Horror, Humidity, and Hills, Oh my!

I’ve found that recreational activities (running, biking, hiking) are an excellent way to get to know an area and its people.  I enjoy these activities a great deal and luckily I have had a lot of time to pursue them since moving to New Hampshire.

The trouble with recreating in the area where I live is that everything outside of my door has been presented to me like a creaky, ramshackle house in a horror film.  None of the light switches work, the eyes in the paintings follow you when you walk by, the paper is peeling off the walls, and there is a life-sized Santa Clause figure that just doesn’t seem right.  This image was generated by my own first impressions of New Hampshire (read here if you missed the post), a reader’s letter reporting that my personal safety was more in jeopardy here than it would be in Alabama¹, and my husband’s ominous warnings that acted as a validation of my fears.

My husband, who is typically the defender of the hill people (“Santa is almost in season” he says), was also very doubtful about the safety of the area but kept that information to himself until one morning a week or so ago.  He was getting ready to leave for work and I was getting ready to go out jogging.  He asked that I please not cross over the main road at the end of our street on my run because “The hill people might get you”.  Now I can certainly be accused of exaggerating circumstances and being a bit paranoid (just a little) but when Fred said something like this it sent my paranoia to Woody Allen level.

I went out on my run with a now confirmed fear of being abducted².  I didn’t cross the street and instead ran 4 miles back and forth on the 1 mile of road between our house and the corner.  I became hyper-aware of the frightening sounds around me- somewhere in the distance I heard a wood chipper grinding reminiscent of Fargo while much closer I was harassed by an alarming little bird whose call sounded like someone running through tall grass in a prison uniform with a raised hatchet… I’m hoping it was not a mockingbird.  I also noticed things along the side of the road that I hadn’t noticed before now- an unmarked, windowless, white cargo van with no visible driver, a rolled up blue tarp, that may or may not have been concealing a slowly decaying body, and a house with a McCain/Palin 2008 campaign sign still up at the end of their driveway… the horror!!  I’ve never run so fast in my entire life.

I returned home from my run safely but completely soaked in sweat.  This was no surprise as I’ve found that I have been almost consistently soaked in sweat since moving to New Hampshire.  The reason for all of the sweating is the humidity.

The average annual humidity in the state of New Hampshire hovers somewhere around 80%, which makes the air here palpable, and (I’m not even making this up) flavorful.  The air tastes mostly of swamp, wet trees, and leaves fallen several seasons ago but when you run past the yurt on the corner with all of the ‘gardening supplies’ out front you taste a leaf of a different kind in the air…

The moisture in the air causes sweat and water to evaporate more slowly from everything³.  Sweat production seems to have an almost linear relationship with energy exertion, which means that you will probably only move from a beautiful dewy glow into a just woke up from a naked-at-work dream sweat if you choose to bend your elbow or make the mistake of rising from your chair.

I made a graphic to demonstrate the relationship between sweat levels (y-axis) and activities (x-axis) below:

Another factor contributing to the excessive perspiration of New Hampshirites is the physical exertion required to traverse the hilly topography.  I have heard the term “New England Flat” used to describe the nature of the landscape.  I looked it up in the dictionary:

New England Flat (adj.)– 1. Describes an area not actually flat but containing a series of short repetitive hills.  2. Describes runner’s butt after training on roads that are New England Flat (def. 1).

New England Flat makes running and road biking a lot more difficult, but as my legs start to look more like Popeye’s than Olive Oyl’s I’ve actually found that I enjoy the challenge (and the spinach that I faithfully eat through a pipe… A-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah⁵)!  However, the smaller hills have taken some of the challenge out of mountain biking… but it’s a very welcome relief from the long up-haul of the trails in Bozeman.   The trails here offer their own unique challenges, and LOTS of them- tree roots.

Bumping along the roots on the trail is like riding on one of those vibrating beds at a cheap motel… only it’s malfunctioning, you’re getting much more ‘ride’ than you bargained for with your quarter, things are starting to go numb, you’re not so sure this is fun anymore, you start looking for an emergency STOP button.  I’ve found the best thing to do in both situations is to just hold on and ride it out.

I didn’t even think about all of the salt that I was secreting during these bouts of humid hill climbing until I developed an insatiable desire for canned black olives⁶.   I’ve been using the five finger logo on the can as a serving suggestion- the olive people call it “Fun at your Fingertips” (which it totally is) but it’s also 25% of my Recommended Dietary Allowance of sodium.  In fact I’ve been thinking about wearing olives while running so I can just put the salt right back in as it leaves my body, and the olive fingers will probably intimidate and confuse other racers (as if my Popeye legs weren’t enough).  I might just start an endurance athlete olive fueling craze.  I can see the advertisements now- olive fingers will be the new milk mustache… I should talk to someone in marketing at Pearls®.

My other main source of sodium replacement is the ocean water that I consume during my surfing lessons⁷.  I have been trying to gulp down just enough to fulfill my post-olive sodium needs.  The requisite amount seems to be equal to 1 liter or 4 failed wave riding attempts.   I can usually tell when I’ve imbibed enough because I start to burp seaweed.

Despite the horror, humidity, and hills I continue to recreate and try to get to know the ‘haunted house’ that is New Hampshire a little bit better.  I head out the door in my hiking, biking, or running gear like a frightened victim in a horror film, fueled only by adrenaline and a BJs wholesale club pack of Pearls® olives.  I’m determined to take my scared, sweaty, New England Flat butt out to Live Free or Die…

at the hands of a hill person with Freddie Krueger nails and a hockey mask that runs me off the road with their non-descript cargo van (only identifiable by the Romney/Ryan 2012 bumper sticker) while searching for a radio station with just the right banjo music…

or maybe, less dramatically, by an unexpected plague of deadly dysentery  that sweeps through the already slightly dehydrated town claiming my life, as it claimed so many of the Alabamian pioneers on their way to this great state.

I realize that by recreating in New Hampshire I’m cheating death and that I’m laughing in the face of certain dehydration…  so each time  I go out I am sure to have the time of my life, make the most of each experience, and remember a couple fingers full of olives just in case.

BO KNOWS I’ve selected the right Alabamians for the most bitchin’ wagon party ever… we left Condoleeza Rice and Courtney Cox behind for obvious reasons.

1- I’m not sure what evidence or crime statistics this claim is based on, but I have a feeling that in the not too distant past a large number of people from Alabama may have migrated to New Hampshire in a long and arduous journey, comparable to that taken by my wagon party in 4^th grade on the 8-bit version of The Oregon Trail. I’m sure we lost lots of Alabamian pioneers to measles, drowning, snakebite, and the dreaded low morale. This migration explains how it became so dangerous here and finally sheds light on my previously mentioned, untimely popularity and non-stop radio play of Kid Rock’s 2008 song All Summer Long– “Singing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long…”

2- I kept using the term kidnapped but I think that term is reserved exclusively for small children that are taken by creepy mountain men in the hills of New Hampshire.   Since I am technically an adult, based on my age, the number of showers I am required to take a week (though I’ve found that it’s socially acceptable to skip washing your hair in some of these showers), and some other defining characteristics I am told that I must use the term abducted.

3- I washed some of my ‘moisture wicking’ workout clothes and put them out on a drying rack about a week ago.  At this point I’m not sure if they’re actually drying or if they’re wicking moisture out of the air into the fabric.  One of them may be starting to grow a patch of moss.

4- I used to go over to my neighbor’s house when I was 8 or 9 years old and do the Sweatin’ to the Oldies workouts with her and her daughter.  Roughly 20 years later when “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” came on at my brother’s wedding I started performing the choreographed aerobic moves from the VHS tape on the dance floor at their very posh wedding venue. I was shocked that I remembered all of the moves as I did a perfectly coordinated rainbow arm reach and grapevine step to designate that there ‘ain’t no mountain high enough’ and then followed it up with some butt busting squats indicating that there ‘ain’t no valley low enough’.  As I used my pointer finger to pan the room and sung out ‘to keep me from yooooouuuu’ I saw that everyone else was also shocked, in a gape-mouthed kind of way, that I had remembered the moves.  I was now in an abandoned corner of the dance floor… apparently the mountain and the valley I created were enough to keep everyone from me.

5- I am actually only now realizing how bizarre this cartoon was… Popeye (what kind of name is that?) with his one-eyed squint was pushing greens on everybody, Wimpy walked around with his pants falling off obsessively eating hamburgers, and Bluto was constantly having some kind of roid rage. I have nothing else to say about this, I’m actually feeling a little mentally scarred from the hours I spent watching this cartoon before leaving for school as a child… who comes up with this stuff and markets it to little kids?  People are sick.

6- I don’t even like canned black olives… unless they’re in that 8 layer bean dip that’s SO good at parties. I normally just park myself between the 8-layer dip trough and the Hint-of-Lime Tostitos for the entirety of the evening (I find it’s a good way to make friends with similar interests AND aggravate your geographic tongue).  During our second shopping trip to Market Basket we wandered down the pickled items aisle (it does exist), my arm was taken over by an other-wordly force and I lifted a can of black olives off of the shelf.  It felt strange at first but once I had the can in my hand it felt comforting and right.  I think that my body had been involuntarily seeking the most condensed source of sodium in the store…  kind of like those people with that pica disorder that are compelled to eat strange things (rocks, sand, hair, nail polish, motor oil- really I got off easy with the can of olives) to compensate for their nutrient deficiencies.

7- Since many of you asked about my surfing lesson I will write a brief update… it’s not going well.

Lesson 1- I tripped on the surf board leash as I walked into the water.  My husband later told me that you put the leash on just as you get to the edge of the water so you don’t trip.  Apparently he wanted to teach me a lesson?!?  The only standing up I did during this lesson was when I stood up from the pre-lesson leash tripping.

Lesson 2-  2 successful attempts at standing up (if you consider 1 second of standing before falling a success).  If they scored wave riding like bull riding I wouldn’t get points for making the full 8 seconds but I’d totally get full points for style on my dismount.  Somebody get me a rodeo clown!

That’s my board and I’m in there somewhere getting a full Neti-Pot style nasal irrigation and soaking up some much needed sodium.

The Duchess of Epping goes to Market Basket

I haven’t been here for very long but I can tell you with absolute certainty that the people of New Hampshire LOVE food.  Their infatuation with edibles plays out daily at the local grocery store, Market Basket.

Having previously shopped for groceries at Town and Country on 19^th Street in Bozeman I was used to a small store with cramped aisles, poor lighting, limited choices, minimal flair, and a community feel.  I knew where everything was and it was like a big family reunion every Sunday when I went shopping.  I saw my friends in the aisles, I high-fived the fruit guy to acknowledge the hot new price on red grapes, I checked out at Lynette’s line and got the skinny on the happenings at the store, and I boxed or bagged my own groceries¹.  I loved it!

The Market Basket grocery store in Epping is the polar opposite of Town and Country².  For starters the store is HUGE…  I mean HUGE.  Like if you park at one end of the store and accidentally use the exit on the opposite side you may wear through the soles of your shoes before getting to the car with your groceries.  Your ice cream will most certainly not make it…

There are 23 aisles individually lit with hundreds of fluorescent bulbs that make me wish I had a pair of those tiny tanning goggles to strap on my face while I shop (why do they even put the little round tinted holes in those?  what would you look at if you opened your eyes in the tanning bed?).  The store offers 1400 different varieties of everything you want to buy³.  Aisle 4- Pasta is so long that you feel like you’ve actually walked the Amalfi coast of Italy when you get to the other side.

“Little Italy” of New Hampshire. The leaning tower of Pizza (sauce) is in Aisle 5 and Vati-Can City is in Aisle 2

There is over 400 square feet of shelf-front (endcap included) dedicated solely to dried pastas.  They have a pistachio flavored version of everything in the store, including yogurt (ick) and a type of cookie called ‘Wandies’, that I am guessing are made by a local Italian lady since the package bears a large flapping Italian flag and something written in Italian that surely translates to “Live Free or Die”… “VivereLiberi o Morire”.

There are tons of shoppers in the store at all times⁴– I once found myself sharing the frozen foods aisle with 12 people.  The shoppers at Market Basket seem to be of 2 varieties:

Shopper #1– This accounts for 80% of the shoppers in the store.  They shop like their lives depend on getting out of there with a week’s worth of groceries in just 5 minutes or less⁵.

Shopper #2– The remaining 20% of shoppers have no concept of what is going on in the store around them.  Some of them may not even be aware that they are in a store… they may have just stumbled in during a bout of the munchies 40 years ago and gotten lost in Aisle 21-Breads.

Shopper #2 stands in the middle of the aisle and compares the ingredients of General Mills’ Cookie Crisp and the Market Basket branded Cookie Factory one ingredient at a time.  Then they ponder the big questions like: I can’t have cookies for breakfast but can I have Cookie Crisp? Do I really need the extra gram of fiber in Cookie Factory? What would a cookie factory be like? Is it still 1973?  In the meantime Shopper #1 gets so frustrated they go into something analogous to road rage that I call the “Food Fury”.  People under the spell of the Food Fury move around the store like they are in a rally car race… the wheels of their carts actually skid around the corners of the aisles leaving shards of tile in their wake.  I saw one guy, whose suit and tie indicated that he is most likely a gentleman in the world outside of Market Basket, roll right over a 20 pound bag of rice AND a small child without blinking an eye just so he could get to the burrito shells.

Purchasing food at the Market Basket is like a competitive sport.  The shoppers act like the store might run out of food, which is absolutely absurd considering the entire population of New Hampshire could survive a nuclear holocaust by eating the food on display. At this one store.  Without even touching the stock  they have in the back.  I stood frozen with fear in the onion aisle (yes there is a whole aisle in fruit/vegetables dedicated solely to onions) while something comparable to a rugby match with carts occurred in the adjacent aisle as shoppers tried to get Bananas⁶.  Even the elderly patrons are like this.  The other day when I was purchasing peanut butter I noticed a man in a Handy Cart® electric cart at the other end of the aisle surveying the jams and jellies.  I watched as he stood up from his cart and reached for the top shelf where the glass jelly jars were stacked 2 jars high.  Fearing the bad sitcom moment and simulated laugh track to follow I jogged from peanut butter over to jelly, caught my breath from the exertion, and asked him if he needed some help.  He smiled appreciatively in my direction, sat back down in his cart, and pointed to the Raspberry jam.  I got one down for him, put it into his HandyCart® basket, then commented on how he must really like doughnuts since he had 4 boxes of Entenmann’s old fashioned doughnuts in his basket.   He gave me a sideways glance, which was either to put his good hearing-aid ear closer to me OR to get a good look at me so he could point me out in the doughnut bandit lineup at the police station later that day, then he put his HandyCart’s® pedal to the metal and sped away (sped as fast as a HandyCart® will go- it’s all relative) without another word.  I walked towards the front of the store to checkout and passed the doughnut shelf… loaded with boxes of Entenmann’s old fashioned.

At the front of the store you are faced with another choice, which of the 17 lanes of checkers to go to (each lane with the same candy- I checked them all).  When you get to the checker there is no small talk about what you did this weekend or your surprising purchase of white potatoes this week instead of yams like there was at Town and Country.  These checkers are well-oiled machines.  They move groceries across the scanner so fast they probably have to outfit their belts with black market motors or NOS to keep the groceries moving down the line with enough speed.  Once the food is scanned it is pushed down the adjoining NOS-equipped belt to the waiting bagger.  I once moved into the bagging position out of sheer habit from shopping at Town and Country so long and because there was no bagger there as the food started sailing down the belt.  It was like I altered the space-time continuum by stepping into the bagging position without a red Market Basket vest on.  Everything started moving in slow motion- there was a single beep from the scanner and the lighting fast food assault from the checker stopped, the whole store went quiet as she held my loaf of Arnold’s whole wheat bread in her hand and stared at me in shock.  Less than 2 seconds, but what seemed like a century, later I felt a woosh⁷ and Lionel appeared out of nowhere in front of the rack of plastic bags.  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the time-space continuum was restored, and my loaf of Arnolds went whizzing by at warp speed.

The Duchess of Market Basket pageant heels. Just in case the hill people ever have a ball or my fairy godmother stops by. Odds on either happening are pretty slim but I keep the shoes just in case… they might also work with flying monkeys?

Checkout lane #9 is where I met my first friend and my third most favorite person in all of New Hampshire⁸, Merle.  It was my first trip to Market Basket, I was completely overwhelmed by the entire experience, I got to the checkout, and there was Merle (and there he always is because I ALWAYS go to Merle’s line).  Merle, who must be pushing 80, stood at the bagging station looking skittish as the food started flying down the belt.  I smiled at him and he asked me how I was doing (so intuitive Merle is), without wanting to burden him with the tale I related to all of  you above I simply said “I’m doing well Merle and how are you?”.  He replied with “I am SO HAPPY!” I told him I was glad and he said (and I quote) “If I was any happier they’d have to cut me in half!” I had no idea what this meant but when pressed for details he simply repeated “If I was any happier they’d have to cut me in half!” at a higher volume.  He finished bagging my groceries and pushed the cart out into the aisle for me with a flourish while announcing “Your carriage…” I felt like the Princess Kate of Market Basket as I grasped the handle of the cart with my left hand and did my best Miss America wave with my right.  I saw Merle give me a little wink before he turned back towards the checker and readied himself for the next assault.  I walked out of the store into the parking lot waving to the other patrons as I went, though nobody else acknowledged me.  It was only after i reached the pavement that I realized Merle had pointed my ‘carriage’ in the wrong direction as he sent me on my way and I was now on the wrong side of the store… thank goodness I wasn’t wearing my pageant heels.

Took a picture to look like I was holding Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic hand I did. Star Wars nerd I am… Yeeeesss.

1- Except when they had those school kids bagging groceries…  this was the one thing I didn’t love about Town and Country.  Those kids never really got it right.  I always ended up with cracked eggs and smashed bread.  One kid put every canned item I had and a gallon of milk in one plastic bag and put only a single package of bacon in another.  While I also believe that bacon deserves a special spot and recognition for being so delicious I felt like he could have balanced the load a little better.  The thin, stretched plastic handles on the heavy bag practically severed my right arm off at the wrist on the way to the car… I’m lucky the parking lot is so small or I may have ended up with a mechanical hand like Mark Hammil a la Empire Strikes Back.  Regardless of the poor effort put in by the children I always felt obligated to give at least $1 to whatever they were raising money for; 8^th grade trip to Costa Rica, Mrs. Smith’s class goes shopping on Rodeo Drive, Boy Scouts of America skydiving trip… okay so I made those up, but some of the trips were ridiculous.  When I was in grade school we went to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall… every year.  I even thought about asking Town and Country if I could bag groceries one week to raise money for my vacation.  Why not?

2- If this was Tron and grocery stores were ‘The Grid’ Town and Country would have been invented by free-thinking programmer Kevin Flynn (aka- The Dude)  while Market Basket was invented by CLU, Kevin Flynn’s evil digital twin determined  to create the perfect system, complete with hideous fluorescent track lighting, at any cost.  If you haven’t seen Tron:Legacy you totally just missed that reference and a pretty entertaining movie too.

3- Except for candy, which I found to be extremely lacking.  The people of New Hampshire clearly don’t have a sweet tooth… or enough teeth left to consume chewy candies (either way).  I was appalled that the candy section was not at least as long and diverse as the section reserved for fiber boosting products in Aisle 10.  The name brand candies were outnumbered by Market Basket imitation candies 2 to 1.  I absolutely refuse to touch any imposter candy since -The Great ‘Red Fish’ Let Down of 2012- in which I sat through 2 hours and 49 minutes of The Hobbit without sugary refreshments.  The imitation fish that I purchased had the texture of wax lips from a frightening Halloween in 1986 and a flavor that can only be described as berry hand soap.  I cried over the loss of my sugar induced coma while the little people on the screen threw plates and sang ‘That’s What Bilbo Baggin’s Hates’.

4- Why were they always at the grocery store?  I didn’t know people could possible need and consume so much food.  Last week I realized why people came to the store so much.  They were offering free samples.  Their sample buffet paled in comparison to the free lunch I used to get at the Bozeman Costco each Sunday but there was one sample table drawing a large crowd… beer.  Yes that’s right, they were sampling beer.  And it wasn’t some new exciting Fall Brew or Sam Adams Pumpkin Ale… it was Lime Coors Light.  It drew them in like moths to a flame.

5- Kind of like Supermarket Sweep only there is no teammate there cheering them to “Grab that rump roast!!” or to scream “Saffron, Saffron!” wildly at the top of their lungs while their partner inevitably makes a wrong turn and puts 20 pounds of water softener salt into their cart.  I used to be embarrassed by how much time I spent watching Supermarket Sweep on summer vacation as a kid but now that I have a use for the defensive cart pushing tactics and ruthless aisle elbowing I witnessed on the show I’m no longer ashamed.

6- I don’t know why they were all scrummed up to get at those bananas… they’re a mushy yellow nightmare disguised by a peel.  The fruit in New Hampshire must come from a different country of origin than the fruit in Bozeman.  It has a strange texture and flavor… not a good strange.  It’s not just the bananas either- I certainly wouldn’t high five anyone about the red grapes at this store.  They’re sweet and juicy… once you get through the skin but it’s like gnawing on the knee of a rhinoceros to get in there.  Then once the juice is gone you have to chew the skin like the binding of an ancient leather edition of The Grapes of Wrath.  Those grapes cause me wrath!

7- The kind of ‘woosh’ I imagine that guy on Quantum Leap got when he jumped bodies.  I always felt bad for that guy- as soon as he saved the day and things started getting good he got ‘wooshed’ into another body.  Then Al would show up and smoke a cigar while punching buttons on Ziggy.  This show was way ahead of it’s time technologically because when you think about it Ziggy was very smart phone-esque.   It matters not that Ziggy was made out of Lego building blocks and that the device somehow predicted the future.  I’m sure this app is still in production… Donald P. Bellisario was a genius.

8- #1 is Fred and #2 is that guy who drives his truck 50mph down our road blasting Metallica’s ‘Enter the Sandman’ everyday at 7am.  I don’t know his real name but I’ve taken to just calling him The Sandman, I always give him a one finger wave when he runs me off of the road as I walk my dog.  I hope he sees me waving and knows that we’re REAL good friends.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression… somebody should tell New Hampshire.

I left Massachusetts, and all of the good radio stations¹, behind on I-495 and got onto NH-125.  New Hampshire’s character was then revealed to me by the business establishments and ‘attractions’ that lined the 24 mile stretch of road leading to the small town where I now live.

The first thing I noticed was an Applebee’s.  Now just the presence of an Applebee’s is enough to make my stomach churn but this was no ordinary Applebee’s… this was an Applebee’s with a dark side.  Not unlike Princess Fiona from the Shrek films, at night this place turns into a hideous ogre… Club Bee’s.  I shudder to think what happens in there during normal business hours but the rumors about what happens at night… terrifying (read here if you haven’t  eaten in the last hour).

We then passed shopping centers with standard businesses- Epping Laundromat, Plainstow Gas N’ Go, etc. but I noticed that several of the shops had no names or names that were so small they were imperceptible from the road.  Instead of posting the name of their shop, or choosing a name at all, these establishments displayed very large, sometimes homemade, signs that stated what you were meant to do there.  One restaurant, that I can only now recall as yellow, was simply named ’EAT’ and there was a convenience store with no other marking on it except ‘SHOP’.  A marketing strategy targeted to those bamboozled by the terms Restaurant and Mini-Mart- this doesn’t look good New Hampshire.

Next we passed by the Lee USA Speedway², a full sized stock car racing track with seating for 5,000 fans.  Then came the hidden gem… only those with the willpower and mental fortitude to not be waylaid by the aforementioned ‘EAT’ and ‘SHOP’ signs could make it this far: Cedar Waters Village Nudist Park. Their website states that they offer:

“350 acres of heavily wooded, private land with secluded roads and hiking trails; sandy beaches, lawns for sunbathing, swimming, sailing, windsurfing, tennis, volleyball, shuffleboard, horseshoes, petanque, sauna bath, hot tubs, hot showers, modern rest rooms; superb bass, pickerel, and horn pout fishing; camp row boats, paddle boats, and canoes; also tenting and RV sites, seasonal RV waterfront lots; rental cabins, church, cozy clubhouse with large screened porches; lakeside restaurant; weekend activities and more!”

Now…. depending on your level of modesty you may be uncomfortable or downright terrified with the thought of participating in any of the above listed activities naked or with other naked people.  Some of you more adventurous folks may see the appeal in wearing nothing but your birthday suit while lounging on the beach, taking a quick skinny dip in the lake, or sunbathing on the deck of a boat as it sails through a warm breeze of mosquitoes and black flies (this is New Hampshire after all).  But I cannot imagine ANY of you thinking bare-bottomed, bare-breasted tennis is a good idea.  Tennis involves lots of sweating, fast-paced leaning, and shuffling around the court in that wide-legged stance³ that would be revolting in the nude.  Shuffleboard, horseshoes, petanque (that’s bocce ball to all of us people with our clothes on) – all of these sports involve bending and a perfectly timed, well executed single leg lift to guide your puck, horseshoe, or bocce right into the sweet spot that you were aiming for.  You could be the most attractive person on earth and you would not look hot bending down to throw your Petnaque in the buff.

Imagine those people completely naked… you just cringed a little didn’t you.

I won’t even get started with my thoughts on naked church or the whole host of bacteria introduced by diners in the buff at the Lakeside Restaurant⁴.  Despite my hesitations about sanitation and the potential for psychological trauma caused by viewing bouts of naked recreation I secretly wanted to put on big boots and nothing else and utilize the miles of poison ivy covered hiking trails like a shaved down Sasquatch.  When I asked Fred if he wanted to go with me for the day he said nothing, but the look that he gave me said everything.  The look didn’t even improve when I sweetened the deal with an evening of superb horn pout fishing (this just sounds obscene when combined with the context of naked people).

Lucky for us, our road is directly adjacent to Cedar Waters Village (maybe I will see some sasquatch in the woods behind our house) and the Lee USA speedway (we get lulled to sleep by the sounds of roaring car engines and screaming rednecks and the smells of scorching tires and lonely men wearing too much BRUT⁵).  Turning off of NH125 onto our road is like turning into a bad Disney theme ride called ‘Dendrologica- A Fantasy World’ (you know the ride your parents always took you on so you could learn something instead of getting marginally closer to your first concussion with “just one more” spin on the teacups).  Both sides of the road are lined with trees, their canopies meet overhead, and you enter the tree tunnel.  Only a little bit of sunlight penetrates through the adjoining branches and leaves unless…

He sees you when you’re sleeping, He knows when you’re awake…

you happen to be passing by the one house with the pretentiously perfect 4 acre chem-lawn (he keeps the riding mower right out front like a trophy thoroughbred- Eeeaaasy, Toro!) or the house where the owners cleared all of the vegetation away from their disturbing outbuilding, which has the sole purpose of displaying a deteriorating life-sized effigy of Santa Clause⁶.  If those people put up a hand-painted sign advertising ‘CREEPY’ I wouldn’t be surprised.  I counted 57 full sized trees and an entire grove of aspen in the front yard on our rental property.  I have yet to find TreeBeard but I’ve got lots of ground to cover and trees to inspect… luckily I am currently unemployed.  (I am dissapointed to report that at press time the only tree face I’d seen so far was most definitely purchased from skymall).

The in-law quarters where we live were built a couple of years ago for our landlord’s parents.  They lived here briefly before discovering the geriatric nirvana of Florida (or as they say around here Flaaaa-rida).  It’s great for us because now we have an apartment with amenities catering to fred’s rapidly advancing age.  However, the elderly just don’t do certain things so our apartment has some strange and some wonderful features.  For example, old people don’t:

Cook- and why would they when the senior dinner special starts at Applebee’s at 3pm?  So there is no oven in our apartment.  We’ve been modifying larger recipes to cook in our toaster oven (baby lasagna, awww how cute!) and I bookmarked a website called Microwave Snacks you can Cook in a Mug.  Microwaved strawberry mug-pie, microwave mug cake in chocolate, vanilla and chocolate peanut butter…. Yum!

Have lots of hair- so there is a huge weave on the drain in the shower…  like big enough that Usher’s son could probably get his arm caught in there and drown.  We are bound to have a drain gremlin down there the size of- well, the size of Usher’s kid’s arm- by late September.

Stand in the shower– so we have a sit-in shower stall (it’s a 2 seater… the romance!).  While it’s fantastic for shaving your legs I just have not been able to get into sitting in the shower.  I’ve tried it twice and to be honest I’ll probably try it again.  I want to like it but it’s just not happening.

Wash dishes by hand– so there is a dishwasher.  It’s a Kenmore.  I’ve taken to just calling him Ken as I like to keep it casual with the help.  I was also on a first name basis with my last dishwasher Fred [husband’s last name- removed because he was embarrassed that people might find this when they Googled his name], whom I just called Fred (or darling if I had made a really big mess).

Chew food with their mouths closed– so nothing.  I just wanted to point out that somewhere well into their 80s people lose the ability to pull their lower jaw all the way up.  I’m going to order a garage door opener or some kind of pulley system for mine because I DO NOT want to be that old lady dropping chunks of microwave mug pie all over the table.  That is some delicious stuff…. you do not want to lose any!

The world inside our little apartment is slowly getting organized, we are gradually unpacking all of those things we thought we might be able to leave in boxes in the garage until we found a bigger place⁷, and the cats are no longer terrified of the ceiling fans.  We’ve also been exploring the world beyond the tree tunnel, keeping an open mind about this new and different place, and trying to see the best in it.  I’ve actually found that it’s not been terribly hard to see the good things despite the less than favorable first impression I got about New Hampshire⁸ when driving in.  In fact I am starting to admire the people of New Hampshire for the very things that, at first glance, repelled me (though naked tennis is still not okay).  It didn’t surprise me to learn that Martin Luther King Jr., the man who spoke the famous words “I have a dream”, was originally from New Hampshire⁹ because the people of New Hampshire have big dreams.  Their dreams- owning a combo gas station/barbershop, watching car racing 7 nights a week, getting some southern exposure while windsurfing, wearing leg warmers to the grocery store and believing that you look like Jennifer Beals from Flashdance– may be a bit unconventional but New Hampshirites are making them a reality everyday (7 days a week with the car racing… trust me I can smell the BRUT).  These people have an unflagging enthusiasm for what they enjoy in life (maintaining Santa’s unsettling little workshop- complete with twinkle lights- 12 months a year) that I’ve not seen in many other places.  New Hampshirites are truly embracing their motto to “Live Free or Die” and I am excited to join them.  Maybe you’ll even hear about my adventures in a Steve Miller Band song someday.  I’m thinking it’d be pretty easy to substitute Mel T. Cheese for Bobbie Sue  in a parody of ‘Take the Money and Run‘ entitled ‘Take your Mug Cake and Run’.  It may be next year’s song of the summer… wait for it.

My assistant decided this was one tree and not three and thus he only peed on it once… I think his new goal in life is to pee on EVERY tree in New Hampshire.

1- The new soundtrack of my life includes an abundance of the Steve Miller Band, Elton John’s greatest hits, and the official NH song of the summer- 2008’s All Summer Long by Kid Rock… if their ‘gift is their song’, I sure hope this one’s not for me.

2- Later I found out that the Lee USA Speedway was not our only option for watching car racing.  One track wasn’t enough to handle southeastern New Hampshire’s enthusiasm for fast moving cars, so there are three dedicated car racing tracks within a 10 mile radius of our home- Lee USA Speedway, Star Speedway, and the New England Dragway.  We’re waiting to go to an event until Fred’s mullet grows all the way in.

3- I believe my high school tennis coach called this move footwork.  Since I lobbed every other ball over the 20 foot fence (If Godzilla had a racket it’d be game on) the only footwork I got to practice was running in and out of the court.  Having spent 90% of tennis practice off court I never did get very good at footwork… or tennis for that matter.  I did, however, get to wear a team shirt and carry the Gatorade at matches… this was my generation’s version of the ‘participation trophy’ we see today.

4- There are a multitude of hygiene related concerns that come to mind but I am stuck on the seating (not literally but some people might get ‘stuck’ to the seating at the actual restaurant). Do the seats have cushions or are there wooden, plastic, *gasp* metal or *gulp* wicker chairs for your bare bottom to sit upon? Do they wipe these down between customers and burn the rags or do they pass out something akin to the Safe-t-Seat® disposable paper toilet seat cover (which so comforts me at airport and gas stations restrooms)?

5- It is hard to distinguish the fragrance of the burning rubber from the fragrance of the BRUT but since they’re marketed towards attracting the same type of audience does it really matter?

6- Every time I drive by I check to make sure he’s still there.  In my nightmares he comes to life like a possessed  B horror film doll, zombies his way across the street and stuffs me into his sun-faded sack of moldy toys where I linger until the actual holidays (yes they’re still 4 months away people!) when the only thing left of me are bones and my one gold tooth that they use to identify my remains.

7- For obvious reasons every mug we own is now unpacked. Unfortunately for Fred I also found the Scrabble board that he “couldn’t find” when he was unpacking.  It was in the garage under an old sheet and a pile of boxes to the ceiling… I wonder how that got there?

8- Okay, it was REALLY hard for the first week.  But I was still making comparisons with Bozeman.  Once I stopped pretending that New Hampshire was the ‘last best place’ and started imagining it as the ‘second-to-last best place’ things got a lot easier

9- This is a lie.

Preparations and Packing

Luckily we have known since May that we would be making a cross country move to New Hampshire.  This gave us plenty of time to pre-pack some non-essentials (i.e. pez dispenser collection) and analyze certain items of questionable usefulness to determine if they should make the trip with us or not.  These were mostly my items as fred claims that everything he owns is useful- the man owns 9 pairs of jeans and a Didgeridoo… I think we’d all agree that his argument just went out the window.  There was one big yard sale and a lot of craigslist postings that yielded over $800 in cash (who knew our junk was so valuable!).  I used this money to _______.  If a responsible person were to fill in that blank they would probably say something like “hire minions to pack and move all of our stuff” or “purchase a soundproof, breathable, box to transport our cats in”¹ but I used the money to buy a new road bike (I just slapped my own hand and said “shame on you” in that accusatory tone so you don’t have to).  I did sell a bike at our yard sale and we planned on donating our other commuter bike to Big Brother’s Big Sisters before leaving town so that took our bike total from 4 down to 2 and then it went back up to 3 again… really not all that bad and come on, who’s counting? The point is that I got rid of some stuff.

We were trying to gradually pack things up and stay ahead of the packing so there wasn’t a big rush at the end.  We may have gotten more ahead of the packing if I wasn’t simultaneously trying to squeeze all of the fun out of my last summer in Bozeman.  Every day I would get home from work, think about packing a box (I would say I gave it at least 10 minutes thought-  sometimes combined with the drive home… multitasking) and then realize that there was something much, much more interesting to do in the pristine wilderness at my doorstep.  I would leave my beloved, understanding husband the following note “I love you! Thanks for letting me go out and play.  I promise to pack tomorrow 🙂  -mel-“² .  I was pretty sure Fred had no idea that he was getting a recycled sentiment until he approached me about 2 weeks later-    We had to talk. About the packing progress.  Or lack thereof-  After our discussion I was determined to do my part.  So while Fred went out rock climbing I spent a warm sunny Saturday afternoon rolling up winterwear in our sweltering loft, listening to Patsy Cline’s greatest hits, and weeping about how much I would miss Bozeman.  This was also not productive packing time. However, the following week I finally pulled it together and managed to strike a balance between work and play.  Fred came home to find several boxes packed, with the re-used note on top of them.

It was probably best that Fred handled most of the packing as I was easily frustrated by the task.  I could never seem to find the right sized item to fill up the remaining spot in the box, so I quested around the house for something that was the perfect size.  Thus, many of my boxes ended up having long, descriptive labels indicating the specific things that they contained since their contents came from several rooms in the house.  For example I didn’t think that the title “Kitchen” could encompass – Cookbooks, waffle maker, magnum P.I. DVDs, that rock from the shelf (you know the one that looks like a dragon egg),  and that creepy wooden shadow puppet that I think your dad bought for you in Indonesia.  Fred took notice of some of my labels while taking the boxes out to the garage.  He managed to figure out that “Lotions, Potions, and hopefully no Explosions” meant Bathroom stuff but he was a little confused by the box labeled “Yad At”.  I explained to him that I thought we should work on interpreting the native language of the Bostonians since we would be moving so close to their city³.   Yad At is Bostonian speak for Yard Art…pull your tongue in, drop the R’s, and say it with me people Yaaaaad At⁴.  He also made me handle the box that I had labeled “This is VERY FRAGILE.  There are things in this box that will break my heart if they get broken… Be CAREFUL.  That’s right- YOU! I’m watching you.  Love, -mel-“.  By the time we loaded the truck I had no idea what I had packed in this box months ago that was so very important except I am pretty sure that my Tom Selleck Hollywood Walk of Fame collectors plate⁵ is in there so my passions for it’s protection is well warranted.

Lunch? You want lunch?

With most of our posessions pre-packed we just had to wait for the day that we could get our rental truck.  We picked up our Budget truck on Tuesday morning to load it for an early morning departure on Wednesday from Bozeman.  By 10am we were already partially loaded.

I think all of the tetris that we played in the early 90s really paid off… and my mother said I was rotting my brain with those video games!  At 12:30 we had a quick lunch⁶

and gritted our teeth to get the final items in the truck.  It got a lot trickier at this point as most of the standard shaped cargo was already loaded and we were left with a sofa, 3 bikes (I know, I know, this is partially my fault with the extraneous bike purchasing), and many fragile things that either had to be on the top of the pile or were just weird (where do you pack a garden hose that will likely leak water out on the drive?).   We had our first “Are you sure we really need this?” moment at 1:43pm.  It was a desk that I use as a sewing table and Yes I did need it.  I kindly reminded Fred of the times when dinner was dangerously balanced on our laps on the sofa because I was working on another one of my sewing projects on the kitchen table. I could almost see the recollection of yards of fabric and precariously perched plates of tomato sauce flash across fred’s face and he quickly found a place for the desk without another word.  We wrapped things up around 4:30 and placed the last item, a lovely pot of geraniums⁷, at the very back with the end of the leaky hose sitting in it (sometimes our genius amazes even me).

I took a photo of the back of the truck and couldn’t believe that 9 years of our lives were contained in that 16x7x8 foot space.  Even though our posessions and our little family- Me, Fred, Remmie, Willi, and Animal- were the only things that the truck could hold (seriously NOTHING else would fit) we were also taking with us SO many memories, that would most certainly merit as strong a warning label as my VERY FRAGILE box.  9 years well spent in an amazing place with so many amazing people.  So for now Bozeman I leave you this note “I love you! Thanks for letting me come out and play.  I promise to come back tomorrow 🙂 .”⁸

1- Yes, I had to go back and add the breathable to that.  I did want them to live (at this point), I just didn’t want them to live loudly and yowlingly in the car on the drive.

2- I did actually use the same note each day.  I’d come home to find my husband, who had just worked 4 more hours than I had, dutifully cooking me a delicious dinner.  I would then take the note from the table where I left it and hide it in the drawer until the following day when I headed off for another adventure.  Handy and environmentally responsible, huh?

3- Boston is just a short $17 train ride away.  I can almost smell the culture and delicious ethnic foods.

4- Go ahead and imagine you’re Matt Damon, it makes the whole exercise a lot easier. And now you’re thinking about Matt Damon- so you’re welcome 😉

5- Only 26 firing days in the entire series, it’d be hard to find another one of those on ebay for $9.99.

6- My husband clearly doesn’t know about Union regulations.  We had a 10 minute sit down on the back of the moving truck, with no cookies, I got in one slide down the loading ramp and he put me right back to work.  Good thing I didn’t use that money to hire minions, they probably would have walked off the job right then and there.  Slavedriver!

7- A pot of geraniums that you’d think were the size of the Florida panhandle from the look I got from my husband when I mentioned to him that he had to make them fit.  They ended up taking up a tiny space at the very back of the truck with no trouble at all.  Kind of like one of those cube pieces that you were just waiting for in tetris.

8- Continue reusing note until I finally make it back  🙂

How Remmie feels about moving.