But where do they go to the bathroom?

Luckily for us, we live in an area with many tourist attractions, so that guests from out of town who might not come a long way just to see US nevertheless visit us as part of their tour of all the area's exciting attractions, such as the White House and the formerly World's Largest Chair.


Our most recent visitors were lucky enough to be here for a famous summertime event, one that we in the East all look forward to each year: humidity. So on one of these hot, humid days, we did what any sensible hosts would do: We took our guests on a tour of a couple of ships in the downtown harbor, where there was about as much shade as on the open ocean.


Fortunately there was some rudimentary air conditioning on the ships, which was activated by each individual tourist waving a brochure in front of his or her most uncomfortably hot body parts. At each ship, employees sat at the entrance to take tickets and inform tourists that the tour was self-guided. THEY were not stupid enough to go down below where there was even less air movement than outside.


These ships are actual, life-size ships that in their early days had some function out on the vast seas, then somehow wandered into the harbor and have been there ever since. They are large and rather obvious, and should have been easy to find. The brochure stated plainly that there were four ships, but we -- our faculties possibly confused by the extreme heat -- could locate only three. 


"It's over on Pier 4," we were told when we inquired about its whereabouts, and as the man showed us what was involved in getting to Pier 4 -- crossing vast desert-like areas of waterfront, leaping over tall buildings -- we made the decision to simply visit the ships in front of us. 


The WW II-era submarine was of particular interest to the Hero and I, having just finished listening to The Hunt for Red October. This is a riveting tale of U.S. and Soviet submarines that took approximately 8,000 CDs to tell and included some very convincing, though fake, Russian accents.*


*In the interest of full disclosure, certain parties have promised us financial gain to mention this book on the blog, provided we also would agree to wire them money from our own bank accounts, etc.


As far as we could tell the submarine looked like most other submarines, meaning it looked like something built from old tuna fish cans and might fall apart at any moment, probably while we were on board.


The inside of the sub consisted of a great many wires, pipes, knobs, discarded car parts, pizza boxes, long, metal projectiles labeled "Do Not Stand Too Close to the Missile," etc. The effect was awe-inspiring, as we contemplated the likelihood that the whole thing had been assembled by a tribe of baboons rudely awakened from sleep.


While the guys admired the great many wires, pipes, knobs, discarded car parts, pizza boxes, missiles, etc., the girls debated whether we would rather suffer a slow, torturous death on board by tiny toilet or tiny shower. THIS, we concluded, was the real reason women have been kept from active service on subs for so long. Before we would set foot on a sub, every ship in the fleet would have to be retrofitted with spa-quality jacuzzis and sparkling clean bidets.


The sub was built to accommodate some 80-odd men, and if we tried real hard, we could see how it could easily fit that many, provided they were all the size of GI Joe action figures. 


Our next stop was a nineteenth-century sailing ship. If the girls had been dismayed by the size of the toilet and shower on the submarine, imagine our horror at viewing what appeared to be one apparatus used for both these functions in the captain's quarters. The males among us did not, however, comprehend what this horror was about. Upon closer inspection we were relieved to see that the bathtub and toilet were actually separate, although we feared that the captain, sharing his maleness with those among us, would not have troubled himself greatly to make the distinction.


Back on land, we contemplated all we had learned from these relics of time past. After heading to the nearest air-conditioned building.

Pardon our recalculating

With our guests last weekend we ventured into DC by car, as is proper for someone who hails from the Motor City. Anyone else would ride the subway, or use some other form of more sensible transportation, such as a three-legged sack. But cars are sacred to those of us having roots in Michigan, and driving them is our sacred duty. When you first get your driver's license in the state, you are required to sign an affidavit that no matter where you may roam on life's journey, you will do so by car, and by car alone.


(Someone is going to point out that I have not kept my sacred duty to go by car when I go to work each day, but after reading this post you might understand why.)


Of course we took along the GPS. In our experience, the GPS is less an absolute authority than a catalyst for debate, and this trip was no exception. With five of us, someone was having an issue with the GPS directions at any one time.


GPS: Turn right in 1 mile at N Street.


Passenger 1: I don't think you should do that.


Passenger 2: Nope, we should turn LEFT in 1 mile.


Passenger 1: I don't think we should turn at all.


Driver: Did it say N or M?


Passenger 3 (peering out window): I hope we didn't want N.


GPS: Recalculating...In 200 feet, turn right on Monarch Street. Then keep left.


Passenger 2 (to GPS): You don't know what you're talking about.


GPS (to Passenger 2): Look who knows so much.


Driver (to GPS): Be quiet.


GPS: Hmmmph. (Is quiet for several minutes) 


Passenger 4 (looking idly at road signs): I didn't know we pass Florida on our way to DC.


GPS (gleefully): I see you missed some turns, Ms. Know-It-All. Would you like some help now?


Driver and passengers: Be quiet!


GPS: Hmmmph (Is quiet for several more minutes) Turn left in 100 feet and drive for 753 miles.


Driver: What?? That will put us in the Atlantic Ocean!


GPS: (snort)


Eventually, with the help of a printed map and no doubt also some divine pity, we found our way to our destination. On our way home we decided to go a different route entirely, which caused considerable consternation in the GPS.


GPS: I TOLD you to go straight back there.


Driver: We're going THIS way.


GPS: Recalculating. Recalculating. Recalculating.


Passenger 1: I think we should take this road.


GPS: (snort!)


Passenger 1 (to GPS): Be quiet!


GPS: (remains silent for rest of trip)


Passenger 4 (idly watching road signs): Did we MEAN to drive to Mount Rushmore?


Driver: Recalculating!


Mercifully, we arrived home, although a bit later than we should have according to the GPS (GPS estimated arrival time: 6:04 p.m. Saturday, actual arrival time: 10:37 p.m. the following Tuesday). The device was feeling pretty smug, even though it had steered us wrong more than once.


"Just behave," I threatened it. "Or next time, we'll take the subway."


GPS: Recalculating!

Happy secret birthday

It does not take long, once you have moved into a new residence, to discover all its flaws. The way to deal with this, of course, is to make a list, as soon as possible, that details all the things you definitely want in your next house.


Since our entire house could fit into a walk-in closet in a modern master bedroom, there is little storage space. The Hero deals with this by smashing through walls and ceilings to create more space. To some extent this approach has worked. But recent events in our home have highlighted the need for a place to store...a surprise birthday cake.


One of our out-of-town guests was having a birthday, and to help her celebrate we -- by which I mean I -- made her a cake. We wanted to keep it a surprise, so we looked around for a good place to hide the cake until party time. 


The Hero suggested the oven. "Too dangerous," I said, with visions of having to explain to firefighters why we had thought it was a good idea to store a plastic cake carrier in the oven.


We finally hit upon using the china cupboard in the living room, which is actually a bedroom armoire that wouldn't fit up the stairwell that leads to the bedroom. After much shifting of items inside the armoire, the cake was tucked safely away. The perfect hiding place, we thought.


Until we started the meal prep in earnest, and I sent my sister, who was unaware of the stowaway cake in the armoire, to retrieve a salad bowl. From the armoire. 


The Hero began to motion frantically, in gestures that could have meant "Don't open the armoire!" or possibly "I am experiencing a major convulsion of all my limbs!" We both quickly fled to the now-open armoire and blocked it from the view of the birthday honoree, acting as if the salad bowl needed the help of all three of us to find it.


Crisis averted, we continued meal prep and pleasant conversation, until someone requested some salad tongs. "In the armoire!" I yelled, and the birthday girl, endeavoring to be helpful, started to open the doors to find the tongs.


The Hero gestured frantically to me again, and we both yelled, "Never mind! We can use the one in here!" and grabbed the closest large utensil, which happened to be a can opener. It would be difficult serving salad with a can opener, but we would make do.


"This is stressful," I whispered. "Maybe we should just have the cake now and get it over with."


"Just stop asking for things," he whispered back.


So we forged on, and while the birthday honoree rinsed the dishes, I signaled the Hero in the other room to a) get the cake out of the armoire, then b) hastily put it back as the birthday honoree suddenly shifted position, giving her a clear view into the living room, then c) get it out again after she looked away, then d) get ready to light the candles, then e) put candle-lighting on hold while the honoree suddenly discovered more dishes to rinse, and finally f) bring the cake with the lit candles into the kitchen while I persuaded the honoree that the fry pan really needed to just soak some more and we should put it aside.


There was a brief awkward moment when the honoree noticed we were all staring at her. We then endeavored to stare as nonchalantly as possible at the table, where she finally saw the cake that had mysteriously appeared. That was our cue to burst into song, as much from relief that we could stop pretending nothing was going on as from sincere wishes for her special day.


Next time, it may be worth it to risk using the oven instead.

#1 on the mosquito menu

Although there are many ways to categorize people, in the summer they pretty much come down to two types: 1) those whom mosquitoes couldn't care less about, and 2) me. 


I don't know what mosquitoes down through the ages of time survived on before I came along. Blood banks, maybe. But since I have been around, they seem to feed exclusively on me, taking a break now and then to sample my brother. He complains that his wife never gets bitten, even when they are side by side, and I make the same complaint about the Hero.


This of course has NOTHING to do with their reasons for marrying us, although it does seem to be one of the perks. Online dating sites might consider adding questions about one's propensity for mosquito attraction to member profiles. This could be an attractive feature to someone who is interested in finding such a person in order to achieve bite-immunity ("You'll never need Off again!"). But mosquito-attracting persons might want to forgo photos, as gazillions of red, swollen bites all over one's body is NOT considered an attractive feature.


According to scientists, mosquitoes are attracted to certain chemicals in the blood, which they can sense at great distances. I'm sure that if someone were to do scientific testing on the mosquitoes who have attacked me, they would find at least some that have come from other planets. Other galaxies, even. 


Or, like Harold Crick in the movie Stranger than Fiction, who discovers he is merely a character in a book someone is writing, I might in fact be a character in a terrifying Robin Cook medical thriller. Possibly the mosquitoes that are constantly harassing me have had their DNA altered in a secret experiment and will eventually pass along some horrible disease to me, such as turning into a politician. 


Scientists have, of course, developed repellents to keep mosquitoes away. These repellents include Charlie Sheen. But the only truly safe way to keep from being bitten, if you are a person who is always on the mosquito menu, is to stay inside when they are most active. This is roughly May through September.


You could move somewhere more inhospitable to the nasty buggers, but wherever that is, you probably wouldn't like it, either. Or, you could just move closer to me. You won't ever have to worry about mosquito bites again.

Water, water everywhere...but no thanks to us

Despite everything I have done to the garden this year, many of the flowers are actually growing quite well. In the interest of encouraging the plants to continue in this manner while we went away for a few days, and fearing there might be a hundred-year drought during that time, we set in motion a multi-pronged plan to make sure they had plenty of water.


This included purchasing a sprinkler with a state-of-the-art timer system, or as state-of-the-art as $17.99 will get you. We had only a short time to test it before we left, but it appeared to be working pretty much the same as more expensive sprinklers, which is to say that it mostly watered the sidewalk and the car. We had visions of it forgetting to turn off at the appointed time and running constantly for days, causing a small flood AND a flood of angry calls from neighbors wanting our ouster from the neighborhood.


For the window boxes, we loaded up on those ingenious self-watering bottles with spikes that are designed to release the water into the soil slowly. At least, they would be ingenious if they really worked. "They're okay if you're gone for a short time," a clerk at the garden store said -- a "short time" about equivalent to a trip to the grocery store. Generally the bottles are emptied before we have even left the house. Occasionally they take "slow release" to mean one drop per day, and the bottle is still full when we return.


But upon our return this time, the flowers appeared to be flourishing, including those in the window boxes. There was no flood in the immediate vicinity. Everything must have worked, we said, and were hopeful that this meant we would not worry so much whenever we went away.


But when the Hero, bent on making sure the timer worked properly, looked outside at the appointed time the next day to see whether the sprinkler had started up, nothing happened.


The reason was traced to a little habit of the Hero's, in which he places used batteries back among the drawer of new batteries, where they can fraternize freely and we are none the wiser as to which are which.


"Dead battery," he said. "I don't think the sprinkler worked at all while we were gone."


"But the flowers have definitely gotten water," I protested. The reason for this turned out to be our neighbor, who, unaware of the state-of-the-art sprinkler with the dead timer battery, but aware that we were away, had thoughtfully watered our yard twice.


I didn't ask whether she also watered the window boxes. I would like to believe that SOME part of our multi-pronged plan worked.

To the beach

Many people escape to the beach to relax. We find that it allows us to have exhilarating new experiences, such as worrying about things we don't have to worry about at home -- being knocked over by enormous waves, being attacked by sharks, being beaten by four-year-olds at Putt-Putt, etc. This time, we took wise precautions, and stayed off the Putt-Putt courses.* 


Luckily the only shark we saw on our recent trip to the beach was flying high above the water and attached to a long string, which was tied firmly to a brightly colored beach umbrella. Still, to be safe, I kept well near the shore, although in my opinion one is only completely safe from sharks well inland, such as Idaho (whose state motto could be, though perplexingly is not, "Not one shark attack since statehood in 1890!")


We did see a number of dolphins swimming offshore. Two of them, likely young siblings, were goofing around, and we predicted that the dad dolphin would have to get stern with them: "You two cut it out, or we're turning around right now!"


Another dolphin, possibly imported from Sea World to entertain the tourists on the dolphin-watch boats, showed off by doing a complicated double twister above the water, after first making sure the dolphin-watch tourist boat was well out of sight.


Plenty of humans were engaging in acrobatics, too, as they attempted to navigate the intensely hot sand by touching it as little as possible. For some, this involved walking on tiptoe; others preferred the "Remember the Alamo!" approach, whereby they ran, yelling, at top speed across the sand, sometimes unable to stop before making contact with their, or a stranger's, beach umbrella. 


We stayed in a Victorian bed-and-breakfast, which we found out after booking did not actually include a breakfast of any kind. This was fine with us, as the walk to a breakfast place was one of the few acts of physical exercise we were able to achieve on this trip. It was too hot to do much of anything else besides complain about how hot it was, and this seemed to be a popular pastime among beachgoers:


Beachgoer #1: Hot enough for ya?


Beachgoer #2: Yep.


Beachgoer #3: Remember the Alamoooooooooo! (crash)


The obvious way to deal with the heat was to simply remain in the ocean; at least, this WOULD have been the obvious thing to do had not the water been cold enough to engage in a little off-season ice fishing, and if the waves had been quietly lapping at the shoreline instead of threatening to engulf even Idaho.


In the midst of all this extreme nature, the Hero announced: "I think I'll go surfing."


I immediately endeavored to talk him out of it, in a very subtle way so that I would not appear to be trying to talk him out of it. 


"Have we ever discussed where you would like to be buried?" I said. "This might be a good time."


But he was of the opinion that it could not be that dangerous, as he never had to sign a waiver when renting a board. They probably figured surfing was less dangerous than wearing the required beach tags with the threatening safety pins.


But back to surfing.


I felt that the best place to surf was Sunset Beach, where waves rarely exceeded the size of waves in the average home bathtub. This suggestion was ignored.


In the end, the waves, the lateness of the hour, and development of an enormous headache on my part meant that we both decided to leave the beach before any surfing could be accomplished. Plus, they were all out of surfboards at the rental place.


I had NOTHING to do with that, although it does give me an idea for next time...




*The Hero wishes to clarify that HE has never been beaten by a four-year-old at Putt-Putt.**


**Because he always pays them off first.

What's back there, anyway?

On the radio each morning as I go to work there are approximately three different ads: one for a commercial vehicle one that allows your inner painter, floral arranger, or landscape architect to do what it does best by accommodating all your stuff; one for a well-known men's clothing store whose announcer declares, in an astonishingly annoying voice, spectacular sales on everything in the stores including, one presumes, the dressing room curtains; and one for a local remodeling company, representatives of which have visited our home and, despite hinting that they have done work in the neighborhood, have admitted upon questioning that they actually have not, whereupon the Hero has told them to come back after they've done some work for our neighbors. 


Every now and then there is also an ad for a shoe company that shall be referred to here as Van Dyke & Ham, which apparently has a long and distinguished tradition; indeed, from its proudly recited heritage and important-sounding music on the radio ad, one might infer that the company even invented the shoe all by itself.


This ad promises that if the company's shoes do not fit perfectly when you try them on, they WILL fit perfectly after "they take them into that famous little back room and work on them."


What happens, exactly, in this company's "little back room" is not specified in the ad. I imagine there is a shoe horn involved, but one more the size of a shovel, which they use to beat your foot into the shoe. If THAT doesn't work they no doubt have other techniques, probably outlawed by the Geneva Convention, for making the shoe fit. This is offset by the fact that you receive a guarantee for the life of the shoes, voided if "the customer, at any time, removes the shoes from his or her feet."


And if you protest any of this treatment, there is probably ANOTHER little back room not mentioned in the ad, one that is even further removed from the Geneva Convention tenets. 


So if you are ever tempted to try on some shoes at Van Dyke & Ham, you'd do well to act as if the shoes fit you perfectly, even if they don't, and assure the salesman that there is no need to visit the little back room. And if you see an oversized shoe horn anywhere, run.