To my friends,

Hello. So. Tonight my husband, a faithful Living Dust Follower, bless his baby heart, asks, What are you blogging about tomorrow? You, I said. Oh, you're going to tell the world what a sweet husband I am and how I rescued you from all your vast misery? Wait and see, I said in sepulchral tones.

Back up to that morning, won't you? I come downstairs in early-to-mid afternoon because I slept in. I always ask first thing, Did you read my blog and how did you like it? (the heck with Good Afternoon). He looked at me and said, You have reached new heights of corny. WHAT??? Then he quickly semi-modified his insult by saying, Oh, I meant that in a good way. Really. What flavor sucker does he think I am anyway? STRIKE ONE.

THEN he informs, with smokin' hot superiority, I Googled James Linn, and it says that President Thomas Jefferson appointed Linn to be supervisor of the revenue (whatever that means), inferring that James Stamina Linn, my illustrious relative, had nothing whatsoever to do with stalling the vote for Jefferson's election, but rather JSL didn't come into play until AFTER Jefferson became president and was actually never hardly heard of before, that I had it all backwards and turned around and grossly misrepresented. (Whoa, that was a looooong sentence.) I told Mike, I am just SO SORRY that Wikipedia neglected to consult my mother for this article. STRIKE TWO.

THEN, bing, bing, bing, Mike says, You need to go to the store, we don't have any food. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? What unsupervised gall. We had a can of tuna. But he didn't want THAT because he had suffered eating homemade-by-KEM tuna casserole the last two nights in a row (served in the darling individual Sunny-Yellow-Fiestaware-casseroles-that-make-everything-taste-ever-so-yummier, the ones my sister gave me for my birthday). Let me dig out my violin. See, I'm not that picky, I could eat tuna every night for a month and not blink an eye. Once when my stepson was a young teenager I served leftovers from the previous night. When I placed his plate in front of him he whined, all down in the mouth, We had this last night. You're darn tootin' we had it last night. And that's the last time he delivered that little brand of charm to his wicked evil little stepmommy, you can bet your bottom dollar. Well, a can of baked beans perched on the pantry shelf (not as good as my mother's, but what of it?) didn't suit His Ungrateful Royal Highness either. What does he think I am, . . .

OH HEART ATTACK CITY, my fingers just slipped on the keyboard, and I pressed a whole bunch of wrong keys at once, and my whole blog instantly vanished into the thin (or would that be thick?) inky blackness of Computer Outer Space. I mean the whole site shut down. PUSH PANIC! So I had to pull it back up with great tremulous fear and HALLALU!, here it is somehow, unerased (word?) and in its right mind, even though I hadn't hit PUBLISH POST or SAVE DRAFT or anything. Nigh unto miraculous . . . again . . . how many times can this HAPPEN to one terrorized soul? I thought it was a gonner. Mike nearly escaped me ratting on him . . . but not quite, heh, heh. Okay, what does he think I am? SUPERWOMAN?? Listen, I made ultra clear before we married that I was NOT SUPERWOMAN. Nor had I any shred of an interest or intent in becoming SUPERWOMAN. I disguised not my true self, I sold him not a bill of goods. He swallowed. Now he's begging for something besides canned beans because he doesn't think they constitute an appealing lunch. STRIKE THREE.

But wait. In the evening we went to his really fun Singing For Your Health class he conducts. Walking up to the door I felt compelled to say, I'm TIRED ALL OF THE TIME. His shweetie-pie comment? You are not tired, you are only mentally prepared to be tired. STRIKE FOUR. And HOGWASH. My tiredness is NOT fabricated just like my James Linn story is not. Apparently Mike doesn't take the content of my blogs seriously, I mean, didn't he just freshly read my NO STAMINA blog that very morning? SHEESH! No real surprise, however, because I've heard the likes of this before. When we were dating I suggested, I'll have you over for dinner sometime. I'm not holding my breath, was his cavalier retort. Down the road I recited this story for HURH'S education, and he said, Oh, I was afraid I said something like that. Yeah, you betcha!

Now, hear ye the darling CDW by way of contrast:

KEM Dearest,
Have you ever considered your family came from royalty and had been used to servants that were at their beck and call 24/7? Maybe that's why you and your family are without that particular gene...ancestors didn't need it! See...I have it all figured out.

Well, modestly, yes, I do consider. And yes, CDW certainly does figure it, and I hope a certain someone is taking notice.

Of course tonight I was supposed to tell you the new "B" word that has booted Baseball right off its cocky little throne. I didn't quite get there, although I was somewhere in the field, talking about STRIKES and all. Like I said, Life happens, and far be it from me not to jazz things up for Mike. After all, he is a very dear and most satisfactory husband. All the ladies in his church choir that he directs are positively smitten with him. They tell me so, but also that I have nothing to worry about. Glad to hear it. And I forgive Mike his four-strikes-you're-outta-than-out because after all I had not been to the store and there WERE meager pickin's for a starvin' man. I mean, you can forgive a famished grouchy man just about anything.

SASSY KEM