Elise Sereni Patkotak

I got this yesterday and can only hope I’ll stop crying by next week.



I Defied Her Rules

Some 28 years ago I went to visit a friend at her office.  She was Barrow’s only social worker back then. 

I got a chuckle when I noticed a yellow lined legal paper taped to the entrance of her office.

It was a hand written columnar sign-up sheet for interested persons who would like to become foster parents and adoptive parents. 

I was amused because the sign-up sheet was mostly bare.

To boot, it was scratch paper.

I took a pen and

I am still not sure how a saint who was killed by arrows while tied to a tree became a symbol of love. Maybe the ex-pope can work something up on that while he’s in retirement.

BTW… best pope joke yet – and I can’t remember if I heard it on Letterman or the Daily show – “The pope is retiring for health reasons. He sprained his neck from spending so much time looking the other way.”

Why is it that if I dressed anywhere near the way people dress for events like the Grammy’s, my mother would return from heaven and beat me about my face and head with a fresh baked loaf of Panarelli’s bread?

Two months before my trip to Vegas and I have been in intense e-mail communication with the rest of the “girls” over where we will be having our group dinner.  Two months! And in my head I hear my dad saying to my mom, as she settled in after cleaning up after dinner to watch I Love Lucy, “So what do you want to have for dinner tomorrow night, Bud?”. Her response was usually along the lines of a request to let the current dinner digest before even attempting that conversation.

Yep, it’s all dad’s fault. It’s his genes that

You know you have gone around the bend with your pets when your local pet food emporium sends you a get well card signed by the entire staff who miss seeing you in the store.

The best thing about shows coming back for a new season is guessing how much “work” each actor and actress had done while on hiatus. If you watched CSI long enough, you saw the actor who played Catherine go through so much plastic work her face looked like it could be used as a knife as her features because sharper and more drawn. Courteney Cox on Cougar Town is getting downright scary. The only actor who seems to have been sensible in the work he had done and still looks good is Ted Danson. As for Lindsay Lohan, if that

Admitting gay scouts and gay scout leaders is not a complicated issue. They are human beings with all the same feelings, emotions, desires, ambitions and hopes as everyone else. Why the hell would you exclude them because of who they love? You’re not running a dating service. Get over it.

A commenter on last week’s column asked how I would feel if I found out some of my neighbors were Republicans. I thought to myself, “Are you kidding? I live in Alaska. What’s the chance they’re Democrats?” Then I went to an ACLU brunch on Saturday and found out, much to my surprise, that it was not three people standing around a hotdog stand in midtown. Who knew?

The thing is that labels are very limiting and ultimately ridiculous in that they mean so many different things to so many people. For instance, I know a lot of moderate Republicans

Sugar-free Alice B. Toklas brownie… best birthday cake ever.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then my poor Carm has got a real problem. Every night he picks up his Santa and carries him all around the living room and bedroom. He checks out every nook and cranny in the vain hope that since the last time he looked, a secret hiding hole has appeared into which he can dump Santa for safety. But alas… no matter how many nights he minutely inspects every possible angle and aspect of the rooms, he finds that nothing has changed