flotsam and jetsam

I keep starting posts that go nowhere, so I'm just going to write a few things that are probably incomplete.

1. I've been listening to NPR after work, and they've had a series about summer food. Various people have written in to talk about foods that bring back happy memories of summertime, many of them were invited to come in and record their little stories.

As I listened, I kept thinking about summertime foods from my childhood. We had a lot of cookouts, so there were lots of burgers and baked potatoes and toasted marshmellows. And I have a wonderful memory from when I was about 4 years old, and our neighbor Mrs. Bartolucci gave me a huge wedge of watermelon and told me the seeds reminded her of the freckles I had on my face.

But the food I kept coming back to hardly qualifies as a food: ice pops.

My mother is not a demonstrative woman. We've never hugged or kissed - even when I was a young child, she made it clear that she did not like to be touched. She has a hard time expressing her feelings, too - well, she's pretty good with anger, but feelings of love and affection are kept inside. So she always used food as a way to show her love.

Unfortunately, my mother is a terrible cook. She didn't bake us special cakes or teach us recipes handed down for generations - what we lacked in quality she made up for in quantity. She would pack huge lunches for me and tell me to share them with my friends. She would buy an extra loaf of crusty Italian bread from Iuliano's Bakery so we could all eat as much as we wanted.

And in the summertime, our freezer was chock full of ice pops.

She would send us out the door early in the morning, with the instruction that we were not to bother any of the neighbors until 9:00 a.m., but when it started to get hot, she would come outside with a huge handful of ice pops for all the kids in the neighborhood. She would lop the tops off of our chosen colors (ice pops are always ordered by color, not by flavor) with a knife and hand them out. There were always seconds available.

That's my summertime food memory.

2. So You Think You Can Dance

If I was voting, I'd be voting for Danny Tidwell - he's just beautiful. Although I will be fine with anyone winning - I love Sabra, Lacey has been great at almost every dance no matter the style, and Neil is a great dancer for a gymnast ; )

But I'm kind of excited, because Monkey and I got tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance tour. Pretty good seats, too!

3. Stu Bycofsky

I know everyone else has already addressed this douchebag, but if the right-wingers don't like the dissent and division in this country, they could A) avail themselves of a poll showing that the country is pretty solidly together on the subject of getting out of Iraq, so how about rallying around that?; and B) remind themselves that they are the ones who supported the scorched earth strategy, 50+1, only governing for wingers President Bush. If you want a unified country, you need competent leadership. Bycofsky is one sick bastard.

4. My kid is going to college in 3 days!

On Sunday, we're taking Sio up to Worcester and leaving her there.

We went to a WPI BBQ last night, which turned out to be great. The organizers had the students sit together at one group of tables and the parents sit togethr at another group of tables. You might think that a group of people who have a Polytechnic Institute as a common factor would be very geeky, and you would be correct. I love a geeky crowd though, and I enjoyed talking with the other parents. Although I'm going to have to practice saying "I was young when I had her" if I keep interacting with other parents! One of the dads said "and you are here for....I'm stumped, you aren't old enough to have a college age child." Well, I am, actually.

I'm vicariously excited beyond belief. I wish I was going away to college. I especially wish someone else was paying for it.