The Beauty Boomer gets fried

Every summer, some dear friends invite us for a lunch-time cruise of Lake Michigan. It's a lovely time--they serve Pimm's Cup and tons of delicious food: coffeecake and fresh fruit followed by chips and guacamole, followed by curried chicken salad and ending with a gorgeous layer cake.

Their sailboat is breathtakingly beautiful--straight out of House Beautiful, if House Beautiful did sailboats.

This is the captain's cabin, all summery and Schumacher-y

and here's the main cabin, which is equally lovely.

The company is lively and interesting, and the views of the city and the lake are sublime.

Usually I'm prepared to spend a day on the water, but this time, we had spent the night at our apartment in Chicago. We had a fire in the building, and have managed to put the place back together, but a few things are still missing, like lamps, rugs, and silverware. And baseball caps. And sunscreen.

So, here I am, with a layer of the boat's SPF30 on top of an SPF15 tinted moisturizer.

I look concerned because I knew that we were heading to some friends' annual lobster party that evening, and I? Was probably going to go as a lobster.

Not surprisingly, I got fried. It's not the redness that bothers me. It's not the slightly charred sensation. (Although I should mention that I discovered when I removed my makeup that cold cream actually feels cold.)

It's the amount of time I spend on my usual age-prevention regimen, only to undo it all in four hours. It's like dieting all week, and then entering a pie-eating contest.

Don't do this at home, kids!

As it turns out, I don't actually like long walks in the rain.

My pal L. came and visited with her daughter--even though they were here last year. A vote of confidence, yay! I'm not the world's worst hostess!

L. likes to go for walks. We always brought our cameras. L. has a fine eye for the picturesque.
So from time to time she ordered me to take a picture.


Above: a window filled with cranberry glass. Below: part of a headstone from a local cemetery.
It was lovely. But the clouds looked threatening.


Just after I took this picture


of the oldest house I've seen yet, the rain clouds burst open and we scurried to hide under a tree. We ended up under a little place that was sticking out over someone's garage door.

A few vans passed. I wondered what was wrong that these people didn't ask us if we needed help, but I figured it was because they were commercial vans and didn't have time. I decided to flag down the next car. The driver might have a cell phone.

A car came by. A van, but a passenger van. It was That Stud Muffin I Married come to rescue us. He'd driven all over the island looking for us.

He took us to the lobster place where we bought half a dozen lobsters.


All ended well.