Monday trivia, some of it political
My favorite student of theweek, a child I wish I knew, is the one who asked his teacher if a certain wordneeded a “flying comma.” He meant an apostrophe, of course, but I thought it agreat description. And it leads me to one of my pet peeves: you don’t need aflying comma when you refer to a decade by numerals: its 1950s, not 1950’s.
My favorite meme of the week:Don’t give the nuclear codes to a guy who isn’t allowed to own a hot dog standin New York City. Another similar one says Don’t give the reins of governmentto that same guy. And that brings me to the tackiest thing any of us have seenall week: a man who wants to head one of the most powerful countries in theworld hawking glitzy, cheap-looking gold hightops with his logo at a politicalrally. Do you suppose he comes up with these ideas himself or has help?
I realized this week there isa new wrinkle in the manners we customarily observe with friends and neighbors:it used to be if you had the sniffles, you could still go to the party. Nowit’s de rigueur to cancel because you might have covid, My neighborsmissed a weekend party because of this and my happy hour guest tonightcancelled because he woke with the sniffles. I thanked him.
Something that seems odd tome: the Catholic Church is on a full-blown campaign to defeat Biden because he,a good Catholic, has not come out against abortion. (He does have a few otherpressing matters on his mind.) So I guess the powers that be think it’s betterto urge followers to vote for a proven rapist and fraudster who still facesfelony charges? And they think they are following in Jesus’ footsteps?
Kitchen fail: I saw tworecipes making creative adaptive use of Hidden Valley Ranch Dip. First calledfor putting a packet in the juice of a 24 oz. jar of dill pickle spears. Itried it, and it’s sitting in the fridge for the required 24 hours, so I can tellyou if it is a keeper or not. The second called for mixing olive oil, dillweed, garlic powder and the dry dip mix, coating two boxes of Cheezits, andbaking them. Now, I loved Cheezits as a child ….in fact I used to hide themunder my bed until one night I heard a strange noise that scared me half todeath: a mouse had found my stash.
Back to today, I thought thissounded great and I could make it first thing, easy and quick, and get to mydesk. In fact, I dreamed about it too much of the night. But the logistics wereoff especially for my toaster oven. It called for a single layer, which I thinkwould require a professional oven and half sheet pan. I only used one box, butthey were two and three deep. I followed the recommended temperature—375 for 30minutes, which is high heat and a long time. You can hear this one coming:burned you-know-what out of them. (It’s fortuitous that my happy hour guestcancelled, because that’s what I was going to serve). So tomorrow night, MaryD’s regular night, she’s getting plain, unseasoned Cheezits right out of thebox.
And a dog crisis averted: atfive this morning, I realized I did not have a can of dog food for Sophie’sbreakfast. Sophie has her routine down pat, and if you deviate from it, she letsyou know with indignant barking. In the evening, she gets two tiny milk bonesfor treats—and she counts. If you only give her one, she demands the second. Soshe would definitely know she was getting kibble instead of the canned meat sheadores. It’s a holiday—President’s Day—no school, no work for Christian—so Iassumed they would all sleep late, and I didn’t want to wake them for a can ofdog food. (I didn’t know Jordan was up at four to see Jacob off to a golftournament). I lay there, stewing about this until I finally got up, broke mycardinal rule about never waking a sleeping dog, and fed her dry food, more ofit than usual. She did give me a funny look, but she ate it and went outside.Just after she came back in, I saw Christian letting their dog out, so hebrought me the case of wet food, and the day was saved.
Except between the Cheezitproject and the wrong kind of food, I couldn’t go back to sleep. As I writethis, the day is half over, and I’m wondering what else will happen.
The day ended peacefully, witha chicken and wild rice casserole Christian made and me getting to write mydaily thousand words. Life is good, and I am grateful.
