Woody & My IBF

The best series on TV, by far, is The Deadliest Catch. Whatever those guys are paid for the crab, they should be getting double. Getting packed to go to sea is such a thrill. I am heading to my own personal Bering Sea. I need the fleet blessing.

So here's the first load from my pickup to Woody.

This is my portable dresser. I have no intention of dragging a suitcase in and out of strange rooms every night, so I am packing an ice bag (that's what those LL Bean canvas totes were called in my sailing days because, uh, duh, we needed ice for the cold locker) to shuffle a few things back and forth. Thus, the dresser. It unzips toward me. That is the back seat. There are three seats.

Under my pillow is my sleeping bag and a blanket. I may need some cheap sleeps. You can't see my picnic suitcase, but its on the floor to the left.

This is my front seat.

Good thing we took Woody to his primary care physician. So many hoses were cracking, fuel lines disengaging, and belts disintegrating.

But check him out now! Note his grill. This is how you can tell that he was adorned in 1942, and not by a 1990's rapper. The numbers on his body say that it was made in October, 1941.

Doesn't he look handsome, even after slogging through the salt and slush?

Woody growls with a real flathead 8 sound now. No more tick, tick, ticking. And the heater works!

I needed to check that all the locks work in case someone wants to steal my dirty underwear (you've heard about those guys -- gross -- and besides, I would sell them on the internet and make some serious dough if I were desperate). The driver's side door works. There are no keyholes on the back doors, but I found the levers to use to secure them. The front passenger side has a secret door handle position. Last, the tail gate. Check. Oh, also the fuel cap and spare tire.

It turns out that not only are there imaginary girlfriends, but the hot subject is how to dump them. On the other hand, imaginary boyfriend info is more likely to be about creating one, changing one, or using one. I guess the primeval urge to change a man extends to the imagination. Same with forgoing the pre-nup. Girls, girls.

Last year we had 36 inches of snow. Yesterday we had 14. In either case, I need a plow. My truck's belly pan sits about 15 inches off the ground, but when you get snow gunk underneath it, it drags about six inches, leaving a large snail trail on the ground.

Another intriguing Wednesday night of High Glitz.

I am now acquainted with the sport's self-proclaimed best pageant dad. Whoops, he was actually granted the title of Best Pageant Dad. And he got a trophy for Best Legs. Why would anyone see his legs at a little girls' dress up party? Creepy. He's looks like an accountant wearing a hot pink shirt to match his daughter's dress.

His daughter has the smallest flipper ever made. She was 2 1/2 when it was done. And, he's told her that he'd give her a hundred dollars if she smiled real big. Or was that the other dad? We used to get paid for A's. In fact, my high school friend Michelle got a car with a bumper sticker on it: "It Pays To Get A's."

Another little girl is from the farm, just like many of the little girls. She has her very own pink 22. She shot a turtle once. She said it was cute. It was bleeding, she added. Mom said she'd never tell her husband how much she spent on the latest dress. Did you see how many guns he has?, she whispered.

One girl's name is Cealy (as in See-Lee). Her best friend's name is Salee (as in Say-Lee). We ain't in New England. How do their parents tell them apart? Cealy's mom tells her she has to make big faces, like Salee. Big, fake faces, she adds.  She's the mom with the iron fist in the velvet glove. The teaser for tonight's episode is her monologue:

Do I think what I do is wrong? No
Do people think this is wrong? Probably
Do I care? No. (This is the Southern two syllable no-o).

The words of the day: sparkle (as in "sparkle, honey"), and sassy (as in attitude, usually taught by grandmothers called NiNi or Meemaw).



Pageant organizer, sotto voce: At the end of the day, 53 girls will go home with crowns. That's almost half of them. Happy, she adds.

Six year old arrives in a Hummer stretch, "because she's such a little princess, we want her to feel that way." This is the lady with the guns.

In order to watch this stuff, my DVR gets the end of My Strange Addiction. One lady eats toilet paper. The other one sleeps with her hair dryer. On.

Dear Oprah,

Make it stop snowing. I know you can.

According to your bud Maya,







Nature has no mercy at all.  Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I'am going to snow anyway."







Out here we have snowshoes and no bikinis. I wonder what nature says in the summer.

I bet Oprah wouldn't wear a bikini. She would make it snow.

I used to loooooove to dance. I was in college during disco fever. As I attended an Ivy League school, and frequented fraternity keggers (drinking age was 18 back then), we discoed without the white polyester suits. I had the best regular partner. He was tall and funny and great with the pretzel. He would spin me round like crazy and we would literally clear the dance floor. He grew up and became a dentist. I would have married him but I met my Navy SEAL. As it turned out, bad choice.

XM is new to me. My son has it in his car and when I borrowed it I tuned the radio to '80s on 8. I graduated college in '82, and partied like mad after that in the city. It seemed like the right station, and they didn't call it "oldies" or "adult." Thank you very much. I pretty much knew all the lyrics. Then I found '70s on 7.

My life passed before my eyes. Rock The Boat, streaking at science camp. YMCA, dancing in college (and forever more, it seems, as everybody knows how to make those four letters with their bodies). Cat Stevens, bonfire with first crush. Rock The Casbah, with my underage sister in bars. Blondie (on 8-track), driving around with the top down, trolling for guys. And, now I can't even remember what song it was, dancing with my disco king. It just popped into my head that we danced so hard that sweat flew off of us with every turn. He was Big Sweaty Guy.

I told my trainer the story today. BSG. He likes that. Great for those bizarre middle-aged guys who stay in one place, lifting the same weights, for hours. You know, I'm a BSG, female variety, but I do move around thanks to Ron The Hun.

My Imaginary Boyfriend is not a BSG. Too bad. I like it hot and sweaty.

I read in a magazine today an essay on how many men is too many. The interviewees' "numbers" ranged from 0 to 100. The zero girl is one of those promise people. The 100 is a sex educator.  The others were 6, 20 and 30.  20 said that she didn't care what his number is as long as it wasn't too low. She'd be "turned off by his inexperience." 6 said she's secretly more attracted to women, but thinks her number is low. 30 is a slut. She keeps a database of the guys and their prowess. Her blog made her a public whore.

I lost my virginity at 18. I don't think I'm a whore, but let's tally it up:

• First boyfriend, the very end of freshman year of college
• Winter Dartmouth guy, had a fur on his bed, only once
• Second boyfriend at second college
• Drummer at favorite nightclub
• Graduate school boyfriend
• Guy I cheated with at graduate school
• Holder of Pike fire hose (see Mary Mary) after running into him on Columbus Avenue (rumors true)
• Second guy I cheated on with graduate school boyfriend, although we were sort of breaking up
• Best friend
• Guy who had crush on me in college, but only got together with in the city, once and it was pretty good (I'm not sure why it didn't continue)
• Working boyfriend
• Moroccan guy from Nell's, last time I ever did coke
• Husband
• Professor, lasted too long
• Guy I met on Craig's List looking for affair, once, not good chemistry
• Guy I met on Match, turned out to be crazy son of a bitch
• Celibate, eight years

And, I had hoped, my almost-real imaginary boyfriend. Without him, that makes, let me see, 16. Wow, that's neither high nor low from what I can tell, and probably a little low for my age. Oh dear, average. Not what I aspire to be. Since it can't be less, I suppose I need to get busy.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.  I travel for travel's sake.  The great affair is to move.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Why the hell can't I just get out of here already?

I am Mrs. Magoo. I can't see without my glasses and I regularly bump into things or fall, or both. I smacked my jaw on something in the attic, but I don't know what or when. I just know that I'm scraped up. Last night, I ran into a floor lamp and hit myself so hard that my glasses cut the side of my nose. This is not unusual. I am habitually covered in bruises.

I had the mother of all accidents my first time with my trainer. He had me doing plyo jumps onto a box. This box is the kind with legs on it, flat metal black legs. I had asked to have a trainer to beat the shit out of me and he could make me cry as long as I was safe (The Biggest Loser influence, I think). Bring it on. Anyhow, I bent my knees and jumped as high as a could, which apparently wasn't anywhere near high enough. I took a huge chunk of my shin off.  Now, of course, I had my game face on, plus I have a pretty high tolerance for pain to begin with.  I kept on going. Ron The Hun looked at it for awhile and then asked if I have any problem with alcohol (martini? g&t? a nice red?). No, I said, and he wiped it down with an alcohol wipe.  Honestly, I didn't even feel it.  We went back to work.  Large droplets of blood kept on splashing down on the floor.  I guess we ought to put a Band-Aid on it, he said. And we did. And we kept on going.

After a few sessions, it became clear that I required triangular orange hazard signs. Once he had to get out of my way so fast that he put a major bruise on his knee. And to top it all off, as I was walking to my car, he was going the other way, said goodbye, and I went flying across the sidewalk, flinging gym gear into the drainage pond. I still can't find my lock. And speaking of locks, I have had three cut off my locker to date. No, I didn't forget the combinations.

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money.  Then take half the clothes and twice the money.  ~Susan Heller


Well, I'll take all the clothes, and then some. After the  19 degree trip on Sunday, I realized that weather could be a real issue.  As Woody is eight-passenger, I have plenty of room to emulate the Clampets (Ellie Mae, if you please). So, I packed lots of contingency stuff:

• Leather waterproof boots, brown, Irish
• Wellies, pea green, with broken buckle
• Gore Tex anorak, school bus yellow; did my first 14er in it (Long's Peak)
• Rain pants, black Patagonia, thought I would use them but never did
• Rain jacket, slate blue, ditto
• Snow pants, too big, black
• Gore Tex gloves, red, cheap, dirty
• Quilted gloves, bright blue with green piping, Land's End, but hey they work great
• Clogs, denim blue, good for 1 1/2 puddles
• Parka, black, down, still has squished box of blister pads from Killi
• Quilted jacket, bright blue, goes with gloves
• Hat, wool, artsy, from Longwood Gardens
• Scarf, matching, ditto
• Gloves, matching, ditto
• Long quilted coat, brown, Patagonia
• Driving gloves, really old, need to be stretched out
• Miscellaneous gloves, forgotten in pockets

I do. I have always been a natural blonde. Like almost all towheads, as I got older, my hair got darker.  My mother called it dishwater blonde. There are about ten adults in the world, probably on some scenic Scandanavian island, that still have that white-blonde hair.

When I ran away from home for the first time, I colored my hair whiter than white, Debbie Harry white (I'm dating myself here), in the same way that many women cut their hair after a romance has ended. I eventually went back to dishwater.

Then I had chemo. A word about my cancer: it was the bad kind, the really bad kind. I have not seized the day, I am not treasuring each day. I am just myself, just as I've always been, which is really pretty good. Chemo did have its drawbacks, though.  Of course I lost my hair. Everyone said it would come back curly, but it did not.  It came back dark, very dark.

I thought I would just live with it, see what it was like, get used to it. I really, really tried. I just couldn't. I didn't feel like me. So out came the bottle. It was just horrible. We couldn't get it back to blonde.  God bless my colorist, she tried and tried and tried. Nothing. And then one day, it worked! I was a blonde again.

I plan to be on the road for over a month, and that means that I'll need to have someone else color it. As any woman will tell you, using a different stylist is the most stressful thing you can do.  I'm afraid my hair will come out orange.  However, I am armed with my formula:

Aveda Twilight 40 vol
Tone with Redkin 102 8n 1 oz and 1 oz clear

If you care.

A most exciting day.  Took Woody for a 3 hour drive. He sounds kinda sick, though, with a tick-tick-tick that shouldn't be there. The transmission is great, three on the tree.  I, however, am feeling rather Nanook of the North-ish.

It is 19 degrees out, and the hood vent is stuck open.  That means I'm taking 10 degrees or so of 55 mile per hour wind directly into my lap. Woody does have a heater (an option on the wagon), and I turned it on so that the little light shows up in the Bakelite knob.  I don't know if it worked, because I was fucking freezing from the wind. I had the parka I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in (quite warm), a fleece hat, Goretex boots, and huge quilted gloves on. About a half hour in, I found that the faded green towel I keep for emergencies makes an acceptable lap robe.

My iPad XM is nowhere near loud enough. Must get boom box. No music, no road trip. I do look rather funny with my GPS suction-cupped to my windshield, and Trader Joe's recycled grocery bag at my side.

Several times, the tailgate flipped open. Fortunately I didn't have my picnic basket back there. You really have to put some body english on it to get the latches all the way closed.  Did that, but the problem recurred. Put that on the fine tuning list. The speedometer and gas gauge seem to be moving, so they're probably okay.

I stopped at a Royal Farms (Cecil County, Maryland's 7-11) for a Krispy Kreme. I am mad about the glazed sugar pillows.  You can't get 'em in Pennsylvania anymore.  They had a grand opening when the company went public, and the lines were around the block, people camping out like for tickets to the Super Bowl. Immediately thereafter, Krispy Kreme went bankrupt. That'll teach them to butt into the Philly donut scene. So, I am at the mercy of the delivery route in other states.

Woody tends to be a bit of a diva when around strangers. Cecil County is especially renowned for hunters with missing and/or really bad teeth. Worse than Austin Powers. By a lot. An enthusiastic local asked to take photos.  Of course. Woody loves it. My name is Chris, he said. Okay. Can I take a picture of the dashboard? Of course. I have to show this to my uncle. So far, so good. Is it a Pontiac? Uh, no.  The "Ford" on the wheels and the grill might cue you in (I thought, not said).

Women tend to be somewhat hostile toward Woody. Surprised the heck out of me. Perhaps they think their boyfriends will run away with him. They're probably right. I watched a bundled up, rotten-toothed girl smoking and leaning against the wall, propped up with one bended knee. Her eyes slitted eyes conveyed a mixture of skepticism and just plain hatred. Hmmm. Better keep this in mind on our trip.  Men only.

We did have a really nice encounter. A hunter's truck followed us for about half an hour. I thought nothing of it, as the road only has one lane each way. From time to time, I pull into a parking lot just to check stuff. He pulled up behind me. Out stepped the sweetest old man, still hunting, I gathered from his fleece and camouflage jacket. Maybe the guns were a clue.

He strolled over, hearing aids blazing, and admired our dear Woody.  He talked about the Model A truck his father had him drive, how the accelerator always got stuck, and he always got a tongue-lashing. He noted the knobs, caressed the wood, remarked on the heft of the steering wheel. What speed is it comfortable at? I told him that I run with the traffic, and 65 is just fine. He raised his eyebrows. Really, I said, I've been up to 80 (true).

I hope to have many more of these encounters. When I go to a strange place, I'm hoping the strangers will help me find all the strange attractions, strange hash houses and strange matriarchs. And they will all be good.

Four-way stops are a nightmare.  Woody has no turn signals, so I have to stick my arm out either straight (left) or bent (right). There are lots of cyclists around here, so I assumed this actually means something to other drivers. Waited my turn to cross on the stop intersection and put my arm out to turn left. Soccer mom careened straight toward me and mouthed "you had no turn signal on" and shrugged. Uh, yeah. I'm driving a 69 year-old car with no power brakes. It's not a Prius.

The trip was uneventful until I was literally five minutes from my destination. I reached down to turn the little handle to open the triangular window at the front of my door. It came out in my hand. It's really not a big problem to fix, but it's the first non-original piece that will go back on. Makes me sad.

I had to wait a few minutes for the chain across the driveway to come down, and I stopped the car. I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn't start it again. My friend helped me push it in, but we couldn't make it over the lip of the road.  Woody is heavy! I thought of the sputtering I had in the last half-mile, and wondered if it could be fuel. Yup, none.  This is genetic. My father always runs out of gas in his old cars. Not my fault.

In the garage, we did a quick check. I wonder if it has a valve, he asked? I don't know, I said. I didn't say that I had no idea what valve he was talking about. Look! Here it is. Now you should have heat. The duct from the engine block had been shut. Maybe I won't have to buy those insulated Carthart coveralls after all. Or maybe I should, just in case.

And here I am, finishing my packing, watching the playoffs, and praying for good weather. And, combing the impossible tangles out of my hair.

Let the adventure begin, Brad!  Please hurry home.