Inside story: Colonoscopies aren't as bad as they used to be

Everybody told me that, like root canals, colonoscopy prep isn't as bad as it used to be.

The cleansing mixture tastes better, they said. We'll just see about that, I thought. I might have to drink only half a gallon of the stuff, instead of the full gallon of swill that it once was, but it had better be tasty. That's all I have to say.

Long overdue for a colonoscopy after skating by for 15 years without one, I agreed to it, but only during our Florida offseason. That's the time of year when the ass man isn't overwhelmed with snowbirds whose guts require inspection, and I'd have half a prayer of an early-morning procedure. Which, believe me, is highly desirable after a full week of avoiding seeds and nuts of all kinds, a day-long liquid diet accompanied by explosive elimination, and nothing whatsoever after midnight save a sip of water for important morning pills.

The gastro's office warned me that the scheduling folks tend to prioritize diabetics. I nevertheless scored a 6:45 a.m. appointment and prepared to feign lightheadedness in order to be rolled in even earlier. That little subterfuge might not be too difficult after a day of fasting, I figured.

But where did the admonition about seeds and nuts come from? I spent a week learning that many foods, which I never would have suspected of such behavior, propagate themselves by means of seeds. I had to pluck a dozen of them from the contents of a jar of roasted red peppers before Bill could make a lovely coulis with it. I had to leave an eggplant untouched when I realized that it, too, had seeds in it.

I ate part of a piece of pizza before discovering, to my horror, what appeared to be a stray tomato seed in its sauce. Like cockroaches, where there is one, there are surely others. What havoc might those puppies wreak?

What happens if a blueberry seed rears its ugly head when that scope is poking about? Is it mistaken for a polyp and needlessly lassoed, in a shameful waste of professional time and effort? Is it big enough that a deadly polyp might hide behind it and be missed? Who knew blueberries had seeds, anyway?

Of course, during serious prep, on the dreaded pre-procedure day of liquid diet and laxative purging, seeds and nuts become the least of one's worries. I tried to live through Prep Day as normally as possible, consuming what passed for meals at the usual times.

The prep instructions suggest "weak" coffee. The hell with that, I said. High test for this girl, loaded with enough sweetener to bake baklava. Then a hearty breakfast of Luigi's Real lemon Italian ice, sprinkled with a cheerful garnish of yellow sugar crystals. Onward, to a light luncheon of beef bouillon, alternating with purgatives the rest of the day, and even more Italian ice and beef bouillon, which makes a hearty meal when you have nothing else. I crunched the little undissolved bits between my teeth, like a hungry Eskimo scraping lichen from rocks.

I believe in preparing for things. I really do. So, I googled "colonoscopy prep" for the dozenth time and learned that I had the wrong color Gatorade to mix with the laxative powder that I'd bought. If the prep sheet had informed me that, not only red and purple, but also blue, Gatorade was out, I wouldn't have had to rush to Walgreen's for white Gatorade at the last minute. And if the fine print of the prep sheet hadn't thought to forbid alcohol for 24 hours beforehand, I would have bought Chardonnay instead.

At 2 p.m. it was time to mix an entire bottle of MiraLAX with my new Gatorade. Normally used in a dose one-fourteenth that amount, "to relieve occasional constipation/irregularity" and to produce "a bowel movement in one to three days," MiraLAX in the amount prescribed for me seemed nothing short of overdose. At best, it was guaranteed to produce results for which one normally stops its use immediately and dials 911.

At 3 p.m. I braced myself and began washing down laxative tablets with the stuff. Google said that I should expect something to happen after perhaps an hour. It happened at once. And continued happening all night long.

The good news?

I was wheeled in promptly at 6:45, treated with extraordinary kindness given my foul mood, and knocked out thoroughly within seconds. I then dreamed of partying at a tiki bar the whole time the doctor went about finding nothing wrong with me.

And unless I choose to go through this all over again at 80, I'm home free.

Turkey tragedy averted

Bill's making a dinner extravaganza for Christmas Eve with family. And that doesn't mean shortcuts.

For instance, I was all for 10-minute-prep green bean casserole. Toss together a can of beans, cream of mushroom Campbell's, and canned French's fried onions; throw in oven; bake; serve.

Bill instead dug up an Alton Brown recipe that appears to involve making, from scratch, one's own cream of mushroom soup and onion crisps. Its only shortcut is not growing the beans from seed.

When Bill roasts a turkey, which we haven't done in over a year, the process always starts with brining--soaking the carcass in a broth of beef stock, kosher salt, garlic, and spices for a couple days beforehand. Instead of making the flesh unbearably salty, like you're thinking, brining results in a tender, succulent bird.

Last night was Brining Night. From my office, I could smell the heady aroma of spices, as the broth simmered. Next, Bill carried it into the garage to cool before the soaking began.

At some point in the evening, I opened the garage door to flip on an outside light and was staggered backward by a solid wall of garlic. I could practically touch the yellow miasma that hung in front of me. I hadn't smelled anything like it since the time I made Greek cucumber dip as an easy out for one of my daughter's second-grade international festivals. (I'd grabbed a bulb of elephant garlic at the store by mistake, followed the recipe using its mammoth cloves, and none of the kids would go anywhere near it. The teachers weren't none too keen on it either. My daughter might still be in therapy over it.)

"Gee, that smells garlicky," I suggested, firmly shutting the garage door. Bill allowed as how it would get better as the broth cooled.

As the broth cooled, the stench started seeping under the garage door and slowly permeating the house.

"Maybe I overdid the garlic a little," Bill admitted. "But it's just garlic powder."

Then it hit us.

It's been so long since he's brined a turkey that he'd reversed the basic rule of thumb that dried spices are more concentrated than fresh, and ended up using 16 times as much garlic as the recipe called for.

He remade the brine today, and the house smells normal again.

I can still kinda taste garlic, though.

Name that thing

Our next-door neighbor, Peter's, house stood empty for most of the six years that we've lived here.

It has finally been sold. Everything had to go, so there was a big house sale a couple of weeks ago, at which we assisted.

There were half a dozen carpenter's levels, six ladders, about 200 coffee mugs, an unused state-of-the-art juicer, and a 1970s green-and-gold-flowered living room set. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. I wouldn't exactly call it a hoarding situation, but there were a dozen complete sets of dishes in this unoccupied house, some still in their boxes, apparently awaiting a really big dinner party one day.

I know Peter is German, and possibly an engineering professor as well, which might explain things, but what possible purpose could six levels serve? Once your house is flat, that's that, right?

Being next door and all, we ended up with some of his stuff--a pair of new oven mitts, two chaise longues for the dogs, a barbecue grill.

Yesterday, Bill announced that he would start accompanying me and the dogs on our evening walk around the yard, to protect us from a neighborhood coyote.

"I got a harpoon at Peter's house," he explained.

Here it is:

This made me wonder about several things:

• Do trash men still cruise local parks with satchels slung over their shoulders, spearing pieces of paper with tools like this?
• How much must Bill practice, in order to hit a coyote with it, instead of me or the dogs?
• Would it do anything more than annoy a coyote?
• What did Peter use it for?
• Most important of all, what is it called?

Steel Magnolias of Punta Gorda

Cora Catherine Schmink hated her first name.

As soon as she could, she dropped it. She liked "Kay" better, anyway. It suited her mischievous free spirit.

She didn't get into bad mischief. But a 5,000-acre farm in Sidell, Illinois, in the 1920s seemed awful quiet to the youngest of the 10-member Schmink clan. Kay found fun wherever she could.

I had an old plug horse who could barely move, but I loved to ride him. Every Sunday we'd have the preacher to our house for chicken dinner, and Mom always said, "Now don't you get on that horse and leave! You stay around here." But I got on that old horse anyway and took off down to the farm where my friends were at. Mom went out and got those tender little branches that'd cut you, and I got a whipping for lying to her.

I was Dad's favorite, though. I'd always ask him to take me with him when he drove into town. One time, he told me I didn't need to go, but I snuck in behind the driver's seat.

When he got to town three miles later, she popped out and chirped, "Hi, Dad!"

She still gets a devilish twinkle in her eye reliving the prank.

"I had an old plug horse who could barely move, but I loved to ride him." Nellie Gray of Sidell, who lived on a farm much like the Schminks' in the early 1900s, had her own family horse.

~~~~~~~~~~

If you've spent any time in Punta Gorda, Florida, you've probably crossed paths with "Granny Kay" and four generations of her family.

Her daughter Betty Lanham's Betty's Cuts & Styles operates out of a converted Florida room off Carmalita Street. Betty's lived in the tidy house attached to it for nearly 50 years, ever since her husband left Illinois to take a job with General Development.

The first time you meet the three generations of women who run Betty's--Granny, Betty, and Betty's daughter Jackie--it feels like you've stumbled onto a movie set.

You might not notice Granny at first. She sits so quietly in a chair by the back door that she could be a client waiting her turn. But then she chimes in on a conversation, having clearly been following it all along, or cracks a bawdy joke.

Until she laid off cigarettes a couple years ago, she'd duck out the back door, with neither pause nor apology, for a smoke.

Kay Donahue, now known mostly as "Granny," is 99, so who's to stop her?

Second-generation Betty, semi-retired and pushing 80, is still the boss, though. She's kept a business and a family with six children afloat through tragic losses, hellish weather, and, now, caring for her mother. She started the first Betty's Beauty Salon in downtown Punta Gorda shortly after losing her husband in the 1980s.

The third generation, Jackie Muehling, is a bubbly 48-year-old who still looks like the Charlotte High cheerleader that she was. She raised three of the fourth generation--Austin, Tyler, and Levi--and shares her mother's beauty salon once a week, when she isn't running her own salon at a local retirement community.

"My boys grew up in the shop, with customers feeding and holding them," she remembers. "Now they'll probably do that with my granddaughter, Tynley." At 13 weeks, Tynley's already showing signs of her great-great-grandma's pluck.

On rare occasions when Granny isn't in her chair by the door, people swear they've seen her there anyway.

"I don't feel like I'm 99," she muses.

Even a recent 3 a.m. fall didn't leave her helpless. Betty knew she couldn't lift her mother, so she laid down a pillow and blanket for her to sleep until they could get help in the morning. Granny was having none of it. Instead, she scooted across the floor, for hours, until she could pull herself up again.

Jackie says that the mischievous towhead from Sidell has ended up showing all of them "what a strong and determined woman is all about."

Five generations. (Clockwise from left) Betty Lanham, Jackie Muehling with baby Tynley, Tyler Muehling, and "Granny Kay" Donahue.

~~~~~~~~~~

Life changed for Kay Schmink at 16, when her father died.

"I figured I'd be getting married anyway, so I quit high school," she says, matter-of-fact. "I got married to a neighbor boy and started having kids right away."

There wasn't much romance in their depression-era union. One worked days, the other nights, to care for their seven children.

Betty remembers the annual back-to-school routine, and her introduction to hairdressing, vividly.

"Mother made us pretty dresses--one for each day of the week--out of flour sacks held together with snaps."

Each of them also got a hairdo meant to last the whole year. They had to endure permanent wave machines that attached to the head like suspended jellyfish. The contraptions burned their scalps, bristled with metal clips and rods, and made their hair reek for days afterward like a pomade of cat piss and bleach.

And, once Kay's children were mostly grown, in a day before battered-women's shelters, she took the extraordinary step of leaving what had become an increasingly abusive marriage.

"I just said to myself: I'm going to leave. So I did."

She took a cab to Champaign and the train to Peoria, to find work as a waitress; eventually remarried twice; outlived both; and never stopped working.

For a quarter-century she ran the gift shop at the palatial Chicago & Northwestern Railway Station and sometimes held jobs that no longer exist. One of her tasks at a Danville nursing home was preparing clients for their last journey.

"The doctor who brought me into the world died there. So I helped him on his way out, stuffing him with cotton for the undertaker."

After arriving in Punta Gorda at what most would consider retirement age, Kay Donahue kept right on working--as a receptionist in Betty's first salon, as waitress/hostess at her husband's restaurant; and in housekeeping and the office at the new Fishermen's Village tourist spot. The Donahues also ran a laundromat in the Punta Gorda Mall destroyed by Hurricane Charley.

At 99, she admits, "I've done about everything I wanted to do. But I don't feel like I ought to be this age. I don't feel old."

What's the secret that's kept her going all this time?

"Go out and have fun! I can stay home maybe a couple of days, but then I want to go out and do something!"

At her 99th birthday party, Granny takes her own life advice: "Go out and have fun!"

Deck the palms

Just because this is Florida, the drive to decorate for Christmas isn’t melted by soaring temperatures.

There’s no question that one beloved local couple, who own a large realty firm, take the cake for their decorating—an entire garden bathroom decked out like an animatronic Macy’s window display, a flotilla of wreath luminaries in the pool, even real donkeys in a real stable.

And there are former northerners who take the tongue-in-cheek minimalist prize.

But there’s one guy, at 170 Salem Ave. in Port Charlotte, whose displays might not be the biggest, the costliest, the most eye-popping or circuit-breaking. Still, for sheer man hours; deadpan, grumpy humor; and pure love of the holidays, Mark A. Romiza’s got my vote.

A former chef from Massachusetts, with a Boston accent as broad as a bahn, he’s a Facebook friend whose decorating travails, captured in video and photos, I’ve been following all season.  Mostly to hear him say, “Santa Kloss.”

Even though he has a bum leg that makes every movement painful, he says he “just loves decorating.” Another Facebook friend posted “For you, Mark A. Romiza” with a cartoon that read, “If it doesn’t move decorate it.”

He starts ramping up at Halloween, when all his mom’s decorations come out of storage. In his own growly way, he writes, "Total of ZERO kids. Glad I don't do this for them. It's in honor of my mom, and myself. Just about all my holiday decorations were hers. She loved every holiday. I guess that's where I get it from. Now on to Thanksgiving." 

But it’s Christmas where he really shines. As soon as the Thanksgiving dishes are done and all of his bountiful Thanksgiving baked goods are handed out to the neighbors, the Christmas project of the year begins.

This year it involved building and painting a plywood chimney, from which he planned to drape a cloth Santa, falling off the roof. Mark’s lucky that he didn’t, in the process.

The chimney is done!

Every phase of getting the chimney up on the roof and Santa visible by night proved difficult and side-splitting. In the end, after four trips to the roof, he was calling Santa “the fat bastard” and cursing himself, his girlfriend, and probably the cat.  All in the spirit of the holidays, of course.

That's it! I'm done!

As if that weren’t enough, there was the train set for the inside of the house.

"Santa came out alright but still needs a different light. It's over. I'll upgrade next year. So now it's the damn train track--have two sets turning into one track, been at it for two hours, track has to be perfectly lined up. But since it's different sets, the tracks are not working with me. So instead of swearing and tossing it outsisde, I'll just sit and relax and go back to it tomorrow. Also putting a little tuna fish on the last car (it's the only food my cat eats). And when she gets close, sound bells, then start train and stop and go for some entertainment."

The long-suffering girlfriend makes an appearance toward the end of the next video--rolling their own cigarettes, no doubt to save up for next month's electric bill.

The final outcome!

In the end, Mark concludes: "No matter what I do it turns into a full-blown project, but in the end it usually works out no matter what happens in between. I also don't want to fall off the roof. Did that years ago when I was painting the old roof and backed into the electric pipe that goes into the house. All's I felt was BAM! I dropped like a rock onto the roof and rolled off. I actually ran over myself once with a golf cart."

Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation has nothing on Mark Romiza.

Ellen: You set standards that no family activity can live up to.

Clark: When have I ever done that?

What's next?

Trayfuls of Christmas cookies for all the neighbors. Of course they had to include Santas.

The Thanksgiving we didn't eat

It wasn't for any of the reasons you might be guessing--we spent our day feeding the homeless, we were penniless, we were dieting, we were stuck in an airport, we were making a "statement," we just skipped it.

Nope.

Seven years ago--long before we hit Florida and became saner--we decided (oh, okay, Bill decided) that it would be fun to cater Thanksgiving dinner, without a license, for a family we didn't know, who had posted an ad on Craigslist. 

There’s so much wrong with this concept that I won’t even start.

We had, I think, been watching way too much Food Network and figured: We can do that!

A young husband had posted an ad.  Seems that Mike had tired of doing all the cooking and serving every Thanksgiving, and never getting to relax and enjoy the day. He and his wife, a lawyer, had a nice, upscale home in the New Hampshire suburbs, two kids, and a family of 25 who descended on them every year. The only caveats were that his dad was lactose intolerant and Aunt Susan was going to bring her famous desserts.

We agreed, and the planning began.

Bill was in heaven! He started digging up recipes weeks in advance.  

We printed out a menu for the family's approval, to put at everyone's place at the table. Every bit of it but the rolls was from scratch. It looked like this, decked out with fall leaves, ears of corn, and fancy fonts:

APPETIZERS
Crudités
Roasted red pepper & sun-dried tomato dipping sauce
Basil aioli dipping sauce
Mixed greens with Parmesan vinaigrette
Crab bisque or Cioppino
Dinner rolls
Southern dill-cheese bread

THANKSGIVING DINNER
Roast turkey
Fresh whole-cranberry sauce
Portobello mushroom gravy (one with and one without mushrooms)
Traditional sage dressing
Cornbread dressing
Garlic mashed potatoes
Southwest-style chipotle smashed sweet potatoes
Green bean casserole with panko-breaded onion topping
Oven-roasted stuffed onions
Oven-roasted carrots, squash, broccoli, & asparagus

Champagne sorbet (to cleanse the palate)

DESSERT
Italian love cake, a rich ricotta delight
Granny Smith apple pie with caramel drizzle
Mike's own pumpkin pie
Aunt Susan's lemon cake
Aunt Susan's chocolate cake

The young family was delighted! Never before had they seen such a menu, let alone at their very own house for Thanksgiving, with caterers doing the service and cleanup!

We had no friggin’ idea what we'd gotten ourselves into.

I spent the week before Thanksgiving nagging Bill to make sure he had everything organized. I made spreadsheets, timetables, strategies. He borrowed chafing dishes, pans, and crock pots from the American Legion and every friend we had.

The shopping alone took two hours and cost over $200.

We spent 17 hours chopping, preparing, and precooking. The dog and cat ran around crazy. Friends came to watch for a while and left, shaking their heads. I never worked so hard in my life. We drank heavily. We came close to blows.

Then, on Thanksgiving morning, bleary eyed and hung over, we loaded it all, most of it fully cooked, into every available inch of my compact car and hit the road, praying that nothing would slide leeward and spill all over everything else.

You know how your house smells on Thanksgiving? My car smelled like that for weeks afterward.

We pulled up and started unloading, carrying everything upstairs from the garage to their kitchen. 

Mike helped, though he had clearly had wine glass in hand for quite some time.

Some of the guests were already there, curious about us and already getting under foot.

Anyway, we got all the stuff piled up on counters, in an alien kitchen with, of all things, gas burners, God help us.

Mike's wife seemed to have no recollection of where any of her pots and pans were kept. (Why should she, being a lawyer and all?) 

Children ran about, shrieking. 

It looked like a very bad Food Network Challenge that wouldn't end well, and the worst part was, we were in it.

Somehow, we managed to get everything sorted out and warming up. We laid out the appetizers to keep the milling throng at bay. 

One old lady asked, "What's low sodium here?" Instead of laughing in her face, I calmly consulted the sheaf of recipes we'd printed out for just such a situation. Well, nothing was really low sodium, but I fibbed to her that one of the dips and one of the soups weren't too, too bad.  (Thank God there were no vegans in the house.)  

Everyone was seated at a couple of makeshift tables in the dining room, and it wasn't a buffet.  So we began serving soups and plates of food to order.

It was wild.  I almost lost it when one woman darted into the kitchen to tell me her husband needed a napkin. I very nearly said, "Let him get his own flippin' napkin, lady! We've got a dinner to put on here!" 

I restrained myself.

It all worked, somehow perfectly. Everyone raved and applauded. 

The aunts got tiddly on the champagne sorbet. The wife angsted about whether the children should have any. I figured there was no danger, since the kids were so high on sugar anyway that a little alcohol could only help.

My favorite person of the whole day was a large adolescent lad who kept exclaiming, "This is the best food I've ever had!"

My second favorite person of the whole day was a five-year-old boy who insisted on helping clean up.

Did I mention that we signed up for cleanup, too? 

Picture a five-course dinner for 30, one small dishwasher, a tiny sink, a wife who has no idea where her storage containers are nor, once found, where their matching lids might be, and two exhausted chef-waiters-turned-dishwashers.

At one point, I wasn't none too neat about how I shoved leftovers into the fridge. Lidless containers, bulging with moist ingredients and covered only in plastic wrap, teetered atop other lidless containers in the same condition. 

I just didn’t care any more.

At the end of the day, we made all of $150 profit. Mike was very good to us, considering we underestimated how much the whole thing would cost.

Of course they kept all the leftovers, and the help got none, because the family had paid for it all.

The next year, Mike begged us to come back and do it all over again.

We did not.

Every Thanksgiving since has seemed like a breeze in comparison.

Island colors

About 2 percent of Port Charlotte’s population of nearly a thousand souls is of Caribbean origin. 

The area has four Caribbean restaurants serving up curry goat, oxtail, jubilee, callaloo, saltfish, and ackee. 

One needn’t even set foot in Jamaica to hear a variety of lilting voices and see splashes of color as riotous as its flag’s. And we don't have goats and stray dogs wandering into the road.

Within the space of 2 square miles, for instance, are three remarkable examples.

~~~~~

Jamaican women younger than 60 walk like priestesses, their heads, sometimes turbaned, balanced high upon straight spines, as if carrying baskets of mangoes.  They seem to march to a dignified internal reggae parade.

There’s one such woman in the neighborhood, an unfailingly cheerful young lady. 

“It’s a beautiful day! Yes!” she’ll sing out as she passes.

Daily, she walks her dogs—one, a wayward, lunging pit bull, the other a lazy cur—as if marching in such a parade, dogs attached to one outflung arm, poop bag to the other.

Her brightly patterned skirts swirl around her ankles. Her dark hair is adorned with hanging dreadlocks the color of dried earth.  One morning, she appeared to be wearing a stuffed cat atop her head, its paws and tail bobbing merrily as she strode along.

On closer examination, it was a new patch of dreadlocks that she’d thought to weave overnight.

I wonder what she must do for a living.

Hairdressing?

~~~~~

One island family has two middle-school children, whom I see walking to the bus stop.

They are even more polite and pleasant than other local children. Part of the reason might be a strict upbringing. Their father sometimes shadows them to the bus stop in a vast white Cadillac and sits there grimly until the bus arrives.

Christ. Middle school is hard enough.

One day, the girl was cradling a small shoebox in her arms. I figured it was goodies for her class.  But she opened the box and showed me what she explained was her egg.  It was, indeed, a hard-boiled egg, painted with a little face, swaddled in kerchiefs. She and all of her classmates had been protecting one all week, to learn what infant care was like.

She appeared ready to pitch it in the street at that point.

Her brother, even more pleasant than she is, once shocked a neighboring mom.

She was treating her sons to Dairy Queen and asked what he would like.

“I don't know. I’ve never had Dairy Queen!” he replied.

“The poor child!” she told me. “His father is so strict. Imagine! Never had Dairy Queen. I got him an Oreo Cookies Blizzard, and you’d think I gave him a million bucks.”

~~~~~

Jamaican women older than 60 tend to shuffle about in small bands, usually heading to church, as one. Sometimes they travel door to door, carrying umbrellas against the sun and handing out religious tracts--which, if one reads them carefully, warn of intellectuals, Catholics, and other evils.

This tends to make a smart Catholic person a bit twitchy, but never mind. They seem like perfectly sweet old ladies.

Such a group--also unfailingly cheerful and dressed in clashing patterned skirts and blouses--lives together in what I call “the Pepto-Bismol House.” Not because of their need to dose themselves with it, though that might be a consideration in the islands. Rather, because of its appalling color, somewhere between Pepto and black raspberry ice cream.

I assume there are no men living there. None would stand for that paint job, and they would’ve been outlived anyway.

I wonder what their quiet next-door neighbor makes of this. His house is impeccably white, with crisp black shutters and a white Buddha out front.

On the other hand, giving directions to his place must be easy. Next to the Pepto-Bismol House. With a Buddha. You can’t miss it.