Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (33 page)

The bad news is that the shutters are painted a bright yellow called Candleglow, which is a misnomer. This color is Solar Energy. This color could power a small city. A tactful friend of
mine called it “sunny,” but sunny doesn’t come close. If you broke off a piece of the sun itself and stuck it on either side of your windows, you would still only have half of this color. Now you need sunglasses to look at my house, and when you do, you understand instantly why yellow was Vincent Van Gogh’s favorite color.

Because he was crazy.

Look at my shutters and you not only want to cut your ears off, you want to gouge your eyes out. But you couldn’t, because you’d be blinded by the color. Your face might even melt off, too. It’s like Atomic Blast Yellow, and you get the idea. It’s a man-made disaster.

Correction. Woman-made, even better.

I’m trying to live with it, until I get the money to repaint or detonate.

To return to my point, fresh from my success with the house, I saw a picture of a chicken coop. It was adorable, like a doll-house with a little wooden door and two tiny windows, with shutters. It reminded me of the Little Tykes playhouse that daughter Francesca used to have when she was little, or those green plastic houses in Monopoly that you put on Baltic Avenue. I always preferred the houses over the hotels, even though the hotels earned more rent, which gives you an idea of my money management skills.

Anyway when I saw the picture of the coop, I said to myself, I want that little housie, so I guess I have to get some chickens. So now we know which came first, the chicken or the coop.

As it happens, this summer project is fun for everyone in my family, meaning Francesca and me. We went and picked out seven adorable chicks, and we learned new vocabulary words—Brown Sussex, Wyandotte, Araucana, and Australorp, which is a black chicken and not a resident of Australia. They’re all pullets,
which means girls, so it took us days to pick their names because we wanted a theme. First we went with Miss Pennsylvania, Miss New Jersey, Miss Delaware, and so on, but they peep like crazy so we tried Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morrisette, Barbra Streisand, and Judy Garland. Then we couldn’t agree on seven girl rock stars, which is clearly what these chicks are, so we decided the dominant one should be Princess Ida and the rest are all other characters from Gilbert & Sullivan, which classes up my house.

We hang with the chicks all the time, watching them grow, singing to them, and trying to get them to love us. The first week they fled from us in fear, flocking at the corner of the cage, but now they’re eating out of our hands, literally. They coo, cluck, and gurgle, and today I’m going out to buy a baby monitor so I can hear them in the house. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Francesca’s graduation from college and undeniable adulthood, but call the police if I try to nurse these chicks.

Ouch.

We obsess on raising and lowering their heat lamp, and we clean their butts, called “vents,” with mineral oil so they don’t “paste up” or, well you guessed it. We also talk about painting the chicken coop pink, since it was an all-girl production, or drawing fake flowers and vines on it, because why not, then considered painting it like a sorority house with Greek letters above the door, or maybe a little theater, since the chicks are all Drama Queens.

So I’m back to paint chips and shutter colors.

I’m thinking Egg Yolk Yellow.

I had originally decided that daughter Francesca and I would skip a vacation this year in favor of a staycation, but that was before I realized how much I hated saying staycation, which isn’t even a word. So I grabbed my VISA card and made a few phone calls, and we were off to a place no Scottoline has ever been.

Hawaii.

The excitement started before we even got there, because of Michael McDonald. Please tell me you know that Michael McDonald sang with the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, who made the soundtrack of your life, or at least your freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, circa 1974. I spotted him in the airport, recognizing him instantly from my fantasies. You know you’re getting older when the grayest head in the place is the one man who does it for you.

Of course, I made Francesca go over to him with me, which she did, and I introduced myself and started gushing, though she pulled me away before I suggested anything untoward.

Who raised this kid?

So then of course I have the best luck ever and Michael McDonald shows up on our very flight, which lasts like 29,373
hours so I can stare at him as he watches the movie (
Prince Caspian
) and gets up to go to the bathroom (only three times).

I like a man with a strong bladder.

And then how great is it that when we get our baggage, the only luggage left is his and mine, which shows that we were meant to be, if you don’t factor in his wife.

What a fool believes, a wise woman has the power to reason away.

And then Francesca and I end up on Maui, which is ridiculously pretty, if only I could enjoy it. Because all I like to do on vacation is sit on my butt and read in the sun, which is what distinguishes a vacation from a staycation, wherein I sit on my butt and read in the sun for much less money.

But Maui offers so much to do and Francesca is the adventurous sort, so in no time, I find myself snorkeling in its teal blue water, watching green-striped eels and spotted manta rays. By the way, I can’t swim, a fun fact about me you may not know. So I’m the only adult in the Pacific wearing an inflatable vest.

Six-year-olds point and laugh.

At one point, I have to struggle out of the water to shore, so I do my best doggy paddle while Francesca waits on the beach for me. She tries to be patient but by sundown, it gets old. She says, “Dead bodies wash up faster.”

I cannot disagree. Glug.

Then we sign up for the snorkeling cruise, which means that we spend two hours on a catamaran sailing to the island of Lanai. In case you don’t know, a catamaran is a two-hulled boat that causes you to throw up, which I do.

The next day we are scheduled for a horseback ride down the crater of Haleakala. FYI, Haleakala is a dormant volcano that rises 10,000 feet into the air, and another fun fact about me is that I’m afraid of heights. I’m too terrified to drive the
road to the summit, which snakes along various lethal cliffs, so I pay an extortionate rate to be driven there, only to realize that I cannot pay anyone to ride the horse down into the crater for me. So I suck it up for the next five hours, over trails that go up and down for three thousand feet, over lava rubble and coarse sand. Francesca tells me it was starkly beautiful—a rust, black, and green landscape that looks like Mars, dotted with unusual silver sword plants that grow only in Hawaii—and I’m taking her word for it.

My eyes were closed.

I survived only by placing my trust in my sleepy old mare, who can do Haleakala with her eyes closed, just like me. Her name is Princess, so there’s something else we have in common.

Much later, back at the hotel, I order drinks that are also found only on Hawaii. The Lavaflow, a pina colada with strawberries, and a perfect Mai-Tai, and the next day I am sitting happily on the beach, reading James Michener’s
Hawaii.

Now that’s a vacation.

Okay, I’m officially confused, and it’s not rocket science. It’s about my latest trip to the food store.

Here’s what happened:

I shop at Acme and Whole Foods, because I can’t buy everything I need in one place. Acme doesn’t know from wheatberry salad, and God forbid that Whole Foods sell Splenda. I even have to go to a third store for pet food, but that’s not the point.