Category Archives: Trout Towers

a Cape Cod diet

The Monomoy South Beach Diet

I was listening to Robert Finch talk about his new book The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod’s Atlantic Shore with Mindy Todd on WCAI this morning, and discovered that Cape Cod has its own South Beach. Which means Cape Cod has its own South Beach Diet.

Still listening, I looked up Monomoy South Beach to find out which ice cream stands and clam shacks were closest because surely that would shape this diet. If you’ve ever been to the Cape in the summer, you know it’s all about ice cream and fried food.

I was mistaken. The South Beach Bob mentioned is in the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, which changes everything.

Not only is it a NWR, but it is an IBA too – which of course I know is an “important birding area” because obviously my finger is on the pulse of all things ecological, biological, and geological in my adopted region. Or at least it is while Bob is reading. According to Mass Audubon, Monomoy and South Beach are home to many significant species, including Peregrine Falcon, Bald Eagle, Roseate Tern, Piping Plover, Tern both Least and Common, Common Loon, Northern Harrier, Short-eared Owl, Pied-billed Greeb, Short-billed Dowitcher, Sanderling, Red Knot, Ruddy Turnstone, Hudsonian Godwit, Whimbrel, Willet, American Oystercatcher, Black-crowned Night Heron, and Snowy Egret.

If you want to go on the Cape Cod South Beach diet you have to eat marine worms, insects (fly larvae and beetles), crustaceans, mollusks, fish, frogs, seeds, berries, leaves, pigeons, and songbirds.

Which just figures.

I may not know what birds can be found in our IBAs, but I do know that local, native New Englanders do not mess around. They are a hardy, no-nonsense, un-mess-withable lot. They know how to do everything, can fix anything, and will do it themselves, dammit.

People here see your pile of watercress and acai berries and throw a squid and some bear sausage on it. Note: we did have a bear wander over the bridge once – probably in search of ice cream and fried food.

Totally unrelated, did you know that there’s a fish called a Sarcastic Fringehead? Do not look up images of it or you will never sleep again – unless you’re a New Englander in which case you probably eat them with scrambled eggs.

As I have mentioned, I am not from here. I am therefore skipping the diet and going straight to reading Bob’s book instead. I’ll let you know if he includes recipes for marine worms and sand shrimp.

The Outer Beach by Robert Finch

 

I'm told my face looks like this

Writing guitar face

It has come to my attention that my face is talking behind my back.

When I write, my face makes all the expressions of the words in my head, as if I am speaking them. Sometimes I feel this happening, but I hadn’t realized it was noticeable until my teenager pointed it out. Teenagers notice things and then share what they find fascinating. Like what your face is doing when you are lost in thought, for instance.

Unfortunately, odds are good that this is happening all the time. I write for work, I write for play, and I write for my mental health. I write reminder notes and grocery lists. I am writing right now. Before I sat down to write I made coffee and tried some of these words on in my head to see how they sounded together. In other words, I was writing while I made the coffee.

I have thought about setting up a video camera and training it on my face to capture what is happening, but that way madness lies. That’s probably what happened to Greta Garbo, J.D. Salinger, and Richard Simmons. I suspect I have Guitar Solo face when I write, but I’d prefer not to have that confirmed. Rowan Atkinson had the same problem:

The only thing to do is to write about puppies, and subjects that don’t make me ponder deeply. I have an uncanny ability to ponder deeply about things – like why no one has ever called their band Desmond’s Tutu, or what should go on my hospitality rider when I start that band.

To be clear, I am not an open book. I am really good at stuffing my emotional response out of sight in actual conversations. But if I am having a conversation in my head in addition to the one we’re having? All bets are off. I need some kind of alert when I start sorting words in my head publicly. It would work like a posture corrector for my face.

Maybe that’s what meditation is about. Today I’m going to have one conversation at a time and Be Here Now. When I revisit arguments I never had in the first place, I will shift my focus and envision what it feels like to be a leaf in the spring. Today will be stunning and my face will not collapse from exhaustion promptly at 3 p.m.

I’ll let you know how it goes – but it will probably be obvious. It’s written all over my face.

(Illustration is from The expression of the emotions in man and animals, by Charles Darwin, 1872)

makeup lesson

How my makeup lesson went

I was asked for a new headshot. One where you can see more than my eyes over the edge of a coffee cup. One not taken in the ’90s.

And so I set to work fretting about it, which is a long process. Pictures are the reason I drive with an expired license.

In the midst of the fretting process I remembered that I had taken Sugarplum for a makeup lesson and had promised her I would have one done, too. This is why the fretting process is so helpful and important. It brings to light things you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Without the fretting process I would have gone barging into a photo session with my own face, and now I don’t have to.

When Sugarplum had her makeup done I had to look twice to establish that she had makeup on. She looked like the inside of a seashell – all glowy and smooth. I want to look like the inside of a seashell, too, so I scheduled an appointment with the same consultant.

It turns out I am the outside of a seashell.

My makeover starts with extra moisturizer because the foundation is falling into my pores. I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good. She applies foundation over the moisturizer, bronzer to replace the color taken out by the foundation, and then blush to lift my face. “See how lovely and dewy it is?” she says, handing me the mirror.

Where she sees dewy, I see damp. Dewy is my lawn in the morning. Damp is my face after I’ve had a hot flash, or run up the stairs, or covered it with wet makeup that is still…wet. I am at a place in my life where I’m more likely to opt for a jar of cornstarch and a poof. But I go with it. At this point there is so much moisturizer on my face it’s only a matter of time before something hydroplanes.

And then it’s the eyes. She puts highlighter and concealer under my eyes to get rid of my dark circles. We both pretend it worked.

She has to remove a little leftover eyeliner before continuing. I don’t tell her it’s yesterday’s mascara, doubling handily as today’s eyeliner. I have time management and economy down to a science and I don’t want her stealing my moves.

Next she gives me eyebrows. I have eyebrows of my own, but they’re the same color as my skin. She fixes that with a $42 pencil, which I buy in a drunken moment of having eyebrows. I also buy the lipstick she swears by because she puts hers on in the morning and it stays put until she eats. In my case that means about an hour of wear, but I vow to eat gently and without using my lips.

I accidentally wipe half my face off on my sleeve in the car on the way home and now I have to change my shirt, which sets me back because I really like this shirt and wanted it in my headshot. Maybe I’ll hold it.

I need to take the photo fast before I lose the other half of my face. Based on her recommendations, it will run me $342 plus tax to replicate this look at home. Tonight I will sleep flat on my back like after face painting at a fair, in hopes I can wear it again tomorrow.

J. Geils, Peter Wolf, and a rock nymph

I love J. Geils, don’t get me wrong. Specifically, I loved (and wore out) Love Stinks and Freezeframe. But it was Peter Wolf’s face I cut out of the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with manicure scissors, gluing him to my bedroom wall. I dreamt of the day when my high power music industry career would give me the chance to meet and mingle with the likes of Peter Wolf. I would be a smart, savvy, rock nymph. There would be affairs.

When I at last had the opportunity to meet Peter Wolf it was exactly like I had never imagined. I did not, for instance, imagine myself middle aged and 7 months pregnant. We were having our second child, so I looked like I was overdue with triplets.

Chris mentioned it so nonchalantly: Peter Wolf was making a guest appearance at a music festival he was doing sound for. He said it like “there will be lobster fritters, Peter Wolf, and free parking.”

I actually stopped what I was doing and made him back up. “The Peter Wolf?” I asked.

“And a line array,” he most likely answered. It was awhile ago, but chances are good that’s how it went down.

It was my big chance. Most people Chris does sound for end up hanging out with him at least a little and there I would be. I tried on my entire maternity wardrobe to find the perfect look, rejecting stretch pants with belly panels, empire-waist tunics, and a sundress made of two circus tents. Try as I might, it was impossible to create the illusion of 17, so I settled on something that didn’t bind, itch, or ride up when I sat down.

I bought a string of food tickets long enough to circumnavigate my belly and Sugarplum and I set to work festivaling while the first bands played. We downed fish tacos, fried oysters, onion rings, funnel cakes, and maybe some nachos. We stayed outside near the food trucks until Sugarplum couldn’t take it anymore and made me go inside to see the bands.

Sugarplum has been a dancer since she was in utero. Wherever Chris was working, we’d go. She heard a lot of bands through amniotic fluid and would faithfully start to shake it when the music started. Once she reached terra firma, she danced whenever there was music – from a cell phone ringing to a New Jersey rest stop.

She danced while I sat and watched, too slow, cumbersome, and self-conscious to join her. When she got tired we sat in the front row watching more bands until she fell asleep in my arms. It was 9 p.m. and there was no sign of Peter Wolf. I couldn’t believe how close I was, and how much I wanted my pajamas. We said goodnight to Chris.

I carried my sleeping rock nymph to the car, past the tour busses and the parties, and home to bed.

For the record, love does not stink. Rest in peace, J. Geils. And thank you.

Pages from Sugarplum’s autograph book:

David Lowery (Cracker), Colin Hay (Men at Work), Evan Dando (The Lemonheads)
Juliana Hatfield, Frank Black (The Pixies), Peter Wolf (J. Geils Band)

spring concert for small rock stars

Barfing on the band

So cute, right? My little indie rocker decided what to wear to Spring Concert a few days ago. He even did laundry. The suit jacket is obviously still big for him – a hand-me-down from an older musician he quietly admires – but it has a certain indie band David Byrne quality to it and paired nicely with his favorite skinny jeans.

On the third song all the kids changed places. Studley made his way off the risers and to the front of the stage, where he barfed like a rock star.

Not that anyone can blame him. This entire spring has felt like someone threw up on it.

I didn’t see the barfing. I saw him being escorted out of the room and thought “wait, he’s getting kicked out? What on earth did he do?” Studley is more of a pensive, layers of electronica musician than a hard core rabble rouser. Although now that we know about the barfing, we might want to change that up.

I climbed over seats and parents and video cameras and went to my son in the hall, where he was stifling sobs over his ruined suit. We got him cleaned up and headed home, totally beating the traffic jam. This is not our first rock show, people.

Because I respect his privacy, I may or may not have mentioned all this at work. I work with performers, and they had stories of their own.

“I barfed on someone’s head.” “I wet my pants at the second grade assembly.” “I had diarrhea at the bows.”

They all seem completely unscarred, with full lives both on and off stage. They also told me what probably happened: He had locked his knees.

I think they need to practice this in music class when they rehearse for concerts. As for Studley, we’ve been coaching him in case it ever happens again. The next time he feels woozy on stage he’ll yell “thank you, Detroit” into the mic, vomit on the front row, and collapse victoriously in the wreckage.

I suggest you sit toward the back.

The real Trout Towers

Imported from the old blog, because people still ask:

In yesterday’s comments, Kristin said “you know, Susan, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t visualize Trout Towers, with the musicians and the upstairs neighbors and the chickens and all.”

I don’t blame her one little bit. I thought about her comment and thought it would be fun to encourage readers to describe the mental picture they have of Trout Towers. I would rather like that. Please go ahead and do that, even though I am about to spoil everything.

Trout Towers is a full Cape – two stories and a full basement. Fun Fact! The person who built it made the windows and chimney larger than normal to make the rest of the house look smaller. It is the clown car of houses.

It looks kind of like this:*

Or it would look like that, if it weren’t for a few curiosities we like to leave around the yard. Like the lawnmower. And a woodstove. Doesn’t everyone have a woodstove in their driveway? No?

This shows the woodstove in the front yard, which would be tacky. Ours is in the driveway and therefore totally classy.

I may have mentioned at some point that Chris likes to bring things home from the dump. Specifically, windows. He’s fond of shower doors, but those must be around on the other side of the house because I couldn’t find a good picture of them. Also, my mother-in-law’s electric cart which we forbade her to drive because she was a maniac. And blind. But whatever.


We are also great fans of the exercise thing and have various wheeled contraptions around the yard for that purpose. Mostly bikes, a tricycle and a jog stroller that birds may possibly be nesting in by now. I do not jog.


And let us not forget the chickens.

Lucky for everyone, Chris took down the geodesic dome he built and left to die on the lawn. It was going to be a garage, but never quite worked out that way. It was kind of an awesome, if overly large, sculpture – until we had kids and the kids had friends and the dome started to look like a really, really big home owners’ insurance claim.

So, it doesn’t look like that at all.

It looks like this.

* Whoever actually owns the house I used in this illustration, I am really, really sorry.

Help me pick a cover for my new book

We’re down to the wire on the book cover and I need help deciding. Please leave a comment and vote for your favorite version. Extra credit for reasons why you like it.

Thank you!

Eulogy for the broken

When a guest breaks something in our friend’s house, she tells them to make a wish. She says nine out of ten people say they wish they hadn’t broken the thing, and I say if ten people are running around your house breaking things you need to rethink your guest list. She tells me that’s not the point. Inviting them to make a wish turns breakage into a whole different kind of tradition – like wishing on a necklace clasp when it turns to the front, or driving through a yellow light.

I don’t do that. When I hear something break in my house I say “Was it the green one? My mom bought that when she was in high school. She kept an African violet in it when we were growing up.” Or whatever.

I don’t think of it as a guilt trip; I think of it as a eulogy. Having a mini Celebration of Life for a broken object is not something I do on purpose. It’s a reaction to the object’s life flashing before my eyes. Many of the things we have, especially the breakable ones, have rich and full lives during their tenure.

Don’t tell our things, but sometimes it’s a relief when they break. With great stories come great responsibility. And dust. I am a champion discarder, but there are some things I can’t bear to get rid of. You don’t realize how heavily a story weighs on you until it’s dispelled with a crash.

The last time we broke a piece of pottery (a favorite tea bowl that came from an art fair in Burlington, VT), I buried it in the yard to dissuade rats from tunneling into the chicken coop. I’m not sure if it’s working, but I do like to think of what future archaeologists will think when they find it.

If it surfaces, I hope the person who digs it up gives it a history – and makes a wish.

Fish makeovers

For Christmas we were given a hydroponic aquarium. It’s one of those things that you either love or send a thank you note that says “why would you do this to me?” People give us these things from time to time – things that make your kitchen explode or cover your bathroom in vegetable dye. We tend to love them.

The aquarium is designed to grow micro-greens on top while purifying water for the fish below. It comes with everything except water and a fish. Shortly after Christmas Chris took Sugarplum to the pet store in the big city where she picked out Antler.

Bettas are beautiful fish. I have had a few over the years and loved their grace and vivid splendor. They come in these crazy colors, as can be seen in a simple Google image search:

You can imagine my surprise when Antler came home and turned out to be a natural brunette like the rest of us. Out of all the fish, my daughter picked the beige one. That’s really nice, I thought. She brought home the one no one was going to buy.

“He’s Antler,” she said. “He’s supposed to be brown.”

We grew radish greens and wheat grass, most of which we ate or juiced before they turned to brown sludge. We replanted when the first seeds were spent and experimented with different greens with varying degrees of success (read: failure).

Things were going great. The fish was happy, the plants were happyish, and then the aquarium went from passable to an omg-where’s-the-fish? bucket of slime in less than 12 hours. The parallels between Antler and life in our house just never let up.

I went back to the fish store and bought a net and a sponge shaped like a fish because obviously you need a sponge shaped like a fish. I also picked up more food.

Antler does not eat just any fish food. Or maybe he does, but he’s doing great on what came with the Water Garden so I figured we should stay with what’s working. The thing is, the kind he eats come in two versions: regular and color enhancing.

I have puzzled over his color a few times since his arrival. For a little while I thought he might be a juvenile and hadn’t settled on a color yet. Like baby eyes. But could it be all Antler needs is color enhancing fish food?

I agonized over this decision longer than is sane. Antler is Antler. He is supposed to be brown. We love him and let’s face it, the chances of him attracting a mate in our dining room are slim.

Which is a shame, because he is seriously handsome.

Eat your greens. Live your life. Be your own fish.

 

Trouts on tour

We took an actual vacation.

We had a friend come to the house and take care of everything while we were gone, including feeding our chickens and Antler the hydroponic fish. We did not ask him to take care of Hazel because Hazel is a lunatic and we were not 100% sure she would let our chicken sitter in the house. This is fine for the chickens as they only come in occasionally, but Antler would have pitched a fit.

Hazel was a rescue pup and I wonder sometimes if the places where you leave your dog to go on vacation are reminiscent of where you leave your dog when you just go. So Hazel went to the spa.

When we signed her up we spread the brochures out on the kitchen floor and talked about how it was a place where she could claim her own experience in a supportive, nurturing environment. It was a time to connect with her inner puppy, spark her creativity, and find her peace deep within. We were all really excited about the retreat, including Hazel. Which is to say she at no time peed on the brochures.

Studley went with me to drop her off and was fully invested in the process. So invested, in fact, that he signed her up for all the extra menu items, spa treatments, and relax & renew mind/body workshops while I was in the restroom.

With all the animals accounted for, we went off to New York and walked 175,000 miles. We went to the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Tenement Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney, the Museum of Natural History, and the Breuer Museum.* We went skating in Central Park, walked the Highline, and went to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. We ate 500 things and then had Indian food delivered because we could.

When we got home we picked up Hazel who now smells like kombucha. And I have to say, as great as it is to collapse from museum fatigue daily and have food delivered to your door, getting hugged by a dog is better.

 

*Sugarplum and I spotted the Breuer on our way home from consignment shopping, cruised the gift shop and had mochas in the cafe. Stop judging me.

Breuer laurels

Full contact foraging

If you have considered dropping out of society and living as an ewok, I found your training camp. I think there are a bunch of ewok training camps, but the one near us is the Adventure Park at Heritage Gardens, described on their website as an “amazing aerial adventure forest.”

I imagined it as a meditative walk through the forest canopy on a birch walkway, surrounded by chirping birds and whispering leaves, punctuated by zip lines. The human version of this zen xylophone, if you will:

 

It’s not like that. It’s like this:

Which is not to say it isn’t tremendously fun. It is. You are in a safety harness clipped to a cable from beginning to end, so there is no danger of plummeting to your doom. You just worry about things like dangling from your cable, weeping gently until help arrives should you fall. (They say you just pull yourself back up. I did not test this claim.)

I was only paralytic with fear once, in a segment that turned out to be one of the easiest stretches. Isn’t that often the way? It was a modified zip line, and once I muted the “I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this” voice, it was over before I knew it. Other stretches were not so simple. Imagine crossing a river stepping from stone to stone, but instead of being in the river you are 20 feet above it and instead of stones, it’s a series of trapezes. Good times.

Not only is it a lovely way to spend time in nature, it’s a total workout. Under normal circumstances it would take some athletic ability, but under my personal circumstances it required tensing every muscle in my body for 2.5 hours. Which is funny, because it turns out I do this stuff all the time.

Fun fact about me: I am a complete lunatic about foraging for food. Not mushrooms, mind you. I read Babar and know what can happen. But I am game for nearly anything else: fiddlehead ferns, blackberries, wild blueberries, cranberries, beach plums, rose hips – anything I can find. There was also the time I nearly killed my family with what I thought were chestnuts, but we’ve moved past that.

So today I remembered the blackberries were ripe. The berries in the easy to reach spots were disappointingly slim, but Sugarplum had mentioned a whole bunch in a bush she couldn’t get to. Sure enough, it was thick with giant berries, ready for picking. Not even the birds had made the required effort.

I have sustained bodily damage foraging before (usually related to poison ivy), but the possibility of falling into a blackberry bush with branches as thick as my arm had never occurred to me.

It still hasn’t.

I am the Kung Fu Panda of aerial adventure forests. I can’t jump from one suspended log to another or catch a fly with chopsticks, but by golly I can catch a dumpling in mid air and I most certainly can balance on a wobbly log if it helps me reach the top branches of a blackberry bush.

Just think what I could do with a harness.

World’s Best Parenting Trick (and why I hate doing it)

running-for-snacksStupid Facebook.

Someone recently posted one of those “ask your kids these adorable questions about you” things and of course I fell for it. Let me tell you, there are reasons people warn you not to take these quizzes. No, it did not steal my birthdate, blood type and mother’s maiden name. It did something far worse.

It all started a few months ago with the world’s best parenting trick. Seriously. I am a genius. You’re going to wish you had thought of it.

Last fall my son’s soccer coach suggested he get extra running in so he wouldn’t have to stop periodically and look for four leaf clovers. He gets that from me. I have never been a runner, despite frequent attempts. I am a wheezing, gasping, sweaty mess by the end of the driveway. I stop at the end of the driveway because no one in the actual outside world needs to see that.

First I had Studley run around the block, but the block’s not very far and he got bored. Driving alongside him worked until they kicked me off the bike path. And then I remembered Couch to 5k. With Couch to 5k you start with nice long walks speckled with short bits of running. I bought the app, laced up my sneakers and hit the road with my son.

I discovered these truths:

  1. A running partner whose legs are literally half as long as yours is a good thing.
  2. Sixty seconds of running is hideous and nausea-inducing.

I also discovered that people see what they expect to see – and that people are kinder and more generous with their expectations than is reasonable.

What happened: I miraculously kept my whinging to myself with my son trotting alongside.
What people saw: A great and supportive mom, slowing it down for her kid.

I kid you not. People were practically throwing flowers.

I can’t tell you how great this was. Half my problem was how embarrassed I am to plod along in public. Suddenly my snail’s pace was making people’s hearts swell with gratitude for this obvious evidence of kindness and good parenting.

Admiration and approval is very motivational – even if the admiration is founded on a lie. You might think that I’d respond by becoming the mom people mistook me for, but something even better happened: I got to know my boy.

We were both out of breath most of the time – me starting with the tying of the shoes and him after the first spell of running – but I noticed that he was willing to talk while gasping for air, which distracted him from the stopwatch. So I asked him questions. Short, monosyllabic questions.

I learned what was going on in school, what he liked, what he was excited about, what projects he wanted to do, and all sorts of things I still have no idea about but are probably apps. On the trail we could talk about anything and everything.

I asked things like “what’s that?” “what’s it do?” and “tell me more” to keep him going. This will sound ludicrous, but I actually wanted my single-digit aged son to keep talking. I especially tried to get him on a roll when the app was about to say “Let’s Run!” so I could pretend to miss the cue.

He always heard it, and we ran.

We ran for six weeks and made a lot of progress, staying with the program despite the voice in my head telling me we were going to die. And then the weather changed and I had to beg out because who knew cold air burns the lungs like freaking acid?

After a couple weeks of waiting for the searing to stop, I decided I was off the hook and could give up running with a clear conscience. I had given it a good and valiant effort. Soccer season was over and so was I.

And then that stupid Facebook thing happened.

Months after we stopped, his answer to “What do you enjoy doing with me?” was still “running.” And not “running for the best spot on the couch to watch Mythbusters,” either.

For extra guilt-inducing credit, his answer to “what makes me happy” was “me.” Remind me of this when I’m gasping for air on the next non-sub-zero day, running at a pace slightly slower than a brisk walk.

I don’t know why he likes running with me. I am whiny, slow and probably unfashionable.
But I suppose it must be done. The entire town must be worried sick, wondering what happened to that darling little jogger boy and the best mom ever.

And he’s right – he is what makes me happy.

Maybe – somewhere under all the wheezing – I really am the mom people mistook me for.

If you have any tips on how you can run in cold weather and not cough up a lung, I’d appreciate them.

Just don’t post them of Facebook.