Adventures while walking

Because I work from home and am therefore in one place night and day, I like to escape into the surrounding neighborhood at some point during the day to see what the rest of the world is doing. Such treks are often quite educational. Plus, it is the only form of exercise this exercise-phobic person can stomach.

The other evening I happened upon Baxter, the Best Dog in the Whole World, and his mom. His mom was saying that she can't really use walking for exercise, because Baxter slows her down. As sweet as he is, the outcome of a race between Baxter and a turtle would be in some doubt.

"But I have to remember," she said, "he wasn't bred to run and fetch, or herd, or guard." She sighed. "He was bred to just sit and watch."

Baxter is my kind of dog.

Sometimes when I venture out, I am profoundly thankful to return to the sanity of my own home. Last night I took a walk by a construction site near us. The road has caved in, and supposedly -- after more than a year of delays -- they are fixing it. I saw the usual debris on such a site. A Mountain Dew can, a plastic wrapper, cigarette butts. A man's pair of jeans. A man's pair of underwear.

Sometimes, it is better not to know what the rest of the world is doing.

Getting organized

The Organization Movement has hit our household. Joe is seduced by California Closets and similar organization systems, although we are more in the market for a closetless system, as we have very few closets in our old rowhouse.

The problem with storage systems, I tell him, is that after you have established a system, you have to keep it going. You have to return items to their designated storage place and keep them organized. No one has yet invented a system that organizes items by itself.

Although Joe is working on it, if not overtly. Deep in his being he feels there must be a way to get his clothes to fold themselves and march up to the bedroom and settle into the baskets where they reside. And a way for the rest of his shirts to miraculously rearrange themselves after he paws through them to find his favorite one. So far the only system he has found that will do this is his wife. Unfortunately, this system comes with a complaint button that becomes somewhat annoying, and he has not figured out how to turn it off.

One day Joe said something about feeling he was messy. I looked at him suspiciously. "Do you mean 'Messies'? Are you reading the Messies Manual? Or listening to it on CD or something?"

He admitted, sheepishly, to the latter.

"Oh, that system will suck you right in, pal," I said. "You be careful with that one. The Messies will have you alphabetizing our soup cans."

He returned the Messies Manual to the library the next day, much to my relief. I am all for keeping an orderly house, but there is orderly and then there is obsessive.

One day he called me into the bedroom. "Here, hold this," he said, handing me an empty hanger. He handed me several more and instructed me to spread out my fingers and hold them all on one hand, staggered vertically. Then he carefully placed a pair of his pants on each one. "See, if we could hang our clothes vertically, instead of horizontally...." he trailed off, looking from the stack of hangers on my hand to the closet.

"Honey," I said, as gently as I could, "this is Advanced Organization. We need to master Basic Organization first."

He looked at me. "You're right," he said, and jammed the hangers and pants back into the closet. As he left the room, several fell onto the floor.

I sighed. It may be a while before we earn our Organization Diplomas.

Before and after the salon

Call me fussy, but I've always thought that you should come out of a hair salon looking better than when you went in. I mean, as long as you're going to pay them a million bucks to snip, color, and primp your hair, shouldn't you look like a million bucks?

A friend once informed me that the idea behind getting your hair done was to go often enough that your hair continued to always look the same. There shouldn't be any drastic, 3-inch differences, she said. Pfft, I said, as politely as I could. If I'm going to pay a fortune for someone to cut my hair, I want something to show for it!

So usually, I wait until my hair is so shaggy that I resemble a dog whose breeding has gone horribly wrong. This generally evokes a great wave of pity from stylists. Sometimes they actually cluck to themselves. They immediately plunge my head under the water and scrub for all they're worth, as if by applying enough products and rubbing hard enough, they can wipe that mess right off my head and start all over.

You'd think, given this opportunity to make over a poor soul who doesn't know a bristle hair brush from a meat cleaver, stylists would make me look a hundred times better. But somehow, though they generally do a good job on the actual cut, when it comes to the styling they seem to mentally check out. When they are done, I look in the mirror and wonder who that poor soul with the dead animal on her head is. I realize, with some shock, that it is me. Is this truly how a stylist -- who, for goodness' sake, is trained in beauty -- thinks I should look?

I always slink back to my car, praying I don't see anyone I know. Not that they would recognize me, looking like Tina Turner as I invariably do. I'm ashamed for even perfect strangers to see me after I've come from the salon. "I don't always look like this," I want to explain to passersby.

Once, in a desperate attempt to get a normal-looking, flattering style, I brought in a picture of myself and told the stylist that's how I wanted my hair done. I figured this was pretty safe. The style had been done before, on me, so I was pretty sure it could be duplicated. When she was done, however, I no more resembled my photograph than Santa Claus.

The ultimate indignation is that for the privilege of looking horrible, I get to shell out enough money to buy a month's worth of groceries. Joe prefers to remain ignorant of exactly how much these little jaunts to the hair salon cost. I gave him a rough estimate once. It's a good thing he was sitting down.

The Gallant Hero and the very heavy mirror

The Gallant Hero groaned as he bore his heavy burden up the steep stairway. The Prissy Princess had bought a new treasure, a magical mirror, that she couldn't decide where to put. At first she had thought it might look nice in the entryway, so that when they came and went they could look into the magical mirror and ask it deep, ponderous questions, such as whether they were going to be late for work. But no, that spot hadn't seemed quite right to her. And so up the stairs the Gallant Hero went, lugging the heavy mirror.

In the bedroom, the Princess instructed the Hero to hold the mirror over her writing desk while she stood back in appraisal. "Hmmm," she said. "That looks nice." The Hero brightened. Maybe this would be fairly quick, and he could get back to his Master of Math studies.

But the Princess said, "I'm just not sure. Let's try some other places."

And so they went, all through the castle, up and down steep stairways and through dark passageways, to find the perfect spot for the magical mirror. The Hero began to dream about just allowing the mirror to slip from his fingers...it would never survive a flight of stairs, and he would not have to lug it around anymore. But the magical mirror would probably put some sort of awful spell on him for breaking it, in addition to the traditional seven years' bad luck. The Princess, having broken many a mirror in her lifetime, was currently under about 154 years of bad luck, and the Hero had no wish to join her.

The Hero began to fear that the magical mirror would meet the same fate as many of their other treasures, namely, consignment to a box in the dungeon. That is where things went when the Prissy Princess could not make up her mind about where to put them. He did not understand how she could buy things without having a place in mind for them. When he asked her about this, she would say, "Oh, I have lots of places in mind. I just don't know where it would look best." The best place, the Hero was coming to understand, did not exist, at least not in their household. If there were a best place for everything, there would be no boxes in the dungeon.

Finally, after much indecision and wringing of hands by the Princess and frustrated sighs by the Hero, the mirror was hoisted over the writing desk in the bedroom. But this presented another problem. How high should they hang it? The Hero, being several inches taller than his Princess, expressed a tentative opinion that it should be in the middle of the wall. The Princess, however, could barely see the top of her head when the mirror was in this position. Like Cinderella's fairy godmothers changing the color of her gown with a poof of their magic wands from pink to blue to yellow and back again, the Hero and the Princess each slid the mirror up and down the wall until, at last, a suitable compromise was reached. Which is to say it was where the Princess wanted it.

The Princess, who liked everything to be pristine (she was not called the Prissy Princess for nothing), was upset at the condition of the wall from sliding the mirror up and down on it. "It adds character," the Hero assured her. She was further upset when the nail-driver made one too many holes. "It adds character," the nail-driver said.

The Princess sighed. Another reason there were so many boxes of treasures in the dungeon was that whenever she and the Hero attempted to adorn the walls of the castle, inevitably they left gaping holes in the walls. She felt it was safer to just not put anything on the walls.

But looking at the new mirror, she gave a sigh of satisfaction. It added lots of character.

Let's nail!

You've no doubt heard of those places where you can go to make dinners that you take home and cook, places with names like Let's Dish, Delicious Dinners, Lazy Cooks Inc. (just kidding on that last one). They have all the ingredients set up and you just decide which of the recipes you want, assemble everything together, and go home and have a wonderful home-cooked meal. The idea is that everyone wants to eat gourmet dinners, but no one has the time or inclination to make gourmet dinners. But at Let's Dish and friends, you can whip up a wonderful dinner in no time. You can even bring your friends and make it into a social activity.

I don't have any statistics on who uses this type of facility, but I have a suspicion that the overwhelming majority of patrons are women. So I'm sure that, like me, you are thinking, why should women have all the fun? How about someplace similar for men?

I'm thinking that the same idea can be used by men who do not have time to do all the chores around the house their wives want them to. All the men who had stuff to fix could gather at a place called Let's Nail It! -- somewhere close to Home Depot -- and all the tools and materials would be provided to fix whatever they needed to fix (with the option to purchase tools at the end of the session should a man find that he cannot do without a particular tool). There could also be make it-take it workshops for men whose wives want them to build simple furniture items, such as cabinets or a four-poster bed.

These home projects would not be limited to something off-site. Perhaps several men on a block could, say, get together one Saturday to paint someone's house, put up a fence, add a bathroom, etc. The next Saturday, they would move on to another project at someone else's house.

Of course, if women tried this, very little would be accomplished because they would all be gabbing instead of working, and there would be a lot of breaks for coffee and snacks. But the men's sessions would be extremely efficient, given that they are not that into gabbing with each other. And they would likely save their refreshments for later, when they collapse on someone's living room couch to watch a football game.

The couch, of course, would be made by several men at Let's Nail It. And while they are watching the game, their wives would be heating up dinner from Let's Dish.

The unfairness of life

Life isn't fair. My mother told me this when I was growing up, but I didn't realize at the time that she was talking about all of life. I thought she just meant when I was 13. Things were bound to get better, right? I mean, what was the point of becoming an adult if things still weren't going to be fair?

But here I am, an adult, and I that find my mother was indeed talking about all of life. A few weeks ago, there was a dramatic display of life's little tendency to be unfair, right in my kitchen.

Regular readers will recall my rather radical ideas for ridding the world of unwanted zucchinis. That was due to no mere intellectual exercise. Joe brought home an enormous zucchini from work one day. "What is that?" I said.

"A zucchini," he said helpfully.

"I can see that," I said. "But why?"

"You said you wanted to make zucchini bread."

"I didn't mean I wanted to make enough to send to all the starving of the world," I said. Not that I don't want to help end starvation, but I hardly think zucchini bread -- especially with cocoa and chocolate chips, which is the way we like it -- would fit the bill.

But there was the zucchini on the table, and I couldn't very well tell him to return it.

Now, the food processor I use for normal, everyday use for the two of us was woefully inadequate for this monster. Plus, it didn't have a grater. And I wasn't about to spend my remaining four months of Christmas shopping days grating this zucchini by hand. I knew I had to dig out the Super Deluxe Monster Food Processor, which compared with the little one is like a military humvee and a matchbox car. My little food processor has two features: chop and grind. The big processor performs every possible maneuver that can be done to food, including packaging the food and sending it (although overseas requires a special attachment).

I reminded myself that I am an intelligent human being. I have a master's degree. How hard could it be to figure out how to grate zucchini? After reading the entire manual, 472 pages -- in three languages -- I knew just how hard it was.

Absolutely, unarguably impossible.

The zucchini would drop down the little chute, which it was supposed to do, but then just ride around and around on top of the grating disk, which it was not supposed to do.

I was sorely tempted to feed the manual into the processor. Hearing my mutterings and threats -- which wasn't hard; I'm sure the whole neighborhood could hear them -- Joe ventured into the kitchen to see what was wrong. He is a brave man.

And here is where the unfair part came in. My husband, despite spending far less time in the kitchen than I, and spending far fewer hours poring over cookbooks and baking tips and new recipes and gadgets designed to put one's cooking on par with the professionals -- as far as I know, he has never pored over these things -- immediately picked up a little plunger thing and started feeding the zucchini in. The zucchini obediently went through the grater and into the bowl, emerging in perfect strands.

In fact, he was having so much fun with the processor that he would have grated the entire zucchini had I not wailed at him to give me a turn.

He reluctantly turned it over to me. Clearly he didn't think I could be trusted with an instrument of such precision.

I knew the explanation. This was a tool, something that came with a plug and a motor, and therefore qualified as a man's toy. It was not something to be tinkered with by a mere woman, even if it was disguised as a kitchen instrument. Somewhere in those 472 pages of instructions, I felt that there should have been a disclaimer about this:

"WARNING: This appliance contains a motor, which will attract any male within a 50-yard radius, who will want to run it for the sheer joy of operating a motorized machine. This may lead to his shredding everything in the house, including your marriage license. We are in the process of developing an 'Emergency Husband Switch-Off Device.' Preliminary testing indicates that it unintentionally switches off all husbandly functions, including fixing the porch, changing the light bulb, and killing spiders; therefore more research is obviously required. In the meantime, we advise you to operate this machine only when your husband is otherwise engaged, preferably in an activity that requires him to wear noise-reducing headphones."

Although my womanly pride was sorely bruised, I came to realize that maybe this was not such a bad situation after all. Maybe, like a certain male relative -- who is an AMAZING chef but seems to possess little interest in other household endeavors, such as making the bed properly -- I need to play dumb and let my expert husband do the cooking.

My mother never quoted the maxim "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." But I have a little maxim of my own: "When life hands you zucchinis, let your husband make zucchini bread." Or at least run the food processor.

Even princesses get stressed

The Gallant Hero was worried about his Princess. For days she had neither slept nor talked while she labored under the heavy burden of fixing a manuscript (although it did not seem to affect her appetite). She did not step foot outside the castle. When she did talk, she said alarming things that his beloved Prissy Princess would never say, like "I'd rather be doing laundry!" The Hero was afraid to leave her side, afraid she might do something drastic, like...paint the basement.

The Hero had stated noticing little paint samples lying around the castle. He wasn't too worried at first, because the Prissy Princess had adamantly declared that the rest of the painting in the castle would be done by a professional, that she was sick of painting and would never again dirty her prissy little hands with a paintbrush.

As the paint samples grew in number, his concern grew along with them. He studied the colors. They were dark. Moody. Not happy colors. The Hero liked happy colors. Finally he ventured to ask what the paint samples meant.

"Oh," said the Princess, "I was thinking of painting the basement."

His worst fears were realized. She was delirious! The stress of her job was getting so overwhelming that even painting, which she loathed, seemed an escape.

"But I thought you wanted to hire someone to do the rest of the castle," he reminded her, attempting to restore some semblance of sanity to her work-ravaged brain.

"Well, it would just be an experiment," she said, shrugging. "To see if I really like the color. If not, we could pick something else."

Now she was thinking of painting twice? This was not like his Prissy Princess at all. He must put a stop to this. Not only would the novelty of painting wear off quickly for the Princess, she would also make a huge mess in the basement. And if there was one thing the Hero hated, it was people making a mess where HE wanted to make a mess. The basement was HIS turf, his place to return to his primal male instinct to cut up boards and put them together, spreading sawdust everywhere. And he had not long ago declared his intention to start experimenting on the walls himself -- not with paint, but with a sledgehammer. Behind those walls, he was convinced, lurked beautiful stone and brick, possibly a fireplace -- things generations of ancestors had touched and used. He meant to find them.

So the Hero tried another tack. "It's expensive to just start experimenting with paint," he said.

"Well, maybe I could just do one wall," she said. "Not get a whole gallon. I was thinking I could...." The Prissy Princess droned on excitedly, outlining her plan for messing up HIS plan with her painting.

Desperate, he interrupted her. "Wouldn't you rather be doing laundry?"

She looked at him as if he were the one who was delirious. Then she nodded knowingly, as if she'd read his mind. "Don't worry," she said. "I won't get in the way of your sledgehammering."

We interrupt this blog

We regret that the Prissy Princess is unable to provide her readers with the enchanting blog posts they have come to expect for a couple of days. She is working feverishly to finish editing a manuscript for a client. The Prissy Princess can think of many things she would rather do than work on this particular project, which seems to have been concocted by throwing a bunch of words in a hat and drawing them out at random, but even the Prissy Princess cannot always have her way. Meanwhile, enjoy the weekend, and perhaps read some old blog posts if you need a fix!

His work, her work

It's important for couples to equitably split the work involved in running a household. According to the Bureau of Fairness at Home, men who share in the housework tend to live longer, as they are not getting constantly walloped on the head with rolling pins and other blunt instruments.

Take the disposal of unwanted critters, for instance. Tradition dictates that this is the duty of the man of the household, because women tend to scream at the sight of creepy crawlies, which is totally ineffectual at removing them other than to summon the man to take care of the situation.

But this is not to say the woman can't help out a bit. In our house, for example, we split the duties when it comes to bugs. My job is to locate them, which I seem to have a natural knack for, and to lift the toilet lid for Joe to dispose of them. (Sorry, Maryland Wildlife and others of you who are nature lovers, we do not believe in recycling things with six or eight legs or returning them to their natural habitat, unless they happen to be right by the door.) This works out pretty well for us, especially for me, as it allows me to avoid any actual contact with the creepy crawlie in question.

It's also important to take into account each person's interests or skills in dividing up responsibilities. For instance, if you, as the woman, hate cooking and cleaning up a messy kitchen, clearly the solution is to eat out, because many husbands are known to be allergic to ingredients used in the kitchen, including pots and pans, ovens, dish towels, etc. (Though mysteriously, they are not known to have any negative reaction to the refrigerator.)

In our household, we have a very fair system of doing things. I ask Joe if he would like to put a load of laundry in, and he politely responds with a "no, thank you." In turn, he asks if I would like to empty the shop vac. "What does that involve?" I ask. (It's always a good idea to understand exactly what you are being asked to do , because once you agree to do it, it will be your job for life.)

And he proceeds to lay out the duty, which in this case involves removing the canister from the vac and emptying it in the garbage bag. "You mean the canister that has all those dead wasps you cleaned up from upstairs?" I inquire.

"Yeah," he says.

"No, thank you," I say politely.

Of course, there are always jobs that no one likes to do. In these cases, you should have children and train them to do those jobs. And until they are old enough to complete these jobs thoroughly, maybe you could get a really talented dog.

If I ran a B & B

The other day after church, I was trying to restore some order to the part of the church house where the caretakers stay when they come to help out. With different caretakers every month, it is no wonder that items tend to wander from their original spots. It is not unusual to find pillows on the wrong bed, or a bedspread all folded up in a closet, or for an alarm clock to go AWOL.

As much as I appreciate what these wonderful people are doing to help us out, it is a little difficult for the obsessive-compulsive part of me to deal with the accompanying disorder in the house. So as I was trying to put things back where they belong, muttering about why people insist on washing pastel towels with their red shirts, Joe complimented me on my ability to restore order.

"You're so good at organizing stuff like this," he said. "You should run a bed and breakfast."

"Oh, you think so," I said.

"Well, not me, but you'd like it," he hastily amended.

Yeah, right. I can just imagine.

"I'm sorry," I would say to one guest. "You are not allowed any more towels."

"I beg your pardon?" the guest would say, slightly surprised.

"You've ruined three towels already with your makeup! You can't have any more. Do you use your good towels at home for this gunk? Yes...I suppose you do. Well, not in my establishment, you don't."

And thereupon would ensue a tug-of-war with a towel, and Joe would have to break up the tussle. He would apologize to the guest.

"Please excuse my wife...she's very attached to her towels. You see, she feels...well...somewhat maternal toward the towels. Responsible for their welfare and all." And he would gently take the towel from me and give it back to the guest.

"You always take their side," I'd accuse, after the guest had locked herself in her room.

Or I'd complain to Joe, "They never fold the towels after they use them. You'd think they were at home or something. People just don't have any manners."

"But you tell them to make themselves at home," he'd point out.

"Please," I'd say. "That doesn't mean they should live like pigs. When I say to make themselves at home, I mean my home."

Or, "There's candy missing from the welcome basket in Rm. 5," I'd complain to Joe. "That makes the third time this week someone stole something from one of those baskets!"

"But the guests are supposed to take those," he'd say in a voice reserved for small children being unreasonable. "Don't you have a sign on there that says 'Welcome, please help yourself' or something?"

"I don't mean for people to actually take any! It's just supposed to look nice and welcoming. Do people think I want to spend all my time running around replenishing those baskets? Do they have any idea how much work this all is?? You'd think they could help out by keeping their greedy hands off the goody basket."

"Maybe you should put a different sign on the baskets: 'Please look, but don't touch.' "

"What, and have peole think I'm ungracious?" I would sniff. "They'd never come back."

And that, Joe would think to himself, might not be such a bad thing.

Morning and night switch

Something happens when a Morning Person and a Night Owl have been married for a while. They begin to change places. Joe has taken to staying up later, but unfortunately I have not become a Morning Person. Oh, sure, I may be up early, but that doesn't necessarily mean my brain is engaged.

It used to be that I would go to bed chatting happily about various topics completely of no interest to Joe, who would show his support for his wife by snoring the minute he got in bed. It didn't take me long to figure out that night was not the best time to discuss important subjects:

Me: So, honey, I read that newlyweds can really benefit from having a mentor relationship with an older married couple. They can offer support, challenge, patience, and enthusiasm while guiding new couples to new levels of competence. What do you think?
Joe: Zzzkzkzkzzk.

But things have subtly changed. I have started going to sleep earlier than Joe on some occasions. When he comes to bed, he begins a conversation as if we were at the dinner table. Now, with Joe it is easy to tell when he is actually asleep. Loud snoring sounds can clearly be heard from his side of the bed, whereas I pretty much look (and sound) the same whether I'm asleep or just trying to get there. So to give him the benefit of the doubt, when he comes to bed maybe he thinks I really am awake and eager for conversation about vector fields and eigenvalues, when actually I am asleep and dreaming about a quiet pond and a deep vat of dark chocolate.

I was beginning to feel some annoyance that Joe seemed to be able to function now at both ends of the time spectrum, and I could function for about two hours in the middle of the day. But the other morning he said he thought he was losing his Morning Edge. I asked why.

"Well," he said, "I just tried to put the peanut butter in the freezer."

If it's any consolation to him, I'm sure it will be several decades, if ever, before I can coherently discuss eigenvalues -- at any time of the day.

Welcome! Now please close your eyes

Some cultures have certain customs concerning the welcoming of guests into one's home. For instance, hosts in some cultures greet their guests with a series of embraces and salutations. In other cultures, hosts thoughtfully provide soft, appealing slippers for their guests to slip on after they have removed their shoes.

Joe and I welcome our guests -- infrequent as they are -- with blindfolds. This, believe it or not, is actually for their own good. Blindfolded, they are unable to see the chaos that reigns in certain parts of our house. A full view of our house would undoubtedly cause our visitors to shrink back against the door, fumble for the knob, and run back to their car or house in terror.

Of course, like any house there are areas of our dwelling that can be seen by guests. These make up about 1/2 % of the entire house. So we give our guests the tour in tandem, with one of us leading them by the hand so they do not fall down the treacherous stairways, and the other stopping occasionally to lift the blindfolds to point out some area of interest -- such as the dishwasher, which is very historic and always clean, because I insist on scrubbing dishes before putting them in the diswasher -- to the guests. If we come upon an area that would be particularly alarming if seen, Joe will deftly distract the guests by pointing out some other nearby feature in response to my frantic pantomime.

Our guests must also sign a nondisclosure cause, in which they promise -- on threat of being invited back, this time without a blindfold -- never to reveal what they have seen in our house, on the off chance that they observed something that might be incriminating to us.

The truth is that we keep putting people off who would like to come see our house (and, we hope, us) because it does not yet look quite how we envision it. But lately I have been reconsidering this policy. I am endeavoring to convince my policy co-sponsor that maybe now is the time to have people over, when their expectations are low. If we keep putting them off, promising that at some future -- very future -- time the visit will be worth the wait, the pressure will be on us to deliver. After all the buildup, they might come over and think, "We waited for this?" But if they come now, they are prepared for disappointment and can indulge in the hope that someday, we will offer them cozy slippers instead of a blindfold.

Coming soon to a beach near you

Every time we go to the shore, we take more stuff. Last year we added a cooler the size of New Mexico, as some of you may remember. This year it was a beach umbrella, which we bought to keep the sun off us but which actually came in handier to keep us from becoming pillars of sand in the sandstorm (see previous blog entry, if you haven't already and if you enjoy reading about other people's misfortunes). We also acquired two additional towels, which came in handy after our personal monsoon (again, see previous blog entry if, etc., etc.).

As you can imagine, we make quite a spectacle hauling all this stuff to the beach. We look like we are hauling gear for a family of seven but have forgotten the kids. The hotel staff takes one look at us and charges us for a few extra people in the room, figuring all that stuff can't belong just to the two of us.

It was inevitable that our stuff would soon outstrip our ability to carry it. As we were sitting on the beach, huffing and puffing from carrying everything, Joe watched another family -- who did have several kids -- stroll merrily down from the street, pulling a beach stroller that was loaded down with all their gear. It had large rubber wheels and netting sides that kept everything snugly in place. They had even more stuff than we did, and the man was hauling it effortlessly. I saw immediately that Envy was setting in in Joe.

"THAT'S what we need!" he exclaimed. "We gotta get one of those. Just think of everything else we could bring!"

The only thing we hadn't brought down was the car, and I didn't see how we would need that on the beach. But I knew there would be no dissuading him.

After dinner that night we were strolling down the boardwalk when Joe suddenly stopped and stared at a display outside a store. I tried to distract him, tried to tempt him with ice cream just a little farther up, but he ignored me. On display was a beach stroller somewhat like we had seen the man pulling earlier. Joe moved toward it with astonishing speed, as if he was afraid someone else would get to it before he did.

There was no price on it. It looked easy to maneuver, although one side of it had only a bungee cord-like thing to strap in your stuff. It didn't seem all that secure. "Let's see if they have any others inside," he said.

In the back of the store we hit pay dirt. There, in shining glory, was "Wonder Wheels," the Grand Marquis of beach strollers, the answer to all our hauling needs. It came in five colors, and it had two big pouches secured by netting, and four wheels -- two for pulling in the sand, four for pushing on the street. "Look!" I squealed. "It has cup holders!" (As an aside, our great-niece, recently turned 2, received a top-of-the-line wagon for her birthday. My sister expressed some disgust at the fact that the wagon had four cup holders, and her own car had zero.)

Our eyes glazed over. You'd have thought we were looking at a brand-new sports car. In fact, we would have had to buy a new car to even fit the Wonder Wheels in it.

But something wasn't quite right. It wasn't, after all, the stroller for us. Maybe it had something to do with the $225 price tag on it. Surely the tag had been switched? Not that there was anything else in the store that looked like it should be that expensive, either. The clerk assured us that the price was correct.

We left the store, sadly, our longing glances lingering on the Wonder Wheels. "A pack mule would be cheaper," I muttered.

Joe's eyes lit up again. "Hey, now that's an idea..."

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the shore we go

"Love," I said to Joe last week, " we have to do something exciting...I need some new writing material. I've been reduced to writing about our dead flowers. Soon I'm going to have to write about can openers again."

So Joe -- even though he once paid me a very nice compliment on my ability to write about can openers in an exciting manner -- suggested we go to the shore for the weekend.

Here on the East Coast, we do not go to the beach. We go to the shore, meaning the shore of the Atlantic. Our favorite spot on the shore is Cape May, New Jersey, which is the farthest point on the shore from our home. We drive right past 289 perfectly fine little towns and beaches to get to Cape May. I do not know why. We just drive until we run out of road, and then we stop.

We were anticipating our usual routine at the shore: hauling 2 tons of food, reading material, and various beach paraphernalia down to the water, which we did, and relaxing in the warm sun, which we did not do. At least, I didn't. This particular day there was what might politely be called a sandstorm, and there is nothing relaxing about being in a sandstorm. Joe struggled to get everything protected by the umbrella, which greatly reduced the wind, but the sand insidiously crept into every little crevice of everything we had, including our ears.

Every now and then Joe would say, "The water's coming up closer." I would look and say, "Pfft, it's nowhere near us." Of course, I did not have my glasses on when I said this, not that they would have helped anyway, as they were caked with sand.

Now, the writer of Genesis tells us that when God created the sea, He placed boundaries on it and said, "This far shalt thou come, and no farther." That afternoon at the shore, a rogue wave came out of nowhere to defy its Maker and swallow our towels, beach chairs, umbrella, coolers, sandals, and everything else we had. I saw it just before it hit and ran, screaming, grabbing whatever I could, including the people next to us, who were more startled by our screaming and running than they were by the wave. And no wonder. After the wave receded, we looked around. We were the only ones the wave had hit. Everything else, and everyone else, was perfectly dry, as if our personal monsoon had never happened.

We retrieved our bedraggled belongings and retreated to our hotel room, safe from all wind, sand, water, and other hostile elements. I looked helplessly at the pile of mush that had been our stuff, then said to Joe, "Writing about can openers isn't such a bad thing, is it?"

A short history of the Indians and the Atlantic Ocean

Whenever we go on a long car ride, say to Target, we always take an audiotape with us. If the trip is extra long, say to church, we take five or six audiotapes. The choice of subject of these stories is always a struggle, with me leaning toward mysteries that will keep me white-knuckled on the steering wheel and Joe preferring some sort of nonfiction account of important people who are long since dead. No sense in wasting brain cells, is his feeling on the subject of mysteries.

So, like any wise couple, we compromise and get what Joe likes. Usually these stories involve one of the founding fathers, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or George W. Bush. One time, I rebelled and got a story on the founding mothers. What's good for the gander is good for the goose, is my feeling on the subject of founding parents.

The trouble with these books is that they all tend to be extremely boring. Five miles down the road, we are singing rousing drinking songs ("12,000 bottles of beer on the wall...") over the audiotape just to stay awake.

But our most recent story, about the Mayflower, did have some redeeming features. For instance, Indians. You can usually count on tales of Indians being pretty exciting, especially if the tale is told by white people. There is never any balance of opinion in stories about Indians and settlers. Either the Indians are portrayed as bloodthirsty savages preying on helpless families and eating their children for supper, or the white people are the ones perpetrating atrocities on the helpless Indians with alcohol, guns, or smallpox, sometimes all three. In these stories, the only good white people are those who have gone over to the Indians and decided to live with them. You never hear that there might have been both bad and good Indians, and both bad and good settlers.

But this story was kind of different. We learned that there were both bad and good Indians, at least in Massachusetts, even before the arrival of the Pilgrims. So the bad Indians cannot be blamed on the Pilgrims. These particular Indians had apparently been bad for thousands of years. No one knows exactly how long, because any smoke signals that might have told us have long since evaporated.

Anyway, we also learned that there were far more Indians in Massachusetts when the Pilgrims landed (quite by mistake; they were actually trying to get to Manhattan, where the women insisted there was better shopping) than we had ever realized. I had always pictured a handful of Indians emerging from the forest to welcome the settlers, leaving the bad ones behind for the time being. But apparently there were all kinds of tribes in the area, some with as many as 20,000 people, and with interesting names like the Narragansett, the Samoset, the Erector Set, and the Neiman Marcus Set.

This history of the Indians stayed with us as we vacationed on the New Jersey coast. At least, it stayed with Joe. One night as we sat overlooking the ocean at a restaurant, he wondered aloud if the ancient Indians knew about the ocean.

"Knew what?" I said, coming out of my musings about whether the woman on the beach with seven children was the mother or grandmother of the children (none of whom were Indian). Whichever was the case, she looked tired.

"Well, that it wasn't just a big river," he explained.

"Oh, I suppose they went exploring it a time or two," I said. He nodded.

"And then," I said, warming to my subject, "when they ran out of clean underwear, they turned around and came back home."

Come to think of it, our own ideas of history are much more interesting than what you learn on these audiotapes. So maybe we should make our own story. And throw in a little mystery to keep people awake.

Please follow these instructions

Joe and I shopped in an antique store the other day, looking for treasures like a primitive cupboard, an old meat fork, and the women's restroom. I am always hesitant to use restrooms in antique stores, for fear the restrooms will be antique, too. This one was very modern, but it was obviously overseen by someone who did not trust that the people who would use it had ever seen a modern restroom before. There were instructions taped all over the walls, paper dispensers, counters, ceiling, etc., telling patrons in no uncertain terms how things worked in this bathroom. I couldn't see that anything worked differently than in any other public restroom I've ever used, which must be about 9,573 by now if I think about it, which I would prefer not to do.

First there was the notice on the toilet paper dispenser. "TEAR TISSUE ON THE EDGE OF THE HOLDER," it declared. I didn't see how else you would tear it, because the edge is where the teeth were. I supposed, however, that some unscrupulous person might tear it by hand off to the side.

The soap instructions were even more basic. "PUSH PUMP FOR SOAP," the sign said, with an abundance of arrows pointing not to the pump but to the floor. There was no conceivable way to get soap other than to push the pump, so I'm not sure why someone thought this particular notice was necessary. Perhaps they didn't want people to waste their time looking for a nonexistent bar of soap.

After obediently pushing the pump for soap, I went over to the wall get some paper towel. I was greeted by a sign that said, "PULL HANDLE SLOWLY HOLDING PAPER." The "SLOWLY" AND "HOLDING" were written vertically, whether to emphasize them or to fit the words on the dispenser, which was longer than it was wide, I wasn't sure. But it takes longer to read words that are written vertically -- which is why the Founding Fathers of English decided that we should read words across -- and so while I was trying to decipher the directions for getting the paper towel out of the dispenser, my hands were dripping water all over the floor. So I hastily pumped the dispenser and tore off my towel. As this was in direct opposition to the directions, I waited for something bad to happen. But the dispenser did not come off the wall. It did not refuse to dispense me a towel. Apparently it did not set off some secret alarm somewhere, because no Towel Police came running.

I dried my hands and threw the towel away -- surprised that there were no directions on the trash can -- and pushed the door open. I expected to see a sign that read, "DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?" and then another on the outer door that said, "...WITH SOAP??"

I pictured the person who had written all these signs. I wondered if her home was also plastered with instructions: On the fridge, "OPEN DOOR TO DISPENSE FOOD;" on the screen door to the outside, "OPEN SLOWLY DO NOT BANG!" (written vertically); in the bathroom, "USE TWO HANDS TO REMOVE TOILET PAPER HOLDER"; and in the laundry room, "BEFORE OPERATING, MAKE SURE CAT IS NOT INSIDE."

I asked Joe later if the men's room had been filled with written instructions, too. "Nope," he said, "I guess they trust guys more than women."

Then he thought again."Well, actually, there was a sign," he said. "It said, 'MAKE SURE YOUR WIFE WASHED HER HANDS.' "

The Great Zucchini Problem

A friend brought up an issue that a great many people face each summer. Besides what to do with their kids while they're out of school, I mean.

I am speaking of the Great Zucchini Problem. Each year, thousands, perhaps millions of people, plant zucchini, completely forgetting that they had told themselves the year before that they would NEVER again plant zucchini. And each year, millions of other people, who did NOT plant zucchini, out of pity for their forgetful friends, neighbors, relatives, real estate agents, etc., find themselves agreeing to take home a few hundred zucchinis.

These zucchinis are relatives of the blimp. You need a wheelbarrow to bring them home, and sometimes it is necessary to remove the door to your home to get them inside. Some people have found it easier to just cut them outside with a chain saw.

As my friend pointed out, once you accept a zucchini from someone, you have to do something with it. You have to go out and buy, using money, ingredients to make something with the free zucchini. So you now have ingredients you never would have bought, using money you never would have spent, all because you felt sorry for your zucchini-inundated neighbor or coworker or postal carrier. And for the next seven months, you eat nothing but zucchini. Zucchini bread, zucchini cake, zucchini pancakes, zucchini casseroles, zucchini cookies, zucchini cheese, zucchini popsicles, etc.

Now, I have a solution to the Great Zucchini Problem. I propose that the government require a permit to grow zucchinis, and only a limited amount of permits would be allowed per geographical location. This would, of course, cut down on the number of zucchini growers, and consequently on the number of zucchini. In our particular geographical location, permits would be strictly outlawed, but they could be carefully controlled in other areas.

If people who were awarded zucchini permits wanted to continue to give some of their zucchini away, they would still be allowed to do so to family and friends and neighbors. But to give them away to coworkers would require, in addition to the growing permit, a license. There would be a hefty fee involved to obtain this license, which would of course reduce the number of employees pushing zucchini at the office, which is very disruptive and cuts down on work productivity. In fact, the government found in a recent study that zucchini arguments at work were responsible for last month's decline of the U.S. auto industry; the other carmakers long ago outlawed zucchini in the workplace, and if the Big Three don't follow suit soon, they will have to start issuing rebates for zucchinis as well as cars. The government will have to bail these companies out, paying millions per zucchini, and turn around and repurpose the zucchini as environmentally friendly cars.

Now, requiring a license to dispense zucchini in the workplace might cause some hard feelings among zucchini growers, as they are well aware that other employees do not need special permission to sell, on behalf of their children, cookies, candy bars, wrapping paper, previously worn snowsuits, etc. But with the U.S. economy at stake, I'm sure American employees will do the right thing and obey the new laws.

And eventually, once people see the success of my program, we can move on to Phase 2: outlawing zucchini.

The Prissy Princess and the smelly garbage

The Gallant Hero was worried. And when the Hero was worried, the Prissy Princess was worried. This time the Hero was worried about his studies.

"How will I ever finish this class?" he moaned to the Princess. "My next class is going to be starting soon!"

The Hero was studying to become a Wizard of Math, and the Princess was very proud of him, even if she did think some of the classes seemed rather useless, like Fuzzy Logic. She did not see that Fuzzy Logic was something one had to learn; she herself had used Fuzzy Logic plenty of times, and she had certainly never had to be instructed in it.

But the Hero could not find enough time to study; he had too many things on his Gallant Hero list, a list compiled mostly by the Prissy Princess. Now the Princess was consumed by guilt. She asked too much of her Hero! If he failed in his quest to become Wizard of Math, surely it would be all her fault. Oh, she was far too selfish! She must relieve him of some of his Hero duties. She set about feverishly doing his chores, giving him precious moments for his studies. Clear the table! Wash the dishes! Clean the stairs! Take out the garbage!

It was as she was lifting the garbage bag out of the kitchen trash can one day, trying not to gag (the Gallant Hero, who usually did this job, wasn't called the Gallant Hero for nothing), that she heard the Hero say that he should be finished with his class in a couple of days. The Princess paused, trash bag still in her hand.

"What did you say?" she asked.

"I said I'm almost done with my class! Isn't that great?"

"But-but, I thought you had two more sections to go!" she said.

"Oh, no, there are just seven sections altogether, and I'm almost done with the last one," he said cheerfully. "I should finish up way before my next class starts. Plenty of time to relax."

The Prissy Princess dropped the garbage bag she was holding back into the trash can and shut the lid. She walked into the study.

"The garbage needs to go out," she calmly told the future Wizard, and sat down to read the newspaper.

Garden update

There are many things for people to be concerned about these days. Things like health care, war, moral corruption, my garden. I'm sure you are all lying awake at night, wondering what is happening with my garden.

Actually, a lot is happening with my garden. Death, mostly. All of my pretty pink and white flowers -- whose name temporarily escapes me but is something hideous and sounds like a disease, like Aspiricum -- have gone to that great Garden in the Sky. All of them, at the exact same time. I don't blame them. It's as if a voice suddenly boomed down and said, "Aspiricum, your time has come. You are of no more earthly use to anyone. Come and join my Garden, which is nothing like that pitiful plot of land you've been living on." These flowers know a good retirement plan when they hear one. And so they just bowed over and died. This was, of course, the most numerous flower I planted, so half the garden now looks extremely forlorn.

There is a family near us who is renting just for a month, probably because their old garden was looking pretty wilty and they wanted someplace bright and cheery for the rest of the summer. Anyway, I was talking to the woman one day and she said, "Your rock garden is lovely."

Now, that might be a compliment if you are growing a rock garden. But I am not trying to grow a rock garden. I am trying to grow flowers. Apparently I would have better luck if I just uprooted all the flowers and let the rocks do their thing. It's true we have a lot of rocks, but if you look closely, you can see some actual flowers. You can tell they are not rocks because they have more color. Well, some of them do. Plus, there are usually a bunch of insects buzzing around the flowers. They don't seem too interested in the rocks.

I have also been engaged in a mighty battle with leaf-chewing insects and something else that likes to gnaw on my dahlias. I think the insects and something elses are winning. The pink dahlia looks perpetually like a sheared sheep.

But the weeds are doing fine. Oh, yes, they are really thriving! Every now and then I look out the front window and think, what a fine batch of weeds we grew this year! We should enter them in a contest.

Last night Joe and I took a walk around the neighborhood, admiring everyone else's gardens, which actually have identifiable flowers in them. Near where Baxter the Best Dog in the Whole World lives, I noticed some ivy whose color seemed otherworldly. Now, you know that I am not the world's greatest authority on plants, but even I suspected that they were not real. Joe leaned over to touch them. Sure enough, they were fake.

I may have mostly rocks in my garden, but at least my rocks are real.