What to do when life hurls lemons at you:

But what do you do when it hands you Lyme's?

I'd like to think that someday soon I can stay awake, not tip over, get rid of the aches in every joint in my body, and get back a little bit of rational thought and creativity. And YES I used to be able to think, so stop laughing. I just tried not to do it too often, because I didn't want to use it all up.

What a great way to spend a beautiful New England 'summer'. That inch of rain we got last night helped a lot. When I get better, I'm moving to Seattle for its drier climate...

Lymeade, anyone?

Congratulate me

I am now a card carrying member of the Lyme's club. Dammit. For so many years now, I've run around in the woods half naked, sometimes several times a day, never getting anything more than a couple of mosquito bites. I was feeling powerful and godlike, romping unscathed in the forest, while so many dropped around me.


My how the mighty have fallen, to one tiny little insect no bigger than the head of a pin:



It's quite embarrassing to pass out in the hardware store.

On the bright side, I can now blame being lazy and taking lots of naps on having Lyme's. And the economy of this state, which has suffered so by getting eight inches of rain a week (no I'm not making up that number), will begin to recover, enjoying at least four weeks of wonderfully sunny, summer-like weather. Like it was August or something. How do I know this? Because I have four FOUR -4- freakin weeks of antibiotic to take. And while I'm taking it, if I even LOOK at the sun I'm going to turn into a deep fried crisp.

Stay tuned for my new look.

“After a long battle, we’ve finally won our right to the beach,” said Sam, the group’s representative. “These unsanitary creatures have been multiplying and spreading and taking over the entire coastline. We deeply resent this invasive species reproducing beyond sustainable numbers, over-running every square inch of space. Winning the right to use this beach has been a victory for seals everywhere.”

SAN DIEGO- A colony of federally protected harbor seals is causing a stink about whether it should spend its days lounging at a popular cove or be sent packing. On Monday, Gov. Arnold signed a bill that adds a marine mammal park to the list of acceptable uses for the sheltered cove where the seals have lived for years.

The city had planned to spend $688,000 to hire someone to walk the beach with a public address system broadcasting the sound of barking dogs to scare off the seals.
Ooohh, oohh, please please PLEASE can I have that job? I’m more than qualified to hang out at the beach all day, plus I can provide a real live barking dog. In fact, I’ll do it for a mere $400,000….Uh, might it be that spending over half a million to bark at seals is part of the reason why the state of California is fresh out of money?

One human observer wasn’t impressed. “I don’t particularly like them. I think they smell, and I’m not interested in looking at them,” said Big Man Small…(Yeah, I feel that way about a lot of guys.) “I don’t think there should be a whole beach for the seals.” BMS goes on to say, “Just because we have forty other beaches in the area to use, doesn’t mean the seals should get even one of their own. Let them stay at sea and drown. It’s our world to do with as we want, F everything else. Now bugger off, I have to work on my melanoma.”

Seals began showing up in increasing numbers during the 1990’s. In 1997, the city posted a warning that the pool shouldn’t be used because it was contaminated with high levels of bacteria from seal waste. Said one NJ tourist, “What’s a little seal poo? At least there aren’t also used hypodermic needles all over the sand like we have back home.”

In 2004, a disgruntled swimmer filed suit, alleging that a seal sanctuary was not one of the permissible uses listed in the state trust. That’s correct, here in the great USA, you can sue a seal. God bless America.

Go, seals.

This just in-living may cause cancer

I get my news via internet, usually in the morning, meaning I can skip the hype and get to what’s real (at least what’s real to me, and that’s all that counts). While sipping my morning tea and skimming headlines, I saw one that blared, ‘drinking hot tea may cause esophageal cancer.’ Instead of making me panic, I started to laugh, almost snorting hot tea through my nostrils. But then I got scared about what kind of cancer that might cause me, and spit tea all over the floor instead, wondering if spilled hot tea spilled would react with the floor wax and/or the wood, which might also give me some heinous type of cancer.

While cancer is no laughing matter, I do get a kick out of hearing what will cause us a hideous death. Here are just a few of things:

Grilled meat
Sun
Stress
Wine (and then there are those articles that claim wine may prevent cancer-take your pick)
Cell phones
Showers
Tight Clothing
Dryer Sheets
Underarm deodorant
Plastic
Air

I could go on, but you get the idea. Now please excuse me. I’ve finished my hot tea, and must shower, put on my deodorant, get dressed in my freshly dryer-dried spandex, and worry about whether or not I have enough burgers for the cookout, while drinking wine from my plastic wine goblet and talking on the cell phone in the sun, breathing the fresh summer air.

A sure recipe for a health disaster.

Quote of the Century? Yeah well...

A friend sent this to me via email a while ago:

‘Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she’ll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she’ll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she’ll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she’ll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.’

OK, let’s break this down:

‘If you give her sperm, she’ll give you a baby.’ Eek. Don’t you dare. I’m barely domesticated, and don’t EVER want any of that baby stuff. ~shudder~ I’m extremely allergic. I remember this one time, over two decades ago, when someone forced me to hold one of those tiny, wiggly, wormy, squirmy, squally smelly things. The relief I felt when it was taken off my hands…Whew. I still have flashbacks and nightmares.

‘If you give her a house, she’ll give you a home.’ I’m still struggling with this whole landlubber concept. A sailboat might be acceptable, however. I like that rocky-rolly thing.

‘If you give her groceries, she’ll give you a meal.’ Um, yeah, I hate to cook. If we catch a fish, sushi we can discuss.

‘If you give her a smile, she’ll give you her heart.’ My heart disappeared quite a while ago, meaning that I now truly am the cold-hearted b***h I’ve been accused of being. I’m more likely to take that smile the wrong way and beat the living crap out of you.

‘Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater.’ But of course I make all things greater, just by the fact that I am female.

‘She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.’ Yeah, that part I can do. In spades.

It feels like this:




But should be like this:



Do you want to know just how much the weather has sucked the big one here in New England? At my favorite shipyard a few chilly mornings ago, when the temp was 47 degrees, I ran into a couple whose wife had thrown a huge blowout for her husband’s 50th last year. She said something about celebrating quietly this year, and I flashed back to last year’s bash that had spread over three docks, all of us scantily dressed in Hawaiian garb, dancing in the hot summer sun. Momentarily confused, I asked him, but isn't your birthday in the middle of summer? They both looked at me as though my brain was leaking out right in front of their eyes. Duh, oh yeah. By the calendar, it is mid summer. By the weather, it’s early April. Huh. Imagine that. I may as well be in Alaska. At least the odds of sunshine would be better there, given that it shines night and day.

The Cat is Still Alive*

You know that yowling that male cats do when they engage in a fight? Not the mrow, your mother lives in a garbage can, yowl, your sister has six toes, growl, your balls are teeny, that proceeds it, but the actual fighting part? Yeah, that noise that sounds like a feline getting killed.

Since we live so far out in the sticks, stray cats don't travel this far to cause trouble, meaning that we live blessedly unbothered by screaming cat fights. But on this night, as I settled into bed with the two dogs, mine and my friend’s, I heard no hurled insults, only a single loud scream from a cat. The cat. The dogs leapt up barking, as I fumbled around for clothes, glasses, boots, spotlight. Of course shining a light into the thick underbrush surrounding the house was futile. In the dark stillness I heard nothing, no scurrying, no stampede of coyotes, no deadly fisher cat expressing joy over a fresh kill. No beautiful gray cat responded to my calling.

I returned inside where the dogs were waiting, wanting to go out and see for themselves. Forget it, I told them. There might be something out there bigger and meaner and hungrier than you two.

Back in bed, I lay not sleeping, heavy hearted, contemplating the best way to tell my friend, upon her return from vacation, that she was now catless. After about an hour, while debating whether I should give up on the sleep idea and mourn the loss of such a great cat, or take a pill and become happily oblivious, I heard the cat door bang. No way. But there he was, completely unscathed, unfazed, happy, normal, all in one piece, NOT DEAD! I was so overjoyed to see him that I fed him again, in the middle of the night, in the hopes that he would be happily full and not go back outside to hunt a free meal.

Yeah right. This lean, mean, killing machine, able to catch a flying squirrel off the steeply slanted slippery tin roof in the dark of night by leaping right through the newly installed second floor window screen like it wasn’t even there, returning back through the window with his prey, for now, he lives to kill again.



*yeah yeah I know he should be kept in at night. But freedom is a personal choice and the choice is to let him live free which he could die doing. You know, the way we pansy humans used to be before we got so fear- ridden and paranoid about actually living that we do nothing but stay in and watch TV about how dangerous and unsafe life is.

On Safari*

During the years that I lived aboard my boat here, the fourth of July tradition was to pack as many guests as possible on board, and sit tight on my mooring inside the harbor, watching the show. The fireworks were ok, but watching the incoming boat parade and the display of drunken boat handling in the pileup at the launch ramp afterwards was often much better.

After I rudely sailed off into the sunset, taking my party platform with me, my friends were forced to find another venue for enjoying the fourth of July festivities. I had spoiled them; sitting ashore among the commoners was no longer good enough. The new tradition became to load everyone on one friend's classic wooden powerboat docked at the shipyard, and motor out to another friend's classic sailboat, which was moored right off the town beach and right by the fireworks barge. The two woodies would be rafted together in a lovely photo op for those who had boring ordinary fiberglass vessels. When I arrived back here boatless last year, I was welcomed aboard Safari. I had heard the legendary stories, had met the owner on shore a time or two, but had never been aboard.



There's nothing like a classic wooden boat. There's something about that timeless feel, the warmth of the wood. Maybe it's the dry rot. Yes, that's a ladder up the mast. The owner asks for no comments, please. It's a work in progress.



This year had a particular poignancy to it, as last year turned out to be the final fourth of July Safari would ever see. Last October, she came loose from her mooring, and died on the rocks in a wicked Nor'easter. The owner was not a member of the boatless club for long, however. The party must go on!


Uh oh, busted by the fun patrol. Sorry, officer, we'll try to behave. No promises, though.

We avoided the drunken boat parade pile by not unrafting until very late, returning to the dock well after the last boat had already parked. The most miraculous part of the evening wasn't that the owner of the former Safari had so quickly managed to recover the sailing lifestyle after such a devastating loss, or that we were lucky enough to celebrate this new boat, but that it wasn't raining! And we didn't freeze to death! After so many cold, gray, wet evenings, we were all gobsmacked to discover that it actually doesn't get dark until well after nine at night. Like it was summer or something.

Another successful fourth of July, where nobody fell overboard and nobody exploded.





*This replacement boat is actually not named Safari; in fact it has no name yet. We offered to put suggestions into a hat for the owner to draw one, but for some reason, he didn't care to try that.