Elise Sereni Patkotak

As I stood in my kitchen preparing dinner and listening to the umpteenth million rerun of CSI, a commercial for male enhancement drugs came on. I’ve somewhat gotten used to that with dinner. But this had a special offer. If you called now, you could get two free tubes of a special male enhancement pleasure cream absolutely free. And while I agree that it was silly in the early days of TV that Rob and Laura couldn’t push their beds together, I can’t help but think we have perhaps moved just a tad too far the other way. Shouldn’t we

I went to pick up some Zyrtec and found that one option was to buy a pack in which each individual pill was packed inside it’s own totally separate piece of plastic and cardboard, lined up one behind the other, all inside another pack of plastic and cardboard.  Have these idiots not heard about pollution? Why the hell would you need each pill packaged separately? Not only would I be ready to put a gun to my head trying to get the damn pill out each time I needed one, but I would be horrified at how much waste I

I finally made the hard decision that this is as good as summer is going to get in Anchorage and I should no longer wait for sunshine and warmth before planting flowers in the planters on my porch. So in total defiance of the gods of weather who have absolutely crapped on Anchorage this summer, I planted flowers.  I fully expect a blizzard anytime this week to punish me for my chutzpah.

It’s June 12. I am walking my dogs. Coming down the street towards me is a woman taking a walk. She is wearing fur ear muffs.  What is wrong with this picture? And where the hell is our summer?

On Tuesday I got nailed by an osprey. What a wild looking bird. Never had one before at Bird TLC. We were trying to tube feed it and one of the feet got loose and it sunk its talons into my right forefinger. Damn they’re fast!  Then came the joy of trying to pull the talons out without doing further damage. It’s a good thing I love birds.

It’s bird lovers who will keep newspaper alive and well. Because without them, what the hell will we line all our birdcages with? During election years, I take particular pleasure in making sure that the politician or candidate who I find most annoying has their face directly under my bird.

Happy Birthday, Greta, even though it’s a day early. I wish I had a picture to put up of you but I don’t have anything on my computer. So I’ll just have to remember that little girl with the impossibly tight ponytail and the ironed jeans who used to drag a silly white horse with a pink mane around my house for hours at a time. I miss that little girl but I wouldn’t give up the young lady she became to have her back. I’m enjoying your adult friendship much too much…even if you only ever call when you

My cousin Joe and I have been reminiscing about the wonderful aunts who filled our childhoods. This is his description of my Aunt Adeline who had polio as a child in the 1920s and spent a life time with physical handicaps that she never let slow her down even a bit.

Aunt Adeline, as far as I am concerned, should be the poster aunt for every Zeccardi niece and nephew that wants to whine and complain.  She had limited availability to education, made sure she was not a burden to her family, overcame her disability, took care of her mother