Hello friends far and near,

On Wednesday nights my stepson comes for dinner. Isn't that nice? It gave me the opportunity to exercise a change of mind. At first I was going to really impress him and fix Julia Child's beef stew. Then I canned that and was going to fix his favorite, meatloaf and mashed 'taters. Next I decided to fix roasted chicken and mashed 'taters because that sounded good 'n easy. But what we finally ended up having was grilled deli roast beef and cheese sandwhiches, spread with Dijon mustard and mango pepper jelly. You can see the succession of ideas was on a downward spiral, from ambitious to familiar to quick to a cinch. Nevertheless, these little sandwich babies are tasty, with lots of butter. I got the idea from Williams-Sonoma catalog. You know how they show off recipes and then also offer the fancy, priceless ingredients required to fix them? In this case they wanted you to buy marmalade sandwich spread. The picture of the sandwich looked so good I almost ate it. But the marmalade sandwich spread was a mere $30 for a little jar. I think. I'm pretty sure. Don't go quoting me or anything. Well, I don't have $30 begging me to spend it on a little jar of marmalade sandwich spread, do you? No matter if it's the most delectable food item ever concocted by man. I mean, all my Williams-Sonoma money went for my new dashed blender. So, I just decided some kind of grocery store jam would do nicely, and it certainly did. Then we had spinach. Sauteed. I still had a bucket of spinach I wanted to use up because on the box it says, For freshest taste use within 2 - 3 days after opening. Well, I take that very seriously, I want 'freshest taste', don't you? So, today was day 3 and I didn't have pineapple juice for Spinach Cocktail. (In case you haven't noticed, I am typing Spinach Cocktail at every available turn, it has such a ring to it.) Have you ever noticed, of course you have, how a truckload of spinach, when cooked, suddenly, and I mean suddenly, reduces to a tiny speck of a heap that would barely fill a thimble? Aunt Charlotte used to say, Vegetables cook down . . . ya think? It's ridiculous. Too bad human ladies can't reduce like that. Wouldn't that just be so handy for us? Sauteeing our bulk off in the blink of an eye, or maybe we could sashay it off (I mean, we are humans and not spinach, after all) in the course of ordinary living, with no discernable effort?

I've decided on an item that is NONESSENTIAL. Reading the newspaper. Now, this is not funny. Reading the paper is THE BEST activity I know that lets you pretend you are doing something useful, important and intellectual when in truth you know you are just entertaining yourself. I'm generally in a kind of a glaze when I read it because I do it a night when I'm too worthless to do anything besides, can't even gather the gumption to get ready for bed. Well, I shouldn't speak for the world, but that's how it is for me, I have spent A LOT OF TIME I shouldn't have scanning the headlines. I just have. I know it intuitively, I know I'm banking tons of useless mind calories (because selectivity is another gene that bypassed me, I mean, do I REALLY want/need to inform myself about a three-headed donkey that dropped out of the sky into someone's living room in Iceland or that poor Michael Jackson is still alive? I didn't think so.) but I persist. In defense of newspapers and journalists everywhere, you guys are addictive and I HAVE found FABULOUS, PRICELESS things in the paper, pretty much daily. But what I am saying is that I don't know when to say, ENOUGH! So the problem is entirely mine. I'm obviously confused again on essentials and non. Maybe I wish I'd never seen that quote?

I'm on a time crunch, lucky you. DTD came over to print a paper and show off her new cell phone cover, lime green. She's all smiley and happy about something and is only letting it out in dribs and drabs, she rations her news very deliberately. Anyway, she only had one snappy comment, well, maybe two, tonight. My favorite was when Mike, in an attempt to flatter me (it doesn't work), mentioned something about my being charming (he's losing it). DTD pipes up, Charming might be pushing it. Well, at least she left the door a smidge cracked for debate on the subject. I'll take what I can get, don't you?

I have an essential item I have to take care of TOMORROW. Thank you notes for my birthday. I cannot concentrate on expressing myself on my blog until I pay my debts of thanks. Balance, which my Granny preached, Whatever you do, try to keep a balance in life, is not my forte, I seem to know nothing of it. Granny had lots of good ideas and so many hopes for her grandchildren. We shan't give up.

KEM