Speech

Sousa doesn’t talk. It’s odd to live with a creature that drifts silently through the house like an ebony ghost.

We know that the girl possesses a voice. In two years she has emitted four small “meows.” 

Sousa is a beautiful black tortoiseshell cat who started life as a stray. She was run over by a car and left for dead at the side of a road. When a nearby farm family went to bury her, she stirred. Our local no-kill shelter took her in, paid the vet bills and tried to find her a “forever” home.

Every weekend she was tucked into a cat carrier and taken to a “mobile.” In other words, she was driven to a Wal-Mart parking lot with other foster cats in need of permanent homes.

Sousa apparently figured out that hiding silently in the back of her cat carrier was the fastest ticket home to her foster mom. For a year and a half, people passed her over for more vocal, charismatic cats.

But then she had a mobile showing at our house. We both knew this brave girl was right for us. After all, the other Tooley cats can talk up a storm. Neko even says the best cat swear words I’ve ever heard when I refuse to open the treat cupboard.

Silence is fine with us.

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Potatoes

"There is no such thing as an Idaho potato. But there are potato varieties that are grown in Idaho."

This was one of the first things my future mother-in-law said to me. She came from one of the largest potato-growing families in the state of Wisconsin and wanted to make sure that any future daughter-in-law of hers wasn't a potato illiterate.

Fortunately, I was a fast learner. And it didn't hurt that I'd sell my soul for homemade mashed potatoes.

My husband and a good friend are still laughing about my order at a famous Chicago restaurant. "I'll have the whitefish, but hold the rice pilaf. Just bring two ala carte orders of mashed potatoes, please."

One night in Berlin I came as close to potato nirvana as I'll ever get. We were wandering around looking for a quaint and inexpensive cafe when I spotted a restaurant named "Kartoffel". My high school German kicked in, and I recalled that this was the word for "potato". Sure enough, every item on the menu featured potatoes in some glorious form.

However, my love of potatoes will never eclipse my mother-in-law's devotion to these tubers. Every summer she drove from her home in Tucson to visit us in Wisconsin, and she invariably arrived unannounced. One summer afternoon she walked in our door just before dinner.

"I'll have to go to the store," I said, "I don't have enough potatoes."

"Don't bother," she said and went out to her car. She came right back with a sack of potatoes. I've never known any other woman who traveled with emergency potatoes in her trunk.

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Twinkies

The Interstate Baking Company recently filed for bankruptcy. In other words, Twinkies have tanked.

Who would have ever thought Americans could forsake their Twinkie habit? A lunchbox staple for generations, Twinkies have fallen from grace. What happened?

The answer appears to be that the world has finally caught up with my mother. Years before the term "health" food was invented, my mother was packing nutritious lunches for me every day. The format never varied: a cheese or peanut butter sandwich on 100% whole wheat bread, an apple and homemade cookies.

In my entire life I've probably eaten a grand total of three Twinkies. When you grow up with real food (called "slow" food now) you are hooked for life.

But now moms who grew up on Twinkies are doing a radical thing. They are reading food labels. Significant numbers of them are deciding not to feed their kids a chemical lunch.

I worked for a natural foods bakery for five years and remember an experiment done by one of the office people. An unopened package of Twinkies was placed on top of a file cabinet for two years. The Twinkies didn't mold, rot, shrink, smell, dry out or decompose. We could only conclude that Twinkies are shot full of embalming fluid.

A few centuries from now some archeologist will probably dig up an intact package of Twinkies and ponder the culture that produced "food" with archival qualities.

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Concrete

Anyone can remodel a kitchen by being handy with $40,000. It's a real trick to do a make over for $2,000.

Our son in San Diego found himself with four young children, a large dog and a kitchen built in 1939. Taking his design inspiration from friends' houses in Mexico, he planned a remodel. The new kitchen would be owner-built of simple, affordable materials. Our daughter-in-law noted another Mexican imperative, "Stops in construction might have to occur until the next payday."

Two building materials would be featured, Mexican tile and concrete - lots of concrete.

The work began. Four, ninety pound bags of cement were mixed into concrete. The concrete was poured into a handmade, arch-shaped wooden mould and allowed to dry for a week. Nine of these arches were created from the same mould. The arches became the supports for the built in table and countertop.

Then, the easiest, cheapest and most visually striking work commenced. Three trips to Mexico were made to bring home a stunning array of tiles. Patterns were created, and the table, countertops and floor were hand tiled.

One summer of hard labor, ingenuity, trial, error AND intense patience from all family members produced an utterly delightful kitchen. To which I must add, our son and his family now have the heaviest kitchen in all of America.

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