Columns 2014

Good riddance to a horrible year

It’s hard to write a humorous, satiric or even vaguely amusing column about the year that was just tossed into history’s garbage bin. 2013 truly was a time when many of us felt the need to shower multiple times a day – after listening to the news, after watching what passes for music and dancing on TV, after hearing an explanation from a politician about anything.  All these things made me want to scrub myself with steel wool to get the stench off.

Recently, one of TV’s highest rated shows was a rerun of two I Love Lucy episodes that

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Scribblings

Happy 2014

Let’s hope humanity does not act as stupidly in 2014 as it did in 2013 or someone might just choose to pull the plug on this grand experiment we call life. So the ones making it bad for the rest of us – you know who you are – get with the program and stop being such assholes.

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Scribblings

Ah dogs!

Is there anything better than waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of your dog trying to barf on your bed? God forbid he should get down and barf on the floor. No, better to just barf on the quilt over mom’s legs and then move to a different part of the bed to sleep for the rest of the night. Even better, growl when mom physically picks you up and tosses you off the bed while muttering words she never learned at St. Michael’s.

Funny, in all the dreams of my youth, this was not

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Scribblings

An unanswerable question

Why is it physically, psychically and mentally impossible to make anything less than a vat of soup when making soup? No matter how determined I am at the start to make only enough for me for a few meals, I end up with enough to feed the multitudes. It’s as though it grows on its own no matter what I do.

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Scribblings

A perfect Saturday

Saturday, 3 PM. My dogs woke up long enough to eat and move to their downstairs bed.Even the birds are having trouble staying awake long enough to put out squak or two. I didn’t even make it to the shower until 2 PM. The most productive thing I’ve done so far is a load of wash, and I only did that because I was running out of underwear. I have leftovers to heat for dinner. Three hours of Big Bang Theory reruns taped to watch. Popcorn to make. Wood to burn in the fireplace to take the chill off the

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Scribblings

My favorite survey

My favorite are the surveys that ask if you plan to vote Democrat or Republican in the upcoming election and when you answer that it depends on who is running because you vote for a candidate and not a party, they tell you that’s not an acceptable answer.

Ah democracy in America in 2013… truly an endangered species.

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pictures, Scribblings

No real reason

image

No real reason to run this picture except it keeps me from having to think of something for today and it shows my baby sister at her finest… ok, and maybe embarrasses her just a little which is only icing on the cake. After all, what’s the use of having a kid sister if you can’t embarrass her every once in awhile… and by that, I mean embarrass her beyond the embarrassment she suffers every time we go somewhere and she hasn’t had the chance to correct my outfit before we’re seen in public. Actually, looking at this picture makes

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Columns 2013

Christmas is about memories – making them, remembering them

My sister Judy has a friend named Paula. They’ve been best buddies since kindergarten. Judy was in Paula’s wedding, is godmother to her daughter, and spends every Christmas out in California with Paula and her family. Despite some family cynicism, I believe Judy would spend every Christmas there even if Paula didn’t live in sunny southern California, thus allowing Judy a reprieve from the fun of a Northeast winter.

My Christmas present to Judy was a package of King Crab that she and Paula could serve on Christmas Eve. Italian tradition demands that Christmas Eve be not only meatless, but

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