Elise Sereni Patkotak

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.

The dress Lindsay Lohan wore to her latest court hearing has sold out online.

Arnold Schwartzenegger is going to act again.

Hosni Mubarak has resigned from the presidency of Egypt.

Guess which of these stories got the most hits yesterday?

I got an interesting number of e-mails from men explaining to me how they are the abused and put upon creatures in this world and that women and children are running wild making insane accusations against them that they are powerless to refute.

In a country in which 99% of the most powerful people are white men passing laws that protect or assist themselves (Viagra is paid for by insurance but not birth control, hello?!!) excuse me if the vitriolic rants I’ve received make me want to do nothing more than spit up in my mouth.

Yes there are men

Until this year, the phrase “You can’t go home again” held little real meaning for me because I always could. Until just a few months ago, my family still owned the house where I’d been raised.

I walked out of that door for my first day of kindergarten, my first day of grade school, my first day of high school and my first day of college. It was the door I burst through when I got my driver’s license and the door I left through the day I became gainfully employed.

But we sold the property and now, on my

Why is it that the men with the biggest bellies seem to be the ones who feel a need to cinch their belts as tight as possible below their bellies? have they never looked sideways in the mirror?

I’m about to pay a $125 vet bill because some idiot has his Rottweiller off leash and had no control of him. The dog ran at my Blondie, who was on leash, and clomped down on her head, ripping her ear. More damage would have been done had not my house sitter had the presence of mind to kick the dog hard near the groin. This makes the dog gasp and in that instant, she pulled my dog’s head from his jaws.

I’m sorry she had to kick that dog in the groin. I personally think a more effective lesson

Yesterday Dick Cheney, the man with no pulse, called Hosni Mubarak a good friend and ally of the United States.

Way to go, dick. The man has been a dictator for thirty years, we’ve propped him up like we have so many other dictators – ignoring their human rights abuses so long as they produced for us… I mean, why the hell should we care for the Egyptian people, right dick? – so why should we worry now about creating another Iran by continuing to support the Sha… oops, I mean Mubarak?

So Sarah and Bristol want to trademark their names. What, doesn’t the former first temporary dude rate a trademark? how about Trig? and Cosine?  And Sine? Don’t they rate either?