One Ticket To Anywhere Please.

I have never more than today, I think, needed to get away from it all. Maybe go to the beach or take my dogs on a nice long day hike to a lake or something.

Being near the water is supposed to be "calming"; apparently you can "breathe" your problems out across the ocean.

I keep wanting to try this, but before I could even get the first breath out, I always think, "Someone is going to be breathing this in. These problems have to end up somewhere." I envision some poor guy on the coast of Japan, trying to relax, and suddenly he's got my problems. He doesn't need that. He's walking around going, "Gee I got to call my Carol and thank her for the card she sent--I don't even know who she is."

And my next thought is, "Forget about that--what about his problems? I don't want them washing back to me." We could each potentially be walking around with problems neither of us are prepared to handle. Suddenly this whole breathing and relaxing thing is not all it's cracked up to be.

It's not easy to ever truly "get away from it all," because like they say, "Wherever you go, there you are." (Again, I couldn't tell you who They are, but trust me, they said it.)

I mean I love to go for walks in the mountains, but I always feel like I kinda look wrong. Like people can tell I'm faking it. I've been hiking happily and had people stop me, presuming my car broke down. Geesh.

I'm not sure what the actual difference is between "hiking" and "walking." Is it speed? Intent? It may be related to the type of pants you are wearing. Shorts that come close to the knees can turn "walking" into "hiking" like that.

Also to be considered is What You Look At. If you are just going from point A to point B, it's "walking," But if you stop and point at a tree, it's "hiking." Even a simple, "Oh look, some kind of bird!" Automatically makes you a "hiker." So if that's not what you had in mind, for God's sake be careful what you point at.

The Swimsuit Season is Almost Upon Us.

One of the reasons people get married I think is suntan lotion; your going to need help. There are parts of your back that you simply can't get to by yourself, and quite frankly, no woman is going to do it for a man that isn't already married to him. All those random hairy parts, ew.

My fear of getting burned goes back to being a kid, when you not only had the pain, but the humiliation bonus the next day when you had to where a t-shirt over your suit in the water. Nothing more embarrassing than that one. Just a big advertisement to the community that you have no common sense whatsoever. "You all put on lotion and didn't get burned; I myself was careless and stupid, and now I wear this Garment of Shame before the entire swimming pool population."

And you get that little air bubble under the t-shirt, which provided your friends something extra to pull, thereby adding another layer of pain on top of the humiliation. All in all, a pleasant outing.

I was talking to an acquaintance the other day about how he and his wife went to a nude beach. I immediately thought, "Gee, there's logic: It's 140 degrees, why not scorch everything?"

The thing about being naked in public, I would think, is that there would be nothing you could think about other than about how naked you are. And how naked everybody else is. That's all you see.

You don't think, "There's a tall guy." It's, "There's a naked guy." You don't say, "That woman looks like a lovely person." You say, "There's a naked lady."

And I would imagine that you'd think a lot about your clothes. When you're dressed, you don't think about your clothes. You never walk down the street conscious of your clothes, thinking, "I love my pants. I'm happy to have pants." But when you are naked, you can't get past, "I have no pants. I'm walking, and I am very much without pants." That's all I would be able to think about: the absence of places to put your hands. No pockets.

Scoring 8.2, 8.6, and oh my a 9.8!

When couples go out socially, they're no longer people. They're couples. And couples don't talk like regular people.

They become teams. Little tag-team storytelling teams. He starts, she finishes. You correct each other, interrupt each other, and no one knows exactly who they should be listening to.

Ever been out with four or five couple? It's like the Conversation Olympics. Whatever subjects come up, every couple must compete.

"We had an experience like that, too." Then you step forward and tell your piteous little tale, and the conversation moves clockwise around the table, everyone telling their version of essentially the same damn story.

By the time it gets to the semifinals, it gets very tough. Your story has to be more interesting than the last couple. If Couple Number One lost their luggage in Mexico, Couple Number Two lost their luggage and their passports.

Couple Three has to beat that. "We lost our luggage, our passports and our. . . house was stolen, too. And our children! The whole family, everything. We called American Express and we got new kids the next day. . . two girls and a boy, so it worked out well--but for a while there, we were quite alarmed."

Me and my husband? We just always seem to have food in our mouths when it appears to be our turn. It's so much more fun to just listen.