Tonight at the African dinner they served beef instead of goat, which I thought was very pleasant of them. They fried plantains and sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. And these corn discs, they had. The corn discs were to scoop up the food, because in Africa you eat with your fingers. Newsflash -- It's fun to eat with your fingers. It's al-naturale. But the best was the cooked cabbage. I asked Lolly, How did you make your cabbage so tasty? You wanna know what she said? Butter. She melted butter in a big frying pan (let's not mention frying pans) and added her chopped cabbage and sorta sauteed it, finishing it with a lid and letting it gently steam until soft and tender.

Boy, I am tired and I take no responsibility for the above paragraph.

Anyway, it figures I loved the cabbage. I'm such a lover of simple things. Butter and cabbage, I got a charge out of that.

Then Kristina, age 20, spoke (and gave a slide presentation) about her one month trip to Africa so she could learn how medicine is practiced over there. It was all spell-binding. Then she got to the part where she visited a family in their house. The house actually looked like a big cardboard box tipped on its side, meaning it was all open on the front of the box. And it was made of cow dung. Poor Kristina had to sit there and visit with the family while millions of cockroaches crawled all over her. Hello. And she said she was a bug person, took bug class in college and everything. But even she was going ape inside. The picture showed her smiling away on the outside, but she was hardly smiling on the inside. Cockroaches are without a doubt my least favorite thing in the whole wide world. I guess I won't be going to Africa anytime soon. Whatever Kristina's made of...I'm not.

It was a wonderful evening. Lolly and her husband have the gift of easy-going, gracious entertaining. I'm always impressed by that, since it is not my gift. My gift is frantic, stressed and leave-half-the-food-in-the-fridge entertaining, I really should hang it up. And their house is all huge and open and flowing. Loved it. Lovely, lovely people. Aaaah. This was in Venice, you know. I enjoy dashing over there from time to time.

I got a hoot out of the 16 year old girl teaching Bible Club. She told me she had a scrapbook going, outlining all her future wedding plans. I said, I would like to see that. So, today, she brought it for me to see. She says she has too much time on her hands. Which I found amusing since she is quite the talented young lady. She's African American and can rumba, sing, play piano, cook, do photography, tell a great Bible story and play fun games with the kids. She has the knack. She won't have a thing to do by the time she marries, it's done all ready.

Speaking of weddings, I'm going to a bridal shower tomorrow, 2 hours up the road. So, I'd better git. The hostess didn't consult me on the time of the bridal shower. So instead of it being at 5:00 PM, it's at 11:00 AM. Do the math.

I wrapped the shower and wedding gifts. They don't look so hot. That's not my thing, either. My hands will not take charge and subdue the roll of gift wrap, or the ribbon, no, they subdue me. CALLING CDW. WHERE ARE YOU, CDW? Presentation is her THING. But for me, ain't it nice the sole purpose of wrapping is to unwrap it and crumple it up and be done with it. Da quickah da bettah. One Christmas DTD'S Great Uncle Pete spent the whole opening the presents time gasping in horror at the extreme waste of wrapping paper. He was incredulous, all that nice paper, torn to shreds and no one even looked at it. Wicked waste. It was pretty funny, actually, he was on a roll, ha, ha.

Butter fingers KEM