The Jobless Goddess

   Well it finally happened. That thing that happens after you've spent 40 years eating Doritos and mint chocolate chip ice cream. We have to go on a house diet. I mean everybody. And when your husband has the sugar and you're afraid you're on track to be a caregiver before your time, it's time to adjust the grocery list.     Oh, don't get me wrong. None of us are ready for this. If you catch me on a bad day I'll tell you I'd rather die with my hand in a potato chip bag than eat another lettuce leaf. And you don't even want to know how my husband is taking this. He prefers to consider it some kind of Russian conspiracy with the Communists  manipulating his blood sugar.     My son is no fan of this either. Dollars to donuts he's just waiting until we cave and start buying Little Debbies again. He'll bide his time. This isn't his first rodeo.     When you get to our age though, you start to take this business seriously. Doctors get involved

   So, I went to Stop & Shop today to pick up the week's groceries. No news there one would think. Except that as I rounded the produce aisle I distinctly heard not piped in music but rather some close-sounding strumming and a bit of singing of an off-key blues number. A wandering shopper? Little Tommy Tucker perhaps?     I kept shopping. I looked over the rainbow-colored peppers and picked out a bag of broccoli cole slaw to try on my husband later. But that music kept playing. I couldn't see where it was coming from and assumed there was some new-fangled kind of music machine someplace.     I pushed the cart down the next aisle looking for coffee and green tea and the music didn't stop. Then, I got down to the end of the aisle and there was a short man with Brillo pad gray hair who has bagged my groceries a hundred times. I looked at him and gave him a big smile and nod and he did the same in-between verses of Fly Me to the Moon. There was my "bagger" perfo

    We got up early this Saturday morning to go to yard sales in hopes of making out like bandits. I know it's February, but on Martha's Vineyard, this is really the time to find a bargain. You've got year-rounders desperate to unload a lawnmower for 25 bucks. Heck, they're probably just having the garage sale so that they can engage you in conversation. It's a tad quiet here in February. Winter population for the whole island, all six towns, is not much more than 16,000. Once you start driving up-island, you may pass three or four cars this time of year.     So we woke Danny up at 9 and let's just say he wasn't happy. What 19 year old wants to go to yard sales with a couple of flatulent 50 year olds on a Saturday morning? If I wasn't afraid my husband and I would die in a car fire on the road (never mind that the highest speed limit on the island is 45 mph and I rarely go over 30) I wouldn't make him come. But there's always the nagging feeli