Carole: A Blowout over a Blow-Out

I have to start this blog by telling you that Heather is a great water skier. She gets up on one-ski. Easily. LuAnn too. It's too bad we don't to see them skiing in this episode. We ran out of videotape. We used it all on our pontoon boat dance moves. But trust me, if water skiing was an Olympic sport Heather would medal. (She made me say that. She's standing over me as I write this. She's bigger than me.)

Hair, Bears and Berries, Oh My
OK, so don't poke a sleeping lion, or a blow-dried Ramona. Got it? I think we're all clear on that now. What we aren't clear on is the use of the word "provoke." To provoke is a verb but the –ing form of the word provoking, which is what Heather said, could be used as an adjective. It's like saying, she is annoying. Annoying clearly is the adjective in that sentence. But who cares.

What is your favorite Housewife line? Mine is, "Who does that?" We all say it. Every Housewife in every city has said it at least 17 times during her reign. If it were the secret word on WWHL how many times would we hear it in one episode? An entire season? We'd all be blackout drunk.

Kristen legit split her lip when Ramona threw a glass at her and Ramona allegedly split her lip on a shotgun. I think every girl needs a good lip split story, I have one. I fell onto my front door doorknob coming back from the mailbox, once. I was a bloody mess, I could have put my lip in a box ala Ginsberg on Mad Men, but instead I had it stitched and looked like a street fighter for three days. Sonja said she splits her lips all the time, I don't even want to imagine how she does that. Heather split her nose last year in St. Barth's. Lu could probably stitch her own split lip up one-handed in the dark while serving dessert. Did you remember LuAnn was a nurse? I'd forgotten. She is great in a pinch.

The Hair-Lip Controversy
There was clearly some disagreement around the hierarchy of hair and lips. Ramona is of the school where hair triumphs all. I can certainly appreciate the value of a good blow-dry, but this was a tricky one. Sonja sided with hair. Heather, LuAnn, and I went with lip. You can fix hair faster than you can fix a fat lip, and of course there's the blood.

As is the rule in these things, an apology must be squeezed out of someone and it rarely comes without pain. Kristin isn’t ready to accept it. Her lip was still throbbing, and there's the blood blister to consider. The funny thing about apologies is it seems that everyone has them. My wise Grandma Millie used to say you can't ask God for a bike but you can steal one and ask His forgiveness. That's how apologies are to me. Don't steal the damn bike.

Ramona gave Kristen an unintentional glass-throwing and a half-intentional apology that went something like this:

I kind of apologize?
That's your apology?
Sort of, yeah. I guess.
You hurled water at me.
I hurled at you.
Don't throw water at me!
Back up.
No, you back up.
Who are you to get me wet?
Your hair is fine.
It's wet!
It's not wet.
It's wet, I didn't want it wet.
It's fine. Your face is wet.
Your face is just pretty!

Admit it, this is Housewives at it's best. It makes me laugh every time I see it. The screaming back and forth about. . .wet hair.

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Sonja stopped splashing at 11, which made me wonder. . .what is the appropriate age to stop playfully splashing? This feels like something everyone should know. The Countess doesn't have a chapter in her book about splashing, I looked. I don't think this issue's dead. How long will it take Ramona to apologize with some feeling? How long will Kristin stay mad? Let's take bets. If we were the betting types (let's be) what do you think is the spread? I'm going to set the under-over on the length of The Blow-Dry Fight at three episodes. Takers?

Of all the gin joints, in all the woods in the world, Elvis walks into ours. Leave it to Heather. A little ice on the lip, a little wine in the belly, a little Elvis in the woods, and the New York Housewives roll over another day.

A Room of One's Own
After the night to dry our hair, we managed frittata and a walk in the woods to observe, as Heather points out, environmental things the Berkshires has to offer. LOL. Heather made the girls hug trees while Ramona and I took the road less travelled. There, she showed me the blueprints from her imaginary playhouse -- a six-room Cape Cod bungalow with custom kitchen inserts for mud pie souffles. She had me for a minute. But everyone knows I'm uninterested in kitchens and cooking. The memories of mud pies apparently triggered an acute PTSD episode and Ramona took off into an un-air-conditioned private plane and it sent me off, apparently, to swim. Did you notice that? I managed to meet the girls for a swim, between taking Ramona to the airport and driving back to the house. Without even getting my hair wet. Hmm. . .I have mad blow-dry skills.

And the Daytime EMMY goes to. . .the sound effects editor for this scene. chirpchirp

Boys and Boats
If there's anything more popular on Housewives than a fight over hair, it's a housewife diving into water. It's a prerequisite for the show, you have to know how to dive, preferably in a monokini.

I spent my summers as a kid in an upstate New York hippie town called Saugerties. It's wedged between Kingston and Woodstock and there's no lake there, but there is a muddy creek. We didn't have pontoon boats, we had rowboats. It's where I learned to fish and put worms onto hooks and jump into water and splash, and dive. We washed our hair in the water (indoor plumbing was spotty) and basked in the sun on the dock. I didn't make mud pies but I did raid the neighbor's farms after dark, outfitted in black clothes by that same Grandma Millie, with pillowcases for our loot. The Berkshires reminded me of all that, but with better outfits.

Party of Fabulous
Word to the wise: If you are going to sneak out of weekend plans with friends to go to Molly Sims' party to promote your wine business, steer clear of cell phone cameras.

Lu is a true sexual, I'm a bullsh-- bi? I'm not a bullsh-- anything. I'm still not sure why Sonja said this. Maybe it was heatstroke. Maybe she should have called Austin. Maybe she should have got her hair wet.

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Tune in next week, where you'll find us. . .still in the Berkshires.

You can buy The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating here.
You can buy What Remains here.