Innings = Chukkers

Tim and I did not do an iota of work on the farm this past weekend. Perhaps that is why I'm so late for the weekend update? The shame has gotten me down? Perhaps, but even though we didn't do any work, we did support a local charity by attending the Bucks County Wine & Polo event on Saturday. And while technically, Pennsylvania is a rival state to New Jersey (*more on that in a minute), Bucks County and Frenchtown, home of the The Farm, are friends. They are good friends indeed.

The Wine & Polo event was held at Tinicum Park in Bucks County, PA where they hold polo matches every Saturday during the summer until mid-October. This particular match was a special one, however, and by special, I mean expensive. 65 bucks per person. Before you choke on your Tuesday night cocktail, let me clarify that by saying that it included a fancy lunch, all the wine you could drink, those nifty wine glasses above, a polo match, and the rest of the money went to the SPCA so it was for a good cause. Oh, and as a special bonus, we were graced with the presence of the incomparable Dianne Wiest, who Tim kept referring to as "the mom from The Lost Boys." I was like, she's also amazing in many other movies including a lot of Woody Allen ones like Hanna and Her Sisters but he was really hooked on The Lost Boys and actually kept referring to her as Mom. Although you can't tell from this picture (too

shy to get any closer), she is a very pretty lady and at age 62, looks like a million bucks. She also seemed like the epitome of normality which is a relief when you meet a lot of fucked up and disappointing-in-real-life actors which I've had the unfortunate opportunity of doing.

But enough about miserable actors and on to the game. It was my very first time attending a polo match and it was incredibly fun. Sure, it's possible that the wine enhanced my excitement, but I am honestly a fan of any sport that not only moves quickly, but requires serious athleticism. I always imagined that polo must be a difficult sport when you consider that before you can even think about hitting that tiny ball, you have to control an animal twice as large as yourself and even if you can control that animal well, there are other large animals running around that you also have to reckon with. Not to mention those mallets are surprisingly small and you can only use your right hand to hold them. It's like playing field hockey on a horse and I sucked really bad at field hockey so I give mad props to those polo players. I can totally see why Ralph Lauren made a logo out of them. Respect.

Some of my favorite things about the game, other than my awe over the physicality of the sport itself, were the fun names and traditions associated with it. As you can see from my heading, those things we call innings in a lot of other sports are called "chukkers" which I definitely thought I misheard the first time the announcer said it. The other thing that was surprisingly fun and something I'd only ever seen in made for British TV movies or read about in Vanity Fair articles, was that whole halftime thing called "stamping the divots" where you go out on the field and push the divots back into the soil.

Tim and I ran out onto the field and stamped like mad. I'm not sure how much I really helped in my high heels, and in looking around at all the little kids out there, I couldn't help but wonder if we didn't actually do more damage than good, but heck, it was fun. (The twisted part of my mind started wondering if anyone ever sabotaged a game by making the divots worse or by putting explosives in the divots but then I remembered that I do not live in a Bruckheimer movie or even something more realistic like Saving Private Ryan and I took it down a notch.)

Under the tent, there was food and wine and white people. We enjoyed many glasses of sauvignon blanc from Cupcake Vineyards and chardonnay from Barefoot Vineyards as well as these delicious mini-cupcakes with icing bones on them. BCSPCA in da house! Also under the tent were a few other random rug merchants pushing their wares. My favorite was the real estate broker with a table set up on behalf of Lisa James Otto, one of the foremost real estate agents in NJ and PA. This gets us to the NJ/ PA rivalry; as I was perusing through some of the LJO catalogues and trying to see if the real estate dude would believe that I could actually afford a home that cost $5 - 10 million (I think he did, sucker), any time he would point to a home that was in New Jersey, he'd be like, "this one is really nice, BUT....it's in New Jersey" and he'd say "New Jersey" as though he were taking a bite out of a shit sandwich. I almost told him that we own a place in New Jersey but decided it would be more fun to just pretend to be rich and shopping for a mansion in Pennsylvania.

Thankfully, right around the same time that the white wine started to taste like headache-inducing syrup, we were in the final chukker and the match was coming to a close. I can't even tell you who won but I think it was the local Tinicum team because there was a lot of cheering but I also think that it was a polite (and drunk) crowd so they would have cheered either way.

Timmy the Whizz surprisingly didn't make an appearance until the very end and we closed out the day with a trip to the port-a-john.