Most of my family was waiting up for meat my sister’s house when I got East on Saturday night. They were back at my sister’s house less than 12 hours later for lunch (we are Italian, after all). They are a pretty wild bunch considering how conservative they are. When people ask me in amazement who the heck are the 24% of Americans who still think the BushCheney monster was good for this country and think they will someday be viewed as one of our greatest presidents, I ask them if they’ve met my family. And yet I can still
A snail by any other name….
Normally I love French cooking, especially the rustic French kitchens. But no one is ever going to convince me that escargot is anything but a slimy snail that has been drenched in enough oil and garlic to try to disguise their real texture. It doesn’t work. They are still slimy snails no matter how good the word sounds in French. And really, who was the first person desperate enough to dig one of them out of a shell and eat it? Ugh!
My sister, my mother…the wash day queens
My mother was the queen of washing. She washed clothes just about every day of her life, even when all the kids were gone and dad had died. And everything was washed differently, with different soaps and bleaches and cycles. Things came out of the wash at different times in the cycle, some to be draped over the radiators, some to be hung to finish drying by the drip dry method, some to be blessed and put in a capsule for Mars for all I know. My sister inherited all those genes.
I don’t use bleach at all as the
California
California is the home of some of my favorite people. And yet there is no doubt in my mind that of all the places in the world I might ever live, California would not be on the list. I can’t explain it. I generally like every place that I visit in California. And yet I wouldn’t want to live here. Weird.
Yet more on school athletics
I’ve gotten a lot of responses to yesterday’s column and challenged myself to boil down what I was trying to express in one or two sentences. There is something wrogn with our acadeimc system when almost totally illiterate athletes are graduated from our high schools and actually admitted to colleges with all expenses paid, while kids who took the time to learn are told to find their own funding or that they’re on a waiting list. That is simply wrong.
Athletics shouldn’t outrank academics
Our schools’ report cards don’t look very good. That’s sad because children who didn’t use their educational opportunities to full advantage will always be a step behind those who did. It’s scary because, to beat a trite old phrase to death, these kids are our future and our future doesn’t seem to be able to read or do math.
As we run around trying to figure out why Johnny can’t read and Susie can’t do math, I think we should peek into a corner that is traditionally left untouched because of its sensitive nature. In fact, as my fingers move
Being around babies again
Being around babies again is wonderful. Handing them back to their mother when they poop, fart, cry or get cranky is even more wonderful.
Enough…enough…I surrender…now stop it!
Having vented about the Dems ads, let me now vent about the All Sarah, All The Time news cycle we seem to be in. Damn. It’s like Madonna or Brittany Spears is our governor and we just can’t stop reporting every sighting of her. Enough already. We haven’t even sworn in Obama and the press is already discussing the 2012 race. Give me a friggin’ break. I don’t want to hear about the next presidential race for at least two years if not more. It’s enough to make me wonder if the press is mature enough to be a free
Ah plane travel
I fly to San Diego today. I’m already dreading the trip. Is there anyone still left alive who remembers when air travel was not a horror to be endure but something to actually dress for?
Another wash day hint
Sometimes you need to run your clothes through the cycle more than three times to get rid of all the soap bubbles if you use too much spray and wash. I’ll let you know the final count when I’m done running the clothes through the washer.