spring break

Reggaeton apparently has no place in West Bridgewater, Mass, but you will find plenty of clam chowdah, mom-and-pop places touting all-day breakfast on Sundays, and Marshmallow Fluff. Damn but those people love their Marshmallow Fluff.

In another strange twist of events, I found six boxes of baking soda in the back of Nana's cabinet (next to the Marshmallow Fluff). What she's planning, I don't know. What one can accomplish by mixing baking soda with Marshmallow Fluff might well be the really important question here.

We spent our time having coffee and hot chocolate in Plymouth and enjoying fish chowder and grilled sandwiches at places called The Milk Bottle, My Sister and I, Good Days, and Yo Biatch My Chowdah's Better Than Yours. Also visiting with The Captain (my grandpa) in the nursing home. Raphael helped around the house - took the trash down to the dump and fixed the bathroom sink and whatnot, and I made a lot of coffee and sorted through a lot of old family photos.

We also heard tons of good stories and heard my grandma call someone a bitch over coffee. See? Toldja it'd be crazy times.

We took the train into Boston on Tuesday. It was cold, this is true, oh, but what a relief from the desert! My ears were numb, and when I went into stores and caught myself in a mirror, I was all pink-cheeked and rosy. When you look like that in the desert, people tend to ask you if you're okay and if maybe you need to sit down and have some water.

On the way to dinner that night, in Boston, while deciding on which Irish pub to eat in, we met a tourist...well, actually it gets complicated. But mainly what I want to convey is that this drunk guy passed us and asked us for some money and when we (strictly speaking, the tourist) asked what he was going to do with it, he told us he was going to buy a nip. A nip! I didn't know people really used that word anymore, and that, if they did, other people would know what they meant, and quite frankly, I was thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you -- and also kind of tipsy from the Something Something Redcoat Martini I'd just imbibed while in the presence of a man wearing a tri-corner hat. Yes!

Ohmigod, and you wonder why I love Boston.










Nana's the one on the left. Note that this was published in 1940. Nana and Aunt Jean were 16 and adorable as all get-out!







My extremely hot mother wearing a scanty skirt even by today's standards -- and that's my dad copping a feel.







Nana and Jean are the second and fourth. Which is which? Who knows? Who cares! Twins!







Nana and Taffy. They match!








Mom and The Captain - when she graduated from Wheaton College. You can't see it, but this dress is another one of those that she'd never let me out of the house in. Mom!