“Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.”

(Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are.)

Okay, I know you can't really smell ice cream from across an ocean and into a day where the wild things are, but the first picture (of a salad) wouldn't load, and the second picture (of soup) could not stand on its own two legs, so we're left with a study in pink. Ah yes, my favorite flavor of ice cream, Winter White Chocolate. Baskin Robbins only makes it in the winter months, hence the name. I think I'm allergic to some of the  ingredients now. But doesn't it look scrumptious? Sigh. Also, trying something new with the teeny tiny watermark, after reading a blog post about blogs being scraped. Once upon a time, my content was scraped. That was back in the dark ages, when I blogged here every day, and Babelbabe and I held court with the rest of the bunch. Before Facebook, before Twitter, before Instagram and the iPhone took over everyone's life.

I've been feeling like an old fogey lately. Like Maurice Sendak, I hate ebooks. Books that need batteries to work? That's the whole point of books. They require nothing more than for you to hold them in your hands. Also, I miss letters. Mail these days is too many envelopes from my insurance company about billing to my chiropractor for the accident this summer. Why do I need five envelopes every time they send me mail? And while it is fun to get birthday greetings from about 28 people on my birthday on Facebook, I am grateful that the ladies in Technical Services still believe in birthday cards, the kind made of funny jokes and pretty colored envelopes. I miss birthday phone calls, when everyone would gather around the phone and one, two, three, sing, "Happy Birthday to you!" In our family, we sing first in English, then in Polish, and if you're lucky, in Portuguese.

When I'm not being an old fogey, I'm working on keeping house. Today I had lots of energy and cleaned off my bed, under my bed, and changed my sheets to flannel--winter is supposedly coming, one of these days. I went to Trader Joe's and the East End Food Co-op and found this amazing lettuce blend which has herbs, lettuce, arugala, red cabbage...YUM. As a single person, I find that buying a head of lettuce is an exercise in futility, as I do not eat enough lettuce and the lettuce then becomes terribly gross before it is all consumed. Tomorrow, I'm baking a quiche for the Children's Dept. Christmas party, and while I'm grating cheese and chopping up peppers, I'm going to see if the celery I bought AGES ago still has something to be salvaged. When I poked it today, it seemed to still have some structural integrity, so I am hopeful.

Also, I have been re-watching Ugly Betty. How I love that show. Betty is such a go-getter. I watch her when I'm sick and/or when I feel that all my dreams have been stomped on. Betty doesn't let life get her down, so maybe I too could get up, dust myself up, and keep going. My mother has this bit when you're grumpy, she says, "Wipe that smile off your face! Throw it on the floor! Stomp on it!" It never fails to get at least a wan smile out of me. That woman is a force of nature.

Yesterday, after I'd told her about my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, she said, it's Joy's birthday today, but you probably remembered that. And I said, no! I knew it was one of these days! And she said, well, it's okay if you don't remember. But I want to remember, I said, because I want to know which day to be sad. Well, honey, she said, today is your day to be sad.

This morning, the book I'm reading was talking about memories and how memories can keep us warm, can feed us. And all of a sudden, I remembered the birth of Sally's first son, and how I was in Pittsburgh that weekend for the baby shower. There was no shower, a birth instead. Her son was 3 months early. I got to hold the baby in the neo-natal unit, and of all the babies I've ever held, that's the only time I was in a neo-natal unit. The thing is, I didn't think it was significant then, the way it hit me this morning. I never got to hold Peter. I never got to hold Joy. But because I was in Pittsburgh for a baby shower, instead, I got to be there for the first days of the baby!! A baby who is now really old, I think maybe in 6th grade.

I sort of feel like this was a "Lake Wobegon" blog post, like when Garrison Keillor on the Prairie Home Companion says, "And this week, in my hometown, Lake Wobegon..." and goes in and out of stories and you never know where he's headed and all of a sudden he's done.

That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.