Day 19 = Open Cupboards and Odd Family Rituals

For a variety of reasons, I am personally not a fan of the open kitchen cupboard, despite the fact that I happen to be the proud owner of two of them. By open, I do not mean that kind of kitchen hazard that occurs when some careless trespasser has accidentally left one of the cupboard doors slightly ajar. Of course, poor unsuspecting moms usually discover this by walking straight into the corner of the offending cupboard door, which had been safely shut only a few seconds earlier. Giving yourself a big ole black eye while baking brownies for the family was probably not at the top of your daily to do list. It goes without saying that the loved one who left the door open doesn't get to enjoy any brownies fresh from the oven...at least not until they fess up to the crime and fetch mommy a bag of frozen peas to ice her aching eye socket.

The kind of open cupboard that I am referring to here is open as in open concept, total dish freedom, a doorless set of shelves where you keep all of your trusty kitchen gadgets, dishes, and glassware in plain sight. Not only does this kind of cupboard leave your dishware cruelly exposed to the elements, they are also constantly displayed for all the world to see the minute they cross the threshold of your kitchen. Unless, of course, you live in one of those trendy new-fangled homes that boasts a lovely, spacious, open floor plan...then, even the UPS guy (or lady...mine happens to be a dude, but I am savvy enough to realize that your delivery person might not be) can probably easily scope out the state of your cupboards from your front porch without ever setting foot inside your home.

The first problem with the open cupboard situation is that of all of the homemaking tasks that loom large over my entire body on a daily basis, I do not wish to add the pressure of keeping perfect cupboards to my chore list. Having the ability to shove dishes in a cupboard with a loose sense of organization without having to worry that guests will judge me based on how neatly or sloppily my dishware happens to be stacked is essential to my survival as a homemaker. No worries to all you white-gloved visitors out there, there will still be plenty left to judge about my home without exposing the inner guts of my happy, crowded little cupboards. While they may not look perfectly organized on the inside, I assure you that, for me, they are perfectly functional.

The second problem with open cupboards is the shocking amount of unsightly dirt, dust, and grime that can accumulate on both the dishes and their surrounding shelving. This is particularly problematic for those specialty items that are rarely circulated. If all of your dishes got a regular mealtime workout, then you would basically have no worries. Keeping dishes in a constant rotation will keep them regularly cleaned and shiny. However, the more problematic areas are those less used objects that you keep around for a few times a year when you decide to get a little fancy. Even when secured in a closed cupboard, you may find that your special occasion china, your special pan for baking mini donuts, or your special crystal plate for displaying deviled eggs are in need of a good scrub before you use them again. Obviously, no one wants to swill a bit of egg nog out of a lovely, yet dust-coated, holiday goblet. If dust and debris can sneakily wheedle its way deep into cupboards that are closed up tight, imagine the disaster you might find if you were to heartily embrace the open cupboard concept.

In order to properly disinfect the pretty punch bowl that you use once a year at annual holiday gatherings, you are going to have to drag it out into your yard in the middle of December. If you don't hose it off outside, you risk contaminating your poor family's lungs with unidentifiable dust particles, year-old bits of petrified household debris, and some kind of mysterious plant spores (despite the fact that you do not own a single houseplant). Somehow a thick combination of this crud has accumulated on every available surface of your punch bowl. If you attempt to handle this task indoors and one of your loved ones should inadvertently suck in a toxic dust rhino the size of Arkansas, one that has been hiding and growing deep inside the bowl since last New Year's, don't forget to pack up a plate of Christmas cookies and a thermos of eggnog to share with the nurses at the nearest local ER.  I promise you will get better care if you arrive bearing baked goods even if they are snickering at you and your open cupboards behind your back.  Don't worry though, they've seen this kind of thing before.  Didn't you hear the admitting nurse say, "Hey Marge, the family behind curtain sixteen is a victim of the open cupboard bandwagon.  We've got another classic case of acute dust bunny inhalation on our hands tonight.  Treat 'em right though, they brought homemade cookies and eggnog.  I'll see if anybody has a flask hidden under their scrubs in order to make things a bit more festive during tonight's shift."

I don't care what lies those interior designers on television or the helpful people at IKEA try to sell you, I am telling you that the open cupboard is a complete and total waste of time. Why you may be wondering if I am so opposed to this kitchen design disaster do I happen to have not one but TWO open cupboards in my own kitchen? I will attempt to explain this oddity. In a hasty decision that placed function over form, on one of his visits, my dad spent a single afternoon whipping up two lovely pieces of furniture for my kitchen. Their intended purpose was two-fold. To provide storage space which I desperately needed, as well as extra counter space so that I might actually be able to prepare food in my kitchen. Without them, my culinary efforts would be confined to the only available flat surface in the kitchen, (besides the vinyl tile floor, a less than appetizing choice) a two by three foot workspace to the right of the sink. I know for those of you who have lived in an efficiency apartment, these kind of kitchen accommodations might seem luxurious, but once the microwave, the toaster, and the coffee maker were in place, there was little to no room left for actual food preparation. You would have been hard-pressed to find enough available counter space to successfully open a can of Spaghetti-o's, not that I would ever in my life open a can of those, as I find them utterly revolting, but you get the point.

Seeing me struggle to chop vegetables with a cutting board balanced precariously on top of the toaster prompted my father to spring into action. After all, he preferred having a daughter with ten fingers not nine. Did I mention that this happened on the day before I hosted my very first Easter dinner at the house that "the man-friend with whom I lived" and I had recently purchased. (This was the title I used to use for my husband before we were actually married. Saying my boyfriend and being over thirty at the time always made me feel awkward like I might as well be calling him my prom date or something. There is no grown-up word to refer to this situation. Someone should invent one. I mean saying the guy I'm seeing sounds too casual and saying the guy I live with sounds too trampy.  Saying my husband is a lie and if accidentally used in the wrong context people get all excited thinking you eloped in Vegas over the weekend. Then you have to explain that no, you did not in fact elope and no, he has not asked for your hand in marriage yet, and yes, you have been together for twelve whole years. Common law husband? Obviously something is wrong with one of you, otherwise you'd be officially married. Partner? Waffles between being too gay and too cowboy. See, we really need a better word for this kind of thing. By the way, Happy 15th 3rd Anniversary, dear!)

When my father created the now infamous Easter Island and it's accompanying sideboard for my would-be spouse and I, his efforts were complicated by a few tricky issues unique to the design of our home. The sideboard had to be left completely open, in both the front and back, as there was a heating vent located directly behind it. Allowing unrestricted airflow was necessary to prevent the plumbing on the other side of the kitchen from freezing and exploding during the blustery February freeze while my future spouse and I were off vacationing in the Carribean. Placing an open cupboard in that particular location, the only space available, I might add, was already a calculated risk. I didn't want to tempt fate even further by hanging a little curtain up for fear of accidentally frosting over the water pipes while I was away in the dead of winter. I learned that little curtain trick from my mom of course. During a period of remodeling in my childhood home, she had open cupboards for a brief period of time. (Well, it felt brief to me, if you were to ask her, she might tell you that it was actually ten years, but who can remember?) She used shiny gold spring rods and little ruffled curtains to manage her doorless cupboard situation. Cute, clutter-hiding, dust-shielding curtains. Very innovate and resourceful idea that I absolutely love, but unfortunately not practical for my purposes. Returning from a beautiful vacation to find busted water pipes have blown water all over the interior of your home somehow makes your bliss-filled get-a-way a bit less blissful.  The desire to have lovely clutter-concealing curtains grace my cupboards just wasn't worth the risk of redecorating my kitchen with an unplanned water feature.

As for our lovely Easter island, placing doors on it was a logistical nightmare due to the space contraints of my tiny elf-sized kitchen. No matter which way you tried to situate the island, there was no way that you put doors on it and still successfully open them without bashing then into the nearby shelving, the other cabinets, or the refrigerator. Even if you managed to open them without denting every other vertical surface in the room, you would have had to contort yourself into a pretzel-like position in order to extract necessary items from the interior of the island. There was no way that the doors could have ever been opened fully. This would have made storing any items over a certain circumference practically impossible, which is how we ended up simply leaving it doorless altogether. These pieces were meant to be a short term solution for a temporary problem, and at the time, it seemed like no big deal. Five years later, after a wedding and a baby, I am realizing that they may continue to be a more permanent kitchen feature than I had originally planned for a bit longer. Like until the year my son turns eighteen.

That may be the next time we actually have the extra time and resources to take on an intensive but necessary kitchen remodel. In the meantime, those crazy cupboards have become the bane of my existence. Of course, this in no way reflects on the quality of my dad's design or his solid craftsmanship. Without these two pieces of kitchen furniture, I would have no where to put any of my pots and pans, serving bowls and  platters, or kitchen appliances. Also, I might be down a finger or two from trying to precariously prep carrot and celery sticks on top of the toaster. I am forever grateful for his contributions to my kitchen, especially since the original version only came with four cupboards and one drawer. This drawer is no longer in service at this time because after we replaced our vintage 1950s era stove, our sole kitchen drawer no longer opened without crashing into the handle of the new stove requiring it to be permanently sealed.  The drawer of course...not the stove.  I know that people have much worse kitchen difficulties. I did live in an efficiency apartment in Paris for a few years, so I am well aware of what it means to have a truly minuscule corner of the room for cooking without a single shelf to your name, not even an open one.

My utter disdain for the open cupboard was created many moons ago. It was not due to any experiences in my current home or the one of my parents. It was created and nurtured by a three-shelf monstrosity that engulfed the entire upper half of one of the wall's in my grandmother's kitchen. Once a year, usually in the spring, but sometimes in the blazing heat of summer, we would set off on a pilgrimage to my maternal grandmother's house in order to help her do a bit of a ridiculously large amount of spring cleaning. It's hard to identify exactly what season it happened to be, because my grandmother consistently kept her thermostat at a blistering ninety-two degrees year round.

Whether it was the height of summer or the dead of winter, once you entered her home, you lost all concept of what the outdoor climate might be. We quickly learned to dress in layers in order to avoid falling victim to heat stroke in the middle of our Thanksgiving feast. My father, my siblings, and I would all fight to be the one to let the dogs in or out of the backyard. It was a cheap excuse to stick your head out the back door of the kitchen and suck in refreshing gasps of crisp November air in order to cool your core body temperature to a less life threatening level.  I may or may not have feigned being woozy on occasion just so that my dad would have to take me outside and walk me around the block a few times until I came around.  Oddly enough, he never complained about doing this even when he knew we were faking.  In fact, he may have even encouraged our little fainting episodes by unexpectedly exclaiming things like, "Oh no!  Your sister is looking peaked, I'm taking her outside for some fresh air."  Funny, like the rest of us, my sister was starting to break a sweat, but she hardly looked as though she were about to pass out at any moment.  He also took to reading the paper on the screened in sun porch after holiday dinners even in November and December.  If you brushed the snow off the glider, it was actually quite comfortable.  One year, I even borrowed some disposable elastic sweatbands from my paternal grandfather's extensive supply and placed them in everyone's stocking to be used at the Christmas dinner table in order to prevent us all from getting sweat in our eyes.  Despite the fact that they were both practical and necessary, my mom recommended that we forgo the sweatbands in favor of blotting our brows with the golden cloth napkins that my grandmother used at her holiday table.  We didn't want to accidentally offend Grandma after all.  Of course, she was right, but I also didn't want to end up with cranberry sauce in my eye or mashed potatoes on my forehead. 

While my dad sweated out every holiday meal with the rest of us, he almost never accompanied us on our annual spring cleaning adventures at Grandma's house as he always had to go to work. Besides the usual tasks that you might expect like wiping down wallpaper, scrubbing floors, and clearing out clutter, we had the additional burden of tackling the giant orphanage for wayward dishes that loomed over the entire left side of my grandmother's kitchen. After a solid year of neglect, almost every dish that was stored there, was coated in about three inches of sticky, difficult to detach, dust, grit, and grime. It was so thick that it was hard to identify whether an item that you held in your hands was a gravy boat, a beer stein, or a teapot. My uncles collected cartoon character drinking glasses, but they only kept certain select ones in their daily rotation. All the other poor little guys in their enormous collection were left to practically suffocate under a thick layer of cobwebs in the corner of the cupboard.   Piece by piece we would unload the cupboard and stack the dirty dishware around the kitchen and dining room.  We were never allowed to place them on the floor although I truly don't see how that mattered as they were about to be washed anyway, but those were the rules. While my grandmother did own a dishwasher, unfortunately most of the pieces were delicate items that were not dishwasher eligible. Not to mention tossing a few of those dust-enrobed items into the dishwasher might do irreparable harm to the interior components of the appliance. Without dad's expertise to save the day, the dust clogged dishwasher would end up being a total loss, so we were left to wash everything by hand. 

My grandmother would park herself at the head of the dining room table to watch the action unfold. My mom was the foreman who oversaw the operation while tending to a myriad of other tasks at the same time.  We were like a tiny fire brigade rescuing long lost trivets and teacups from choking to death on dust balls.  My brother being the tallest was charged with dish removal, cupboard wipe scrape down, and dish replacement. My sister dutifully washed, wiped, and scrubbed. I dried and handed each squeaky clean dish to my brother so that he could put it back in its proper place on a now sparkling shelf. And believe me, each of them had a proper place. If my brother inadvertently put even a single dish back in the wrong location, my uncle was quick to help him move it to the appropriate spot that it was supposed to be in. The process was a slow one. My sister could wash approximately three pieces of filthy fine china before having to drain the blackened dust-coated water from the sink, refill it with another round of soap suds, and start over. She might have been able to wash a few more dishes at a time, but we all knew the story of the Cuyahoga river and how it once twice thrice caught on fire.  Not knowing what kind of toxins we were dealing with meant taking some added precautions just in case. If someone ignited one of the burner's on Grandma's stove in order to brew her a cup of Sanka, we might end up with a four alarm sink fire on our hands.  Better to be overzealous about refreshing the dirty dishwater than burn the whole house down.  It felt like it took the better part of nineteen hours to complete this task, but we were always happy to help out, as we knew our grandmother wasn't able to do this kind of chore herself.

We never thought to question why she held onto this massive myriad of dishes, the majority of which, she never even used. Nor did we question why in the world no one broke down and slapped some doors onto this crazy cupboard to cut down on all the mess. We just happily scrubbed and polished and hummed little tunes until the whole job was done. It was a weird little ritual that we knew was completely fruitless.  By the time we returned for the winter holidays, our work would be all but undone.  We knew this but somehow, we still didn't mind doing it. While we tended to those dusty dishes, my grandmother would fuss at my mother who was scurrying about the house trying to accomplish everything else that had been jotted down onto my grandmother's super lengthy list of spring cleaning chores. My mom would be washing bedspreads, rotating winter and spring wardrobes, wiping down walls, and supervising her dish-washing children, while simultaneously tending to a pile of mending that threatened to topple off of the dining room table and take out one of the dogs at any moment. While all this was happening, my grandmother would be tsk-tsking my mother for allowing her grandchildren to do so much hard work. Oddly enough, she was totally okay with my mom bearing the brunt of the spring cleaning responsibilities, but she felt the children should be spared this kind of intensive labor.

The truth is we didn't mind helping our mom out at Grandma's house, but our motives weren't as virtuous as I've led you to believe.  If we weren't there to pitch in, she would have had to leave us at home alone with dad for at least a week while she was away trying to tidy up at her mom's house. Not having mom at home for weeks on end made all of our lives, including Dad's, mostly miserable. Dad did the very best he could while mom was away and there were loads of perks to be enjoyed when dad was at the helm. It always meant that we were allowed to eat as many bowls of sugary cereal as our bellies could hold which sounded great until you came down with the worst tummy ache of your life. We didn't have to take a bath if we didn't feel like it which sounded great until somebody at school told you that you were starting to smell like a farm animal. Bedtime could be drawn out way later than usual which sounded great until you actually had to get up at the same time as usual the next morning in order to catch the schoolbus. Life in our house just wasn't the same without mom.

Dad didn't have all the secret knowledge of those special things that only mom knew how to do. He didn't know how to fold our socks quite right. He couldn't put our hair in French braids. He once got a little carried away with the laundry soap and filled the entire hallway of our house with soap suds. While having a foam party in the hallway of your home might sound like sheer awesomeness, especially since this incident occurred before foam parties were ever a thing, I assure you that the excitement of being on the cutting edge of this kind of entertainment quickly wore off. Repeatedly wading through a wall of soap suds in order to reach your bedroom, while wearing swim goggles to protect your eyes from stinging laundry soap, and trying to breathe through a snorkel so that you didn't end up with the taste of Tide in your mouth was less than ideal. To save mom from weeks of scrubbing at Grandma's house, with the secret plan of getting her to come back home with us at the end of the day, we were willing to do whatever we could to make it happen. I'm not saying dad couldn't handle managing the house, he just couldn't do it like mom, a fact he himself would readily admit if you ask him. Don't worry about my dad's feelings though as he also had a stake in operation bring-mom-home. Despite the fact that he himself was unable to come help with the chores, don't think for a moment that we weren't richly rewarded by Dad (unbeknownst to mom of course) for making sure that mom was back in the car and on the road home with us by nightfall.  It's true that our allegiance came cheap in the form of ice cream cones and chocolate bars, but we were handsomely paid off nonetheless.

As for my own kitchen situation, it may take a bit longer than I originally planned, but I am sure that I will eventually be able to replace my two open cupboards. Unfortunately, the ones Dad built will probably never wear out as both the sideboard and the Easter island are far too well made to meet an untimely end. I've really tried hard to abuse them in the hopes that they might crumble, but they easily seem to handle whatever I throw at them.  Knives, broken dishes, giant blocks of ice, rotten potatoes, my entire body, are all no match for these sturdy kitchen workhorses.  I know it is a lofty goal to set, but I hope that we can eventually complete our kitchen remodel before I am too old to do my own spring cleaning. After all, I wouldn't want my grown son and his family to have to come hose off all the dirty, unloved dishes that have been hanging out on our open kitchen shelving, gathering dust and debris for a whole year. It is also a great incentive to take immediate action by decluttering any of those unused and unloved items that have been languishing on my kitchen shelves since way back when we moved in.

On that note, I'm going to go wipe down the shelves of my open cupboards for the two hundredth time this year and see if I can't rustle up a few more objects of kitchen clutter to donate to the Goodwill Store. Maybe for old time's sake, I'll fill my high efficiency washer with regular old laundry soap to see if I can successfully fill our basement with soap suds in honor of my dad. While my son naps, and I patiently wait to see if out-of-control suds monsters start to climb up the basement stairs, I'm going to sit down and write a letter to those folks at Ikea. As I am sure you might guess, I am recommending the removal of open cupboards from both their catalogues and their store displays. It's the right thing to do, lest some poor unsuspecting newlywed couple blow their budget on a trendy set of open cabinets that I promise they will rapidly regret installing even if they seem like a good idea at the time of purchase.

Unless of course they happen to be the kind of couple who can comfortably afford to hire someone to clean their kitchen for them. Then they can install as many open cupboards as they like because the responsibility of keeping them clean and tidy will fall entirely on someone else. In fact, I am certain that their hired help will be happy to clean every single item on every open shelf in the house as often as they request because the lovely couple is paying them to do just that.  I just hope they're not surprised if one day they discover via nanny cam, that the housekeeper has actually been scrubbing their favorite crystal wine glasses in the toilet bowl using the bossman's or bosslady's toothbrush. After all, it doesn't matter to the cleaning person, they're wearing gloves and they don't typically drink wine at the house of their boss, not out of a glass anyway.  Why dirty a glass when you can take a swig right from the bottle?  And the hired help certainly isn't about to use their employer's toothbrush. Gross, that thing has been in the toilet!  Of course, everyone is free to make their own home decorating choices, but when it comes to deciding to place open cupboards in your kitchen, you can't say that no one warned you!

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Day 18 = Dad Can't Sew.

At the risk of sounding like a control freak or falling victim to gender stereotypes passed down from generations of women before me, I still feel fairly comfortable making the following statement. There are certain fathers out there who simply do not share the same attention to detail as their wives, especially when it comes to dressing their offspring. It's not that these dads can't or won't help clothe the children, it's just that their standards of what counts as appropriate attire happens to be a tiny bit looser than those usually upheld by the lady of the house. While most moms fuss over important details like whether clothing matches, which shoes look the best with the outfit in question, and whether or not their kid's hair has been carefully coiffed or not, a lot of dads tend to be a bit more relaxed in this arena. As in, is my son wearing pants? Check. No shirt? No problem. Is my kid wearing shoes on both of his feet? Check. One sandal. One snowboot. All systems go. Does it appear that the hair on my son's head has been combed at least one time in the last four days? No. Well it's nothing a little fatherly hair ruffling can't fix up. Cue hilarious fits of father & son laughter and even crazier hair post ruffle. You see what I mean?

If you follow this logic, you can easily understand why my mom was a bit apprehensive about leaving my dad in charge on the beautiful spring morning that my sister made her First Holy Communion. Due to the fact that my mom and sister were forced to arrive at the church hours before the rest of the family in order to take pictures and prepare themselves for the upcoming ceremony, I was left home alone with my dad. Because dressing a preschooler in a party dress and asking her to wear it for three whole hours before an event starts without accidentally coating it with chocolate pudding, crayon shavings, and clumps of dog hair was out of the question, wardrobe arrangements would have to be left in my dad's hands.

No big deal. My dad was a capable guy. Back in the day, he had handled major accounts for the hydraulics department of Cessna Aircraft. He knew how to operate a variety of motorized vehicles and heavy equipment. Planes, boats, motorcycles, backhoes, corn pickers, combines, and commercial vehicles were no challenge for him. If need be, along the side of the road, he could repair the family's broken down car (with the family still in it) while wearing white pants without getting a single speck of grease anywhere on his body. He knew how to successfully back up with a car load of rowdy kids and a howling dog, while having his vision completely obscured by the fact that the entire rear compartment of his vehicle was loaded to the gills. And he could still successfully repeat the same stunt when he was hauling a trailer. He could successfully launch a boat, amidst a crowd of rowdy, heckling onlookers and other extremely impatient sailors, without filing for divorce from my mom in the middle of the boat ramp. If you have ever been a part of the boating world, you will understand that this was no small feat. He built a spring fed lake on the family property using only a blueprint of his own design and a bulldozer. With this kind of experience under his belt, he could certainly handle the simple task of dressing his four-year old daughter for church.

Despite his confidence in his own skills, my mom still tried to develop a fool-proof plan. Before her departure with my sister in tow, she made sure that I had been properly sanitized. She then laid out my entire outfit with careful instructions for my dad. Luckily for him, the warm spring weather meant that leotards would not be involved, saving him from the hours of scrunching, stretching, tugging, and jumping up and down required to successfully stuff a squirming munchkin into a ridiculously tiny pair of tights. Little ruffled lace socks with dress shoes were all that would be required. I also used to wear a little pixie cut back then so he was spared the extra drama of having to comb through loads of tangled tot hair and affixing little baubles in the appropriate location. All in all, he had it pretty easy.

Much easier than my mom, who despite her required departure early that morning, was saddled with the additional responsibility of hosting a family party for no less than seventy-five people immediately after the church service had ended. Even though the church was located twenty minutes away from her house and that starving relatives would be arriving in droves, she managed to keep her cool. Knowing the local back roads meant that she would be able to cut most of them off at the pass, beat them back to our house, and have a beautiful buffet ready and waiting for them when they arrived moments later. She knew she could handle it like a pro as long as she wasn't delayed by an Amish horse and buggy. Despite the fact that she had been up half the night preparing crudites and an arsenal of salads ranging from ambrosia to potato and everything imaginable in between. Despite the fact that she had spent hours carefully rolling cold cuts and artfully arranging them along with a variety of sliced cheeses on platters. Despite the fact that she had made so many yeast raised sandwich rolls the day before that her fingers would still cramp up into little claws if she wasn't careful. Despite the fact that she had rolled, cut out, and decorated no less than twenty-two dozen delicate sugar cookie crosses along with baking up a zillion other batches of chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal raisin varieties. Despite the fact that the crock pot was probably bubbling away with some deliciousness and true to form, she had finished frosting the First Communion Party Cake at five-thirty that morning. It was all under control.  After all, it was nothing that a little well-placed dollop of concealer and an extra coat of mascara couldn't hide.

For this particular occasion, my mom had given me a choice of three outfits, I had chosen a pretty pink party dress and could not wait to put it on so that I could flounce around the house in my lovely little frock. My father was given strict instructions not to bring that dress anywhere near my little body until approximately five minutes before we were ready to walk out the door. There was to be no snacking in the car en route to the church, and the seatbelt had to be placed ever so carefully so as not to permanently wrinkle the delicate pink fabric of my special occasion dress.

Unwilling to risk inadvertently causing extra work for my already overtaxed, overtired mother, my dad followed her exact instructions to the letter. Lucky charms finished. Faces wiped. Chompers brushed. Hair combed. Five minutes until departure. Party dress on. Little lace socks folded just so. Patent leather shoes carefully polished and buckled. It was at this point that my dad realized that he himself was still sporting his manly bathrobe. Distracted by the details of dressing his daughter, he had nearly left the house in the male equivalent of a housecoat and slippers. I was too busy skipping around the house in my fluffy party dress and my clickety-clackety dress shoes to take notice of any wardrobe issues that my father might be experiencing. I skipped down the hall, right on the heels of my dad's still-slippered feet, humming a little tune. When we reached my parent's bedroom door, a moment of panic crossed over my dad's normally calm, cool, and collected forehead.

He had to excuse himself for a moment in order to slip into his dress shirt, tie, and suit. In that very second, he realized exactly why they tell mothers on airplanes to put on their own oxygen mask before assisting their children or others. He knew that in the three minutes it took him to throw clothes onto his body, anything could happen. He should have dressed himself first but now was not the time for second thoughts. He gave me careful yet stern instructions not to leave the confines of the hallway. He then slammed the door and I heard a crazy ruckus inside as he rushed around the room to put clothes on his body before anything ridiculous could happen to me or my pretty pink party dress. He actually managed to get his pants on and tuck in one half of his dress shirt before he was interrupted by the high pitched wailing that had suddenly broken out on the other side of the door.

For a nanosecond, he froze, contemplating what he might actually find when he opened the door. A nasty rug burn from a hallway skipping accident? A torn sock? A broken shoe buckle? Oh, God. What if it was puked-up Lucky Charms all over the front of the party dress. He knew he should have gone with the safer breakfast option of cinnamon toast. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw when he finally flung open the bedroom door. I was standing halfway down the hallway sobbing uncontrollably. Dad quickly began his fatherly assessment using a pre-prepared checklist of ten items that he kept in his head expressly for this kind of unfortunate scenario. Tears. Lots of tears. No blood. No vomit. No pee. No poop. No scrapes. No cuts. Two eyes. Ten fingers. All teeth accounted for. Insert gasp of extreme shock now.

That gasp happened at the precise moment when he noticed the long pink swath of material that was laying in a crumpled heap at his feet. His eyes followed the trail of petal pink satin down the hall, half of which was still attached to my waist. In his haste to dress himself before I was able to ruin my wardrobe, he had shut the hem of my dress in between his bedroom door and the door frame. When I spun on my heels to skip down the hallway, carefully keeping his instructions in mind, I heard a tremendous rip. With the bottom of my dress precariously pinched in the door, half of the gathered waist had been pulled away from the rest of the dress and was now lying on the hallway floor. I was heartbroken and hysterical over the untimely demise of my once perfect little pink party dress. The top half of the dress had remained in tact but the skirt had been hopelessly ruined.

Of course, I had other wardrobe choices, but my mom had chosen this specific dress for the occasion and my dad did not want to deviate from her detailed instructions. He scrambled through my mom's sewing supplies in search of salvation. For a moment he considered the staple gun, followed by the hot glue gun, but he quickly deemed both choices to be far too risky to attempt on his fidgety, flustered little girl. Due to the nature of the tear and its precarious location, any repairs would have to be done while the dress was still on my body. Attempting to remove it would only cause further damage to the delicate article of clothing.

I stood in the middle of the hallway wailing at the top of my lungs, certain that my dress was forever ruined, noting the panic that had immediately washed over my dad's face. If my mom had been there, I know that she could have made it all better. With a few quick stitches, she could have me back in business but to my knowledge dad didn't dabble in any arts and crafts, except wood-whittling, which was of no help here. I mean I'm sure he could have carved a wooden button and even sewn it on if need be, but even I knew that this kind of extensive repair would require no less than sixteen buttons and that there was positively no time for that. I had no idea how we were going to fix this whopper of a wardrobe malfunction.

I was only aware of one instance when my dad had taken the mending into his own hands during an emergency situation at work. While bending down to assess some kind of mechanical breakdown in the garage where he worked, the tired old seam of my dad's work pants had suffered a catastrophic blowout. Without a spare pair of pants and not wishing to expose his gutchies to the whole shop, he grabbed two shop rags, a stapler, and disappeared into the bathroom. When he came back out, he had fashioned himself a new pair of pants. It was actually only a rough repair to temporarily patch up his old pants and avoid exposing his posterior for the remainder of the workday, but it did the trick. Impressive? Absolutely. Ingenious? Positively. A bit dangerous given the location of the staples? No doubt. Under no circumstances did I wish to be stapled into my dear little dress.

My dad tried to soothe my tears and calm me down. He gathered up the skirt of my dress and walked towards me down the hallway. "My dress is ruined! If mommy were here, she could fix it." I wailed. "Shhhhh! Don't cry." my dad pleaded. "We'll get you all fixed up here in a few minutes." "You will not." I howled. "You don't even know how to sew." "Yes, I do know how to sew." he chuckled. "No, you don't. You're lying to try to make me feel better." I sniffled. "Mommy is the only one who knows how to sew, and I don't want you to staple me." "For Pete's sake, I am not going to staple you." It's true he considered it for a brief moment before realizing in this particular case, it would never work. That's when I noticed that he had a needle in one hand and a spool of perfectly matching pink thread in the other. Before I could utter a single word of protest, he knelt down beside me and got to work quickly stitching the drooping waist of my dress back into its proper position. "Holy cow, Daddy. I didn't know you could sew!"

Truth be told his stitches were a bit wonky compared to the careful precise ones that I was used to seeing from my mom, but he fixed my dress so I didn't even care. No one else would have ever even noticed, except for the fact that I told every single person that I came across that day. I excitedly recounted what had happened that morning and how dad had been able to fix me right up, including insisting that they examine my dad's handiwork with a needle and thread. On the way to the church, my dad explained that mommy had a lot to do today so we should probably wait until later to tell her about the dress. I agreed. When we finally arrived at the church with five minutes to spare, my mom carefully checked us both out from head to toe, pleased that we both looked fetching and that my dad had followed her exact instructions.

She kissed me on top of the head when she met us in the back of the church and whispered in my ear. "You look so very pretty, dear. Did Daddy do a good job helping you get ready this morning?" It was really meant to be a rhetorical question as obviously everything had turned out as expected and both my dad and I seemed to be visions of loveliness. "He did." I whispered back as we hurried towards our assigned pew. "And did you know Daddy could sew?" I knew I wasn't supposed to tell my mom yet but I was so proud of my dad that I couldn't contain myself for one more minute. I wanted to tell her what a great job he did, but there was no time. "What do you mean?" she asked. She must have been just as surprised as me because her eyes got really big when I explained how dad had accidentally ripped the bottom of my dress off when he shut it in the door five minutes before we got in the car to come to the church. I told her not to worry though because he was able to sew my dress back together before we left and he didn't even have to use the staple gun or the hot glue gun or anything.

Unfortunately, she didn't have time to respond because at that precise moment, the organist began to play the entrance hymn and we turned to see my sister floating down the aisle in her beautiful white First Communion gown, wearing a lovely crown of white flowers with long satin ribbons streaming behind her. I think for a split second I caught my mom winking at my dad. I imagine that she, too, must have been impressed by his secret sewing skills. Either that or she was giving him the stink eye. From my angle, it was hard to tell, but I don't know how she could ever be mad at him. After all, he was able to save the day at the last minute and he still got us to the church with a few minutes to spare. He even remembered to plug in the crock pot, so what if it was after we had already pulled out of our driveway.

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Day 17 = Grandma was a Speedracer

When you picture someone's doting grandmother, unless they are the matriarch of one of those famous clans known to dominate the world of automobile racing, you do not think of a person who claims to have a need for speed. In fact, the general slowness of granny drivers is often recounted by both famous comedians in comedy venues and frustrated coworkers around the water cooler, lamenting being delayed en route to their destination by some geriatric, snail-paced motorist. My mother's mother was this kind of driver, slow and steady, careful and cautious. She occasionally let a few cuss words slip when someone cut her off in city traffic, but that was the extent of her aggressiveness behind the wheel, safely contained within the interior of the car. On the other hand, my father's mother was a straight up lead-foot. Interestingly enough, my father had painstakingly taught both of them to drive. It was quite the contrast, both death defying experiences in their own right. He went from slithering around the city streets with his mother-in-law at the helm, a veritable slow moving road hazard, to holding on for dear life as his own mother hit the hammer down on the highway, looking for other dragsters to challenge on the short track. One of her nephews was a race car driver and she always used to tell us that someday she hoped that he might let her drive a few laps in his race car.

Her need for speed was not exclusively limited to her endeavors behind the wheel of an automobile. Despite the fact that she was already in her sixties at the time, I clearly remember sled riding with my paternal grandmother and I can assure you that she was no slouch on the slopes. The idea of riding a sled with your grandmother may or may not seem like a good idea to you. I suppose it depends on the kind of grandma you happen to have. Luckily, I enjoyed both kinds. For example, the idea of sled riding with my maternal grandmother was completely preposterous. Anyone that knew her and has just finished reading that sentence is probably giggling to themselves right now at the thought of plopping my mom's mom on a sled. Even long before she endured a quadruple bypass in the early 1980s, she was no snow bunny. Despite her heart condition, her endurance levels were unparalleled when it came to all day shopping marathons.  Unfortunately, beyond the safety of the mall, and without the lure of a great bargain, I am afraid she would have petered out rather quickly. On the other hand, I don't think I ever remember being at a shopping mall with my paternal grandmother, but sled riding with her was something we eagerly looked forward to every winter.

We lived on a chunk of property that was as flat as a postage stamp. There was not a single hill in sight. The best we could come up with was the sloped entrance to my neighbor's barn. The barn was built on a little stone foundation and a man-made ramp of earth led up to the barn doors on the second level of the barn. You couldn't sled down the ramp itself as that would shoot you straight out into traffic on a 55 mph highway, but you could get a good six feet of sled riding in if you went down the left side of the ramp. That was the extent of our sledding at home. We had other winter adventures like flooding the backyard to make an ice skating rink, building enormous snow forts and elaborate tunnels but little to no sledding. I mean how many times can you make your way down a six foot hill before the thrill is gone?

Luckily, at my grandmother's vacation home, the entire front yard was a great big hill perfect for winter sledding. I would have been content to gently ride down the hill in front of her house on my little plastic roll-up sled, but my grandmother assured me that this would never, ever be fast enough. The first problem was that I had the wrong kind of sled. From some secret location in her basement, she dug out a few vinyl cushions. Because my family were not the type to attend local sporting events, at the time, I didn't recognize these strange flat cushions. They were actually old-school stadium cushions, but the slippery vinyl alone was not enough to achieve maximum velocity. Grandma scurried to the kitchen to mix up a special slippery concoction that would serve as a kind of homemade ski wax assuring that the fastest descent possible could be achieved. She then carefully coated the underside of each cushion with the mystery mixture. Finally, we could get to the much anticipated business of sledding.

Not quite yet. Grandma explained that in order to go really fast, you have to construct a launching station at the top of the hill. She personally identified the front porch as the perfect starting point for our speedy downhill ride. Relying on the massive amounts of snow available, we all worked together to create a kind of bob sled track starting at the front door, sliding down a snow chute built up over the stairs and then continuing down the rest of the hill. At the midpoint of the hill, you had a choice of two diverse routes. If you wanted the fastest but shortest route, you stayed straight. For a longer but slower ride, you could bear to the left. The choice was yours to make and no one ever harassed you about your decision, but it was guaranteed that grandma never chose the one on the left. Finally, after working together to prepare the fastest sledding track possible, we were ready to go.

My brother was the first to test out the newly constructed speed track. Grandma gave him a big, solid push off the front porch and down the snow-covered stairs. In a move that he and his snowsuit would later regret, he selected the speedier downhill route. At the bottom of the hill was a large flat space where you normally slid to a gradual stop. At the far end of this large flat expanse was a steep cliff-like drop off that led down to a second flat cleared area. This area was a small shooting range set up in order to sight in hunting rifles. It was not so much a cliff as a really steep, short hill. It was the first line of defense in keeping anyone from accidentally wandering into the line of fire on the shooting range. The second safety measure was that wild briar bushes had been allowed to grow out of control on this particular part of the property.  Their purpose was to keep any dopes who were drawn to the sound of gunfire from getting sprayed with wayward buckshot. Below the shooting range was a forested hillside that stretched as far as the eye could see. Knowing the lay of the land becomes essential to the rest of the story surrounding my brother's super speedy descent.

On that particular day, my brother had chosen to wear a purple snowsuit with golden stripes running down each side. It was cinched in the middle by a purple snowsuit belt with a big silver buckle. After my grandmother gave him a hearty shove, he became little more than a violet blur with an occasional gold and silver sparkle. When he reached the first landing, it became clear that instead of slowing down, his momentum was actually increasing. Before we could comprehend what was happening, we watched in awe as he flew off the little cliff above the shooting range and immediately dropped out of sight. We ran to the bottom of the hill expecting to see him, but all we could see was a freshly broken trail through the snow, some scraps of purple material, and a few bits of white fuzz on a low hanging tree branch. We had lost visual. We frantically scanned the horizon in search of our speeding, out of control sibling, sailing down the tree-lined slope on a slicked-up stadium cushion.

It was then that we noticed a small purple lump far off in the distance. Could that be our broken and bent brother? He had actually slid off the far side of the shooting range and continued his wild ride deep into the middle of the forest. It was too far to tell but from where we were standing, it seemed as though he was lying in a motionless heap of mangled limbs. His death defying descent had taken him through a fairly treacherous tangle of old growth timber. If a tree had stopped his slide, surely he would need medical help. Just as we were about to call for a backboard, his arm popped up from the snowbank where he had landed. "I'm alright!" he shouted. We jumped up and down and shrieked like crazy, thrilled that he was unharmed and wowed by his maiden voyage. As he dug his way out of the snow heap and made his way towards us, we noticed something strange about his appearance. Unfortunately, we were still too far away to pinpoint the exact nature of the problem. As he drew closer, we realized the gravity of what had happened. His entire snowsuit had been shredded into hundreds of thin ribbons of purple fabric. The only thing that was keeping the cruel winter wind from ripping the remaining tattered shreds of fabric from his body was hits trusty little snowsuit belt. He looked like he was wearing one of those fringed flapper dresses from the roaring twenties, only there were little bits of white snow suit stuffing peaking out between the long strips of swaying purple fringe.

"What in the world happened to your snowsuit?" we laughed. It turns out that the wild briar bushes had been completely concealed underneath deep piles of fluffy white snow. Who knew that during the dormant winter period, they still remained razor sharp? When my brother flew off the little cliff, he raced right through a patch of brown dried-out briars. Despite their dead, lifeless appearance, their ability to slice and dice was completely intact. He's lucky he walked away with all his fingers. This didn't deter my grandmother from taking on the challenging descent herself. After all, now that my brother had smashed down all of those pesky briar bushes, you could enjoy an even longer ride. Just be sure to keep your arms close to your sides to avoid any remaining pricker bushes.

After her first trip, she made her way back up to the top where we were anxiously waiting to hear her review of the ride. She already had a few structural changes in mind. First of all, we needed to go down the hill a bunch more times in order to pack down the snow into a more icy chute that would allow us to go even faster. Second, we needed to create a jump at the bottom of the hill. If you were able to get enough air, you could totally avoid that tricky bit of the track that was completely surrounded by those pesky flesh shredding brambles. We quickly set to work applying her carefully calculated design changes. I can't remember where my parents were on this particular day, but I am sure that they were not observing our death defying descents. This was one of those things that your grandparents allow you to do that your parents would never, ever agree to if they actually knew it was happening. My grandparents normally had safety standards that were even stricter than the ones my parents upheld, but in the quest for the ultimate speed sledding adventure, some calculated risks had to be taken.

I can still here my grandmother's joyful whoops as she sped down that hill eagerly trying to snag an even faster time during each downhill run. If you felt daring, you could follow down behind her in a train of speeding cushions. For the more delicate little ones like me, you stuck to the solo action, where you could attempt to apply the brakes if the wild ride got a little too scary. You also had the option of dumping your sled lard-coated stadium cushion just before you were about to fly over the briar bushes. Just be sure to time it right or you'd find yourself with a shredded snowsuit like my big brother. If you wanted to be able to enjoy your snowy ride at a slower pace, you certainly didn't hop on a sled with Grandma as accompanying her was not for the faint of heart.

Just when you got to the point where your tootsies started to get a little numb inside your winter boots and the snow started to melt through your mittens to make your frosty fingers lose their feeling, Grandma would take us all inside to warm up. She would make us each a steaming cup of homemade cocoa from scratch on the top of her avocado colored stove. She always plopped two big, fat marshmallows in each toasty cup of warm chocolaty goodness. Our mittens and winter clothes would be draped over drying racks in front of the baseboards in the kitchen. If they dried out in time, we could squeeze in a few more speedy night runs down the snowy hillside between dinner and bedtime. We could even hit that jump if mom and dad weren't looking. I hope someday, when I'm in my sixties, I'm still sled riding with the grand kids just like my grandma did with us.

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Day 16 = No, We Do Not Recommend the Cucumber Ice Cream

In the circles that I frequent, I'm known for having a bit of culinary know-how. I'm no chef, but on most nights at our house, we eat rather well. This does not include those occasional rough days when my rowdy son has unexpectedly woken up in the middle of the night, caterwauling to be freed from the confines of his claustrophobic crib. I stumble down the stairs, blind and half asleep, bouncing off the walls, and nearly falling flat on my face when I finally reach the landing. You know how your poor body thinks there is just one more step to go and then your leg is stopped short by the floor and your hip gets unexpectedly jammed into your spine and the momentum of the rest of your body sends you toppling onto your face? Now fully alert and awake, you pick yourself up, briefly check for broken bones, and race to grab the wailing babe before he wakes the entire household and three neighboring residences. As soon as he hits your arms, he passes out.

You precariously position yourself on the edge of his oxymoronic "big boy" bed and snuggle next to him for a few minutes until you think he is sound asleep. You try to put him back in the crib and he wakes up. You repeat this ritual seven times before finally giving up, realizing that you are probably not going to have the pleasure of returning to the spacious comfort of your own bed on this particular evening. After accepting this grim reality, you finally start to drift off to sleep, until your sweet dreaming toddler, with his angelic face and head of tousled curls, starts rhythmically kicking you in the face. You would reposition yourself to avoid constant contact with his pulsating, pint-sized piggie, but you are already teetering dangerously on the edge of his minuscule mattress.  The only thing left to do is resign yourself to simply staying put and suffering the consequences. After having one of those nights, and thank the lord they are rare, I morph into a dinner time zombie, lurching around the kitchen, searching aimlessly for some kind of nourishment for my clearly crabby self and my super starving family. I consider myself successful if I am able to properly prepare a package of hot dogs without setting the kitchen ablaze.

Luckily, as my sweet son grows older, this kind of suppertime scenario is growing less and less common. In fact, on most days, I am proud to say that we enjoy a wide variety of tasty cuisine, lovingly prepared by my hands. Unfortunately, not every dish is a success. When you're willing to take risks and try new things in the kitchen, you're bound to come across a few spectacular failures. It happens to every chef from time to time but some of those failures happen to be more epic than others. Some of those failures are seared into the taste buds of your unlucky food testers, the mere mention of which can still make them gag. Maybe as an adult, I have become a bit less willing to experiment in the kitchen, but I have never been able to successfully gross out my table mates as effectively as that steamy summer of my youth when I served up a big batch of cucumber ice cream. No, that is not a typographical error, nor am I the hapless victim of autocorrect. You read that right the first time...cucumber ice cream. Never heard of that innovative flavor combination before? Perhaps you simply aren't well traveled. Or perhaps there is a reason you don't see this menu item listed at every Dip and Scoop from here to Poughkeepsie. It was supposed to be cool, creamy and refreshing, instead it turned out green, gritty and disgusting.

You may be wondering how I came up with this particular concoction. Trust me, it was not an invention of my own design. I enjoy cooking but I'm not much for experimenting in the kitchen. I'm more of a stick to the recipe kind of gal. I can trace this back to the early days of my culinary training. When people ask me where I learned to cook, I always tell them that I learned at the heels of my mother and grandmother. I should actually say under the heels, as the kitchen could be a dangerous place for little tots like me. Despite the inherent danger of hot bubbling pots, fast flying cutlery, and getting a little crack with a wooden spoon for extreme indiscretions like double dipping the tasting spoon, it was a place I loved to be. All the hours and hours of observing and helping would eventually pay off.

Usually people make some sort of comment about never having the time to sit down with family members to learn the art of cooking. Growing up smack in the middle of rural America, time was one thing that I was not short on. I had hours and hours of long summer days with nothing to do but stare out the window at the cornfield next door. My mom encouraged my sister and I to dabble in the culinary arts, probably so we would stop driving her crazy by incessantly repeating the following phrase, "Mooooommm, I'm so bored. There's nothing to do." Which is how I found myself at a very young age standing on a kitchen chair with a bowl, a spoon, and a big, fat recipe book, learning how to cook. Truth be told, in my early years, I spent a lot more time baking then cooking. Inevitably as you're learning to hone your cooking skills, you're bound to have a failure or two. Better to have a botched dessert than an entire meal that was completely inedible. My mom was pretty free with what she allowed us to bake. There were really only two rules. First, you had to clean up after yourself. I readily admit that this was not my particular forte. Second, it was highly frowned upon if you wasted ingredients, which meant if you tried something new, it had better turn out, or you would run the risk of receiving mom's rarely given, but utterly devastating, frowny face of disapproval.

Luckily, the majority of our desserts turned out to be delightful. I mean my mom had carefully taught us all the basics of pastry, practically before we were able to walk, so our successes weren't particularly surprising. Besides, she was always willing to help guide us along whenever we found ourselves struggling with some sugary sweet snafu. To help avert kitchen disasters, early on in our culinary endeavors, all recipes had to be approved by our mom before we were permitted to touch a single measuring spoon. As we got older, and developed a more solid set of cooking and baking knowledge, we were given a much greater amount of freedom in the recipe selection department. A move that I am sure my mother deeply regretted after wrapping her lips around one tiny obligatory spoonful of bright green, creamy cucumber goodness.

You may be wondering exactly how I arrived at cucumber ice cream. It was more of a choice by elimination than anything else. Nowadays, the modern ice cream maker, which includes a special metal bowl that you store in your freezer until you are ready to whip up a batch of some delectable dairy dessert, is readily available. Back then, you still had the old hand-crank machines that required amazing arm strength and ten tons of rock salt. These old fashioned ice cream making contraptions were often found neglected in some forgotten corner of the garage, covered in a hefty layer of dust. By summer, rock salt was often hard to come by in those parts, as the winters were long and blustery. Also, with dad at work, arm strength was at a premium as well. In a rare, but smashing thrift store find, my brother got his hands on a slightly used modern ice cream machine made by the Donvier company. Unlike today's electric machines of a similar design, it was hand cranked and it was really small. Despite its limitations, it still allowed us to experiment with all sorts of homemade frozen confections that you couldn't easily get your hands on in the average grocery store, including the surprisingly unpopular flavor, cucumber.

In the heat of July, I began to specialize in small artisan batches of peach ice cream. It was delicious, creamy, chock full of juicy fruit at the peak of freshness and it was met with rave reviews. One of the drawbacks of living and dining in a significantly rural locale is the overall accessibility of important ingredients. Before beginning any culinary adventure, it was essential to verify that you had all items called for by the recipe or that you were able to create them through handy substitutions should the need arise. With the nearest grocery store being almost a half an hour away, there was no option of quickly running to the store for one or two missing items. Baking choices were often made based solely on the availability of the proper ingredients. Should I make chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies? I feel like chocolate chip today. Let's run down the ingredient list. Baking powder? Check. Flour? Check. Butter? Check. Chocolate Morsels? Negative. Okay then. Peanut butter cookies it is.

One sweltering summer afternoon, I had a hankering for ice cream. I sauntered over to the fridge in search of the necessary ingredients. It looked like we happened to have just about everything I needed, so I began to whip up a batch of my world famous peach ice cream. As I was nonchalantly tossing the essentials into the blender, I realized that unfortunately some fruit bandit in our household had eaten all of the peaches except for one lonely old bruised one left rolling around in the crisper. I was already six ingredients in and I didn't want to receive the devastating frowny face of disapproval from my mom. I had two counts against me. Not checking to make sure I had all the ingredients before I started cooking and possibly wasting an entire batch of ice cream.

Now, I had several options here. First, I could call the neighbor to see if she had any extra peaches lying around. Negative. Second, I could try to adjust the recipe to something without fruit like vanilla or chocolate. In a decision, I would later regret, I thought this option was simply too plain and boring. Third, I could make a savvy substitution. Unfortunately, we were clean out of fruit. There was not a single piece of the sweet stuff anywhere in the whole house. I was perusing a recipe book in a panicky fashion, when my eyes landed on the words cucumber ice cream. In a quick comparison with the award winning peach, it became apparent that both recipes shared a similar ratio of ingredients. It also just so happened that our garden had produced a bumper crop of cukes that summer. I grabbed my trusty vegetable peeler and set to work. Although I had some initial misgivings about the combination of ice cream and cucumbers, it was printed in a recipe book so someone had to think it was tasty, right?

I'm still not sure who exactly might enjoy this dairy disaster. Certainly, no one in my household was a fan of it, not even me. The fact that it was bright green did little to prepare your palate for the vicious assault it was about to undertake. You may be wondering why anyone would ever put even one spoonful of this crummy cucumber concoction to their lips. It had to do with the one spoonful rule. You see in my house, it was a requirement that you eat one spoonful of everything offered at the table. You were not allowed to say no thank you, I don't care for any of that. The philosophy behind this movement was that over time, your taste buds change and you may end up liking something you previously found disgusting. Sometimes, it was true and sometimes it wasn't, but those were the rules. Our parents wanted us to grow up and be willing to try new things instead of just sticking to the same old safe standards day after day.

As a child, I never really enjoyed cheesecake. My great aunt lived next door to a sweet, older lady named Mrs. Pochaton. I believe that she was of either Polish or Slovakian descent, but I have no idea how to actually spell her last name. However, I do know that it was pronounced pock-uh-tawn. Anyway, anytime this lovely woman heard that we were coming to town, she would prepare her signature cheesecake especially for us. Everyone raved about how delicious it was except my aunt. I think she was secretly peeved that someone besides her was attempting to spoil us with baked goods. She probably felt like spitting in her neighbor's cheesecake, but instead she was always sweet and cordial knowing that while cheesecake may not have been her thing, she still had the corner on the cream puff market. Anyway, I always had to try one tiny bite of this special cheesecake, although I myself deeply preferred my aunt's cream puffs to the savory, sweet spoonful of thick, cloying creaminess that I always struggled to swallow. Eventually though, I actually grew to like cheesecake, although this realization happened long after both my dear aunt and her sweet neighbor had passed on. This particular discovery can probably be credited to the one spoonful rule. Without it, I may have never dabbled in cheesecake again.

On the other hand, coleslaw has been an unwavering item on my do not eat list for nearly three decades. No matter how many spoonfuls I try, and no matter how many recipes I am presented with, my opinion of it remains perpetually unchanged. Even if you try to jazz it up with some raisins, a tradition handed down from my grandmother, I still find it utterly revolting. My sister's arch nemesis at the dinner table was the mixed vegetable. For years, she was forced to gag down a teaspoon of those dastardly devils every time they made a guest appearance at our kitchen table. The only person who received a special dispensation from the one spoonful rule was my older brother, who happened to be allergic to milk. Mercifully for all involved, he got a free pass from all things dairy.

This is why I can say with confidence that only four our of five people in my household found my presentation of cucumber ice cream to be positively putrid. The fifth taste tester abstained due to lactose intolerance. It was probably one of the few times my brother was pleased by the fact that he was unable to digest dairy. The rest of us suffered our spoonful in silence. It was actually my second spoonful of the gross green stuff. Like all chefs worth their salt, I had tasted it before serving it. I knew it was bad but I had hoped by some miraculous turn of events, the flavor would mellow a bit by the time dinner was finished. I assure you it did not. Forget the one spoonful rule and the frowny face of disapproval, that concoction should have received a one-way ticket to the compost pile. It was the one day when my parents actually regretted instilling the one spoonful rule. I could consider it paybacks for all that nasty coleslaw that I was forced to ingest against my will, but despite my disdain for coleslaw, I would have never purposely sought out such a cruel form of revenge as cucumber ice cream.

This is why I do not typically dabble in adjusting or tweaking recipes. I follow them as written and I prefer that they come from a trusted source on the internet that includes loads of rave reviews. Also, if they don't sound appealing to begin with, I have no problem avoiding them altogether. Despite the fact that I have had numerous culinary successes since the great cucumber ice cream debacle of 1987, no one is able to let it go. Perhaps it is the remaining bitterness of sweet cream and crunchy cucumber that still lingers on their lips. No matter how many dessert masterpieces I present, they still can't help bringing it up. Remember the time you made cucumber ice cream? Yes, I do. How could I possibly ever forget the greatest culinary disaster of my entire cooking career? Should anyone ever suggest to you that combining cucumbers with ice cream is actually a good idea, in the wise words of Nancy Reagan, "Just Say No." I  for one have learned my lesson. Even during one of my most miserable mommy moments, when I am so bleary-eyed from lack of sleep that I am struggling to decipher the cooking directions printed on the back of a sack of frozen peas, I solemnly promise to never, ever again attempt to combine sweet cream and cucumbers into some kind of frosty frozen dessert. I can say with 100% certainty that cucumbers make a lousy fruit substitute.

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Day 15 = Why Mallards Make Perfect Pets

Any day now, I am expecting to receive a very important package in the mail from my parents. It will arrive by special delivery in a box with little round air holes poked in the top and it will probably be squeaking or quacking or howling. I know it is coming soon because they promised that when I had children of my own, which I now do, they would send it. If you know my parents, then you are aware that it would be highly out of character for them not to make good on one of their promises. Especially when it is a personal vendetta of sorts, a kind of karmic payback for the grief that I inadvertently caused them during my own childhood. You see, I had a bit of an obsession with bringing home and raising an extremely diverse variety of sweet, lovable, little creatures. And by raising, I mean that, like most children, I enjoyed petting and loving them regularly while my parents were left to do the lion's share of the work.

I have to be honest though. I am not 100% responsible for the penchant that I developed for cute little fuzzy furballs. Whether they realize it or not, my parents are partially to blame. I mean we were regular viewers of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins. Every week, we tuned in to see if Jim would actually be able to survive while Marlin told us all about it from a safe distance. My Dad was also a huge fan of NOVA and its myriad of animal documentaries. My mom and I did not share in his fascination with the brutal reality of the great outdoors. We preferred that our antelopes did not end up headless at the hands paws of a pride of lions. We also preferred that our little mice remained on the outside of some big, fat, slithery snake's bulging belly. While we are perfectly aware that it is the circle of life and all, we just don't like to observe it on such an extremely up close and personal level. In other words, seeing deep inside the nostril of a rare venomous toad as he is about to ingest some creepy, crawly insect just wasn't our thing.

Besides allowing us to view all these nature related shows on television, in a move they would later regret, my parents actually encouraged us to read books about animals. Don't ever permit your children to do that, unless you are certain that you are okay with adopting fifty-two different species of wildlife. Everyone knows that owning and caring for domesticated animals is romanticized in every children's story book from here to Idaho. After all, I never remember coming across any books that focused on the more glamorous facets of pet ownership like scooping poops, trimming toenails, harvesting hacked-up hair balls, or cleaning up putrid piles of puppy puke. No book ever mentioned that I might have to endure the traumatic experience of nursing poor Stimpy the hamster back from the brink of rigamortus after he suffered a bought of hypothermia induced by living in our finished basement. Turns out indoor temperature conditions that feel cozy to most humans can be a bit chilly for the average hamster, especially in frosty February. Luckily, I was able to save him by stuffing him into an old sock and vigorously rubbing his cold, lifeless, little hamster body until he finally came around an hour or so later. Despite this unexpected bit of hamster triage, Stimpy went on to live a long and lovely life with his old pal Ren, but for a few moments there it was touch and go.

You rarely ever come across any kind of truth in disclosure when perusing children's literature, instead, it's all sweet, snuggly, sugarcubes and pretty, prancing ponies. I mean I suppose most kids might be prone to avoid more realistic titles lurking on the library shelf. Who wants to read Hunter the Happy Old Horse that Died, Charlie the Cuddly Kitten that Croaked, or Rover the Rowdy Rottweiler that Got Run Over? Which brings me back to the original problem. Animal related kid lit is rarely based in reality. My furry friend fever began with a picture book called The Little Lamb. (Careful parents, this book is still in print. Avoid it like the plague, unless you plan to become the proud owner of your own little lamb in the next six months.) In the story, the neighbor lady gives this little girl named Emmy a lamb. The poor mama lamb had twins and doesn't have enough milk for both baby sheep. Emmy is asked to care for the little lamb until he is big enough to return to the flock. Emmy names her new fuzzy little pal Timothy. I loved this book so very much that my parents eventually bought me The Little Duck as well. Huge child rearing mistake! We all know that unlike in this lovely little story, no one will welcome your little animal buddy back into the flock or herd or gaggle or whatever once your child has lost interest in his fluffy little companion.

Besides, watching shows like Wild America with Marty Stouffer and reading about the awesome experiences of other pint-sized pet owners, my mother engaged in an even worse bit of parenting peril. Next to our house, on the other side of an expansive field that was planted with either hog corn or soy beans, was a rarely traveled road made of gravel and dirt. My mom used to take me for walks on this road when I was small. I now know that the purpose of this stroll had little to do with visiting animals in the neighborhood. It was to free her from the confines of the house for an hour and to wear me out so that I would totally pass out when nap time finally rolled around giving her a few precious moments of solitude. At the time however, I was unaware of her devious ulterior mommy motives. All I knew was that at least once a week, we paid a little visit to the goats that lived along that dusty old back road. I have no idea why, but at the end of their driveway, the owners of the property behind us kept a little goat on a rope with his very own little dog goat house. We didn't even know who these people were and I don't even remember ever seeing them in person, but we were on a first name basis with their pet goat. I absolutely adored checking in with that little hoofed fellow. We even have photo evidence of our enduring friendship.

Thus began my vigorous campaign to acquire a new pet of my own. I knew a goat was probably out of the question, but for years, I toiled in order to wear my parents down. Being born into a home that already owned three dogs did not help my cause one bit. In the third grade, one of our teachers used to bring in her pet rabbit to the classroom on a weekly basis. He was a lop-eared little guy that actually lived with her inside her house. To my surprise, I discovered that bunnies could be trained to use a litter box. When I found this out, I started feverishly campaigning for my own indoor bunny. For weeks on end, I asked, discussed, whined, cried, begged, pleaded, and papered the walls of the house with hand-colored promotional flyers, until one weekend, my parents finally cracked. On that particular Saturday morning in early spring, my mom and dad came home and mysteriously summoned me to the garage. I stood there staring at them blankely wondering why they had requested my presence in the garage of all places. They looked rather excited about something but I had no idea what it was. After a bit of over obvious gesturing on the part of my mother, I noticed something odd that stood out sharply against the shiny, quilted background of her fashionable rust-colored overcoat. Peeking out of the corner of her right pocket was one teeny-tiny, white bunny ear. This ear belonged to Buffy, my new pet rabbit.

I was over the moon. All of my nine-year old dreams had finally come true. I couldn't wait to give her a tour of my room and pick out a place for her to poop. Then my parents broke the news that unfortunately, she was actually a he that would be spending his days outside in a roomy rabbit cage under our deck. Woah...this is not what I signed on for during my initial proposal. Problem 1...Why would you bring me a boy bunny when I specifically asked for a girl? Turns out lady bunnies can be a wee bit witchy making boy bunnies the friendlier choice. In reality, I think my parents were afraid that they would accidentally bring home one of those "fast" lady bunnies and end up with a whole warren of rabbits. Problem 2...He'll freeze outside! In order to keep him cozy and warm, I spent hours crafting little pieces of scrap lumber into a small wooden hut that fit inside the corner his cage. This snuggly inner enclosure would later prove to be problematic but at the time creating his comfortable bunny quarters was my only concern.

Buffy came with a tiny bunny harness. If you put pet rabbits on a little leash, you were supposed to be able to take them out of their cage for a little hop once in a while. This sounds great in theory but in reality I think it was simply part of the bunny breeders sales pitch to sell some extra merchandise to my parents. It worked just fine when he was a sweet little baby bunny, but Buffy grew up to be a big, fat, freakishly-strong, grown-up rabbit. As an adult rabbit, Buffy developed a set of razor sharp rear toenails that were capable of slicing your arms to ribbons with one wayward boot of his little bunny foot. The only luck involved when dealing with this dangerous appendage was walking away with your hand intact. Trying to handle him without receiving a rabbit roundhouse of rage was nearly impossible. Forget placing a harness on him to go for a bounce around the yard, removing him from the confines of his little wooden house inside the tight quarters of the wire cage was asking to lose a finger. The salesperson had told my parents that as long as you held him all the time when he was a little ball of fluff, he would grow up to be a friendly adult rabbit. This was somewhat true. As long as you kept him fed with fresh water, rabbit pellets and a regular supply of carrots and dandelions leaves, he was a happy little guy. Attempt to remove him from his cozy little cage and you'd risk losing a limb.

Occasionally, I would successfully bust him out if his cage with only a minor bit of bloodshed. I made a little wooden pen out of some boards to let him stretch his bunny body and get some exercise. Unfortunately, the smell of fresh blood, despite the fact that it happened to be mine, and the lure of a big fat feast of domesticated hossenfeffer drew every predatory bird in the county to the skies over my backyard. Buffy did not like being dived on by a flailing, screaming child one bit, even if it was a desperate life-saving maneuver to keep him from being snatched up by a hungry hawk. Needless to say, my original plans for this beautiful baby bunny did not come to pass. Buffy lived the life of a rabbit recluse in his outdoor cage. I think he was actually more of a loner bunny who preferred not being squeezed and stroked and practically strangled by over-exuberant, loving, little arms. Over time, our limited interactions slowly became centered exclusively around providing a week's supply of bunny nourishment, a few bunny snacks, and shoveling the mountainous pile of bunny poop pellets that accumulated under his big, fat, bunny bottom. Truth be told, after a while my parents ended up caring for Buffy on a much more regular basis than me. Who didn't see that one coming?

Despite already owning a bunny, by the fifth grade, I had set my sights on a new and exciting animal ownership goal. In order to make this dream a reality, I struck a deal with one of my more agriculturally inclined classmates. His family owned a local farm and the spring lambs had just been born. Luckily, I still had a bit of leftover Christmas cash lying around, patiently waiting to be spent. I have no idea what the going rate for a sheep was back then, but for the paltry sum of twenty-five smackers, I could get my hands on my very own sheep. The kid and I set up the sheep & moo-la exchange point. Now all I had to do was get the parental units to sign off on this precious little purchase. I was already planning to shear him in order to spin my own wool. My mom was an avid fan of crocheting, so I thought that she might be on board with my plan. Perhaps the fact that my mom is extremely allergic to wool is what caused such a vehement and resounding no from them. More likely it was due to the fact that they were now primarily responsible for the majority of Buffy the Bunny's care. Whatever the reason, the deal was a no go.

When my great aunt and uncle heard that the sheep sale had gone sour, they stepped in to broker a new deal on my behalf. They owned a farm in Ohio and they specialized in raising pigs and hogs of all kinds. In lieu of the lovely little lamby, they offered to provide me with a precious pink piglet of my very own. It was no little lamb, but I suppose I could come around to snuggling up to a little swine if it was my only option. Unfortunately, for some odd reason, my mom and dad vetoed this offer as well. I guess my unreliable nature related to rabbit raising had forever ruined my chances of acquiring any new pet pals.  Despite the botched bunny deal, for years, I continued to campaign, undeterred.

Eventually, it was my parents who wore me down, with their consistent, united refusals to provide me with any new opportunities for pet ownership. I had given up on all other endeavors except for acquiring a single, white, domesticated duck. This desire could be traced back to that previously mentioned piece of pet purchasing propaganda called The Little Duck. In the book, this little boy goes out fishing and unexpectedly finds an abandoned duck egg lying in the grass next to a pond. He carefully carries it home to where his family just happens to have a warm, toasty incubator waiting around for just such an occasion. He patiently waits for it to hatch. When it finally does, I believe he names it Henry and he has to teach it how to swim and to do all the ducky things that little quackers need to know. Thus began my desire for obtaining a downy little duckling of my own. Using the same tactics as the bunny buy, I was finally able to convince my dad to purchase me my very own duck. To my surprise, he actually came home from the local feed store with a peeping package of four because birds are supposed to fare better in a small group. Either that or my parents were suckered by another salesman, but since this happened way before the Internet, you can't blame them if they were. I couldn't wait to see my four fabulous, fuzzy, yellow ducklings. I opened the box and realized that while these birds met the definition of a duck as in they had feathers, webbed feet, yellow beaks, and they went quack quack, they were not exactly the particular species of duck that I had requested.

These were mallards. Who ever heard of anyone raising a mallard? Smart man, my Pa. Domesticated white ducks were forever friends which is exactly what I had hoped to receive. On the other end of the spectrum, mallards are free spirits who migrate to warmer locations every fall. If a kid is lucky, they will come back every year. If parents are lucky, they won't. This is why the mallards were such an easy sell and taking on four birds was no problem. It was a good thing that we had a few spare ducklings as there were some issues related to establishing pecking order. Unfortunately, that is not just an expression in the duck world. You may not know it but baby birdies can be terrible bullies. Because they are such relentless little creatures, there were several replacement bird purchases made, but in the end, we raised a flock of three fine, feathery fellows. Our feisty mutt, Lady, chased trotted after them in order to teach them how to fly. Finally, one crisp fall day, when I came home from school, I found that they had flown south for the winter. Was I sad? Not really. Like every other animal out there, ducks became a bit boring after a while. It was just the right time for them to make their way to bigger and better places. They did come back every year, but by then they had become grown-up, self sufficient, wild ducks who weren't really interested in hanging out anymore. They used to give us a little wave of the wing to let us know it was them, but they never hung out at our place for too long as warmer weather and better digs were always calling.

It was the perfect solution for all parties involved. I got a few new pets that I was intensely interested in raising for a while. The ducks were well-cared for so that they could become all fat and sassy in preparation for their long journey. Our garden got a little extra fertilization. Our dog had a few creatures that she was actually encouraged to chase around. The ducks learned how to fly and my parents were not left holding the bag when my original excitement over my new peeping pals finally petered out. Just when it looked as though all mallard care might fall into their laps, the feathery little fellows flew away for the winter. Looking for the perfect pet? I highly recommend the mallard. In fact, when we finally receive that highly anticipated shipment of parental payback from my mom and dad, I hope their choice is a merciful one, and I end up with a quacking box of mallards on my doorstep.

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Day 14 = Fireworks & Family Secrets

As a child, the Fourth of July was probably my most favoritest holiday ever. It ranked right up there with Christmas. After all, what kid wouldn't love a yearly celebration where you are actually allowed to run around with a flaming hot stick in your hand? Of course, I should edit that last statement lest I inadvertently offend the family safety commission. Technically speaking, we were never, ever permitted to run with a sparkler in our hand. In fact, even if our little mits were sparkler-free, we were not allowed to run within fifty feet of another individual who happened to be clutching a sparkler, lit or unlit. Instead, we dabbled in the gray area of really fast walking while holding those little white hot pieces of metal until some boring, old, obviously fun-hating adult yelled at us to slow down.

Let's talk for a moment about the sparkler. While I have not officially researched the following statement, I feel fairly confident saying that the inventor of the sparkler was obviously not a mother. No mother in her right mind would create such a child endangering instrument and then be willing to place one end into her baby's precious little hand while setting the other end on fire. And it's not like you're simply holding onto a small innocuous candle, which in itself is fraught with danger. This sizzling stick fills your lungs with noxious fumes and shoots showers of sparks out in all directions. If you successfully make it to the end without setting yourself or any of your little neighborhood buddies on fire, an even better final surprise awaits you. As the sparkler burns down closer to your little clenched fist, white hot burning bits of sparkler blow-back begin to settle onto the tender flesh of your extended arm, searing your skin in a hundred different microscopic places. No matter how bad it gets, you fight through the pain, refusing to loosen your grip until the last little spark has landed. Although you are now aware that you will experience this sort of unpleasantness at the end of every single sparkler, you still run walk as fast as your little legs can carry you to get ahold of your next flaming stick of death.

Unfortunately the danger of playing with sparklers often extends beyond the discomfort that you are willing to go through by hanging on until the bitter end. There always seems to be at least one kid in the group that turns into a loose cannon the minute you place a flaming sparkler in his grubby little hand. Like some kind of drunken moth, he stares into the end of his sparkler, until he has been completely blinded by the intensity of the orange after glow. It's bad enough when the sparkler is actually lit, but at least you can see him coming and make an attempt to avoid contact. Once his sparkler has completely fizzled out, he's like a ship in the night silently sailing across the lawn, molten metal rod in hand. He is desperate to find a safe place to put this now extinguished, flaming hot piece of wire, that has become totally invisible under the cloak of darkness. He knows that the on site sparkler safety officers will not issue him a new flaming instrument of danger until his first one is properly disposed of per family safety ordinance #194. Unfortunately, in his overexuberance to get his hands on the very first sparkler of the evening, he tuned out the initial safety lecture and has no idea where the safe place for used up sparklers might be located. Unbeknownst to his poor unsuspecting victims, he continues to stagger around the darkened yard, waving the still warm wire, shouting, "Hey guys, where do I put this thingy?" Like some kind of flesh seeking missle, his slightly sizzling sparkler is bound to find a target in the form of some poor kids exposed forearm. Guaranteed to happen every single year.

Despite the inherent danger of waving a burning baton of showering sparks around for fun, it sure beats the alternative "safer" fireworks. I mean who ever heard a child say, "Man, I can't wait to light these smoke bombs again next year!" And those little squiggly charcoal "snakes". A...they look nothing like a snake, and B...once you've experienced the magic the first time it kinda loses its luster. Not to mention, they are practically impossible to light and two out of three of them end up being complete duds. That only leaves us with those little boxes of snappers that you throw on the ground in order to make them explode. It's true that they are great for throwing behind people's chairs and scaring them half to death, but once people catch on to your little shenanigans, the jig is up. Setting them off without an intended target is not nearly as entertaining. So you are left pining away until darkness falls and the adults finally bust out the sparklers from their secret hiding place. If everyone survived the sparklers without incident (minor burns excluded), we moved on to bigger and better explosives that only the adults were allowed to handle.

One year that is forever burned into my mind was when one of my uncle's brought out this wild spinning disk of pyrotechnic wonder. The set up for this thing was monumental as it had to be safely secured at both ends to avoid coming loose and shooting into the crowd. As it spun in a dizzying circle, it shot flaming bits of burning debris into the air. It gradually picked up speed until it finally caused a mini explosion that allowed it to expand into a pretty little paper lantern. I have no idea how the whole thing did not catch on fire. As part of this grand finale, it blasted a little paratrooper into the air that later floated gently back down to earth under tiny little parachutes. To this day, it remains the coolest home display of fireworks that I have ever seen.

In fact, the only other home fireworks display that I ever found nearly as exciting was the year my dad tried to set off a package of spinning roses. They were the kind of firework that you set on the ground, lit as quickly as possible and dove out of the way. They would spin around erratically, while simultaneously shooting a fountain of sparks out in all directions. Always with safety in mind, my dad put a piece of sheet metal on the ground in the hopes of preventing a small forest fire from breaking out. On the metal surface, the flaming flowers took on a life of their own. The slick, shiny surface allowed them to gain a startling amount of momentum. The innocent bystanders never saw it coming, until they skittered right off their metal safety shield, flipped wildly through the air, and began showering the entire family with globs of fiery, explosive debris. Fortunately, an added safety measure in the form of a nearby garden hose was used to put out the flames, save all humans and animals from harm, and avoid torching the towering trees that surrounded us on all sides.

I suppose that I come by my appreciation of explosives honestly. In our house setting off fireworks was typically a manly pursuit, but that wasn't always the case. One day while rifling through my grandmother's kitchen drawer in search of a missing packet of Kool-aid, I came across a small plastic bag filled with firecrackers. This was a particularly odd find especially since it was already late September. When I questioned my mother as to why they might be there, she told me not to touch them and that they belonged to my grandmother. Gramma's fireworks? I struggled to wrap my mind around the concept that for some unknown reason my dear grandmother might be the proud owner of explosive devices. Not once in my short life had I ever seen this lovely lady set off a firecracker. Maybe I heard wrong. Maybe they were actually Grandpa's firecrackers? For years, I was consumed with burning questions over her puzzling possession of black powder. Finally, when my parents felt I was old enough to handle it, they explained why there had been a package of fireworks tucked snuggly between the rubber spatulas and the twist ties. Turns out my grandma was actually a bit of a joker. Every once in a while, after the grandkids were safely tucked into bed, she liked to wreak a bit of harmless havoc. Just for kicks, she would light a firecracker in the kitchen, discretely toss it into the middle of the crowded living room, and wait for the sparks (and her unsuspecting guests) to fly through the air.

I guess my parents were trying to protect me from the startling truth. But how could I really be shocked? Her hometown was the epicenter of America's fireworks industry. It's a wonder she ended up marrying my grandfather instead of one of the Zambelli brothers. If marrying an Italian immigrant hadn't been frowned upon in the Irish American community, my story may have been totally different. Nah. My grandfather was a total catch. No amount of fireworks could have stolen her heart the way he did. I always think of the two of them on the Fourth of July because we spent every Independence Day at their house along with our entire extended family. Too bad it's raining today, otherwise I'd celebrate by lighting a flaming metal rod of skin sizzling molten material, place it in my tiny son's hand, and hold my breath until the crazy flaming thing finally fizzled out. Oh well, there's always tomorrow night. P.S. What do people do with their spent sparklers now that metal coffee cans are getting harder and harder to come by?

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