Eau de Strep

The Dynamite offspring have enjoyed their fair share of pestilence this winter, so much so that our local pediatricians can literally smell us coming.

"I suspect she has strep again," I say to the doctor, based solely upon the fact that my daughter woke me up repeatedly the night before, clutching her neck and straining through her tears to whisper, "My...throat..."

In response to my amateur diagnosis, the doctor said without any hesitation, "Yeah. I can smell it."

She could smell it. She could smell the strep.

What else could this woman smell? I wondered, fearful and somewhat embarrassed. Coffee breath? Wet dog? Old perfume with hints of sandalwood and jasmine?

I shuddered to think.

"Um, you can smell strep throat?" I asked, half-smiling at the notion and half-wondering if my daughter would have to endure the intrusion of a throat culture after all.

The doctor smiled back at me and nodded. "Yes," she said. "There's a distinct smell."

There's a distinct smell.

Am I the only one who never knew this?

The Discomfiting Casserole

I made my first casserole last night and, well, suffice it to say, Sandra Lee would be proud.

I, on the other hand, feel ashamed...like I've crossed a culinary line and slid head first into a Pandora's vat of noodles, creamy soups, crumbled Ritz crackers, and melted cheese.


I am dirty with cheese. Or cheese product, as the case may be.

The whole notion of casseroles as comfort food doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, when someone dies, loses a job, gets sick, or experiences some unfortunate circumstance, we come a'running with the cheese. I'm so sorry, we say with our Pyrex dishes gurgling with saturated fat laden carbohydrates. Just eat this. It'll be alright.

Until the palpitations start.

Think about it. Do mac & cheesy, tuna noodly, cream of mushroom soupy trays of glop topped with cheese really make us feel better in our times of need? Or do the rocks they leave in our stomachs simply distract us from emotional pain?

I suppose it's easier to cry about indigestion, constipation, and cardiac arrest than it is to confront loss, sickness, poverty, death and all our real fears - (Pandemics! Environmental toxins! Global warming! Nuclear weapons! People who pronounce nuclear with three syllables! Aaaagh!)

You know what I fear even more? The dawn of a new casserole era.

But Hope Is Alive

Thank God for Barack Obama, because besides fixing the economy, healing the sick, stopping global warming, and establishing world peace all on January 21st (which he will), I am counting on him to FIND MY HEAD. Because it's gone.


If only it were in Australia with the rest of Marat Safin's body...but alas.

I'm here in Connecticut buried in snow and dog hair. (I carry my vision & hearing impaired dog around these days. Have I mentioned this? She's SIXTY POUNDS. But after her terrible fall down the stairs on Christmas night, a fall punctuated by a most horrible, soul-piercing yelp - Ho Ho! - I carry her. Upstairs and downstairs. Outside and inside. I carry her everywhere and anywhere she might need to go.)

I found a mouse in my bedroom. Actually, my cat found the mouse, and I woke up one night to find the cat fumbling at something that turned out to be a mouse. In my bedroom. Unfortunately for me, I had just finished reading The Tale of Despereaux to my son and could only see the mouse as a Noble, Valiant Creature. (I know! Where is my head?!) It took a few hours, but I managed to capture the beady-eyed rodent inside a green felt Leprechaun hat I had lying around my bedroom (Yeah, I know). With mouse in hat, I sashayed coatless across my snow-covered backyard before releasing it into the wild. I might even have uttered a soft, "Be safe, little mouse."

Everyone around me is falling down. They faint in locker room showers, slip on black ice, or trip over their shoes. Luckily, they all manage to land on their feet, as fate would have it, but everyone else (and by everyone else I mean ME) ends up feeling dazed and bruised. Ouch.

"Remember Dr. Atkins," my mother is known to repeat, recalling the renowned diet doctor who slipped on black ice and, despite his healthy-sized frame, died of head trauma. How could I not remember Dr. Atkins?

And that is why I refuse to rush. In theory, of course. In actuality, I rush from dawn to dusk. I rush over black ice in heels and despite my two left feet. I rush my blind and deaf and feeble dog out the door each morning as I rush my kids to the bus stop and myself to work - and especially, of course, on days with BEFORE SCHOOL ACTIVITIES (the bane of my existence - well, along with sanctimommies).

I don't have time for either.

But regardless, I navigate through both, all the while wishing I could simply Hit and Run.

That's how my friend Lisa talks about the game of tennis: hitting and running. Running and hitting. You run around, and you hit. The more running and hitting, the less rushing around and losing your head.

It's that simple.

Isn't it, Barack? Isn't it that simple?

Marat? What do think?

[The following to be read with a Russian accent]

"I'm not fighting with myself. Oh, my God. That's how I am. You know, the story of the hippo? The hippo comes to the monkey and said, listen, I'm not a hippo. So, he paint himself like a zebra. He said but he's still a hippo. He said but look at you, you're painted like a zebra but you are a hippo. So then he goes, you know, like I want be a little parrot. So, he put the colours on him and he comes to the monkey and said but, sorry, you are a hippo. So, in the end, you know, he comes and said I'm happy to be a hippo. This is who I am. So, I have to be who I am and he's happy being a hippo." After 1st round defeat to Kiefer, Toronto Master Series 2004

Um, OK then.

Barack? I need you, man.

The Lure of Freedom

"So Ruth, do you like vacations?"

It was 10AM on a Sunday and the beginning of a very long "90-minute" presentation about an "exclusive club membership" at a place called InnSeason Resorts (to be referred henceforth as NEVER InnSeason Resorts.

I don't even know where to begin.

I could lambaste my dear husband for falling for the "You Won Four Free Round-trip Airline Tickets!!!" line he heard from the person who called one evening around dinner time. Or I could wag my finger at every person who's ever told us about their "fun free vacations" just for sitting through a short presentation about timeshares.

They always made it sound so easy. All they had to do was endure some hard-sell spiel about the beauty of timeshares and - voila! - freedom was theirs in the form of free meals, free rooms, and free time away from home.

With the promised "Four Free Round-trip Airline Tickets!!!" and a free night in a "resort" in exchange for sitting through a 90-minute timeshare presentation, the Dynamite family could take a pretty nice vacation this summer, my husband thought. And then there were the other "Free Gifts!!!" that included a $150 gas voucher, two food vouchers ($20 and $50), and a free night's stay at the NEVER InnSeason Resorts "Harborwalk" location in lovely, scenic Falmouth, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.

So what if it was January?

With the kids safely sequestered at my in-laws and visions of our smiling kids at Sea World dancing in our heads, my husband and I hit the road. For about three hours, buoyed by our own imaginings of what was to come, we drove and laughed and enjoyed being together. For the first time in a long time, it was just the two of us in a car. And we were unfettered. Happy. Frisky, even.

Then, of course, we arrived at our "resort."

Envision, if you will, a dilapidated raised ranch-style motel next to several decrepit buildings overlooking a ferry dock. Now imagine that this abandoned dump of a motel had new siding and freshly painted doors and a shiny new sign out front that read NEVER InnSeason Resorts.

Then, imagine receiving the key to your "free room" at NEVER InnSeason Resorts and discovering that your room was located IN THE DECREPIT, SEEMINGLY ABANDONED BUILDING NEXT TO THE DILAPIDATED RAISED RANCH-STYLE MOTEL WITH THE NEW SIDING.

Suffice it to say, NEVER InnSeason Resorts left a lasting first impression with its complimentary rust-stained refrigerator, mold-stained tile grout, visibly separating carpet seams, and paper thin walls through which my husband and I learned far too much about the guests upstairs.

"You'll be the good cop," I explained to my husband at dinner the night before our scheduled presentation, "and I'll be the bad cop." I figured that we'd manhandle our conversation with the timeshare salesman the next day and have a little fun at the same time. Then, with our dignity and Four Free Round-trip Airline Tickets!!! safely in hand, we'd grab some lunch and toast ourselves for being so smart.

But then, at our appointed time the next morning, we met Gary.

Oh that Gary. He was so charming and professional that I almost didn't notice when he led us into a big sunny room flooded with tables and gushing salespeople and photographs of glamorous resorts on the walls. He threw out the bait, that Gary, and I just gobbled up the chum.

For three hours all I could think about was, "Yes, Gary, I love vacations!" and "My family deserves vacations, Gary!" and "Let me get my wallet, Gary."

The numbers were all over the board, starting at something like $35,000 for a total investment PLUS large annual fees PLUS other fees for this and that. The final "package" was dramatically cheaper at $12,000 with $550 annual fees and bla bla bla other fees I didn't care to hear more about. I just wanted to look into Gary's eyes and dream for awhile.

My hypnotic trance was broken only by the sound of my husband's irritated voice.

"Look, Gary. The answer is NO and we're NOT going to do ANYTHING today and I HOPE you can RESPECT that." Forget good cop/bad cop. Think: mad cop.

My husband was visibly shaking when we left, so I thought it best not to share with him all the details of our "free gifts" as described in the package Gary handed me when we left. (At the time I think I was purring something to him like, "Oh Gary, sweet Gary, I'm sure we'll be kicking ourselves for this for the rest of our lives.")

Kicking ourselves for believing for even a second that we'd receive the promised gifts was more like it once we got back on the road.

The Four Free Round-Trip Airline Tickets? You have to reserve two at a time through a designated travel agency but only WHEN you book your vacation stay AT A DESIGNATED "RESORT" (read: CRAP) and PAY THE NON-DISCOUNTED DAILY RATE ($$$) for a MINIMUM STAY (7+ days). Soooo...four Dynamites could theoretically fly "free" from Connecticut to California if they reserved two (2) CRAP hotel rooms at about $300 each per night for seven (7) days minimum. For the math-challenged, that equates to $4,200 PLUS tax and extra hotel charges for the week - not to mention things like FISH TACOS, MARGARITAS, and TICKETS TO SEA WORLD.

We'd get a $50 meal voucher though, provided we reserved the airline tickets and CRAP hotel rooms with the designated travel agency and forwarded copies of our last five tax statements and medical histories (with lab work) to some address in Guam.

We could take our time redeeming the $150 gas voucher, provided we send receipts totaling at least $100 each month at the SAME gas station that we have PRE-REGISTERED with the gas voucher company and then they will send us $25 per month. Theoretically.

"Tell me, Ruth, do you get enough time away to do the things you like to do?"

"Do you spend enough time with your loved ones?"

"If you learned that you only had six months to live, what would you do? You'd go on vacation, right?"

Curse you, Gary, you beguiling trickster.

Should Karma land you squarely in one of Never InnSeason Resorts CRAP hotel rooms FREE for all eternity and you are forced to look into one of the tarnished mirrors on the wall, I bid you ask yourself just one question: So Gary, do you like vacations?