When I was a kid, my birthday morning always began with a cold pat of butter to the nose. It was my mom's idea--some superstition she had learned about buttering noses so that bad luck would slide off in the year ahead. I'd forgotten about it until yesterday, when the memory came rushing back like a rich, buttered muffin sliding across a hockey rink.

I told the Keelhauler about it as we drove home last night from a little birthday eve guitar beach party at our secret beach spot of secrecy. I was hinting around him to resurrect the tradition, but when I described the ritual, he said, "Yah... your mom is crazy."

So, this morning I awoke butter-free and feeling the first awesome grip of the beautiful womanly experience of menstruation.

"This would not be happening," I thought, "if the Keelhauler had put butter on my nose." He was still sleeping, so I got up and headed to the shower.

I live on a sailboat, and the marina where it's docked provides a clean, well-lighted place for showers, which is nice. What is not nice is the long trek on chilly mornings like this one, and the occasional forgetting of toiletries or crucial pieces of clothing (e.g., pants). Yesterday, I dropped my bra and didn't realize it until I was halfway down the dock. Today, I managed a more successful lingerie rodeo, but when I stepped into the shower and wet my hair, I realized I had no shampoo. My options were a bar of Dove soap and a tube of Robert Isabell "Fresh Cuttings" exfoliating shower gel ("Skyblooms" scented). I opted for the latter, which did little but replace the sand on my scalp with whatever grit the Isabell company adds as an exfoliant. Also, my hair now smells like "skyblooms," which according to the label are "Scents of a powdery soft, sheer pastel atmosphere" but in reality smell like poison.

"This would not have happened," I thought, itching my head, "if the Keelhauler had put butter on my nose."

I met the Keelhauler at the car, and we drove to the gas station, and I opened the little door to access the gas tank intake. The little door popped off and got stuck in the long red scarf I was wearing. I probably do not need to tell you what I was thinking, as I stood there, gas nozzle in hand, little metal door swinging lazily from a thread it had unraveled from my scarf.

The Keelhauler went inside the gas station and came back out with coffee and a scratch ticket for me. After I reattached the little door to the gas tank, I handed him a tube of moisturizer and said, "Since we don't have butter, could you please put this on my nose?" which he did, in lavish amounts. "There," he said, pronouncing it done, "now the bad luck would slide off."

And we went happily along on our way up the 101, watching the surf roll in and singing along with Neko Case on the stereo, and all was well until we hit Carpinteria. Traffic stopped, and so did we. So did everyone, it turns out, except the lady driving the SUV behind us, who we stopped via the law of inertia.

Our coffee splashed onto the dashboard, and the Keelhauler yelled, "Are you all right?" and I looked in the rearview mirror to see what had hit us. As I have already revealed, it was an SUV, a big platinum-colored plastic thing. We sat there for a moment. Traffic hadn't moved.

"What do I do?" I asked the Keelhauler, who thinks more clearly than I. "Pull off to the side of the road, and get ready to start writing," he advised. Which is what I did.

The owner of the SUV pulled over, and she came out, all apologies. The damage was negligible, but we decided to trade information anyway, just in case. She went to her car to retrieve a pen. I had a moment of teariness. "This would not have happened if you had put butter on my nose!" I said, secretly, to the Keelhauler.

Traffic started to crawl by, and a guy in a stake-bed pickup took the time to yell, "Get off the freeway!" as he passed. "FUCK YOU!" I yelled in response, because that is apparently my instinct, and anyway, we WERE off the "freeway." Maybe the guy drives around hollering at people for sport, I do not know, but I rejoice that my life is not quite that empty yet.

Anyway, we traded information, writing on the flyleaf I tore from a copy of "The Pied Piper of Tucson" that had been in the book section of my car. (I am nothing if not resourceful.)

And then we were on our way, "Betsy," as I'll call the other driver, keeping a notable distance behind me for the rest of the trip.

I dropped the Keelhauler off at the dock, and kissed him goodbye. He's going out to sea for two weeks.

On the upside, I won three dollars on that scratch ticket.

Star of the day. . .Jack Pointner -- welcome to our world, little Libra.