For Frying Out Loud Read online

  Then we dressed for the weather, which was, at the moment 18 degrees out. Our anti-hypothermia gear included long underwear, jeans, shirts, sweatshirts with hoods, ear muffs, heavy coats and gloves with those shake-’em-up chemical hand warmers inside. My final armor: ski pants. We could hardly walk, looking like little round South Park cartoons, waddling toward the Capitol.

  I have never, ever, seen so many people in one place in my life. And we weren’t even to the Mall yet. The streets teemed with humanity, flowing towards the festivities like spawning salmon. Throng, mass, multitude, horde, all in a line 35 people wide, and several city blocks long, stretching toward one of the security tents for entry to the Mall. It was bitter cold. And nobody moved. Not in front of us, not in back of us, and only occasionally someone fought their way side to side, either to get in or more likely get out. We stood chastising ourselves for not coming earlier until the women in front us said she’d been standing in this same place since 5:30 a.m.

  Then we began to hear that even ticket holders were being turned away because the Mall was full (full? It’s not a stomach, it’s the National Mall!). And of course, we were ticketless.

  “I refuse to miss this thing!” I said to myself and anybody else who would hear, which would be nobody because of all the earmuffs. I know Ronni was thinking that she left 75 degree Florida to freeze her tush for nothing.

  “Let’s walk up to the other end of the Mall by the Lincoln Memorial,” said Eric as he grabbed my hand and I grabbed Ronni’s and we elbowed our way out of the crush.

  So we walked and walked, feet freezing, teeth chattering, until we came upon a short line in front of the Greene Turtle Sports Bar on 8th Street. “When does the restaurant open?” I asked the first person in line.” “Eleven o’clock,” she said. Glances were exchanged.

  We cued up at 10:15 and waited 45 minutes while chatting up the gang, politely ignoring Inaugural schmutz peddlers, and ticking off the moments until toilet access. Didn’t need diapers after all, although it was close. Between the ski pants, and the rest of my ensemble I felt like Gypsy Rose Lee, and worried I’d have heat stroke before I could disrobe.

  Barack Obama took the oath of office as we watched the historic Inaugural from a table in front of five jumbo TV screens, all the while warming up, drinking beer, eating burgers and talking with the wonderful people around us. People chanted “Yes We Can!” We cheered, sang with Aretha (I’ll leave it to others to discuss her hat) and enjoyed every single patriotic, tearful, joyous moment, in a deliciously diverse crowd.

  When the helicopter lifted off with former President Bush (three of the best words in the English language), Eric led the whole restaurant in a chorus of Shah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, good bye.”

  As for the parade, Anderson Cooper reported a crowd ten deep along the route, so we opted to walk another 28 blocks (!) to Dupont Circle to watch it with friends and thaw out in their cozy, toasty condo.

  We bid a fond farewell to Eric around 7:30 p.m., and arrived back home at 10 p.m. Bonnie, who opted out of the trip because just seeing crowds on TV gives her claustrophobia, greeted us with relief and a barrage of questions.

  “Well, how was it?” she asked.

  “Indescribable,” I said, “although I guess I’ll have to try in my Letters from CAMP Rehoboth column.

  Indescribably wonderful. Especially since I got to have the group experience without the group hypothermia. Cue the sax with America the Beautiful.

  February 2009

  CRYING Wii Wii Wii ALL THE WAY HOME

  We got a Wii. If you don’t know what that is you are older than I am, which is sad.

  Bonnie said she wanted the snazzy video sports games because it would be good exercise. I know she just wanted to play. This is a woman who celebrated her 40th birthday on a roller coaster and spent most of the following decade still squatting behind home plate. While other folks were getting first colonoscopies, she celebrated age 50 speeding along the wrong side of a winding road in the English countryside. The rest of us in the car wanted to see sheep, but not splayed on the windshield. Bonnie and the sheep survived that birthday.

  For Bonnie’s 60th she wants to do a zip line. I’m lucky I can still zip my pants.

  So we got a Wii, no easy task itself. The Big Box Store was always out of the big box of Wii. Then we heard rumor of a truck arriving the next morning.

  “I can’t believe you’re making me get up at 6 in the morning to stand in line at Walmart for my own Hanukah present,” Bonnie hissed at me, as I pulled the covers over my head.

  “Pretend it’s a game,” I said.

  So she put on her cleats and jockeyed for position as the sun came up over the Walmart parking lot. When the terrified greeter opened the doors my spouse was first off the starting block and I am proud to say she came in by a nose to the electronics department without trampling anybody.

  So we got a Wii.

  The first time I Wii’d as an adult it was at a friend’s house, where I was tapped to go Wii bowling with three former PE teachers. Oddly, I could simulate in the living room what eluded me in the bowling alley and, strike after spare after strike, I beat the pants off all three women. They smiled, but I know these jocks were humiliated to beaten by a klutz like me. I should have retired my Wii controller and jersey number right then and there.

  But now, in our home bowling alley, I roll on, standing in front of the TV, swinging the game controller, and letting go of the button to throw the bowling ball. It’s a lot lighter than a real bowling ball, you can’t get your thumb stuck in the socket and you don’t have to wear somebody else’s stinky bowling shoes. Then again, getting athlete’s foot is the closest I come to being an athlete.

  You do get to hear the delightful echo of bowling balls being mowed down. Wii sound effects rock. And there is applause for strikes. I love applause.

  Of course, every time I pick up the controller, Bonnie begs me to secure the wrist band, certain I will eventually launch the device through the 42-inch flat screen Sony.

  The good news is that gutter balls are much harder to execute with Wii than in reality. The bad news is dropping your hand too far without releasing the button sends the virtual ball rolling behind you into the cartoon crowd, who scream and sneer at you. I remember that all too well from high school.

  And speaking of cartoons, my favorite part of Wii is putting together the cartoon characters resembling you and your friends. There are choices of eyes, ears, noses, hair, eyeglasses, the works. I love that you have no choice of thighs, boobs or butts and everyone looks similar from the neck down. This is not a reality show.

  So far, the most Wii fun I’ve had is cross-dressing my friends and endowing them with inappropriate eyebrows and facial hair.

  Last week we invited friends over so we could replicate them into little cartoon avatar figures and have a tournament. I was in the midst of throwing a ten pin split when I put a little too much oomph behind it and pulled a groin muscle. In my living room, in front of the TV. That’s a new one.

  After bowling, Bonnie challenged me to softball, where she got to throw the ball at ninety miles an hour and I got to flail wildly and miss it. Flashbacks of summer camp. Bonnie now has a right biceps like Popeye’s and my rotator cuff is unglued.

  Then there’s golf. You are supposed to hold the controller like a golf club, but we’ve not figured out how to do that without squatting and looking like Quasimodo. Hunched and ready, it turns out I’m just as lousy at Wii golf as I am on the course. Although, the way the game is set up, you can only take a certain number of strokes before a disembodied voice tells you to “give up.” If somebody told me that in 2005 I could have saved myself a lot of humiliation, not to mention greens fees.

  Part of Wii golf is to read the greens, looking at differing shades of the color green to determine the angle of the terrain. Please. I can’t even tell my blue turtlenecks from the black ones anymore. Six shades of video green are just cruel.

  I’ve yet to try Wii
tennis because I watched Bonnie virtually smashing the ball over the net and figured, first, since it takes two hands, I’d have to put my drink down, and second, it looked like too much exercise. The only thing my backhand is good for is to give compliments.

  Now that it’s nearly Spring, Bonnie wants to get the new Wii Fit exercise routine. If she makes me participate I might have to throw a wee fit to get out of it. I understand you enter your vital statistics, including your weight and the little cartoons are drawn to more realistically reflect each participant. Can’t wait.

  The game checks your Body Mass Index, tells you your Wii Fit age and keeps tabs on your weight. Let’s face it, Wii might want to be fit, but there’s no way Wii (the Royal Wii) are having any part of that.

  As Bonnie says, “Wii shall see about that…”

  Wii shall overcome?.

  March 2009

  SCHNAUZERHAVEN UNDER SIEGE

  Schnauzerhaven was invaded by an alien. Undocumented, but she did have papers. All over the house. We babysat for a puppy.

  Frankly, my dogs, my spouse and I never knew how old we all were until our twenty one days on puppy watch. Actually it was only three days, but it felt like dog years.

  First, the visitor was not a Schnauzer-American, which immediately alerted my terrier immigration squad. She was a ball of white fur with a floppy tail – something else very foreign – and entirely relentless. Running, rolling, crouching, kissing, snuggling, sniffing, peeing, pooping. For the puppy Olympics we didn’t lead with a torch, but thought about torching the house by closing ceremonies.

  You should have seen my 11-year-old dog cavort with the puppy. They crouched, facing off, butts high, circling, then running outside, lapping the back yard twice and racing back towards the porch. As the puppy crossed the finish line, the oldster stopped to lie down. I swear I heard him ask for an Aleve.

  When 10-year-old Paddy turned his back on the pup, she took it as a challenge and nipped at him until he agreed to grab the soggy end of a rawhide bone. The two of them ran around the house, each with an end of the rawhide in their mouths until Ms. Puppy ran under the bed and Paddy got clocked in the head for being too tall to fit. I swore I heard him ask for an Aleve.

  In the meantime, another Schnauzer relative of the boys arrived for a sleepover, setting up a classic three dog night plus the interloper. It’s 11 p.m. Do you know where your canines are? Just about everywhere.

  We had Paddy the Jealous under the covers mid-bed and Ashley the Rotund up top between the pillows, with Penny the Puppy lying where my feet should have gone. Moxie the Elder retreated to his doggie bed escape module on the floor.

  I’ve had a better night’s sleep in U.S. Airways Coach.

  Although “night’s sleep” is inaccurate. Cirque du Soleil began at 4 a.m., long before Soleil rise. Usually, I can sneak out of bed, go to the bathroom and be back under the covers without blowing reveille. But this time, when my feet hit the floor they were followed by sixteen paws and a chorus of yapping. You can tell a 10-year-old dog to shut up and go back to sleep, but tell that to a puppy and you’ll be tip-toeing through turd tulips in the morning.

  So we all got up and went out. Now here’s the thing about the puppy. She doesn’t come when called. Or sit on command, or do anything else requested of her by any human. Dog trainer Caesar Milan needs to give her an extreme makeover.

  It’s a good thing those Cypress trees surrounding my house are good and thick. Passing motorists should not have had to look over the fence to witness two women of a certain age loping around the yard, clad only in our t-shirts and underpants, trying to lure said puppy back into the house.

  Finally, when everybody was indoors, we divided the troops. Bonnie bunked on the sofa with one Schnauzer and the Puppy from Hell, while I retreated to bedroom headquarters with the other two. It didn’t stay that way long because while I nodded off, one canine must have grown opposable thumbs and managed to open the bedroom door. The pack ran back and forth for what was left of the night, popping up and down on the bed like Whack-a-Moles.

  When we finally gave up trying to sleep, I got dressed and left for work. Bonnie, who goes in later than I do had an easy time getting the regulars into their crates. Not the puppy. The little devil ran under the bed and Bonnie crouched down to coax her out. The puppy crawled on her belly to the far side of the bed, so Bonnie stood up, walked around to the far side, squatted and called the puppy. That’s when the infuriating little creature reversed gears and retreated to the original side of the bed. Bonnie walked around and crouched, the puppy fled; Bonnie changed sides, so did the pup. Staggering to her feet, my mate concluded that the squat and run dance could go on all day so she gave up and took an Aleve.

  The three caged Schnauzers spent the day watching a perfectly good carpet being defiled by the fuzzy weapon of mass destruction.

  By that afternoon we were all really dragging except, of course, you-know-who. Yet another Schnauzer dropped by for a few hours of doggy daycare, so now there were four mature dogs being chased around the house by a six pound nipper. She was so determined to sniff every butt in the house (except mine and Bonnie’s thank god), I was afraid one of the dogs would stop short, with the resulting rear end collision turning the puppy into a pug.

  The next morning, feeding the pack presented its own problems. We separated the bowls to the four corners of the kitchen. One with puppy chow, one with weight loss kibble for seniors, another with lamb and rice kibble for sensitive stomachs and the last a kibble and green bean happy meal.

  Well, nobody was happy. They each wanted what the other one was having and we humans had to stand guard, keeping everybody out of everybody else’s business, no easy task with dogs or humans.

  After breakfast, since the sky had turned black, we all went back to bed. There was a succession of lightning bolts, followed immediately by some of the loudest, most frightening thunder since last Tuesday’s Rush Limbaugh show.

  En masse, the dog pack leapt onto the bed, shaking and quaking from fear. They had the mattress jiggling so much from the panting vibrations I felt like I’d just put a quarter into the bed in some sleazy motel.

  Just before it was time for puppy love to go home, I had a panic attack. I counted noses and hers was missing. I knew we hadn’t opened any doors, I had seen her just moments before, but a thorough canvass turned up nothing but Schnauzers. We called, we looked under beds, we peered into closets (nobody there except a few Republican politicians) and searched like Google. No puppy.

  Frantic, I paced to the coffee table to grab the remote to turn the TV off–I wanted to hear Penny if she made a noise. As I picked up the remote, I peered through the glass coffee table to the shelf below. There, between the pile of gift books and a stack of DVDs slept one tired little puppy. Adorable when asleep.

  She’s gone home now. All visiting Schnauzers have departed as well. We’re down to our happy household of two humans, two dogs. I’m sure that if enough time elapses we will be up for puppy duty again. Make that puppy doody. I just found a souvenir in the corner.

  I need an Aleve.

  April 2009

  FLOUNDERING ON THE HIGH SEAS

  “You can’t swing a cat in Rehoboth without hitting a lesbian.”

  The quote, quite true, came from a group of gay gals laughing it up along Baltimore Avenue last week in the incredible sunshine and heat. April? Town was packed!

  And as one of those in danger of being smacked in the head with a flying feline, it’s just great to see the weather change for the good here in Gayberry RFD. The April taste of summer wasn’t wasted on me. Having been cooped up most of the winter, nose to the computer keyboard, I immediately put the convertible top down on my car and drove around town like a tourist. Upon my return to the house I flung open the windows and luxuriated in the fresh scent of cherry tree flowers and blooming plants.

  What was I thinking? After one night’s sleep with open windows, I had two pounds of pollen packed in my sinus cavities and anothe
r bushel blanketing every surface in the house. I’m sniffling and snorting from allergies that feel like swine flu. I tried a sinus wash – you know, waterboarding, like the military uses for torture. It didn’t help.

  Then, like fools we went to the nursery for the annual replacement plants. I don’t know why we don’t just stick plastic flowers in the planters. If all the dollar bills I spend each spring replacing dead stuff were laid end to end they’d reach to the condominium I should be living in.

  We toted plants sentenced to death to a car covered in pollen, for planting in a yard that’s basically a dog latrine. Tomorrow we’ll plant the greenery on death row, I mean the backyard. Achoo!

  A glutton for punishment, Bonnie and I then accepted an invitation to breathe in several more buckets of pollen and allergens – we went for a day on Rehoboth Bay, fishing. I’ve never been a fisherperson, news that I’m sure shocks you.

  But much to my delight though, the generous Captain and First Mate surprised me with my very own fishing rod – pink, with teeny sparkly lights that blinked whenever the reel spun. “I couldn’t resist,” said the Captain. I think it was the Hannah Montana edition.

  After drifting for a while near the Indian River Bridge, me with my pink fishing pole dangling professionally from the side of the boat as I busied myself with e-mail on my phone, the first mate landed a big flounder. Mission (dinner) accomplished. We reeled in to go traveling.

  This is where it got interesting.

  On our way out of the Indian River Inlet and into the ocean, Bonnie and I sat up front on the speedy fishing boat. I may be a neophyte fisherperson, but I’m an experienced boater, having lived on and traveled in a 29 foot power boat all around the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, up to New York City and Fire Island and back. The alternate title of my first book was going to be My Life as Ballast.