Sniffing for Antiquity

History is my thing. Actually, that's kind of a generalization. I don't care about battles and forts; I want to see things that make me imagine a day in the life. I want to picture people from centuries ago walking where I'm walking. Museums and historic sites are great places to learn, but they are also opportunites to jump start the imagination.


I recently had the chance to examine a very primitive Roman sandal, and it led me to wonder how many lives were actually lost to such sandals. Surely the leather thongs and hard flat soles tore into the skin of the feet of many Romans, allowing the filth of a world devoid of modern sanitation to infect the feet of countless men, women and children, who would seek treatment from physicians who were basically guessing at cures.

A visit to the Tower of London had me constantly wondering if Henry VIII had walked in the same exact place that I was walking. The coats of armor begged me to imagine the heat and discomfort, not to mention limited range of movement that their wearers had experienced, and I remain to this day very sceptical that jousts ever actually took place in full armor. Viewing the crown jewels caused me to imagine what it must have been like for a jeweler to create such majesty with rudamentary tools and perhaps a wood fire to melt the gold. The most intriguing thing to me, however, is that this so-called palace was not very grand with its narrow, winding staircases (did no one break an ankle?), low doorways and relatively ostere furnishings.


At the Colliseum in Rome, I compared the lack of ease that I experience climing or descending the steep stairways in modern arenas and stadiums to what it had to have been like with the added challenge of uneven steps. Did the spectators bring cushions on which to sit, or did they sit for hours on the stone benches?

At Pompeii, I imagined that it, and all other thriving towns of that time, could not have smelled very good, what with the lack of sanitary facilities, refrigeration, toothpaste and deoderant. Anyone who has visited Pompeii knows that it's citizens seemed to bathe an awful lot, but what were the unfiltered, unclorinated public baths like? History is always giving us insight to into the lower mortality rates of our ancestors. Up until modern times, people must have mostly felt discomfort at best.

Authenticity is a big deal for me when I'm visiting historic sites. I don't like the idea of too much restoration and I try to ignore the necessity of it; I get afraid that no part of what I'm looking at was ever touched by people who lived hundreds of years ago and that makes it less interesting to me. Could it be that the Mona Lisa has no original paint? What if?

But accuracy is also important. After all, look at our stupid asses -- for years we all believed the capital of China was called Peking! That's pretty major, so whose to say for sure that those food cooking counters in Pompeii aren't really toilets or that the Coronation Chair was ever sat upon by William the Conqueror. Can we even be expected to believe that Queen Elizabeth the first is in that sarcophogus? And wouldn't it be fun to peek sometime?

I actually found an amazing place to get a real history experience here in the U.S. Places like Colonial Williamsburgh and Plymouth Plantation smack of reenactment and that bugs me, but I recently went to the New York City Tenement Museum. Please go! When you do, you'll be given a tour of two apartments. There are more than two, but two takes an hour and that's all you're allowed per visit.

We saw a tiny apartment from 1876 and another one from 1934. I've chosen to believe that the museum really did look up census and other public records as they claim, and I was given a lot of information about one of the families who lived in each place. The linoleum on the 1934 apartment's floors was original, which was so amazing to me. I wanted to touch it with my hand. The building had been vacant from 1935 until 1988, when they began to preserve it as a museum. The guide explained why there were interior windows, and that really painted a picture for me of how sweltering it must have been before airflow was mandated. I started to consider what it was like for a large family to share one bed. We were shown a coal stove and we were told that before indoor plumbing, there were outhouses used by all the tenants plus the saloon on the ground floor but that chamber pots were routinely emptied out open windows. I was actually able to imagine for once what it smelled like in the old days -- coal smoke, raw sewage, horse shit, spoiled food, b.o. -- and I was oddly comforted by that.

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Ginny Perotti, Television Reviewer

Last night marked the premiere of the 2009 season Family Guy, possibly the most important program on television.

The season opener found diabolical closeted homosexual baby genius Stewie in possession of another transporting device, this time allowing Stewie and his talking canine sidekick Brian to visit parallel universes. Stewie didn't realize that the transporter was set to "shuffle" and hilarity ensued as the dog and his boy visited the Griffin family as drawn by Disney, as the modern stone age Flintstone family who really pioneered the primetime cartoon genre, and as a Japanese samurai family, just to name a few. It took a poodle Stewie from a dimension in which dogs are humans and humans are dogs to explain the snafu involving shuffle mode and soon all was back to normal. Brian and Stewie were initially unsure that they were indeed back in the universe that they call home until patriarch Peter farted in daughter Meg's face.

There have been past episodes involving time travel and the like that didn't live up to their full potential, but the 2009 kick off to Family Guy gets four stars, two thumbs up and my seal of approval. Here's hoping Seth McFarlane can keep up the good work.

My pizza recipe

For years, I thought homemade pizza was the bummer of all bummers. It wasn't something to be made by home cooks because it couldn't come close to anything you could find in the thousands of pizzerias in downstate New York. It was always a huge disappointment. I'd get served jarred sauce or leftover pasta sauce and shredded mozzarella baked on rolled out bread dough or boxed dough mix, or on an English muffin or, worse, an embellished frozen pizza. It was what was available and it was because we lived nowhere near the closest pizza place. Later, I would come to appreciate other forms of pizza like that sold at Nick's in Forest Hills or the touristy pizza Marghareta in Amalfi or Rome. I was also discovering that my kids weren't closed-minded pizza snobs. They probably would have eaten and enjoyed an English muffin pizza or a Chef Boyardee kit pizza with browned ground beef on it or, God forbid, sliced hot dogs. At the same time, I was beginning to love working with my precious stand mixer and it's groovy dough hook, so I decided we'd give homemade pizza a whirl. Now I get requests and compliments, although we still buy the real deal all over town. This is NOT standard pizzeria pizza, just so you know. It's for when you're in the mood for something different.

A stand mixer and food processer are helpful/kind of necessary with this recipe.

FOR THE SAUCE:

preheat oven (yes the oven) to 350 degrees.

2 lbs plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise, cored and seeded

2 cloves of garlic halved

2 tsps dried basil

kosher salt

pepper

TBS olive oil

fresh basil

Coat a jellyroll type sheet pan with the olive oil. set the tomatoes on the pan, cut side up. Sprinkle with dried basil, salt and pepper. add the garlic. Roast for about an hour. Allow to cool a bit and then puree the whole thing (skins and all) together with the fresh basil in the food processor, adding salt and pepper as needed. This won't taste like Sunday sauce. It will have a milder, fresher flavor.

FOR THE CRUST

1 pkg dry active yeast

1 cup water (110 degrees give or take five degrees)

2.5 - 3.5 cups flour

1 tsp. olive oil

1/2 tsp. salt

In the bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the oil and salt. With your dough hook, mix in the first 2.5 cups of flour for one minute on a medium setting. If the dough doesn't come away from the sides of the bowl, start adding more flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until it does. To knead, just keep mixing with the dough hook for two more minutes. Form the dough into a ball, place in an oiled bowl and turn once to get all sides of the dough oiled, cover with a clean dish towel and allow to rise one hour in a warm place.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Punch down dough to deflate and roll or press into a fourteen inch circle. Place on lightly greased pizza pan, top with sauce, julienned basil, perhaps some very thinly sliced garlic and FRESH mozzarella and perhaps a little freshly grated Parmagiano Reggiano. You can add other toppings but PLEASE NO HOT DOGS. Bake 20 minutes and enjoy.

[tip: you can prebake the crust for five minutes before you put the sauce and cheese on it]

THINGS YOU LOVE THAT I HATE, or a rant by a party pooper

Here's my top ten things that I am not a fan of although most people are:



1. At Last by Etta James

2. That Hawaiin-ish version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that starts off "ooo oo".

3. The movie "Grease"

4. The Broadway musical "Chicago"

5. shrimp in any form (I don't eat any seafood but I notice that most people find shrimp to be a very celebratory food).

6. Streisand/Cher/Bette Midler/Celine Dion/Elton John/Billy Joel (I consider this list a category for some reason).

7. Prolific authors (Koontz, Mary Higgins Clark, Patterson). I keep an open mind about Stephen King because his house is around the corner from one of my many childhood homes on a street of Gothic houses where I used to love to walk in Bangor, Maine. I get that this is not a valid reason not to lump him with the rest of the prolific authors.

8. icicle Christmas lights

9. Velvet Christmas dresses on baby girls

10. ARETHA FRANKLIN. I am sorry, people, but I just cannot stand her and I know you all think she's a living legend. I simply don't possess the brain receptors to appreciate her.

Interesting is a relative term

If you were to ask me, I'd tell you I have a veritable treasure trove of interesting stories to share with my boys. Ask me; don't ask them -- unless you want an honest answer.

Drew and Jordan have never found it interesting that I attended a wooden two-room schoolhouse complete with a bell-on-a-rope in rural Vermont. The fact that my family and I moved into a house in Brooklyn built by a Dutch farmer in 1652 on the day that Kennedy was shot doesn't elicit so much as a grunt of acknowledgment, even though they are both well aware that our country isn't exactly brimming with structures from the 1600s. To them, there is nothing fascinating about the fact that I've known their dad since I was eleven and that we married despite a long-distance courtship that took place during my high school years. The stories about their grandfather painting a Mercedes with flat yellow paint and a brush aren't deemed funny, even though I had to ride in it as a kid and I kept noticing that nobody would ever park next to our car. Nor do they care that I heard elderly and flamboyant author and gay icon Quentin Crisp say on Letterman that his phone was listed, so I called him and took him out to dinner when I used to work in Manhattan. They never ask about my experiences as an identical twin. When I told them I used to have to go with my mom on the subway once a week in rush hour to Sloane-Kettering when I was a baby to get that thing on my arm treated, I got no response. They don't care about the car I won in a raffle even though it was worth 50 grand. I'm soooo boring.

They do express interest in one story, however. It isn't my story, though. It is a story that both of my parents have in common and it is the legend of the "mickey". It seems that my parents and other neighborhood children in Brooklyn in the late 40s were allowed to cook potatoes in the street. They were permitted to make little fires in the gutters and roast potatoes in the smoldering ash and they called them mickeys. My boys call them mickey potatoes and, at 13 and 17, they never grow weary of hearing about them. My mother will explain that she was given the potatoes; my father claims he snuck them out of the house. Mom says she warmed her cold fingers them, although I tell the boys that this is a little "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" for my taste. They have no idea what I mean, nor do they want to know. When asked if the spuds were wrapped in foil, the boys are told that nobody had foil back then, and they politely listen to the reasons why. Not many people in Brooklyn had cars, either, which seems to explain why the children weren't chastised for building fires in what could be used as parking spots. I joke that they did this because candy hadn't been invented. Sometimes I suggest that my parents never really made mickeys; it seems like something they only read about, although I can't explain why they both have the same memory if it isn't true. Secretly, I think cooking potatoes in the street is weird and, you should pardon the expression, "doofy".

I assume that my grandchildren will enjoy my stories about the two room schoolhouse, and they won't look away from their video games when the boys try to tell them about the time they stood at the crater of Mt. Vesuvius.

I remember Grandma (and Grams)

I'll be the first to admit that I don't put my grandmothers on a pedestal, may they rest in peace. I'd almost go so far as to say that often I don't even miss them. They truly had their moments of greatness and my paternal grandmother had a great big heart about 85% of the time. But they both had a mean streak and a weird idea about loyalty to their children (my parents).

Although these two grandmothers didn't speak to one another, they both had the same sense that they had to protect their son and daughter from my siblings and me. When they were visiting, they seemed to think that they had to create a barrier between their children and those noisy, needy kids who made their children work so hard. They were diligent about detecting the slightest bit of a "fresh mouth" (a/k/a disrespect). Basically, there were times when my grandmothers took an adversarial role against my siblings and me and, in the case of my mother's mother, some of my cousins as well (my father was an only child). I've mentioned this to my mother, and she kind of doesn't get why I would find it so odd. I guess that old chestnut about it being a different time rings true in this case.

My mother is a doting grandmother; my father tries to be, but he has quite a few stepgrandchildren so he is pulled a little thinner. He does okay though. My boys have enjoyed quite a bit of quality one-on-one time with both of my parents.

Three years ago, my husband and I were challenged as parents when our older son got in some big trouble twice just before his sixteenth birthday. One of the times, my mother was visiting, so she saw firsthand the aftermath of a party that got out of hand. She saw how much it was going to cost us to replace stolen and broken items, and she witnessed my feelings of violation. My husband's father died young of a heart attack, so my mother fears sometimes that John will too. This was one of those times.

The party happened over Thanksgiving weekend, and we lifted Drew's restriction on New Years Day. By January 5, he had found more trouble and this time it was worse. He had done something illegal at school and he was caught. Fortunately for him, this happened a week before his sixteenth birthday; it would have been a whole other level of serious a week later. When John told me what happened, it seemed so surreal -- I kept waiting for him to say "just kidding". While I waited for John to bring Drew home from school, I called my mother to tell her what happened. She didn't take it well.

She had some choice words but when she said "He's nothing but a criminal", I said I had to go and hung up. Now on top of this crisis in my family, I realized I had to teach my mother her role in my life as the mother of two sons. I decided to email her and tell her I didn't need to be defended against my child and that I was deeply disappointed in his actions but it didn't change my unconditional love for him. All I wanted from her was to love my kids as I love them. Email is great. You get to think about what you want to say before you hit send. That was all it took for her to at least act like she saw things my way. The next day, a wise friend of mine told me to stop sharing so much with my family and I have taken that advice to the point that my father was never told about this blemish on Drew's school record. All's well with Drew, he's attending college on a full scholarship and my mom doesn't seem to hold a grudge.

It's probably the times we're in; I dare to say more to my parents and I can say it quickly but thoughtfully via email. Maybe I'll link my parents on this.

Little Word, Big Meaning?

I have a friend who strongly feels that political correctness is overrated. She had older parents, and they did not hold back the epithets and outmoded labels for other races, ethnicities and those with disabilities. In all fairness, I don’t think the older generation was really exposed to the sort of media that told us the new word for “colored” was “black” and that we were now asked to say “Downs Syndrome” instead of “Mongoloid”. My friend is not unapologetically politically incorrect in sensitive situations, but she still thinks people need to lighten up, and she continues to completely embrace a few of the old tags, such as “oriental,” which I tend to agree is certainly not one of the worst of the bunch.

On the other hand, I tend to think that over the course of a generation, political correctness can foster compassion and understanding. I acknowledge, however, that sometimes people don’t mean any harm whatsoever in the usage of a particular out-of-date term. The word that comes immediately to mind is “midget”.

I would never presume to say that I know what it is like to have dwarfism. Aside from the physical challenges, little people are undoubtedly a curiosity wherever they go. Many parents, including my husband and me, have hoped that our child’s first encounter with a little person would not be met with much commentary by our child. The comments of innocent children are probably nothing compared to the snickering of older kids, teens and insensitive adults. I just don’t know if banning the word “midget,” as many little people would like, will change things. The theory seems to be that it conjures up images of side-shows and that it isn’t dignified. I can see that to some extent….

On the other hand, what I’ve learned is that my parents’ generation was taught that the word “Midget” is proper terminology. My father will tell you with the utmost certainty that a midget is a dwarf whose features are in proportion with his body. Dad likes the word “features”, but he means the head and limbs. Dwarves, according to Dad, are midgets with short limbs and a large head. Dad is a Congregational minister. My mother, a woman with a very high IQ, also believes this. My sister’s former supervisor, a licensed psychologist and former nun who headed the counseling center at a college until recently, sent a memo to a co-worker advising that the college had one midget enrolled. Recently, I was visiting with a relative-by-marriage who is the same age as my mother. She was talking about her favorite reality t.v. shows and one of them is that show with the “nice midget family”. This woman has what I call an agenda of kindness and was clearly serious and not poking fun at the Roloff family of Little People, Big World.

I suppose the “solution” is to make sure our children know that all little people are dwarves but no dwarves are midgets and, if we feel it is appropriate, to tell our aging parents to reconsider the use of the word “midget” and just leave it at that. This is one instance, however, where I might actually agree with my friend that we can ease up ever so slightly on the political correctness.

My Toys for Tots Soap Box

I recently had the occasion to shop for a toy for a small child and it got me to thinking about Christmas morning. Then I went to the little girl's birthday and I really wondered what her Christmas mornings are like since she was positively lavished with gifts. She's a lucky and deserving little girl, but all kids are deserving whether they are lucky or not. First a confession: I might actually have a conservative bone in my body. A tiny one. I believe having children is a privilege and not a right. You should have the means to support them before you bring them into the world. Don't act like one thing has nothing to do with the other if you don't have a skill or job experience and you want to have a family. Furthermore, if you are a woman, expect that some event could possibly force you into the work force while your kids are still small. Be ready, just in case. That said, sometimes shit happens and you can't adequately support your kids. Even if the shit that happens is your lazy ass sitting in front of the t.v., I can never blame the kids and I could never punish a child because of his parents' lack of motivation. And that brings me to my Toys for Tots Soap Box [stepping onto the box...] Stay out of the dollar stores, don't give cast-off birthday presents that your kid got at his or her party and didn't like, and steer clear of the 75% off clearance shelf. If you give some sad little piece of junk, all you are doing is creating garbage for someone else to throw away. Spend literally a couple of extra dollars on something a poor child can actually enjoy. And try to remember an older kid. These kids didn't create their family's hard times. They did nothing to deserve that junk I keep seeing in the charity boxes year after year. Nobody's asking you to go broke. Just do a little better.[stepping off the box.].

Hoards of Hoarders

I've long believed that nothing makes for a better Oprah or Dr. Phil episode than a good case of hoarding. Just like the proverbial car crash, I just can't look away. Now A&E has given me a gift -- an entire series about people with hoarding compulsions. It's a spin-off of the hit series "Intervention" and they just call it "Hoarders". I have to give them credit before I go on to describe the program -- compassionate professional organizers and psychotherapists are on hand throughout. They are rarely successful, but it's not for lack of trying.


There is a very sad component to the program, of course. People are so consumed with this compulsion that they lose loved ones who either turn their backs on them or are taken by Child or Adult Protective Services, or they are at risk of losing their homes, but they can't seem to give up the junk. Spoiled food is routinely uncovered under piles of garbage. Sometimes a cat carcass will be discovered. Last night, a woman lost her children, her home was rat-infested and she still couldn't let go of the crap. Her house looked good at the end of the show, but everything was in storage and, in the end, she never got her kids back because she hadn't truly let go of the stuff, and her husband filed for divorce. She fought for and won the right to keep a re-usuble Slurpee cup from 7-11. The entertainment factor for me comes from getting royally pissed -- watching this show feels almost interactive.


My grandmother was a hoarder. One of the sadder things that she held onto was an obsolete dictaphone she had purchased at a yard sale. She had visions of typing at home, just like so many people who don't want to get up and go to work but the very idea of getting some lawyer to talk into this ancient monstrosity was ridiculous. She had lots and lots of small appliances without electrical cords that she boasted she had aquired for a dollar. Cool Whip containers never got thrown out, and she loved her Cool Whip, so you can imagine. She saved all shopping bags, but never reused them. And she was always about fifteen years beyond trend, stocking up on used 8-Tracks, for example, long after anyone could use them, and declaring that surely they could be modified for use on a cassette player. She had expired food and she would cut away spoiled or moldy portions of cheese and produce rather than throw the food away, because that was "a sin". The dress she wore to my parents' wedding was still on a hook on the outside of her closet door (with a dozen other garments) when I was fifteen. Basically, there wasn't any place to sit down or set a plate of food, and visitors were told to go around back because there was too much junk up against the front door, but she couldn't part with her stuff. She and her mother (another hoarder) even stored things in their bath tubs and sited ever-changing reasons why a sponge bath would have to do (it was cold, they didn't feel well, etc.).


There was an irony to this. My grandmother loved my father to a fault. He was her only child and she had been a single mother with a great capacity for caring and affection. She wanted to protect him from things he didn't need protecting from, such as working "too hard," or "aggrevation" (a favorite word of hers). He found her hoarding very aggravating, however, and he worked hard to clear paths in her home or clean off chairs so that we could sit down. His frustration would become apparent, and our visits to Grandma's would be all about the two of them yelling, with Grandma blaming us kids for upsetting our father because she could not believe her hoarding was the cause or that her son could be upset with her. He did love her very much, and I think that made it all the harder.

Dad sometimes enabled Grandma in her hoarding. He would agree with her that some of her possessions were valuable. He'd get all proud of the antique "secretary" in her bedroom (a desk) and he'd declare that her Hummels were like money in the bank. These affirmations were fuel on the fire until she reached rock bottom -- she saw a mouse, didn't move from her recliner for a couple of days out of fear, and decided it was time to move out and she had to throw up her hands and let the stuff go.

Now, when I watch Hoarders, I tell my husband that we really need to take old clothes to the charity bins or I suggest that we take a box of books to the library or that we bring something to the curb on large item pick up day, and John laughs. We are not hoarders -- we just like to watch.

Monday Morning Blues

I'm off to work in four minutes, and, as I often do, I am wondering what changes I can make in my life to make Monday morning easier to take. I know I can't afford to be a homemaker, but I don't have training or youth in my corner. When I first moved here, I thought that becoming a massage therapist might be the route to take, and nobody was doing that back then, so I wasn't taken seriously by loved ones and that idea never gained momentum. Of course, that field has taken off by leaps and bounds, and now I feel like it's too late. I love to cook and am quite good at it, but culinary school is out because there are some key ingredients in fine dining that I just won't try to taste (mushrooms, seafood).

How much is the Megamillions worth this week?

Yeah, I'm one of those liberals

A friend whom I like very much recently forwarded me a “funny” email that actually didn’t make me very happy. It was a picture of a man taking a picture of Michelle Obama with a cell phone while she volunteered at a soup kitchen. The caption suggested that he was taking a picture of the first lady with a Blackberry that cost him $100+ a month while he mooched off the government. That assumes an awful lot, and I don’t hold it against my friend because maybe I’m just being humorless. Except, I don’t really think I am.
I personally do not know anyone who would rather eat with filthy, smelly, drunken bums than earn a living. Granted, there are many people in this country who have not been around the truly downtrodden, but it is safe to say that you would not break bread with someone with matted hair and exposed festering toes unless you had to. If you commuted by subway in the 1980s, you’d know that many homeless people could clear a subway car in rush hour because they were that hard to be around. I promise you that any poor person would rather afford his or her own meals than to sit next to someone who has lived on the streets for years.
There was no way of telling that the phone being used to photograph Mrs. Obama was a Blackberry or that it cost $100+ in monthly service charges. There are many different pay-as-you-go cell phones on the market today, and I am sure they are a blessing to the poor, and serve as the only telephone for countless impoverished families. Certainly, we all lived without cell phones years ago, but that does not mean they aren’t useful and that they don’t serve to keep us safer in certain situations.
Finally, the government doesn’t have soup kitchens. This person was not mooching off the government. Your tax dollars had nothing to do with this.
Yes, I am a liberal through and through. And all I’m asking is that we all stop assuming people are lazy or trying to get over on the rest of us unless we know the truth. No, I’m not one of those people who think the poor are all the salt of the earth and the rich are all mean – that’s so “Pretty in Pink”. If anything, watching Judge Judy has told me that some of the truly poor are so beaten down that they will sue their own adult kids for $300.00.
A little compassion, a little understanding and a little benefit of the doubt – don’t we all need that?

Peter Frampton in Three Acts

ACT 1

I was introduced to the works of Peter Frampton in the following manner: when I was in 6th or 7th grade, I overheard my friend Holly's brother Michael, or possibly, her cousin Ernie, say "Peter Frampton is only about the best guitarist who ever lived." This was the late-ish 70s, and we were in rural Vermont, so most of the boys (and girls) did not have access to much of what was happening in the music scene. I presume this statement was based on heresay or derived from propoganda distributed by the Frampton publicity machine. Specifically, he probably heard Casey Kasem say it on AT-40. To be fair, it was only a matter of days until Frampton was all over the radio dial.

ACT 2

My father fell hard for Peter Frampton and his way of "making his guitar talk". Dad fell for a lot of the latest artists during that time. My son Drew claims that his friend Kevin B. doesn't have the ability to know which bands are and are not "bitches' bands" and the same held very true for dear old Dad. Case in point: he pretty much flipped out on my little brother for scratching a 45 of the Bay City Rollers' hit single "Saturday Night" (yes, the song that spells out the world Saturday). Dad also loved "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago and "Weekend in New England" by Barry Manilow. We now know those songs are for bitches only (a/k/a girls and women). Obviously, a cute guitarist with long flowing hair and a cache of extremely lame songs was best suited to a female audience, but Frampton had us all fooled at that time. I'm telling you, some publicist was presenting this guy as a guitar legend and we all bought into it for a while. Anyway, at the tail end of the Frampton Comes Alive craze, Dad was courting my stepmother Joan, who had teenagers to impress. Wouldn't you know that slick so-and-so won them over by bringing his copy of Frampton Comes Alive over to their house so he could appear hip and cool!!!!

ACT 3

I'll get straight to the point. My friend Annette and her husband Joe were watching something on t.v. with Peter Frampton singing live. I believe this took place in this millenium. The next day, Annette uttered the following words: "Me and Joe were astounded when they actually showed Peter Frampton mouthing the words 'do you feel..... like I do' into the microphone." It took me a minute, but I realized that there was someone on this planet who still believed Frampton had, indeed, made his guitar talk all these years. Bless her heart. And Joe's.

The Pickiest of All Eaters is in the House

Drew has never been a great eater. I know exactly how it started; he hated baby food green beans and my "nanny" Anna Marie seemed to be forcefeeding them to him because they were nutritious. She only sat for us for a couple of months, but it was during that time that Drew developed discerning tastebuds. Okay, I can't really put all the blame squarely on her shoulders; I kept buying the green beans, thus enabling her little battle of wills with my 11 month old son.

Drew finds the smell of homemade chicken soup nauseating. He's never eaten a cooked vegetable or any sort of fruit any time past infancy. He won't even eat chili although he eats pasta with sauce, tacos and sloppy joes (it must be the beans that put him off). He claimed to eat Chinese food at his friend Mikey's house once, and the joke now goes that he ate a grain of rice and then Mikey's mom gave him a bagel. It's probably a maturity thing, except he is several months beyond his 18th birthday and attending college.

My mother used to be beside herself because I was so picky. Here's my list of things I won't eat: mayonnaise, eggs (of course, I will eat them as an ingredient in baked goods), seafood/fish, mushrooms. I have always eaten cooked vegetables, all kinds of meat and every variety of fruit. She had it easy with me!

The other night, Drew and my husband John were discussing how so many of his peers like Indian food and sushi, which is kind of a problem for him since he deems both foods disgusting (he has actually tried sushi). Last night, Drew went away with some of his friends to visit another friend at college, and he texted John, asking that he guess what he had just tried. John guessed Indian food. It was apple pie!!!!! In a way, I was so happy for this step in the right direction, except that no picky eater his age should be bragging about trying any sort of dessert for the first time and... HE HATED IT.

Naturally, we know how this will ultimately work itself out. He'll start dating a vegetarian and suddenly he will "love" vegetables and that's all he'll eat.