The Great Pander

It's been over a month since we returned from our trip to Maine. Most of that month was taken up with Pandering to Teen Daughter because Her Parents who Ripped her From Texas Feel So Guilty. The Great Pander, as I like to call it, consisted mainly of driving her and whichever friend was visiting from Texas to the beach, the movies, stately gardens, shopping, and more shopping.

Yes, the beach, or as Douglas Adams would have it, that perfect venue for "Sun, sand, and suffering." The beaches on Long Island's Atlantic side are, I discovered, as good a place as any to lose a teen. Not that I became aware of this ocean's teen-sweeping qualities right away. What you notice first is the coldness. And then you notice the waviness. They're big, especially when you compare them to the Gulf, a body of warm liquid mud that I never liked much, not even as a kid. Growing up for 3 years in Alice, Texas, some 45 miles from Padre Island, my mother and the mom next door would occasionally drive us all to the seaside. We would play in the water while our mothers would safely drink beer and have a snooze, confident that those puny little caplets wouldn't do much harm to us. Except for the odd sting of a Portuguese Man-of-War (treat with lashings of Clorox), moms and kids always returned home happy.

But the Atlantic is a much riskier proposition than the Gulf. The first time I went to Robert Moses Beach this summer, with Jesse and her first visiting crony, the undertow was freakishly strong. While we watched, the life guards rescued one swimmer after another. The people being rescued weren't drowning, as far as I could tell. They had simply ventured beyond the second breaker and discovered they hadn't the buoyancy or the strength to ride a wave back to shore. They could either really give it their all, or they could flag a lifeguard down. The lifeguards, once flagged, would trot out with a rope attached to a lifesaver and reel the embarrassed swimmer back in.

The second time we went, the undertow was revealed not to be freakish at all. It was the norm, at least for the summer of '09. This time, the waves were even bigger and the lifeguards busier. The National Guard, every so often, swept the shoreline in buzzing 'copters, scanning the waves for signs of bobbing heads that the lifeguards had missed.

But still I was somewhat complacent. By the time the third trip to the beach rolled around, I figured little could go wrong. It being a sunny day, the beach was thronged by frolickers, so much so the girls had a hard time finding a spot on the shoreline where they could dive into a wave rather than a person. Once they did secure a spot, I noted that the nearest life-guard tower was no more than 60 yards away. And judging from the swimmers all around the two girls, it looked as though you'd have to be an Olympic qualifier to swim past the first breaker, where the rip-tide was.

So, the girls were safe, right? I planted my gear and started reading, returning to check on them every quarter of an hour or so. After checking on them for the forth time and finding again that that they were no more than six feet from shore (the waves were strong enough to knock you down even that close to the beach), I decided it was time for a nap. Stepping past many a lunatic just lolling out in the sun, I returned to the shade of my big beach brolly. The sound of crashing waves was lovely, loud enough to drown out the masses all around me.

A half hour later I woke up, rose up, and walked back to the spot where the girls had been playing. They weren't there. This didn't perturb me at first. I was calm. Completely calm. Really. But then my head started pounding with all the reasons why the girls' absence was ominous. They had no money, so they wouldn't have gone to the concessions stands. They're not over-endowed with initiative, so even if they had gotten thirsty, they would not have considered the possibility of the free water fountain just a few hundred yards away. And their love of nature being fairly minuscule, it was jolly unlikely they might have gone for a walk to the prettier, non-swimmable part of the beach.

So, obviously, they must have drowned.

I looked for them for another five minutes, the certainty that their bodies would never be found growing in my mind. My finger was on my cell-phone, ready to make the terrible phone call to Mike. Fortunately, some sliver of common sense was still struggling against the rising tide of panic. "Talk to the lifeguards," I told myself. "They'll have a procedure. Let them go through that procedure, then panic."

Of course, it's utterly predictable what happened next. The life-guards were duly sympathetic and happily radioed the girls' description to all the other life-guards. The sharper of the two guards said, "You're from Texas, aren't you?" I could tell what he was thinking: silly desert-dweller does not know how to behave at the beach. "Chances are," he said kindly, "they are looking for you. I know it's hard, but the best thing for you to do is to go back to your umbrella and wait for them."

I simply wasn't ready to do that. I walked up and down the beach for another twenty minutes until I finally swung back to my umbrella and found the girls there, looking exhausted. Shocked that I could have thought anything might have happened to them, they explained that they'd been walking a long time. Though they were never immersed in water for more than seconds at a time, that was enough time off their feet for the current to gradually push them several hundred yards along the shore. When they decided they were thirsty, they realized they weren't even sure what direction they had floated in. It took them awhile to find the tiger-striped towels that they recognized.

I sheepisly walked back to the guards, and told them to stop looking for the girls.

I felt pretty stupid, but I also decided that until my kid was quite a bit older, I probably wouldn't be letting myself fall asleep at the beach again. It's not far-fetched: a 14-year-old girl sees the cool kids going further out into the water, past the second breaker, but these hypothetical cool kids don't know my kid and don't even notice that she's getting into trouble. The life-guard is yakking with his girl-friend and doesn't notice her either. This is the stupid age and in some ways a teenager who doesn't know how dangerous the world can be is just as unsafe as a toddler. I have not shared this realization with my kid, of course, who feels she's ready for pilot training (I kid you not).

The other most notable day in the string of days that made up The Great Pander, involved one of the several trips we made into New York City, aka "The City." We needed to return one of Jesse's Texas buddies to her parents, who were staying in the city for a mini-break. We got the train to Penn Station, our preferred method for getting into town and emerged above ground to find the weather uncharacteristically dry and temperate for a July day. Our friends, like myself, preferred to walk when at all feasible, so we spent much of the day walking around lower Manhattan. The highlight of that walk was a visit to The High Line, a park that has been created on the bones of an old elevated train track. Raised thirty feet above the city street and planted with all the beauties of a New York summer -- russet grasses, the last of the orange day lilies, and yellow, er, asters? -- it was a reminder that every garden is a step closer to heaven.

And I never go to New York without mentally calculating how feasible it might be, over the course of a life time, to visit every cafe and restaurant that looks enticing. And a lot of them look enticing. Our friends K&J took us to one of celebrity chef Mario Bartali's restaurants, Otto. It's a family-oriented place, the least impressive, we were told, of Bartali's establishments. I can't imagine how good the top Bartali restaurants must be. (One of them is so booked up, you can't even get in unless you just turn up when someone else has canceled). In the little eatery we dined in, everything was a balance of the homey and the unusual. I never would have thought of serving just wilted rabe as an antipasto, but the dish was beautiful, oozing with garlic and olive oil and anchovy.

After that lunch and a glass of wine, we visited a strip of Indian restaurants and sari shops somewhere in the middle of Manhattan (yes, I'm still fuzzy on the geography). I'm not sure what I'd do if I lived a mere tube stop away from an Indian grocer, where I could just buy some asafoetida any time I needed it (not that I need it -- a very smelly spice preparation -- that often). I succumb to the notion, a notion that my new goddess, Nigella Lawson, says is a great fallacy: the belief that an adventurously stocked pantry will make me a decent home cook. Goddess Nigella warns her readers not to clutter their shelves with things they only use once in blue moon. So, in this new house, I've been trying to practice some restraint. The great danger I face in having too much variety is that I forget about the variety I have. Then, stuck at the store, I buy another one of whatever it is I think I might need. So, naturally, I threw out 2 jars of asafoetida just before we came to Texas.

Must do better. Tomorrow. Because I could really use some kalonji today.

The Great Annual Vacation

Yes, we had a holiday. This is the place we stayed in on Deer Isle, Maine (pictures here ). The little cabin is what we stayed in. The big house next door is what we would have liked to have stayed in. Anyway, we haven't had a vacation in several years. Last year, we just lived on Long Island. The year before that, we went to Wimberley for 5 days. Oh, joy. The year before that, we went to Maine, which we all loved, though Jesse possibly loved it less, as nature is not really her thing. This year, we resolved to go again to Maine, grateful that we could drive somewhere nice from our new home. From Austin Texas, if you're driving, you can suffer for many, many hours while trying to flee the big unshielded nuclear reactor in the sky. Or you can go a short way and tell yourself that you really do like Port Aransas. I had grown to dislike both options.

So we packed the wagon and headed out. I’m sure our next-door neighbor regrets the arrival of Texans on her street. Leaving for our trip to Maine involved lots of shouting in outside voices from the back-door to the garage. At 5.30 AM. On a Saturday morning. In Texas, on any morning of the year practically, you can be confident of closed windows and the buzzing air-conditioners to drown out every sound of nature. Not so in New York. I belatedly tried to quiet us down when I noticed our neighbor’s cracked windows. I expect a lynching upon our return.

Fortunately, Mike the Half-Scot did most of the driving on what became an eleven hour day given all the stops. I say this is fortunate, because I was coming off some evil drug that my indifferent oncologist had put me on, saying that it might help with hot-flashes. The drug is in fact an anti-depressant and as is my luck with at least half of the drugs I take, it just made me sleepy and dopey and incapable of finishing a sentence. I hated myself on it. Withdrawal made me sleepier still. So I pretty much stayed passed out for the most of the journey, alert enough to listen to a reading of “The Code of the Woosters” over the stereo. The P.G. Wodehouse dialog has infected our speech somewhat, a fact that Jesse despises, eh, what?

Due to the fact that freeways are a decent distance from towns in the Northeast, we had to stop at roadway services several times, to eat whatever bilge was on offer. A true foodie would, I guess, pack a plastic container with a salad of smoked mussels and some slices of Pepperidge Farm at least. But I eat the bilge: powdered sugar doughnuts, Popeye’s biscuits. The memories of family holidays when I was a kid, when my mother was determined to wring every last dime out of every last meal, are not ones I treasure. My mum is probably the only woman on record who actually tried to vacations revenue neutral. Drop your standard of living far enough, she reasoned, and you can almost make money on the deal. Her own mother was no different and was always advocating we stay in whatever Crack Den Motel she could spot from the highway, the kind that always have cards left in the lobby from the local 'massage therapists', who would have

the oddest names: Busty Swallow and Purdy Haught.

Once we got across the Maine border, I took over the drive for most of the rest of the way, to a cabin I’d rented on Deer Isle, a wee island, accessible by causeway, that John Steinbeck wrote about in Charley and Me. The cabin was the only place in our price range that had a view of Frenchman’s Bay. I fancied hearing the waves at night.

But I had heard some whisperings of doom. The New York Times had only recently featured an article about great vacation rentals rip-offs. One family found their rental to be over-run with mice and mice droppings. Another family found their picturesque Maine lake to be infested with leeches. To organize a rental, I’ve always gone through agencies that specialize in holiday lets. Such agencies ensure that the cabin or house is cleaned once a week and is stocked with linens and the other basics. The last place we’d rented in Maine, three years ago, was lovely and comfortable. But the NYT article made me wonder if my luck was about to change.

We dutifully followed the instructions for finding the place, admiring the view of Deer Isle’s woods and coastline. I was gratified to find that ‘the yacht club’ our cabin was said to be near looked more like "the sloop and dinghy club". After passing this very modest harbor, the instructions for finding the cabin went a little haywire. We could see woods, trees, unpaved tracks and the main-road itself. Few actual houses were visible in the forest. There were few signs or helpful numbers. We checked for cell-phone service, so we could call the agency, but all our phones were dead. Finally, Mike parked at the marina, and advised Jesse and I to walk out on the dock, glance back to the shoreline and see if we could see our intended rental from there. We did this, and got a nice view of more rocks and birds and a house that was clearly not the one we’d paid for. I could think of nothing else to do but to walk back along the road and hope to see a helpful sign, stuck somewhere in the trees.

On foot, I spotted a tiny, well-concealed sign that had the numbers 303, at the head of one of the unpaved driveways. I walked the several hundred feet down the driveway and saw a red house the same as the picture we were given, a picture of the house next to the cabin we would rent, and the cabin itself. I groaned a little. The house was awfully close to the cabin, and clearly someone was staying in it. We would have neighbors, something the brochure had failed to mention. But I had even greater concern regarding the condition of the driveway where we’d have to bring our car. Recent, heavy rain had turned the drive into a mud wallow suitable for hippos. Or Honda Accords. The good news was the view of the sea, evident from the track where I was standing. It was everything the agency had promised. It was classic Maine coastline, rocky, with a tree-line meeting the shore-line, complete with mists and islets in the distance.

I trudged back to the marina and to Mike and Jesse, still waiting in the car. Of course, I told Mike to park the car near the mouth of the drive-way, well up above the car-eating mud-wallow. He pished and toshed, saying that he could get past that mud easily. Which he did. Only to discover that what looked like solid ground a few feet further on was just more mud deceptively covered in grass and heather. About twenty feet from the house, we were well and truly stuck, our wheels spinning like roulette-tables.

We got out and knocked on the door of the main house, hoping that we could be directed to some planks that we might be able to use make a tractable surface underneath the wheels. The lady who answered our knock was in fact the owner of the property and she looked mortified at the sight of our car. Her own car was parked a few feet away, but seemed to be on more solid ground. It had been, she explained, an awful summer thus far. Alison, as her name was, explained that she would shortly be joined by another woman, a local who was abandoning her own house, because recent rains had merged the septic with the well. She told Mike where to find the kind of planks he was looking for and while he busied himself with what I was sure would be the impossible task of getting our car out of the mud, Alison showed me around the cabin.

The log cabin turned out to be charming though not excessively maintained. You could see tiny shards of daylight between some of the logs, suggesting it might be wise to pray for higher temperatures. The place was cheerful, somehow: rustic but sturdy. The furniture did not look as firm or as comforting at the house: rickety wicker and Indian prints like you haven't seen since 1970 were the theme (I had few hopes for a soft bed and later that night I found I was over-optimistic). The house came with quirks that Alison listed off as she showed me around, chief among them a fireplace that, she promised, was a bit smoky until it gets going.

Downstairs the cabin had 3 rooms: a tiny bathroom, a small kitchen and a sitting room with the hearth and a view of the sea. A flight of stairs, the kind of hand-crafted, uneven stairs that weekend-carpenters throw together without a ruler, took us up to the sleeping loft above. The loft was all one room, with twin

beds overlooking the sea at one end and the marital bed at the other. Later, I would stress to Mike how important a life of the mind is.

I went back out to the car, certain that we would now have an hours’ long wait for a wrecking service to come tow us out of the mud. Mike had managed to cram a number of planks under the front wheels and was ready to make an attempt to spin out of the muck. He got in and with little hope I watched him gun the engine. But incredibly, the car budged an inch and with Alison and I pushing against the front hood, it came free. Mike parked our car a little closer to the solid ground that Alison’s was sitting on.

We got our stuff -- too much -- admiring the view from the window as we moved in.

Once moved in, I turned on the tap, ready to start the water for pasta. The water was murky, with a strange grassy color. It smelled like mold. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of all self-catering holidays: bring bottled water! And so while Jesse and Mike stayed in the cabin, I trudged back to the car and set the GPS to take me to Stonington, Deer Isle’s only burg. There, I found a fairly crummy market. I bought water and returned to make pasta with scallops in a gorgonzola sauce (recipe: boil pasta; simmer cream plus gorgo plus scallops; toss and serve!). We built a fire and chatted, enchanted, as logs turned to coals, then embers.

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On Day Two, we spent the morning on the beach outside the cabin, skipping stones and poring over the sea life in tide pools. Jesse, though a little put out at the lack of cell phone service (and don’t even think about a wireless), accepted various lessons from her dad without much grumbling. She worked on her stone skipping technique. With the seaside ramblings and the prolonged breakfast and having to take showers or cat-baths one at a time (given the water quality, I wasn’t confident about whole-body exposure to a shower) , it was noon before we got into the car and drove to Stonington.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Deer Isle’s one burg. I’d heard that it wasn’t nearly as touristy as Bar Harbor, and this indeed was a fact. But I can't shake some expectations that Britain cursed me with. I still expect even a semi-touristy place to have a green grocer, a butcher, a bakery, a pub. Certainly, in a town where the harbor is choked with real fishing boats, I expect a fish-monger on the main drag, instead of a short drive out of town. Stonington's focus was art galleries: fine if you can afford any, but even if I did have 5K just sloshing around, I'd buy a painting or two from this amazing painter: Dan Thibodeau. Still, the town was very pretty, with many 19^th century houses on the hillside overlooking the harbor. We wondered around, bought sweaters and lobster rolls and ice-cream. Every twenty paces, we’d stop and check for cell-phone service, never finding any. But you do see sweet and homey sights like the one that follows

The best part of Day One was the final goodnight from Jesse. We’ve had our difficulties in the last few weeks. Being resentful and sulky has been the one way she’s had of paying us back for breaking her heart by taking her from the close and very high-quality friends she had in Austin. At first, my own heart broken by her hostility, I responded with my own resentments towards her. Eventually, at Mike’s suggestion, we tried a conscious approach of extreme kindness and negotiation. Everything that she proposed, we decided, we would start treating as if it came from an adult who had legitimate concerns. This may sound like a fancy way of saying that we caved, giving in to her every whim, but that’s not quite what went on. We started treating her like a sweetly reasonable person. Slowly, she became a little nicer towards us, a little more inclined to accept a hug.

The reward last night was when she visited as me I was reading in bed, about to fall asleep. I guess it’s been months since she stopped insisting on being formally put to bed each night, a ritual I’ve sorely missed. It was lovely to have her come visit, accept a long back rub, and just show that she wanted to be in my physical presence still. Whatever happens, I’m still her mom.

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In my quest to avoid becoming too much like my mother, and because I desperately need the rest after a year or turmoil and a month of hard-labor, schlepping boxes until my hands were chapped, I’ve pretty much boycotted cleaning up or tidying up the cabin. Which means that it stays in a state of chaos. We do barely manage to get the dishes washed after what meals we do cook, but clothes are strewn everywhere. Books are hither and thither. Ipods and Iphones mingle in a heap of charging cables.

You’d think this would just cause mass confusion, but the cabin is small enough that the logistics of sloppiness are not too troublesome. If object A is not in Spot B, then Spot C is never far away. Clearly, tidying up as a life strategy is over-rated.

We’ve taken what walks we could around Deer Isle. These are short and not very demanding, which suits Jesse fine. We also found ourselves drawn back to Bar Harbor and the excellent free busses that shuttle tourists around Mt. Desert Island, the large island where the Acadia National Forest is mainly located. The coast of Maine is spectacular here: craggy gray cliffs and tall pines hug the shoreline. The breezes keep the mosquitoes at bay and various sailing craft zig-zag across Frenchman’s Bay.

Possibly the best afternoon we’ve had was on a 70-year-old sailing ship, the Mary C. Lore. She’d been fitted out with limited engines to get her to and from the dock, but her sails and other equipment -- she’s a two-masted schooner -- are unchanged from the day she was built. The 3-hour voyage gave us landlubbers a chance to watch the basics of getting a ship under-sail.

And since it really takes a fair number of hands to raise those heavy sails, we were enlisted in working with the deck-hands. This involved one of the crew setting a rhythm -- “Now One, Now Two!” -- while the assembled neophytes tugged away at ropes as ordered. In about 15 minutes, all three sails were raised. As I told Jesse, such physically demanding action really increases your respect for Jack Sparrow.

After the sailing excursion, we went to dinner at the Pilgrim’s Inn, an 19^th century building on Deer Island that I failed to photograph because, like so many fine buildings in New England, you can’t photograph it without the picture being cut to pieces by the criss-crossing power and phone cables that line every street here. It’s maddening.

But the food was terrific both times we’ve been there. I always find in Maine that nothing beats boiled lobster: succulent and warm, it slides down your throat. The other great joy in Maine, I’ve discovered, is a locally distilled vodka, infused with blueberries. The blueberry edge was perfect. And the Pilgrim’s Inn makes the best Sticky Toffee Pudding I’ve had outside of England. Thank god for the hot-flashes or I’d be gaining five pounds this vacation.

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After the rest, the restlessness. On Day Four we laid around the cabin and read books and played Scramble and skipped stones. On Day Five, a thick pea souper settled in. You could see the bench out in the front yard, but that was about it. So we could lay around another day or we could cut our 9 hour journey in half and perhaps sleep in a bed that was comfortable and was next to a shower that actually dispensed clean hot water. Maybe a bath would be possible! I wondered aloud if we should head back a day early. I wondered aloud about this several times, then when challenged by Mike to explain myself, I said that I was, you know, just kidding. "I want, want to stay another day," I insisted. Mike confessed that he'd like to go a day early. His books were calling.

So we packed up and parted company with Alison, the owner. She asked what could be done to make the place more comfortable, hoping, obviously, to be given a list where no item required more than thirty bob to be addressed. I'd glimpsed into the 'big house' a few times (nosiness is in the blood, I'm afraid) and noted that despite the house's bigger windows and more capacious deck, the furniture was the same lump-pillowed wicker that we'd been trying to get comfortable in. Clearly, unless you have real money in these parts, you shut the cottages down in the winter. This means you either ship your good furniture into dehumidified storage, or you only keep furnishings that you can afford to sacrifice to mold and damp. Too many more experiences like that and I'll start to understand why some people just give up and rent a camper. At least the bed will be something they can sleep on.

On the way back, we stayed in a Holiday Inn in Woburn, MA. The water was not a grassy color, but it was sort of reddish. What is going on in the northeast? But I assumed there were no health risks, so I happily wallowed in a long, hot bath, mentally planning the next year's holiday, which we're hoping will be in Britain if the money goes right. If we do that, I need to start working, now, on loosing the seven pounds I will surely gain back.

More pickies below, for those who don't want to go over to the website.

The Double-Chinned Devil and Me

Actually, I'd planned to talk about Yankees, and how nice they've been to us, but before I do that, let me wander off into the weeds a bit, the weeds of last week. It was both horribly busy and a time for reflection.

First, the busy part. Last week started with me in an enormous fabric warehouse where I excitedly bought bolt after bolt for the drapes I intend to make. What's truly horrible is that I've had no time to make even one cut into all this fabric. All that yardage is still waiting, hungry to be cut and sewn and hung well (no jokes, please). For a whole month, we've had only drop cloths strewn from the windows. I don't know how much longer I can stand it.

And what fabric I have bought is only enough for a couple of rooms. It seems we're in this New House Death Spiral, where we can't settle on fabric and paint colors until we have a clearer idea of the furniture we have to buy (Seven Layers of Design and all that) and we can't be sure how much furniture is required until we can determine how much stuff can be squared away into the attic and basement. And we can't put stuff away until the handyman nails down more sub-flooring in the attic and the dehumidifier guy makes the basement safe for stuff. Supposedly, those guys start tomorrow but they've thus far displayed a very casual attitude towards returning my phone calls.

So that was the busy part of the week. The reflective part began when I went to the oncologist's for my quarterly check-up and saw that I'd lost another pound. I wanted to pat myself on the back but really it's just the tamoxifen sparking all those hot-flashes. All that burning heat has to cost the body something. If the truth were known, I'm now eating like a horse, because my estrogen levels are dropping far faster than my testosterone levels. More male hormone. More hunger. More lunch!

But my weight keeps dropping and that latest pound to fall off is just one more in the downward trajectory from the 177 pounds I weighed seven years ago and the 140 pounds I weigh now. The picture at left is one of me at my fattest (memo to Universal Heart-Mind: I want that cute little four-year-old back).

I used to attribute this downward slide in weight to the fact that I was getting on my bike and riding more. Some weeks, I rode a lot. And there can be no doubt that all that exercise earned me a few pounds, here and there. But while I was applauding my hard work and self control, I was forgetting that the same weight drop had happened to my dad. Over twenty years, but beginning with a big push in his early 40s, he went from being a big, schlubby guy to a spry, slender fellow, resembling his own father in late middle age. Looked at another way, my weight drop simply happened right on schedule.

Not long after I joined a breast cancer survivor's group, I found myself helplessly drawn to Gina Kolata's book, Rethinking Thin. The women in my group were all wonderful but when they talked about eating blueberries and broccoli and drinking herbal teas, I had images of a kid at the batter's plate, nervously rubbing his lucky rabbit's foot. Sure, you want to make healthy substitutions in your diet. Sure, you want to live by Michael Pollan's brilliant eight words: "Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants." But a tumor, like your body, has genes, and will largely do what it was programmed to do.

But we all want that magic bullet, that tablespoon of bran that will make the cancer or the fat or the bad skin go away. Kolata shows that the strongest determinant of your weight is your biological parent's weight. Take the infant of obese parents and raise him/her in a family of normal-weight people and the chances are he'll still be a well-upholstered man. Even adoption by the Schwarzeneggers won't re-write his basic genetic script.

So if it's all in the genes, why are Americans getting fatter? Kolata argues that what few good studies we have on the subject of the nation's weight gain show that Americans are getting larger by an average of 5-7 pounds. That's not much. And it's anyone's guess as to what the causes may be. You could just as easily claim, she would argue, that the gain is attributable to the same forces that has caused us to gain height and IQ points in the last 70 years. Some researchers think that our biology is responding to vastly improved maternal health with a slight increase in a number of markers, weight being one of them. Every time researchers set out to prove that the national girth has some distinct cause in food or exercise habits, they've come up bust. Americans are, on average, eating more healthily than they did 30 years ago. And still they get fatter. The cause could be too large portions, or too much exposure to the same, simple molecule that makes up corn syrup, or too much desk-work -- but no one really knows.

Meanwhile, as Kolata forcefully demonstrates, few endeavors are less successful than dieting. But that doesn't stop billions from being made in the fitness and supplement industry. Academic institutes and back-street charlatans alike all make a fat pile of cash off of their respective projects, be it institute-based research or the concoction of snake oil. Despite all the self-denial and micro-measuring, fewer than a handful of people out of a hundred will make any lasting changes in their weight because of a diet.

Why is dieting so fruitless? Maybe if we thought about the problem in terms of the inherited condition of height, the answer would be easier to see. Let us imagine that our species had taken a slightly different path way back in evolutionary time. Let us imagine that our heights can be modified and that we value tallness. And so an industry has developed in this alternate history, one we'll call Torture, Inc. Everyday, you can go to one of Torture's plushly appointed salons and rack up some time on the rack. Some people, a tiny handful, would have a high pain threshold and they can spend hours getting stretched. Most others can only manage a few minutes. In this alternate history, perhaps we'd be inclined to understand height and pain thresholds as biological features you're simply stuck with. We would perhaps be less likely to praise the tiny number of giants and disparage the great majority of hobbits. Both groups would be understood as simply the inheritors of a cluster of chemical processes that determine an individual's pain threshold.

The weight range you're stuck with really isn't so different from the height you're stuck with. Every human comes complete with a set of biochemical processes that indicate satiety, that burn fat, that ramp metabolic rate down or up. There isn't much you can do to affect these processes. One of the great lies of the fitness industry is the lie that if you were leaner, you'd burn more calories. In fact, if you take a fit 150 lb chap and have him gain a kilo of muscle by working like the devil in the gym for six weeks, he will burn -- wait for it -- 20 more calories per day. Your muscles at rest burn less than your brain and liver combined. That weight-training fiend, if all he was after was an increased burn rate, would have been better off just taking a brisk walk around the block every evening.

The ability to modify an inherited condition, like one's natural weight range, is simply going to vary across the population. As someone who lost 30 plus pounds and has kept it off, I don't want to be pointed to as an example of what profound self-control can do for you. Sure, the cycling and the moderation in diet helped, but without those two measures, the chances are I still would have dropped 20 pounds, right on schedule.

Now, was I going to say something about Yankees? It has to be noted that in this neighborhood we've been visited 3 or 4 times, invited over for dinner twice, and are frequently flagged down for a bit of a chat. If they're any unfriendlier than Texans, I've yet to notice it. It's true that their style of speech can be off-putting to a southerner. They think that by interrupting you, that they're just urging on the conversation. Or perhaps I just ramble on too much, and they can be forgiven for getting impatient?

Possibly. I'm going to munch on a cup of blueberries while I think about it.

Mama Jack Flash

I used to love sleeping late. By late, I mean until 7, when I'd make a lazy stab at getting coffee and the paper. But those days are forgotten now. I'm on a drug that forces the sufferer into menopause and now all hope of a good, heavy sleep is over. Two, three, as much as five times in a night, I'll wake up in a sweat, throwing the covers over and stripping my skin off. If a flash hits after five, that's it. I probably won't get back to sleep.

So, on this Sunday in a rainy June, at 5.10 a.m., I was too hot to even lay back down in the bed. So I decided to use the time wisely. I got up, went to the garage, moved this here and that there until I could get to my bike, still somewhat in pieces after being shipped in the tiny trunk of my Corolla. It took an hour of grief and aggro to get the bike lubed and roadworthy again -- I'm total pants at getting a rear wheel seated properly -- but it seemed I was riding before I'd even made a conscious decision to get dressed. I rode loops in Caumsett State Park: think very tall trees, a semi-maintained stately home and its outbuildings. The hike and bike trail -- yes, it's a measly 3 miles long -- loops in splendid shade but never comes close to the sea, despite the park's long shore line. This morning, my first back on the bike since we moved to New York, was blessed with a perfect breeze, enough to cool you but not enough to move you, if you know what I mean. It's just so flipping green around here.

The natives seem friendly, despite their appalling roadsmanship. I'm trying not to embarrass myself too much in front of them. Jesse and I were invited, thanks to the kindness of a neighbor, to a lunch for daughters and mothers on the last day of school. The mom hosting the lunch lived with her husband in a gaspingly large and beautiful estate, complete with heated pool, waterfall and all the rest of it. Thank god I'd rejected the idea of cut-offs in favor of a some white capris pants with a matelot-style shirt. Jesse, confused by the evident wealth, thought the family poor, because they had this little tiny house next to an admittedly impressive pool. "That's not a house, angel, that's the garage." The Big House was on a hill, or rather a hillside.

While chatting with the other mums, all of whom were very pleasant, I noticed a horrifying sight. The middle-schools around here -- well, all the schools, including the pre-K ones -- make a fuss about graduation, holding commencement dances and forcing the kids to walk around in academic robes. The girls were in white robes and scholars' caps. All the girls were pretty indeed and but those ghastly pale robes made them look like albino whales. There was no intelligent comment one could make. I felt the earth shake in anticipation of the truly stupid thing I would say. Wishing to make some compliment, I could only settle on, "They look adorable." Jesse, my dear daughter, gasped. One woman stared mutely at me, incapacitated by shock.

Oh, well, the sandwiches were nice. Jesse, who is still deeply in grief for the loss of her friends in Texas, refused to get in the pool. She hung around me and stared mutely at the other kids. On the way home, she cried mightily, protesting that she'll never ever meet any people as unique and funny and 'like me' as her friends in Texas. My heart broke for her. Again. All we can do is try to keep her busy and be as sweet as we possibly can to her. She was caught smiling a few days later. I have the picture here.

As you may have noted from the clever insinuation above, my car has finally arrived from Texas. I had hoped to leave it in Texas but Mike the Half Scot made me bring it up here. Yes, the humble Corolla is bringing down property values, right here in Cold Scream Harbor.

The curious thing is that I would not have predicted how much easier the Corolla makes my life. Not in the way you might think. Getting out to buy groceries is useful, yes, but the Corolla's real value is in the low expectations it inspires. Want a Yankee tailgater to Back Off? Just drive a car he pities. I guess they figure I'm driving as fast as I can, so they even wave me on sometimes. Who knew?

And the other good thing about having my Corolla back, is that it looks right at home in the parking lot of C Town, the Hispanic grocery my landscaper had told me about. (That was an awkard moment. How do you say, "Gee Whiz, you look kind of Mexican! Where do your homeboys shop?") C Town has everything, well, almost everything, your average Tex-Mex kitchen requires. And the fruits and vegetables are no worse quality than those sold in the tony markets around here at twice the price. In 48 hours, I'd already hit C Town twice and had plotted the quickest route to get there from my house. I couldn't wait to call friends Mark and Barb over to come and eat tortillas and poblanos. I was mixing the dough for the first batch almost before I got the groceries out of the car.

And while I rolled out the first dozen, Mama Jack Flash came twice. That bitch. At least the hotflashes are keeping my weight down, by burning up every calorie a tortilla can bestow. I munched the first one out on the porch, and watched as the latest storm withdrew, leaving a sky that looked like it, too, was boiling.

Cool Breeze

It had to happen, I guess, a moment of extreme confusion about the climate and it's management. I was sitting by the window in our breakfast nook, unpacked boxes towering all around me, when I felt a bit of a chill. Annoyed that my husband would even think of turning the A/C on when it wasn't even 75 degrees yet, I politely asked that he turn the damn thing off.

"Darling, it is off. You're sitting in a draft."

I passed a hand in front of the slightly cracked window and realized that he was right. It was June and the air felt like something an A/C unit would produce. It seemed as if I'd fallen asleep and then awakened on Mars.

&&&

Okay, it's been really wet here. The Weather Channel says that the jet stream, which usually makes Canada wet at this time of year, has shifted a little bit and so is making the north eastern United States unusually damp. Day in and day out, torrent and trickle take turns. Long Island is about to have its wettest June on record. You'd think I could occasionally remember to take my umbrella with me.

I'm missing the sun, but there are bright sides to all this gloom. I'd rather hear the great meteorological purring that is an all-night rainfall than the din of an A/C unit. It's a matter of aesthetics. We are thankful that the rain masks all the street sounds that would normally filter up from the arterial road that is closer to us than I would like. Still, I love northern light and would like to see some of it this summer. In this grayish world, nothing has an edge.

&&&

Clearly, some days do have edges, even here in Cold Scream. When I've had enough of unpacking and sorting and throwing crap away, when I've had enough of seeing Jesse cram her nose into Facebook, I haul her down to Cold Spring Harbor's Main Street, there to get lunch at a deli (a mysterious place where New Yorkers know what to order and where Texans just point at the menu and hope for the best--I had more success in French bakeries than I do in New York delis, despite not knowing a word of French). We take the sandwiches with unknown stuffings across the street to the harbor. There we sit on a rock. So far, it's always low tide at noon, but still pretty. I try to make the walk last longer and she always tries to end it quickly.

&&&

I remember the rhododendrons in London's Kew Gardens, how they bloomed around May, so profusely that they seemed to blanket the entire park. The gardens of Kew are a very managed environment, however, and I don't recall ever seeing rhodies bloom in the wild in Britain. But maybe that's just a defect of memory. Anyway, I was astonished when driving Mike to work one morning, to see a forest of white and some purple rhodedendrons beside the road, stretching, as far as I could tell, over a dozen acres or so. I couldn't wait to go back there on a day with good light so I could take these pictures.

For the plant novices I know, rhodedendrons come originally from Asia and are a cousin of the azalea, a southern beauty that's a little more drought tolerant than a rhodie. I've read that rhodies are almost a weed in the Pacific northwest. I haven't yet heard how the locals feel about them.

I assume that these rhodies got their start with some ambitious newly arrived gardener, who brought a few specimens with him/her over on the boat from England. Over the decades, the rhodies have definitely won the field, at least in this little pocket of life off of the Woodbury Road. The white ones are so prolific, they're almost spooky in the heavy green light. The barricades they form around the largers estates are twenty feet high in places.

But that's enough plant admiration. One hundred boxes down, two hundred to go.

Cold Scream Harbor

The goodbyes were painful and protracted. At least my mother didn't cry, perhaps because she'd already cried several times. Or maybe the anti-depressants are working. For me, there were many happy moments in that last week in Central Texas, my niece's graduation chief among them. It was good to see this lovely young lady, who fought her way back from leukemia before she was even in kindergarten, graduate.

While walking to the arena in San Marcos where the commencement ceremony was to be held, I took this shot of tubers on the San Marcos river. It's clear that when it comes to photography, I should definitely not quit my day job. Anyway, you get the idea: hot day, cold water and colder beer. This is Texas Bliss.

The river reminded me of one thing more I'm going to miss. Nearly two years ago, I had the Perfect Ride. It was a hot day and we did the Crabapple Crippler in Blanco County, a steeply graded hill that follows a five-mile steady climb. The Crippler came after 50 hilly miles in Blanco County, famous for the kind of chip-seal roads that can make one bike feel like two. By the time we got to a bend in the road at the Blanco River, we were so ready for a swimming-hole. And the one we came upon was perfect, with patches of rushing water and pools of calm. We hopped off of our bikes, and had a blissful half-hour up to our necks in a return to sanity. I don't think any New York ride will ever match that.

And even if there is Perfect Route with a Perfect Water Hole at the end, it'll be a ride shared with Yankee drivers, which means every turn of the pedal will be haunted by the Angel of Death. Complaints about the drivers up here will have to wait until another time, when I feel I've gained some objectivity.

We arrived one week ago today and I have been savoring the island's many charms. And I'm so lucky because I'm one of the few NY residents who is loving on the weather right now. Last summer on Long Island was sunny and, for these regions, hot, with temps in the mid-eighties. This summer is seeing a complete re-write. The light is murky, the mists roll in from the harbor a half mile from our house, the downpours stop to permit moments of drizzle, then return again. When the sun does appear, it's in full-out baking glory, but only for ten minutes. I love it. It reminds me of England, except for the baking sun bit. Take a walk down Grove Street and you see the post-boxes leaning in the damp soil.

The morning after my and Jesse's arrival, the movers came and unloaded the Christie Three Hundred. We directed book boxes to the garage, garage stuff to the garage, and everything else into the house. We told Daddy's new Accord to say goodbye to covered parking for awhile. At about two PM, I found myself wondering if I should start self-medicating, because it seemed as if the house and garage was choked, full, replete, gorged, swollen, FULL. I certainly had no plan for what to do should 50 boxes be stranded on the driveway, waiting for the next New York downpour. As is typical of me at this phase in all our moves, I wanted to scour up a can of gasolene and get started. I wanted to take the six extra captain's chairs that Mike made us bring and bung 'em in a wood-chipper.

But, somehow, we got everything inside. I think we had a pizza. Or maybe we just went straight to bed.

Since then, I've gotten to know the house better. The jets in the tub are splendid. Mabel is a peach of a stove. The house has the best floorplan I've ever lived with. Every room is just the right size for its purpose. But the thing I like best about the house is the thing I never noticed during the house-hunting phase, and that's the view from the front porch, caught here in the gray light typical of this summer. It's a lovely spot to sit and read the paper. If you ever get the time.

The neighbors have been very friendly. The prices have been shocking. Our yard man pulled up in a Cadillac Escalade and we began to tremble, waiting to hear the quote for mowing our tiny yard. Good news! We can have our lawn, one-quarter the size of the one we had in Texas, mowed for the same price. The yard man, Geo, is Mexican so I got to quiz him about good places to shop for poblanos and the other essentials of fine dining. I haven't had a chance to visit the grocer he recommended, but we have checked out the Chinese take-away that is Geo's favorite. The take-away, whose name of course escapes me, is the usual hole in the wall, but the food is sublime. I had a beef and noodles dish with a rich sauce.. The noodles were fresh and hand-cut, as if made by a vendor on the streets of Canton. The smells in the take-away were sublime.

And then there's the Long Island Weirdness factor, which I'm still getting used to. I applied for a library card and for the first time in years -- twenty? thirty? -- I was filling out a form where there was no accommodation for married women who keep their original surnames. In this age of blended families, surely our arrangements are not all that surprising. The librarian had the sort of sour face that a butler wears when one of the below-stairs servants has strayed into the upper halls. I cheerfully crossed out all the form's options for a title and wrote in 'Ms'. Followed by Kiss My . . . no, no, I'm wandering off into fantasy here.

I'll let you know if we ever get that library card.

Thirty-Six Hours, Roughly

We were in our old house eleven years. That was plenty of time to add a few locks and have a few lock mechanisms go bust. The remodel we undertook some nine years ago added hot-water tanks that could be accessed from the outside. They, too, required locking door-knobs and keys. We never quite got around to keying all these doors to one master. You can just hear Mike the Half-Scot grumbling that what's the good of having a locksmith out for God knows how much money when you could just carry a half-dozen keys around. Consider it weight training.

So I carried a half-dozen keys around these many years. Two months ago, I shed most of them. Then I shed the key to the Wee Flat in Austin and the key to the Wee Cottage in Huntington and the key to Old Red, our rumbling Toyota pick-up. So now I'm down to this, the key to the Corolla that Mike won't let me get rid of (that man is always trying to improve my character) and the key to my hybrid bike's lock. Note that I've acquired a fast-tag for one of the local libraries to our new house and a fast-tag to Bottles and Cases, the only liquor store on Long Island with prices I can stand to pay. I hope the Corolla doesn't become too much like my Dad's old Lincoln, which he said had a mind of its own and would always turn towards Pinkie's, the closest liquor store beyond the Tom Green county line, whether he was thinking of booze or not.


Now I'm down to two keys and trying to dampen the melancholy of leaving friends, family, and a fair city, by remembering that the friends and family will have to come visit me often. Hey, I'll be on Long Island, where mafia heavies are two a penny and if my arm-twisting won't work, surely their's will. And I have to remember, too, that the Austin I'm actually leaving behind is one that left us all long ago. Our symbols of that local feel vanish rapidly these days. I'm leaving the Austin of chain stores, sprawl, and a Barton Springs once clear as glass and now murky as dishwater, thanks to the pen of one Governor George W. Bush, may he be plunged into poverty and may I live to see it.

We're only half-way into our goodbyes, but I'm already abstaining from them wherever possible. I picked up Jesse from the first of The Final Sleepovers, and watched her say goodbye to the girls who had been her close friends in the Kealing Band. Well, I tried to watch. I don't know what the parents of these girls thought when I bolted, sobbing, from the living room. I've already told other parents not to be offended that I have no plans to come to the door.

It's funny, but over the last few months, I've wondered if I was turning into a monster because I was more than a little resentful of having to stay in Austin while Jesse finished eighth-grade. For her, we undertook far more stress than was necessary, and did it while I was undergoing radiation. Other, less cowed, less yuppiefied parents, I thought, would have just told their kid to suck it up, we're moving. I resented the fact that we weren't free to be that kind of parent.
But seeing my Jesse say goodbye to her friends, I found myself wishing I could cut another body part rather than suffer this pain. I could no more hurt her than I could drown a puppy. I can resent my own nature, perhaps, but it's hardly her fault that I am what I am. I think she has already forgiven us.

So the dread and the excitement mounts. I wrote last time about the dreads. Mike and I have started calling it "Armistice Syndrome", the feeling that even though peace has been declared and we're about to ship out, we, we will be the poor chaps who get felled by a stray bullet or an exotic infection. I will leave my sister's early tonight, eager to miss the drunk drivers. I will drive like an old lady going to church. I will not believe that it's just a little bit of turbulence.

But the excitement is as real as the dread. Soon, soon, when I get a new haircut, I won't have to share it with Mike by sending him a picture from my I-phone. He can actually see me! And I can actually see him.