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.

And on the Seventh Day, he made a mess

Mike has moved into Shoe String Harbor. He's deserted the Wee Cottage, leaving it to its fate. And to the mail we forgot to tell Uncle Sam to forward (allow me to briefly wallow in a fantasy of living in a pre-digital age where my debtors can't find me). It's exactly one week until, in all likelihood, we will be reunited in the kitchen you see here. I hope Mike gets it cleaned up by then.

To his very great credit, he remembered to do something that I wouldn't think of until I'm walking up to the door and the movers are streaming in around me, boxes of crockery in their arms. Here's what I would be thinking: "Oh, pants! There's no shelf-paper anywhere!" But Mike made himself useful during this weekend of living in an empty house with just one twin bed and the couches that he'd rented for so long he'd bought them by default. He thought of shelf-paper, before the arrival of the objects that would go on the shelves. He then cut and pasted and jigsawed his way through rolls of the unweildy sticky stuff.

And, as you can see, Mabel is in position and awaits ignition.

I've been calling Mike up every ten minutes or so, to quiz him about the house: "What was the shower like?" and, "Is the sideboard too big for the dining room?" I'm giddy with relief that we've closed on the house, but the Coldsmith-Christie Year From Hell means that I still, still lack faith in a future. I keep waiting for a piercing thunderclap, a parting of the heavens, and the sound of gods cackling. Boy, we sure fooled her. I'm still riding my bike, but I won't go on the routes I once regarded as somewhat dodgy if still safe for the careful rider. I just know that if I get on that bike in the wrong part of town, I'll be mowed down by one of Austin's finest laptop-jockeys, texting and talking at the same time. And of course I'm worried about the flight. I keep checking the weather forecast, to make sure that clear skies are expected for next Sunday. Yes, I possibly will be taking half an anti-anxiety pill before I get on that bird.

For 44 of my 53 years, I have lived in Texas and in counties close to or inhabited by my mother. The very thought that I can do anything else still seems like heresy. And we all know that the punishment for heresy can be biblical. I keep looking over my shoulder.

So I'm paranoid, my teen is sulky, and my mother is depressed. To jolly my mother up, I extolled the virtues of NYC bus tours. "Mom, it's so cool," I told her. "They have these double-decker buses that take you around the city's high points. You can get off, have a look around, and pop back on to the next one." My mother's response: "Will they pick us up at your house?" It took me a moment to stop spluttering and find my tongue. I'd told her a hundred times that where we would be living was at least 50 miles from the city. I reminded her of this fact again, when she, my still fit and able-bodied mother, remarked, "Oh, I know it's far away, but it's just too much trouble if they won't come pick you up at your door."

Did I really say what I remember saying? "Mother, as Morgan Freeman would advise, you can get busy living or get busy dying." No matter. She's very skilled at ignoring people when they say anything truly unpleasant.

Time Dilation, or how Fourteen Days can Seem Like Two Decades

On the day that Jesse turns fourteen, we are also fourteen days out from flying to New York and leaving Austin. For these last few weeks, Mike and I have been suffering from the relativistic effects of being really ready for something that isn't allowed to happen yet. We're not eager to leave Austin, but we are soooo ready to be reunited under one roof. At 3 weeks from the day of departure, it seemed like there was still six months to go. At 2 weeks, it feels as if there are now 4 years to go. The minutes drip past, each drop of time travelling the distance from the highest raincloud to the bottom of the deepest canyon.

I want to crawl into a stasis chamber and stay there until they call us to board our flight.

And, meanwhile, there are many birthday celebrations. I realize that when you and I were young and had to walk five miles in the snow to school everyday, birthday parties did not even dare speak their name. My mother threw me exactly one, when I was four or five, and it wouldn't surprise me if she resented even that one. For that reason, as well as a general incompetence at all forms of entertaining guests, except maybe with a dinner party, my party planning skills are complete and utter pants.

I wanted to do something large in scope this time. I wanted to invite every friend Jesse has and every schoolmate she has more than a nodding acquaintance with. This would be a combination bon voyage and birthday party. It would not be like all the other anxieties of my present life, which crank slowly past, one painful turn of the screw every time a supernova is spotted, but instead it would be large, somewhat lavish, and over with quickly.

Of course, I couldn't think of a single appropriate venue or activity. Jesse's idea -- rent one of the party boats that cruise Town Lake -- made me white with fear. Especially when I thought about the bill. I consulted with my friend Robin, who has a teenage son. She was full of ideas. We could have a party at a local rock climbing club's 'party wall'. We could go to one of those laser arenas and the kids could use each other for non-lethal target practice. Or we could try paint-ball. Or we could just hire a room at the local roller rink. I presented these ideas in turn to Jesse and they were all flatly rejected. Too large. Too small. Too boring. Too boy.

All Jesse could come up with was a Series of Intimate Events. Dinner with that chick, a movie with this other one. The most she would let me gather together at one time were her 3 friends from the middle school band. Overly excited, I found a discount service that rented a room at the Hilton for me before J. had a chance to change her mind. There would be a pool, a hot tub, a walk down Sixth Street on a Saturday evening. It would be fun!

We arrived at the Hilton, a few blocks from Sixth Street, the city's, er, lounge district. The girls took a tour of the hotel, self-guided, then we all went to the hotel spa, where the pool and jacuzzi beckoned. It amazes me how vulnerable I still am to some of my lower-middle-class instincts. My mom always booked us in whatever Roach Ranch we could afford. The showers drizzled you with warmish water, the carpets reeked of that awful rug pomade they use in vacuum cleaners to conceal the smell of mold and old beer. The Coldsmith kids considered themselves quite lucky if there was a pool that hadn't been closed by the health department.

I'm still that kid in some ways. Though I've been put up by past employers in more than a few swanky accommodations, I still can't help taking a step back in places like the Hilton. We entered the foyer to the spa and pool area, where desk clerks waited with sotto voce offers of fluffy robes. I was momentarily tongue-tied, certain that this couldn't be something we had paid for. Surely, I thought, some hotel flack was about to swoop down and inform us that those towels and that pool were reserved for the Hilton's VIP Class.

Whatever my habits as the descendant of sodbusters, there was to be no swimming that evening. We'd stepped onto the terrace to the sound of a great clap of thunder. The girls scurried back in and re-settled themselves back into their hotel room. Rain started to beat at the unopenable windows. Clearly, dinner and a long walk on Sixth Street would be ill-advised.

But they didn't seem to mind. Fourteen-year-old girls can giggle a lot for a long time, over nothing at all. I mentioned having pizza delivered to the room and they were ecstatic. The piled on to the bed. They watched the movies they'd brought on a laptop, shunning the fancy LCD TV in the hotel's wardrobe. They giggled some more. They only required that Mike and I be absent as often as possible. The thought crossed my grumpy mind that if they weren't going to use the pool or the TV, we could have stayed at the kind of motels favored by my mother, where you have a view of the Interstate and where the sticky substances are never cleaned off the remote control.

Mike and I had drinks with friends in the hotel bar and returned to find the girls still watching movies and giggling. We let them stay that way until about a half past midnight, when we made them shut it down. The next morning, I found them like this, all sacked out in the same bed. Apparently, the two girls designated for the other bed thought, at the last moment before surrendering to the sandman, that two feet was just too far to go. I think I now understand where all those cases of middle-school headlice come from.

Eventually the girls got up and made their way to the hotel's lovely salt-water pool. The temperature was perfect and the hot-tub warmed us up nicely. So long as I kept my distance, I was allowed to take pictures.

But after the giggling, the tears. The guests were all dispatched homewards and we returned to the Wee Flat, where Jesse rediscovered that her life sucked in every possible way. We've returned to the reality of what's left in these fourteen days, the many protracted goodbyes, the last-time-to-see people and the last-time-to-do things. And the Latin homework. We've been home just three hours and my dear daughter has cried four times.

If I can't find that stasis chamber, I may have to turn to Mojitos.