Author: Suzanne Olsen Page 24 of 45

Can You Keep a Secret?

On May 26, 2010

I wonder how people manage to keep things secret. I haven’t had much luck with it. Once I threw my husband a surprise birthday party and two different friends of his called him to ask, “How do I get to the place where your surprise birthday is going to be?”

Granted, both of these guys have been stoners for years, but you’d think that even in a stupor people would realize that an invitation with the words, “SHHHH – IT”S A SURPRISE!” would know not to mention it. It’s one thing to let something slip, but there was no excuse for that, and it caused me a lot of misery.

Since my husband knew, but I didn’t know that he knew, he thought it would be funny to torture me by driving down to the beach that day with one of his friend’s to go crabbing. They left early in the morning and while they were on the water, his friend kept trying to get him to leave, but Esso said things like, “It’s such a nice day, let’s just hang out some more. You don’t have anything planned for tonight, do you?” When they finally left to come back home, he wanted to stop and eat, stop and buy beer, etc. Julius, the friend, sneaked off and called me to report that they were still in Tillamook and he didn’t know WHEN they’d be home.

I was, of course, a nervous wreck, because we hadn’t made “plans.” We’d talked about going out to eat with some friends but hadn’t firmed it up. I thought this would make things seem less suspicious. Esso finally called and said he was too tired to go out, and that he’d rather just stay home and order a pizza.

The inability of those two friends to keep a secret caused me a whole day of torment and agony. One of them had the gall to show up at the party pre-intoxicated. He parked himself in front of the microphone when it was time to roast Esso and rambled incoherently about who knows what until I bitch slapped him. Not really. I politely nudged him to the side and announced that they were going to take the food away, but he certainly deserved a hefty smack.

The reason I thought about this subject was because I was watching Biography and it was about Paul Newman. Some gossip columnist back in the day kept saying that there were rumors of trouble in Newman’s marriage to Joanne Woodward. For those of you who don’t know who she is, I can tell you that she’s this gorgeous, very classy actress. By sheer coincidence, people have told me I look like her. However, I think she looks like me.

Newman and Woodward got fed up with the rumors and took out a full-page ad in some newspaper saying their marriage was just fine and the gossip columnist needed to go bungee jumping without a cord. They didn’t say that because Joanne would have been way too classy, but they said something, believe you me.

Movie stars have the paparazzi and everyone else watching them, so I can’t imagine how they keep secrets, but they certainly try. When they get discovered doing something like having an affair with the nanny, they first deny it over and over. Then evidence starts piling up, for instance the nanny shares intimate text messages from the alleged perpetrator. Still the star denies it, though not quite so forcefully. “I did not have sex with that woman,” they say, then add, “not that I can remember.”

Another thing that’s interesting, when I was younger everyone thought I looked like Sally Field. People told me that all the time. Now she looks older than me, so I’m glad they’ve changed to Joanne Woodward, who is, as I’ve already mentioned, quite a looker.

Pssst – Can you keep a secret? I didn’t think so.

Why Scratching Is Bad for the Environment

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 26, 2010

In News

I went at the crack of dawn this morning to Starbucks to hang some of my photos for a little show I’m having and I listened to NPR news on the drive back home. Actually, it wasn’t the crack of dawn, I slept right through that because I don’t use an alarm clock. The rain, jabbing persistently and vehemently on my roof, awakened me to a dark, dreary, milky-grayish light that informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was standing on the platform watching the train carrying the crack of dawn fade off into the sunrise (if there had been any, which there wasn’t).

Oh that felt good to write, like a nice long, dog-like stretch after a good night’s sleep. But I am not here to wax poetic. Nor am I here to wax the furniture. Or your car, for that matter. I’m here to try to write something amusing. NPR was telling us about the BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This is not in any way, shape, or form amusing. My heart goes out to the millions of fish and fowl that will lose their lives as a result of this tragedy, as well as the millions of people who will lose their livelihoods.

I will try, however, to write something humorous about the oil companies, which some might say is no laughing matter either, but I have to write SOMETHING. The story this morning on NPR was about oil companies scrambling to avoid expensive safety regulation that is sure to be the government’s way of slapping them for being naughty and having yet another massive oil spill. I was grumbling about “those stupid oil companies” when I realized I was, in fact, at that very moment, driving a vehicle that depended on oil to operate (albeit only SOME oil because it is a hybrid which can go two to fifty times farther on a tank of gas than the average car on the road today, not that I’m trying to rub your nose in it).

Then it occurred to me that I would drive a non-oil based car if someone would make one and give me convenient places to re-charge or re-fuel it. I’m going to hear from people in California saying that, in fact, GM made a prototype electric car 20 years ago that ran great and everyone loved, but when the executives at GM met with the executives at BIG OIL (BO) – apt initials, aren’t they? – they decided, after much head and crotch scratching, that it would be in their best interests to NOT have people LOVING the EV1 (their electric vehicle) because it would put all their service departments out of business (electric cars don’t need oil changes), not to mention oil refineries, gas stations, Lava soap and similar products to get mechanics’ hands clean right down to the fingernails, and a plethora of other industries that depend on oil for the lifeblood of their bottom line.

These scratching executives decided that a certain California legislator who had the power to throw out the clean air standards probably had an itch as well, and so they all reached into each other’s pockets and scratched until they were all satisfied that in the end, their mutual bottom line was far, far more important than clean air or, for that matter, innovation, Yankee ingenuity, state of the art technology, or a really cool vision for the future.

These executives snatched back all the EV1’s (they were on loan to 400 consumers to try out), and they crushed them into a mass of metal you could fit into the palm of your hand (although it weighed 8 trillion tons) in order to remove all trace of the vehicles. Instead, they started pushing Hummers (army vehicles seen in old WWII movies), which take two parking spaces and get -4 miles per gallon, and, coincidentally, you can buy from GM.

Small world, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, other companies with Yankee ingenuity (that happened to all be in Asia) started making electric cars and hybrids. These soon became the world’s most popular vehicles. GM responded by building bigger and bigger SUVs and, in a miracle of marketing, sold them because they convinced the general public (who also has the word “general” in their name – it really IS a small world) that their toddlers would not be safe in any car except one that gets single-digit fuel economy.

This marketing strategy worked so well that now it is nearly impossible to find a parking space because, to be safe, these vehicles also need to have one wheel over the line on both sides so that only cars with the dimensions of a two by four can fit in there.

If we fast-forward to the present, we see GM crawling to the Government and grabbing millions of dollars in bailout money with that very same hand that was scratching oil companies and legislators not so long ago.

What has this got to do with the Gulf of Mexico? I would explain it, but I’ve run over my word limit. I apologize for leaving you to scratch your head and figure it out on your own.

Finding the Perfect Card

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 24, 2010

In Holidays

My brother’s birthday is tomorrow and I forgot to buy him a card. So I went to look in the box of cards I bought just for this contingency. A neighbor of mine years ago gave me the idea – she used to buy cards on sale so she’d have a card on hand for anything that came up.

I thought it was a good plan, so I went to Hallmark and bought some cards that I thought were pretty funny. I also picked up a bundle of cards when my girlfriend dragged me to a garage sale.

I still have most of these cards, even though this was years ago. The garage sale ones were pathetic. Here are some of the sayings (you’ll notice a couple are based on very old commercials):

“How do you spell relief?” (open) “J-A-N-U-A-R-Y! Happy Holidays!”

(Two frogs on a wedding cake) “Two words come to mind on this momentous occasion.” (open) “You fools!”

“How about…” (open) “…a nooner?”

“Double your pleasure, double your fun…” (open) “run your paycheck through the copy machine!”

“Meet me later….” (open) “in your birthday suit?”

Who bought those cards in the first place? Or have they just made the rounds from garage sale to garage sale, picking up new bad cards along the way like snow tires pick up gravel?

The Hallmark cards are funny, but now that I own them, I have a hard time giving them to actual people I know. Many are about aging, and when I think of a friend opening them and reading the message, it seems a little cruel, so even though I love them and laugh each time I read them, I haven’t been able to pass them on. Here’s a sampler:

“You aren’t getting old” (open) “Hell, you were old last year.”

“Don’t let them tell you what people your age can and can’t do!” (open) “That’s what your knees are for.”

“It appears that sucking in your gut like that…” (open) “has blown the hair off the top of your head.”

If someone is really bald, AND has a gut, could I make fun of them by giving them a card pointing this out? Sure, we’d all get a laugh, but it’s a cruel joke on the birthday girl.

At what age does humor about aches and pain turn into a vicious reminder that you are getting old and it’s all downhill from here? People like me who have a sense of humor can see that this is tongue in cheek, but can the one being honored on his birthday? I’d much rather get a card that talks about getting old as being like fine wine – comparing aging to a process in which a sweet, juicy grape is turned into a dry, fermented beverage that’s one step away from being vinegar.

Wait a minute, no I wouldn’t. I DO NOT want to be reminded that I’m “getting older” on my birthday. I want to pretend it’s just another day and I will continue to be immortal. The aches in my joints are temporary inconveniences that WILL NOT be worse tomorrow.

So once again, I’m going to leave those “old” cards in the card box and go buy a new one that will tell my brother how much I appreciate him even though he used to beat me within an inch of my life when we were kids. I hope Hallmark has one that says that – and I’m betting they will.

Demp

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 24, 2010

In Friends, People, Relationships

Sometimes life deals us a good hand and we are in the right place at the right time. Meeting Mary Morelock at the Legion Pool in 8^th grade was one of those times. I knew who she was but didn’t like her because in 8^th grade all I wanted was to fit in. She, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care what anyone thought about her, and she said and did anything that crossed her mind.

On that day at the Legion, there were several girls our age there, and we were hanging out together. Some of them went to lie in the sun, which left just me and Mary in the pool to hang out together. “Want to touch the bottom?” she said. “Sure,” I answered. Then we started doing flips off the low diving board, and I discovered I liked her because she was willing to try anything, and she laughed a lot and made jokes out of everything around her.

We spent a lot of time hanging out after that, and when I met her family, I felt like I’d found my second home. They were outspoken, or as we’d say today, not politically correct, but in an honest, and humorous, sort of way.

Mary’s dad, Demp, hung in the background, completely aware of everything going on but preferring to be an observer. Mostly his interactions were a few polite questions, and frequent offers of Little Debbie cakes, which must have been his idea of hospitality. “You want a Little Debbie cake? There’s a whole bunch of them out there in the freezer.” And then five minutes later: “You sure you don’t want a Little Debbie cake?”

When I first heard him say Mary’s name, he pronounced it, “Murry,” and that’s what I called her from then on, which I later shortened to “Mur.” When we were in high school, Mary had the only car, a Jeep – one of those utterly cool, real Jeeps with a removable tan nylon top like you see in African safari movies. Since she was the only one who drove, we all called her first whenever we wanted to do anything, either alone or as a group. She had tons of friends, so she’d get a lot of phone calls. Demp saw what was going on and started answering the phone, “Morelock Cabs.”

I hung out at Mary’s house so much he nicknamed me, “The Boarder.” He’d say it, even with me in the room, when he talked to Mary about me, as in: “Murry, do you and The Boarder want some stew?”

Once a car full of hoodlums chased Mary’s little sister, Kathy (called Bunny), home because they thought she’d cut them off. When she pulled up to her house, they got out of the car and started cussing and trash talking to her. Demp came out with a shotgun and said, “Bunny, git in the house.” He calmly told the boys to leave, and when they defiantly stood their ground, he raised the gun and peppered their Mustang, shooting the hood ornament off. Word got around and nobody messed with Demp’s kids after that.

I loved going to her house because she had big speakers in the living room and they were always playing the best music nice and loud. Not ear-splitting, but way louder than anyone else’s parents allowed. At my house, we never got to have our own music in the main part of the house – we had to listen to it in our rooms. My dad always had some Charlie “Yardbird” Parker or Miles Davis music playing that embarrassed the crap out of me. At Mary’s, they had the Allman Brothers, and Demp would sit right in the middle of the speakers, reading his paper and apparently enjoying himself.

My favorite story of Demp was the time we visited Mary’s parents when my kids were about two and six years old. Every time I go to Tennessee I visit Mary’s mom and dad. They moved to a place in the country after their kids all finished college, and my kids have always loved going there. On this day, me and Mary and my kids arrived just after suppertime. Us girls sat on the back porch watching my kids chasing lightening bugs while Demp puttered around in the house. It was about 10 or 11 o’clock by the time we got ready to go. We found Demp in the garage, and we were saying our goodbyes when he offered my kids a pop. I told him no, they didn’t need a pop, but thank you. A couple of minutes later he offered them one again, just like he used to offer me Little Debbie cakes.

“No, Demp, thanks but they don’t need a pop.”

“Suzanne, why won’t you let them kids have a pop?” he persisted.

“It’s late, and if they drink a pop right now they’ll wet the bed.”

“Aw, hell, I wet the bed every night. That don’t stop me.”

That was hilarious on so many levels that it makes me laugh even still.

Demp just went to the Big Cab Company in the sky, and I know for a fact that he’s up there, cracking up Jesus, all the saints, and the apostles with his wit and shenanigans. And he’s probably standing next to St. Peter, offering the newcomers whatever Heaven’s version of hospitality is, over and over again.

Your Blogist Is So Fat

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 22, 2010

In Food

I realize my last few posts make me appear to be a glutton. And I am. But I do work out quite a bit and have managed to stay in the same clothes for years. Yes, they are ragged and worn out, but that’s another blog.

I have to change my ways, though. I read that it’s unhealthy to overeat, even if you don’t get fat. All this talk about being fat makes me think of Yo Mama jokes, so I’ve gathered a few here for our entertainment.

Yo mama is so fat she looks at a menu and says, “Okay!”

Yo mama is so fat she had to go to Sea World to get baptized.

Yo mama is so fat you have to grease the doorway and hold a Twinkie on the other side just to get her through.

This last one is my favorite. I went online to get more and found this really awful. These are so bad I think someone from a non-English speaking country made them up because they aren’t funny and the person couldn’t spell. See for yourself – I copied these verbatim from the website:

Yo mama so fat she used a thin mashine to make her thin instead she became fatter.

so mama so fat her pansy size is is is ***** lose some weight.

I think some people set up websites just to make money from the millions of ads they have on there.

Here are a couple more I found on TIME Magazine’s website that are supposed to be the top 10 Yo Momma Jokes. These are really bad. TIME has no sense of humor:

Yo mama so fat she sat on a rainbow and Skittles popped out.

Yo mama so fat, she jumped up in the air and got stuck.

Does anyone even get this last one? If you do, please explain it to me, because I’m not seeing it.

Here’s a couple I like:

Yo mama is so fat, when she was diagnosed with a flesh-eating disease, the doctors gave her 14 years to live.

Yo mama is so fat, when she gets her shoes shined, she has to take the guy’s word for it.

Yo mama is so fat, she’s got shock absorbers on her toilet seat.

Someone once said, “Don’t criticize the way someone else does something if you’re not willing to do it yourself.” Actually, I just said that as a lead in to these Yo Mama jokes I just made up. They are no worse than some of the ones I’ve seen. Since I made them up, and since I’m complaining about being fat, I changed them to Yo blogist – get it – blog ist – someone who blogs. Do I always have to explain everything?!!!!!

Yo blogist is so fat they sound the tsunami warning every time she gets in the ocean.

Yo blogist is so fat her mobile home is a triple-wide.

Yo blogist is so fat her desk chair cowers when she comes into the office.

Yo blogist is so fat, when she jumps in bed her husband gets catapulted out the door.

Your blogist is so fat, when she sits at the kitchen table, half of her is still in the living room.

Pretty funny, huh? If I think of some more good ones, I’ll let you know. Hmmm. You know what? Buttered popcorn sounds pretty tasty right now. Or a carrot. Decisions, decisions.

The Dog Ate My Blog Post

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 22, 2010

In Food, Friends

I didn’t do my blog yesterday because my dog ate it.

Actually, it fell out of my notebook and got wet and the ink all ran and the paper fell apart and I didn’t have time to redo it.

What really happened is that my daughter stuffed it into her backpack because she thought it was her homework.

Actually, my husband wadded it up and used it with a bunch of newspaper as a pad under a hot casserole dish that he put in a cardboard box to take to a potluck because he didn’t want to burn the seat of his car.

Really what happened is I got a massage yesterday by Helga the Swiss dominatrix, a friend of a friend who came highly recommended and was giving a good deal – I’m too cheap to get a massage unless it’s nearly free or a gift.

Normal women should not have this much strength, especially if they have spears for elbows. She planted the point of her elbow at the beginning of each of my muscle groups and bore down with all she had until she was on the verge of skewering me, then very v..e..r..y slowly dragged the elbow across the entire muscle. Ligaments and tendons ducked for cover as she smashed them down like a steamroller until the elbow eventually reached the other side.

I took it like a man because I thought it was supposed to be “good” for me. But she was enthusiastically sadistic. I’d made the mistake of telling her that I had a knot in my neck – probably from blogging – and she gave that area extra special attention. She “stretched out” my neck by standing behind me why I lay on the torture rack and pushing my head forward until my chin was pressing down into my sternum. I thought at any second my head would snap off in her hands and she’d turn the severed head around and hold it at her eye level and say, “oops!” with a wicked grin.

When I left, I was at least 3 inches taller and throbbing so much from head to toe that, seriously, there was no way I could sit and write.

Besides, friends came over and we had appetizers and wine to tide us over for the fifteen-minute drive downtown to get dinner. I was pretty full by the time I left the house because eating distracted me from the pain, and the wine was the perfect medicinal vintage to dull the shooting pains spiking every few minutes.

The restaurant we wanted to try was Toro Bravo. If you’re ever in Portland, you HAVE to go there. But expect to wait an hour and a half to get a table if you go at the same time as everyone else because they don’t take reservations. We killed the time by going to Afrique Bistro – pronounced af– freek by us but who knows what it’s actually called. There we had more wine and appetizers which were really, really tasty (cucumber salad and cheese spinach). I was starting to wish for elastic-waist pants.

When we were done there, we decided to check out Russell Street Bar-B-Que (all of these are on NE Russell Street). There we had pints of IPA beer and two orders of hush puppies. These were the real deal – the hush puppy was about the size of a chopped-off finger and cooked through. They were delicious with butter, and each order had 12 hush puppies, so doing that math, that gave us a total of 24, which meant that, since there were 4 of us, I got 12 and everyone else got 4. We also nibbled two pralines there.

They called us from Toro Bravo to say our table was ready, and we waddled back there and ordered no fewer than 10 appetizers (or tapas) because we wanted to sample all the flavors. And another bottle of wine, which unfortunately had the unpleasant side effect of causing a pain in my forehead, although the rest of my body had long since ceased complaining. Except for my stomach. It was yelling and screaming, “Stop, you freaking idiot. DO NOT put that fork in your mouth again. DO NOT!!!!! You are the stupidest human being in the world. No one has ever continued eating like this when they are COMPLETELY FULL and not regretted it. You will have to run 10 miles tomorrow to burn all of this off. Please stop. I’m begging you. P..l..e..a..s..e.” My stomach’s voice continued like this as I stabbed another potato, pickled beet, and cheese bread slice. It had pretty much given up by the time Julie and I shared a lava cake with ice cream for dessert.

By the time we got home, it was very late, I was very miserable, and I had a headache. And that’s when the dog ate my blog.

ADDENDUM (for extra credit): Speaking of dogs, let me explain about hush puppies. I’m originally from the South so I know that, when people here in Portland make hush puppies big and round, it’s not right. True hush puppies are corn bread batter dropped into hot fat. They fry until they’re browned on the outside and cooked through – and each one of them is like a snowflake – no two are alike. The big round ones can have wet dough in the middle because the heat can’t get in there quick enough to cook the center without burning the outside. If you want a good batch of fried okra, go to Miss Delta (on NE Mississippi), but don’t order the hush puppies there. They are okay, but they’re round and they don’t taste like a real hush puppy and you dip them in gravy, which isn’t bad, but it’s not the real thing.

Sailing Trip, Final Part

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 20, 2010

In Vacations

When we left Orace and Audrey’s place, we started heading back home. It took a couple of days to get back down to Smuggler Cove, and when we got there the place was full of boats. We found one of the last places to tie off, even though it was fairly early in the day. Everyone was sandwiched in there like a trailer park of sailboats. We had to anchor the back of the boat to make sure it didn’t swing out and hit the people beside us.

There were a million jellyfish everywhere in the water. Little ones the size of silver dollars all the way up to ones as big across as a Frisbee were layered from the surface all the way to the bottom. You could barely see a spot that didn’t have one whipping its tentacles to swim up and down.

We would be going back to Vancouver the next day, and we were in a very festive mood. We brought out the Spanish coffees right away and watched the jellyfish pulsating around the boat, and later stuffed ourselves on another of Esso’s feasts.

Since it was summer, and we were so far north, it didn’t get dark until practically 11:00 at night. We could see big rocks below the boat. The depth sounder warning alarm had been beeping this very annoying noise for the last couple of hours until we finally turned it off. We figured the jellyfish were setting it off.

After one last protracted game of Scrabble – the Spanish coffees made it impossible to think of words longer than 3 or 4 letters – we went to bed. About 3 a.m. I woke up, wedge up against the way. The bed was at a 45 degree. “Wake up you guys,” I hollered, “the boat’s tipping over.” We all jumped up and ran out on deck. The boat was listing way over to one side. The tide had gone out and we could see boulders sticking out of the water.

Esso started the engine and tried to drive us off the huge rock we were resting on, but we didn’t move. I yelled, “Jump up and down on one side.” With all of us jumping, eventually we “rocked” the boat off the rock, scraping over it as we went, and motored out into the cove away from the shallows. We dropped anchor out there and congratulated each other for being so smart and getting off the rocks. I bet we woke up everyone in the Cove.

When our adrenaline levels subsided we went back to sleep, and woke up the next morning surprised that everyone wasn’t heading out of there since boaters seemed to like to get an early start. We ate breakfast and shoved off, excited to be going home.

The boat rounded the corner of the protected cove and hit huge waves and wind blowing like a hurricane. Unlike the rolling waves we’d gone through crossing over the Strait the first day, these were coming from all directions. The boat would get smacked on one side, and we’d list way over. We tipped so far that the mast was only feet above the water and we had to hang on to keep from falling in. Then a wave would slap us from the other direction, and we’d tilt way to the other side.

I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’m a great swimmer, but I knew if I fell in that water, even with a life jacket, I probably wouldn’t survive. We were in a shipping lane, and a few gigantic ferries and tankers passed a couple of hundred yards away. Their wakes came all the way across and tilt us even more. There was not another boat our size anywhere in any direction.

“We’re going to die if we don’t turn back,” I screamed above the roar of the wind.

“We’ll be fine,” Eric hollered. “I’ve got to get back to work.” He had flown up to Vancouver from Portland, and I’m sure he didn’t want to miss his flight. I held on and kept my mouth shut until we rocked so far sideways I thought the boat would fall over.

“We’re going to die if we don’t turn back,” I screamed.

“We’ll be fine,” Eric said.

“Look, there’s not another boat out here. That’s why Smugglers Cove was so crowded – people were waiting out the storm. We have to turn back.”

Eric and I continued this debate for about another twenty minutes. Esso was busy trying to steer the nose of the boat into the oncoming waves, which was impossible, but he was making a good effort.

“If this boat tips over, we’ll all die,” I said after a really nasty wave had the mast practically touching the water. “There’s no way we’d could swim to shore.”

Eric argued, Esso fought the steering wheel with all his might, and I whimpered like a blubbering baby and calculated how many hours I could last in the water before exhaustion overcame me and I drowned.

Another ferry went by, and its wake pushed the boat so far on its side that the mast hit the water. I started crying and begging to turn back, “I don’t want to die, it’s not worth it, let’s go back before it’s too late.”

Either out of fear or pity, Esso turned the boat around. Eric was fit to be tied. “You can’t go back, I have to get to Vancouver today. Oh, man, don’t be such a wuss, you can make this!”

We went back like a coward dog creeping away from a fight to lick its wounds, and I was never happier. Eric, on the other hand, would have thrown me in the water if Esso hadn’t been there.

We got back to the little slice of mooring that we’d left – no one had come into the Cove since we set out. We spent the day there killing time because the storm never let up. We figured that’s why all the jellyfish were in there; they had enough sense to take shelter even if a certain member of our crew did not.

It was a long, antsy, uneventful day of passing the hours, listening to Eric lament not getting back on time and how we could have made it. If there had been a harpoon on the boat, his life would have been in danger. We didn’t play Scrabble that night, which was a relief because I know I would have slapped him.

Next morning the sun was out and we had smooth sailing all the way back to Vancouver. Esso was gone for a long time checking in the boat. “They dived under the boat to check for damage and said there was a big chunk torn out of the keel,” he said. “I have to pay them almost a $1,000 bucks to get it fixed.”

It was then we realized it would have probably been better just to let the boat stay on the rock until the tide came back in, but how did we know?

We took Eric to the airport, and we started the drive back to Portland. We got across the border with the three bags of oysters we’d gotten earlier in the trip, and had a party when we got home with some of the neighbors.

To this day, Eric still says we shouldn’t have turned around. “If wasn’t that bad,” he says, and we get in a good-natured argument. Recently, for my birthday, he blew up a picture he’d taken of me sitting in the boat. I looked like a whale. My face was as round as a beach ball, and my sleeve looked like a tourniquet around my arm. I’d forgotten about all the eating I’d done on that trip, and I was a little embarrassed that I made those guys look at me like that for so many days – they even saw me squeezed into a bikini a few times.

Oh well, they survived it. And now I’m done telling this tale. All is well.

Sailing Trip Part 4

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 19, 2010

In Vacations

We finally reached Desolation Sound on the 7^th day. The wind was blowing, and we hoisted the sail and the brightly colored spinnaker. Each of us took turns sailing the boat. The guys kept their eyes straight ahead and got the boat up to about 6 knots. I had learned in sailing class to watch the tell tales. You want them to go straight back – that shows your sails are getting the most bang for your buck out of the wind. I quickly had the boat going over 7 knots, and the boys were in awe.

When they wanted to drive again, I told them about the tell tales, but neither of them listened, they just kept looking straight ahead and trying to “catch the wind” by steering. Neither got the boat above 6 knots the whole day. This proves my theory about the brain of a man.

Desolation Sound was worth the trip. It had utterly spectacular views of jagged, snowcapped peaks straight from a postcard. There were other brightly colored sailboats leaning into the wind, and I quickly forgot the boredom of motoring all those days. We stayed there for a while, reluctant to leave the first wind of the trip, but it was time to find a place to tie up for the night.

It started getting dusky as we crept along scanning the shoreline for a place to stop. I’m not sure why we didn’t just anchor, maybe it was too deep. Fog set in, and the trees cast spooky shadows that made me think the woods were full of Sasquatches. I was getting a creepy feeling that led to goose bumps. I was also tired and hungry, among other complaints. We saw a couple of dim lights in the distance and motored blindly toward them. We came up to a dock literally in the middle of nothing and nowhere. There were no houses – I don’t even know what the dock led to – it could have just been free standing. It was obviously private property, with only one sailboat tied to it. Esso guided the boat next to it and Eric jumped out with a rope to tie us off. “You guys wait on the boat and I’ll see if anyone is home,” Esso said. I expected a shotgun report to crackle through the silent night.

Someone came off the boat and started walking warily toward us. I jumped on the dock, figuring I could turn on the Southern accent if I needed to – desperate to get some dinner.

“What do you want?” the guy asked like some moonshiner protecting his still. I couldn’t see his face but he was about my size and I thought I could take him if I had to.

“We need to tie up for the night,” Esso said.

“This ain’t a public dock,” the man said coldly.

“Ple-ease let us tie up here tonight,” Scarlett O’Hara said (that’s me). “We’re soooo tired and hungry.”

“We’ll pay you,” Esso added, “and we’ve got beer.”

“Oh well, now, if you’ve got beer, let’s pop one open. I’ll tell the Missus we’ve got company.” He hovered while Eric fetched him a Kokanee. He tilted the bottle up and drank half of it in four fierce gulps. “Ah, that hits the spot. Bring the six pack with you.”

“Give him a minute to tell his wife,” I said, grabbing a fistful of stale pretzels. After a couple of minutes he popped back up out of his boat and yelled, “You coming?”

We walked across about 50 feet of dock to his sailboat. He turned on some lights so we could see to climb on board, and we went below. “This here’s Audrey,” he said, pointing to a smiling, curly haired, squatty little woman in a sweatsuit, “and I’m Orace.”

“That’s an interesting name,” I said.

“Oh, it’s really Horace,” Audrey said, “he just don’t say the H.”

Their boat was a floating single-wide. Seriously, I have been in trailers in East Tennessee that were decorated exactly like this one with a lot of oversized furniture that they must have taken apart to get in the door, and plenty of pink gingham and mauve prints. And there were doilies and knickknacks. A floating white trash museum, but pleasant and homey and a very welcome port in a storm, as it were.

Orace helped himself to one beer after another. I whimpered about wanting to go and start dinner, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He had company and he was going to damn well take advantage of it. Finally I said I’d go fix something and bring it back. That was welcomed by everyone, and I left Esso and Eric there as hostages. I made who knows what – probably peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with potato chips. Esso popped in to get another six-pack of beer.

“You guys drank that first one already?”

“Orace doesn’t even bother to swallow. He just pours them down like he’s putting oil in a car. And she’s pretty fond of beer, too.”

Orace had an appetite, and so did Audrey. For that matter, so did I, and the food vanished well before my growling stomach was ready to throw in the towel. I went back for more, and Esso went back for another six-pack.

They were delighted with everything we said, and wanted to know all the details of our trip. Orace told us slurry stories about being the mailman in these parts, and wintering over without seeing anybody for days at a time. He stood up most of the time, using his hands and arms to accentuate what he said. After awhile he became incoherent, which made the up to then jovial Audrey a little cranky. “You’re drunk,” she said, more than once. She’d stopped smiling.

We kept tying to leave he wouldn’t let us go. “What’s your hurry?” he’d say, and we felt compelled to continue being his audience. I realized that this party could go on all night, so I said, in my Scarlett O’Hara, “Audrey, you have been so kind to welcome us into your home and let us stay here tonight. We might have died out there in the ocean if it hadn’t been for you. I honestly don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t found you. Thank you so much for everything.” I got up and said, “Esso and Eric, we have overstayed our welcome and you need to get up right this minute and let these wonderful people get some rest.” They sprang up like prairie dogs and grabbed Orace’s hand, gushing gratitude. Esso handed him a greenback, which must have satisfied him for the overnight mooring because he grinned and stuffed it in his pocket.

“There’s no sense in rushing off,” he said, obviously befuddled at the sudden end of his party.

“Let ‘em go, Orace. You’re drunk,” Audrey said, sealing the nail in the coffin of his good time.

“We’re leaving the beer,” Esso said. “And thanks again.”

“We’ll make breakfast for you all in the morning,” I called down from the upper step.

It was fun for a while, but I was pretty to escape the clutches of our clingy hosts. We slept soundly in the perfect quiet of that deserted dock. In the morning, we got up, dressed, made breakfast, did our usual routine at our usual speed, and there wasn’t a peep from the other boat.

“What do we do?” I asked, wondering what sailboat etiquette was in a situation like this.

Esso took another six-pack of beer and put it on the dock beside Orace and Audrey’s boat. They would have come out if they’d been awake. I really wanted to say goodbye and thanks again, but who knows how long it would take them to sleep off that much beer? We started our engine and figured that would rouse them, but still no sign of life. It was a beautiful, green, hidden cove surrounded by mountains and lush forests, with a wispy fog still hanging close to the water. I drank in the scene as we pulled away from the dock, and hoped a Sasquatch didn’t get the beer before Orace found it.

Sailing Trip Part 3

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 18, 2010

In Uncategorized, Vacations

Fast forward to four days later. We had settled into a routine. We got up and had a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and oranges (to ward off scurvy). Then we’d pull up anchor or leave the dock we’d tied up to overnight. We started our motors and puttered further up the coast, past scenery that was surprising exactly like we’d seen every day so far. Then we stopped and had a nice lunch of sandwiches, chips, apples, and pop before starting our engines back up and going further up the coast. Late afternoon we arrived at a new dock or place to anchor and prepared a feast of barbecued oysters or something Esso had prepared like marinated steaks with grilled toast, salad, and dessert. The wonderful meal was accompanied by beer and wine, with Spanish coffees as after dinner drinks that took us all the way to bedtime.

Sometimes, if we were lucky, there would be interesting rock features or little secret coves along the way that Esso and Pat knew about because they’d been sailing up this way before, but the sites didn’t last very long. We’d sit all day long, and then sit all evening. Out of boredom, I gorged on potato chips, candy, fruit, pretzels, cream cheese, string cheese, pork rinds, licorice rope, Tootsie Roll Pops, leftover bacon, trail mix, cashews, and the occasional carrot or celery stalk.

Boredom was making my clothes too tight, which made sitting around even less pleasant. The rest of the gang was delighted with the R and R they were getting. I was going nuts. About the third day I started taking the little dinghy out that was tied to the back of our boat. I’d row it around and around the cove just to get my circulation going and check stuff out. No one else had any interest in exploring.

I had how many more days of this? On the 5^th day we went to a secret place Esso and Pat knew about that was full of oysters. We anchored about 500 yards away from the rocks and rowed our dinghy’s close in. Everyone got on the little rock islands and started filling bags with oysters. I didn’t have the heart to do it, so I rowed around in the dinghy. After awhile Eric needed to go back to the boat, I guess to use the facilities, and so I sat on the rocks and talked to Sue as they collected potato sacks full of oysters. Erick got back to the boat and neglected to properly tie up the dinghy. Oh boy, what excitement that was! We all yelled and screamed at him as the dinghy started drifting away, but he didn’t hear us. Finally he appeared on deck, gave us that “What?” look, and just kept raising his arms like he was trying to understand what we wanted. He held up a bag of potato chips and we all screamed and shook our heads frantically. The dinghy had floated past the front of the boat so he couldn’t see it from the back where he was facing us. He picked up a beer and pointed to it. We screamed some more. Finally he went to the front of the boat, probably to pick up the bag of pretzels, and noticed the dinghy, which was becoming a small speck on the horizon. He stared the sailboat up and drove it to the dinghy, where he jumped into the water to snag it. We were terrified he’d let the sailboat get away while he was fetching the dinghy, but he managed to retrieve the one without losing the other. I so appreciated the diversion and entertainment of that half hour of distraction.

I’m not saying that there weren’t good times. Evenings together were full of laughter and fun. But this was not what my vision of a sailing trip had been. We did try to put the sails up one day, but there wasn’t enough wind to get us going and we gave up quickly.

Pat and Sue were only with us for five days, then they headed back. We said our goodbyes and continued on. The first night alone with just Esso, Eric, and me, we decided to play Scrabble because it was the only game on the boat. Esso turned out to be the best Scrabble player in the world. He’d hold onto a bunch of X’s and Z’s until he could make a word on a triple word space, and then score 90 points.

In stark contrast, Eric would stare at the board for a solid ten minutes, until we’d lost all patience and told him he had to go or else, and then he’d spell the word “on.” Next time, same thing, and then he’d put down, “it.” You think I’m joking? If he got a three-letter word like “the” he was ecstatic. In any other situation I would have grabbed the board and flung it across the room, but I was desperate for any stimulation – even the most aggravating kind.

Lest you think Eric was a numbskull, he’s really quite charming and a handsome, 6 foot, slim guy who was a golf star in college and a successful architect. I think the Spanish coffees and who knows what else were fogging his brain.

I began wishing I’d brought a mu-mu, because waiting for Eric to move upped my appetite. I was wearing one pair of fat shorts pretty regularly – all the cute stuff I brought was still folded neatly in my duffle bag because I couldn’t get anything else to zip up. I knew I looked like a fat cow, and that made me want to eat out of depression.

I’ve got a couple more stories to tell, so this will again be continued. Hope you can stand all this excitement.

Sailing Trip Part 2

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 17, 2010

In Vacations

This story is continued from day before yesterday. I was describing how I spent the first day of the sailing trip emptying the green contents of my stomach all over the walls of the little sailboat’s bathroom. That was a hard way to find out that I get seasick.

All the way across the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, Eric and I heaved. My husband to be, who I’ll call Esso which is a play on his initials, skippered the boat deftly through the huge swells, laughing that his “crew” were such landlubbers.

When we arrived in Nanaimo, we met our friends Pat and Sue. Sue is a nurse so she had a whole duffle bag full of prescription and non-prescription drugs to cover every situation, including bubonic plague. She gave me and Eric some miracle patches that she guaranteed would get rid of the seasickness by morning. “Until then,” she advised, “It’s best to just drink alcohol and forget your misery.” Eric and I thought this was sound medical advice and we were soon as rowdy as pirates and looking for someone to keel haul.

I honestly don’t recall what we did that night, but the next day I woke up feeling chipper and ready to sail the seven seas. “Arrrr,” I said, “Let’s hoist the mainsail and lift the boom!”

“We probably won’t be sailing today,” Esso told me. “There’s not much wind and we’ve got a lot of distance to cover.”

“Not sailing?” I said. “Isn’t this a SAILING trip?”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to have wind to sail,” Esso explained, looking up at the limp tell tales. “Tomorrow,” he added.

So we started up the engines and motored single file up the coast of Vancouver Island. Pat and Sue owned their boat, a 35-foot sailboat named, “The Winter’s Tale.” It was black and very sleek looking. Since their boat was bigger, they got to lead the way.

The wind never did pick up, but the scenery was quite pretty – a shoreline covered with trees and rocks to the left of us, and sparkling blue ocean on the right. When you looked straight down into the water sometimes you could see fish, and on occasion rocks. Esso and Eric used nautical maps to make sure we didn’t get too close to the bottom. I liked the little gizmo that showed if there were fish under us and how far down.

After a couple of hours, the excitement of creeping along had been replaced by a sore posterior and a desire to find some shade (there wasn’t any on the boat except in the cabin down below). It was like being on a road trip except there weren’t any roadside attractions to break up the monotony. Out in the ocean there aren’t Dairy Queens or “The World’s Largest Tennis Shoe” to stop and invigorate your brain. Plus the boat seemed to move very slowly. We could stand up and walk around the little circle from the front to the back of the boat – it was about the size of a jail cell so laps made you dizzy after just a few.

By the time we anchored that evening out in the middle of nowhere, I was as antsy as an ant on a hot sidewalk. I quickly changed into a bathing suit and jumped overboard. The ocean was cold and felt great, although I had never been in open water swimming and I soon got the creeps. What if there were sharks down there? I quickly climbed back up the ladder into the boat.

We roped our two sailboats together and had a feast – Esso had pre-prepared huge meals that he stored in giant coolers full of dry ice. We had marinated steaks and twice baked potatoes and sautéed vegetables. And alcohol. We made Spanish coffees because that’s what Eric liked, and drank them under a sky that looked like someone had shaken sparkling glitter over black velvet.

“We’ll sail tomorrow, right?” I asked Esso and Erik.

“If there’s enough wind,” Esso said. Soon we all hit the hay, and thanks to the patch and Spanish coffees, the rocking boat did nothing more than lull me to sleep.

To be continued…