The flower of Midlife sifted through faith, family and heaping helping of southern fried chicken.

“What does Russian dressing look like?” My brother-in-law asked while sitting at the dining table raking a fork through his salad.

“It’s red,” I offered. “And bottles often come with a mini decoder ring and uranium pellets.”

“No. I mean what’s its consistency?”

We were staying in a beach house for the week with all seventeen members of my husband’s extended family. First Hurricane Alex had appeared followed by another low pressure system. I had run in the rain, biked in the rain and sat in the rain on the beach. I hopped on the neighbor’s wireless, but ultimately decided against wiling away the hours (even rainy ones) on Facebook. Who wants to do at the beach what they do all day at home? No, it was high time to open a bag of pretzels and enjoy an afternoon dipping them in ranch dressing.

“Is it supposed to look like vegemite?”

Wonder if he means “do you come from a land down under” vegemite? I bet you could dip a pretzel in some of that.

“Jenny,” he called to his wife. “What does Russian dressing look like?”

Obviously, my knowledge of Russian dressing was subpar. For pity’s sake, there were much more dire concerns at the moment. Like how the rain was affecting the oil spill and making it impossible for me to get any semblance of a tan line.

“It’s like Catalina,” Jenny called back.

I thought Catalina was a small island off the coast of California — southern California — where it never rains.

“But is it chunky?”

 Chunky? That more sounded like Thousand Island. The rain lashed harder. Hmm. The sweetness of Thousand Island coating salty pretzels. My mouth began to twitch.

“What does it smell like?” he asked.

My head hurt. The rain started to slack off a bit. Maybe I could bike down to the market  and comparison shop salad dressing before the next band of showers pelted the shoreline.

“JIM!” My sister-in-law’s mouth was open wide enough to cram 1,000 little Catalina Islands in there.

“The expiration date on this bottle says May 11, 1998.”

My brain tried to do the math. My brother-in-law looked down at his fork. “Should I throw up now or later?’

“Have faith in the strength of modern science and preservatives,” I reassured him. Looking at the seal it read, 11 May 98. That probably had been the last living unopened bottle of 1998 vintage Russian dressing on the planet. Pity. No telling what that could have gone for on eBay.

Ranch dressing and pretzels didn’t sound nearly as appetizing as it did a few seconds ago. With the rain starting back up again, I headed down the dark stairwell to my room. Considering all the time we’ve spent together lately, wonder if Jim Cantore would consider being friends on Facebook?

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