Paddle with your left to go right

On labor day Monday, I conquered the Delaware. Well, first my brother Joe from Pa invited Jim and I to come up and go kayaking. It would be us, he said, and Marybeth (my sister-in-law), and a friend of theirs.
Now Jim has gone kayaking a number of times with our daughter, Addie, and they've always enjoyed it. In fact, last summer Jim was pleased and honored when Addie had wanted to spend her last weekend before college with him, kayaking on the Delaware.
But me? I have never gone, and I have never been tempted. A little plastic boat? Paddles? Um, no thanks. Except. This is my 50th year, and I made a vow to do new things in honor of that milestone. I'm making an effort to move out of my comfort zone, attempt things I've never done, say yes more often than no. I want to do 50 new things, and I'm a little behind. So, I took a deep breath and said "Sure, Joe, we'd love to go kayaking". Ugh.
2 hours later we're at the Delaware river, somewhere in Matamoras (I think). We've each got our kayaks, paddles, life-jackets, water, and whatever other gear we think necessary (for Jim, trail mix, for me, my cell). Then come the instructions:
Keep it straight- you don't want to go into the rapids sideways.
okay, makes sense.
Paddle with your left to go right.
what?
Paddle with your right to go left.
what?
Keep the water-shieldy things on the outside of your hands.
okay, what was that about left and right?
If you get stuck on a rock, push off slowly.
right, what?
just stay with us, and stay right under the bridge, then left.
left, right. your side, or my side? wait, which left? what?
There I am with everyone telling me what to do and all I could think was "oh jeez I'm gonna be going in circles". Let me say this- I am not afraid of the river. I am not afraid of water. I have a healthy respect for it, having grown up around the ocean, but I am not afraid of it. I had my life jacket on, and I wasn't worried about getting hurt.
So here is my secret:
I am afraid, horribly horribly scared- of making a fool of myself. I am self-conscious gone viral. I am hopelessly mired up in how I might look to others. So when I'm thinking "Oh jeez I'm gonna be going in circles" I'm not worried about being stuck in one place. I'm worried that people will laugh at me. That I will be the only one who can't figure out how to make the damn boat move.
And this is why my daughter has so often been my hero and always an inspiration- because she does not have one single self-conscious bone in her body. She just does stuff, and who cares how it looks. And she dives into life fully and courageously and with buckets full of joy.
So. I did my best to channel my brave adventurous unselfconscious daughter and go. Just go.


Then I went. And it was fun. I didn't go in circles. In fact, it only took a minute to feel comfortable, competitive even. And I managed to keep my kayak straight through the rapids without much trouble.
Floating slowly could be a little boring, but then the rapids appear and those were lots of fun. I got splashed and the weather was wonderful and the day turned out to be a perfect goodbye to summer. We even had a small bit of kayak-losing, shoe-floating, never-happened-before-drama among our party (not me) which added some flavor to the day.
Here is what I learned:
When you tell me to go left or right I will just look at you completely stupid while I try to translate that idea to my muscles, which, given the further confusion of the paddles working in opposite directions, what would you expect? However- when you tell me to keep the kayak straight with the waves knocking it this way and that- well- I just do it, with no problem at all, because my muscles get it.
Am I glad I went?
Absolutely. And I would do it again, and I would prefer the rapids be bigger even.
It was a very wonderful day, a new adventure, a new memory, and one fewer thing I have to do this year..... because

I am fifty years old, and I have conquered the Delaware.

Alice, Harriet, and Fried Green Tomatoes

Some of you know that Jim and I have a newly emptied nest, with our youngest at school in California, our middle guy off starting his life in Washington, DC, and our eldest having been on his own for some years now, living and working elsewhere in NJ.
So what do you do with an empty nest?
You fill it.
With birds.
Meet Alice and Harriet, more formally known as Alice and Harriet II. The original Alice and Harriet were our daughter's pets when she was 7 or 8 years old, named for Alice-in-Wonderland and Harriet-the-Spy. In hindsight we guess they were not particularly healthy, as they died just a few weeks after we brought them home. We had a proper funeral, which Addie, our daughter, remembers. It was raining and dreary and one of her brothers played taps on his trumpet as we laid the birds to rest in a corner of our garden.

We are pleased to say that the new Alice and Harriet appear to be healthy and full of personality and very much serving the purpose of adding life and noise into our little home.
Alice, blue, is the curious one (fancy that) but Harriet, green, is the more brave.

And I nearly killed them today.

I'd stopped at a farm stand for locally grown fruit and vegetables, and decided I would finally try making some fried green tomatoes- which I've been talking about doing ever since reading the book "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe" by Fannie Flagg many years ago. (You may remember the movie, made in 1991, called simply "Fried Green Tomatoes", starring 4 excellent actresses- Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, Mary-Louise Parker, and Mary Stuart Masterson. If you haven't seen it, invite some friends and indulge. It's a wonderful movie filled with great performances.)

So, as this is my 50th year and I am working hard to actually do things rather than merely talk about doing them, it was time to try frying green tomatoes.

I found a recipe online which was pretty simple- cut the tomato into thick, 1/2 inch slices, season with salt and pepper, dip in milk, then flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, and fry in olive oil for 4 to 6 minutes on each side.
I sliced and they looked delicious already.
I coated and I was getting hungry.
I fried- 4 minutes- and burned. Scorched. Blackened. Crisped.
Ugh.
And then....... the smoke.
Dense thick smoke filled the whole floor and all I could think was "Respiratory systems! Birds have teeny little respiratory systems! They can't breathe; they're gonna dieee!"
And I ran and opened every window and door and yelled for Jim to bring me a fan, then grabbed the smoking pan and took it outside, where it continued cooking for a few minutes while I wondered if the neighbors were watching and if I was a bird murderer and how would I break the news to Addie.

Well- the jury is out. The smoke has cleared, the birds appear to be ok, but if they die in the next day or two we'll all know the quilty party. Fortunately, as Jim pointed out, they are under warrenty for another 13 days. And if we do have to get another pair, I'll be soliciting some new name ideas.

As for the fried green tomatoes? I can't believe I hadn't tried them sooner. Burned as they were, they were delicious. I will surely make them again, but with the heat set a bit lower, and a fan in the room at the ready.