Beloved City sits only a forty-minute train ride away from my suburbia beach town. Under the spackled ceiling of the cookie-cutter rental, I pine for the city that looked dapper in formal wear, took me on earthy adventures, supplied me with fresh simple food for either feast or picnic and knew and worshipped my soul in the rain.

I try to immolate the evening routine that Beloved City and I shared in our brief summer romance, the specially selected cheeses, bold red wines, fresh flowers, light sweaters in the garden, but outside of Beloved City the cheese is rancid, the wine is acidic, the flowers are carnations and the sweater is stained.

Why did we break-up? We were a couple destined to be together. We were fun, the life of the party. We grooved with flip fashion in the early evening and later settled down for a meaningful tête-à-tête before a late night when we shucked our shells and rubbed our raw souls together. How could a love like ours be divided?

Late Sunday night is the same all over the world, people prepare for and dread the upcoming week, and in an effort to blot it out, they over indulge and pathetically attempt to change the course of their lives in one night. However, in Beloved City, Sunday night is only a timeslot for celebration.

Sitting in suburbia lost in memories of easy Sunday nights, the idea hits me that I’ll sneak back to Beloved City first thing Monday morning. Surely when the Edinburgh Castle sees me it will call to the Scott Monument with an overjoyed message that I’ve returned. The whole Holyrood will rejoice in my presence, and it will become law that I will never leave Princes Street Gardens.

Spit spot I board the train with the family in tow. They aren’t aware of my plan to enter Beloved City and never leave – they think we are going to see three Festival shows. To them it’s about seeing Potted Potter, seven Harry Potter books condensed into seventy minutes of hilarious and unauthorized parody. Because the Edinburgh Festival has begun in earnest the train becomes increasingly packed with visitors at each stop, and by the time we reach Beloved City, the humans are packed chin to skull and the temperature is moist-degrees.

Fluffing my hair as I walk up the familiar incline out of the train station, I wonder if the city will still love me in the midst of so many new and preening international visitors. The streets swarm with lovelies all vying for my spot as girlfriend to Beloved City. The sultry Italians with their oversized sunglasses, the Israeli’s dropping their coins for my children to find, fellow Americans in their brand-conscious Izod wear, but most alarming are the black clad staffers who reserve entire sections of restaurants and enter buildings from roped-off side doors.

Beloved City laughs and drinks with a host of sexy Festivalgoers who have taken my spot. I have no flat to call home – no longer do I interest Beloved City’s residents. Because I’m a suburbia interloper there is no need to befriend me or convert me as a long-term social contact. It’s like I’ve been kicked out or transferred to a new school.

What devastates me most is how the Festival and Fringe Festival have rocketed Beloved City to an entirely new rock star status. Every hour is packed with opera, ballet, music, avant-garde art, experimental theater, pop art and a ridiculous overflow of exhibitionism and sideshows. Without me, Beloved City has never looked so good.

Am I missed? Was I even there? Am I just one in a string of romances since the Romans?

Beloved City’s new Festival girlfriend makes me look like an uncultured farm girl whose boyfriend has been stolen by a Victoria’s Secret model.

For two days I watch show after show whose level of artistic accomplishment is well above anything I even dared imagine as stellar. Maybe I see 1% of what Beloved City’s new girlfriend has to offer and I am sure the other 99% is equally as good. However, I can tell the future. I’ve looked at the calendar and know the new girlfriend will only last until the end of August.

My love will still be there – crushed and hurt from betrayal, but ever present. Do I again devote myself to Beloved City when his girlfriend leaves him with his winter of limited sunlight and constant rain? The romantic in me wants to fully dedicate myself to Beloved City but the practical side knows that the next shinning Festival will turn his eye and maybe his heart again next August. Plus, Slovenia has been winking at me from across the map.

At the end of the block bounces a little girl with beautiful blonde hair that covers a three-inch red streak of hair underneath. “Baby G, it’s Irish Girl!” My six-year old races with open arms toward Irish Girl who bounds at him like a puppy. The two children hug and Irish Girl picks up her smaller friend and whirls him around only to slap his dangling legs into a signpost. Shrieking begins and for the next eight hours either one of those two children will take turns in fits of hysteria. It is my hope that when they marry their neighbors will have earplugs.

Today’s mission is to climb The Law, a 613-foot lump of volcanic rock that is the town’s main visual. A website tells me the walk to the top is roughly a four-hour round trip and one side of the mound features steep inclines that should be avoided. Since I inhabit this town and I read the website and I packed the picnic, this is my hike, which is why we mistakenly start on the forbidden side of the mountain that features the steep inclines.

In addition to Irish Family and their American Doctor, the group also includes two doctors whom I’ve described in previous posts (African savior and dermatology researcher). The doctors have brought another friend and two additional children. In total our party is fifteen plus a golden retriever, which means my picnic is short five meals, probably because I am the only adult in the group without a Ph.D or M.D..

Like a North Face advertisement, the doctors open backpacks and slip into thin waterproof clothing as the rain begins to pour. My family looks like a commercial for cotton – the fabric guaranteed to soak up all the rain.

The six children race toward the mound and attack it like an ice cream sundae. The Husband carries a bag – not a backpack— loaded with bulky containers of big food. The heavy bag threatens to pull his thin body backwards in a spiral down the mound.

The straight-up climb is taxing for me, but The Husband appears to suffer a heart attack. While I very much want to attend him, I am first of all concerned with myself, and secondly with my wild children who have scampered up and out of site. I know it’s my parental duty to monitor my children on a 600-foot cliff, but even if I had the energy to help them, they are so far ahead of me I could not reach them before they tumbled off the ledge and downward to their death.

The website is so wrong. It takes nowhere near two hours to climb the mountain and it is more difficult than the site tells. Of course, near the top we pass the sign that tells us to get on the pathway. Apparently, we took the complete opposite, forbidden and dangerous climb and it took only thirty minutes. Shah, it wasn’t that hard. The Husband’s face has already returned to its normal color from florid red.

With Irish Family a person gets their money’s worth. Climbing six hundred-feet is only the start of the adventure. Next on the agenda the group marches five miles to the next town, strips off clothes and slips into swimsuits. Now, we are at the beach.

Still pouring rain, American Doctor, The Husband and I stay ashore while the others jog up the beach in their swimsuits to warm up and then in tandem the whole group submerges in the salty water. Let me say, this water is not the same temperature as Galveston Bay. There are calls of “come in, the water’s warm” and while I may not be a doctor, I do know cold water.

The children build an impressive canal while I make my way to each one and pour hot chocolate down their throats in hopes of staving off the cold. Finally, six pairs of blue lips tell the adults it’s time to redress the little ones.

Certainly, we give-up now, right? The rain and cold have beaten us.

Nope.

A long jump contest is started. Representing Texas Women, I participate against Irish Wife, Whales Mother and African Doctor, and if I am not the declared winner, it’s only because African Doctor fudged a centimeter. The Husband, on the other hand, whips American Doctor, Irish Father and is closely tied to Researcher. K, without a doubt, takes home the children’s title.

Amazing. After running and jumping, we are warm. Now, it’s really time to head home. My family has a five-mile walk and the others are heading back to Beloved Town. After all, they have to work tomorrow.

It is with great pleasure I report that Irish Family could no longer accept our separation and appeared this morning for a surprise visit. While sipping coffee and checking emails from the few people who love me, I discovered a short email from Irish Husband saying his crew will meet us at the beach around noon. Thrilled, I tear through the house spreading the good news and dressing the children for a quick departure.

The days of picnics and bicycle rides are over I tell myself, but just in case I pack two sandwiches and an apple, which is all we had in the house. Irish Wife always packs healthy, hearty snacks and I don’t want to get caught on a six-hour trip with no food. Of course, we’re in a different city now and Irish Family will be in their car. Surely, we’ll revert to regular life and eat in a restaurant. Because I’m so sure there will be no strenuous physical activity, I wear my ballet flats.

Racing toward the beach we maneuver in and out of the crowds of weekend beach tourists who congregate on the seaside streets peering into the quaint shop windows. The tourists are in town for the Highland Games, which is a part of Scotland Homecoming, an international endeavor to bring visitors to Scotland to celebrate their heritage. The result is swarms of foreigners wearing tourist shop kilts and talking about their far-fetched clan connections.

No matter the throng of people, I spy Irish Girl’s fantastic ponytail from a block away. The whole family sets off in a lope to tackle the friends who six long days ago we bid a sad goodbye. They have a new family member in tow: American Brother-in-Law.

Irish Wife holds the familiar bicycle bag and it brings back memories of our idyllic rides through pastoral fields, city traffic and pouring rain. Then I catch site of the silver tandem bike leaned against the seawall. Unbelievably, the family biked twenty-plus miles to our coastal town, and they brought a picnic enough for us all to share!

Snuggling down in the sand the adult chatter begins while the children fall into their old patterns of communication that involve wrestling, chasing and telling secrets. The container of sandwiches is passed and The Husband gets his first taste of Irish Wife’s nutty bread filled with cheese, butter and cucumbers. Irish Wife says she likes my salted and peppered tomato and cheese sandwiches better, and honestly, I like my sandwiches better too, but it’s the premeditated kindness of her sandwiches that I contemplate and devour.

Irish Family nudges the group to steer clear of the Highland Games and instead go for a hike, but the colorful posters promoting caber throwing, weight heaving and bagpipe showdowns have melted into our minds and resistance is futile.

The grassy, green field explodes in plaid as bagpipe groups enter and retreat at timed intervals. Leashes of curly dogs who participated in the agility trials hang on the arms of many game-goers. While the bagpipers march in one corner of the field, the caber throwers assume the opposite corner.

Caber and weight throwing amounts to the same as American Mountain Men or World Wrestling Federation only these men are dressed in kilts. Extremely large men don black wife-beaters, long hair, kilts and plenty of tattoos while picking up telephone poles or massive weights (“The size of a small boy”) and throw them either high in the air or far in the field. Riveting.

The Husband and skinny American Brother-in-Law posture in a most smug manner and loudly discuss the intelligence of throwing heavy objects. Imaging how one of the log throwers might easily pick up both of these caddy men and toss them into the field, I give a quick elbow to the ribs and shush them – for their own sakes.

With the game silliness out of the way, Irish Wife says we are off to a city a few miles down the road to see a 12th century green and castle. Perfect! Revealing my leggings, I hitch my skirt over my chest, squeeze into a child’s bicycle helmet and mount the backseat of the tandem bicycle. The surprise is that American Brother-in-Law is my partner on the tandem.

All day the B-I-L has played the role of smart-alecky American doctor and because he is family I am nice enough to him, but mostly I’m happy he’s not someone I will have to deal with for long. Now, our fate is to cooperate and balance on a bike as we navigate a highway.

Irish Wife is always the leader. I’d follow her anywhere. However, American Doctor shifts into low gear and we motor past Irish Wife while dodging pedestrians and cars only to make a hasty wrong turn away from the main road and up a hill. Chugging up the hill, I’m careful to pedal as aggressively as possible because American Doctor has thrown down that he is Mr. Outdoors-Adventure Man.

Shooting out of town onto the highway, the tandem bike flies as we pedal like maniacs. Looking back Irish Wife is nowhere to be seen. American Doctor doesn’t stop grinding when I inform him she’s missing, but I politely insist we stop and wait for her. She would never leave me, especially on such a dangerous rode.

Before long Irish Wife appears and American Doctor says in a way to suggest she is slow, “That’s odd she’s so far behind.” Glibly, Irish Wife glides by us and legitimizes her lag time with, “I stopped to pick up some lovely sunnies (sunglasses) that someone dropped.” She slips on the pair of Ray Bans and pedals ahead of us.

American Doctor hops onto the bike and we go at it, pedaling like a sewing machine. A couple of times my ballet flats dash off the pedals and I shout, “Coast! My feet are off the pedals.” I should have put my feet on the bar and stopped pedaling at all. The skinny American Doctor probably wouldn’t have noticed because he was so consumed with racing ahead.

We are pedaling so fast that it’s really not fun. I like a nice deep, steady pedal, and in fact, I tell the good doctor that a higher gear would be more enjoyable for me. Blinded by his need to finish, he retorts, “It’s not efficient to use the muscles that way.”

Furiously, he pedals and I stare into the blackness that is the back of his shirt. There is a little zipper pocket right in front of my eyes. Lost in thoughts of opening the pouch on his shirt and unleashing the little people who drive this man to pointless competition, my dissociation ends as we whiz by Irish Wife. On the highway, instead of staying to the side of the road and worrying about the cars, we overtake our own in a risky and stupid move.

American Doctor makes his point. We arrive at the castle thirty seconds before Irish Wife. Taking off his helmet he walks off and leaves the bikes for Irish Wife and me to lock. Did I just experience a drunken night with a college boy? I should have stolen his shirt as a souvenir.

After a castle tour and frolic on the grass, Irish Family mounts their bikes for the twenty-mile ride home. My family heads to the pub for tasty kidney pie and haggis stacks. No longer am I ashamed to claim a love of haggis. Digesting it is another story, which is why the four mile walk home did me good.

Tomorrow Irish Family is returning to climb The Law, a local mound that is a four-hour round-trip climb. I’m making the picnic, which I will do with the upmost of care.

Sneaking a furtive look at the alarm clock that has been dragged from Texas I see it’s almost 9:30 am. With no noise from the extremely loud children, I know they are still asleep. Amazing. The Husband sleeps with his face toward the ceiling and his mouth open exposing his attractive plastic bite guard. It’s so late that I guess he is not getting up to flee from the house and go to the National Archives to write in peace and be completely protected from any sound, particularly the grating noise of bickering children.

To illustrate how sacred a space The Husband enjoys at the National Archives, last week the children and I popped by to visit him while we were in the area, and the gatekeeper refused to let us in. Literally, The Husband gets locked away and protected from the noise generators. What a deal.

In contrast, I tote my heavy laptop on my back all day and whenever the children decide to occupy themselves for more than five minutes I drag out my clunky MacBook and write a sentence. Of course, I spend five minutes rereading what I wrote three hours earlier in the brief five-minute span when the children decided to make a project, wrestle each other or rollerblade. Their first need for tape or medical attention demands that I stop mid-sentence after only writing one sentence that makes no sense. (This paragraph itself was interrupted three times as I was called to provide more water, look at bumps on someone’s arms and turn on the light.)

If I gingerly roll out of the low bed and crawl to the carpeted hallway I can get downstairs with no sound. However, once I start the coffee, which without a single doubt must be started lest I begin beating my head against the wall, the rest of the family will awaken. A quick cost-benefit analysis tells me to choose the bird in hand and commence staring at the ceiling in luxuriating and uninterupted thought.

In a half conscious state, God tells me the world is starting over and I need to tell him the things I want in my new life. I’ve only named freedom as my top priority when the oldest child appears at the door interrupting my divine conversation. She whispers to me that she thinks she’s breaking out in hives, and as always, I look at the spot of supposed affliction and see nothing.

We’re up. We’re out.

The only way to combat suburbia is to leave it. The new Bitsy takes a shower, puts on semi-clean clothes and leaves the house with wet hair. The Husband has planned a day that takes us on the train toward Beloved City. Sadly, we get off the train well before we reach Beloved City and hike through a truly depressed town where I watch a gang of kids try to steal candy from a Pakistani storeowner. Serves him right, he should sell fresh food and not that crap that will fatten then kill the children.

After walking through a sad and frightening housing project, we continue the march out into an empty field, up a steep incline and then reach a most pathetic privately owned castle. It’s nice to walk, so I don’t complain, plus the centerpiece of our journey is Prestonpans battlefield where Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Jacobite friends defeated the British in 1745 (or some year.)

Down a country lane we walk. The children shriek at beetles, chase each other and scream at the top of their lungs. There is no evidence of another soul for miles and it’s nice, for once, not to shush the children.

Apparently, Bonnie Prince Charlie was fortified with blackberries as he marched toward his victory. The roadsides are covered in fat, juicy blackberries, which we eat like greedy gobblers. At times the path narrows and it feels like a Claritin commercial with dandelions swaying in the breeze, tall purple itchy flowers, and weedy green devils. Hypochondriac child rubs her arms and wonders aloud if she’s getting hives. Just to throw in, I sneeze a few times.

Walking with my personal historian makes the walk extra interesting despite the Prestonpans site being a dud. It is a square of dirt on a hill with a blue metal rail and a plastic flag holder. The most interesting part is the firemen who are practicing rope ties and rappelling techniques to use if they get called to rescue somebody from a cliff.

On to John Muir Walkway, a walkway that mirrors the coast from North Berwick toward Edinburgh, where I expect to be thrilled like I was in Muir Woods in California. Yet, the walkway meanders through more housing projects and is littered with Irn Bru bottles and cigarette packages, as well as being accented with graffiti. Mostly, it’s that the walkway isn’t continuous and leads from the road to the beach around a power plant and through grocery store parking lot.

Toward dinnertime the children began to complain about foot blisters, hunger and each other, plus the usual rain starts. After twelve miles and the hottest day we’ve experienced all summer (78 high) it is time to catch the train home.

The John Muir Walkway was not what I wanted it to be, but there are miles and miles more of it. Tomorrow we are off to the Highland Games, but the next day I plan to try another part of the John Muir Walkway in honor of the man who would not appreciate the KFC bags that litter his namesake.

Clearly, all of Scotland is out of hair color, hence the gray stripe forming at the top of my head.

The almost drained Pimms bottle makes a hefty clang as it hits the many other bottles in the recycling bin. The fragrant sweet peas droop in their vase — were I not packing to leave they would enjoy another day on the breakfast table. Instead, they take an early retirement in the compost bin.

With scissors in hand I walk into the garden and snip a combination of deep purple sweet pea and cornflowers to leave in a vessel by the mistress’ bed. The bright pink ranunculus I cut to mix with fat green leaves for an arrangement to sit in the deep sill of the kitchen window. For the living room there will be red Lucifers with yellow cockelbells and accents of orange birds of paradise.

Hopefully, the family will return home, open the door and be enveloped in fragrance and beauty, not to mention astonishment that their house has surely never been cleaner. The Husband’s self-esteem must be so low that he can’t even accept the fact he exists, which is why he has to scrub away any signs that he was ever present.

Our packed bags sit by the door and other than that, there is no evidence we inhabited the house for a month. All traces of our existence have been scrubbed, scoured, vacuumed and wiped away. However, the family will know we were there because their baseboards have been washed, furniture has been moved and floors underneath cleaned, rugs have been beaten and cupboards have been evacuated and now sparkle from having rented to a neurotic American couple. If only I could stay in Edinburgh as a maid.

Alas, it’s off to the ‘burbs for the remainder of the summer. Granted the city that sits twenty miles outside of Edinburgh where we will spend the next two weeks is located on the beach. No matter the proximity to the beach the house and neighborhood are less than inspiring. Both are neat and tidy just like a window display at Sears.

Waking up in the ‘burbs finds me freezing in a tiny double bed despite the pile of blankets under which I toss. The opened window lets me know the morning has arrived, but The Husband’s contented deep breathing signals that it is now time for me to fall into my customary deep morning sleep.

The clock says a couple of hours passed, but I’m sure it was only ten minutes ago that I dreamed I was in a freezing suburban bedroom. The reality is that the bright room glows in sunlight, but it is still a rinky-dink room miles away from my former glorious bedroom overlooking the town that fuels all my hopes and dreams. Clearly, there is no reason to get out of bed as the low ceilings and lack of crown molding offer no motivation. Maybe I’ll sleep until our flight next week.

Children’s cackles and the awful racket of a television seep underneath the bedroom door. The television? It’s back? How did the bane of my children’s life work itself back into their world? Since early June I’ve not heard a peep from the anxiety-producing Cartoon Network but now its affected sinister blather mixes inside my head with the thickness that already exists there from mold allergies. It’s confirmed. I’m not getting out of bed until it’s time to fly home.

Bad esthetics, television, processed food, what’s next, a car?

Because The Husband has taken the train into my former paradisiacal city, I am forced to leave the bed and supervise my children who sprawl naked in front of the television eating dry cereal out of plastic bowls imprinted with Disney characters. We got in late and the disappointment of living within so much particleboard and laminate caused me to neglect the task of unpacking their clothes. Apparently not bothered by the frost that had me trapped under the blankets, the kids chuckle like lobotomy patients as Horrible Henry dumps a bucket of water on the teacher.

A bottle of V.S.O.P. Courvoisier sits on the counter and curls his finger at me while giving me a slow wink, “Let’s you and I have a talk. I’ll talk and you sleep.” Mr. Courvoisier’s offer gets me to consider the life of Barfly, but his sticky, dusty bottle puts me off, plus I don’t really enjoy cognac, especially in the morning.

Shutting off the television, dressing the children, picking up the cereal and putting on a long-sleeved t-shirt, thin sweater and jacket, I herd the children to the beach. Sitting on a grassy area above the sandy beach wrapped like a mummy, the blue sky is opens with possibilities.

(The beach in Ayr. That is my shadow in the photo.)

Toastie under the duvet cover and extra blanket I open my eyes to the large window whose curtains have been left open. Outside the blue sky is milky with clouds and the sea air is chilly. I’ve been in Scotland almost two months and I still toss and turn most nights, but always around 4:30 am when the sun comes up and the gulls start their pained calls that could only be announcing suicide, I fall into a deep sleep that is only broken when the Liliputians enter my room and quietly stare me awake.

Creeping out of bed I silently slip into the clothes removed not too many hours ago that rest on the chair next to the bed. What a feat it would be to sneak out without waking The Husband or children. Surely the rustling noise of my jacket will sound the alarm and ruin all hope of leaving out without attachments in tow. No matter that the door will creak, it’s my parental obligation to open the door to the children’s room and count their heads and make sure they are still breathing. Risking the full early morning prize, I push open the door and sure enough, both children rest snug in their beds. Unbelievably, I make it outside without awaking one family member.

The Scotland seaside feeling is different than that of New England. There is no need to style a Coco Channel fisherman’s shirt (did you see the new movie where she wears that shirt?) with white jeans or wear a man’s yellow cotton sweater that later in the day will be tied around your shoulders when the clam chowder is served. In fact, any clothes coordination or fashion conscious effort would surely mark you as a target of silent ridicule in Scotland.

Scotland beach culture isn’t like Hilton Head either. The similarity ends with wearing yesterday’s clothes. In Hilton Head you might grab the drying bathing suit hanging on the shower rod and slip the wet bikini bottoms onto skin that momentarily recoils, but the minute you step onto the wooden deck facing the ocean, the sun makes contact with your burned skin and lets it know that today’s sun will be as aggressive as yesterday’s.

Certainly in Hilton Head and probably much of New England the exercisers are out in the wee morning hours. At least the babies are up and out, shrieking into the wind while their exhausted parents slowly push the pram. Not in Scotland. The beach is desolate and lonely. Pretty much the whole country is lonely, which is exactly my reason for wanting to stay forever.

Just a quick note to let you know we’re zipping off to Isle of Arran and Ayr for the next couple of days and I don’t expect to have Internet.

It’s my eleventh wedding anniversary and I’ve planned a terrific surprise for The Husband. He has no idea why we’ve just woken him up early. A small bag is packed and we are off for a three-hour train ride that will land us in Robert Burns country. Tomorrow morning a costumed historian/actor is meeting us at our cottage for breakfast and is going to fill our heads will all things Robert Burns. Then we’ll get into a car and drive to RB’ house and various spots of inspiration for the rest of the day. The Husband will love it – I’ll take a sedative and deal with the children in the backseat while we hear some old Scottish poetry.

To: Government and Cultural Monitors of Scotland
Fr: B. Parker
Date: Summer 2009
Re: Modifications to Policy and Trends

On a scale of one to ten, Scotland pleases me at 8.5, which in my rating system is extremely high. My homeland of Austin, Texas is personally well regarded, yet I rate it at only 7.2. With a few tweaks Scotland’s score could be raised to 9.1, which is awfully high and makes me scared to think of anything that close to perfection.

Please review the following suggestions that require little effort and will boost the quality of life for residents and tourists alike:

1. Elimination of Low Flush Toilets
Of course, we all want to save water. Well, that’s a lie. My mother plants greedy water hogging flowers and Lance Armstrong used 330,000 gallons of water at his Austin home last July. Certainly Europeans are more water conscious than Americans even though their water supply is less endangered. Every home and business has a low flush toilet, which impressed me at first, but at almost every flushing opportunity, I have to press at least twice if not three times.

The pool of water that sits in European toilets is smaller than it is in American toilets. During sleeping hours our family enforces the no flush rule and even with a bladder weakened by the stress and strain of childbirth that repeatedly fills the toilet there is never a smell. In L’Europa the pee smell threatens to choke me.

In fact, I’ve gone on a mission to discover which of my immediate family has the truly stanky stench. Whoever it is could best a horse in pee-smell contest.

2. Use of Napkins
Having been given no silverware I comprehend the hint that I am to use my hands to eat the artfully arranged wads of Serrano ham drizzled in oil. Drops of olive oil coat my fingertips and with no napkin I rub the oil into my cuticles. It’s like the Solar Oil sold in nail stores, except it also contains pepper (exfoliant) and Parmesan cheese (fragrance). Would a napkin not make the dining experience more pleasant, or is this an environmental issue aimed at cutting paper waste or laundry energy?

In people’s homes and in restaurants, rarely are napkins a part of the meal. Carefully watching people’s behavior I notice they rub their fingertips together and wipe their hands on their clothes. Maybe the fabric is heartier than the thin cottons and silks worn in America.

3. Receiving The Bill At Restaurants in Less Than One Hour
It’s now become a joke between The Husband and me. The service is in Europe is different than America and it’s achingly slow. While it is fabulous to be free from, “Hello, my name is Tiffany and I’ll be your server,” being a customer in a European restaurant is akin to being a prisoner. They will not release you. Short of begging, a patron cannot get the bill to pay. You must budget an extra hour if when eating out just to pay the tab.

4. One Coat of Mascara Per Woman
The no make-up idea has grown on me. I now see it as a bit ridiculous, a waste of good time and somewhat less attractive, especially if too much is applied. However, I’d to suggest one coat of mascara for each woman. Just a quick swoosh over the lashes and maybe some petroleum jelly on the lips. Lively lashes would brighten everybody’s day.

5. City Sponsored Smoking Facilities
Smoking and peeing are exactly the same; both feel good but are heavy on the toxins, and unless you are really drunk you should not pee or smoke on the streets. It’s offensive to others. Smoking should be conducted in tree houses, garages or on the roofs of houses, not while walking. Has nobody been to finishing school? It’s unsavory for a recently showered person to be ruined by the smoke of a run-of-the-mill street smoker.

Scotland Street Smokers, probably all Street Smokers, are messy smokers who don’t control what could be an artful act that would better be practiced in small city-built and maintained pagodas set away from tourists and small children. Let me dissect and singularly castigate each type of smoker I propose to contain in city sponsored smoking stations:

a. Ned, otherwise know as unemployed young gentlemen who should not be drinking in the bar at 10:30 am when his muscles could be moving his grandmother’s sofa so she can clean underneath it. Ned needs a nicotine fix every ten sips of beer and steps outside the pub where I’m eating muesli and drinking my latte to further indulge his oral fixations. Standing at the door, Ned’s smoke blows back through the door onto me, person who is enjoying a heart-healthy bowl of muesli. Ned’s skinhead bent makes him consider killing me when I slam the door behind him.

b. Edna, the house cleaner who walks down the street with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. It’s not so much that her cigarette smoke is blowing onto me, as it is that her unattractive face is further reduced as she chews her cud mixed with self-generated smoke.

c. Cormac, Alistair and Gregor, the gas repair boys who sit three to the front seat of their service vehicle and all simultaneously smoke while waiting for:
i. A supervisor to show up
ii. Their break to end
iii. An idea about what to do with the broken gas line. Waiting for the “green man” on the traffic sign, their smoke accosts me and chokes my otherwise pristine lungs.

d. Fiona and Elspeth, the high school girls, and Amara, the African immigrant, who waste everybody’s time and money by smoking cigarettes and not inhaling. As if the burning cigarette alone doesn’t ruin my air quality, Amara attempts the artful drag and immediately blows all the smoke out of her cheeks onto my freshly laundered pashmina. Seriously, if you’re gonna smoke, learn to do right or save the taxpayers the cost of footing your healthcare bill.

e. There are far too many smokers for me to ridicule. It was ridiculous for me to think I could excoriate each type in less than a serving of coffee and muesli. It’s been an hour and now the check has come.

Suffice to say, 83% of the population smokes in public and while I don’t begrudge anyone their freedoms, my freedom to nurse my cleanliness neurosis should not be violated.

6. Single Faucet Stream in Sinks
It makes zero sense to have two faucets dispensing either cold or hot water in sinks whose purpose is to wash hands. Like it feels good to stick your hands under scalding hot water. One in five thousand public sinks have a stopper so a person can mix the hot and cold water in the basin to create warm water. Why not a single faucet that controls the water temperature? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to purchase and install just one faucet instead of two?

7. Hot, Soapy Dish Washing
This business of rinsing dirty dishes in lukewarm water is ridiculous. Crank the dishwasher to SCALDING HOT and truly wash the dishes. No dousing filthy dishes with warm water and no soap and calling them clean.

8. Reuse of Plastic Water Bottles
Again, I’m for Earth friendly practices, but my immediate circle of acquaintances over-use the empty Evian water bottle. They refill the thin plastic bottle with tap water and pass it around the children. We’ve been here almost a month and the same refilled water bottles reappear each day. These people are doctors and should know:

“Health advocates recommend not reusing bottles made from plastic #1 (polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET or PETE), including most disposable water, soda and juice bottles. According to The Green Guide, such bottles may be safe for one-time use, but re-use should be avoided because studies indicate they may leach DEHP—another probable human carcinogen—when they are in less-than-perfect condition. “

Thank you in advance to seeing to these matters. With the exception of building the smoking pagodas the fiscal note attached to this legislation should be inconsequential.

Warning: Do not Google “bad acne”. As a professional admirer of teenage acne, some of the photos even caused me to recoil and push the computer screen away and dry heave. Just to get you moving, I’m going to post one gross photo. So watch yourself.

“Elements are substances that cannot be broken down by chemical means,” lectures Dr. B as he paces in front of my tenth-grade chemistry class. Somewhat sidetracked but certainly keeping chemistry on the top of my mind, I stare at the back of Donny Windsow’s neck and marvel at the absolute minefield of acne that has exploded over his neck, up his jaw and over every surface of his face.

Clicking my four-color pen into green mode I write a bubble-lettered note to my best friend, “LOOK at the giant zit by his left ear! Be careful or it’s going to erupt and knock your eye out.”

My BFF and I spent countless hours fantasizing about being alone with Donny and pinning him to the wall while pouncing on his face as we rid him of the pounds of puss trapped inside his face. Who am I kidding; we still spend time reminiscing about Donny’s acne. Maybe it’s legend, but in my mind there remains a perfect picture of a sweet boy covered with gargantuan red whelps of tight skin throbbing with white tips screaming for me to wedge two index fingers on either side and slightly press downward and then inward with more intensity until a hardened core of puss as firm as a grain of rice shoots out and narrowly misses my ducking head.

Now that almost half my life is over I have recently learned that not everyone is obsessed with each little pore on their face being purged from free radicals. The joke is on me. The advertisement with the fresh-faced girl wearing a cloth headband and holding the Clinque bottle with the mint green top isn’t a wink to the never-ending job of extractions. When I spend an afternoon with a girlfriend at the spa, my friend isn’t creaming over the aesthetician’s powerful magnifying mirror that shows every spec of dust resting in an opened pore.

Ironically my new summer friends are dermatologists. So for me, it’s like being a cocaine addict who has fallen into a colony of pharmacists. Because I do have some dignity (none that you’ve seen) I limit myself to one casual dermatological question per day, and since these doctors are only interested in research and cancer, they never give good answers. The other day while sitting on the beach talking about being working mothers, I worked in a question about acne.

Of course my hope was that my new friend would gently lay my head upon her lap as she grabbed a handful of sand and mixed it with the glycolic acid retrieved from her backpack and perform a professional grade microderm abrasion followed by a medical extractions beneath the unforgiving light of the sun. Instead she asked a question to which she already knew the answer and then answered it, “Do you pick? That is called Acne Excoriee Jeune Fille – don’t do it.”

How I wanted to know more about Acne Excoriee Jeune Fille but my dermatology question and answer session closed. At home I Googled and happened onto the SkinPick site which told me about Acne Excoriee:

“By picking away at the blemishes on the face, no matter how small, many people find satisfaction, as if they are picking away at their troubles or their emotional pain. Others pick because they are uncomfortable with the adult body emerging from that of the child. They cause physical damage to their faces in order to fend off any advances from the opposite sex who might find them attractive in a more mature manner than they are emotionally prepared to confront.

The underlying emotional trauma manifested in picking acne lesions may also be a coping mechanism designed to quell the pain of physical or emotional abuse in the picker’s life. This trauma may be happening at the time the picking begins or it may be a timely outlet for previous trauma.”

Geez, moments before I read the site I was a normal, healthy person, but now I’m mental. Who knew? Apparently everybody, but me. How did this mental illness escape me for so long? Mr. Skin Pick writes that he has been a skin picker for ten years, and ends his sentence with three exclamation points. Uh, I have been a skin picker for twenty-five years, which must give me some standing in my newly discovered classification.

Despite Mr. SkinPick’s lack of medical credentials, some parts of his analysis are directly applicable to me, I am, after all, trying to emerge from a child into an adult. Compared to my peers, I have gotten a late start, but I’m making progress. Also, I am left wondering if all these years I’ve been picking away my pain or trying to make myself ugly so The Husband won’t find me attractive and bother me in the evenings. The Husband, according to SkinPick, has his own troubles with Onychophagia, nail biting, a habit in which I also indulge from time to time. It’s amazing we can both function having these horrifying and named neuroses.

The SkinPick site had me laughing that someone named my obsessive use of the mirror to monitor my skin, but then I read all the sad accounts of the people who pour out their hearts about picking, eating scabs, pulling hair and chomping toenails. In mind my, I thought I was just extra clean, but now I’m a freak with a medical condition.