Miss Susie's Wild Ride

Let me explain the family relationship we have: my grandma, whose name was Mary, was the older sister of Lily and Susie's mother, whose name is Margaret and Carol's mother, whose name was Madeline. I know what you're thinking: All those names and I still had to convert to Catholicism. Although Carol's family is Catholic and we went to Mass together on Saturday evening, but just let me tell you - if you ever go to Mass with Carol and the priest asks if there are any visitors, don't expect her to raise her hand and say where she's from. Expect her to smirk wickedly as you raise your hand. I know she did that to pay me back for dunking one of her Barbie dolls in the toilet when I was four.

So anyway, we're cousins. On Saturday morning, we all met for breakfast and made ourselves look presentable and whiled away the morning until Susie took us to the club for lunch. The staff at the club was busy setting up for a wedding that was going to be taking place later in the afternoon and we all felt bad for the poor bride because here we've had no rain for weeks, and on the day of her wedding, the sky is scudding with grey clouds.

We had a very good lunch. Susie ordered a chicken sandwich; Carol and Lily ordered fried tilapia and I had prime rib on a roll. Carol, Lily and I were introduced to a purely Southern appetizer: deep-fried dill pickle spears. I know. It sounds awful, doesn't it? Southerners have the reputation for deep-frying everything, but let me tell you, deep-fried dill pickle spears are really, really tasty. So it's probably a good thing that I live in a place where dill pickle spears are served naked and shivering next to your turkey club sandwich.

After lunch, Susie took us on a tour of the golf course, which is just one of the things you do when you've got our blood coursing through your veins. It's like we're drawn there by some mysterious force. We got a big gasoline-powered golf cart from the pro shop and chugged off.

This golf course was unlike any other I've been on, mostly because the golf courses I am acquainted with are in Indiana, which is pretty flat compared to southern Kentucky. At one point on the front nine, Susie said, "Now, y'all just take a look at this!" and I did, because I was sitting in the front seat beside her, but there was nothing to look at. We were going over a blind hill, and when we got to the top, there was no comforting spread of neatly manicured grass stretching out before us. There was nothing but air, because we were going straight down.

Lily and Carol were spared the worst of it because they were looking at the backs of our heads, but I got the full view of an extremely twisty and narrow cart path, complete with at least three tight switchbacks. And let me add that Susie, who may or may not have been still feeling the effects of the previous night's margaritas, was not slowing the cart down one little bit.

We hurtled towards the first switchback, Susie cackling with laughter, me screaming for a priest and clutching my purse to my chest (it's one of those dumb kind that has no zipper or other closure that could have prevented me from littering the golf course with lipsticks, grocery receipts, loose change and the occasional tampon), and Carol and Lily carrying on on talking as if it were a normal occurrence in their lives to go around a hairpin turn on a golf course so fast that two of the cart's wheels were lifted off the ground.

By the time we got to the bottom, I thought I was going to need a defibrillator. Susie thought this was the funniest thing she'd ever heard and showed me a marked lack of sympathy that I felt was disrespectful of my position as the baby of the group.

[I can't be wrong in thinking that I'm the only person who's freaked out by riding in vehicles that are open to the outside, like golf carts and shuttle buses and UPS trucks, can I?]

Whatever goes down must go back up, so it wasn't long before the cart path started to climb. On one rather steep hill, our cart was laboring heavily, sounding less like The Little Engine That Could and more like The Little Engine That Was Prepared to Stall Out and Allow Its Passengers to Roll Straight Back Down a Hill Towards a Pond. Which is, of course, what it did.

This turn of events alerted even the stoic Lily and Carol, who expressed sounds of mild dismay while I shrieked, "Suuuuuuuuu-sieeeeeeeeeee! Let me out! I'll just walk up the hill!" Because I am not only the Baby Cousin, but also the Biggest Cousin. And I didn't want to have our untimely death from drowning, smashed into the silt at the bottom of a little water hazard by the weight of a golf cart, on my conscience. That's just the kind of person I am, always thinking more about others and less about how I might make a break for it and go back to the club house for a Jack & Coke.

"Oh, it'll be okay," said Susie airily and jammed her foot down on the accelerator. The golf cart grudgingly put-putted its way to the top of the hill with the four of us speaking soothingly and patting it on its fiberglass sides, the way one would talk to a nervous thoroughbred. A green lawn tractor carrying a couple of attractive college-age groundskeepers passed by, eyeing us curiously. That just made everything better.

[Continued from earlier...]

We went home after the golf course tour and had a grand time sitting around in the awesomely frigid air conditioning. Lily did quilt stitching for some place mats she and Carol and I were supposed to be making for Susie as a hostess gift, but Carol and I were lazy little buttheads and just sat there lounging on the comfy furniture instead of sewing, which caused Lily to gently take us to task. We guiltily murmured about our need to go to church, so Susie drove us to the nearest parish, leaving Doug and Lily at home to watch HGTV.

Misty margarita-colored memories

(Just kidding, Mom!)

In all truth, I have talked some pretty big talk about the drunken bacchanal that was CousinFest '07, but in reality, we are really four middle-aged ladies (although we are smokin' hot) and our idea of some wild partying this past weekend was sedately drinking some margaritas with our dinner and then sitting in Susie's pool, keeping ourselves afloat with Funnoodles hitched up under our arms. That is not exactly the kind of behavior that makes the neighbors call the cops.

Our drives to and from CousinFest were wonderful, as always. Lily and Carol and I talk so much and so deep that the miles just fly, sometimes laughing and sometimes getting teary and sometimes stopping to replenish the snack inventory.

This year's CousinFest in Kentucky and Susie's new house was marked by the fact that I had a nice, plump roll of bills to take down with me. We didn't really plan to do any shopping, because being together is just enough. But still. A girl always feels better with a little spending money in her purse. That's what I've heard anyway, because I left all my money in my van, tidily rolled up and stuck in the console. (It turned out that my cell phone was there too, but I didn't know that until Sunday.)

Lily and I reached Carol's house in fine style; all our luggage was loaded into Carol's SUV; we kissed our uncle, Carol's dad, goodbye and went off, waving and giddy.

Thirty minutes later, as we were all murmuring about lunch, I yelped, "OHHH NOOOO!!!!!"

"What? What?" Carol and Lily shrieked, wide-eyed. (We're all wound a little tight in our family.) Their voices and expressions indicated that I'd just noticed that we'd run over a tangle of barbed-wire fencing lying in the road, or that possibly I'd seen that hook-handed man that figures so largely in stories about unwary travelers.

"My money!" I wailed. "I left my money in the van!"

Carol was quick to whip out her cash and to tell me that she also had her debit card, so I was comforted, but still wanted to kick myself.

We got to Susie's city easily, and turned into her neighborhood, which is built around the biggest, ritziest golf course I've ever seen, and kept whispering, "Wow. Look at that place!...Omigosh, look at that place!"

Susie's house reminded me that Marie Antoinette, before that unfortunate business with her head, had a "little" "farmhouse" she called le petit hameau built on the grounds of the palace of Versailles so that she could go there whenever she was feeling "domestic" and "milk the cows" and "bake some bread" and pretend that she was the wife of a "humble French peasant" instead of Louis, who had a few Issues. Of course, the real French peasants always were there well beforehand to bathe the cows and shine their hooves and polish their udders and tie blue silk ribbons around their tails and madame la reine would sit down on a three-legged stool with a velvet cushion to milk la vache into a solid gold pail, but whatever.

Susie's beautiful house has that same sort of air about it, although she herself is nothing like Marie Antoinette, I promise. Because if she were? I would so hit her with a teacup. She came out to the door with her sweetie pie golden retriever, Summer, and we all hugged and kissed and cried and then got down to carrying in the luggage, primarily so that we could unearth the booze, which had been securely cushioned between all the suitcases.

Lily, Carol and I got the grand tour, which was so amazing that I kept blacking out and having to be revived with cool, wet face cloths scented with almond. I have hopes of what heaven will be like and one of them now is that I will be met at the pearly gates by an angel proferring a cool, almond scented face cloth. My private guest room with the en suite bath was so elegant that when I quietly burped later on after putting on my pajamas, I hung my head in shame and whispered "Please excuse me" to the furniture.

Susie fixed us a wonderful, cool dinner because Kentucky is hotter than the first layer of hell, a fact which I got straight from Dante's Inferno. She made chicken salad, fruit ambrosia, veggies and dip and about a million other delicious things and she lit little citronella candles all over her gorgeous brick patio and we ate outside to the music of Earth, Wind and Fire (I told you we were middle-aged), who had to compete with the companionable croaking of the bullfrogs and Carol's unchained symphony on the blender as she mixed the margaritas, long on lime, short on tequila.

One of the greatest pleasures of the evening was finally getting to meet Susie's husband, Doug. Lily, Carol and I had never met him because they've been all over the country and the world in the few years since they've been married. They have to keep traveling to Maui and Paris and exotic destinations like those because they just don't realize how fun it is to be landlocked in Indiana. One day they'll figure that out; until then, all we can do is pray for them, I suppose.

Anyway, Doug is a pure southern gentleman with an accent that sounds like equal parts fresh butter and clover honey sliding off a hot biscuit. He could make the phone book sound like a sonnet. He could say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" and you'd still want to just swoon on the verandah. And not only does he have That Voice, he also did all the dishes both nights so that we ladies could all sit on the covered back porch and screech and giggle like adolescents. Now, I ask you, did Susie pick a winner, or what?

The first night, I went to bed at about 2:00 a.m. basking in the delight of having an entire suite to myself, where I could hog all the pillows and the covers and sample the many Arbonne products that Susie left sitting temptingly around the bathroom. I was deeply intimidated by the Kohler toilet, initially wondering if I was supposed to pee in it or admire it as an objet d'art. For the first time, I felt I truly understood those "The Bathroom as Still Life" magazine advertisements I've been seeing for years.

The nicest thing about the accommodations was that there was a little wet bar right outside my bedroom door, with a coffee maker built into the wall and a pull out refrigerator stocked with every kind of soda pop, fruit juice and bottled water known to this world and maybe even the next. Darling Susie even remembered to get soy milk for Lily and half-and-half for me and Coke for Carol and the next morning, when I stepped outside my room to press the On button, sniffing the aroma of early coffee a few minutes later, I was filled with bliss. Bliss!

More tomorrow about Miss Susie's Wild Ride (golf course tour) and the filet mignon so beautiful, so tender that I wasn't sure whether I should eat it or marry it.

Emails from home

These are two emails I received from Meelyn and Aisling while I was at CousinFest:


Dear Mommy,

I'm over here having a blast and I BET that you're having a really good time too! We've been to your blog and I laughed over your brand new blog post about exercising, it's so true. We've taken a nap and the living room furniture is so comfy. Tell me a few things that you're doing! By the way we should have a 32 day challenge. Being @ Nanny and Poppy's house is very spoiling. Well g2g bye.

MeeMee

[I felt no call to fill Meelyn in on the visit Jose Cuervo paid to CousinFest '07. Carol, Lily, Susie and I love him like a brother. We love him.]

_________________________________________________________

Dear Mommy,

It's around eight thirty now and we where supose to have popped popcorn, taken showers, (except not me I'm stinky!) and settled down on the couch getting all cozy ontil nanny looked outside to see Uncle Pat and Aunt Angie and Kiersi. Kiersi is so cute! She is standing right now with one foot in the golfing hole on Poppy's floor putter! We had taco cassaural for dinner with a chopped salad. Aunt Angie helped us finish off a whole pan of that good stuff! Kiersi got a little spank because she was standing on the coffee table. Then she stood on the coffee table again.

Poor ole nanny! we were playing water guns, almost as wet as an ocean and all of a sudden some inspector guy from some true green place came along out to the back yard with me in a bathing suit and meemee wearing her top some pants and a swim suit to go underneith, but nanny lo in behold looked the worse out of me and meemee. Nanny let me and mee wear both her bathing suits because she said she would blind the neighbors if they looked out the window to see a sixtyfour year old woman running across the lawn wearing a bathing suit. Any way!

The inspector for their lawn came and there was nanny with no make-up, wet up to her eye balls, carrying an four inch watter gun. Nanny started to feel so enbarassed! She started to cluch her shirt because her bra was showing because she was wet, and followed the men to the front yard.

That's practically all that's been exciting around here, other than going to weenie world to get some ice cream. (Before dinner!)

We haven't been doing so on the thirty day challenge. From running all around the yard and reading out books and staring at the TV screen we're egzosted!

Ps. We're sleeping in tomorrow.

Love from Aisli that misses you

[My mother shall henceforth be known as Calamity Nan. I hope she wasn't cold.]

une célébration pour des cousines

CousinFest '07 is finally here!

It is 9:28 and I've been galloping around the house since seven o'clock, doing the packing. I am taking with me:

1) a carry-on sized suitcase, stuffed

2) a vanity case because, well, I'm vain.

3) a tote with my scrapbooks in it

4) two pillows

5) a bag of shoes

6) a tote bag with all my books in it

7) a mini-cooler with the supplies for the most excellent hors d'oeuvre I am making

8) my purse

If Kayte reads here today, she will laugh her head off. She is an easy traveler who deals well with minimalist packing. I have no concept of such. Which is good, because when we go to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in September 2008, I'll be able to squeeze more of my stuff into the spaces not occupied by her stuff.

My husband carried my suitcase and vanity case out to the van this morning because I had them by the door waiting. He went out and came back in, leaning down to kiss me, saying, "I loaded up the car for you."

I returned the kiss and gestured at the kitchen table, which was covered with items 3-8. His eyes widened as he looked at the teetering pile of stuff and he said, "How long are you going to be gone? Until Sunday afternoon, right?"

"Yup," I answered.

"Okay," he said, still incredulously eyeing the rest of my most necessary belongings. "Well, I'd better get all this stowed away."

I went out to the van just now to do a spot check - you know, just in case he loaded my stuff into our neighbor's van across the street - and noticed that it already looks like something that belongs to the Joad family, or maybe the Beverly Hillbillies. And Lilly's stuff isn't even in there yet.