I Pull a Rosie Ruiz (LynnK)

Here's L'il Ms. Firecracker, about to frizzle out several hours after the parade. She wasn't so hot before or during the parade, either.

After a painful night and morning with the Shingles, I finally admitted that waiting in line with hundreds of others and their cars and floats and animals for at least an hour before the parade even started, not to mention the parade walk itself, followed by the long walk home . . . Well, I just wasn't up to it.

But I had the hat! And the teeshirt from my group, the Democratic Club of Coronado, which made me feel obligated to show up. Never underestimate the power of Catholic Guilt.

So I decided to walk slowly to a point about midway on the parade route, jump in amongst my gang, and finish up near the street that would lead me home again. All in all, maybe a mile and a half. Not exactly a winter in Valley Forge.

Conserving my measly strength, I sauntered to the Point of Entry well before the time I estimated the Coronado Dems would arrive there. But they didn't come, and they didn't come. I must have missed them! Dispirited, I headed for a point near the end of the route, hoping to meet up with friends watching the parade at Their Usual Spot. Couldn't find them.


But lo! Here came the Dems, lookin' good in their identical blue teeshirts, demonstrating eco-friendly transportation like peddle carts, bicycles, golf carts, hybrid cars, Segways, and feet. I slipped in and joined the smiling and waving.

For a grand total of two blocks. They were moving fast, possibly because the parade got a late start, and within a short time, I was out of breath and lightheaded. Rather than make a scene mid-parade, I toddled over to a curb on a side street, sat, and buried my head between my knees. No question of going to the club's barbeque after the parade.

Ultimately I slogged home, punctuated with stops for sitting and catching breath.
And that's how I spent the Fourth. I didn't even make it to the great fireworks show over Glorietta Bay, which would have required me to walk another two blocks. Okay, I was watching Mark Harmon on NCIS, which was the main reason I stayed in.

While waiting for my group to show up, I did get to see quite a lot of a very long parade. There's nothing fancy in the line-up. Well, except maybe this.















Coronado has long been a Navy town, so the military bands and troops and vehicles play an important part in our celebrations. The vets are most especially honored, and when they appear, people come to their feet and applaud.



Men in kilts. Yum!



Coronado has long been Fourth of July Central. Its first parade was staged in 1888, and in early years, a lot of drinking before marching was involved. Often, when time came for the parade to start, the participants couldn't find the parade. It's always been a labor of love, though, with citizens donating money to finance the celebration and volunteers doing all the work.

This is a small town (about 29,000, including those in military housing on two large Navy bases), but 80,000 people show up to watch the parade. More thousands crowd the beaches and parks. Dogs are abundantly present. Childen laugh and squeal. With the possible exception of those who can't find a parking place, everyone seems to be having a great time!

Me, too, despite my pathetic performance, and I'm already looking forward to next year's parade.

Re-Entry (LynnK)

After nearly three months in a world not my own, I seem to be returning to earth. I’m hoping so, anyway. And like the space capsules I’m old enough to remember, I landed in the water.

Since early March, I’ve scarcely gone anywhere or done anything. Singing wasn’t painful, so I managed to rehearse and perform in a concert last Saturday night. Once a week, I staggered out for groceries and other essential errands. Otherwise, I had all the mobility of a cave drawing.

Until Monday, when I wrestled my too, too solid flesh into a bathing suit and dragged myself to water aerobics. The long stretch of virtual immobility (not much room to move in a 500-sq-ft apartment) had packed on at least fifteen pounds, and unlike my skin, my clothes won’t stretch to accommodate them. I needed exercise. Baaaad.

Krissie, another fan of water aerobics, can testify to the benefits. Even a body in pain can move freely and without undue stress in the water. But she lives a long distance from the nearest pool, and the winter in Vermont is frigid. I have no such problem, the heated pool being a mile away and winter temperatures plunging to, oh, the high 50's. Even so, I can’t bear what is, for me, the intolerable cold of a Coronado winter. I hadn’t done aerobics since October.

Nearly all the Aqua-Naughties were there, ostensibly glad to see me again, and there was lots of joking around. I did more moving in one hour than I’d done in months. Muscles that must have thought themselves retired for life were suddenly performing frog leaps, cross-country, pendulums, roly-polies, and sinkers.

On Tuesday, I started paying the price for my exertions. Every part of my body was protesting the pain. Who knew hair could hurt?! But Wednesday I went back, and yesterday I hurt even more.

Nonetheless, I’ll be there again tonight. This pain, unlike the agony produced by the damnable Shingles, is productive. And I’m weary of being the helpless victim of a mean-spirited virus. Outa my way, herpes zoster. I have things to do.

I’m also feeling miserably self-absorbed, which I detest. So many of my friends are dealing with serious problems involving the people they most love–husbands, children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters and parents–where I have only my own pain to grieve about. Not that I haven’t been through the other, excepting offspring, of which I have none. Now I have only a cat, who is doing just fine.

But resentful, from time to time, whenever I clip his claws or clean his ears. Not because of those things, though. He mourns, without exactly being aware of it, the loss of the treat that always used to follow these assaults on his person.

Anyssinians have a tendency to develop gingivitis, and to help combat it, I rewarded him (directly after claw-clipping, etc.) with what looked something like a small rawhide chew stick given to dogs. These ones taste like chicken–I’m taking the package’s word for that–and are fully digestible. The cat liked them a lot. After demolishing one, he’d stretch out like a pasha and give his ragged claws a manicure.


So naturally, about three years ago, the pet stores stopped carrying the chewies. I tried every place in town, pretty much. There was a similar product, someone told me, that I could order on-line. But by the time they added enormous shipping and handling charges, a package cost three times its regular price. I do supply premium cat food, Petromalt, teeth-brushing, and the like, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay extortion rates for pig-in-a-poke chewies.

This only became an issue once a month, when the cat permitted me to groom him and then waited with a hopeful expression for his reward. My explanations cut no mustard with him. He’d proceed to the kitchen cabinet where the treasure had formerly been stored and sit there looking from it to me. Me to it. It to me.

Then he'd go to his favorite perch and fix his gaze on me with the unmistakable message of an aggrieved Abycat:

"Ah, Lynn, you are a great disappointment to me.”

Eventually, in the way of cats, he forgot. And so it went for a couple of years, with him enduring the indignities of claw-clipping and ear-cleaning without any reward except petting, of which he gets plenty anyway.

Then . . . a miracle. Yesterday I ventured out for long-postponed errands, moving with all the grace of Robbie the Robot, and at Petco, I found NuBone chewy thingies! Not the same brand or appearance, but they seem designed for the same purposes.

Will the cat like them? Give me a look of tolerant approval? I dunno. They’re still in the car, which I had to park a long way away. By the time I hauled in the perishables, I was knackered.

He senses something, though. The vibration of impending treats has perked up his ears. He’s fixing me with one of his “get-to-it” looks. Something wonderful this way comes.

And I’m having the same experience. Slowly but steadily, I’m starting to feel better. I have a fun trip in July to look forward to. If not for the (semi)-rigorous dieting and exercise between now and then, I might be positively cheerful.

Really, I ought to fulfill ineffable cat-longings by going out into the night and retrieving chewies from the car. And I would, if I had the vaguest notion where it was parked.

The spirit is willing, the body is semi-functional, but the mind is still lost in space.