As far as I am concerned, crackers are the perfect food. First of all, they are a carbohydrate; that propels them way up there in the direction of perfection. Secondly, they are tasty by themselves and they serve as a luxury vehicle for the delivery of other delicious stuff like peanut butter, cheese, hummus, fruit . . . The one thing that has kept the crackers in my world from reaching absolute perfection is that I buy them pre-packaged. I…
What does one do for entertainment in Texas over the Christmas holidays? According to the media, most people shopped until they dropped. Then they got up and did it again. Sports fans got the best Christmas gift they could imagine when the NBA began its season on Christmas Day. The Dallas Mavericks, however, unwrapped a disappointing opener for their fans. And football games are aplenty. We were neither at the mall or at the arena. We went to the Dallas…
So here it is, New Year’s Day, the beginning of 2012. Funny, but nothing really seems new to me. (Possibly because I haven’t yet written the date on anything and had to change that last digit from “1” to “2” by tracing over it eight or ten times.) Another reason that I don’t have a feeling of newness today is because my life is structured by the academic rather than the calendar year: so my “new year” begins at the…
As I write this, we have survived the celebration of four birthdays in the last week – my two girls, me, and Jesus. That is a lot of celebrating even when you do it all rather simply. Our season of celebration began with the arrival of Offspring No. 1 from Chicago. She is home with us for three weeks. For me, this alone is reason to celebrate; she has not been home for an extended stay in a while. This…
Up until this moment, only a very few people know that one of the things on my bucket list is to get stoned. Well really, I just want to smoke pot. I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed by or proud of the fact that to this day, roughly one week shy of my fiftieth birthday, despite having spent nearly a decade on college campuses as a music major, I have never been stoned. Now that it is about time…
It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving and Black Friday are over and we have started the official countdown to Christmas. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving despite a few obstacles. It was perfect in that both girls were here with us. The obstacles were, in hindsight, minor – the kitchen is still not finished and Wednesday morning the dishwasher decided that it would cease to function properly and thus would be unavailable until addressed by a repairman on Monday. Neither…
Do you read the instruction manuals for all of your household items? If not, you should. Not necessarily because they may enlighten you on how to properly use whatever it is that they came with . . .though they might; but rather because they are often a great source of entertainment and hysterical laughter. The following is from such a manual. “11. Do not touch the parts that are not intended for manipulation.” I kid you not. Any guesses as…
How is it that two dogs, one neutered and one spayed, and two cats, also one neutered and one spayed, can spawn litters of offspring all over the house? And how can they do so at the same rate as rabbits? Oh, wait. those aren’t whole puppies and kittens; it is just huge balls of fur shed by the aforementioned spayed and neutered dogs and cats that have collected in every corner. What a relief. No more mouths to feed….
Today is my four-legged boy’s seventh birthday. “The Birthday Boy” “The Birthday Boy almost 7 years ago” If you subscribe to the belief that a dog year is roughly seven human years, then Adidas is forty-nine. That means that for the next fifty six days he and I are the same age. I thought it might be interesting to see how much age 49 in a dog and age 49 in a human actually have in common. We are both…
For some reason, I seem to be exhausted by the end of the school week. It’s not like I am over-extending myself. In fact, there are several things that I want and need to do that just haven’t gotten done because I run out of steam by the time I have accomplished all the things that have to be done. Despite being tired and wishing for a day that didn’t start before 10 am, we decided to go to the…