Dorie’s Different Reality

One of the nice pleasures around here are some little lakes up in the mountains. True, they aren’t mountains in the Himalayan sense, but hey, Appalachians count too! A number of them have swimming beaches. We always enjoyed taking the tiny Duchess swimming. I think she’s part mermaid- that child loved the water! Anyhow, lakes being natural and all, there’s more than people in the water. It’s amusing to be wading when the little fish come up and take a little nibble at your feet. They just want to see if you’re any good to eat!
In today’s news, a local spa that offers “fish pedicures“! http://www.yvonnesalon.com/
So you sit on the bench, dangling your tootsies in the water and the little fishies nibble on you. Uh people, they’re eating you! Be glad they aren’t piranhas! But maybe it’s gentler than that PedEgg thing. Have you seen it on TV? It’s like a battery operated cheese grater! I’ll take carp teeth any day.

There are lots of neat things on YouTube. This morning I watched the E! True Hollywood Story of John Candy. Unlike some of the people profiled on that show, there wasn’t a lot of scandal or mayhem attacked to John. He was a genuinely nice person. His “demon” if you can call it that, was that he lost his own father- had a heart attack and died at the age of 35! It sounds genetic, because his grandfather died young too. John makes me think of the word “Rabelaisian”. His weight dogged him his whole life (oh I know that one!), but he smoked a lot and loved his good times. Seems like he lived like he knew the batteries would fail sooner than most people. I think Only The Lonely is my favorite Candy film. A lovable loser trying to find happiness…I dig it.

It’s been wicked hot. More than usual. We have “time of use” metering for the electric, and weekday mornings, it goes back on the highest rate. So during the day, we have to revert to the time honored means of cooling off.We have ceiling fans, drink a lot of iced tea or lemonade, and stay out of the heat of the day whenever possible. Did I mention it’s humid? Yeah, it’s a swamp. I do think one’s body gets used to being in air conditioning and going in and out of that environment, loses the tolerance for handling heat. Some will think, why would I want to? To which I’ll say, what if you have to? Have to cut costs somewhere.

Speaking of summer: The Grand Duke and Duchess got married at the Garden Conservatory at Highland Park in Rochester- in the desert room! We love gardens, and this one was full of beautiful desert plants; a touch of Tucson in NY state! But it was August and indeed, hot. They made most of their plans themselves of course. Being Mother of the Bride, I wanted some role in the event, so I persuaded the Bride to let me be “coordinator of the guest favors.” A few of my ideas were shot down- like lobster lollipops because the Duke is from New England. Then, I couldn’t find crab candy, in honor of the Maryland bride- what a shame.Instead we had bags of Jelly Babies- Dr. Who’s favorite! And we had sandalwood fans for the ladies . So they could enjoy the desert house and perhaps share with their gentlemen friends. Useful too- it was rather warm that day!
(All you see here is the groom’s back- but if you stop by Duchess’ blog, she has nice pics of the Duke from their recent trip to the Jello museum!)

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 9:27 am and is filed under Family, Maryland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.