My eight-year old mini dachsund named Otto battled a cough in the days before I left Syracuse for a week on Cape Cod and instead of getting better here, he got worse.  I recalled my Cape friend Teresa telling me about a great veterinarian who makes house calls,  so I telephoned to make an appointment.

If I was unsure whether I had the option of an office visit or a house call, I quickly got my answer when Dr. Joan Goffi asked me for directions to my house.

Help for Otto arrives

There she was, at noon today, with her two black canvas bags and a kindly smile that told me Otto was going to be OK.  She asked me about symptoms, listened to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope, and advised me that he might indeed need to go to the veterinary hospital in town if the antibiotics for his lungs don’t work.

All the while, Otto’s big sister Eika the German Shepherd was uncharacteristically concerned.  She sat up very close to the doctor, and sometimes leaned right into her.  She interrupted conversation by extending her paw.  Twice she attempted to jump onto the sofa where I was sitting, though she knows that is strictly forbidden.

What upset her so?  Dr. Goffi was confident and reassuring.   I was at ease.  Otto wasn’t particularly thrilled at getting prodded, but he didn’t appear to send out any canine distress signals.  I remain stumped at what freaked out the big dog.

Then it came time for a blood draw and Otto’s fortunes quickly changed.  Maybe that’s what spooked Eika.  She’s clairvoyant.

Declaring the counter-height kitchen peninsula exactly the right level for the task, Doctor Goffi asked for a towel for the table and a towel to swaddle Otto.  In these circumstances, the pet owner becomes a vet tech, the person responsible for holding down the patient while his vein gets pricked.  It was over in a flash, well at least for the doctor and me.  It was a little different for Otto who had a needle in his jugular vein. Doctor Goffi will phone me with the results in the morning.  Could it be any easier?

In the meantime, I was handed some doggy antibiotics and an itemized bill that sweemed equivalent to what I would pay at the vet’s office in Syracuse and yet I never had to leave my house.  Aside from Eika’s odd anxiety, it was a very relaxing and comfortable experience.

Doctor Goffi told me she used to be part of a large veterinary practice where appointments were scheduled roughly 20 minutes apart.  Now that she’s independent and conducting medical business by car, she allows an hour for each visit.  She also saves money on office rent, phone and machines and technicians.  The doctor doesn’t hesitate to send sick animals for X-rays and ultrasounds at the animal hospitals, but most of the care can be done as it was today; in the home, with a stethoscope, vast experience, a sweet bedside manner and an occasional blood catheter.

If this seems delightfully old-fashioned, consider that Dr. Goffi says house-calls are the largest growing segment of veterinary medicine.   Young new graduates handle just about anything with a smart phone or tablet, so it makes sense that a decent car and someone’s kitchen table will be more than adequate to replace customary office space.

What do you think about this trend?  Are you ready for veterinary house calls?  Or is it best to bring our pets to a more clinical setting?  Please weigh in.

Thank you Dr. Goffi. Otto doesn't mind you came to the kitchen and took blood out of his neck.

I’m at the heavenly place again, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  You would be surprised at how many people were on the beach this 11th day of the coldest month of the year.  No one was in a bathing suit in the 43 degree sunshine of course, but plenty of people were bundled up, walking dogs and themselves and soaking up the sunshine.

While Syracuse is enjoying a Cape Cod kind of winter this year, Cape Codders are talking about a Virginia winter here.  My carpenter said he’s thinking about the polar bears, but otherwise, climate change is working for him.  Ditto.

After running my two dogs into exhaustion at the beach, I went to the Nauset Fish Store in Orleans and bought some halibut.  I usually prefer shellfish, but the halibut was glistening on the ice and I couldn’t resist.  Waiting at the cash register I noticed the large sign on the wall which stated how to cook “white” fish, which means any fish that is white in color, or any fish besides orange-colored salmon or red-colored tuna.  It didn’t take much memorization on my part.  I came home and did it.

It’s so simple you probably all know it already, or you might have guessed it.  But it was marvelous in its simplicity.

So hit the fish department at the grocery store or try Fins and Tails on Erie Boulevard.  Get the white-colored fish of your choice: halibut, haddock, cod, scrod etc. and give this a try.  It’s a winner.

No-fail Baked White Fish courtesy: Nauset Fish Store, Orleans, MA

Grease a casserole dish with butter, canola oil or PAM and add the fish.

Salt and pepper the fish.  Add a few pats of butter.

Top with generous amount of Panko – Japanese bread crumbs, widely available next to the traditional bread crumbs in stores.

Bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

After this, all you need is a salad or steamed broccoli and roasted potatoes. Pinch yourself that you are  not dead and in heaven.

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Plenty of room at Hardings Beach in Chatham

Foot and paw prints in the sand

There is a wonderful bicycling culture on Cape Cod.  The Commonwealth of Massachusetts repurposed the old train tracks no longer needed once automobiles and trucks took over the job of transporting people and goods here, and applied an eight-foot wide paved path extending 22 miles.  Now you can bike from Dennisport in the central part of the Cape to Wellfleet which approaches the “wrist” of the Cape’s sandy arm that extends into the Atlantic Ocean.

The trail is primarily wooded with scrub oaks and pitch pines, and glossy poison ivy occasionally extends its reach onto the path.   But there is plenty of variety on the rail trail too.  You pass salt marshes and cranberry bogs, you cross dozens of streets both large and small, and you even cross over the only highway on Cape Cod on a small bridge built specifically for bikers and pedestrians.  Whenever you reach a street, all cars must stop to let bikers pass.  That’s part of the culture here.

You also pass behind the back yards of homes and you find little homemade signs indicating a cafe or bike shop nearby.  One such treasure is the super unique breakfast bar at the private little airport in Chatham where my friends Carrie and Dave biked 5 miles the other day to earn the calories for our breakfast.  At any point you can get off the path and share the roads with cars to get to a particular destination such as a beach.

That’s what I did yesterday afternoon.  I left my house in Harwich and rode 11 miles to Skaket Beach on Cape Cod bay.  I only needed to accommodate auto traffic–my least favorite form of biking, for a couple of miles between the ocean and the rail trail.    Once I arrived at the beach I pulled out a lobster roll I had made at home, rewarded myself with my favorite sandwich in all the world, and rode back home.  It was about 23 miles in all.

Here are some photos I took along the way, including a few of cranberry bogs.  If you ever wondered where your Thanksgiving cranberries come from, it starts right here on Cape Cod.  What appear to be ordinary fields or marshes are actually cranberry farms which are intentionally flooded at harvest time to allow the buoyant berries to float to the top for gathering.   It’s quite a sight, right down to the man who stands up in a surface contraption to pick them up.

This is the typical view along the Cape Cod Rail Trail

A narrow little bridge allows bikers to cross the highway in Harwich

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Occasionally you pass through metal culverts

Cape Cod is filled with fresh water ponds which you can see from the trail

Here is where I left the trail to get to the beach. Pretty home for sale

Arrival at Skaket Beach, Orleans. Famous for sunsets

Cranberry bog before annual intentional flooding

And here is a bog that is flooded. All the red you see are cranberries

This funny-looking machine looks like a stand up paddle boat

All my life I’ve dreamed of an extended stay on Cape Cod and now I’m doing it.  The fourth child is securely in place at college.  My one-month sojourn at the house in Harwich is underway.

It was 11 years ago next month when I bought it.  Since that time I’ve stolen a week each summer with my family,  plus some long task-filled weekends opening it up and putting it away, while other vacationing families rent it and pay for it. One of them is a woman from Texas who comes every year for three weeks in June.  She has spent more time in my house than I have.

Friends ask how I can stand other people using my stuff.  Those other people, none whom I’ve met personally, are the reason I have any of this “stuff” at all.  Plus the pen pal experience of describing it each winter to the families shopping for their rental online is very pleasant.   In that way, I feel I do know them a little bit.  The Texas woman I now consider a friend after all these years as we share the ups and downs of our lives via email throughout the year.

I learn something from the items that get left behind in the rush out the door each changeover Saturday.  I’m mailing back a Wii video game controller to a family with children as attached to their game systems as much as mine were.  One year I found a bottle of anti-depressants that obviously rolled beneath a dresser and hung out under the baseboard heat until I came along with my dry mop in the fall.  I wondered at what point in the vacation did the woman realize her medication was gone, and did it trigger the kind of stress she thought she’d avoid during her week at the beach.  I’ve found tiny bathing suits left in drawers and baseball caps in the garage.

I admit, the first trip back in the fall after a succession of families has occupied the house all summer, is a little rough.  Things get moved around, the kitchen cabinets are completely reorganized, missing items which I first wonder might have been taken are almost always discovered in a different room, but the total effect is jarring.  This year someone rearranged the furniture in the living room and didn’t put it back.  Was it a family from the beginning of the summer and was it left that odd way for all successive families?  Or was it the last family at Labor Day?

Then of course there is the occasional stain in the carpet and item that breaks.  Last year I discovered someone had stained one of the living room sofa cushions, and instead of taking some cold water and detergent to it, they simply flipped it over to wait out the rest of the summer in secret.   I will spare you the description of what heat and high Cape humidity did to the stain while it was tucked out of view.

This time I found the top to the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator broken off.  These are not partyers who rent my house; they are families seeking their slice of Cape Cod for a week.  I attribute the breakage to the cheap plastic parts of new fridges more than any mishandling on the part of guests.  The sofa stain?  Maybe it was a child who wasn’t supposed to be eating in the living room and feared getting in trouble.  You have to be highly flexible to manage a house like this but the reward for that flexibility is the house itself.  And right now, it is all mine again.

In between walks to the beach and dinners out with two girlfriends I’ve come to cherish through the years, I’m sorting toys, touching up paint and doing lots of cleaning.  I’m not done yet but unlike years past where I literally ran up and down stairs to get it all done before departure in a day or two, this year I have a month to finish it!

Oh and this time, I’ve got the added “benefit” of cleaning up after Hurricane Irene.  We didn’t hear much about the damage on Cape Cod with all the flooding in Upstate New York and the Southern Tier, but much of the vegetation here, including my gigantic New Dawn roses which face south –the ocean side, got scorched with salt spray burn.  It looks like an early, colorless autumn in my yard, plus two trees suffered fatal breaks and will need to be removed as soon as the over-booked tree guys can get over here.

Here’s what the roses looked like in June: Cape Roses

And here’s what they look like this morning: After Hurricane

No place, no situation, is ever perfect, but this one is pretty special.

This is the biggest lobster I’ve ever seen.  He’s 17 pounds!  The good news is, the folks at George’s Fish Market in Harwich will soon release him back to the cold Atlantic Ocean where he can live out his days in peace.   He’s been here a lot of days, he deserves a few more.

The Fish Mongers say it takes seven to ten years to grow a lobster to one pound.  That means the behemoth is 170 years old!

They’re accepting names for the lobster for 1 dollar.  Once a name is chosen the lobster will go back to the seas and all the proceeds will go to the Cape Cod Food pantry.  So enjoy these photos of a rare specimen from the deep before he slips away again.

This is a little “Where’s Waldo”, but you can locate the giant claws with the white rubber band that keeps them shut tight.   All the other lobsters in the tank are a respectful dinner portion of between 1.5 to 3 pounds.

The giant appears to be hugging the 1.5 pound typical lobster sporting the orange bands.

Here is the makeshift box bearing the one-dollar names, in front of the fish for sale.  Cute, isn’t it?

The staff is always a little busy to entertain my tough investigative questions such as “who gets to pick the name”, “how much money is in the box so far” and “when is the contest over”?  But I’ll try to find out and report back.

Regular readers know this is the time of year when I kick off summer with a trip to Cape Cod.  I started when I was five years old, took a significant break during college, graduate school and early career days, and resumed when my own children were very little.

I remain envious of the people of eastern New England, who can zip down to the Cape in an hour or two.  It takes me at least six hours from Syracuse unless there is an accident or road construction, and then it can stretch into seven or more such as what occurred on Friday.    Repaving in the Berkshires stopped all eastbound traffic.  It took 50 minutes to go five miles.

Once over the bridge spanning the Cape Cod Canal a calm washes over me.  Everybody describes the same thing.  You feel so relaxed.  Is it the charming architecture or the flowers?  The brine that lingers in the air that you smell for about a minute after you get out of the car?  It might be the famous Cape Cod “light”.  There is something different about the colors here that some claim is the effect of the ocean which surrounds this sandy spit of land reaching into the ocean.  The particular light draws artists from around the world.

After a Memorial Day trip with my 18 year old son Christian and a solo trip for Harry with his pals immediately after, I am alone for this one week, but alone is loosely termed.  My daughter came for a whirlwind weekend of sightseeing, lobster and the beach with three nursing school friends from New Jersey.  And early this morning, at 2:30 am, two wonderful friends from New York City arrived to enjoy much needed rest from their exciting life in the city.  We’ll be together till Thursday.  And finally, I have two girlfriends who live in the Boston suburbs and come here for weekends and the whole summer, respectably.

Tara, Olena, Kim and Natalie dig into a lobster roll dinner at home

The roses that I planted as thorny little sticks ten years ago are exploding off the back of the house; a glorious tangle of leaves so glossy you would think they were lacquered.  The blossoms open with pale pink pointed centers against a plate of petally white velvet.  Year after year I marvel that this breathtaking beauty emerges from what could best be described as prison barbed wire.

Cape Cod is warmer in the winters and cooler in the summers than just about anyplace in the northeast.  Unlike Hawaii it’s not the “perfect place”.  There are ticks, mosquitoes, and a damp and delayed spring but that about covers the deficiencies.  Oh, and you would think the seafood would be dirt cheap here for a tiny little ride from the boat to the table, but its not.  Most of the fish is more expensive on Cape Cod than it is at Tops, Wegmans and Price Chopper.  In every other way the Cape is very, very special.

So plan your trip to the Cape.  Or, if you are unable, come along on mine.  It’s great here.

This article is about gray paint.  You think that’s a trivial topic?  Have you ever painting a room or your siding gray and saw too much lavender in the final product?  Or brown?  Or blue?  With decades of experience designing and painting rooms in my houses, I conclude gray is the most difficult color to select.

But I found it!  Actually, someone else found it and I found their website, so I’m spreading the word.  Benjamin Moore’s “Silvery Moon” is the perfect shade of serene, not too light and not too dark, not purple, blue, yellow or brown…. gray.

With the entire east coast socked in with a week of rain, I have taken some of my time at Cape Cod to redecorate a bedroom.  The intense blue walls with crisp white trim were ideal ten years ago.  But since that time the bed linens faded from repeated washings.  This room more than any other in the house was looking a little shopworn.

Inspired by my gorgeous Cape Cod setting, I keep the colors of the whole house limited to what you see at the beach; most walls are sand colored, what little wall space that exists in the kitchen is light periwinkle, and the fabrics are a combination of white, cream and beige with touches of red and blue.  It sounds rather novel, but if cottage rental sites are any indication, most houses on Cape Cod have this palette, so points off for originality for me.

With my gallon of “Silvery Moon” in the car I went to Home Goods in Hyannis for new bedding and eventually chose light turquoise quilted matalesee spreads with bold pillows bearing realistic sketches of coral red lobsters on a white background with red welting.  Though turquoise is a color more often seen in the south, it still works up here, perhaps because the gray walls mimic the skies from time to time.   I only hope the crustacean pillows don’t scare the buhgeezes out of the youngsters of rental families this summer!

I pulled off the headboard slipcovers I sewed ten years ago and would be happy to use the 60s era vinyl tan originals that I brought in from the curb in front of the neighbor’s house in Bradford Hills about that time, but one of the headboards has a big tear in it.  I see a new sewing project in my future.

The rest of the items in the new room were pulled from other rooms, so now I have minor voids to fill on future shopping trips.

What do you think of my before and after?

First, the before…………….

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And now, the after…….

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I should understand the quizzical expression on the faces of people who’ve never cooked and cracked their own lobster because even though this native New Englander has done it for decades, opening up an oyster  is something I thought was best left to the professionals.  That is, until today!

Oysters are one of my absolute favorite foods.  With foie gras and aged raw milk goat cheese, oysters would be on the plate of my last meal before going to the electric chair. (Notice there is no whole wheat bread on that plate).   The death row analogy is essential because if we simply talked about the last meal of life we might not be able to chew it in the nursing home, and if we did, there’s a chance we wouldn’t remember how much we wanted it all these years.  On death row, you’re murderous and aware one day, satiated and dead the next.  A little dark, I know.  Its probably all the rain this week.

Oysters are glued shut in a seamless attachment of the top shell to the bottom which presents a problem for a do-it-yourselfer like me.  I’m willing to tackle a good project and getting into an oyster at a fraction of the cost of the Raw Bar seems as good as any, but how do you do it?

My sister in South Carolina likes shrimp, so she goes out and catches and cooks them.  Catching lobsters is best left for seasoned mariners, but cooking and getting into one involves some skill and work.   At a recent dinner in Maine with my sisters and brother-in-law, Tony mentioned lobsters are almost too much work to enjoy.  I know.  I’ve heard that before, but practice makes it easy, so shouldn’t it be the same with oysters?

I’m at my house on Cape Cod for a few days, getting a jump on home maintenance before I return the Memorial Day weekend to bring everything out of the garage.  I’ve got the same cold, dark, rainy weather as Syracuse so if I can’t walk to the beach or plant my flowers, I should devote some time to buying my own oysters and shucking them.

It would be excellent to say the method to do this lie on a piece of paper, scribbled by my ancestors and placed folded and yellowed into a New England cookbook I have at home, but no, I turned to youtube and found a guy from Legal Seafoods in Boston.  This gave him excellent credibility.  If Irving from Iowa popped up I may have made spaghetti instead, but this man from Boston with his bald head, white chef’s coat and stainless steel pots in the background was right out of central casting.

He made it look so easy!  He just grabbed an oyster, a towel and the oyster tool which looks a little like a knife with a groove in the middle and he shoved it into the vulnerable spot at the tip of the oyster where you insert the knife and twist, and voila!  Down the hatch!

So I gathered my supplies and inspected the famous Wellfleet oysters, harvested just 30 miles from where I sit right now and looked for that sliver of an opening, and….. just as I suspected, that oyster on youtube was a ringer.  There was no opening on mine.  I had to create one, sometimes by hammering into the end of the oyster which I’m sure was a trip to Cape Cod Hospital waiting to happen…. and it took awhile, but I did it.  I did it over and over again until all 12 were opened.

Like any shellfish, oysters must be alive when you eat them or else they are poisonous.  If you want to test the freshness of an oyster, squeeze some lemon juice on him and watch him recoil a bit.   Then eat him.

So I did it.  Just when I think I’ve prepared every kind of delicious seafood, I conquered opening an oyster.  I think I’ll get more tomorrow.

And then I’ll be ready for the electric chair.  Kidding.

I know you can hardly sleep at night awaiting the fashion recommendations I promised, but I stole a few days at my house on Cape Cod which left me little time for blogging.  This is the time of year when I see the place for the first time since early July, as I rent it to families by the week all summer and early fall.

It’s always a little jarring to find a few stains in the carpet and upholstery, and lots of odd items get misplaced.  The kitchen is always the most changed with countertop appliances all moved around and the cabinet stuff completely rearranged over time.  But honestly, the house sails through quite well year after year and I find a proper balance between covering the expenses and sharing my home with strangers.

My favorite activity on the first weekend back is to read all the comments left in the guestbook in the living room.  Families tell me what they enjoyed about their time in my house which gives me particular satisfaction.  They usually like what I like; the outdoor shower, eating on the little patio, lying in the hammock tied between two trees.  They also comment on my paintings which I did as a cheap way of furnishing the house several years ago.  Of course I never mention the paintings to the families in advance.  That they comment on them in the guestbook tells me they looked closely enough to see my little signature on the bottom right of each one.  Sweet.

In between a lot of washing and spot removal and tying up the climbing roses which got floppy all summer, Tom and I cooked a 3 pound lobster nearly the size of my miniature dachsund, and I took a late afternoon walk to the beach a mile away.  I love the play of early autumn light there.  It’s a wondrous place.

Weekend’s over.  I’ll get to those great fashions next time.

Bank Street Beach, taken with my iphone camera

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Unlike the thunderstorms that roar through upstate New York, the ones that warn of their approach with a growl and flash from the western sky and hurry past before the dog goes into full cardiac arrest under the bed, a hurricane goes on and on for hours.  I’ve experienced two of them, and at my little house on Cape Cod where renting families have been in charge all summer, the reports of a weakened Hurricane Earl are encouraging.  A decrepit beach plum tree split in half on the front lawn and the roses lost some of their leaves, that’s all.

In 1991 my three little children, their dad and our German Au Pair Jana were vacationing in Chatham on Cape Cod when Hurricane Bob blew through.  With plenty of warning we stocked up on food, gassed up the car and because a representative from the town went door to door on our street and we learned we were in a secondary flood plain, not a primary flood plain, we were allowed to ride out the storm in the house, but Steve and I faced the car toward the street just in case we had to bolt in an instant if the ocean surged toward the house.

Waiting for Hurricane Bob, Chatham, Mass. 1991

We were renting someone else’s home back then.  I recall the homeowners calling from some distant place to request we bring in the outdoor furniture.  We had been glued to the TV in anticipation of the big event and had already secured the property as if it were our own.  Windows closed, drapes drawn, we were ready for Bob.

Salt spray creates a blizzard effect

It’s a creepy feeling waiting for a hurricane to hit.  You see the first signs in the tips of the trees which sway wildly while brush on the ground stays still.  But it picks up.  And eventually everything is bending and twisting hard.

The car faces outward for a hasty retreat if necessary

As a television news anchor in Syracuse, I was mesmerized by the coverage in Boston.  Their resources were deep and I was ready to enjoy the show from the easy chair, until the utility cut power to the entire Cape early to prevent electrocution from downed, live wires.  Drats.  Before the lights went out we learned the only two bridges which allow access to the mainland were closed when winds reached 70 miles per hour.   Suddenly, making a run to my folk’s home in Worcester was out of the question.  We would see this thing through till the end.

Oceanfront homes suffer damage

Bob begins to depart

Over several hours, conditions steadily deteriorated.  It looked more like a blizzard than a tropical rain.  Salt was lifting off the sea and spraying horizontally making a greasy mess of the windows.  This made it difficult to see water  breaching the dune and flooding the marsh in front of our house.

Standing up to 50 mph winds after Bob

With no power and no TV or radio to provide normalcy we had only the sound of the relentless and roaring wind, sustained at 90 mph for several hours.  Low-grade hurricanes cause damage by wearing down  resistance of trees, of siding, of nails and of people.  A single gust at 90 mph inflictts damage for sure, but several hours of it, and stuff just gives up.

When we heard the shingles tearing off of the roof, Steve and I brought the children to the dingey lower level for added protection.  By then it was getting boring and I was yearning for something to happen, either better or worse.  The sideways white rain, the constant wind; after 8 hours of the same thing, we were so over this thing.

And then it slowed.  Funny thing about a hurricane.  Even as the skies lift a little and the rain stops, the winds persist.  With gusts down to a reported 50 mph, Jana and I walked the little road to the beach to survey the damage.  Other cabin fever victims came out too, to find the heavy wooden lifeguard stand floating 1,000 yards inland inside the marsh.  Waterfront cottages were pockmarked with holes.

Hurricane Bob did 3 billion dollars of damage to the Cape and the Islands.  Within days all the trees lost their leaves to salt damage and it looked like November in August.  Doctors offices were invaded with people suffering bee sting reactions.  Underground wasp nests were flooded and the bees were mad and taking it out on tourists.  Boats were lifted by the storm surge and deposited onto roads and in parking lots.

Boats get blown ashore in Harwich

Without power for a full week afterward it was a challenge to continue with our family vacation, but we did it, and now with Tropical Storm Earl on the way to Canada, the old scrapbook is out as we remember the last big bruiser to hit the Cape.