Summer, Summer, Summertime....

Summer is officially upon us! It's time to hit the beach, neighborhood pool or fire hydrant. It's also a time that is loaded with Nostalgia. Yes, I am talking about it with a capital 'N'.

As I type this I'm coincidentally wearing a t-shirt from my home state of Rhode Island. Nothing says summer to me quite like the shores of Rhode Island. Land of the oldest carousel, clam cakes, Del's Lemonade and salt ponds with the scent of beach plums in the air. The beaches there are simple. There are not a lot of snack bars or distractions. It is just stretches of soft, golden sand, cold Atlantic ocean and views that put the movie Jaws never far from your mind. It's one of the reasons why I watch that masterful movie at the start of every summer. It completely gets me in the mood for these warmer months.

Just a short ferry ride away was East Hampton, a place that E and I spent a magical summer. We danced on the beach at dawn, drove through winding roads all night long and had more freedom than either of us ever knew before. We saw couples having Hollywood kisses on sidewalks and dined on pasta primavera for the first time. We felt quite continental.


And of course, there is always the music. After food, music is what evokes memories of summer unlike anything else.







What music and food remind you of summertime?

Shining Star

Nostalgia week comes to an end today with this final and fifth post-

There was nothing safe about him. He wasn't my type in looks or what I thought was his personality. To say that he took a while to grow on me would be an understatement but then again, the feeling was mutual. After three years of dating on and off, H and I were to be married. It seemed like a handful of lifetimes had passed during those three years and especially now with just months to our wedding day we were worlds apart. San Diego for me and Okinawa, Japan for him. Between 3 a.m. phone calls, instant messaging and emails we were putting our wedding together. Sadly, because of this distance I never felt so alone. This man, whose smile promised me that we would 'live a life less ordinary', was so far away. So was my family and my entire slew of bridesmaids.

All the things I had been so excited to do I had to do alone. I picked out my dress solo, I spent hours trudging through department stores sifting through china patterns and glassware picking out what felt like our future and doing it entirely alone. All those invitations? I wrote them out myself. It is ironic that I watched a movie about the Marquis de Sade while making those things out. I had thought planning a wedding would be exciting and fun, but it was beginning to feel more like a chore. To top it off the playlist was due to the DJ and despite knowing all the various items I did not want played at our wedding (the hokey pokey and the electric slide make me twitch) H and I did not have a song. We had songs we liked but nothing spoke to us. Suddenly it seemed that finding our song was of the utmost importance. If I could figure this part out then maybe everything else would come together and we wouldn't feel quite so far apart.

Unfortunately everything I heard or had suggested to me seemed tired and played out. No to Etta James and Sinatra. 'Unforgettable' was entirely forgettable. Many songs just seemed to be dripping in a sugary sap that made me gag. Then one day during my lunch break I got in the car to run some errands and I heard it. Our song. The melody lifted my spirits and put a smile on my face. It brought tears to my eyes and all at once I knew that this song, this 1970's cheeseball of a song, was going to be our song. I put my car in park and just sat there and listened to the whole thing, grinning the entire time. We weren't together when we heard it but somehow it summed it all up for us. Napster enabled H to listen to it and he agreed that it was perfect. After that I played it continuously. Each time I heard it I felt closer to H despite being almost a world away.

It is not just our wedding song, but it is officially our song now. Shining Star, by The Manhattan's.


Read my latest at 23andMe- "Oligohydramnios, also known as low amniotic fluid, presents itself in only eight percent of pregnant women during some point in their pregnancy."

Second Floor, High Numbers

Nostalgia week continues here with day four-

It's Friday night. Excitement for the weekend has been building all week. As you walk down the hallway of McEwen Hall, second floor, the high numbers (as we liked to be known) one could feel the humidity in the air from at least ten different showers all pouring forth their hot steaminess. A million various sweet smells from perfumes, hairsprays and competing scented body lotions all mingled together at once to dizzy your senses. That was the point, right? Passing by each room you could easily hear about ten different types of music from southern rock to real country, disco, rap and those drinking songs you never forget. Girls scurried across the hall, throwing clothing from Contempo Casuals and J. Crew back and forth, scrutinizing every detail of their chosen outfits. Should I really be tucking that sweater into high-waisted jeans tonight? Accessories were borrowed too. Friends did each others hair and make up. There was a shortage on brown lipstick.

Both ends of the hallway is were the drinkers congregated. Smokers must hang out the windows so that your friends 'bed in a bag' didn't end up smelling like your Winston Lights. Pre-drinking could last for hours if your friends took too long to get ready. It didn't matter though. You could always reapply your lip gloss one more time. Besides it was the getting ready for the night that was always more exciting to me than the actual evening out. Truthfully, standing around at a frat party was never very much fun to me. I would have rather hung out with my girlfriends all night in the dorm than swill 'beast' and play asshole with some boys who could form a mosh pit for the 'Magic Carpet Ride' song.

Those nights were all about anticipation and possibilities. Our laughter seemed endless. We took care of each other no matter what the night brought upon us and couldn't wait to rehash the details the next morning over a leisurely dining hall brunch. Our adult lives were just dawning before us, expectations were strong and we were full ourselves and what seemed to be our bottomless and overflowing youth. The friendships created from those nights have lasted a lifetime and can be picked up and treasured at a moments notice even today.

And now for the song- Oh What a Night. It played continuously in almost every room on those nights where it seemed wearing just the right shirt could turn your whole night around. Whenever I hear it I'm taken back to my freshman year dorm and all the memories of us girls getting ready for a night out.

Firsts

Part three of Nostalgia week continues-

It was a summer of firsts. I was seventeen and just like the song by the Stray Cats, I needed to let off a little steam. I wanted to be on my own so bad and yet I had no idea how in the world I was supposed to get out of my little village of a town. To top it off E was taking a job as a nanny (seriously E? What was that about?!) in the Sag Harbor/East Hampton, NY area and we would be apart for most of the summer. I thought I was going to just curl up into a dried ball of debris and die. The summer yawned before me a in a dull, hazy way that seemed to float on forever with absolutely no point if I didn't have my partner in crime. That is until it was decided I should take a few weekends to visit E up in NY. Now the taste of freedom was on the tip of my tongue and suddenly everything looked brighter.

That summer, not only did I take the ferry for the first time, I also found out what it was really like to be on my own, to budget myself and to learn the lesson that with such freedom can come a whole lot of confidence that I never knew I could possess.

It was that summer that I bought my first pack of cigarettes, deciding that, "Hey! I'm 17 and I've never smoked! I'm going to walk into that corner store and buy the first pack of kill sticks I see!" Thus my love for Winston Lights was born. I smoked the whole pack that night. I bought alcohol for the first time (did I mention that we forgot our money because um.. you can't put money in a bikini, but the old guy at the liquor store knew we were good for it and we could pay him back later. Later when his wife was there. She? Was not too pleased.), I stayed out until dawn for the first time, killed a mouse by drowning and then freezing it, took care of my first drunk friend and vice versa. I also experienced how painful it can be to sleep in your car.

The weeks in between my weekend jaunts were rough. I felt chafed at having a curfew and not being able to come and go as I pleased. I had to eat what my mother made for dinner again and not what I felt like. I spent my days toiling away at CVS in my oh-so-fashionable red smock too.

When I think back to those weekends it is a mess of memories all tangled up together. I remember the blazing hot sun and sand, the wild nights with my best friend who liked to dance with a vacuum cleaner when she was drunk and climb trees. I remember dancing to Enya in the moonlight with the ocean as my backdrop. There was tasting pasta primavera for the first time, drinking coffee in the morning or should I say the 90s staple, cappuccino and creating my own schedule. Everything I did was magical and fun. Every moment was golden.

In September, when school started up again, I felt invincible. I had a self-awareness and confidence that I never had before. I dubbed myself 'Super-Girl!' (she was a lot like Wonder Red) and I felt that nothing could stand in my way. If my parents had known what I was up to I'm sure they would have put a big ol' kabosh on my weekend trips to visit E but looking it back, allowing me the access to experiment and do all those things gave me the power to know that I was stronger than my 98 lbs. I needed that more than anything. The summer of '93 was one of the best in my life and it wasn't just because I found out I could drink like a fish.

By the way, the song is 'Downeaster Alexa' by Billy Joel. I traveled to many of the places he sings about during that summer of firsts and every time I hear it I feel as if I'm being transported to that youthful, carefree summer. I can't think of any other song that makes me feel more nostalgic than that one.

Cruisin'

Part two of Nostalgia week continues today-




When the air turned warmer and the sun dipped below the horizon my parents would sometimes turn to me at the dinner table and say, "Hey, Vic- you want to go cruisin' tonight?" "Yeah!" I would reply and off we would go, all of us piling into my parents silver Datsun 200 SX. I loved that car, no matter what time of year it was it always had beach sand in it and it perpetually smelled like sunscreen and summer.

Off we would go driving around the coastline of Lil' Rhody often ending up in Weekapaug at a scenic overlook. I would gaze out at the ocean and its vastness, so dark and churning and only a bit out of reach. The stars overhead twinkled as Wolfman Jack played on the radio. We cruised to music that is still around today.

I think for my parents this must have been a mini-date night for them. They could drive around and have long talks while I gazed out at the waves and the moon. The windows were often open and so was the moon-roof overhead. The smell of the salt and sea would fill the car and it still reminds me of home to this day. Just when I thought we were going to have to head home one of them would turn to me in the backseat and say, "You want to go to Friendly's, Vicky?" Just like that I would be out of my own seaside dreams and I would perk up and say, "OOH! YEAH! Can I get a Fribble?! Please?" (Not to be confused with an Awful, Awful by the way.) It was always the perfect ending to the night.

That brings us to the song portion of the post- While it wasn't something that you heard from Wolfman Jack, it was often played on the radio and my parents listened to the soundtrack often- 'On the Dark Side' by Eddie and the Cruisers.


Image: Gull Rock, Weekapaug, RI

Hungry, Broke and Ludacris

You hear a song on the radio, in the car, in a store, or on your ipod and suddenly you are taken back to a distinct time and place. You are no longer standing in frozen foods but in a darkened high school gym or in your bestest friends bedroom. The song/memory evocation is so strong it can bring up deep feelings, distinct smells and completely take you back in time, if only for a few moments. This week, in the days leading up to my birthday (and let's face it, because it's my blog) I'm doing a little trek down memory lane each time it will be accompanied with a song that brings it all back.

I would love it if you would share with me some memories you have and the songs that take you back too.

I had been married to H for about a year and we were living in what felt like the land of the lost, also known as the Mojave desert. Or as E liked to call it, 'my sandbox'. Having recently moved to SoCal herself we found that for the first time in many years we were only a few hours apart and could visit each other quite easily. For me, it was bliss. I had spent several years apart from my best friend between going to separate schools, traveling abroad and moving across the country. Now, living in the middle of nowhere, I needed her more than ever. We spent many weekends that year getting reacquainted over midnight drive-thrus to Jack in the Box for mozzarella sticks and drinking cheap wine.

One particular weekend I drove down to E's place in San Diego and we quickly realized that we were both flat broke. I'm talking mere pennies in the wallet broke. Having just moved across the country and me having been unemployed for a record eight months had broken us down a bit. Her apartment was almost free of food and I had brought down a few things from my place to tide us over. Still, between the two of us, I think we had less than two dollars to our names. We decided to that we could cobble together a pasta, artichoke heart, half a goat cheese pizza slice dinner (with some cheap wine we found in her cupboard) if we just bought ourselves a jar of pasta sauce. Off we went to Trader Joe's. As we stood in the pasta aisle of the store scanning the shelves for the cheapest bottle of sauce, E spent the last of her "real" money on her car payment via her cell phone. That payment made, at the last possible moment, made her officially flat broke. Altogether we had about two dollars in change. We grabbed a cheap jar of Trader Giotto's sauce and prayed tax wouldn't put us over our price limit.

Once we got home, made the pasta, reheated the pizza and threw the artichokes in the sauce for good measure we settled down on her couch to dissect the recent inexplicable popularity of Cameron Diaz's "butt-dance". The contents of the dinner didn't matter, we laughed and commiserated about how broke we both were individually and continued to drink our wine. Our friendship was moving into a new territory now that we were adults and we were continuing to find our way in our new lives. It was the perfect example of how you don't need money to be happy. Seven years later I still remember that weekend and it always makes me smile. Just recently E and I laughed over how broke we really were, how dire things had become for us and how at the time we felt so scared, but at least we had each other to make the other one laugh.

The song? The impossibly horrible, 'What's Your Fantasy' by Ludacris. Why? Because it was on all damn weekend no matter when we got in the car or where we went. It is laughably awful and each time I hear it I think of that weekend when E and I were so broke we almost couldn't afford a jar of spaghetti sauce between the two of us.


Over at 23andMe's pregnancy community I'm discussing pregnancy and allergies, "I am not allergic to anything. Scratch that. Sometimes clove buds make me hurl. However, during my second pregnancy... read more here."

I'm talking about my lack of a competitive nature and the 5k I'm training for at DC Metro Moms too. Read all about it!