and some fresh-baked biscuits from the store. Bec put out a platter of s'more fixings and we all had those (yes, in addition to the strawberry shortcakes) while around a fire which brother-in-law Jeff had built in the backyard fire pit.

Dan and I ended up heading out early because his allergies were out of control by then but there was something special about driving away, seeing my family huddled around a fire in the darkness of a summer night.

I forgot that summer can feel like this.

When I saw GiG yesterday, I was relieved to find her looking fantastic and healthy despite having had radiation and her first round of chemo in a month just the day before. Upon greeting me she said, "I was swimming in the pool and it felt great and I don't even have cancer today!"

Indeed, for the weekend, we are all cancer-free.

Today's agenda:

Stop eating crap
1pm: the nugget's dance recital
5pm: accomplish everything I was supposed to have done this entire weekend but never got to
6pm: relax for the night

Welcome summer.

I'm such a techie.

Counting the printer, that's seven gadget-y things I was playing with. (That's what she said.)

I’ve spent literally 20 of the last 36 hours on my new computer and have accomplished the following:

1) Transferred 13 pictures from 2007 to external hard drive.

2) Completed several multi-step procedures (recommend by the Mac gurus who post on the message boards as this is the level of dorkdom to which I’ve been reduced) involving something called a DNS server in an attempt to get the Mac’s internet web browser to increase from its current pace of punch-the-screen-slow.

3) Erased all music from PC (while trying to move music from PC to hard drive to Mac) except for that which is performed by artists whose names begin with either C or D. Cyndi Lauper and David Cook, you survived. (I believe everything else made it onto the Mac and the visual I have of this is of little music notes clinging to a dock having jumped from the boat before it blew.)

My transition from PC user to Mac-hole has not been pretty. Tasks that I used to be able accomplish in a matter of minutes while chatting on the phone now take several afternoons and serious focus. Much of this is due to the fact that the font in most programs is too small for me to read and I don’t know how to fix it.

Let me be clear: I love my new toy. It’s just that it makes me crazy fucking mad.

And it also makes me slow. So very slow.

And while I have to admit to longing, at times, for the simplicity of my old familiar Dell (and to having mammoth tantrums about this), I recognize that this is part of the transition process. Despite wanting to, I never did end up saying fuck this bike riding shit---which is exactly how seven-year-old Lola would have put it---when I couldn’t yet balance on two wheels. So, I’m still in it. I’m still trying. (As I write this, the screen is getting mysteriously darker and I don’t know how to fix that either.)

I am committed to figuring this thing out though (and the brain pain is, at times, a welcomed distraction) so I’m giving myself the two hours I require to do things like find my address book or rename a photo. This is a change from my usual approach to a technological roadblock which involves whining about the problem incessantly--- “It’s doing something weeeeird!”---until I wear Dan down and he fixes it. I figure trying on my own is the only way to really learn...teaching myself to iFish, I am.

I’ve been so focused these past couple of days on getting things off the PC before it's gone for good that I’ve not even had the time I’d like to play with the Mac's bells and whistles. (It took the word “play” preceding it to make me see that the term ‘bells and whistles’ sounds sort of dirty in a fifth grade sort of way.)

I’ve dabbled with all the fun stuff like GarageBand and iMovie but I still don’t really know how to use them properly. I did apparently figure out Photo Booth though. This is an application which allows you to take photos of yourself with the built-in camera and then offers various ways to distort the photos. I chose to get familiar with this particular product on a night when I had taken an Ambien to help me catch some much-needed Zzz’s. For those unfamiliar with Ambien’s effects (at least on me), I will just say that I rarely take it without Dan there to supervise because a) it puts me in the mood and b)before passing out cold, I get a little wacky. (I used to tell Dan that “I know it’s working when the shells on the wreath in the bathroom start moving.)

I didn’t remember this photo shoot until a few days later when Dan reminded me and I might not have believed it without seeing the photographic evidence for myself.

I was drugged (iDrugged!), I don’t know what Dan’s excuse was.





Yup, the new Mac's totally worth it.

In Memoriam of Memorial Day Weekend 2010

All weekend long I was taking mental notes for a blog entry I knew I wouldn’t have time to write until Tuesday. Now it’s Tuesday and I’ve got nothin’.

That said, I can tell you that this was probably the best Memorial Day Weekend I’ve ever had (and certainly the only one that was eventful enough to warrant even remembering). Dan and I have never really been holiday weekend people. We’re just not the type to barbecue with the neighbors, head to the beach or launch the boat for the season. (We are, however, the type to spend the first nice weekend of summer inside watching all seven seasons of The Shield.) Because I have no school-aged children and am not a nine-to-fiver, I rarely even notice when the rest of the world’s concept of a long weekend has come and gone.

And while I understand that yesterday was supposed to be about memorializing fallen soldiers and not about a third day in the sun with my family, I have to admit that my focus was on the latter. (Though we did end the weekend watching Phil Donahue’s documentary “Body of War” so to be in touch with that particular brand of sorrow.) My mind has been so intensely focused on cancer, in fact, that I only last week took my head out of the sand about the BP disaster in the Gulf.

This weekend, however, was much more about family than cancer. With Katie coming in from Memphis last Tuesday, we had the entire family in town which doesn’t happen often. Two of my sisters as well as their spouses and children stayed at my parents’ house with Dan and me. There is always a certain charm for me (I'm not sure about everyone else...) to the chaos of a house full of family; someone always knocking on the bathroom door, endless piles of dishes, taking showers in shifts. I had a certain sentimentality about all this even before my mom was diagnosed but, indeed, everything in life has a new poignance about it now that wasn’t there before. Being together with my entire family I couldn’t help but be aware that I was together with my entire family. That mindfulness is shared and savored among all of us lately. We drank our coffee together in the morning as the sun glistened on the river and again later when it fell across the sky to the west. We played poker and Trivial Pursuit, ate crab claws and homemade lobster rolls, cheese platters and local strawberries, and toasted some variation of “to life” whenever we remembered to.

On Sunday, GiG had her heart set on getting us all out together for a lunch at Ocean Cliff, a beautiful Newport hotel which sits, aptly, on a cliff abutting the ocean. It was a sunny afternoon and a band fronted by a jazzy female singer played 40’s standards under a covered patio where we had a leisurely lunch, each of us taking a turn walking the grounds. We laughed and talked, a few of us even cried when the moment seemed especially rich or sad. Afterwards, my mom, a couple of sisters, nephew Ben and Dan and me sat out on the lawn in Adirondack chairs staring at the ocean and marveling at the different types of beauty the day presented.

Cancer came back today in the form of radiation and tomorrow will bring another appointment with my mom’s oncologist. But joy peeked out from behind the cloud of cancer this past weekend and not one of us missed its warmth.