Dispirited Air

I've finally figured out why Spirit Airlines got its name-you'll need a litre of alcohol, not beer or wine, but the hard stuff, spirits, like esophageal scorching moonshine or mind altering absinthe to obliterate any memory of the flight.

Now, I've flown everything from People's Air, Lufthansa, Qantas to Air India, economy to first class, and everything in between, and no one likes getting a bargain better than me or my sisters, except for our father, who has his PhD in Parsimony, which is why we ended up on Spirit.

Hey, I've been drawn in by their seductive promises of $20.00 fares-who wouldn't?  I can't even get a pizza for that, and when my dad booked 5 round trip fares down to Fort Lauderdale for an upcoming cruise, my older sister, who was already down in the  Caribbean, could only howl with laughter and unleash a string of expletives.

"I flew them with our father just ... @*&^%$%$%^& once."

How bad could they be? 

We checked in, making sure we printed our boarding passes ahead of time since they'd charge us $10 if we hadn't. We unloaded our cases, ($50.00 extra for each of us, round trip) and flew into a pair of seats at a dingy little bar at 8.00 in the morning to celebrate our first vacation together since pigtails. 

Airport bars are like confessionals-you'll pour out your life story to the dude sitting next to you, to the bartender, to the couple sitting seats away, hoping you'll never see them again. And you can usually pick out the ones who are just starting their vacation; they're not slumped over in their seats playing Dots, or forlornly scrolling through their camera roll. No, they're upright, animated, and sucking down Bloody Mary's.

Like we were.

As a huge Boardwalk Empire fan, I had been dying to order a Bloody Mary like Nucky did last season when he said "Lighter on the bloodly; heavier on the Mary."

"Lighter on the bloody, heavier on the Mary"

And I did.

It's a good thing we knocked back a couple heavy Mary's, because as we headed toward the back of the plane, one row up from the toilets, deep in the aircraft's sphincter, either the seats had gotten smaller, or the people had gotten bigger.


As I sat down, my knees grazed the back of the seat in front of me, same for sissy.

I reckon I couldn't even floss between my knees and the seat.

We Cade girls are generously boned, sturdy, and will likely be able to use our husbands as barbells for our squats in a decade. Our femurs make up half our body length; I don't know what happened to our torsos, compact squares the size of  matchbooks, but it didn't matter. Our legs were the issue.

And you can't even say we're leggy because that implies we've got a set of great gams.

They're manly legs, working legs, legs of substance. Dominant leg genes that go back generations. And they weren't designed for Spirit.

No legs are.


Don't fart or sneeze, Sissy or else your knees will end up in Row 28 B's colon.

Okay, I'd just lower my seat, it would give me a few more inches. But there wasn't a button. I looked all over. Left. Right. Raised the arm rest, and ran my hand beneath. Nope. It wasn't even taped over or broken. No button.

That's like getting on an elevator without any buttons.

We sat as if we had sticks up our ass, which we did since we were immobile. 

Don't expect water, pretzels, soda or other snacks,  unless you're flexible enough to thread your arms into positions that are not humanly possible to find your handbag which is vice gripped between your legs, which are wedged between your seat and the row ahead. Forget about trying to get your wallet out of your back pocket.

Because those early morning heavy on the Mary's had turned us into raisins, and our tongues hanging out like thirsty dogs, I needed to chug some water.

But water is $3.00. No cash. Debit or Credit only. 

Well, maybe if I dehydrate just a bit more, I'll gain more legroom.

Need to relieve yourself?

Best to slip on a pair of Depends because by the time you extricate yourself from your seat, it may be too late. Besides, what's more shameful? Quietly peeing in your adult garments, or squashing your privates against a stranger's nose while trying to squeeze out of your row?

I'm pretty sure Spirit will start charging for the lavatory, so unless you have a cast iron bladder or bowel, get some training pants. 

But we soon put our experience behind us after we were spirited away into the cruising world aboard Royal Caribbean's Oasis of Seas, spending a majority of our days trying to find our way back to our stateroom, since our sense of direction fell short on the high seas.


After our maiden cruise, we lugged our suitcases up to the scale at the airport, lifting up each other's case trying to judge the weight and what we'd do if somehow we were over.

"If we are over fifty pounds, I'll start tossing dirty underwear out," I said.

"I'll put my dirty clothes into a plastic grocery bag and carry them on," Sissy said.

Turns out if we had stuffed some clothes into another bag, that's considered a second carry on-another $25.00 fee.

I'll start stuffing my shirt and pants with the extra clothes," I said. 

We're Cade's, and not only do we have cinder block legs, but we're cheap as hell.
 
As we placed our bags on the scale, we fell a few pounds shy of 50, roughly same as they weighed in at LaGuardia.

Phew.

"The bags are over 41 pounds. That'll be $25.00 each. Excess baggage fee." 

No traveller likes to hear those words.

When we tried telling her we hadn't been charged additional money when we checked in at LaGuardia, and hadn't even seen a sign, she didn't budge.

They've heard it all before. You've got to have a tough hide when you're wearing a Spirit name tag.

Being raised in a legal family makes you toss out words like "lawsuit, breach of contract, industry standards, restitution, summons and complaint, lack of conformity, bill of particulars, quid pro quo, and hourly rate" and any other legalese you can pull out of your ass even when it's not remotely applicable to the situation.
 
After waiting more than a half an hour to speak to a supervisor, and then spending minutes explaining to a cyborg that we hadn't been charged an extra fee, she stood her ground. Didn't smile, didn't offer apologies, didn't offer a compromise. Nothing.

"If you don't pay the fee, the bags stay here." 

She didn't even flinch when I told her I was going to charge her $25.00 because she kept us waiting, which was a substantial discount on my hourly rate. I threw in some legalese.


 I was in a stage iv public meltdown.


"Let's just throw our suitcases on the belt. Then we'll say they lost them and file a claim," I said to Sissy.



"Um, they wouldn't be in their system, and if we don't have proof that we actually checked our bags, we'd end up with nothing."

"Oh, yeah."

And that's what big Sissy's are for-they rein you in when no one else can. She yanked out her Amex card and paid the $50.00.

"I'll just contest the charge when the bill comes."

Several days after our return, Sissy forwarded a Spirit email with those teaser fares...and just like childbirth, where you forget how painful it really is, I lingered on their site.....eyeing the fares, wondering if I could swing a one week vacation in Guatemala.

We got the Spirit....

 

Making Memories In a Wet and Steamy Tent

There were few things I did without as a child. I got the usual toys kids wanted-a new purple stingray with a banana seat, an Easy Bake oven, a Creepy Crawler bug machine that cooked up those spongy creatures with stretchable limbs, and that weirdly pleasant plastic odor. But what I really wanted more than anything, at least during one phase in my pre-teen years, were two things I never got-a wood-grain station wagon like all my neighbor's drove, and a camping vacation.

I envied those families who layered suitcases on the roof rack like a tiered cake, piling  blankets and pillows in the back, along with the kids and dog, turning the end of the wagon into the ultimate moving fort. Coolers filled with bologna sandwiches and Purple Passion, they'd back out of their drive, on a 70's road trip into the wilderness, while I was parked at the end of our drive sitting on my banana seat, waving goodbye.

My father could rough it up for his annual Alaskan fishing trip, but I don't think my mother ever slid her tiny body into a sleeping bag.

The closest I ever got to camping was when we dragged our sheets and blankets into the backyard one night and rigged it up between a small tree in our garden and a weathered picnic table using clothes pins to seam the bedding together. Since we weren't a camping family we didn't have sleeping bags, so we yanked whatever else was remaining on our beds, including the frilly canopies that we slept under, and fashioned a patchwork tent, with enough gaps in the ceiling to just about make out the Big Dipper.

We carried out bowls of Bugles and Funyons, soda, and long strands of red liquorice that we had braided into necklaces and bracelets before eating, found an old flash light in the junk drawer, and waited for night to fall, our mercurial voices drowning out the building winds, as we wondered what it'd be like to marry Keith Partridge and ride around on a psychedelic flower-power bus, and telling spooky stories about a crazy serial killer who slithered through backyards looking to slice up preteen backyard campers.

We were packed in our makeshift tent, the air thick with the sweet and salty smells of  junk food, and stale hot breath from prepubescent teens, and though only steps from the house, we felt as though we were nestled deep in the forest, miles from civilization.


One by one, we drifted off, five of us stuffed into that steamy tent, where silence soon filled the lengthening gaps between whispers, and we drifted off to sleep. 

We didn't make it much past midnight; the distant storm had bulldozed its way in, with claps of thunder so loud and forceful, they seemingly lifted us from our sleeping bags. And cracks of lightening so vivid, our tent exploded with intense snaps of light. Then the rain came, fast and heavy; it soaked the fabric ceiling down to within inches of our noses, all while our parents were snoring in their dry beds.

There was no heli-parents in those days-it was classic survival of the fittest. Besides, we always played outside in storms, rain or snow-lightening, wind or hail. We'd happily wash our hair under the drain spouts with lightening firing off rounds within inches of our house, threatening to reduce us to small piles of ash.

"When we were your age, we walked up and down the Avenue in all kinds of weather," our mother would say, gently closing the screen door on us. 

During one summer storm, when drains overflowed, and turned a neighboring street into a waist high river, we swam like trout through the muddy water, dodging twigs and unidentifiable objects. Our mother barely raising an eyebrow as we trudged into the house, our clothes browned from the dirty water.

"A bit of dirt won't kill you."

(Well, possibly swimming in water contaminated from run-off and sewage might have.)

We stampeded into the house, our clothes stuck to our skin, most likely the only wash of the week, besides the chlorinated pool water-which we counted as a summertime bath. And that was the last time I had camped until my kids begged me to go during one summer vacation with another mom and her son. It would be a mother son/daughter outdoor adventure they pleaded.


"Um, I'm not really the camping type," I said.

But like many of the unpleasant memories that perforate my five decades of life, this early memory was locked away in an air tight cerebral vault with a combination I'd never remember until it was pried open by a similar one. Somehow I had forgotten about that rainy summer evening, and ordered a tent, sleeping bags with an extra fleece lining for those chilly nights (how rustic and so, well,  campy), and a few mats to cushion the soft green meadow where we'd rest our bodies. I threw in a cute propane stove where we'd perk lip burning coffee like a couple of cowgirls, and a few wine glasses, because as I later found out, drinking and camping go together like cheese and crackers. 

I had always wondered why camping families look exhausted when they rolled in their driveway, eye bags down to their toes, hair in a nest, stumbling into their house, the bags of camping gear left on the roof until it positively had to come off.

And I soon found out-camping is damn hard work. It's no wonder because you're basically moving the entire contents of your house into your car, and transporting it to a 12x12 dirt patch under a canopy of sap dripping pines. And since the kids simply dissolve into the forest, there's no one to help set up camp. There's no one to haul your bags in after a long drive or flight, no comfy bed to flop on, no minibar to raid, and no private bathroom-it's a dirty, dusty, privy going, rock underneath your sleeping bag kind of pioneer experience that the kids absolutely loved.

By the time we figured out how to pitch our tent, we were on our second bottle of wine. By the time we slipped into our sleeping bags, we could hear the familiar rumblings of a distant storm gathering strength, flexing its muscles. We aimed our flash lights on the ceiling and watched as drops of rain seeped through, and woke up the next morning with a stream running through our tent.

There's nothing quite like waking up in a wet sleeping bag on a oppressively humid morning, surrounded by your kids, and knowing you're making another string of childhood memories for another generation.

The Tug of Father's Day

For the first time in a quarter of a century, I'll be celebrating Father's Day. It'll be the first time in twenty five years that I'll have to split the holiday between my husband and my father.  For years I've felt excluded by the tugs my friends' felt, splitting the day between the two men in their lives. There has always been lingering sadness on this day, a feeling of profound loss and loneliness, despite that my kids have a terrific father. And although I have always tried to make it special for him, the day only served to remind me of all I had lost.


Families are peculiar. Some are like dysfunctional clumps of personalities moving together in an amorous mass, changing, evolving, growing, and constricting, but also coming together when faced with a birth, an illness, a death; others breaking apart, drifting in different jet streams, seemingly unconnected until an event brings them together.

Ours was always an atypical family, and if they had reality TV back then, we'd be pioneers, be the first family of reality series.

We motored in a sea of dysfunction, not close, not distant, somewhere in between,  circulating in a world of scripted privilege, unaware that our family was breaking apart, until I found my mother at the foot of the staircase, her arms and legs splayed across the marble floor.

It was a little after 4.00 on a cool May morning, and somehow I had heard her garbled yells calling for help. Only moments before I had stumbled in after celebrating a friend's impending marriage. She'd been shuffling around the kitchen looking for aspirin. I told her to go to bed.

I went upstairs; she never made it.

She begged me not to call the ambulance. She'd been in and out of hospitals for the past year, her health had been gradually declining, and she didn't want to go back.

"I won't come out one day," she had said.

I think she wanted to die at home.

I sat on the floor and cried. I was alone.

I rode in the ambulance with her, holding her hand, dressed in one of my father's shirts that I grabbed from his closet, watching the life fade from her chestnut eyes as the sun rose.


She died two days later, with my sister, my brother in law, and her childhood friend Liz, taking turns stroking her arms, wiping away her tears, in between bouts of reminisce fueled laughter and grief so strong it took our breath away.

"Remember when she crawled on her belly up Dad's driveway, wearing a bandana and black clothes, and rolled off to the side into the brush when his car came racing up the long steep drive?"

"Remember when she ripped up the carpet in the family room when she decided she'd had enough of that shag?"

For a skinny little woman, with arms and legs so delicate you could probably snap them like a dried twig, she, at times, surprised us with her strength. 

When Mom died, the thin bonds that held our family together snapped.

One event triggered an avalanche so destructive it took 25 years to rebuild.

But this year, I'll be driving to New York with Sissy where we'll be cooking dinner for our father. We'll have a tri-sister sleepover with my other sister, Karen, and then we'll head back home to celebrate with our own families.

Yes, her name is Karen, too. 

And that's another story.


I'm not even sure what my father likes. People's tastes change. He used to love donuts, fresh home grown tomatoes with a sprinkling of salt, and crusty Italian bread that my mom's friend Agnes made. She'd drop off her bread, still warm from the oven, and within minutes, the entire loaf would eaten, with only a few scattered crumbs dusting the counter top.

But I can't remember if he prefers crullers or jelly,  how he likes his steaks cooked, or if he still eats fish, or has had pesto before.

These are the simple questions that I'll ponder while putting together a dinner menu.

I'll feel the pull of Father's Day this year, the gentle tug of wanting to be with two  fathers.

Finally, after twenty five years.

Hitting the market with the hubby

At the risk of sounding like a 1950s aproned house frau, I'm on the verge of banning the hubby from all retail establishments, including the supermarket, but excluding the liquor store. (However, this, too, maybe off limits if he keeps on fetching bargain bin wines, one step above Boone's Farm.)  I think most older men should be banned, too, and I don't think I'm alone judging by the "Oh, sister, I know what you mean," looks from my fellow shoppers as they push their carts up and down the grocery store aisles, their husbands on a grocery market lam.

The eye rolls say it all.

It's funny how such a measured gesture perfectly captures the universal "holy shopping carts on fire, I should have left him at home" kind of feeling.


Like most "older" men, he simply disappears in the grocery store. He wants his own cart, and then takes off like a toddler in a playground. I lose him in the dairy section, between the blocks of Cabot's cheese and free range eggs, and he surfaces again in meats, balancing half a steer on his shoulder.


"This should do us for a bit." he says.

I used to go shopping alone, but over the past few years, my husband's been riding shotgun, his idea of spending quality time together since the kids are now orbiting in their own hormone filled black holes. He refuses to go the mall and I'm delighted since within minutes of his arrival, he's shuffling past stores, arching his back, with a pinched  look on his face.

"These floors kill my back," he puffs. I don't know what it is."

I do-he hates malls.

But he doesn't mind grocery stores.

What used to take me 30 minutes for a big shop-up has gradually turned into a two hour hide and seek game.

"I'll grab a trolley," he says (that's Brit-speak for shopping cart.)

"Umm...no, that's okay. I think we're fine with one." I say, patting the handle, wondering if they make man-sized harnesses so I could tether him to my cart.

I eye the kid sized plastic trucks attached to carts, (those monstrous juggernauts that take out endcaps because they're impossible to turn), and wonder if I could convince him to awaken his inner boy and take a spin.

"Oh, yes you can fit in there, darling, I'll give you a push."

But, as I'm rifling through my handbag looking for my shopping list that no doubt is back home on the counter top, along with either my debit and Amex card (yes, I'm one of those infuriating shoppers holding up lines all across Massachusetts because I can't find my cards, dumping empty wrappers, receipts, packs of gum, lipstick, and unwrapped tampons on the counter), he's seamlessly blended into the masses of bodies pushing their carts down the aisles, his bald patch dimming like a fading beacon.

I dial him up.

 "Um, where are you?"

"I'm just pottering about," he says.

What my husband dreams our cart looked like

And that's what I'm worried about. Pottering means either he's just grabbing whatever is within his reach-a hog, cookies, candy, or the thinnest half ply toilet paper that is as effective as using a feather after a jalapeno bender.


He'll eventually meet me carrying his haul, each item balanced on top of each another, like a stack of presents, and dump them into the cart with a smile as wide as the case of canned tomatoes that now flattens the still warm French bread.

"I think we still have a case of those tomatoes from the last time we came," I'll say. And before I can bend over and hoist them out of the basket, he's off again, wandering down the aisle, pecking on his iPhone, searching for sweets.

It used to be much worse before we all got hooked up with cell phones. I'd end up going up and down each aisle, muttering under my breath, wondering how on earth I could lose him in our small market. But, by God, it was as though he had an invisibility cloak, and no matter how many times I rounded corners in that cart, and peered down those damn aisles, he was never there.

But after years of him going missing, even with the advances in technology,  I've devised a sneaky little game that keeps tabs on him, and I think, quite frankly, he likes it.

I'll pick an obscure item, one that will have him scanning the international food aisle for a good ten minutes, before he realizes it's on the other side of the store.

"What are peppadews? he asks.

What our cart looks like.....

"Oh, I'm really testing you now. I had to take it up a notch." 

"Hmmm...international food aisle, canned goods aisle, produce...give me a hint?"

And so, he wanders off to the international aisle, which unfortunately for him, has grown from being as exotic as custard from Canada to now Korean kimchi, and a thousand other canned foods, from pickled cactus to questionable animal parts. He scans each country's section, reading each label, from top shelf to bottom, traveling through South America, the Caribbean, and over to Asia-all without a passport-before he moves on.


"Oh, that was a tough one," he says, holding up the jar of peppadews like a trophy.
 "They were in the produce department. You almost got me."

These hunts give me just enough time to go full throttle down the aisles, bypassing all the crap that usually get tossed in by hubby. And they somehow fulfill his long dormant drive to hunt and provide a wholly mammoth for his clan.

We'll hook up at the register and off we'll head, snacking on the fresh un-flattened French bread on our ride home.






 

When the Jehovah's Witnesses Come Knocking

I'm not quite sure why the Jehovah's Witnesses always find me, but I suspect it may have started back in high school when my father sent two disciples up to my bedroom one Saturday morning for some weekend evangelizing. Fortunately, two of my friends had stayed overnight, so we got to wake up with the Witnesses standing above us, like a pair of visiting angels. My father stood jackknifed in the hallway, trying to cover up his fits of laughter while we were in our jammies, blissfully still in that post slumber teenage fog that rarely lifts before mid-afternoon, listening to their soft lyrical voices urging us to accept Jehovah.

I lost them for several years while moving up and down the east coast doing the six year college stint. And they never crossed the Atlantic for me when I was living abroad.  But once I settled down on the Cape, they came.

And they've never stopped knocking on my door.

We've developed this peculiar relationship over the years, and I figure the only way out of it is to move back to England or pop my clogs.


Grace and the Jehovah's come knocking every two to three weeks, and I've got so attuned to their visits,  I can sense one coming, just as I can predict a summer storm. I really do like Grace-I've given her that name because she knows my name and I'll be damned if I don't know hers. Her visits are usually in the middle of a deadline or when I'm in the middle of a Facebook creeping session or dredging chicken, my fingers clumped with flour.  She'll have one or two ladies with her, some old, some young, always in proper skirts and sensible shoes, clutching well worn bibles and copies of the Watchtower and Awake!

The latest lit drop

 I get the feeling my house serves as a training site for the entire region since Grace usually brings new faces every time she calls.

"Look how easy that was," Grace says.  "See, she looks forward to our visits. They all do. They're actually excited when we come."

I've met a lot of them over the years, but my favorite Witness is Connie, a 85 year old Brazilian who threw her arms around my son as he made his way across the front lawn after I slipped and told her he didn't believe in creationism.

"Do I look like I came from a monkey? she asked, cupping his face in her wrinkly hands.

I open the door, and stand on the threshold. I've never invited them in, though I have often thought Grace would probably love a cup of tea and a cookie.  It must be darn hard getting doors slammed in your faces all day long, but I resist the urge to feed them, and we exchange pleasantries on the step. She has one of those warm and welcoming faces, and if I wasn't so careful, I'd be tempted to confide in her. 

"Grace, I went 90 in a 65 mile zone."

"Grace, I took out "Fifty Shades of Grey" from the library."

"Grace, it's two weeks overdue."
 
She's a stunningly stylish lady, her glossy brown hair neatly resting in a loose bun. I'm tempted to pull the bobby pins out and let her hair tumble over her shoulders. She loves her bright lipstick and wears fashionable clothes, but then again, since I work from home in yoga pants and cardigans, anything besides elastic waist bands looks stylish. She loves cats and gardening, which is a good thing since I to steer our conversations to fluff topics and avoid religious ones since I skipped Sunday school classes and went to Leo's Bakery instead.

I get the feeling some one's watching me.

We'll chat for five or ten minutes and she always asks about my mother in law, Pam, who lives in England, my two cats, James and Nibs, and the kids. Pam knows Grace, too, and if Pam lived in the states, she'd be on the biweekly call list. Pam got me out of a call once and still remembers when I crouched behind a sofa and begged her to answer the door.

"Please Pam, I'll make you the best gin and tonic this side of the Mississippi. Just this once."


We'll talk about the weather, what I'm cooking for dinner, and my work schedule until we're both tired of dancing around the real reason- why she's planted on my doorstep.

Jehovah.

I'm not a particularly religious person. Living with a bunch of atheists will do that to you, but I know it's important to Grace, so I listen as she reads a few bible passages, praying she's picked out some short ones. Plus, I figure it must be nice to get through a few verses without having a string of expletives come from behind a closed door. While she's reading, she pauses and looks at me, hoping that I'll have a come to Jehovah moment.

She's been working on me for years and I'm sure she's tabulated her return on investment and it's not in her favor. I know she's under pressure to convert me.

"But Elder, I've almost got her."

"Okay, 1,545 visits and she's not budging."

"Rome wasn't built in a day."

Grace hands me a few issues of the Watchtower and Awake!

"They are some great articles in here," she says.

I promise to read them or at least skim through since she'll often ask how I liked the last issue and I still have those dreadful high school flashbacks when I hadn't read an assignment and couldn't answer the teacher's question.
 
I'm tempted to end our relationship, to tell Grace it's over, it's time for us to move on. That's it's just simply not working out. But it's not that simple.

I like Grace.

I can't say I look forward to her visits, and I confess I've dropped to the floor a few times when I saw Grace pull into my drive. As I lay on the rug, spreadeagled, holding my breath,  my eyes tightly closed, I feel a surge of remorse and self-loathing.

"I'm a 50 year old woman playing dead on the living room floor."

"How have I let the relationship go on for this long?"

"Can Grace sense that I'm home?"

"Is she peeking in the window?"

"Hmmm, I've just made a batch of snicker doodles, should I ask them in?"





















 

Our Garden of Horrors

I've always been the type of person who underestimates the amount of time it will take me to do anything, driving the husband and quite a few others in and out of the family batty.

The hubby says I sound like our local Chinese take out.

Everything always takes "five minutes," from painting my office to frantically rolling out fresh pasta as guests are pulling into the drive, to grabbing a quick cup of coffee at my favorite cafe.

So when I teamed up with my pal and her sister this past spring, and signed up for a community veggie garden that was just five minutes from my house, I should have known that the three mile journey would soon feel like a cross country trek through quicksand and our gardening reputations would be muddied, forever tarnished by "The Great Abandonment Scandal of 2012."

 "Darling," the husband said in his clipped British accent. "Are you crazy?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, I could ride my bike to the garden it's so damn close. Besides, Paula's office is a wink away," I said.

Like the hundreds of times before, he shook his head. "It's a stupid idea. You don't have time."

But we didn't see it that way. It would be our own little farming oasis. Our little patch of wonder.  We'd grow crops in artsy geometric patterns, we'd tie our tomatoes up with pretty grosgrain ribbon, we'd grow cilantro, jalapeños and tomatoes, so prolific our bounty, we'd be canning salsa for weeks, lining up the mason jars like trophies. Maybe we'd even win a prize at the county fair and get to wear a fancy satin sash round town. 

Our blooming plot of vibrant vegetables would be the envy of our new acquaintances,  a sturdy bunch of old Yankee farmers who eyed us with a peck of suspicion.

Maybe they'd present us with golden pitchforks and crowns.

"My, my," they'd cluck, "They should be in Martha Stewart's magazine."

"I can't believe what they've done with that patch of overgrown weeds."

"An epic transformation."

"How on earth do they do it?"

Where it all began.....

We met over at the community garden early one spring afternoon, the earth was just beginning to soften after the long grey winter,  and the welcoming fragrance of new growth floated in the air. Spreading stacks of seed catalogs over the rustic picnic table, we picked out dozens of heirloom tomato seeds from the evil sounding Black Krim to the happy go lucky Mr. Stripey, but soon realized even if we started the seeds that very day, we'd be lucky to harvest any tomatoes before Halloween.
 
We couldn't wait to get started. 

We'd throw apres work garden parties on the small common green, bringing yards of twinkling fairy lights, perhaps hanging lanterns, adorning the worn picnic table with vibrant colors,  artisan cheeses, grapes, baguettes, maybe even hire a guitarist.  I think we may have entertained making our own wine. It would become the place to congregate for evening cocktails and morning coffees. It would be an agricultural epicenter.

A farm to farm table success story. 

What we envisioned....

But less than a week later, as we lugged in our rakes and hoes to do a bit of pre planting weeding, we were met with a carpet of newly sprung weeds. These weren't your average nansy pansy whip them out with a quick tug kind of weeds-these were indestructible electric green matted monsters with roots reaching down to the earth's core.

I love weeding, really, finding it oddly therapeutic, spending hours squatting on my lawn, plucking out clumps of crabgrass. I've never met a weed I couldn't destroy. But these were hybrid warriors with roots of steel. They could star in their very own B horror flick, invading communities, covering homes, swing sets, bicycles, and unsuspecting suburbanites in hours. The weed covered folks would be frantically trying to find their pruning shears, but like most naughty gardeners, their rusted old shears would  be buried under a pile of clippings and they'd ultimately turn into human topiaries.

Would that be our fate?

Now, we gals are pretty strong. We do manly push-ups. And squat thrusts. In fact, in former lives, we probably settled the west, pulling the damn wagons ourselves.  Yet on that day, as we tried yanking out those weeds, sweat and dirt rolling down our backs and faces, we left defeated with only a tiny patch of our garden weeded, our knuckles bleeding, our enthusiasm dampened. Our fellow gardeners, with their wellies and sun hats on, resting on their hoes, had cleared what little weeds they had, barely breaking a sweat.

Had they known something all along?


They told us where to find a guy who'd till our plot for 20 bucks. He ploughed through our garden and once again we were planning our evening soirées, wondering how we'd hook up our fairy lights since there wasn't an outlet for miles. Could we haul in a generator? Hook them up to our car batteries?  Use candles instead?

What we thought it would look like....

We planted our heirlooms, our zucchini, kale, cukes, basil, cilantro, jalapeños, red peppers, green and yellow beans, and eggplant with every intention of daily weeding and watering. It looked so darn cute.

"Oh, we'll meet down here two or three times a week, bring our coffee and tend to our garden. It'll be a fabulous way to start the day."

"A great stress reducer."

"Gosh, we'll be down there all the time. It's so close."

"If it gets too crazy, we'll take turns."

We had it all figured out. We'd balance work, family commitments, and our own extensive gardens at home. By the middle of the growing season, we'd be knee deep in produce. We'd donate some to the food pantry, open up a farm stand. Be a farm to farm table success story.

But like most of our great ideas, (and we have many), there's just a problem called follow through.

We like to think of ourselves as industrious little percolators, pumping out one novel idea after another, feeding off each other's energy and excitement, propelled by our cerebral caffeine, but somewhere along the way we run out of steam.

Like the time we wanted to funk up the funeral industry with our fleece lined caskets. "Rest in Fleece" was our company name. We figured why would a manly man want to rest in a god awful slippery pink satin lined coffin?

Or like the time we envisioned 'active wakes." Instead of lying supine, the deceased could be waked doing their favorite activity, like fishing. Your uncle could be staged catching the biggest bass in his lifetime, dressed in waiters and reeling in that trophy sized fish, the sound of a babbling brook coming from an in house state of the art sound studio. Did your deceased love, love crossword puzzles? Your mother could be sitting by a roaring fire, (crackling noises courtesy of the world famous sound effects) finishing the New York Times Toughest Crossword Puzzles, Volume 8.

But then we figured we'd be putting our "Rest in Fleece" business out of business before it ever became a business because, well, it would be hard to fit these upright and decidedly stiff stiffs into our jazzy lined coffins. 

Plus we underestimate time. And we over schedule ourselves. And we move on.

Our daily watering never happened. The weeds choked our plants, squeezing the life out of our dear little plants, and started invading our fellow gardener's plots. It had turned into our garden of horrors. We'd sneak in at odd hours afraid to be seen as the women of the unkempt garden.

What it looked like.....

 The gardening police called.

"You ladies have to do something about that plot of yours. The weeds are spreading into other gardens. Have you just abandoned it?" Her voice, measured but dismissive, told me that our lease was up.

"But it was covered with those bad weeds before we even planted anything. I think we got a dud of a plot." I said.

I went down for the last time, on a blazingly hot day, determined to salvage our sullied reputations. I dragged my hoe, my pitchfork, and as soon as I walked down the garden path and spotted our little field of nightmares, I turned around.

Moments later, I was handing twenty bucks over to the till guy. 

No salsa trophies, no satin sash, no Mr. Stripey's or those evil Black Krims.

Not even a golden pitchfork or crown.

Just a few shots of our garden of horrors to remind us that sometimes five minutes is a very long time.

Moves Like Jagger

The 2011 party train pulled out of the Jones' station a few months ago, groaning under the weight of too many party platters, holiday dinners and impromptu cocktail hours.

Note the plural on cocktail hour.

There's a darn good reason why it's a singular noun.

And should stay that way.

I tend to host the big family holiday dinners because cooking for 20 doesn't torque my panties. I have a 'saddle up" policy during the holidays-the more elbows resting on my sagging table, the better. I work best under crushing boulders of stress, when  my stomach is uncharacteristically flat against the floor because King Kong is sitting on my shoulders pounding me with the hard cover of the Joy of Cooking.

I've got my beloved Swiffer in one hand, a food splattered cookbook in the other, with my cell sandwiched between my neck and hunched shoulder, chatting to Sissy, wondering if I have time to buzz up to Home Goods because I now must simply have the extra napkins  I fished out of my shopping cart and chucked into the accessory  department the other day. (That's called my psychological shop-up-packing my cart with eleven foot rugs, clearance casserole dishes, and serving platters taking them for a spin round the store and depositing said items on the opposite end of the store when I assess my goods and wallet and decide I really don't need an another white serving dish.)

I used to make out grocery lists for my dinner parties, but I'd either race out the door leaving the list on the counter, along with my wallet, or it would disappear in the big black hole at the bottom of my handbag.

this is why I never find anything in my handbag

Besides, I'd take one look at my messy shorthand writing and couldn't figure out if I had written litter or  lettuce. Instead, I loiter in the meat department, desperately trying to recall half grazed recipes, putting the neurons on turbocharge so I can pull up those  recipes whose ingredients I'd failed to commit to memory.

And this happens every time I have a dinner party, holiday or not.

Big Sissy makes out grocery lists.  She knows weeks ahead what's she cooking. There's no last minute running around for her: she dodged that muscular Cade Procrastination gene, the flame retardant DNA that makes us impervious to the pain of having a blowtorch aimed at our asses while still being able to resist those chores, deadlines, or decisions that we'd rather not do. 

But for me, half the fun is seeing how much I can cram into the day before my guests wander in.  And although the  husband says he wouldn't change a single thing about me (wink, wink), he starts squawking and fretting because if there's one trait that he'd rather not see expressed in the next generation of Joneses, its my "It'll only take five minutes," gorilla of a gene.  I've painted chairs hours before my guests lowered their bottoms onto the seats, touched up walls with minutes to spare, and had my mother in law tethered to an ancient sewing machine, zigzagging curtains seconds before the doorbell rang.

"Oh, darling, I just don't understand how you can do this," she tutted in her delightful British accent, her tiny feet tapping the pedal, sounding very much like an SOS call.

Between whirling around the house on my Swifter, heading to Home Goods, the grocery store, and repainting the kitchen, I don't eat. And I usually don't make it to the gym.

And that's not a good pairing. 

So, it's only natural that I unwind and enjoy the cocktail hour with my guests. But one hour turns into two and before I know it, my apron's off, I'm moving like Jagger and dinner is simmering on the stove, abandoned like the white serving dish and 8 by 11 rug in bath section at Home Goods.

See, my office morphs into a dancing den and I'll be damned if I'm cutting onions while my guests are cutting the rug so I throw down my santoku and slide across the kitchen floor into the real party room. Grooving with a bunch of middle aged mums, my teen aged son, who glides across the dance floor with a "unique" sense of rhythm,  is as almost as satisfying as sitting down to an overflowing plate of pasta and meatballs.

And while we're bopping on the creaky wood floors, the pan-generational music  bouncing off the walls, big Sissy always slips into the kitchen, making sure nothing has  gone up in flames. If there's one gal you want in charge during a suburban mosh pit maelstrom in the middle of a dinner party, it's Sissy, who stealthy weaves around the kitchen, ensuring we'll sit down to dinner before midnight.

I've decided that I'll set the oven timer for my next dinner party. Cocktail hour-one hour- max- and that includes boogie time. I just hope Sissy hears the timer.