A cooling frenzy

My husband and I have become obsessed with coolers. We have coolers for short trips, coolers for long trips, and a cooler for going to Target, where it comes in handy for holding water and snacks to tide us over while we drive around trying to find a parking spot. When we were house hunting, we would pack drinks, snacks, dishes, napkins, books, wine, the Foreman grill, etc. "No one told me we were going on a picnic," our agent would say when he arrived to pick us up. "Never mind that," I said. "Do you have somewhere in your car we can plug this grill in?"

Last summer Joe took the cooler obsession to new heights. And depths. And widths. He decided we needed a Beach Cooler. We have a beach cooler, I reminded him. No, no, he said. That one doesn't hold enough. We always run out of bottled water with that puny thing. And it can only fit little snack bags.

I didn't see anything wrong with this. I like little snack bags.

But he had grander visions. The cooler must be big, he said. Big enough to hold -- he searched for a vision of what he wanted it to hold -- a watermelon! Yes! A whole watermelon! And other fruits! Pineapple! Papaya! Wouldn't that be refreshing!

I personally thought it sounded more slimy than refreshing, but there was no deterring him from his quest.

And a quest it became. My husband, who researches everything with the thoroughness of one who is investing his life's savings, dropped everything to search for the perfect beach cooler. He read online reviews. He surveyed friends and coworkers about their coolers and whether they were happy with them ("Can it fit a watermelon?"). Armed with this information, he went out to buy the Beach Cooler. Unfortunately, it was near the end of the season, and he had to poke around the rakes and snow shovels to find something suitable. Not being a big shopper, he is not familiar with the time-honored store tradition of stocking winter items in July. Several nights he came home discouraged, but he pressed on.

Finally he brought one home. "What do you think"? he said, both anxiously and proudly, as if showing off a prized flower he had cultivated. "It's not as big as I wanted," he said apologetically. "But it can still hold a small watermelon plus other stuff!" I stared at it, this hunk of plastic that could hold a neighborhood's worth of watermelon. Why the two of us needed to take a cooler the size of New Mexico to the beach, I had no idea. And since it was for the beach, it had no wheels, which meant that we had to carry it the old-fashioned way, rendering it impractical to take anywhere else. We used it once, prompting me to mutter dark threats about his personal safety, but Joe assured me that we would use it much more next summer.

But now he has a new grill, a small portable "Son of Hibachi" ("It's self-cleaning!"), and his grand vision this summer is to take both the cooler and the grill to the beach and have cookouts. "That sounds like a lot of work," I said, ever the one to encourage him in his quests. "But we won't have to leave the beach to go eat!" he said cheerfully.

"You can enjoy sharing your dinner with the seagulls," I said. "I'm going to get a hot dog that doesn't have any sand in it."