Farewell to the Captain Captain Kangaroo dies. It's sad to watch a piece of your childhood fade to black. I fondly remember the Captain, Mr. Moose and Mr. Bunnyrabbit as mainstays of a happier time...a time even before the Great Quisp and Quake Wars (now who remembers THAT?!) Farewell to the Captain, you will be remembered with love and missed sadly.

I Hate Winter I hate winter. There, I have said it. But the real issue is why do I continue to live in the god-forsaken area known as southwestern Pennsylvania when I feel the way I do? Because truth be told, I really hate summer here too and while fall is my favorite season, in southwestern PA, it lasts about 12 minutes sometime at the end of August. I told my boss today that we should relocate the office. To Phoenix. How can a quasi-state supported agency for a local area in western PA explain their main HQ in Phoenix? Well, that I really don't have an answer for...all I know is why move to another building within hell when what we all really want is to just get the hell OUT of hell? I mean come on....water cooler chatter around here pretty much basically revolves around: a) how cold it is b) how hot it is c) how much we hate it and my favorite, d) why this place sucks We never really hit on why it is we all stay. So my proposal is to just hit the road. Pack up the old kit bag and go someplace where we can all be happy. My desktop Weather Bug just started blinking - winter weather advisory and wind chill warning from tomorrow night through Friday. Four - six inches of the white crap and winds which will freeze your nostrils shut, guaranteed. Does anyone have the number for Greyhound?

Parking Points I used to think that getting the closest space to the front of the store was the epitome of a good parking job. I mean, after all, isn't that how my grandmother taught me on our summertime trips to the mall to get her hair done and have grilled cheese sandwiches and marshmallow sundaes at Sweet Willliam's? You know the drill, you drive around and around and around and around until that piece of parking space perfection opens up and then you slide right in. It should be within a certain number of rows radiating from the front entrace and it should be within a certain number of spaces within the row. If not, continue to drive. I have to admit, I parked like my grandmother parked for years. I'd use that extra gallon of gas at $1.27 per to take another trip around just to see if I could score that perfect parking real estate that it seemed everyone ELSE was driving around and around for. Let's face it, movies have been made from this stuff! Have you ever see "Fried Green Tomatoes"???? "I'm older, I have a bigger car and I have more insurance." That about sums the endless odyssey of parking to a T doesn't it? Well, not long ago, our mall built some anchors onto it's existing site. These included a JCPenney which jutted out and abutted the access road that went around the entire mall. To access the parking, you have to cross a fire truck lane which accesses the store's entrance and then cross a pedestrian crosswalk to the parking lot. For the most part, it's Russian Roulette with cars. The signs say all the cars have to stop for those in the crosswalk and those who stop do so ONLY under duress and ONLY with looks of absolute rage and murder on their faces. I am sure several seniors and small children, apart from being menaced by those who either a) refuse to stop or b) stomp the pedal and see what sailing over the raised crosswalk at 60 mph is like, have been maimed or worse yet, outright killed by those drivers who just refuse to obey the STOP FOR PEDESTRIANS signs and speed off on their way with little digital salutes out the windows. The sad part is this group includes moms in vans, old ladies going 12 mph in Chevette's as well as kids in souped up antiques from the 60's. The fact that people continue to park and cross this crosswalk gives credence to the theory that there's a Sucker Born Every Minute. Well, as for me, I think after many years of parking in this particular lot as well as in the attached parking garage to the mall, on street places in town and even places where No Man Has Parked Before...I have finally been made privvy to the REAL secret of what parking for shopping is all about. Basically it revolves around a three-point system: proximity to a cart park, a pull-through and the elusive close-to-the-front. If you get all three, this is knows as a "Winner" or more appropriately, The Triple Crown of Parking. Yesterday, in sub-zero wind chills, as I went to Wal Mart to get dog food and cat food so our critters wouldn't plot our deaths in the middle of the night due to lack of sustenance, I realized that this really IS what it's all about. People were driving up and down, laying in wait for the perfect space, flipping each other off...the works. And when it all came down to it...I realized, yeah, they may have saved themselves a few steps to the door but in the end, like death and taxes, they still had to push that empty cart back to the cart corral or worse yet, back to the front door. Obviously, this is a critical problem since there were carts abandoned all over the place...left in parking spaces for others to nearly run over before they realized they couldn't park there. They are still parking the old-fashioned way...like their mom's park and like THEIR mom's probably STILL park. ANd I have to add, making it damned inconvenient for the rest of us. No one likes to pull into the primo space only to find three carts getting to know one another there. The worst part is how people who do this just eyeball you as you walk by with YOUR cart...to put it away, where it belongs. Yesterday, for example, in one space over from the cart park...this chick gets out and puts her car against a Ford F-150 directly across from her. I walk by...freezing but still doing the American thing and putting my cart where it goes...and as I give her a filthy look and felt particularly self-righteous about it...she shoots one equally filty BACK at me and then leans over and opens the door for her mother. They get in the car, light up and drive off. I trudged back through the frozen, 2 degree tundra to my car and went home. There really is no point except to say when you think about it, it does ALL come down to where the cart parks are and if you can pull that humongous SUV you're tooling around in through so you don't have to back it up and hit the light post. And once we ALL accept that, then and only then can society TRULY start to change.

Cold Night in the ER As is always the case, on Friday afternoon at 3:30, the Boy came home and announced his ear hurt. With the doctor's office closing at 4:00, I called and requested some medicine be called in but probably in the hustle and bustle of the end of the day, that request never was answered. I also called to see if there were Saturday hours...there weren't. We were pretty resigned to having to use the on-call service. Let me explain THAT. Apparantly, MY doctors very rarely staff this on-call service for their office. Every time we call it seems some third-rate, younger, less-established doctor is taking over. And, usually, there we are waking them up at some o'dark thirty in the morning about some weird problem we're having like the time that Anthony broke out in a weird rash after taking a dose of some high-test niacin his endocrinologist gave him. As you can well imagine, we are usually treated to some nasty doctor we don't know that we just woke up who cannot believe we'd be calling about something in the middle of the night. Never mind that he's SUPPOSED to be manning an on-call service...we won't go there. Anyway...Evan's ear was hurting but he wasn't complaining and I was lulling myself into this pseudo-false belief that everything would be okay when at 11:30 p.m. pretty much as I had ditched the book I was reading on how to run a Jewish household and rolling over to go to sleep I heard his little voice say "Mommie! Come here!" I got up and went into his room and sat on his bed. I knew the next step was pretty much going to be calling the idiot on-call doctor and when I dabbed at his ear with a piece of cotton and blood came out, I yelled to Anth to start the process...which went pretty much like I thought up to and including the instructions to get ourselves to the ER post-haste. It was the coldest night of the year and we started the van and let it run...none of us wanted to sit in the van on a -5 degree night and ride to the hospital. We bundled up Evan and got dressed and off we went into the frosty night. The ER was pretty deserted - my heart actually leapt! Was it possible that we'd be in and out?! In triage, Evan asked the nurse who his doctor would be this evening. I had to crack a smile. He was SO scared...he was pretty sure his brain had liquified and was running out of his ear. She replied that it would be Dr. Kennedy. He was obviously highly disappointed. "Oh, I was hoping it would be Dr. Carter...he is my favorite." The Boy, we find, is a ER addict on Thursday nights after we think he is sleeping. Then he asked if his mother would be able to stay with him - she told him actually we BOTH could go with him and then he went with her. We followed. How proud I was of him! Such good questions and so brave...especially considering he thought he was pretty much going brain dead like Professor Klump did. The doctor came in (wow! How fast!), looked in his ears and pronounced that his eardrum had actually burst and his ear was horribly infected. Now it was MY turn...to feel like Mother of the Year. How could I have not known my kid's ear had a raging infection? What was I planning on doing - letting him chew his arm off in pain???? Antibiotics all around...a male nurse named Teddy brought them in and gave Evan HIS instructions. Yep...my boy wanted all the details. Apparantly, the 400 mg of ibuprofen I had given him before we left the house had kicked in. Suddenly, he had morphed into Mr. Science and was all curious and investigatory about the ER and what they were doing to him. We left exactly 18 minutes after we entered (kudos and more kudos to Westmoreland Regional Hospital's ER!) with 2 - 250 mg amoxicillin caplets in the boy and 2 in his pocket and with enough gauze sponges and chucks for his pillow to last a month. We were asleep by 2am. It was an exciting, if cold, night. Yesterday he finally saw the ENT specialist since the drainage continues and he failed a hearing test at our doctor's office. New meds...a drop this time. Another hearing test in two weeks. With the language issues we already have, we certainly don't need more so we're being careful. But you know...it's so weird to remember the baby I used to carry in and have to do all the talking for. Holding his hands and comforting him and now see the boy who not only walks away with the nurse by himself but, more importantly, who knows who Dr. Carter is and wonders why HE can't treat him. How cute :)

Voices for Israel This is a GREAT CD. I heard some snippage of it on JM in the AM today and fell in love. Go to their website and support such a GREAT cause! Their mission statement on the website reads: Mission Statement Voices For Israel has four primary objectives: � To express support for and solidarity with the people of Israel during these trying times. � To raise money for victims of terrorism in Israel. � To promote a global sense of Jewish unity and community. � To achieve the above goals through music; there is no more inspiring way to convey our innermost hopes, feelings and prayers than through song. How cool. If you'd just like to BUY....go to this link: Buy the CD Let me know how you like it - I think you will.

We are No. 1!! Just found out that if you google "sundriedtomato" - my blog comes up in the NUMBER ONE spot! How cool is THAT?

The Squeeze Lives Sad but true frequent fliers...my dad took her back. And. having said that, I have washed my hands of the whole sordid affair. I told him I just didn't want to be the one to take the phone call telling me someone had popped him. We went down for the holidays and spent the night (!) - getting the unforeseen pleasure of sleeping on the Murphy Bed with no pillows. You can just SEE my wry smile can't you? The house was filthy - girlfriend obviously feels that simple straightening and then eventually cleaning is beneath her. It didn't matter...she stayed holed up in their bedroom the entire time we were there so we didn't see her until the end when she felt the need to come out and "pray" over us. Uh huh. And it was kind of a downer when we saw the gifts for her grandchildren all piled up on the lid of the jacuzzi, all wrapped and sparkly and beautiful and then there were the gifts for OUR kids (my sister's and mine) inside of a brown grocery bag with the price tags still on them...unwrapped. But the Boy DID enjoy his gas-powered scooter that my dad got for him and his cousin. And Trever DID enjoy the bath I gave him when we first got there. The look on his face said..."Oh my favorite Aunt! I get a bath every time I see you!!!" And pretty much those are the only baths he gets too. On Sunday morning as we were preparing to saddle up and ride off into the sunset, my Dad got up and made us all breakfast. Grits, eggs, scrapple, bacon, ham and a bypass on the side! Anth discovered he does NOT like grits but I thought they were pretty good and kept cracking "My Cousin Vinny"-inspired grit jokes at my Dad who had NO clue. And I have to say it was pretty nice...my sister and brother-in-law were there and Trever and me and Anth and our kid. The Squeeze was sleeping off her hangover. Nice family! So anyway, I have decided to make some New Years Resolutions. Last year, I resolved to write more and by establishing my Blogs, I have done that. THIS year...I want to start "The Book". Not that I know how to start or where to start but I will start it. When I was six years old, I wrote my first "book." My first grade teacher bound it for me in a red velvet cover and let me illustrate it. She wrote in the words for me so everyone could read them. And it was around that time that I told my mom I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I was going to publish books and books and books of stories and then I would buy her a Mercedes station wagon. Well, my mom has been gone for nearly 21 years and so I think the Mercedes is kind of out of the question, but it would be nice to finally achieve my dream and obviously one I have had for a LONG time. I will also keep my checkbook balanced and save $1000 by the end of the year. Even if I don't save $1000, by keeping my checkbook balanced, and not bouncing anymore checks, that should save me a small fortune!!! I also plan to reach my personal weight loss goal by August. I am not sure if that translates to getting a two-piece bikini to dazzle the ponies on Assateqgue with but in any event, I hope to have to wear weights so that I don't blow away when I am sunning myself. Everything else...well, we'll work on it as we go which always seems to be the best way anyway. Somehow, it all works itself out.