RECIPE: Tomato sandwiches

I first became acquainted with tomato sandwiches through reading Harriet the Spy when I was little. For years, I would only eat tomatoes this one way, other than tomato soup, which is the best soup ever invented.

Yesterday, the girls and I stopped at a roadside stand and bought five pounds of tomatoes and came home and made sandwiches, the first of the season, for some reason. To make a tomato sandwich, you lay out the requisite slices of bread and spread them generously with mayonnaise, right out to the edges of the bread. Then you slice as many tomatoes as you have people, making each slice as thin as you possibly can without adding blood to the tomato juice.

Layer the tomato slices on each person's first slice of bread, salting and peppering each layer vigorously. Top with the second slice of bread and cut each sandwich into quarters, resigning yourself to the fact that you're going to be wearing either 1) a bit of tomato; 2) a splodge of mayonnaise; or 3) a drip of tomato juice on your top before all's said and done.

The tomatoes are best if they're still warm from the ground.

This is my favorite sandwich and I do not sully its purity with basil leaves or slice of mozzarella or sprinklings of oregano. They are perfect as they are.

A little mood-altering music

Yesterday, I was sulking in the living room because I am sick of the heat.

I hate going to the pool when it's so hot because it is impossible to be comfortable sitting on a deck chair and reading when you feel like a pot roast that's just been shoved into the oven. And I don't want to spend the whole afternoon in the water because I can't take my book or my MP3 player in there.

Can't sit and read on the front porch because ditto.

Don't want to go places because it is miserable getting in and out of the car a thousand times.

So, as I say, I was sitting there thinking "Summer, summer, hating summer, sick of summer..." when all of a sudden the song that Aisling was merrily tinkling away at on the piano registered on my consciousness:

Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
but the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Now, that's more like it, I thought. And once it's here, I wonder how long it will take before I'm sulking in the living room and thinking, "Winter, winter, hating winter, sick of winter..."

Things I would/wouldn't let my girls do

I'm making a list.

1. Wear makeup at age 13 -- Well, YES. Everybody knows that makeup is one of the most wonderful, beautiful things ever invented and that everyone has a responsibility to the general public not to go around looking all tired and pale. It's about being a good citizen.

2. Dye/bleach their hair an ordinary color -- Yes. Because hair grows and can be re-dyed. I know this from personal experience.

3. Dye hair an unusual color -- Probably not. Maybe just a strip of an unusual color, like pink. Again, because hair grows.

4. Get a tattoo -- No. But more from the "do you know what that thing is going to look like when you're 42 years old and have stretch marks?" perspective than from the idea that permanent body art is evil. I think we need to face the facts that youth and firm skin do not last forever. I heard Cher's speech about this. I believed her. And then at the pool I saw a woman about my own age with a rose tattoo on her upper left breast that had obviously gone from being a bud to an elongated, indistinguishable blob of red. And she wasn't fat or wrinkled or anything. Just middle-aged. It was horrifying.

5. Get their ears pierced -- Already done.

6. Get their tongues, lips, eyebrows, chins or noses pierced -- Abso-freakin'-lutely not. Facial piercings look like a fast track to life behind the counter at Dairy Queen. It doesn't look edgy or cool. It looks like a cry for help. "I am willing to mutilate myself if you'll only pay attention to me."

8. Get their navels pierced -- At this point in their lives, my kids don't wear clothing that displays their belly-buttons, so this one isn't really up for consideration.

Which brings us to...

9. Wear revealing clothing -- We work really, really hard to make sure the girls are dressed fashionably, but modestly. It's very hard. I mean, thankfully, the era of slutwear inspired by Britney Spears and her ilk seems to be waning, but it is still hard to find cute tops that aren't too low cut. I know how important clothes are, and making them dress as if they go through grandma's closet when they get dressed in the morning is not helpful. Like it or not, people judge us by our looks and I don't want people looking at my beautiful, kindhearted, funny kids and dismissing them with a scornful, "Oh, look. An Amish nerd."

We do a lot of layering, higher cut tops underneath lower cut tops.

9. Go on birth control -- I know this probably sounds harsh for a blog that is usually very light-hearted, but in my frank opinion, this is the kind of thing that loser parents do in order to shrug off their parenting responsibilities. They don't want to have to say "No" and take the time to explain why "No" is a reasonable answer, so they say "Yes" to going out on dates alone and "Yes" to going to parties and "Yes" to renting a motel room with a group of other loser parents so that the kids can "party safe" after the prom.

Even saying "Yes" to the question "Can Ben and I go up to my room to study? It's so noisy down here" is a really stupid thing to say. They don't want their daughters to get pregnant, but instead of providing some guidance and supervision and old-fashioned chaperoning, they let their girls use birth control so that some pimpled Romeo can paw her in his car. And then go tell all his friends. Because if you think he's not telling all his friends...hello?

I have no patience at all for all the lazy parents who say, "They're going to do it anyway, so she might as well be protected." Did such people learn nothing about venereal diseases in eighth grade health class? There are things out there that are a LOT WORSE than pregnancy, and none of them can be prevented by taking a pill or by using Norplant or getting an injection of Depo Provera.

An unwanted streak of pink in a girl's hair when she's in her teens is a lot easier to fix than an undected case of chlamydia that has rendered her sterile in her thirties.

RECIPE REDUX: Wasabi wit you?

Okay, I tried that recipe for Wasabi Peanuts down below? And it was really horrible. Don't try it. Unless, of course, you enjoy buying ingredients like wasabi paste, which is not cheap, and basically just throwing it in the kitchen garbage as soon as you get home.

I did find it to be a more than adequate sinus opener, though. By the time I got finished beating it until it was frothy, I felt like my entire head had been reamed out with a plumber's snake. At one point, I undertook to blow my nose, but had to stop when I'd used up a roll of toilet tissue and a gallon bucket. Allergy sufferers, take note.


There is nothing wrong with your sinuses that a little
Japanese horseradish can't cure. Image credit: Nuts Online

So here's my new recipe for wasabi peanuts. I hope you'll try them if you like really spicy food. I think my Grandad would say that they'll put hair on your chest. So if your chest is bald and you'd like to grow a luxurious mat of hair, such as Tom Selleck had back in the old Magnum, P.I. days, get out your debit card.

Wasabi Peanuts

1. Click on this link and place your order

See? See how simple that was?



Look at that manly man. Rumor has
it that he ate wasabi peanuts daily
and refused to share any with Rick,
TC, or that fruity Higgins guy. Photo
credit: IMBD.com

Leo the Greek

My husband and I just finished watching the recent DVD release 300, which is the dramatization of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. It was actually a pretty good movie, despite some glaring inaccuracies. Such as the clothing worn by Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, who was dressed like a shameless brazen hussy. And wearing a slave bracelet.

King Leonidas of Sparta, who led his warriors to defend the mountain pass into Greece from the Persian king Xerxes, tried very hard. He really did. In a way, I hated even starting to watch this movie because, like Titanic? I already knew how it was going to end. Which is to say, the ground littered with bodies that were all stuck full of arrows. Badly.

Only this time, I didn't have to endure Kate Winslet's Rose leaning off that door she was balanced on, out there among the ice floes in the northern Atlantic, saying, "Jack? Jack? Oh, Jack!" as Leonardo DiCaprio, as frozen as a halibut, gently sank down to the bottom of the deep blue sea.





So anyway, I found this picture, painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David in 1814, and I think I understand why the Greeks fell to the last man at Thermopylae.

They are wearing no pants. Which is either a reflection on the inadequacies of the Spartan armor, or on the humors of M. David, I just don't know. But I do know that it would be just about impossible for anyone to win at horseshoes, much less in hand-to-hand combat, if your opponent is all up in your business, swinging a sword around.

I mean, really.

When will a hole open and swallow me up?

Something happened to me today -- something bad -- that is so hideously, urgently humiliating that I can't relate it here. I just want to mark the occasion, a first in my life, when I was so humiliated, I got tears in my eyes. For all the people in my family who think it is high time that my enormously inflated self-esteem got pricked with a great big giant pitchfork, you now have your wish.

I'm sure that I'll be able to laugh about this sometime within the next few months, but right now, I'm thinking about becoming an anchorite. In the mountains. Of the former Czechloslovakia.

RECIPE: Wasabi Peanuts

[Note: I have not actually tried this recipe yet, but I could eat wasabi on ice cream. I love wasabi peanuts, but it seems like the only available wasabi snack around here is the wasabi pea. Which, meh. So I found this recipe online and thought I'd post it here so that I'd know where to find it. My other recourse was to print it out, take it into the kitchen and throw it away three days from now when it is rendered unreadable by falling into the sink when the dishwasher is draining.]

Wasabi Peanuts
2 cups whole raw peanuts
2 Tbsp. coarse salt ( it will be discarded, just keep reading; they aren't THAT salty)
1/2 T. cornstarch
2 to 3 T. wasabi paste
1 egg white

Put peanuts in large bowl. Sprinkle with coarse salt and work it through with your hands, breaking peanuts in half. (The salt helps split the peanuts while instilling salty flavor without overdoing.) Empty peanuts into sieve and let salt fall through and discard.

Mix wasabi with cornstarch and egg white and beat with fork until foamy. Pour over peanuts and mix well. Spread on non-stick or lightly oiled baking sheet and bake at 350° F for 30 to 40 minutes or until peanuts are roasted and dry. Cool and store in airtight container.

NOTE!!!! Before making that recipe, check out this post, where I give a much better "recipe" for wasabi peanuts!!! You make the recipe above at your peril.

File under - Thoughts: random

Random Thought #1 - I sat down here at the computer desk just now to vaccuum the keyboard - you know that thing where you gently dust off the keys with the brush-thingie from the sweeper? And while I was gently sweeping, the little brush must have pushed some majorly significant key, because brower's tool bar and my Google tool bar have completely disappeared. If I move the cursor up to the top of the monitor screen, the browser too bar reappears, but where is Google? Where?

Where?

I feel like I need to grab and lantern and a rope and wade in to some murky techno-swamp to find it, bringing with me my faithful trackin' dog, Blue, and a flask of liquid courage.

What have I done? How can I fix it? The thought of going without my Google tool bar is making my breath come in funny, tight little gasps.

Random Thought #2 - I just learned the other day that catching pieces of airborne food is just something that dogs should be able to do. Just like I know how to use a jumbo styling wand to flatten my bangs without burning my forehead; just like my husband instinctively knows how much beer or soda pop he can gulp before releasing a belch that won't shatter the fragile antique glass in our windows. One gulp too many and we'd be standing in a pile of shards.

Hershey can execute a leap into the air and bring down chunks of food large or small. He shows a marked preference for any sort of meat, but comes running from the farthest part of the house at the rustling of a chip bag. He's not choosy about his salty snacks. Tortilla chips, pretzels, white cheddar popcorn, Fritos, potato crisps - he eats them all, right out of the air.

Wimzie, not so much. She mostly stands there, looking alert and all, "Throw it, already! You know I can catch this" and then you throw it and it hits her in the head. Or lands on the floor at her feet, where she looks at it in surprise, as if to say, "Omigosh! A Cheese Nip cracker just came from....nowhere? How...? Should I...?"

By that time, Hershey has shoved her aside and eaten it. It is his time to shine, the only opportunity he has in life to feel superior to her, the Dog Who Gets Smacked in the Face with a Chunk of Big Mac.

I discovered Cesar Millan about a month ago and he has learned me a thing or two. Plus being really, really cute, but that's beside the point. I watch his National Geographic Channel show, The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, only for the information he provides about dogs. Not because of his macho walk or his dirty chuckle, no matter what my husband thinks. Anyway, Cesar says that catching food in mid-air is a skill dogs should have, but some of them don't have it because they're spoiled rotten.

When he said this, I cast a guilty, furtive glance at Wimzie, who was lying on her back on a sofa cushion, bolstered by a snuggly blanket with her four paws up in the air. I hastily averted my eyes and cleared my throat, turning up the volume on the television a little louder.

The first thing we were doing wrong was just putting out a bowl of dry dog food and letting her snack all day, choosing when (and where) she would eat. We were giving her and Hershey too much power over their food, he said, and that dogs and wolves living in a pack eat only when the pack leader says "Eat."

So we started feeding them twice a day, morning and evening, after their major walks. We give them a few minutes to chomp down their food and anything not eaten gets taken away. Wimzie was not a fan of this new approach and for the first few days, would only sniff at her bowl, deigning to take a few bites.

"She'll eat when she's hungry, the little brat," my husband said, removing her bowl from the floor to the kitchen counter when she turned her back on it and yawned, strolling into the dining room with an air that reeked of Paris Hilton.

We were resolute and gave her no treats, no snacks, no nothing. By day three, she cracked and ate a bowl of dog food like an actual dog, instead of mincing at it like a pampered princess. Which, of course, is how we've been treating her for the past ten years. The only things that distinguish her from the above-mentioned heiress is that we haven't bought her a Prada handbag or bailed her out of the county lock-up.

The next step was training her how to act like a dog and work for her food. Cesar said that this could be accomplished by using high-value foods, like meat and cheese, to motivate her to catch. We are meeting with spotty success. She honestly doesn't want to catch stuff, preferring, when all is said and done, that she be hand-fed while lounging on my lap. So I throw bits of food and Hershey catches 90% of it. He is the happiest dog you ever saw. Wimzie caught one piece today out of about eight that were tossed in her general direction, and even that was by accident. She nearly choked on it and I was faced with the possibility of performing the Hug of Life on a moody, ungrateful Jack Russell terrier.

Hershey watched her coughing with great interest, undoubtedly hoping that she'd yak it up on the carpet so that he could steal it away. She swallowed the bite of cheese and didn't move a muscle when the next piece fell on the floor right next to her feet. Hershey moved in swifly on a recovery mission, but she gave him one quick look and he fell back, reprimanded.

I'm not sure where we're going with all this, but I'm hoping that it isn't going to take pieces of prime rib or, say, an entire lamb chop to encourage her to actually lift her lazy feet from the floor.

Boats, hot dogs and water slides - more news from the lake

The girls called yesterday afternoon from a boat, of all places. A big boat, they emphasized. A big double-decker pontoon with a grill for hot dogs and a water slide.

"And guess what?" Aisling said eagerly. "I got to drive the boat a whole lot!"

This gave me a moment of...something or other. You see, I spend a lot of time with Aisling and I know her very well. And ordinarily, I wouldn't dream of letting her drive some Matchbox cars around the dining room table, let alone drive a pontoon filled with the closest members of our family around a big lake.

"Oh, it's okay," she assured me. "Kiersi got to drive the boat, too."

Kiersi is my niece. She's just a little over two feet tall and is nineteen months old. What were all the adults doing? I wondered. Lounging around on deck chairs while Meelyn served Long Island iced teas?

As it turned out, Poppy was at the wheel, too, supervising all this boat-driving in a very responsible manner. I feel so relieved. I had this picture of Aisling, a captain's hat backwards on her head, driving the pontoon so fast that the front end was lifted out of the water like a ski boat, straight at a little canoe full of nuns or something.

"And guess what else?" Aisling asked me. Honestly, there are times when I hardly know how to answer this question. It's highly possible that I could say. "Uhhmmm....you were skipping rocks in the lake and all of a sudden, the Loch Ness monster appeared and said, 'Hi! I'm visiting from Scotland!' and then offered you a powdered sugar doughnut?" and she'd say in disappointment, "How did you know?"

So I'm careful. That's all I'm saying.

As it turns out, the other thing that happened is that Aisling was walking barefoot and stubbed her fourth toe on some cement and it bled a lot. Nanny bought some peroxide and Aisling cried a lot. "Because it hurt," she said. "It made me miss you."

I gulped and managed to squeak, "Did Nanny kiss it?"

Aisling giggled. "No, Mommy. It's my toe."

"It's a rule," I said sternly. "Tell her that I am citing her for dereliction of duty if that toe remains unkissed."

"Nanny, Mommy says you have to kiss my toe," Aisling called to her.

"And my toe, too," I said. "Tell her that. That's what she gets for being a big toe-non-kisser."

Meelyn got on the phone after that and told me that she had gone down the slide on the pontoon a thousand times.

"And we pulled an inner tube behind the boat," she said. "That was a lot of fun, but Uncle Pat was driving and he made the boat go fast and the water all came up over the inner tube."

"Did he think that was funny?" I asked, knowing my brother and how he would never be able to resist pushing that speed up just a little bit faster...just...a...little...faster. It's exactly the same thing I would have done, or expected to have done to me, if I were the one on the inner tube.

"Oh, yeah," she said, laughing. "He did it to everyone. But Kiersi doesn't like being in the water. She got a little grouchy. The boys and I are having fun though, going down the slide. Poppy went down, too."

I had another moment or something or other, trying to imagine my portly father, one of the most dignified people I know, going down a curvy water slide off a pontoon. Will wonders never cease? It's like someone just told me that apples can fly or that my mailbox is a portal to another world, like Narnia only better.

The girls will be home tomorrow. I'm so glad. And I can hardly wait to see my dad, to see if this water sliding experience has changed him.

Thursday's List

READING: The Catholicism of Shakespeare's Plays by Peter Milward SJ. This is such a great book, very helpful as a research tool in nailing down all the Catholic themes and "shadow plot" in Hamlet.

POOLSIDE READING: In a Dark Wood Wandering: A Novel of the Middle Ages by Hella S. Haasse, translated from the original Dutch by Lewis C. Kaplan. Valois, Orleans, Berry, Bourbon -- all those famous dukes, plus a little bit of Brittania provided by the nasty Richard II and valiant John IV during the period of the Hundred Years War. This book was first published in the Netherlands in 1949 and has never been out of print. I can see why.

LISTENING TO: my new MP3 player - love!

FAVORITE NEW FIND: I stumbled across a little site called FindingGod.org that has a daily meditation called 3-Minute Retreat. I've done this little "retreat" for the past couple of days and they've both been so good, I decided to add their button to this blog. You can click on it over there to your left. If you're at work, turn down your speakers, because there is music. It is really beautiful music, but still.

HAPPY TO SAY: I have Hamlet nearly all planned out for the entire workshop and am nearly ready to start on the Round 2 questions for HISTO, which won't need to be given out until October, so I am way ahead of the game and feeling very, very good about that. In one week, I'll be ordering the Hamlet tickets!

FAVORITE THING TODAY: went out to breakfast by myself (my husband had to be at work early, so he wasn't available for company) and had a very nice time

HOURS OF SLEEP LOGGED LAST NIGHT: Seven, the longest amount all week.

SCRAPBOOK PAGES THIS WEEK: None again. Too busy with HISTO and Hamlet and the pool and generally enjoying myself. But I did design the cover art for the HISTO binders and I used many scrapbooking techniques for that, so that probably ought to count for something.

THE CAUSE OF MY STRESS: Missing the girls with every fiber of my being, but loving this solitude with every fiber of my being.

PRAYING FOR: All the people involved in the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Film footage the news networks are playing over and over again is just horrifying. I finally turned off the television at about 7:30 this morning because I can't stand the media's eager slavering over tragedy and the way they shove microphones into people's faces and say, "How did you feel when you realized your husband was probably traveling across the bridge?" Sickening. Please join me in a short prayer.

Fear and loathing at the grocery store

Although completely unlike Hunter S. Thompson in just about all respects, I do share with him a desire to be a little bit reclusive in my personal life. This week, for instance. A lot of people would have made plans to see movies and do lunch with various friends, but the thing that appealed to me the most was to be able to just be by myself, whether staying at home or having lunch or going to a bookstore. I like to be by myself. And to tell you the truth, there are a lot of weird people out there that I'd just as soon avoid.

Like the ham lady I met at the grocery store. And poor Cody. And Melissa's mom.

I went out for breakfast this morning -- by myself -- and on the way home, decided to stop by the grocery to pick up a some things, like a bottle of sesame oil for tonight's stir fry. I traveled through the store briskly, remembering that my husband had requested cookies and that I needed a bottle of sunscreen.

I was walking with my cart through the produce section when I heard a woman call out, "Melissa!" Naturally, I didn't respond. Because my name is not Melissa. How was I to know that she was summoning me? She said again, more urgently, "MeLISSA!" and I still didn't turn around. Finally, at the end of her patience, she yelled "MUUUUH - LIH - SUUUUUUUUUUUUH!" and grabbed me by the shoulder.

I whirled around and looked at her and she immediately dropped her hand from my person, abashed. "Oh, I am so sorry," she said. "I....thought you were my daughter."

"I'm honored," I said politely.

"There's my daughter, up there," she said, suddenly seeing a young woman at the deli counter. "You look a lot like her."

I eyed the person at the deli counter and felt pleased because she did appear to be in her twenties and I....well, I'm older than that. A lot. But the thing that made me want to start giggling was the fact that this woman and her daughter were both African-American. I mean, I do have a pretty dark suntan, seeing as how it's August and all, but still. Melissa, buying some potato salad, was a very pretty cafe au lait color and I am a brunette and we were both - *ahem* - full figured women.

But still.

It was pretty funny.

Melissa's mom evidently thought it was kind of funny, too, because laughter spurted out of her and she patted me and walked off. I sincerely hope she wasn't laughing because she was all, "Now that I'm up close, how could I ever have thought that this old cow was my baby?" and thinking how she and Melissa would scream with amusement as her mother pointed me out to her on another aisle and oh, well. Some days are just like that.

When I got to the check-out stands, the lines were enormous. I had too many items to get in the express lane (even though there was another brazen hussy standing there with enough groceries to feed a refugee camp for about a month, looking belligerently around as if daring anyone to mess with her.) I was about six carts back in a slow, slow line when another store employee came out of the customer service area and said, "If some of you would like to step over to line ten, please?"

I stepped over rather briskly and so did a lady from another line. She was in front of me and had a whole enormous cart full of food, so I resigned myself to a slightly shorter wait and began filling out my check. Suddenly, I became aware that she was talking to me.

"I'm sorry?" I said, looking up from my checkbook.

"I said, 'Look at all this food I'm buying,'" she repeated. "I only came in here for about three or four things."

"That's easy to do," I said, thinking of my own days when "a few items" could suddenly add up to seventy dollars worth of impulse buying.

"I got some good deals, though," she remarked, gesturing to her bulging cart. "Like this ham. See this ham?"

"Yes," I said, obediently looking at the package of ham she was holding up.

"This ham was on sale, $2.49 for the pound."

"That was a good deal," I said, smiling one of those smiles that is friendly, but doesn't necessarily encourage further social discourse.

"You should buy you some of this ham," she persisted, fixing me with a stare with an intensity worthy of an evangelist.

Taken aback, I said, "Oh, no....that's okay."

"Seriously. You should buy some."

"No, really. I'm fine."

"I'll hold your place for you while you go get it. It's right back there, in that refrigerated bin by the lunchmeat and hot dogs."

I thought about the pound of sliced ham sitting serenely at home in my refrigerator and wondered if it would be worth it to buy more ham, just to get her off my back. I decided not to. "I really don't need any ham," I said pleasantly.

She raised her eyebrows and looked at me incredulously. "What? Don't you like ham?"

Is there some rule I don't know about? Some heretofore unnamed law that states that if you shop at Lane Bryant, you must like ham?

"I like ham," I said with a touch of frost in my voice. "But I don't want to buy any."

"I don't like ham," she said, changing sides unexpectedly. "Look, I bought all this food -- this ham and this Jimmy Dean sausage at $1.59 for a one-pound roll -- and all this other stuff, but I won't eat none of it but the bagels and cream cheese. Not a single thing."

By this time, the cashier was scanning her many purchases and the woman's attention was diverted from me to her grandson, who looked to be about thirteen and had decided not to help his grandmother unload the groceries onto the belt and instead was sitting on a bench looking sullen.

"Cody," she said indignantly, "get yourself back over here and help me."

"I don't want to," Cody responded, scratching indifferently at a mosquito bite on his arm.

Cody, I thought. Be smart. This is your chance to run.

"Fine," said his grandmother, unloading about fifteen packages of sliced ham onto the conveyor. "But you can't have any bagels."

"S'okay with me," he replied, yawning.

Suddenly, her attention swung back in my direction. "You really should get back there," she said earnestly. "That ham will go pretty fast. You don't want to miss it. Come on, Cody."

I was reminded of the exhibit of artwork from the Vatican in Cincinnati last year and how we really meant to find the time to go, but never did.

I unloaded my groceries and then made my way home, deciding that, if my choices for lunch today fell between a ham sandwich and a bowl of dog food, I would definitely go for the kibble.

More news from the lake

The telephone rang yesterday afternoon, just as I was getting ready to leave for the library.

"Mommy?" came an indistinct voice, accompanied by much background interference of happy shrieks and squeals and music being played over an intercom.

"Hi, Aisli!" I said, feeling an enormous warm rush of happiness at hearing her chirpy voice. "How are you, honey?"

"I'm fine! I am so fine, you just don't know! We're all at a water park right now and we're having so much fun!"

"What have you been doing at the water park?"

"Well, first of all, they have this thing called a wave pool? And it makes waves just like the ocean? Nanny and I thought it looked like fun, so we got in it and a wave came and knocked us down and we skinned our knees on the bottom, kind of like when you're at the beach and a wave throws you all around on the sand."

I got an amusing mental image of my mother and Aisling whirling around in a wave, both emitting piercing screams and getting their mouths full of water. "Oh, dear. That sounds a little rugged. What did you do next?"

"Next we went down the water slide. The first time, I leaned forward instead of backward and I just about got drowned, but Nanny pounded me on the back and I coughed and choked up a bunch of water."

This was slightly alarming to me, until I realized that Aisling's coughing and choking is usually due to the fact that she simply cannot keep her mouth closed, even if she knows that water is going to come in. "Did you try it again?" I asked.

"Yup," she said. "And that time, Nanny and I went down together and my bathing suit top fell down."

"Oh my gosh...."

"And I didn't even know it! We got to the bottom of the slide and stood up in the water and Nanny was laughing and laughing, but I didn't know what she was laughing at and then she pulled up my top."

By then, I was doing some laughing of my own. "I bet Nanny was disappointed that she didn't get a chance to flash the park. She probably thinks there are some Mardi Gras beads around there somewhere."

Aisling began to laugh and I heard my mother ask her what was so funny. Aisling said to her, "Mommy said you were probably disappointed that you didn't get to flash everyone."

"Give me that phone," my mom said.

"Hi, Mom!"

"I brought you up better than that."

"You tried. I give you credit for trying."

"Anyway. I already flashed that beach in Hawaii -- ACCIDENTALLY -- when your dad and I went there. Ever since then, I've known to hang onto my top."

"All it takes is one moment of inattention, Mom, and then BAM! Mardi Gras beads are coming at you from all directions."

"You shut up. You are such a bad girl. Be ashamed."

"I'll try!"

"Here's Aisling back."

Aisling said, "Do you miss me?"

"Like a world without chocolate," I said lightly. "Where's MeeMee?"

"She's just now coming from the big water slide. Do you want to talk to her?"

"Yup," I said.

"Okay. Here she is. I love you, Mommy! I miss you! I'm having a good time! Tell Daddy I love him!"

"I will, honey," I said. "Mind your top."

The phone was transferred from one wet hand to another. "Mommy?" said Meelyn, excitement in her happy voice.

"Hi, sweetheart! How is the world's most awesome teenager doing?"

"Ooooh, Mommy! It's so great! We're having so much fun! I've gone down the biggest water slide a bunch of times. You have to climb, like, five flights of steps to get up there. I was so scared, but I told myself I was going to do it since the boys were doing it. And it is so much fun!"

"That sounds so great, honey! Are you....errr....having any troubles with your top?"

"No," she giggled. "I hang onto it real tight."

"So what else have you been doing?"

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "Aisli and I took Kiersi for a little walk last night and we swung her between our hands and she laughed so hard and loved it."

"Oh, how fun. She's such a cutie."

"And we've played a lot of ping-pong. Did you know that Poppy is a very competitive ping-pong player? He about makes you swallow the ball."

(Can you get delirium tremens from being away from the golf course for a week?)

"How's it going with you and Aisli in the same bed together? Or do you have separate rooms?"

"No, we're in the same room. We like it better like that."

"Do you have fun, giggling and talking before you go to sleep?"

"Nope," said Meelyn. "We are way too tired to talk at night. We hit the sheets and don't move until morning. We're having the best time!"

We talked for a few more minutes and then Meelyn said she needed to get back to the slide. "I love you, Mommy. Tell Daddy I love him. I miss you both."

"We miss you, too. And we're so glad you're having a good time!"

"We are! This is so much fun! I'll talk to you later, Mom. 'Bye!"


Ooooh, ouch. OUCH. I have been really enjoying my days, but I didn't think I'd miss them quite this painfully.