Nuttys and the Cape

You had me laughing with the tin of peanut brittle propped on gut w/the hopeful dog onlooking. Good stuff.

When I first cleaned up my act I was responsible for taking donuts to an early-morning meeting. I would go to the store and buy two boxes of donuts. I consumed one box on the drive to the meeting, then put the other box on the table and ate from that along with everyone else. I probably put away 10 to 14 donuts during that sugar-crazed donutastic orgy.

I'm at the Cape. It's nice. It's cool. I'm wearing long pants. It's dry. When you fly into Boston you generally take a turn over the harbor. I was sitting by the window and happened to look down at the water; we were high enough that the fishing boats looked like little white flecks of foam, and you could identify whole schools of swell rolling across the ocean. The sun was almost directly overhead and reflected back at me like a fast-swimming school of fire bright fish. They described arcing leaps over the islands and yachts, obscuring them from view as they passed, keeping pace with our plane.

Last night we took my wife's 98-year old grandmother and her 89-year old friend out to dinner. They had a glass of wine apiece before we started and then proceeded to get us lost on the way to the restaurant. We drove for two hours before we finally stopped to get something to eat, these two old women giggling the whole time, immensely pleased with the adventure and not a bit upset that the could not remember the location of their favorite restaurant.

Grandmother had another drink before dinner. The glass of wine was so big, and she'd shrunk to such a degree, that it looked like she was trying to carry a fishbowl to her mouth every time she drank. As she carefully decanted another sip, I could see only her white hair curling like fog above the flashing rim of the glass. It was quite droll. Later, when the food came, she (half in the bag by this time) kept complaining that she couldn't see what she was eating.

"I have no idea what I'm eating right now," she'd say in a querulous tone, "since I can't see."
To which her friend replied, "Yes, but you can taste, cahn't you deah?"

Grandmother was too wine-addled for a sharp response, so she just shrugged and reached out for the enormous glass. When you're 98, all things are permitted.