Tell You [a] Little Story

Aaron is a sun beam and a Sunbeam. He knew his part for the Primary program the first day he got it. He was ready. Although he's on the wild side sometimes at home, his teachers know him to be among the most reverent in the class, and when the big day came, they sat him in the seat farthest away from them. Naturally. They had Lindsay and Joseph and Katrina to worry about. And don't forget Brooklyn. Aaron would be very well-behaved on his own, at the end of the row. And he was. He said his part flawlessly and Steve and I beamed from the third row on the left. He only knew some of the sign language for "Teach Me to Walk in the Light" and he was behind a beat or two, but that was cute, he was trying. He was making us so proud. Poor Joseph cried through his speaking part because he couldn't see his parents, and Brooklyn stared off into outer space with her mouth open. I'm sure their parents still loved them, and all, but clearly, Aaron was ahead of the curve in te...

What color to paint the kitchen? Our cabinets look like this, with a dark brown finish: The countertop is this: The appliances look like this: and: Nearby walls are grayish-blue, taupe, and a greenish-brown. So my dilemma is: do I play it safe with another drab neutral and then later maybe cover it with faux brick a la Monica's kitchen on Friends or do I paint it a real color (I'm leaning toward a masculine-y grayish-purple) and risk it looking really tacky and having my sister Sarah say, "I told you so" ? Please give your input. On a related note, anyone who comes to help paint will be invited to one fabulous dinner cooked in above-pictured range. Mom....?

He eats sand. He alternates saying, squawking, and shrieking "hi!" to every passerby. He mimics. He picks on his older brothers. He dances. He beams. He climbs. He fears nothing, except an occasional dog. He calls every man on a bike "dad". He prides himself on getting out of the crib during naptime. He vomits. He entertains. He hangs with his mom at the Grand Canyon. He unrolls a whole roll of toilet paper to blow his nose. He makes us happy. He looks like his dad. He laughs. He rocks.

Who woulda guessed? Spam has become high-class Seoul food: South Koreans can't get enough Barbara Demick Los Angeles Times Oct. 23, 2005 12:00 AM SEOUL, South Korea - Stroll into an expensive department store and walk straight past the $180 watermelon with a ribbon twirled just so around its stem. Don't bother with the tea in a butterfly-shaped tin for $153, or with the gift boxes of Belgian chocolates or French cheeses. If you're looking for a gift that bespeaks elegance and taste, you might try Spam. While it might be the subject of satire in the United States, in South Korea it is positively classy. With $136 million in sales, South Korea is the largest market in the world outside the United States for Spam. But here, the pink luncheon meat with its gelatinous shell is deemed too nice to buy for oneself, and 40 percent of the Spam sold here is for gifts. Especially during the holidays, you can see the blue-and-yellow cans neatly stacked in the aisles of the better stores...

1. Eating chili fries, Superdogger, fried chicken, deep-fried cheesecake on a stick, taco dog, salmon burger, sausage on a stick, pork chop on a stick, anything on a stick, gyro, meatloaf, fried asparagus, fried Milky Way, apple-filled frybread, frozen banana, frybread of any sort, funnel cakes, deep-fried Twinkies, garlic mashed potatoes, deep-fried Mars, anything deep-fried, curly fries, turkey legs, bratwurst, carne asada, Polish sausage, nachos. 2. Participating in the World Grilled Cheese Eating Championship. 3. Riding the G-Force, "a 75-foot giant-swing with the head-spinning centrifugal force of four-Gs" after any combination of numbers 1 or 2. 4. Attending.

THEN: Wow! We have a respectable sum of money to put into the house. First we'll remodel the kitchen, then we'll get new carpet. After that, a new garage door, then paint, inside and out. With any leftover money, let's landscape the backyard. NOW: Forget the other stuff-- I hope we're going to have enough to finish the kitchen. Everything's costing just a little bit more than we'd planned. Okay, a lot. THEN: Our friend the cabinet guy is so amazing! It only took 5 minutes to measure our whole kitchen. I trust him completely! NOW: I wonder if we should have communicated with our friend the cabinet guy about what we wanted our new kitchen to look like. Hmmm.... THEN: We are so generous to offer to pay the guy raising our kitchen ceiling more money if it turns out to be a bigger project than he originally estimated. We are so nice, and giving. NOW: What were we thinking to leave an open-ended offer for more money?! He is sure taking us up on that! The price is quic...

I graduated from college without ever taking any English or math of any kind. Zero. Freshman English? Nope. Calculus, zip. No American Heritage either, which was a required GE credit. In fact, my bachelor's degree in International Relations may be technically phony due to a beneficent grade advanced to me by a certain anthropology professor. You see, I was due to turn in the write-up of my field notes from a study excursion in Namibia, and this professor agreed to let me turn them in post-graduation, promising that when I did he would change my grade from an expectant C to a satisfied A. It's been 8 years, and I'm not making a lot of progress on said field notes. I think about it once in a while, and I believe in following through with what you commit to do, so maybe one of these days, I'll resume the tedious transcription of the dusty tapes buried in a box in the garage that every so often I have to rescue from the garbage pile when my husband decides to spring clean. ...