Don't Bug Me

Whenever I venture outside in the summer and have the audacity to speak, yawn, or God forbid, breathe, there’s always some gnat with a death wish that flies into my mouth. I try to spit it out, but can’t, and I’m left dry heaving on the front lawn until my neighbors call to complain. Which is one of the many reasons it’s better to stay inside (and I’m talking about both suicidal bugs and complaining neighbors here). So it probably comes as no surprise that I’d never intentionally eaten an insect.

All that changed recently, however, at my book club meeting. The book we were discussing, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, was set in the Amazon rainforest, so our hostess, Sheila, decided to serve refreshments in keeping with a Brazilian jungle theme. Now you’re probably thinking that we had bananas or mangos or even Brazil nuts. But you would be wrong. Sheila decided to go with something a bit more exotic and serve us something the Amazon has plenty of: insects.

Crickets, to be exact. Now I don’t know if there are actually crickets in the Amazon and I don’t feel like looking it up, but if there are you know they’re going to be some pumped-up-on-steroids type of cricket. The kind of cricket that would burrow into your inner ear and chirp endlessly until you jumped into piranha-infested waters just to end your misery.

The variety Sheila had were too small to be Amazonian crickets. Plus, they were dead so I was pretty sure their ear-burrowing days were over. They were actually called Crickettes and came in a small rectangular pack. Given their name and their packaging, I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to eat them or smoke them. Not surprisingly, they sat untouched until Sheila asked who was going to try one.

I don't know why I volunteered to try one, but alcohol may have been involved. Wait a minute. What am I saying? I was at book club - of course alcohol was involved! In my defense, we humans have a long history of consuming disgusting critters when we've been drinking. Don't believe me? Just ask the little worm at the bottom of a tequila bottle.

But I can’t blame just the alcohol. The box said the crickets were bacon cheddar flavored. I assume the flavor was added after the crickets’ demise because if living crickets are naturally coated with bacon cheesy yumminess I wouldn’t have waited so long to eat one. There was also the fact that no one else was brave enough to try one so this was the perfect opportunity to claim I’m the baddest ass mother on my cul-de-sac (and when I say mother I’m not using some gangsta slang. I mean an actual minivan-driving mother).

Truthfully, though, I wasn’t the only one to take the dare. Sheila’s 15-year-old son also volunteered. Since the judgment portion of boys’ brains aren’t fully formed until they’re 25, he had an excuse. I’m not a boy and I’m well-past 25, so I don’t know what my excuse was. Oh yeah, someone had just refilled my wine glass.

 Now, if you’re going to eat a cricket, here are a few pointers:

1.     Make sure it’s dead. Dead ones don’t put up much of a fuss.

2.      Whatever you do, don’t look at it. You’re not eating a frosted cupcake with sprinkles on top. Better to just pop the cricket in your mouth with yours eyes clamped shut.

3.     Don’t expect it to be delicious. Crickets have the consistency and taste of wood shavings. “But wait,” you say, “wood shavings don’t taste like bacon and cheese.” That’s right. And neither do crickets.

4.     Chew as little as possible. Otherwise you’ll end up like I did – with a cricket wing stuck to the roof of your mouth. And take it from me: no amount of dry heaving in your friend’s living room is going to dislodge it.

I did learn one important lesson, though. It turns out crickets are the perfect diet food. You really can eat just one.

  This is the "before" picture.

Trust me - you don't want to see the "after."

Happy Camper Is An Oxymoron

 I come from a long line of people who consider the phrase ”happy camper” to be an oxymoron. To put it simply, we Bitners are inside folk and I made sure to marry a man with similar proclivities. I assumed, then, that my husband and I would beget children who appreciated the value of memory foam pillows and indoor plumbing. I was wrong.

Recently my youngest has become fixated on the idea of camping outside. With me. In a tent. An item that, due to our love of the great indoors, we have conveniently neglected to own. Every time he brings up camping, I try to get him off the topic by offering him candy or turning the TV to Sponge Bob. Not a parenting technique I’m proud of, but one I was willing to resort to if it meant sleeping in my own bed. 

That is until the day my parental guilt took a direct hit from the Internet. I’d received an email announcing LL Bean was having a sale on all camping equipment.

            Malls I can do. They’re climate controlled, bear-free and the most dangerous part is looking for a parking space. Plus, the only equipment I needed was the piece of plastic in my wallet. So it was a no-brainer to head to Colonie Center for an adventure my nature-phobic DNA is better suited for: shopping.

            I was still on a buyer’s high when I returned home with my purchases – a tent, two sleeping bags and a self-inflating pillow. I only bought one pillow because I wasn’t sure it would work. If it did end up inflating, my son I would have to wrestle for it, but I was confident I could take him.

I also purchased a first aid kit and something called a Pocket Survival Pack. I bought the pack because it had seemed cocky to look at it in the store and then put it back like I didn’t need it. With my lack of camping know-how, I was in no position to tempt fate. I could picture rescuers one day discovering my lifeless body in the woods and lamenting, “If only she’d bought that pocket survival pack.” Besides, it was on sale.

            I decided I’d better figure out how to use the stuff while I was still safe and secure in my own home. It took me about ten minutes – no lie – to figure out how to open the survival pack, which turned out to be a simple zippered plastic pouch. This did not bode well for my chances in the wild.

            The first thing I noticed when I finally did get it open was that my pack was defective – no chocolate. Second thing I noticed was it was full of cool stuff I hoped I would never have to use – like a rescue whistle, signal mirror and waterproof fire starter.

Then I came across fishing line and fish hooks. I searched in vain in the pouch for the little tiny fisherman that will use them. Good Lord, I’m never going to survive if I have to catch my own food. There was also a scalpel blade, which, if I used it for slitting my wrists, would be a faster way to go than starving to death. There was even a pencil and notepaper.  Although it says you can use the paper when it’s wet, I’ll try to remember to write my farewell note before using the scalpel.

            Then I checked out the bonus lifesaving instructions. The first instruction said: Don’t Panic! Too late. Especially if I was reading it while stuck on the side of some mountain. Come to think of it, instead of a zippered plastic pouch, the whole thing should come in a brown paper bag so I’ll have something to breathe into to stave off the inevitable panic attack.

           

 With any luck, this retail excursion will be enough and just owning the gear will satisfy my son’s desire to go camping. And maybe if I stick the stuff in a closet, we can forget all about it. At least until the Visa bill arrives.

Take It Outside!

I try to spend as much time as possible inside because, well, it means I’m not outside. Outside is where it’s cold or hot or wet or dark or buggy or … you get the idea. And some of my favorite activities are best done inside. Like sleeping, eating watching TV, playing computer games, reading and, of course, drinking, which is a very versatile activity because it can be done in combination with the others. Except for maybe sleeping, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried.

 Staying inside has the added advantage of not requiring any fancy equipment like snowshoes or grappling hooks or pfd’s (not to be confused with pdf’s). All I need to be happy is some good food, some wine, a remote, my laptop and books. Lots of books.

Books allow me to experience the world without ever having to leave my comfy chair. And certain books, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Into the Wild come to mind, clearly validate my decision to avoid nature as much as possible.

I also love magazines because, as much as I like to read, and I like it even better if the stuff I’m reading has pictures to go with it. Not to mention that reading magazines doesn’t take a lot of time, which frees me up to do as much eating, drinking and sleeping as possible. And with so many different magazine titles, there’s sure to be one to suit all tastes and interests.

I have my favorites. Food and Wine, naturally, is at the top of the list. House, House & Home, House Beautiful and TV Guide all appeal to my chosen lifestyle. The phobia collector in me appreciates Prevention, while Self appeals to my narcissistic side.

You have to be careful, though. Clean Eating is not about finishing off the leftover pizza in your refrigerator to make room for the cake. And Do It Yourself is not a handbook for parents looking for ways to get children to do more around the house. I’d subscribe to Wine Spectator if it weren’t for the “Spectator” part, which implies it’s about watching other people drink, thereby missing the whole point.

Recently, though, I came across a magazine that gave me chills just looking at it. It’s called Outside and its tagline is “Live Bravely.” Needless to say, I’m not a subscriber. But there was something about the in-your-face danger of its attractive cover that drew me to it, even though I knew it wasn’t right for me, much like the way men are drawn to the Kardashians.

I was intrigued by the cover story that promised to tell me how to endure my worst-case scenario. But the title “Could You Survive?” was written in a typeface so large and bold that it was clear the editors doubted my abilities without ever having met me. Okay, they may have a point.

It turns out, though, their idea of a worst-case scenario (avalanches and shark attacks) differed wildly from my idea of a worst-case scenario (a low battery warning on my iPhone during a power outage or finding out the DVR is full when I go to record the new season of Boardwalk Empire).

The article then goes on to give 27 tips that can save your life. Well, here’s a tip for those smug Outside writers who are so busy living bravely they don’t know when to stop: that’s 26 more tips than you need. The number one tip that can save your life is: Stay home. (Okay, supposedly most deaths occur in the home, but wouldn’t you rather slip in the bathtub than get mauled by a grizzly?)

As I continued to leaf through the magazine with articles about fitness routines and adventure vacations, not to mention ads for mountain bikes, GPS systems and hiking gear, I began to feel like a lazy lump of flesh who wasn’t worth the expenditure of energy my muscles required to hold the magazine much less the effort of the writers to write it. It was almost enough to make me want to pick up the latest issue of Travel and Leisure – which would be the perfect antidote if it weren’t for the “Travel” part.

The Inside Scoop on Howard Johnson's

(This article originally appeared in the Albany Times Union on May 18, 2012)

Back when phone booths outnumbered tanning booths and Mad Men’s Don Draper was still faithful to his wife, thousands of Howard Johnson’s Restaurants dotted U.S. roadways. But nothing, except the presidential campaign season, lasts forever. The HoJo’s at Northway Exit 19 in Queensbury was leveled earlier this year and the HoJo’s at Exit 21 in Lake George, one of three remaining in the country, has a for sale sign in its window. With the demise of that piece of Americana goes a bit of my own personal history.

I got my first job at the Exit 19 Howard Johnson’s as a fountain girl. That probably sounds like I was a glamorous starlet in an elaborate Busby Berkeley musical. But fountain girl is really just code for “willing to spend eight hours a day up to my armpits in hot fudge for less than minimum wage.”

As fountain girl, I was required to wear clunky white shoes that looked like they belonged to a nurse at a clown hospital. I also wore a uniform made of military-grade polyester originally designed by NASA as part of a trampoline to deflect space junk. It was burnt orange. You know, the same color as many 1970s refrigerators, and about as figure flattering.

There were plenty of good things about that job, though.  I learned a lot, like bon jour is French for “I’m not going to tip you.” I tried to help others learn things, too. For instance, fellow fountain girl Rachel Ray would probably still be toiling in relative anonymity if I hadn’t taught her everything I know about being relentlessly perky. And my husband and I had our first date at the Musket Room, the Lake George HoJo’s bar.  It was an event that became the inspiration for the often overlooked Captain & Tennille hit song “Musket Love,” a paean to both young romance and the Second Amendment.

 So I was sad to think that something that had been so influential in my life was quickly disappearing from the American landscape. That is until I discovered that the now-defunct Howard Johnson’s in Plattsburgh had been recreated in a recent episode of Mad Men. Never having seen the series, I watched the clip online, excited about the possibility that the notoriety could launch a HoJo’s revival.

I also wanted to do a little fact checking, knowing that the show has a reputation for its painstaking attention to detail and historical accuracy.

Conical shaped scoops of ice cream – check.

Conical shaped bras on the waitresses – check.

Orange roof – check.

Orange sherbet ordered by Don Draper  – hold the phone.

I don’t remember any orange sherbet.  Convinced I’d found an error, I called my sister, Lynne, who’d followed in my enormous white footsteps as a fountain girl, to verify.

 

We both had regularly augmented our meager paychecks by sampling lots of “free” ice cream. We couldn’t help it; it’s in our DNA.  In fact, the Bitner Family coat of arms contains the image of a freezer chest. Lynne assured me that HoJo’s did indeed have orange sherbet, as well as lemon, raspberry and lime. I’d blocked that entirely from my memory, probably because the fruity names sounded vaguely healthy.

While watching the actors eat their sherbet, however, I did notice one glaring mistake. People who looked like that never ate at Howard Johnson’s. People like that never even drove past Howard Johnson’s. Because I can assure you that if I’d ever waited on customers who looked like Jon Hamm’s Don Draper, I would have pledged all my tips for a thousand years to buy enough HoJo’s stock to keep the place open. 

It’s too early to say whether the Mad Men spotlight will be enough to turn things around for Howard Johnson’s. So you should head to one of the remaining restaurants in Lake George or in Lake Placid while you still can. Because it looks as though HoJo’s is going the way of three-martini lunches. And I, for one, will miss them both. 

Oh, Shoot!

A well-known adage for writers is to “write what you know.” Which explains why you’ll never find a sex scene in one of my stories.  I suppose I could give it a try, but then I’d break another writing adage: Don’t bore your readers.

Thankfully, I don’t write romance. I write mysteries, so it’s a given that at least one of the characters will end up dead. And because shooting someone with a gun is much more expedient than waiting for a character to die of natural causes, it makes sense that I should know something about guns and how they work.

So when I saw the opportunity to visit a pistol range while at Sleuthfest – a conference for mystery writers in Orlando, Florida – I signed up. Now, I hoped, I’d be able to infuse my killing scenes with more drama, passion and excitement than any sex scene I wrote would ever be able to achieve. Plus, as I discovered when I took a trap shooting class (See Pistol Packin’ Mama), I just like pumping things full of lead.

At the conference hotel I boarded a bus bound for the pistol range along with a group of middle-aged writer types who all looked about as dangerous as Jessica Fletcher and that Cabot Cove sheriff played by Tom Bosley. All, that is, except that pair of Texans, who probably not only knew how to shoot, but were no doubt packing their own heat. That’s why everyone let them have a whole section of the bus to themselves. Then we gave them our lunch money.

The bus took us deeper and deeper into the heart of Orlando until there was nothing but pawn shops, check cashing joints and strip clubs. “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Disney anymore.” If there were any hidden Mickeys around, I didn’t want to see them.

Upon entering the pistol range, we were confronted with a large sign that stated: “No live ammunition allowed beyond this point.” I immediately felt right at home because I have an embroidered sampler with that exact quote hanging in my front entryway.

We were ushered into a small classroom where Tim, the instructor handed us each a questionnaire to fill out. It had the typical questions that you’d expect, like “How many felonies have you committed?” and “Have you ever been caught?” I think more useful questions – at least in my situation – would be “How freaked out are you right now?” and “ Do stressful situations make you want to shoot everyone around you?”

I answered all the questions then signed that all-important waiver. You know, the one that says if I shoot myself or if someone else shoots me, either accidentally or intentionally, it’s my own damned fault because I signed the waiver.  Tim then gave us a brief safety talk, including good advice like don’t look down the barrel of a gun when you’re trying to figure out why it didn’t go off, which sounded exactly like something I would do. None of this was doing anything to calm my jittery nerves. So I was an excellent candidate for handling a loaded firearm.

We each had the chance to fire a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, chambered for a .38 to lessen the recoil, and a 9mm Glock semi-automatic. If that makes me sound like I know what I’m talking about, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you right after I get done shooting its lights out.

When it was my turn to go in the room where they do the shooting, I took my target, a blue silhouette of a man with a bull’s-eye on his chest, with me. There was nary a mark on the man, and I was afraid he’d look the same way when I was done with him. I pinned the target to a garage door opener contraption and the instructor sent it out about 30 feet, but it might as well have been 100.

Then the instructor gave me 10 bullets and told me to load them in the magazine. We’d been told that the only people who refer to a magazine as a “clip” are novices and people whose parents are first cousins. Apparently, this imprecision of language is a sore spot with gun enthusiasts, and people who say “clip” when they mean “magazine” deserve to be shot. And gun folk really don’t like it when you call a magazine “the bullet-holding thingy.”

Inserting bullets into the magazine turned out to be harder than I thought. If I ever have to reload during a shoot out, I’ll end up dead. But at least, as my lifeblood flows out of me, I can take solace in knowing that it was my inability to reload a magazine – and not a clip – that led to my untimely death.

I started with the Glock and managed, just barely, to hit the target. If the blue target man had a mouth, he’d probably have been smirking. Once I’d fired five rounds, the instructor had me shoot the next five rounds with the hammer cocked (there’s your sex scene – happy now?), which was much easier. Each time I pulled the trigger, my aim became better and better. Who’s laughing now, blue target man?

When I finished firing both the Glock and the .357 Magnum, I left the shooting range with my shot-up target and waited for the others to finish. I was feeling pretty good at this point because A) I was still alive, and B) my target looked respectable for a first-timer. The only people who’d done better were people who’d done some shooting before and people who spend a lot of time playing video games.

As they say on late night infomercials, “But wait, there’s more.” If we wanted to, we could fire a .44 Magnum, aka the Dirty Harry gun. Ten of us volunteered, including me. We each were allowed to shoot five rounds and this time we were allowed to aim for the head. I know what you’re thinking, “Did she fire six shots, or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all the excitement I kinda lost track myself. But I can tell you that the blue target man ended up not feeling too lucky. Punk.

If you squint, I do sort of look like Clint Eastwood.