Sprinkler Season in Full Bloom

I can already feel July melting away like a cherry popsicle on a summer day.

Holmes and Beloved were kind enough to invite me over for dinner Sunday evening to close out the long Fourth of July holiday weekend. Even better, rather than going mainstream with the traditional hamburgers and hot dogs, they were serving up Champagne, lobster tails and North Carolina steamed shrimp.

Needless to say, I was there ten minutes early and stayed for a solid five and a half hours.

After gorging on dinner, we moved the bottle and the party downstairs to the Man Cave where I requested that Holmes play nothing but bands from the Laurel Canyon era as I regaled them with tidbits from the film I'd recently seen.

That meant starting with 1967's "Buffalo Springfield Again" which opened with the Neil Young-penned and sung "Mr. Soul," a fitting way to kick off a listening party that went on to include (duh) the Byrds, Joni Mitchell (notably absent from the documentary despite her "Ladies of the Canyon" album a few years later) and Tom Petty.

Oh, and chocolate mousse.

The only reason I left before midnight was because it was a school night and even I had Monday responsibilities, beginning with a walk with Mac who had just returned from ten days in Scotland. I was particularly impressed with the news that her group's private guide had worn a kilt - it was his family's tartan, Mac made sure to ask, though she didn't ask what was underneath it - except the day they went hiking when he wore jeans.

As we walked to the river, she described the magical sights they'd taken in: moors, castles and almost no precipitation. She liked both haggis (we agreed it's nothing but Scottish Scrapple) and blood sausage, but was less fond of the potatoes in fish and chips, a dish they naturally ate more than once.

It was good to have my waking buddy with me on the Pipeline after weeks of us being in different places. That said, I couldn't convince her to join me in my now-daily (and thoroughly enjoyable) walk through the sprinklers on Brown's Island before getting on the walkway, a fact she attributed to the phone in her pocket.

One more way that technology saps the fun out of life.

After catching up, she was headed to work and I was headed to the Northern Neck, also for work - I had an interview in Kilmarnock and another in Warsaw - but at least with better scenery than Short Pump where Mac works.

When I left the Front Porch Coffeehouse after the first interview, I was greeted by a roiling black sky in the exact direction I was headed.

Sure enough, I got barely a few miles before a fierce rainstorm slowed traffic to a crawl and visibility to nonexistent.  Since no one on the Northern Neck is in a hurry anyway, I just took it in stride, tried to avoid hydroplaning and just when I thought the sky had cleared, drove right into another squall.

Nerve-wracking as the driving was, I kept reminding myself that my Mom had just told me that they've been so long without rain that the grass crunches underfoot, so at least I was suffering for the greater good.

Back in Richmond, everything looked bone-dry, making it even more of a surprise when I saw photos from the morning storm in D.C., where cars were half submerged at 15th and Constitution Avenue, a crazy sight to behold. The Post said they got a month's worth of rain in one morning.

After a full day of road tripping, all I wanted was a comfortable seat, some vintage Hitchcock and buttered popcorn. Walking into the Byrd to see "Vertigo," manager Todd said to me, "It wouldn't be a Hitchcock movie without you."

I didn't mention it, but it will have to be since I have plans the nights he's showing the other Hitchcocks this month.

The Byrd had a great crowd for a Monday night - far more people than I'd expected, although the parking lot had been full, so I should have been suspicious - and when Todd was introducing the film, he asked who was seeing it for the first time. I was gobsmacked when fully a third of the people raised their hands.

Never seen "Vertigo?" The film that replaced "Citizen Kane" as the greatest film ever made according to the British Film Institute? Say it isn't so.

It was clear that the audience was full of newbies because when Kim Novak's Madeline character throws herself to her death from the mission bell tower, there were gasps of "Whoa!" and "Omygod!"

Guess they didn't see that coming.

Because I've seen "Vertigo" plenty of times, I could sit back and enjoy the film as a 1958 travelogue of San Francisco. Obviously, the city was far more uncrowded in 1958 than when I went there, but that only made it easier to recognize places I'd seen in real life like Lombard Street, Coit Tower (shown repeatedly by Hitch as a phallic symbol), Mission Dolores and Grace Cathedral.

Other signs of the times included a diagnosis of acute melancholia at a sanitarium and Kim Novak's character Judy asking him, "Is this some kind of Gallup Poll?"

Because this was a 21st century audience watching it, many of them for the first time, there were frequent moments when the audience had issues with things James Stewart's character said. I mean, let's face it, when a stranger knocks on your hotel door and wants to not only start seeing you but change how you dress, the style of your hair and your make-up, it's not going to sit well with modern audiences.

When Stewart told Novak he wanted her to change her hair color, he rationalized his request by saying, "It can't matter to you!" I don't know which was louder, the laughter or the sounds of female indignation. Seriously?

In the immortal words of Megan Rapinoe, "I think to be a woman in the world, in general, is frustrating. And I feel we spend so much time fighting against things."

Even in 1958, I'd be willing to bet that women wanted to be the ones who decided what color their hair was. Still do, but now we have bigger fish to fry.

Equal pay would be a fine start. Stick that in your Gallup poll, Hitch.

Portrait of a Sweaty Woman

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me, those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

You tell 'em, Henry James because they won't listen to me.

Since I got back from the beach Sunday, it's clear that Richmond has settled into full-on summer mode. In Jackson Ward, that means clearing out of the 'hood, whether permanently, as is the case with VCU students, or temporarily, as seems to be the case with a goodly percentage of my neighbors.

The sense around here is that everyone was told to blow this pop stand but I didn't get the memo, which is fine because I don't mind living in a ghost town for a few months. With each day that passed this week, I noticed fewer cars on the road as well as parked, with barely a fraction of the number of people I usually encounter when walking to the river.

A river which is decidedly low at the moment given the extended heat.

Walking over to Bar Solita for a nosh with my date last night only proved my point. Other than a few people milling about in front of the November Theater awaiting the start of "The Wiz," the streets were all but deserted. Inside Bar Solita, other stuck-in-the-city stragglers like us were finishing up happy hour, but once they cleared out, there wasn't much left in the way of humanity beyond a dozen people.

Not that we cared. A bottle of Can Petit Cava Brut provided light refreshment and a long finish, while orzo salad, eggplant caponata and quinoa tabbouleh delivered nourishment that wouldn't send us into sleep mode.

We were so engrossed in conversation as I shared all my upcoming trips to the Northern Neck to do interviews for stories (not to mention, an excuse to drop by Merroir to scarf oysters) that I hadn't realized that the bartender had nothing better to do than listen to us blather.

Finally, he came over, grinning, and asked, of all the unlikely questions, if we were from Lancaster. "I heard you mention Morratico and Whitestone," he explained of hearing those unlikely locations mentioned in Richmond.

After I shared that I do a lot of writing about that area and that my parents have lived there for 30+ years, my date piped up to say he had a house in Irvington. The bartender's mind was being blown right in front of us. The question was, how did this charming young man in the Hawaiian shirt know what we were talking about?

"I grew up in Belle Isle State Park," he explained, looking not a little proud of it. "My Dad was a ranger so we lived on park land." Whoa, what an awesome place to grow up.

I've been to Belle Isle State park many times - it's minutes from where my folks live, basically a straight shot from their dock by water - for picnics, music, walks and to check out boat rentals, but I'd had no clue park personnel ever lived on the property. Suddenly, I wanted to hear more about his childhood. He told us about summers spent swimming in the river, riding his bike on the roads winding through the park system, exploring the woods and commandeering the picnic pavilion.

Hell, the Hardy Boys only wished they'd grown up in a place with so much exploration potential.

Not surprisingly, once he'd come of age, rural Lancaster County lost its allure so after a detour to Key West, he'd landed in Richmond, specifically Jackson Ward, which he loved. The only place where he lost points was in admitting that he'd never been to Merroir. "I haven't been to Rappahannock, either," he said sheepishly, probably because it's barely five blocks away.

I informed him that there was no need to pay twice as much at Rappahannock for the same oysters he could get by driving to Merroir and he looked relieved to hear it.

Once we'd finished a slice of triple chocolate cake and the last of the bubbly, we bid our new friend farewell and headed out into the even-emptier streets, where we were wholly surprised to see puddles everywhere as we strolled home. Apparently it had rained, if not long at least hard, and we'd never even noticed, despite Bar Solita having two entirely glass walls.

It wasn't much cooler, but the pavement had that lovely hot, wet smell that inevitably follows a summer rain shower or thunderstorm, so there was at least the illusion of cool. For people like Henry James and me, that's enough to get us to the next summer afternoon.

Speaking of which, if it winds up being so steamy that a heat nap is in order, all the better. In the immortal words of Sam Keen, "deep summer is when laziness finds respectability."

Only in summertime could those two be such fine bedfellows.

Roxanne, Meet Karma Chameleon

With musical opinions to spare, I admit I was curious.

What could a Facebook algorithm tell me about what kind of high school stereotype I was, based solely on my choices of '80s music? So I took the quiz and got my grade.

The way you've covered every '80s genre makes us think that you were the studious type in high school. You may not have appreciated the label when you were young, but being a nerd paid off. You are intelligent, well-rounded and all the awkwardness has disappeared. Though you were a nerd back then, you're a nerd no more.

Hold it right there. I am still very much a nerd and no wanna-be judgement calculator is going to tell me otherwise. But if you're going to fit me into a high school box, I'll be the first to admit that nerd is where I belong.

Straight As? Check. National Honor Society? Check. Graduated a year early? Check. No question, I was a nerd, even if we didn't have that word back then.

The way I see it is, apparently if you're a nerd in high school, you're smart enough to listen to a broad range of music. If you're smart enough to have teachers asking what they can do to challenge you, it seems you're open to the Police and Culture Club. it's that simple.

Of course, this wasn't news to anyone at my parents' house, where I'd gone today to celebrate Father's Day with the man who produced this nerd. Also in attendance was Sister #2, along with her two sons, both of whom are teachers. The one who teaches high school had brought along the school's yearbook and offered me a look-see.

"I still have mine from Parkdale," my sister noted as I opened the surprisingly hefty book. I still have mine, too, but it's nothing like what I was holding now. Besides being in full color, every senior not only had a senior portrait but right next to it was each one's baby picture, too.

Seemed a bit much to me.

But what gave the yearbook so much more heft than my own wasn't the baby pictures, it was page after page of candid shots of kids at school. Now mind you, my high school had close to 3,000 students, exactly the same number as the school where he teaches. But no one was documenting our every move on a daily basis, much less combining them into photo-montages that seemed to go on for dozens of pages at a time.

The other thing taking up untold pages was documentation of the sheer number of clubs and groups at the school and I'm talking everything imaginable and then a bunch that never would have occurred to me. Like the Dr. Who Society, a group that watches their favorite episodes and eats snacks. A Millionaire's Club (don't ask). An Environmental Defense Club to teach the importance of up-cycling. And don't get me started on the Do Something Club.

Maybe all this struck me as a bit much because I didn't belong to any clubs in high school because I was too busy being a nerd doing homework, studying, reading and wondering if my life was ever going to start.

You know, like nerds do.

Meanwhile, my Mom mentioned that the mother of my childhood best friend had died and insisted on pulling up the obituary on her tablet to show me. The picture I saw looked nothing like the woman I remember from childhood, although my Mom insists that only her hair is different in the picture.

Well, that and she's 50 years older than the last time I saw her.

Far more interesting than a photo of a woman I didn't recognize was the listing of survivors, which included my childhood best friend, Cindy. She'd applied for the job by showing up at the side door of our new house on moving day, inquiring of my Mom, "Do you have any little girls I can play with?"

At the time, she only had four to choose from: a 4-year old, a 3-year old, a 2-year old and a 3 1/2 month old (two more were yet to come). Guess who she offered up?

But what caught my eye scanning the obit was that Cindy now spells her name Cyndi, which she most definitely did not do when we were children.

Now that I think about it, Cindy and I parted ways even before we were out of elementary school as it became painfully clear that she liked boys and breaking rules while I was perfectly happy being teacher's pet and helping with bulletin boards.

Which leads me to believe that her taste in '80s music could never be anywhere near as broad as mine. Spoken like a true nerd.

The Bones of My Priors, an Interpretive Talk

You sign on to make potato soup and next thing you know, you're the unwitting star of "This is Your Life."

Despite that I'm practically drowning in work this week, I'd promised my Mom I'd make my usual trek to the Northern Neck to help her prepare for her annual women's club St. Patrick's Day luncheon. And by "help," I mean do all the potato peeling and dicing, onion and celery chopping, cooking and stirring required for 60 servings of potato and cheese soup.

Mom devoted her energies to making three loaves of Irish soda bread with raisins and caraway seed, only one of which I helped her with, though I did make a pound cake. This collaboration of ours has been going on for over a decade now, with my share of the workload steadily increasing.

I'm fine with that. It's a busy, messy, hot day with lots of conversation, all for a good cause.

But when Mom requested my help this year, she wanted more than a day of my life. She wanted me to stay overnight so I could help her schlep four crock pots full of soup, three loaves of bread, paper products, party favors and two floral arrangements to the Women's Club the next morning.

Of course I said yes.

But then it turned out that Mr. Wright was going to be in Irvington, so I suggested to Mom and Dad that he join us for dinner, an idea they loved. When he arrived with a bottle of Simonet Blanc de Blanc, they liked him even better.

It wasn't an elaborate meal for two reasons: I'd volunteered to make it and the last thing I felt like doing after a full day of cooking and baking was cook some more. Making a Cobb salad and baking a pan of cornbread was about all I could muster.

But the bubbles and the relaxed mood backfired on me once we finished eating. Out of the blue, my Dad begins lamenting to Mr. Wright, "It's a shame she didn't meet you sooner" and goes on to dissect my entire love life before he arrived on the scene.

Hilarious.

I'm talking about him going all the way back to my first boyfriend and then discoursing on every man in my life since, although not in chronological order. He'd bring someone up and then start explaining why he knew that man wasn't right for me.

Every now and then, my Mom would chime in, explaining that she never really liked so-and-so, but my Dad was definitely driving the conversational bus (with the aid of more bubbly, of course).

The funny part was, I learned (or was reminded) of all kinds of things from my past that had long ago been misfiled or forgotten entirely.  Meanwhile, Mr. Wright got to hear about my bad choices in excruciating detail, from the one with a motorcycle to the one with multiple tattoos (before ink was cool). The long and the short-term. The ones I married, the ones I agreed to marry and then backed out on and the ones I lived with.

One, Dad claimed, simply wasn't up to the task of handling my large and talkative family. Another, to my surprise, had taken Dad aside and asked permission to marry me. That was news to me. And when Mom shared who her favorite had been, I didn't have the heart to tell her how lousy he was in bed.

Just when I was thinking that the topic was waning, one of my parents would mention another "prior," as my Dad dubbed them the very first time he met Mr. Wright, and the reminiscing galloped off again in another direction.

Truly, I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if Dad had motioned toward the door and said one of their names and they'd come walking in the room to surprise me.

Fortunately, though, "This is Your Life" only lasted an hour or so before they'd passed judgement on every man I'd ever been involved with. Or ran out of steam, I'm not sure which.

That was when Dad turned his microscope on Mr. Wright, curious about what he'd been doing for the past decade since that's the period my Dad takes the most issue with.

And let me tell you, when you invite your significant other to dinner with the people who spawned you, the last thing you want is to put him on the spot about why he didn't find you when your life fell apart and you first became available.

Even if it turns out he has been available since 2009 and would have been only too happy to have started this relationship sooner if he'd only known.

"She's always been the smart one," Dad informs Mr. Wright, shaking his head. "And she settles for all these duds. How did it take her so long to find you?"

This from the man who just happened to be on a triple date with another woman when he met my Mom and was instantly smitten. Happily ever after is easier - and comes sooner - for some people.

Turns out a few of us have to kiss a lot of frogs first. But as a cyclist once told me, the reward for being a slow starter is a strong finish.

All I can say is, about damn time. And, Dad, better late than never.

Off with Her Head

You could call it just another evening watching simulated oral sex with my parents.

But before all that unfolded, I was in Urbanna by late morning for an interview with a 26-year old who owns a boutique. A woman who gave up living in the Fan to return to the Northern Neck to take advantage of a business opportunity.

All I could think of was how when I was 26, I was working, sure, but not at anything I loved (teaching correspondents how to write, back when that was a thing) and still going to clubs twice a week.

Not a bit concerned with investing in my future like this sensible young woman.

My afternoon was given over to a couple of Richmonders who also happen to own a marina in Deltaville. One part of me was thinking about their commute, while another was acknowledging that strolling down "A" dock admiring boats that go for what houses cost is a pretty terrific way to spend a sunny spring-like afternoon.

And they get to do it everyday.

Once one of the owners found out my food background, he was the one asking questions, admitting that O'Toole's is one of his favorite restaurants. He expected me to judge but I told him every Forest Hill resident loves O'Toole's.

Once I was finished working for the day, I headed to my parents' house for dinner and a sleepover, a prospect so unusual that my smart alecky mother had observed, "Staying over? My, my, how things have changed!"

And while she's right, things have changed dramatically, the truth of it was that I couldn't see any good reason to return to Richmond when I had yet another interview on the Northern Neck the next morning.

Unlikely as it may seem, I do have a sensible side.

Before I'd even arrived, Mom had emailed, giving me a choice of dinner options and I'd picked chicken. But since she had no real plans for the package of drumsticks sitting on the counter, I resorted to the Internet, putting in on-hand ingredients to come up with a recipe. As I got busy making it, Mom returned to her chair in the other room, so I questioned what she was doing.

"Enjoying the smells while someone else makes dinner for me," she said happily.

But she did have a plan for all three of us post-dinner and that was to watch "Mary, Queen of Scots." She'd tentatively asked if I'd seen it and been relieved to learn I hadn't. She and Dad are big fans of British historical series, so this film seemed like a natural for them.

Only problem was, I don't think Mom was expecting to see Lord Darnley, Mary's second husband, pleasure her orally. She certainly wasn't expecting to see Ismael, Mary's gay confidante, violently stabbed by a group of her subjects. And I'm almost positive she didn't see the Earl of Bothwell's rape of Mary coming.

What I couldn't deal with was the colorblind casting, despite being a fan of the practice. But do I believe for a moment that Elizabeth I had a Chinese lady-in-waiting? I do not. Or that Lord Thomas Randolph, Elizabeth's adviser, was black? Sure don't.

And while I understand the director's reluctance to shoot an historical drama with an all-white cast in the politically correct times, if the actors don't make sense visually, what have you accomplished?

By the end of the movie, we were all sort of underwhelmed and went to bed. But this morning at breakfast, when I admitted to some historical curiosity about the real Mary (I mean, besides her sex life, which we were current on), both copped to some questions themselves. Out came the iPad, joining the Washington Post and Richmond Times Dispatch at the breakfast table so we could all learn a little more about the Scottish queen.

In other words, the nerdy apple doesn't fall too far from the nerdy tree.

Of course Mary didn't really wear an elaborate red gown for her beheading (too obvious). But after fact-checking, I was sorry that they hadn't shown the moment when the executioner lifted up her head for the crowds to see, only to have the head go rolling away because she had on a wig.

Come on, why pass up that kind of cinema verite?

After breakfast, Dad invited me to ride shotgun as he did a few errands in Kilmarnock, a trip that resulted in the overhead door to his trunk dropping on my head ("We need to get that fixed," he said, stating the obvious), which hurt like hell. My head may be hard, but those doors are heavy.

The outing also took us past a gang of convicts picking up trash in Lively under the watchful eye of a man with a rifle. I've no doubt it sucks to be a convict, but these guys really couldn't ask for a more glorious March day to be out in the sunshine.

After bidding so long to the people who spawned me, I drove back to Kilmarnock for another interview. This one was right on Main Street and if there's a busy time in a town like Kilmarnock, it's lunchtime. The sidewalk was full of slow-moving people coming in and out of shops and restaurants like they had all day to get their business done.

Which, given that this was the Northern Neck at mid-day on Tuesday, they probably did. Besides, no one is in a hurry after they've had a slice of pie after lunch at Lee's.

Crossing the arching Norris bridge - which my Mom fears and avoids - meant crossing a Rappahannock River covered in whitecaps, which probably explains why not a boat was in sight. I love the view looking down from that bridge because of the many times I've been in a boat going under the bridge and my inability to reconcile the two.

One thing I long ago reconciled is how lucky I am to have these two people for parents. When Dad mentioned that he'd just recently been at the doctor's office, it was to brag that his blood pressure had been 130/60, a major accomplishment for an 87-year old man, according to his doctor.

"I told him the reason is because of all these years with your Mom, the love of my life," he told me quite seriously.

Romantic, yes, and absolutely true. But I have it on good authority he also likes enjoying the smells while someone else makes dinner for him.

Some things don't change.

Remind Me Tomorrow

It wasn't a lost weekend exactly, but somehow there wasn't so much as a spare minute to blog it.

Friday's adventure with Pru and Beau was to begin at Longoven and end at Swift Creek Mill to see "Cyrano."

As in "Take it and turn to facts my fantasies," that Cyrano. But it didn't happen that way.

Since it had been a while since our trio had been together, I began by thanking them for agreeing to our night out. "I knew I better say yes or you'll stop asking," Pru observed dryly. The woman knows me so well.

As did whomever had programmed the music because any playlist that begins with Sharon van Etten's new album and moves on to one of my all-time favorite L.A. bands, Small Black, must have me in mind.

As is our habit on play nights, we arrived early and ate all around the menu. That meant ordering sweet dumpling squash with Comte, cauliflower variations under a soft egg, roasted sunchokes with Pecorino cream and a Tuscan kale salad with fig miso and Manchego just to give us something to enjoy with a bottle of La Grange Tiphaine Clef de Sol White (after the requisite toast to the Loire, of course).

We're not savages, after all.

Over a discussion Pru began of how to celebrate my birthday (would it be wrong to go to a restaurant, leave it for another and return to the first, all in the name of a progressive dinner?) and whether it should be in or out of town, we moved on to main courses.

While I was forking up bites of luminous soy-glazed grilled cod with maitake mushrooms, spinach and cauliflowers, Pru was regaling us with tales from her Mexico jaunts. Seems the best dinners came from places where fishermen brought their catch and cooks with card tables set up waterside cooked the fish to the customer's order on the spot. She should know, having had many a tasty piece of fish that way.

By that time we were drinking Julienas Cuvee Tradition, a velvety Gamay ideal for the Church Hillians, who were devouring rosettes of smoked duck topped with horseradish cream and pickled turnip under grilled radicchio leaves, a dish that looked like a collection of purple seashells on the plate.

It wasn't long after we ordered dessert - black sesame and pear for beau, chestnut mousse with milk chocolate and persimmon sorbet for me and eggnog for Pru - that we decided that our play tickets needed to be moved to another night and Beau was put in charge of delivering that news. Fortunately, it wasn't a problem for the theater.

Let me put it this way, once discussion begins of being a sucker for coffee grounds - not to mention making love to one's coffee-maker ("Well, sure, it's warm," our server interjected) - or about having Shakespearean quotes inside a medicine cabinet, you can pretty much assume that no one's looking to follow Act I, much less Act 2.

To wit: "So she orders a gin and blood orange juice and I remind her that it's noon, she's ordering a gin drink and she doesn't drink alcohol." Must have been a helluva brunch for Queen B.

That we made another stop, this one at nearby Perch, for the bourbon fans to have tamarind-infused Rust and Stardust cocktails (I kept to Treveri Blanc de Blanc) solidified the wisdom of foregoing a linear story in the name of drama for meandering conversation ("Bring back the swoop!").

Saturday was given over to more restauranting, when I landed at a crowded Social 52 for brunch, where the wait was only 35 minutes, as opposed to our first attempt at the new Brunch (sibling to Lunch and Supper), which promised a wait of an hour and a half. All that for a cacophonous room and a white cheddar waffle with syrup and bacon, but at least the company was stellar.

Remind me again why Richmonders love brunch so much?

Things finally calmed down when Mr. Wright and I showed up at Branch and Vine that evening, grabbed a bottle of Verdejo off the shelves, ordered creamy tomato soup and sandwiches and stayed put until they closed, the owner walking out with us after locking up.

Superbowl Sunday dawned early because I had food to make for the big game which we were watching with my parents on the Northern Neck. Actually, Mr. Wright had mentioned going to watch it with my Dad, which left me looking like a bad daughter if I wasn't there, so all of a sudden it was a Superbowl party.

With zero interest in the game, I volunteered to be on KP, deciding on a thematic bent. Lobster rolls for the Patriots, Tex-Mex hummus and Pacific crab-stuffed cherry tomatoes for the Rams and enough other things - yes, there was Ukrop's cole slaw because cole slaw - to fill in the cracks. Kind of clever, right?

Mom surprised us all by pulling out a bottle of Paul Laurent Rose Champagne and who's going to say no to that? She also cracked wise, explaining to Mr. Wright that I was the daughter who'd always left the room when the Superbowl was on, so not to expect too much.

Pshaw, I was raised by sports-loving parents, have been to plenty of Washington home games and am well-versed in the rules of football, meaning he was gobsmacked when he realized I could not only understand that was happening, but even mock the cheesy graphics explaining yardage and downs.

You just never know when you can impress someone important with knowledge you've had laying around in your brain for decades, even if you do rarely need to access it. And, yes, I did pass my Dad's quiz on the first half, just moments before being underwhelmed by Adam Levine's half-time performance.

Quit taking your shirt off, son.

Then at breakfast this morning, the three of them got into an in-depth conversation of baseball. They covered uniforms (I'd liked that the Rams were wearing the throwback uniforms) and long-gone players, but it was the subject of parks that caught fire, with my all-knowing Mom's complaint about their varying sizes.

Needless to say, I had little to contribute there, although it appears I'll be adding Yankee stadium to my roster of one (Wrigley Field) before long.

All I can say is, yesterday's match proved that defense is key in the big games. Brady is Brady and Goff is Goff, 'nuff said. Pats were definitely the best team (must be all that water Brady drinks).

And now, back to my regularly scheduled life, already in progress...

Sunday Morning Coming Down

I wouldn't want to brag about being a good daughter.

Okay, I wouldn't ordinarily, but who else but a very good daughter would go to dinner at a place that has Tr*mp wines on the wine list?

Not to mention that I'd just gone to the Northern Neck on Wednesday to make lunch for my Dad on the occasion of his actual 87th birthday, so it's not like I was looking to score points or anything.

Daughterly duties done, that lunch might have been enough for some offspring.

But while we were in Islamorada, I'd gotten an invitation to Dad's birthday dinner and the 26th of January seemed forever away and my brain was probably somewhat softened by all that sun and relaxing, so I'd casually mentioned it to Mr. Wright and he'd agreed.

It probably didn't hurt that he and my father have a mutual admiration thing going, but his brain may have been a tad vacation-compromised, too. An acceptance was sent.

So there we were, driving to the Northern Neck Saturday afternoon, allowing enough time to get ready and have a glass of wine in Irvington before setting out to meet an abbreviated version of the family (including the only sister and brother-in-law he'd yet to meet), meaning only eight people for dinner at the Kilmarnock Inn.

Although I've been to the Inn plenty of times, I'd never noticed the political slant of the menu before. I'm talking about a menu with the title "Filibusters at the Kilmarnock Inn," that then moves on to "Starters for the First Term" (and second term) and includes such entrees as the POTUS platter (filet mignon) and the Presidential Running Mate (NY strip).

Refusing to be part of that nonsense, I instead opted for seafood wontons followed by a salad of greens, craisins, Feta, olives and pecans, then flatbread with wilted arugula, marinated tomatoes, goat cheese and bacon.

Not a partisan opinion in sight.

But no self-respecting liberal wants to open up her wine list and see, not one, but two, Tr*mp Winery options staring back at her. Goodness knows, I remember all the yard signs in this neck of the woods back during the election cycle, so I knew I was a stranger in a strange land, but the decision to offer those bottles can't possibly sit well with every Inn visitor.

So I have to assume management are idiots.

Eager to share my disdain with the choice, I discretely pointed out the wines, first to Mr. Wright and then to Dad, both of whom made their opinion of the inclusion obvious in their return looks. My discretion was necessary because one sister and her husband are of a different political affiliation than my parents and me and I wasn't looking to start any discussion on that subject.

Instead, a lot of the evening's conversation involved travel. Seems the absent Sister #5 and her husband are about to take a river cruise through Europe, although no one seemed quite sure of where they were leaving from or going to. Sister #3 regaled us with a laundry list of Italian cities she and her husband have been to, while lamenting not having decided which one they want to retire to.

When talk turned to sports and the topic of ballparks, a mention of me - the least sports-inclined of my Dad's six daughters - having been to Wrigley Field caused Sister #4 to say to her husband that it would be a good one for them to visit.

Even an athletic failure like me knows that, as ballparks go, I got to see a game at one of the best.

In typical Sister #3 fashion, once she realized the depth of Mr. Wright's sports knowledge, she wasted no time in bluntly asking him what he was doing with me.

Ah, sisters. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em.

The second problem with the Kilmarnock Inn, after its wine-buying habits, is that it's located in Kilmarnock, where they roll up the sidewalks by 9:00 on a Saturday night. We'd barely finished our desserts when we were informed that they'd finished up everything they needed to do and were closing up for the night.

Translation: we needed to clear out.

Fortunately, two of the couples were staying at the inn, so we all adjourned to the gathering room, a euphemism for a good-sized room located near the inn's cottages with a TV, a pool table and leather library chairs for lounging. Bottles of red and white wine helped keep the party going once it was decided that shooting pool was in order.

Luckily, as the two least coordinated (but best read, I might add) sisters, Sister #4 and I immediately settled into chairs to chat while the ultra competitive Sister #3 teamed up with her husband and challenged Mr. Wright and Brother-in-law #4 to a game.

Little did she realize that you don't challenge Buffalo and Chicago natives to pick up a cue without expecting that they've spent some time in a few pool halls. Even after what Brother-in-law #4 referred to as "giving them a shellacking," Sister #3 continued to insist on additional games.

Meanwhile, Sister #4 and I, comfortably sipping Grillo on the sidelines, were also learning about hidden billiards talents in our partners. I can still use the excuse of newness, but they've been together for 30 years, so you'd think pool would have come up before now.

Eventually, the victors refused to shellac the losers even one more time and we left the inn to recover from family time those who were sleeping there.

We'd opted out of brunch with the clan so that we could have a leisurely Sunday, eventually landing at the library to hear Richmond Times Dispatch columnist Bill Lohmann talk about his book, "Doctor Copter" about the physician who'd made weekly treks to Tangier Island to provide medical care.

For us, it was a rare cultural activity on one of our Irvington weekends, but to locals, it was like the second coming. Attendees not only filled the large room where Bill spoke, but also another room downstairs where they'd decided to broadcast his talk to accommodate the overflow crowd.

I'm sure a big part of the appeal was the Northern Neck/Tangier connection - many of the original settlers in my parents' village came from Tangier - because the doctor flew out of Whitestone in the early years and later Topping. That said, Mr. Wright posited that it was a function of being held after church let out, being a free event and, probably most important of all, that local women make cookies which are then served to attendees after the lecture.

What more could a curious Northern Necker want on a Sunday afternoon?

I don't know about what else those people might have wanted, but we closed out the weekend at Merroir, sitting on the porch for a change because of the temperature. A couple and their dog were the sole occupants of the outdoor seating but even they eventually caved and put Rover in the car so they could dine in warmth.

Meanwhile, the porch provided everything we wanted: a view of the water, a bottle of Hugl Gruner Veltliner and a platter of Old Saltes to get the party started. After the Ruby Salts I'd had at Perch and the gigantic Apalachicola ones I'd slurped in Isalmorada, I needed a palate correction back to what a truly briny oyster should taste like and Old Saltes never disappoint.

But we'd come, not just to chow down, but to talk and Mr. Wright's rockfish under caramelized onions and my fishcake over mixed greens provided the fuel to do a post-vacation look back while considering next year's winter getaway possibilities.

He likes to say that there's an awful lot of thinking and talking that goes with this relationship, while I'm convinced it's really just a whole lot of planning and executing.

Not that I'm complaining.

Well, except when it comes to businesses foolish enough to serve wines labeled with the name of the man attempting to destroy the American democratic experiment.

Can't we just give him a shellacking and be done with it?

Stick a Candle In It

Is it just me or has everyone else lost track of what day of the week it is?

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day felt like a weekend, except that the following day, Wednesday, felt nothing like a Monday. Meaning we had responsibilities.

The plan was to drive to the Northern Neck for some seasonal fam time, in this case with the parental units plus Sister #4 and her posse. My contribution to the evening meal was cookies and a Viennese torte which I'd wisely made before going to dinner the night before and a salad for which I needed to stop and get the ingredients.

Don't judge. Of all the things I needed to accomplish before the official holiday, somehow buying salad ingredients - a task neither sexy nor festive - had fallen through the cracks. At Ellwood Thompson, Mr. Wright demonstrated his superior planning skills yet again by suggesting we snag some lunch makings to tide me over for the long journey from J-Ward to the Rivah.

Car snacks, never leave home without them.

Except that I didn't want to eat in the car. A woman en route to spend the afternoon and evening with eight family members needs a more civilized way to fuel up than gobbling at 60 mph. Since he'd suggested lunch, I suggested the roadside table on Route 3 for the setting.

In 33 years of driving to my parents' house, I never fail to notice the small blue sign near a creek with a picture of a picnic table on it. Finally the day had come when I could see where that table was. Turns out it was multiple well-weathered tables scattered over a fenced-in grassy knoll overlooking the water. Although Route 3 wasn't far away, it felt like it was.

The picnic tables were splinter factories, old and rough, so I laid down my scarf on the bench rather than risk a hole in my cute tights. Our coats stayed buttoned to the top, but the turkey wraps and chickpea, herb and feta salad tasted wonderful in the crisp air. Sitting there munching on the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (Dad's favorite version of the cookie) I'd baked to take to Mom's with a view of pale blue water felt a picnic the holidays forgot.

It was also the peaceful interlude before the family holiday storm.

Don't get me wrong, visiting my parents when only one of my sisters and her family are there is infinitely preferable to going when multiple families convene. Still, their house is so much warmer than what I'm used to and currently so full of Christmas decor that sometimes to cool down and breathe easily, I just went out on the Ledo Deck. That's the  affectionate family name for the glassed-in porch, as opposed to the sleeping porch upstairs or the little porch off Mom and Dad's bedroom.

One of the most charming things about this house is its abundance of porches.

Non-stop conversation and gift unwrapping dominated the afternoon, but it was my brother-in-law I pitied because he'd been up at 4:30 a.m. making his red sauce for tonight's penne with sausage and meatballs.

And while I believe that everyone should have an Italian in the family willing to make such a sacrifice, he did seem to nod off a few times over the afternoon as a result. Or maybe, like me, he felt like he was in a sauna.

The big family meal went off without a hitch, the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers occupying the dining room while the millennials took up their positions around the breakfast nook table. We toasted each other with Chateau d'Aqueria Tavel Rose and my Dad's sentimental words.

Abstaining from Rose was the cook, who admitted to a preference for Chianti. That was Dad's cue to begin telling the saga of the Chianti bottle that has somehow made it 50-some years as part of their household.

As he explained it for those who didn't know - and, mind you, that's not me - he and Mom drank Chianti in the '60s and '70s because it was cheap. But one straw-covered bottle had been promoted to decor after the first time they stuck a taper in it and let it burn down during one of their dinner parties. After that, they made a point to change candle colors every time they burnt it so that the wax drippings would be multi-colored.

I don't want to brag, but in the early '70s, my resourceful father had even found candles made of various colors of wax so they dripped multicolored from one candle. As kids, this was nothing short of otherworldly to us.

To Mom, it was ridiculous to spend that kind of money on crazy candles.

As he's sharing this old chestnut, I quietly leave the table and return with the waxy bottle in question, which I happened to know now resides in Dad's bathroom. The oohs and aahs as everyone admired 50 years of waxy buildup was enough to melt even the toughest Grinch heart.

That or inspire that "Hoarders" show to try to track him down.

I'm not as sentimental as my Dad, so I have no comparable souvenir of my youth with which to dazzle others after the holiday meal ends. Fortunately for me, it looks like my parents will live forever, so there'll be no shortage of bon mots and youthful memories.

Meanwhile, by the time we returned to civilization, I was surprised to discover that we hadn't even turned the page on Thursday yet.

When we first began going down, my sisters and I used to marvel at how slowly time seemed to move on the Northern Neck. Mom's explanation was always that the "day was lasting nicely." It was code for interminable.

This week is lasting nicely.

In Daylights, In Midnights

When a David Byrne song starts feeling holiday-like, it's probably time to step away from the gift wrap and cookie sheets.

Cruising along Route 360 this morning with the sky a pale blue, the odd angle of the December sunlight in my eyes and the unnatural warmth of the car baking my brain, I unexpectedly heard holiday thankfulness in the music.

Everyday is a miracle
Every day is an unpaid bill
You've got to sing for your super
Love one another

The mind is a soft-boiled potato
A jewel in a chocolate shell
I staple my love to your heart, dear
With memories and beautiful smells

You can kind of hear it, right?

It was my final pre-Christmas visit to help Mom and Dad prepare for the onslaught of family that will descend like locusts on the Northern Neck over the next ten days, a whirlwind of wrapping presents, baking cookies and deleting photographs (don't ask) for them.

During a brief break, I showed them the SNL cold open from Saturday, the one where the cast redid "It's a Wonderful Life" into "It's a Wonderful Trump," showing that idiot what the world would have been like if he'd never been put in office by the Russians.

My uber-liberal parents loved it, though I suspect it may have been their first episode of SNL. At least they got all the political humor.

By noon, I had eaten my weight in raw eggs.

That's because  I can't resist nibbling on cookie dough and today I made something like ten dozen cookies, so there was a lot of dough around. Mom and I mocked the recipe warning not to eat raw dough (because of the eggs), given that we've been doing so our entire lives and aren't likely to stop any time soon, no matter how much the medical science community tries to scare us.

As Hall and Oates once said, you've got to know that old habits die hard.

Frankly, as solidly as my days have been packed lately, I could justify dough-eating as fuel for the duration. Even for heathens like me, holiday season is a marathon, not a sprint.

It already seems like eons ago that Mr. Wright and I slipped over to the VMFA to see "Congo Masks: Masterpieces from Central Africa," but I think it might have been just last Friday. With the snowball that is my life rolling steadily downhill and getting bigger all the time, I thought it only prudent to get over there while I had a free moment.

The masks were a unique kind of artifact, but for me, it was the film of Congolese people wearing them and dancing in them that provided the best insight into why masks are so central to aspects of the culture. The films were also a fascinating timeline, since the ones from the '50s showed everyone in native dress, while the 1990 footage showed that Western clothing had reached the Congo.

I'm sorry, but it's disconcerting to see a man in a wooden mask with raffia hair wearing cargo shorts. Is there no point too remote on earth for these baggy bloomers to appear and degenerate native dress? Asking for a friend.

Most surprising was learning that masks are still being created and several newer ones are included in the show. There's one of Jesus from the second quarter of the 20th century and another of Elvis from the third quarter of the 20th century.

As to how either one wards off  evil spirits, well, the signage wasn't specific about that.

Also unexpected was a gallery full of musical instruments, the kind used to create the sounds that men in masks danced to. Favorite? The wooden trapezoid slit drum which could produce a half dozen tones because of the varying thickness of its sides.

Almost as long ago was a cozy dinner at Max's, tucked away at the far end of the long bar behind the enormous coffee machine, where we were out of view of absolutely everyone else in the place. Even the bartender had trouble even seeing us to pour Blanc de Blanc or serve us dinner, but the allure of being out of sight was too good to pass up.

Equally as good was an entree that could have been the poster child for vegetarian comfort food: grilled asparagus with sauteed mushrooms and Brussels sprouts leaves over pommes aligot, aka obscene cheesy mashed potatoes.

And before you go thinking we've become some kind of healthy vegetarians, know that two courses had meat and one had chocolate, so we still have our heads about us.

By 11 we were walking over to the Ghost Light After Party at the Basement, the latest incarnation of a piano bar in J-Ward. We found a table with a view, scored glasses of Rose and watched as local theater types took turns singing whatever the hell they wanted to, even when that included "My Heart Will Go On."

As I told the evening's host when he came over to chat, Mr. Wright had scored major points early on in our acquaintance when he'd copped to a love of show tunes while straight.

Let's just say he looked positively beatific when "Seasons of Love" began, but that's always a show-stopper because everyone in the theater community apparently knows every word, so it's inevitably a group singalong.

525,600 minutes
525,600 moments so dear
525,600 minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunset?
In midnights? In cups of coffee?
In inches, in miles?
In laughter, in strife?

In 525,600 minutes,
How do you measure a year in a life?

Well, if you're asking Mr. Wright, he would say it's measured in something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. He's not wrong, either.

We didn't intend to stay until last call, but the songs kept coming - I'm not sure there's ever been a GLAP where "A Whole New World" isn't sung - and it was too much fun to tear ourselves away, so we got more Rose and stayed the course, walking home at 2 a.m. through deserted J-Ward streets.

Sunday, we started at the Byrd for that perennial mash-up of love stories, "Love Actually," which I've been informed is now actually considered a Christmas movie. Whether of not that's a fact is still up for grabs, but why wouldn't I want to see a romantic comedy with Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson and Bill Nighy?

That's some pretty appealing man meat right there, and of multiple varieties, too.

Afterwards, just to prove our range, we wound up in the front row at Gallery 5 for Silent Music Revival's holiday screening of director Jean Renoir's surrealistic 1928 film, "The Little Matchgirl." Spoiler alert: all her matches can't keep her warm and she freezes to death.

That Hans Christian Anderson was dark, I'm telling you.

Disco punk band Toxic Moxie provided an improvised soundtrack that I would put up against any SMR soundtrack I've heard and I've been going to the event practically since it began 11 years ago. Their ability to react aurally to what was happening visually onscreen was spot on and evocative in that way that synths are so good at conveying sadness.

The only problem with being non-stop busy all weekend was that Monday arrived with a to-do list for the week that encompasses all the holiday prep I've been doing for Mom but needed to do for myself plus six interviews, seven deadlines and the need to get my hired mouth to a new place multiple times, all by New Year's Eve.

And don't even get me started on the travel prep that jumps into high gear once the work obligations have been met.

Sign seen on an insurance office sign in Tappahannock this morning: "Say yes to new adventures."

Don't mind if I do. This heathen is ready to dive into the holidays solely so she can come out on the other side and get back to real life.

It may mean a lot less raw egg, but a whole lot more to look forward to. Just one question, though. How did those 525,600 minutes pass so quickly this year?

Ah, yes, the biggest adventure of them all. Talk about your whole new world...

Closed for Snow

As goes Clay Street, so goes the world. At least, that's what I was hoping.

The moment I looked out the window this morning and saw that my street was passable was the moment I decided that my road trip to the Northern Neck was on, after all. If they'd gotten to Clay Street, Route 360 had to be clear.

Mom and Dad's pre-holiday to-do list awaited. I had to accept that absolutely nothing was going to happen in Richmond today with everything shut down and I needed to get out even if it meant driving an hour and a half away to escape the Hallmark holiday statis.

This girl was gone.

When I went down to clear off my car, a chore I expected to take 15 minutes but which took 30 given the foot of snow covering it, it was to discover that a very Jackson Ward thing had happened to my vehicle: there was a snow penis carved into the center of the hood.

I couldn't even be surprised. Instead, I went back upstairs, got my camera and took a snap of it.

That's because from the month I moved into this place - March 2009 - snowfall has meant male genitalia around these parts. The first one I ever saw was 3' high on top of a car and I tried to convince myself it was an aberration, except that the next morning I saw two: one on the hood of a truck, one in the truck's bed. Over the years, I've been able to count on seeing one whenever we have any appreciable snowfall.

Like so many things, it's just life in the Ward (insert shrug). I cleared it off, along with all the other snow that had blanketed my car and was on my way.

Driving east meant leaving J-Ward with its foot of snow and driving through Mechanicsville with its 7 or 8" (including the snow-covered windmill) to the Northern Neck where it wasn't much more than 4 or 5" and passing 17 snow plows along the way (I counted).

In the median between here and Tappahannock, I saw four vehicles abandoned, including a Fed Ex van, undoubtedly left yesterday since the roads were clear this morning.

Far more scenic was the landscape, with every evergreen resembling a Christmas card-worthy image of snow-laden branches. Large bushes like forsythia must have filled in and then over with snow, so that they now resembled giant Hostess Snoballs, minus the electric pink color.

For incongruous charm, it was hard to beat getting on the bridge in Tappahannock to see each of the docks along the shore covered in a carpet of snow. For sheer grandeur, nothing topped coming off it to see enormous, untouched white fields of snow as far as the eye could see. They didn't look real and no one would have found them believable if CGI had made them look that perfect.

When I stopped at Food Lion in Warsaw to get sour cream for Mom (the one ingredient she didn't have for the cake she wanted me to make today), the cashiers were standing in a gossip circle near the chip aisle, bored out of their minds and dreading the day ahead.

All was well at Mom and Dad's, where the heat is always set too high and Christmas decor is omnipresent. Things did smell wonderful, though, because the Christmas tree they'd gotten in Whitestone, while smaller than their usual ceiling-scraper (for which they both apologized, as if they were shirking their parental duty to only get a 7' tree), had a particularly fragrant scent that I love.

Besides the sour cream, Mom had asked me to bring the recipe when she couldn't find her copy. Mind you, this is a recipe she first shared with me in the '70s after a German co-worker made it and Mom got the recipe from her, a backstory I'd never heard before today.

That led to a conversation about her years working at the International Monetary Fund and how she'd been passed up for a promotion when her boss retired. Everyone was shocked when she didn't get it, but then word leaked that the woman who had was the IMF director's god-daughter. As recompense, when Mom decided to take early retirement, they paid her full salary for a year and a half before benefits began.

I reminded her that she'd used that time to move to this house full-time and do things like plant butter lettuces and cantaloupes and soak grapevines in the bath tub to make wreaths. "Yes, I did," she said, looking pleased with herself at the 30-year old memory.

Somebody's got to remember these stories and it looks like I'm it.

Dad, meanwhile, is in charge of writing out the dozens of Christmas cards they send out every season, as well as addressing all gift tags. It's not just that his handwriting is magnificent (though it is) but that Mom's resembles nothing so much as chicken scratch, a fact she attributes to years of using shorthand to take notes.

In any case, it's a holiday chore that necessitates a great deal of back and forth between them about people and memories.

When 1953 comes up because of a song, Dad reminds me that 1953 was the year he went in the army, a pivotal decision in his life, he now believes, because it set him on the path to meeting Mom. Needless to say, he still considers this the best thing that ever happened to him.

You listen to these stories your whole life and you can't help but be a believer in love and romance.

Driving back late this afternoon against a low-slanting sun, I could see that this morning's pristine fields had now been violated, whether by sun, birds or animals, but there wasn't much more traffic on the roads then there had been this morning and that had been ridiculously light.

It was clear everyone who could be was at home today. Well, not everyone.

Back at home, where the neighborhood felt emptied out and there were parking spaces galore, I briefly considered a movie but decided instead that with my social needs fed by the people who spawned me, I'd stay at home and accomplish any number of things I needed to do.

After putting a load of laundry in, I grabbed the snow shovel and began shoveling a path from my door and along the sidewalk (as the city requires) to the basement door. If I'm being honest, it felt great to do something really physical in the cold evening air after not getting in my walk today...or much movement beyond wrapping presents.

I was scraping away, getting into the quiet of the 'hood in between my scrapes, when my neighbor unexpectedly opened the front door to see me there with my shovel.

"Oh I thought you were my friend," he said unconvincingly and probably annoyed to have gotten up from his video game to find out. "She's supposed to be coming over, so when I heard something..." I continue shoveling and smile. He goes away.

Once I finish shoveling, I pause before going upstairs to enjoy how unusually silent the city is. No hum from I-95 drifting over, no passersby, just an unnatural quiet. It's lovely.

It's broken seconds later when two young women who live next door walk up, crunching through the snow, each with a large bag in her arms, probably from the 24-hour Rite-Aid. In a voice that can only be described as young and inexperienced, one squeals giddily, "He didn't even card me! I mean, he.."

Before she finishes, her cohort brags right back. "He didn't card me, too," clarifying either that this guy casts a fairly wide net when it comes to underage drinking or to establish that it was her narrative, as well.

Both sound tickled pink to have gotten away with buying lots of beer to wile away another snowy night stuck at home.

Shoveling the walk, getting trashed, we like our pleasures simple in J-Ward. And, man, you should see our snow sculptures.

Itsy Bitsy, Teeny Weeny

The best time to watch a depressing movie is after a day spent with my parents.

Ostensibly, I was there to help Mom clean out a closet that she felt had gotten out of control. In reality, that meant digging through decades of her stuff. We must have come across 15 purses, including several I suggested she could live without. "But I've had that purse since the year I started working at the Fund!" she says, affronted, clutching a navy blue bag.

P.S. Mom began working at the International Monetary Fund in 1967.

And bags, so many bags. Grocery shopping bags, a  tapestry knitting bag (no, she doesn't knit or do needlework), tiny, stylish bags that belong to another era when she didn't carry so much "just in case" in her purse.

But it also meant digging through boxes and boxes of unorganized photos and as I glanced through them, I found a handful depicting me and my five sisters posed in bikinis in front of the ocean. In the '70s pictures when we're pre-teens and teens, we're all sporting long, straight hair parted in the middle, but in the '80s version, everyone's hair is shorter and, for the most part, permed.

There's not a pair of sunglasses in sight in either photo, despite the bright summer sun.

By the time I found a group shot from 2004 aboard a boat (although the where and why escapes me), we are all grown women looking far more comfortable in our own skin. Only one sister wears a hat and, surprisingly, it's not me. And everyone except me has sunglasses on.

What a difference 30 years make.

Mom also enjoyed the stroll down Memory Lane, never more than when we came across the sole photograph of her as a child. During the Depression, snapping pictures of your first born was clearly not a priority.

Because it was such a beautiful day to be on the river - sunny, breezy and near 80 - we spent a lot of time, including lunch, on the screened porch. Mom and Dad were just coming off two days without power after Hurricane Michael and one of my nephews was there doing yard clean-up after so many branches fell.

For lunch, I reverted to childhood, making everyone fried bologna and cheese or grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, a big bowl of potato chips in the center of the table. Everyone was delighted with the menu. Afterward, I baked a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and served them up warm because I like to eat the dough my family is big on cookies fresh from the oven.

I shared with Dad what Mr. Wright had said about his spot-on baseball play-off picks - that it's rare to find an athletic man who's also analytical - to which he responded, "That's undoubtedly because so many athletes think they can coast solely on that." Not my Dad.

Closet and yard work finished, we lingered most of the afternoon chatting about family and trips.

"I could take an entire season of this weather," my Mom commented to no one in particular as a breeze ruffled the ferns on the porch. Me, I was just happy to be in shorts and not feel cold like I had most of the weekend.

And solely because I'd just come off such a sweetly pleasant day with the 'rents, I took a deep breath and headed to the Byrd Theater to see "The Hours." Now, I read the book when it came out and I saw the movie but my collective memory of both was a depressing one, so I knew that going in.

Instead of staying there, though, I focused on what a large and stellar cast the film had. Oh, sure there were the leads (Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman in a prosthetic nose), but also a terrific Ed Harris. And Claire Danes as the daughter, Miranda Richardson as her sister, Allison Janney as Meryl's lover, plus John C. Reilly and Jeff Daniels.

Do we make movies with that much star power any more or is it too cost-prohibitive?

The Byrd crowd was small. I suppose not everyone is up to being depressed on a Monday evening. For me, the low point was when a toddler went running across the lobby, her mother in chase, before the film even began.

"If you don't stop when I say 3, no computer for a week!" the mother yelled at the back of the four-year old, who did indeed slow down. Not "no bike" or "no going outside to play." No computer. Children can now be disciplined with the threat of no device usage.

Oh, for the sweet days of bikinis and no sunglasses...

Sepia-Toned Afternoon

Birthdays were always high holy days in my family. The celebrant chose the meals.

Which means I shouldn't have been surprised when  I got to my parents' house Monday and Mom announced that today's lunch would be my birthday lunch, even though it was a couple days away. Not only that, but she gave me two choices, knowing they're both life-long favorites of mine: cheeseburgers or fried chicken.

And don't you know that despite having had cheeseburgers for my chosen birthday dinner my entire childhood and beyond, I requested fried chicken this year. "What else?" she wanted to know. Gherkins and clementines was all I desired to accompany my thigh and wings.

"I'll have some potato salad with mine," my Dad announces from his chair on the screened porch, making it clear that he thought gherkins and clementines inadequate sides for fried yard bird. It was a fabulous birthday repast (what meal that ends with greasy fingers isn't?) made even better because it was with the two of them.

It was a perfectly gorgeous day to be on the Northern Neck - mid-70s temperatures and a spirited breeze off the Rappahannock - and after I'd planted some moonflowers and hung some pictures, we all settled on the porch to enjoy the afternoon.

When the topic turned to the current administration (as it always does when you put three lifelong liberals together), I didn't expect to hear my Dad say, "I wish I was going to be around to see how history treats Trump."

I understood where he was coming from because Dad's been a lifelong student of history, meaning most of his pleasure reading is about the past, especially war and politics. As a kid, I just thought that was because I had the coolest and smartest Dad ever.

So naturally he's curious about how this era will be depicted by future historians.

But it turned out that his comment came from a deeper place. An athletic and active man all his life, he's been in a lot of pain lately from a bad knee and back problems and it's finally starting to get to him. After climbing a ladder to hang the refilled hummingbird feeder for him, I asked if there was anything else he wanted.

"Yes, a new body!" he admitted with no irony. That set me wondering what age he'd like his body to be again and he said twenty-two.

"I was 22 when I met your mother," he said by way of explanation and then turned to Mom. "Like that picture of us upstairs from when we were in our bathing suits at the beach when we first met." That black and white photo is a family classic of my 6' tall father standing next to my 5' mother, long before they knew they'd have six daughters and stay happily married for over six decades.

Yet again I was reminded of how fortunate some people are to meet their "person" so early on in life and stay with them through all that comes with children, careers and changing interests. It's a luck I never knew.

Talking about Dad's years abusing his body playing baseball and softball, he said that when Mom started coming to his games, she didn't even know how the game was played. She was quick to defend herself, though, saying that her family had always listened to baseball games on the radio, but she'd never had any visuals to go with it.

This was new intel for me. Baseball had been a big deal in Mom's family growing up?

Next thing I knew, she's telling me how my grandfather O'Donnell (known to us kids as "Papa") started playing on an Irish baseball team (because of course all the Irish kids would have played together back in the '20s) when he was just a kid.

The team's name? "Little Potatoes Hard to Peel."

Every time I see my parents, they make me laugh, tell me stories I didn't know or remind me of things I no longer recall.

The best part of my birthday isn't a surprise fried chicken and gherkin lunch, it's that I'm still lucky enough to have these two wildly eccentric people in my life.

Now that's a gift.

Of Swings and Sunflowers

You only need to know one.

Back in 2002 when the New York Times wrote a travel piece about visiting Irvington, the writer joked that most readers wouldn't even know where the Northern Neck is. Back then, Irvington had a modest population of 496 and while that number has since grown to 673, it only takes one to extend an invitation.

Oblivious to the other 672 with no interest in me visiting, I drove down Saturday morning to see if it was still as seductive as that NYT writer had found it back in the days of yore. I still get a little frisson every time I cross the powder blue Norris bridge, what with the never-ending repairs and the necessity of being stopped on the bridge top to allow opposing traffic to pass. It's just not normal to be stopped so high above the water with the wind whipping by.

I'm going to be so bold as to say that my Irvington foray put to shame what the writer had laid out (but then I've got no use for myriad shopping options or the fishing trips she'd included), with only one overlap, but it was a significant one: the Tides Inn.

It was there we had dinner at a table overlooking picaresque Carter's Creek, assisted by a server named Clovis who proudly said he's worked there for 23 years as of June 15 this year. You don't often hear about that kind of long-term commitment to a job anymore, nor often see a salad sampler on the menu - marinated golden beets/goat cheese, balsamic mixed greens and, my fave, roasted shitakes on a bed of seaweed for the grazing win - both of which were worthy of raising glasses of Laurent-Perrier La Cuvee Brut to.

Meanwhile, scallops, grilled rockfish and a chocolate bombe accompanied by Ruby Red port ensured that I left with a favorable impression of the venerable inn, despite its eminence grise vibe.

Instead of the Times' suggestions for fishing and shopping, we did a farm tour with the owner at Dug In Farm (the second career of a former D.C. lobbyist, who was having an open house), fascinating for how how casually she referenced all the mistakes she'd made in trying to farm: buying land with bad soil, raising chickens with a pair of coyotes living nearby, starting an orchard with pricey blueberry bushes.

Yet despite the steep learning curve, it was clear she loved working the land as she proudly showed off a 2018 calendar and pointed to the chores listed on certain days all throughout the growing season. "You don't think or make decisions during growing season, you just do what's listed," she explained of her vegetable and flower operation that focuses on sunflowers.

I'm enough of a nerd to have been satisfied with the tour, not to mention a stroll back to the bee hives, past the abandoned pastel chicken coops and through the high house, a greenhouse-like structure she got from the government that allows her to extend her growing season on both ends. But there was more.

Sitting on the gravel next to the farm market was a Byrd's Seafood food truck selling Windmill Point oysters that had been pulled out of the water at 8 a.m. that day. Scoring a half dozen along with some cherry mignonette , I slurped them down perched on the tailgate of my host's truck, surely as Northern Neck a moment as any had by that NYT reporter.

We spotted the farmer herself, relishing a fried oyster taco and explaining it had been all she was thinking about throughout the tour. A woman after my own heart, always with her mind on the next meal.

Sunday dawned cloudy and warm (and the NYT's suggestion of sailing was out of the question), ideal for a walk through town on a Christian high holiday (yes, I had a hat covering my heathen head), with the bells of the nearby Episcopal church ringing out loud and clear. It brought to mind a woman in Irvington I once interviewed who told me that the Sunday church bells here reminded her of her New England childhood.

In a related story, I couldn't help but notice a "Church View Port-a-Potty" sitting in a gravel lot behind a storefront, surely an indication that this town oozes quaint, even when addressing bodily functions.

Walking through the about-to-open Dog and Oyster Vineyard meant meeting some very sweet vineyard hound dogs (and one beagle) lounging in the vines, hearing vintage soul music blasting from the tasting porch and spotting the firepit sending tendrils of smoke into the spring air. The pourer called out a greeting from the porch.

Virginia Tourism couldn't have staged a more winning or inviting scene.

Lunch was served up on the deck overlooking Carter's Creek, which I came to realize is a prime turning around point for boaters nosing around the creek. And, as is standard Northern Neck protocol, all boaters wave to people on docks and decks like old friends. They're just that friendly.

I got an architectural walking tour, amazed at the variety of styles that made up such a small town. Unlike my parents' hamlet a short drive away, all the houses in Irvington aren't early 20th century meaning there was mid-century modern housing stock I couldn't have anticipated, but could definitely appreciate.

In the name of culture in a town without so much as a theater, I agreed to watch "The Adjustment Bureau," despite an unstated fear I'd signed on for another mindless Hollywood thriller with the ubiquitous Matt Damon (is he being chased in every movie?).

Conclusion: What do I know? Instead, I was completely sucked in by a provocative Phillip K. Dick story dissecting free will, destiny, fate and soul mates.

As post-film discussions go, it doesn't get much meatier or impassioned than that. Add in that glorious blue moon that took over the sky both nights, leaving a moonlit trail on the water and I'd have to say that Irvington put on a full charm offensive for me.

"It's every bit as bucolic as Maryland's Eastern Shore," that New York Times writer raved in 2002.

Maybe. But I'd add that its allure increases considerably when just the right Irvington denizen does the inviting. No adjustments necessary.

The Taj Mahal of Cottage Bunks

I could get used to river hopping.

Friday found me at my parents' house, where Spring was busting out all over, from the pink hyacinths (Mom asked me to cut a couple so she could enjoy their heavenly fragrance inside) blooming near the driveway to the weeping willow covered in the lightest of green leaves just beginning to unfurl.

The back 40 leading to the dock was still super-saturated from last week's Nor'easter, but I didn't let that stop me from traipsing through it to go down to the river, where the beach was littered with shells and the air smelled especially briny.

Back at the house, Dad surprised me by sharing that my friend, a member of the local sheriff's department, had stopped by for a chat the other day. Dad was incredulous that despite four (five?) years of friendship, I'd never let slip that I have five sisters. I explained that his wife not only knew how many sisters I had but had heard stories galore about some of my trials and tribulations with them.

Seems the two of them had bonded, both being men's men with the kind of softer side that allows them to openly worship the loves of their lives. They apparently hit it off so well that I think we all know there will be future chats between them.

And just for the record, it's not as if my friend had just randomly shown up at my parents' house, either.

He'd been checking on a security system alarm across the street caused by a window blown in by that same Nor'easter and figured as long as he was in the neighborhood, why not finally meet the man who'd produced me? He'd certainly heard enough stories about him and Mom and it's not like I hadn't told him where they lived. In fact, just the other day, he'd sent me a photo of a flooding in a yard very near my parents' house and I'd forwarded it to my folks.

By mid-afternoon, I was bidding my parents farewell because I had an interview to do with - wait for it - my sheriff friend. When I'd called to set up the chat, his beautiful wife had gotten on the phone and insisted if I was coming that I stay the night at their cottage. Actually, she wanted me for the entire weekend, but I had plans Saturday.

For the record, the sole time I have not spent the night with these friends was the night of our first meeting and then only because I hadn't known what a perfect place I was walking into. Since then, I return regularly to soak up their happily-ever-after vibe and partake of their stellar Corrotoman River views. They're the ones who introduced me to sailing.

So I left the Rappahannock River and my parents behind to work (not that interviewing a friend is work, not really), dine and spend the night with the happy couple. It was notable mainly because it was my first winter visit so I wasn't going to be able to sleep in my usual spot, the screened in porch on the guest house. That's okay, I was ready for a new experience.

Settling into comfortable chairs for the interview, we journeyed back through his life - the MCV blood bank in the '70s, his carrot cake-making days in the Fan, his absolute luck in marrying the woman of his dreams - as I teased out the information I needed for my article and got the scoop on so much of what I hadn't known about him before.

More than a few times, we found ourselves completely distracted by a sailboat out on the water on a chilly day. It originally caught our attention because it was heeling so far over we were convinced it was going to capsize. Only when it changed direction could we see its sails only partly unrolled and understand that it was following a wind pocket unusually far in.

I didn't wish I was on it - too chilly - but it made for some spectacular viewing from our cozy perch.

"That's the most we've ever talked!" he, an introvert, observed. I didn't point out that actually, it was just the most he'd ever talked with me. A shame because he's a great conversationalist, funny and with a near perfect memory.

It wasn't long after we finished the interview that my girlfriend got in from work and the full-on fun could begin. Our first topic was an agreement: I will no longer be just a winter friend and am expected to visit year round from here on out. Can do.

First she poured us wine, then we settled down to catch up after  six months. So much to talk about in both our lives. Turns out we've both had a sharp turn for the better with people very close to us.

But since woman cannot live on wine and girltalk alone, her husband eventually rounded us up and drove us to The Corner, notable because the last time she and I went there, in bathing suits and still damp from the pool, the owner expressed interest in getting to know me better.

When we pulled up, it was clear the place was rockin' on a Friday night, with cars everywhere and a crew of smokers on the front porch. Inside, two birthday parties kept the jukebox fed and a continuing stream of new arrivals incoming.

We scored a table in the center of the madness and an adorable young server my friends knew by name (likewise, she knew their beer orders without asking) took our food order while chaos swirled around her. When she brought my wine, she asked, "So who are you?" without a trace of hesitation.

Best she learn my name and order if I'm going to be a year round regular.

The very first time I'd gone to The Corner had been for an interview with a guitar-maker and he'd told me that his wife said the crabcake was the best in the state and I hadn't ordered it (the cheeseburger had been calling my name). Tonight I rectified that and I'd have to say that the woman I never met (and who since left him, a fact I know only because he asked me to dinner as  result) knew her crabcakes.

Once back at the cottage, it was blowtorch time because my hosts had made creme brulee using Matt Lauer's recipe and, I think, because the man of the house likes desserts that involved open flames. You have to love friends who make dessert because they know you're coming.

My girlfriend teased me about how whenever I blog about their cottage, I get effusive. "You made our outdoor shower sound like the Taj Mahal of showers!" she joked and I reminded her that it is extraordinary. It's just a shame that it's March and I can't use it.

For the first time ever, I slept in the bunk room, a slender room fashioned out of a former bathroom with a nautical theme and two single beds mounted on the wall. I saw no reason to climb the ladder to the top, instead burrowing into the lower bed and sleeping like I was on a boat.

In a related note, my host had suggested that one of these times I sleep on the sailboat, so it looks like I've got another first time experience to look forward to.

Who am I? A woman with fabulous friends and a happier outlook than I've had in months. Only now we know I can hold my own at The Corner.

53rd Place Trophy

So, when did we start celebrating the American labor movement with explosives?

Personally, I just learned about it today while driving to the Northern Neck in the pouring rain. Signs and stands along Route 360 were advertising "Labor Day fireworks!" Huh?

But, as always, it was worth it for my companion and I to spend the day with my parents who never cease to entertain with their pithy political commentary, extensive bird knowledge and hilarious reflections on life.

We had crab melts for lunch, the lump crabmeat from as near as Reedville, and then settled in for hours of conversation while keeping an eye on the non-stop flight patterns of birds incoming for meals at their various feeders despite the continued onslaught of rain.

A couple of tiny hummingbirds were adorable to watch, the sparrows were particularly tenacious in returning and a male cardinal arrived so drenched that the crest on his head was flattened out completely.

From my perch on the wicker settee, I watched as the rain obliterated the land on the far side of the river, making it look like the silvery water met the sky.

For fun, we looked through a massive album full of old photos, ticket stubs, poems and notes that one of my sisters had made for my Dad's 70th birthday. I especially loved the pictures of my parents from the '70s, my Dad with his massive mutton chops and plaid pants with white belt and my Mom in short skirts and hip jewelry.

My groovy parents.

One photo in particular caught my eye because it showed Dad with his six young daughters at the beach in 1969, which led to ribbing about how very fertile Mom had been.

"With three of my daughters, all I had to do was throw my shorts on the bed and she got pregnant," my Dad cracked to uproarious laughter and mild mortification on the part of my companion. Dads will be dads, no?

Of course, once he heard laughter, he couldn't stop himself from going for more, bringing up my, ahem, colorful past and passing judgement on it as only a man who found the love of his life at 23 can. Must be nice to be so lucky that way.

By the time we drove back to Richmond (with only a few minor episodes of hydroplaning, yikes), we had just enough time for a meal in service of my hired mouth before parting ways.

Given that it was already after 7, all I could think was thank goodness you don't have to look good for comedy, so I tidied up and set out (again, this time on foot through massive puddles) in the pouring rain for the Comedy Coalition and some non-Dad humor.

Tonight's show was "What Was I Thinking?" and was based on journal entries from people brave enough to share their adolescent angst.

From her Hello, Kitty locked diary, Kim read several entries from 1997 and 1999 about the posters on her walls, the songs she liked and Anthony, her one true love since 3rd grade, although she was still nervous about fast dancing with him unless there were plenty of people around. Slow dancing, now that was fine.

Life sucks. I might have to move to Cali. I might have scoliosis.

The improv performers wasted no time in riffing on her teen-aged malaise, like using pinhole cameras to avoid eye contact with someone you liked and explaining human vibrators. Best line from a Mom to her daughter: "You're going to be alone because no man is going to want to listen to your music!"

Matt was the next victim willing to bare his journal and, in his case, ephemera for the sake of comedy.

He'd brought posters acquired over time - "You don't get that kind of collection overnight"  ("Ace Ventura," Ren & Stimpy, the Road Kill Cafe, Green Day, aliens) - plus the journal he'd begun when he started drinking and writing and a scrapbook of his sports accomplishments (swim team ribbons ranging from 1st place to 23rd place) compiled by - who else? - his Mom.

Your eyes take me too close to a past I'm not ready to look at yet

That mother lode resulted in a bit about his Mom knitting a sweater that incorporated his accomplishments (53rd place in arriving to school on time) and a pair of Converse painted with the names people, including bullies, called him. Another centered on "X Files" and mouth-probing aliens.

Last to sacrifice her dignity on the altar of comedy was Katie with her fuzzy blue leopard spotted journal detailing her first mosh pit at Sauce-a-palooza ("Jeez, it was so spiffy!"), poetry ("Let love come to you. If it doesn't, you don't deserve it." was topped only by "Now and forever, you are an obstetrician. You helped me be born again.") and a list of every cliched '90s CD she absolutely needed (Disturbd, System of a Down, Sublime).

Like Kim's diary entries, Katie's listed every single friend she went places with, even if it was 20 people, sometimes with first and last names and other times with just a first name and last initial, as if to keep their identity secret. Hilarious.

Clinging to you like a pair of wet jeans
Heavy on the wet

No one get deep like a teen-aged girl.

It was some rich material to pull from and the performers mocked high school poetry competitions (one teacher trading a year of overseeing detention to get out of judging the competition) and girls who started thinking marriage after a boy did no more than talk to them, all of which involved ridiculously long lists of friends' names ("Was that Cher B. or Cher M? I think it was Cher C.").

This rainy day turned out to be full of laughs start to finish. They say you have to let comedy come to you and if it doesn't, you don't deserve it.

Hell, I don't mind driving or walking to it if the laughs are good.

Nowhere to Hide

Is it wrong to covet someone's go-go boots?

Knee high, shiny white and about the grooviest thing you could possibly wear to sing back-up on songs by the likes of the Ronettes, these were go-go boots for the ages. You couldn't try to look bad dancing in them.

Janet, the friend who was looking fabulous in them, was part of the Shangri-Lords, a band I hadn't seen since they last memorably performed at a pool party in August 2014. That night, members of the band had jumped in the pool mid-song and then - wait for it - climbed out and finished the song.

Needless to say, when I heard they were playing at Hardywood tonight, I planned my evening around it.

Eager to share the thrills I knew they'd deliver, I invited a fellow music-lover of the appropriate age to appreciate a band that covers girl group songs. That would be girl group songs sung by a male singer, but that's also sort of the point.

We started at My Noodle and Bar for a quick dinner fueled by everyone's favorite picnic wine, J. Mourat Rose, listening to the oddest soundtrack, which ranged from Tame Impala and Animal Collective to Aretha to, worst of all, 80s-era Yes.

Luckily the food and wine were good enough to make up for the latter.

We got to Hardywood just as the band was taking the stage to get the dance party started. Singer Michael had done it up right in a silver sequined blazer which he shed after only a few songs ("It's not the heat, it's the humidity!" he joked) to reveal an embroidered black shirt.

The moment they started "Be My Baby," with Janet on castanets, the crowd began to sing and/or dance along, although no one could beat back-up singers Janet and Lindsey for smooth moves. Someone had been practicing their choreography.

By the time they got to "Nowhere to Run," people were screaming and flailing with abandon, sort of like children at the beach. This is a band that's all about the fun.

When they did Leslie Gore's proto-feminist "You Don't Own Me," easily half the woman in the room began singing along, yours truly included. The woman in front of me belted it out to her date while using him as a pole to dance against.

You don't own me
Don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me
Do't tie me down cause I'd never stay

I don't tell you what to say
Oh, I don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself'
That's all I ask of you

Just after it ended, the woman behind me leaned over and noted, "Most subtle coming-out song in history!" True enough.

The Shangri-Lords' momentum went out of control on "You Keep Me Hanging On," as Michael incorporated hand gestures the Supremes would have been proud of. And don't get me started on the masterful "whoa, whoa, whoas" coming from the back-up singers. Priceless.

You say you still care for me
But your heart and soul needs to be free
And now that you got your freedom, you wanna still hold on to me
You don't want me for yourself, so let me find somebody else

Set me free, why dontcha, babe
Get outta my life, why dontcha babe
Cause you don't really love me
You just keep me hangin on

There was one song that required Janet to shriek melodically on cue and my date and I marveled at her ability to do it repeatedly. You can't teach a person that kind of talent, kids, they're just born with it.

But then, she's also a wizard with go-go maintenance. Just yesterday, she'd posted, "Pro tip: magic erasers are pretty good at getting scuffs off white vinyl go-go boots."

If only I had a pair to scuff. Some girls have talent and all the luck.

For Ace, Wherever You Are

Plans, it seems, are just suggestions and now I reek of a stranger.

Waking up after only seven hours of sleep this morning, I couldn't drift back off. I knew I had exactly three things planned for today, each one progressively more appealing: an interview on the Northern Neck, lobster dinner with my parents at the Inn at Montross and a show with my favorite music lover.

Returning from a walk where I'd investigated the eastern end of Brown's Island (finding it soggy, debris-strewn and still inaccessible to the pipeline walkway), I found a message from Dad: we would meet at the Kilmarnock Inn, not Montross.

This was actually more convenient for me (less driving) so I sign off on the change. The moment I hit the send button, I get an email from my editor asking if I can please cover an event tonight from 6-8.

Well, not if I'm eating dinner on the Northern Neck I can't.

Now I've got to check with Dad and see if we can meet before my interview for lunch instead of dinner. He agrees, but warns me he won't be freshly shaven if we do.

Shaving not required, I tell him.

The drive out is pleasant and only mildly unnerving when I get to the White Stone bridge which is being worked on. This means only one lane is open and a flagman is directing traffic, but it also means stopping at the pinnacle of the bridge for our turn to go and, let me tell you, it's an unsettlingly windy place to stop.

I console myself by looking at the portable toilet perched atop a trailer next to the construction equipment, feeling grateful that while I have to sit in my car at the height of this bridge, at least I don't have to relieve myself on high.

And as along as I was up there, I took a few photos out the window of the shimmering blue Rappahannock surrounding me, my arm hairs glinting in the sun.

The Inn is crowded and the table next to us is discussing impeachment, which would be a good thing except they're discussing Clinton. My parents live deep in conservative territory, so they're often in the minority when it comes to politics.

Dad and I have Crab Louie salads piled high with crabmeat and we all share housemade peach ice cream for dessert while Dad tells me how much relief he's getting from acupuncture and Mom ghoulishly describes watching the needles being inserted.

When I get to where my interview is scheduled, I learn that the interviewee is stuck on the bridge, which is how I wind up in an Adirondack chair on the front porch of a radio station reading the Washington Post waiting for the manager to escape the bridge line.

A woman who'd won a prize on the morning radio show drives up and asks if I work for the station. When I say no, she heads inside to claim her prize. I learn that today is also her birthday and I wish my fellow Gemini a happy one.

Because my subject was a half hour late, I get back to Richmond later than planned and I need to be at this event in half an hour. Fortunately, it's 3 blocks away and I walk quickly.

I have just long enough to glance at my inbox, where I'm surprised to see that a friend from Boston has emailed, but I don't bother opening it now when I have somewhere to be.

Once there, I begin talking to people for my story and all of a sudden a woman approaches, throws her arms around me and hangs on for dear life. I don't know her, but I hug her back so long and hard that she finally mumbles, "You're a really good hugger!" Even so, we hang on to each other even longer.

We move over to a bench to sit down and I get a whiff of her scent on me. It makes me feel very unlike myself since I don't wear perfume, but I unexpectedly enjoy knowing that I smell girly. She tells me I'm beautiful, raves about my dimples and runs her fingers through my hair, saying we should start a band because of our punk hair.

I have no idea what rabbit hole I've gone down.

After the tribute ends, people begin drifting over to Quirk for drinks (a somewhat ironic way to celebrate a man who died of alcoholism) and several ask if I'm coming. Because I have plans in an hour, I really can't, although it would be a beautiful evening to be on the rooftop at Quirk.

Turns out the friend from Boston is in town for the night only and wants to get a drink and chat after not seeing each other in years. I have exactly 58 minutes free before being picked up for music, but I'm game and ask where he is.

Before he responds, I hear from my favorite music lover, who is suffering from too little sleep (join the club, Tiger, I'm operating on a two-hour deficit myself and all because of anticipation about seeing you-know-who) and indigestion, so he's bowing out of music tonight.

As compensation, we spend a pleasurable hour volleying words back and forth as I put away the detritus from today's road trip, take off my going out clothes and settle myself contentedly on the balcony with a bowl of raspberry sherbet.

And, man, do I smell good. Too bad nobody will know.