I was having breakfast with family at a diner in Elmer, NJ, when my aunt asked the table at large, “Is that lipstick on my coffee cup?”
Everyone peered her way and agreed that yes, that was a faint pink smooch on the mug.
My aunt paled a little. “I had my mouth on that.”
When we asked for a clean cup, one of the waitresses explained the reason: “It’s these new waterproof lipsticks. It can be hard even for a dishwasher to get them off.”
You learn the darnedest things in South Jersey diners.
The first was a misrepresentation and the other a lie of omission. Since May 12 I’ve been on the East Coast, but I couldn’t tell my dad or my readers. To do so would have ruined the surprise 80th birthday party we’d planned.
When he recently asked if I’d be coming back East any time soon, I prevaricated. Since he reads my blog and follows me on Facebook, I couldn’t suggest meet-ups with Surviving & Thriving readers in Manhattan or South Jersey. What, and ruin the surprise?
And it was a surprise, especially since his 80th natal day took place back in March.
The first tomato sandwiches of the year have been enjoyed. Maybe a little too much, since the sighs I made while eating sounded nearly coital.
But dang, there’s nothing like eating a tomato that five minutes ago was on the vine in your own greenhouse.
Hence the haiku:
Just-picked tomato
Fresh bread, mayo, salt, pepper
Jersey girl heaven.
If this were New Jersey I wouldn’t need a greenhouse – just a patch of dirt almost anywhere. My childhood neighbor had one come up in the middle of the lawn, uninvited.
I got home from the two-week East Coast trip at around 1:30 this morning, exhausted and suffering from Weird Pattern Sunburn. The back and front of my neck and about three inches of shoulders were scorched stop-sign red where the sunscreen washed away. I’d been wearing a T-shirt and shorts over my swimsuit for a trip to Ocean City, NJ.
It’s really starting to hurt – it may blister, dammit – and my shoulder and arm muscles are seriously wrenched from holding my younger great-nephew in deeper water so we could jump waves. The heavy backpack cutting into the ache/burn during our long day of travel certainly didn’t help matters.
Wish I could have a professional massage, but nobody’s touching that sunburn. When DF put aloe gel on it last night I shrieked like a smoke alarm.
Totally worth it to have gone to the shore again, after decades away. I’d forgotten how lovely it feels to be cradled by the ocean.
Sorry to have maintained radio silence for the past week. Getting ready to get out of town, the overnight journey (15 hours door-to-door), doing Philly stuff for a day and a half, taking the Megabus to Manhattan, doing NYC stuff in heat ’n’ humidity with my niece and her kids, getting the bus back to Philly and then the bus to South Jersey, writing for my day job….Well, it took more out of me than I’d expected.
I’m still pretty flattened even though I’ve been at my dad’s place for two days. It didn’t help that the Megabus out of New York was late, which meant extra standing around in the aforementioned H&H. It also meant that I missed the Jersey bus I wanted to get.
Did I mention the sudden high winds that powdered me with Philly grit while I waited near the corner of Broad and Vine? Or the thunderstorm that rolled in immediately afterward? And for extra credit, the NJ Transit bus was late, too.
Why not get a rental car? Two reasons:
I didn’t need wheels for the first two days, because I was too tired and too busy (I’ve had to write two MSN Money columns since I got off the bus) to want to ram around much. Dad let me use his pickup for short visits with my Aunt Dot and my brother.
Also because I’m cutting corners where I can. We’ve had a great time so far but we’ve spent a boatload of bucks. When Alison and her boys arrive tomorrow I’ll pick up the rental car and we’ll divvy up the usage.
Besides, on the bus ride I saw my first real sign that I was back in South Jersey.
Apparently I was out of my mind when I booked my recent trip to the East Coast. My return schedule last Friday was Philly-Chicago and then Chicago-Anchorage. The option of flying directly to Anchorage vs. a stopover in Seattle or Salt Lake City felt like a grand piece of luck.
And it would have been, if the flight had left on the same day. However, it left at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday.
I wanted to do a series of forehead-plants into the drywall. Instead I sighed, shrugged and started looking for a semi-affordable hotel near O’Hare.
The old me would have done those forehead-plants.
When I was in elementary school we heard the story of a brave Revolutionary War-era woman who carried water to the troops during the Battle of Monmouth. “Molly, Molly, bring us your pitcher,” the men would call on that hot July day. That’s how she became known as “Molly Pitcher,” we were told.
Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley did follow her husband, a barber who enlisted in the Revolutionary Army, and apparently helped him load cannons. But “Molly Pitcher” seems to have been just a generic nickname for women who carried water to the colonial troops.
The truth is so limiting. I like the legend better, especially after what happened to me yesterday.
I’m writing this from Seattle Tacoma International Airport, after a super-fast flight from Anchorage: 2 hours, 54 minutes — the wind was certainly beneath our wings on this trip.
I leave here at 11:45 p.m. and journey on to Dallas/Fort Worth, and from thence to Philadelphia, landing at 10:30 a.m. Sunday unless the Anti-Destination League hears that I’m out loose.
I’m spending part of that day with an old friend and then trying to write the MSN Money Frugal Nation post for Tuesday. That’s because on Monday I’m taking the Megasbus to New York City, where I’ll meet with a couple of editor types, have dinner with a blogger friend and get in line for the “Book of Mormon” ticket lottery.
Getting a ticket would be a Christmas miracle. I am not holding my breath.
The Megabus died within spitting distance of the Lincoln Tunnel exit of the New Jersey Turnpike, close enough to see (and yearn after) the Empire State Building. We filed outside and stood or sat under a couple of trees, breathing in vehicle fumes mixed with air as humid as most oceans.
“It’s my birthday,” moaned one of the young women who was heading to the Big Apple with two friends to celebrate.
A skinny red-haired guy pulled out an equally skinny, almost triangular guitar and began strumming under his breath. One of the trio of young women noticed.
“Play us some music,” she ordered. “Do you know ‘Wobble Wobble’?”
Her friends snickered. The young man said, “No, I don’t know that one.” Instead, he launched into Bob Marley’s “Is This Love.” The birthday girl began to dance, one of her friends began filming with her smartphone, and other passengers stopped kvetching and began to listen.
Yesterday I bought a couple of tomatoes. I shouldn’t have: They were mushy and nearly flavorless. It was like eating catsup-tinged oatmeal.
Or maybe I’m just comparing them against the love apples I ate for a couple of weeks while visiting my dad, which would be unfair. Ain’t no tomato like a Jersey tomato.
Most people perceive New Jersey as merely a bedroom community for Noo Yawk, a state defined by traffic-jammed highways, obnoxious accents and, thanks to the creators of “The Sopranos” and “Jersey Shore,” organized crime and tippling imbeciles.
Fact is, New Jersey’s motto is “The Garden State.” We South Jerseyites considered North Jersey “The Garbage State.”