“The Bareback Millionaires!!”

“Um, no, Dad. The Barenaked Ladies.”

“Whatever. I like these guys.”

J very correctly pointed out that I should have put a few pictures up with the kayaking post I wrote yesterday, especially since I spent a good deal of my time out on the water taking pictures of, like, the same thing over and over again. The sun coming up, for instance. Which happens, you know, every day.

Anyway, here are a few…

This morning we got up at 6 a.m. to go kayaking. If you know me well, you know I hate this sort of thing generally. I hate being forced to get up early to go on some sort of trip or adventure. The worst is getting up for an early flight, or road trip – although driving isn’t so bad once you’ve got some caffeine in your system and the morning news on the radio.

But similarly, I don’t like getting up early for, you know, any activity really. The crazy thing is, it’s not the getting up early part. No, really. I like getting up early. I like getting ready for the day slowly. I like reading the paper, maybe, and having a good breakfast. I even like going for early morning runs or trips to the gym, where I’m in charge and can take my time. I like the sense of accomplishment, and on the flipside, I don’t like waking up too late and feeling I’ve wasted my day.

So – getting up early – that’s not the problem. It’s getting up early and having something to do immediately, something that someone else is generally dictating. Something that requires you WAKE UP big time and participate before the sun has risen. Like, oh, I don’t know, going to look for eagles.

So when J suggested this kayaking trip last night – a sunrise kayaking trip – my first response, naturally, was not unbridled enthusiasm. But he was really excited about it, I hadn’t had a chance to go out for a real kayaking trip yet, and I figured I could handle it. I mean, we’re living here in this beautiful place for free, - working, but not on anybody’s schedule, really. I mean, I can’t complain about anything so I decided I might as well do something I normally would say no to. It would be good for me, and also, we would be coming right back home where if I wanted to, I could get right back into bed. Not that I would, but it was a comforting thought.

When J gently woke me up this morning, out of a very, very deep sleep, I thought only briefly about going back on my promise. It was completely dark outside although he swore the sun was about to come up. He was also making coffee and told me you could see Jupiter shining brightly in the sky only at this time of day, right before sunrise. The combination of these things forced me out of bed and into some comfortable clothes that I deemed fit for kayaking.

As we waited for the sun to fully light up the sky, thus prompting the beginning of our adventure, the dogs ran around outside nearly breaking my heart as they had these ridiculously exuberant looks on their faces, tails wagging, positive we were all going to do something fun together. I explained to them that we’d go swimming when we returned (we didn’t), put them inside, shut the door and watched the disbelief register on their faces as J and I headed down to the beach.

I’ve kayaked before plenty of times. I’ve kayaked in the ocean with my brother in Maine. I’ve kayaked on rivers on various outdoors trips and I’ve kayaked in the Chesapeake with J before, too, during a family day my mom hosted at the house for her coworkers, so I knew what I was doing. It’s not hard, especially in the early morning calm Bay waters. But because I can’t help myself, I got spooked a few times. It’s the early morning thing again. No one’s out. No one’s there to help you when you fall. Or die, or whatever.

Because I’ve read almost nothing but mystery novels for the past two years, I cleaned up a few things in the house before we left. I’d taken off my bra the night before while snuggled in a blanket watching TV because I figured, hey, I’d be way more comfortable with my bra off! And I’d left it casually sitting on a chair in the living room. That wouldn’t do, I knew, because if I was found dead in some “boating accident” and a particularly resourceful inspector thought there was something funny about my case and proceeded to prove there’d been foul play, he or she would naturally search the house, find my bra and assume sexual intrigue where there wasn’t any. That sort of thing.

I frowned at the fairly terrifying mist rising off the water. I thought J had exclaimed “there’s a bear!” when he pointed out a beer can sitting on the pier. I asked what I should do if I saw a shark.

But after we’d paddled out a ways, headed north and staying close to shore, I started to relax. Great Blue Herons – by far my favorite creature to behold out in these parts – flew from tree to tree as the sun crept higher and higher over the horizon.

We turned in at Jack’s Creek, a small inlet surrounded by reeds, trees and just a few houses that J and Max had discovered on an earlier trip. He set to work scanning the trees with his binoculars, spending a great deal of time watching a sandpiper or something like that and I took off my shoes, let my feet drift in the water and laid back in my kayak for a while. The water was so calm I was barely moving. I watched the birds overheard, squinted and looked at the sun, brightly poking through tree limbs and then turned my head to the side and looked out at the vast expanse of water…the slight ripples my paddle made when it brushed against the water. The reflection of the pink and blue sky.

I know this is going to sound totally insane, but it made me feel a little sad. This amazingly peaceful moment was the first time I’d felt – maybe ever – really close to this body of water, the land around it and the animals and plants that make their home here.

I only started spending time at the Bay a few years ago and by no means has my family ever been really into living on, and learning about, the water. I mean, we all love it – who doesn’t love looking out on the water? – but our presence here is recent. With J’s help we’re just getting into the kayaking thing and hopefully we’ll do even more in the future. More boating. More exploring.

I wasn’t sad about any of that though. I was sad because…and honestly, I can’t even believe how immature and simplistic this is going to sound…but I was sad because of pollution. I’m going to look even worse now, but the Bay…the Bay is polluted right? I mean, I know it was growing up and I think that things have gotten better over the years, but I know perfectly well there are problems. And maybe for the first time ever I saw how beautiful the Bay is, I mean, it was so remarkably beautiful out there this morning, and all of a sudden I felt depressed about it, and then I started thinking about other environmental concerns, and once that starts, well, there’s no stopping.

I did, though, I did stop. I knew there was no use being on a sunrise kayak ride with my husband and getting upset about humanity’s wrongdoings against Mother Earth. I decided, instead, to enjoy it the Bay as it is, because it’s still great, and even more importantly to find some worthwhile groups that are making a change for the better and maybe donate my money or time to their cause.

The thing about kayaks is that you’re really close to everything. You’re close to the water below you which is, in fact, in the boat with you and seeping into your socks and your underwear, and if you paddle into shore you’re close to the reeds and bushes and trees and everything that lives in this habitat, and you’re just there really a part of it all, gliding soundlessly around taking note. Maybe that’s what made me feel so suddenly attached to this place, and I’m looking forward to more of that, yes, even very very early in the morning.

Yesterday, after finishing some work, I decided to go to the Annapolis Mall. I needed to do a little shopping, but, equally, needed to get out of the house for a while. I needed human contact. Human contact with strangers, if that makes any sense.

I wasn’t too interested in malls when I was teenager. I was, you know, “different” and (trying to be) “one-of-a-kind.” Which is really funny, because I’m pretty sure my friends and I, and like 50 gazillion other teenagers, were all going for the same thing. Who wanted to hang at the mall? Nobody. Of course, I got over that self-imposed boycott of a place that’s really, for what it is, great. Lots of stores under one roof. People watching. A safe haven where, if you know you MUST buy a dress to wear to a wedding that very weekend, which I needed to do, you totally can.

And yesterday was one of those perfect mall experiences. I got what I needed and then some. Passing a Verizon Cellular kiosk while strolling the wide expanse of retail, I stopped to inquire about purchasing a new charger for my phone, and learned that I was due for an upgrade. An upgrade to a new phone! Due to my propensity for dropping my phone in the toilet, and having the same model for what seemed like forever, this was wonderful news, and after chatting away happily with the salesgirl about my contract and my mail-in rebate, I left carrying this new, sleek Motorola something-or-other that plays, like, a samba for a ring tone.

While playing with my new favorite purchase I noticed this store called Hollister. And, I mean, I’m not totally a grandma, I know what Hollister is, I’ve seen it during other mall jaunts, but I’ve never gone in because, you see, I know I’m too old for Hollister. From what I understand, Hollister is for teenagers and college students. I know that’s not a law or anything, don’t get me wrong, it’s just my personal opinion. I very clearly remember the day, years ago, when I decided I was really too old, not only to shop at, but even to enter the store Abercrombie & Fitch. It had taken me so long to get there, too, seeing that I’d worked to be so “thrift shop” in high school. I finally grew up, and started getting my eyebrows done, and realized I wanted to look cute and wear tank tops with my bra straps showing. Stuff like that.

I was never a major Abercrombie & Fitch player, mind you. I never really pulled off that I-just-made-out-with-my-boyfriend-in-a-field-while-wearing-this-crisp-buttondown-and-jeans-and-minimal-makeup look. But there was a time where I basically got it - I got why people liked to wear those clothes and I sometimes tried to be one of them - even if I never fully immersed myself in the culture, if you will.

So yesterday, when I saw Hollister, which for all intensive purposes is pretty much the same store as Abercrombie and Fitch I think, with a more prominent surfing theme, I decided I had to go in. It was almost like a dare to myself, because, I’ll admit it. I was a little scared. I didn’t even want to go in and shop - I just wanted to see what was going on - but I was still nervous someone would call me out for a) being in there under false pretenses and b) being too old.

I didn’t need to worry about either because, first of all, everyone was too busy shopping or stacking up piles of brightly-colored t-shirts on the heavy wooden tables placed throughout the store to notice me. Also, I look pretty young, which worked for this undercover mission (and believe me, I know I’ve only got a couple more years where I can admit that I look pretty young without sounding like a total asshole).

So I wandered the stacks of clothes and listened to the loud pop music and stole furtive glances at my fellow shoppers and what really amazed me was how similar everything was to when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I know that sounds crazy - how could things be the same? - but it’s true. The clothes were similar - strappy shirts and low-cut jeans and hoodies and t-shirts with make-believe events and colleges and Hawaiian themes etched across the front. The music, while obviously not the very same music, was reminiscent of the alternative pop hits I once publicly hated but secretly liked - boys singing in melodramatic voices about love gone wrong. And skateboarding.

And as I walked around in this store, where I felt I somehow didn’t belong, I felt so, I don’t know, cozy - and good. Yes - good! As though - even know I’d never been a slave to this kind of fashion, I had entered some realm of all encompassing memories. I mean, who did these people think they were? There was a web cam in the back of the store showing live footage of some California beach popular for surfing even though…we were in Annapolis. But that’s the charm. The escapism. The clothes your mother probably thinks are too expensive to cover so little skin. The people, who, just like you, want to look good, and kind of maybe want to look a little bit like everyone else. I swear to you, I got a little emotional taking it all in, thinking about a time in my life gone by and I think the reason I felt that way - so happily nostalgic - and maybe the reason I feel like I’m too old to go in those stores, is that I’m really and truly old enough now to know that it’s all very certainly part of my past, and I can’t return exactly, except as a visitor.

I know that people think it’s real, real cute when dogs make faces like this:

But the thing is, when you spend all day with the dogs, and the dog in question is making that face because there was a miscommunication, and she thought that when you very clearly said in a very loud voice, “Get the HELL out of here I am trying to work,” what you meant was, “Do you want to go swimming?!” and therefore proceeded to cock her head and then prance around from foot to foot like an overweight ballerina, and then twirl around in circle, followed by a flagrant display of French kissing with the Labradoodle just because of the sheer joy of the potential situation, and, of course, the grand finale of grabbing a stuffed dog toy and throwing it into the air before breaking into a chorus of high-pitched, excited whining, well then, actually, it’s really not that cute at all.

And now, an update on our complex emotional and professional lives.

Ok, ok, I’ll admit it. Mostly what we’re doing is playing this game Apples to Apples, every chance we get.

My mom introduced me to the game after she’d played it at a “fun day” in her office. The rules, as with any game, are kind of hard to explain if you’re not actually playing, but basically, everyone gets a bunch of red cards that list people, places, events, etc. The judge - a new player every round - picks a green, descriptive card which features an adjective - “melodramatic,” for instance, or “cheesy” or “scary.” The players then each throw in a red card that they feel best fits that description.

The point of the game, of course, is to figure out what that particular judge will find the funniest, or most ironic, or truest, or whatever. And it doesn’t always make sense. You just have to get it, you know? So, like, when we were playing a couple weeks ago, and Max was the judge, and the green card word was “arrogant” and Jennifer put down “Helen Keller,” she won. Because that, you see, is very funny.

And, honestly, if this September hasn’t yet been remarkably productive in terms of…I don’t know…becoming a totally famous writer and all…well, it has been a great time to hang out with our friends and try new things, like Apples to Apples, our new favorite game, and kayaking around the Bay, our new favorite water sport. Ok. The only type of water activity we’ve ever attempted out here, fine. But the point is, we’re branching out.

I’m sure those of you who find J’s birdwatching habit as, um, charming as I do are curious to find out if he’s spotted any new species since we’ve been living here in southern Maryland. Any, you know, California Condors or Snowy Owls or anything. And the answer is no, not exactly, although he did see some little songbird that had him jumping all over the place with the binoculars this morning, and then declared that it flew away too fast for him to “positively ID it,” whatever that means.

For people like me, though, those of us on a level way below even “amateur birder,” there’s plenty to look at - the stuff that’s always been here - like seagulls, and osprey and, my favorite, the statuesque Great Blue Herons that land on the pier and just sit there forever, so peacefully.

And then just as you’re really getting into the beauty of the Chesapeake, the dogs come gallumphing up to you, smelling awful because they’ve found some dead fish to roll around in. Which is completely disgusting, but mostly pretty funny. And giving them a bath, sure, it’s not like winning the Pulitzer or anything, but it’s something that really needs to be done under the circumstances, and thus, whether choosing perfect adjective-noun pairings while playing board games or dealing with nature, every day is a new challenge.

“Oh my God, Fred? Yellow clogs and a striped pink shirt?”

“The president wears clogs.”

“How do you know that?”

“He was on TV! He had on socks and clogs with the presidential seal on the side! TOTAL asshole!”

A while back I decided to get with the program - advance into the modern age, so to speak - and create my very own website for my blossoming freelance writing business.

You know people nowadays, they love the internet, and I thought it would be nice if, instead of photocopying my articles over and over again at Staples and sending them off to various editors to show them just how brilliant I am I’d show them that I’m actually really brilliant by sending them a neat little link to a personal webpage highlighting some of my professional writing, as well as unpublished pieces.

Here’s the thing though, I’m not brilliant, at least not when it comes to things like creating a webpage from scratch. I mean, I love the web and all, don’t get me wrong, but the only reason I’m able to write on this blog on a regular basis is because my wonderful friend Mike took the time and energy to help me make it (and by the way, I’m pretty sure “make it” isn’t the correct lingo for such a complicated process, but whatever) and the good people at WordPress make such easy-to-use blogging programs. Or software. Something like that.

Anyway, I decided to enlist some help as that seemed the only reasonable thing to do and hired my friends Nick and Cory, who actually are brilliant when it comes to doing things like making a webpage, to help me out.

And - ta dah - they did it!

My very own personal, professional webpage, that is bound to bring me fame and fortune.

Or, at the very least, it makes me feel totally awesome.

In future weeks I hope to learn some Very Important Things like how to update this webpage and how to use it to my advantage to get a million dollar book deal and all that, but for now, I’m just very happy to show this initial version off.

And, as always, very grateful to these genius, technically-savvy, creative types in my life.

If you’d like to hire Nick and Cory to do something totally amazing for you, you can contact me and maybe, if you’re worthy, I’ll hook it up. I mean, maybe, if you promise to truly respect their super talent and how cool they are and everything.

During, you know, THE MOVE, there was one thought that kept me from totally losing it, and that was the fact that they say moving is one of the most stressful things you can go through in life. I figured if they say that then, well, it was ok that I was having minor nervous breakdowns from time to time. Even better, it was normal. I was normal.

The other nice thing, of course, was having J along for the ride. One time, when I was just standing there in the bedroom nearly hyperventilating, pointing from box to box and all the stuff that was very clearly not in boxes and asking, over and over again, “How? How are we going to ever finish???” he very calmly asked me to leave the house for a while, go run some errands or something, and honestly, that saved me. That was exactly what I needed - a break.

Of course, the two of us being in it together also meant there was always someone around to yell at when things weren’t going well. You know, someone there to take it out on. And while there was comforting and support, there was a fair share of petty arguing, too. And on moving day - that last, extraordinarily long stretch of loading the truck and combing the house for tiny remnants of our two-year stay there - the petty arguing was at a high, the comforting and support at an all time low. Because it was, you know, really bad. We had to do the kind of stuff only the people who’ve lived in the house can do, like going to public works to make sure the 500-year-old broken lawnmower we own would get picked up and taken away sometime. Stuff that, maybe, we should have taken care of months ago. But didn’t.

One of the things we should have definitely taken care of by that day was dealing with this very large pile of cardboard we had stacked along the side of the house the entire time we lived there. Chapel Hill, with good reason, has pretty strict recycling rules and really condemns putting recyclable stuff, like cardboard, in the regular trash. There is a recycling center just minutes from where we lived where you can take stuff like broken down cardboard boxes and throw it in a recycling bin. So, when we moved in and started getting many, many wedding presents in many cardboard boxes, we’d break down those boxes and stack them along the carport wall, in a neat pile and we figured we’d regularly make trips to the recycling center to get rid of them. Only we didn’t, and we kept getting things in cardboard boxes and the pile just got bigger.

And when we started talking about the moving process a couple months ago, I thought about those cardboard boxes, and how some of them had been outside for about two years, and about how they were sort of getting moldy and about how many insects live in and around our house and wouldn’t those boxes be the perfect habitat for some seriously horrifying insects? And I thought about this one recent time I’d mustered the energy to do a little something about the situation and I went out there and pried a few of them from the pile to stick in the trunk and take over to the recycling center, and how I instantly got this incredible headache and became extremely congested to the point where everybody, for the remainder of the day, was asking me if I had a cold, and this happened because I’d moved a few - just a few - of those boxes and whatever lethal spores were proliferating there in the damp conditions had entered my nasal passage when I dared move those boxes and probably killed off several thousand of my brain cells.

And so I’d tell J as moving day loomed ever and ever closer, “Listen. I’m worried about those boxes. I mean, there’s so many of them.”

So you know what we did? Nothing.

So by the late afternoon of that fateful Wednesday (we’d hope to be on the road by mid-morning) we, naturally, wanted to go. We had packed the truck and checked the house and we were tired and dusty and headachey and cranky and we wanted to take showers, but of course we’d packed all the towels, and we wanted to give up, but you can’t give up when the end is in sight. We’d dragged some old, unusable items - the lawnmower, a suitcase with a broken zipper, an old dog cage, some lamps - out to the side of the road for anyone who wanted them if they weren’t trashed first, and that’s when we realized that cardboard - that hateful, disgusting cardboard - was still piled up on the side of the house.

And I think this is when, as I mentioned before, J said it was the worst day of his life, and he was walking around wincing and kicking things and I just stood there with my shoulders slumped, hand on my forehead, swearing over and over that next time we were paying someone to do this for us, and somehow, amazingly, we realized we just had to do it. We had to finish.

J found a large green tarp that we’d had lying around forever and proved to be worth it’s weight in gold that day. He laid it out flat on the ground and we took turns removing each flattened cardboard box from it’s home against the low, cinderblock wall, holding them with the tips of our fingers as far away from our bodies as possible, which proved difficult with the heavier ones, then thrusting them down into a pile in the middle of the tarp. With each movement a new insect appeared to smite us for tearing down his or her homestead. Spiders - including at least one Black Widow - that had woven thick, cottony cobwebs amongst the rubble. Crickets that jumped high into the air and alarmingly near our faces. Caterpillars and cockroaches and other indescribable mutants that love to nest in dank havens of sin and despair. We did it in the blazing August sun with our headaches ever increasing. We spoke very little because there was nothing helpful to say and finally breathed a sigh of relief once we had finished, tied up the tarp and catapulted it on top of all our belongings in the already-bursting-at-the-seams back of the truck, carted it to the cardboard recycling bin and thrown each piece inside. We threw them hard, as the smallest inkling of joy returned to our hearts.

All I’m saying is that there are so many good parts to couplehood like lying in bed reading on a lazy Sunday morning or a romantic dinner at your favorite restaurant, but my advice to you is if you are seriously thinking about settling down with someone, just think about something like, oh I don’t know, taking a billion moldy cardboard boxes covered in insects to the recycling bin on a day when your will to live is already at a low, and if you think you can handle that - really handle it without badly hurting or maybe even killing one another - then I think you’re probably ready.