Elise Sereni Patkotak

Every once in a while we are lucky enough to make a friend in life who becomes a friend for life. I believe I’ve been particularly blessed in this area since I don’t always make it so easy for people to remain my friends, especially when I’m in one of my frequent “I hate the world and am slamming the door on it forever” moods.

But I have this one particular friend, Grace, who had the grace to be born two months before me so she ALWAYS has to be a year older than I am for at least two

Dec. 8 is a Catholic feast day, though it’s been so long since I’ve paid attention to anything Catholic that I’m not sure which one it is. I want to say the Immaculate Conception but then how would you explain a birth three weeks later.

At any rate, more importantly, it was my dad’s birthday. He’s been gone for over twenty years now. And still when I meet someone who is kind and gentle and just plain good, I immediately think of him. He was one of the best people it has ever been my privilege to know. If there

May I just ask that at least for the length of the holiday season, all sports and other stars shut the hell up about their transgressions, their overused expressions of regret and their hardly meant proclamations to do better in the future.  Being scum in your personal life is not something I either need or want to know.

Can Obama hear the chants yet?  You know, the chants from the sixties that drove LBJ from office.  Can he hear them gaining on him? Because they are. Quagmire meant the same then as it does now. And the same as it meant to the Soviets and Alexander the Great… all of whom failed in Afghanistan.

I got some papers in the mail yesterday that involved me reading and understanding a financial form. Once I talked myself out of the cold sweat produced by anything financial in my life, I took a deep breath and actually tried to understand what it was saying.  I could be wrong and I will have my financially savvy friend Kate double check what I think I’m seeing because I may just be buzzed on caffeine but I believe I might have actually deciphered a financial form correctly… and since Kate doesn’t get here until 6 PM, I have four hours

Some crazed Alaskan driver in a pick up truck came zooming out of a one way drive way in the wrong direction without bothering to stop to see if any traffic was coming. I was, in fact, almost at the entrance that this idiot chose to use for her hurried exit. As I slammed on the breaks while holding the horn firmly down, my whole life flashed in front of my eyes and quite frankly, I was a bit disappointed.

Will George Clooney PLEASE give me a call ASAP.

Buy a book by a real author. Show Sarah she can’t dumb the whole nation down no matter how hard she tries.

Spent the better part of yesterday morning in a dental chair getting some long overdue work done. Had Xanax and Percocet to get me through the ordeal since dentists are on the very bottom of my list of people I ever want to have to spend time with unless they are NOT in their office. My mother used to take Xanax. She’d get up in the morning and take a half a pill and say, “I’m going to take this in case I get nervous today.” I don’t know how she did it. I could not have figured out how