Elise Sereni Patkotak

A book by one of Sarah Palin’s close aides has been leaked to the media in which she is shown to be petty and malicious.

Yawn…. tell me something new.

There seems to have been a recent uptick in e-mails from Africa telling me I’ve got millions of dollars just waiting for me to access. And I have to wonder… who the hell still answers these e-mails? Seriously, how naive do you have to be after all these years to believe or even OPEN one of these spams? Yet someone must be answering them or they wouldn’t still keep coming, right?

As PT Barnum once said, there’s one born every minute.

Apparently some singer made her entrance to the Grammys inside an egg. Here’s what I want to know. How did she keep her gown from wrinkling while she was in there? If it was me, I’d come out looking like wrinkle city. What was her secret?

As if I didn’t already feel inadequate.

that I seem to be physically incapable of taking a plane flight… no matter how short or how long… without coming back sick?

I know the phrase “responsible dog owner” is not an oxymoron. Most people who own dogs do their best to make life good for their pet. They keep up with shots, have the animal spayed or neutered, and have it under control when outside their home.

I am currently in the process of paying a vet bill necessitated by a loose dog on a trail putting its very big mouth around my leashed dog’s head and tearing her ear.  I was on the East Coast when this happened and was lucky to have a house sitter who got my dog

I look in the mirror the day after returning from the humid East Coast and scream in horror until I realize that’s what my hair always looks like in Anchorage where humidity is but a distant memory of summer days of pouring rain.

Whenever I come East, there are at least two or three big family get togethers. This is not because I’m here for a few days. It’s because this is what my family does. They get together, they eat and they visit. They are, on the whole, a group of very interesting individuals who have been blessed with a lifetime together. OK, some might not use the word blessed in that last sentence, but I do.

I leave any family table I’ve shared with them with laughter on my lips and a smile in my soul.

I only hope the next

to point out to you with startling clarity just how much more arduous and long the task of looking good has become since your youth.

I will now put my head down between my legs and breathe in deeply and slowly until I am no longer feeling quite so hysterical.