Hi Strangers,

I think you could safely say I am a Blogging DUD right now.

But thank you Dr. Deb and BJH for your helpful comments. Dr. Deb wonders why I didn't heat up my baked beans. L-A-Z-Y, is why. Her family likes Bush's Baked Beans, but she personally doesn't "get" the combo of beans and sugar.

BJH had never heard of comparing baked beans to houses before. Hey, I wonder if that is an idea original to the Universe so far, baked beans and houses.

Mike and I celebrated our anniversary tonight at Cassis, a French Brassario, or whatever it is. I am far from sophisticated in foreign things. When BJH and I were looking at condos recently, we went in this one ultra mod townhouse stlye condo, in a high rise, too. The owner was there and it turns out he is none other than the owner of Cassis, too.

Now doesn't that just beat all, as Barney Fife would say? There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of condos along Beach Drive and we go in about six of them and Mr. Cassis is there. This is interesting to me because for Christmas my dear church friends gave us a gift card for Cassis. And we hadn't used it yet but were saving it up for our anniversary.

Mr. Cassis, does he really live there? By all practical appearances, No, he does not. Nor does his wife. The place was so spotless you could have taken a magnifying glass to the shower door and not found one speck of a dried mineral marring the sheen.

So the Realtor said, This place is so clean it doesn't look like you live here. Mr. Cassis says, in a thick French accent that allows me to completely lose the essence of what he's saying, You are either clean...or you are not. I know he said this because the Realtor translated later. So, I'm assuming they take showers.

I will not be inviting Mr. Cassis to my house anytime soon.

So, at the dinner tonight, where the tables are pretty much stacked on top of each other, which is the French way, I guess, well, when one table of four two inches away from our table got up to leave, I told Mike, QUICK!, say something romantic before the next people land. There was still the other couple on the other side of our table, two inches away, but we had already exchanged pleasantries because she had stolen my napkin before we arrived, which I didn't know yet, and I was looking all over for it. Then she 'fessed up. Was that as clear as French Onion Soup?

Okay, so Mike said, Thirteen years of wedded bliss I wouldn't trade for anything. I said, Even though I'm not the world's greatest housekeeper? And he said something like, Small taters. I wish I remember exactly what he said because it was very sweet and freeing (he may live to regret saying it), but by then the romance was over as we were surrounded again.

But the food is very good, and I'm pretty sure the kitchen is clean, rather than not clean. Mr. Cassis himself was running around enjoying himself, but I didn't say, Hey, remember me?

Today was fun. I went in Borders and all their calendars are $1.00. So what that the year is half gone, I helped myself to Mensa calendar, the kind you tear off a page every day. And each page has a puzzle. This ought to be good. And then I scooped up the tear-off-a page Joy of Cooking. I had that cookbook once upon a time, but it was too deep for me. Too bad I find out now that it is THE cookbook of and for all time.

But I succumbed to the JOY calendar because on the back of the box it showed a cast iron flat pancake griddle, the exact kind I bought at Crate and Barrel with my gift card, which I told you all about in the blog that disappeared. JOY says, How to make the perfect pancakes. So, I bought her calendar, too.

Then there were the little Moleskin date books, miniature ones, adorable. I bought two of those because, after all, they were originally $9.95 for $1.00. One is a monthly calendar, which I bought just for looks, and one is a page for every day where I plan to "journal" houses tasks I need to get to. Maybe if I write it in this sweet little moleskin booklet, I will actually do the jobs, so as not to let Mole down.

I really had something to say besides everything I just wrote. I thought of it while I was vacuuming. And it has to do with brands. Brands of what, Please, somebody tell me. It must be the French banana split freezing my brains. The waiter said he doesn't eat sweets. I always ask the waiter what to order, and he couldn't help me with dessert except to say root beer float. Heck, I can make that at home.

People who don't eat sweets are a breed outside my realm of comprehension, btw. He said he was born like that. Whatever.

One night I was driving around looking at houses in the dark. And I found the perfect bungalow on the perfect street and I was, once again, all moved in.

I drove by the next day, in the daylight of all things. The bungalow had gone from white to yellow in that short span. So I moved out.

Hope I remember what I was going to blog about by tomorrow.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY pretty soon.

Frenchy KEM