Random Reminiscences, or Some Things That Have Improved Since the 1980s

Carla and I have had such an exciting week (no). Yesterday, for instance, we went to the dentist and the library AND the thrift store (to drop off donations, not to look for anything fun), and then we waited for someone from the security company to arrive (he came an hour early) and for someone from the roofing company to arrive (he came an hour and twenty minutes late). 

But the dentist visit and the library visit, at least, gave me a chance to indulge in a little nostalgia. 

Carla, by the way, is so much better about the dentist than she used to be. It was once a source of tremendous anxiety. I can empathize with this, because I too get extremely anxious when I go to the dentist. (Sidebar: I recently was having some tooth pain that was severe enough I was afraid I would need another root canal. And my biggest fear about seeking treatment was not the root canal itself, but the fear of enduring the cold test that they use to diagnose the issue. That was the worst pain I have ever endured, and I was shaking and teary just thinking about the possibility of facing it again. I wondered if I could just… get a root canal without the diagnostic test [probably not]. Anyway, the happy but also deeply disturbing outcome was that I somehow had a piece of aluminum foil stuck in between my teeth that was causing the pain. Once I figured that out, the pain miraculously evaporated. I can figure out how to avoid the cold test another time, huzzah.) The hygienist used to have to wheedle and finagle Carla into doing anything. Brushing her teeth with the weird gritty polish was always A Process that involved lots of negotiation and Mean Mommy Voice. She actively and vehemently resisted the fluoride application, thrashing around and refusing to open her mouth. Our hygienist really got a workout, back in those days.

But! Now Carla is very nonchalant about the whole thing. I asked her in the car if she wanted me to walk her through what to expect, and she said yes. Then she decided in advance which kind of tooth polish she would prefer (grape, or mint) (she ended up choosing cookie dough; gag me). Then I told her that if fluoride was an option, we were going to do it. She still hates the fluoride. 

The thing is, fluoride treatment is so infinitely better than it used to be! She has it so easy! The hygienist gets out a teeny little tub of fluoride (seriously, there must be 1/2 teaspoon in there IF THAT) (and each tiny tub costs $40 out of pocket; our dental insurance – which we are extremely lucky to have, I know! – only covers one fluoride treatment a year, even though our dentist recommends it every six months) and paints it on her teeth and she’s good to go! The only restriction is she can’t drink hot liquids for an hour. That’s it!

When I was a kid, the fluoride treatment was a nightmare. The hygienist gave me a teeny cup full of caustic red liquid and I had to put ALL of it into my mouth and swish it around for a full minute. A full minute is like a million years when you are six or ten or however old I was! And the hygienist always cautioned me to not swallow any. I am a rule follower and also a catastrophizer, so I imagined that swallowing even a teeny amount would kill me. I hated it so much! 

Image from Reddit. Apparently some schools offered fluoride to students??? Did this happen in your school? I only ever got fluoride at the dentist.

There was a fluoride innovation at some point in my youth. Instead of the swishing liquid, my hygienist started carrying a fluoride foam. She would put the foam into the channels of a two-sided flimsy foam U, and I had to bite down on the U so that my teeth would be submerged in foam. Then I had to hold it there, not swallowing for a full minute. This was slightly better because the foam was sweet instead of caustic. But the foam would get all over my face, and by the end of the minute it would be dripping down my chin. Plus, once again I was afraid that even swallowing a teeny amount would result in my immediate death. 

Image once again from Reddit. I can practically taste the fake cherry flavor.

Fluoride treatments were the worst! And my parents had no sympathy for me, just as I have no sympathy for Carla. Because I know how it used to be.

(I mean, I have a little sympathy for her. I know it’s bitter and sticky and annoying. But I’m not going to let her skip it, as she pleads for me to do every six months.)

After the dentist, we went to the library. There was a mesh box on a desk in the kids’ section with three monarch caterpillars in various stages of development in it, and another mesh box on a separate table with a real-live chrysalis in it. Next to the second box was a display of books about bugs and butterflies. 

Libraries are AWESOME. I just love that the librarians, or someone high up in the library admin, think about how to engage young minds and make learning fun and interesting. 

Libraries, in my experience, are a whole lot better than they used to be. And to be fair, my library was the only one in my entire hometown, and my hometown was at least half an hour away from any other town. Where I live now, we have dozens of libraries that are nearby and easy to access. I patronize three regularly. (We are going to have a NEW library and NEW library system when we move, and my husband and I took Carla to check out the library early on in our house hunt to make sure that it was acceptable. Also, we looked into whether we could keep our existing library cards – yes – because we adore our library system.) 

There are special displays set up by the librarians – book club picks, books on rotating themes (gardening, DIY, cooking international recipes), books about whatever holiday is coming up, books by famous authors who have recently celebrated a birthday, received an award, or passed away. There are rows and rows of computers. There are glass-walled rooms furnished with tables and computer hookups that you can reserve online for your homework session or writing group. There are innumerable classes you can take and activities you can attend – all for free. The librarians are friendly and knowledgeable and you (Carla) can ask them for recommendations fitting very specific criteria and they will walk you through the stacks and pull out multiple options and reserve several more for you online. You can pre-order books and come inside to pick them up or get them through the drive-up window. There are always crafts you can take home and reading contests you can participate in. 

When I was kid, you had to whisper in the library. If you didn’t, you would suffer the wrath of the librarian. The librarian was also deeply disapproving of the number of books I checked out each week – although perhaps, in hindsight, my lack of proper book transportation device may have been the subject of her disapproval. I tended to leave with a teetering stack of books in my bare hands. 

My local library took up both floors of a two-story building. It had stacks of books. It had a space for reading periodicals. It had an elevator. You could look things up in the card catalog, and you could research old periodicals on the microfiche machine. There may have been a computer or three. It had a lot to offer. But I don’t remember special displays or targeted groupings of books, or librarians who smiled and told you about monarchs. I do remember that if you read a certain number of books, you could win a free pizza from Pizza Hut… but I think that was a program run through my elementary school, and not the library. (Ah, yes. It was called Book It! and it is still active today!)

Image from @LibbyApp on whatever it is we’re calling Twitter these days.

(Another sidebar: I wonder if my love for things like pizza and tacos originated with school reward systems? In addition to Book It!, there were frequently pizza parties we could win for various things that have escaped my memory. The pizza party part was the important part, not whatever it was we had to do to earn it. In high school, people on the honor roll got to go to lunch early, and on Fridays we had Pizza Hut pizza. I loved being one of the very first kids in line to get the pizza while it was hot and the cheese was melty. YUM. But even better than pizza: We could get a free taco for every A on our report card. Is there any better incentive? NOT FOR ME THERE ISN’T. My mom saved all my report cards in my baby book and it tickles me to see the little stamps from the taco place on each A to indicate I’d collected my free tacos.)

I’m not saying that Today’s World is perfect; I know it has deep and terrifying flaws. But in lots of ways, big and tiny, important and inconsequential, my kid has it really, really good. I try not to “back in my day” her very often, but some things are much better these days. Although I do feel bad that she doesn’t get free pizza and tacos in exchange for her grades.


Do you remember fluoride treatments from when you were a kid? Did you have any food-based rewards systems when you were growing up? What is something that makes you think kids these days have it a lot easier than you did?

Tuesday Randomosity: TV and Phone Calls Edition

I was ALL ready to go for a nice long healthful walk this morning but then I got home from camp dropoff and my foot was already screaming at me, simply from a) driving and b) walking from the car to the door of the house. So I have scrapped the exercise idea and am typing nonsense to you instead. 

  • I cannot find SkinnyPop snack bags anywhere. And by “anywhere” I mean at Target or at the grocery store that offers curbside pickup. I suppose I could go to Costco, but going to Costco is a Whole Thing and I like to put it off as long as possible. 
  • Every few months, my face decides to FREAK THE FREAK OUT and today is that day. Yesterday, it broke out into dozens of little itchy pimply bits, so before I went to bed I washed it really well and then applied a thick layer of Eucerin. Then – and I think this was a mistake, although it’s hard to tell because I have experienced this same Face Freak Out many times and I don’t think I always do this step – I applied some benzoyl peroxide via Q-tip to the afflicted areas. Then I went to sleep. When I woke up, my cheeks and forehead were bright sunburn red and everything was tight and itchy. I washed my face again, applied another thick layer of Eucerin, and now I just have to wait it out. I wonder why it does this? It’s regular enough that I don’t worry (so much) that my face is going to stay this way forever. But it’s irregular enough that I never know what’s going to provoke it. I am washing all my sheets and pillowcases today, though, just in case that helps. 
  • My husband and I are (finally) watching the latest season of Stranger Things. We watched a recap of the series before we started the first episode, and seeing all the seasons condensed into key moments like that made me laugh. The series is SO RIDICULOUS. It sounds absolutely bonker balls. And yet it is so good! I love the characters and I love to hate on their TERRIBLE hair. The danger is palpable and so intense. The acting is pretty great. I love it. This season is VERY intense though.
  • One of my favorite parts of watching the show is the closed captions. My husband and I have reached that glorious stage of life during which we really PREFER to watch shows/movies with the captions on. But for Stranger Things in particular, the captions for the musical choices bring me great joy. “Intense synth music” it will say, in parentheses. “Eerie stinger.” The adjectives give me life. “Curious synth music” or – my favorite – “inquisitive synth music.” How do I get the job of the person who writes these captions?
  • After an episode of Stranger Things – or anything that’s intense/scary – I need to have a little mental palate cleanser. Lately, I am watching an episode of Seinfeld. I have been making my way through the whole series over the past year or so, and I’m finally at Season 9. As with most TV shows from the 90s, there are a lot of storylines that are completely cringeworthy now. But so much of it is still so, so funny. And I am constantly reminded that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of the great comedic actors of our time. Plus, there are countless guest stars: Aunt Becky! Lorelai Gilmore! Sarah Silverman! Luke Danes! Charlotte York! 
  • I cleaned out my Contacts list on my phone. So many names of people I haven’t talked to in years – a few I haven’t talked to in a decade. A couple of people who are no longer with us; I deleted the entry for my husband’s grandmother, but not the one for my friend. A couple of restaurants from which I used to order takeout when I traveled for a job I left in 2012. Contact info for colleagues from that job and for the job I left in 2016. The number for the psychologist I saw several years ago. Details for various car services in various cities. Phone numbers for several old babysitters. The address and number for the dear woman who took care of Carla in the infant room of her first daycare. The numbers for both daycares she attended. Names and numbers of mothers of some of Carla’s former friends. And so many many names that I no longer recognize AT ALL. Kind of makes me wonder how many phones have me listed as a contact… and how many of those phones’ owners remember me.
  • The reason I started cleaning out my Contacts List is because I was hunting for a specific number. We have a tree in our yard that is starting to overtake our driveway. The bottommost branches scrape against my husband’s car when he pulls into the garage. I think it’s time to call in a tree expert. And we HAD such a tree expert come in and remove from branches from the defunct telephone wire a couple of years ago… but for the life of me I cannot remember what his name is! There are a couple of candidates in my phone – local numbers with names I don’t recognize. But did Past Me add any helpful notes about who these people were or why I have their numbers? No, she did not. Future Me is changing her ways, though, mark my words! We did have a separate tree service come out and trim the giant oak in our backyard, so I could call them… but it took FOREVER to schedule them to come out, and I don’t particularly want to wait forever. They did do a good job, though. And seemed very knowledgeable and professional.
  • I am still thinking about the poor cashier at the party supply place. I went in before Carla’s birthday party to order a couple of balloon centerpieces. The place was fairly busy – two people waiting for their balloon orders to be fulfilled, a man in front of me in line, a handful of other people wandering the aisles. But the poor cashier was FRAZZLED. He was doing everything at five times the appropriate speed – like when I asked for a specific balloon, he dashed over to the balloon card catalog and fumbled through the cards trying to find the right balloon, then dropped the balloon on the floor. Then he asked me what other colors I wanted for the centerpiece and I told him, and he swooped over to the area where the centerpiece balloons are kept, but then he grabbed only three instead of four, and had to swoop back to get the fourth, and then he dropped one of those. When he was writing my receipt, his writing was nearly illegible and his hand seemed almost shaky. And then he forgot to give me my credit card back. And then he dropped the pen, and couldn’t get the credit card receipt out of the machine. I felt SO BAD for him. And it wasn’t like there was a big line of people forming behind me. And no one was yelling or tapping their foot impatiently. One woman did come up to him and ask if there were any staff members on the floor, and then asked him where she could find the party games, and he told her. So it seemed busy but not frantic, you know? Maybe this guy was brand new at his job, and nervous because of that? Or maybe he had too much coffee that morning? Or maybe he’d already been yelled at by his boss for being too slow? I don’t know what the deal was, but I felt terrible for him because I know that feeling. I wish there was something I could have done. I wanted to say, “No hurry, I’m not in a rush.” But that seemed condescending, or like it would call attention to his distress. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything that I could say that would soothe him, so I tried to just speak in a low, calm voice and smile in a mild and unhurried way. If he were Carla, I would have suggested that he stop and take a few deep breaths, but I resisted the urge. 
  • I made a new type of pizza sauce yesterday. It’s quite good, so I want to record the recipe somewhere (although this may be a poor place to put it) for future consultation. I put a 28-oz can of tomato puree, 1/4 cup of olive oil, and 12 large leaves of fresh basil into the blender and blended them up. Then I added 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of minced garlic to a small pot and heated them gently until the other stuff was done blending. Then I added the contents of the blender to the pot and added approximately 1/3 teaspoon of dried oregano and about 5 shakes of cayenne and stirred everything together. I heated everything through until it started to boil, then I turned the heat off. It was really quite good.
  • A while back, Wordle “reset” and ended my winning streak. It’s not like I have that impressive a streak (although I have yet to miss a single word) (because I consult my husband if I get stuck and he is AMAZING) (there have been a couple of days when I somehow forgot to do the Wordle though, which I hope we can all agree is not the same as getting one wrong), but I like seeing how many Wordles I’ve completed and how many days it’s been since I last forgot to play. (72 days, before Wordle stopped keeping track.) Now I still get the satisfaction of playing, and it still shows the breakdown of how many times I’ve gotten the answer in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 guesses (0, 5, 19, 62, 27, and 13, respectively) but it no longer says how many times I’ve played. I am not a fan of this development.
  • Okay, I contacted the tree service that took care of our oak. Partly because they are a known entity, and partly because I can EMAIL them instead of calling. Why don’t more companies offer this option?

What’s new with you today?

Friday Randomosity: Once Again Mostly About Food and Grocery Shopping Edition

Shall we ignore All Current Events and talk about random inconsequential things? Yes please. 

  • Now that Carla is back in school, I can return to planning my grocery store runs for the week. This is useful because I don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn on the weekends, and also because the grocery store is MUCH less crowded on a random weekday at 8:30 or 9:00 am than it is on Saturday at 8:00. There is supposedly a limit on the number of people who can be in the store at any given time, but it always seems Very Full. Perhaps it is just that we all move together from produce to dairy to canned goods to meat, like a school of hungry mask-wearing sardines.
  • I went today because I needed dry sherry. (And also because I cannot go Monday or Tuesday because Carla is not in school, and Wednesday I have a mammogram and Thursday I am taking Carla to the orthodontist. Gotta give yourself motivation to wake up every morning, amirite?) I have a French onion soup craving something awful, and I like abundant sherry in my French onion soup. Why didn’t I pick it up with the other French onion soup ingredients when I went to the store last? Because I live in one of those states where you can’t buy alcohol on a Sunday before a certain time. Which is a RIDICULOUS law. What is the purpose? To prevent people from swinging by the store and grabbing a bottle of hooch to drink during church? I will be endlessly annoyed by this. Partly because of this law, I don’t typically go shopping at all on Sundays. But my last shopping trip had to take place on a Sunday for some reason, possibly related to me feeling cranky about waking up early on a Saturday. And as usual when I slip up and go to the store on a Sunday, I completely forgot about the stupid no-alcohol law and was unable to buy the sherry. That’s five extra days of life without onion soup, Internet! Yes I know I sound ridiculous! Anyway, today I was able to get the sherry plus some wine and I am never going to the grocery store on Sunday again. Until I forget about the no-alcohol thing and get annoyed all over again. 
  • By the way, there is apparently a SHERRY SHORTAGE.  I’d had a bottle of sherry in my hands on Sunday – the checker gamely agreed to see if it would scan as a cooking item or as a wine; it was prohibited for sale – but today there was no sherry to be found. I had to ask someone to help me look — surely they had just moved the sherry, I thought. But no, the staff person led me back to where I’d been looking. Fortunately, she was able to rummage around and dig a bottle of sherry out of somewhere. But while she was looking, she told me that sherry has been backordered for ages because there is a shortage. A shortage of… sherry???? Baffling! I find it so fascinating to learn about all these shortages of sort-of odd items – like the graham cracker shortage this past summer or the Hormel pepperoni shortage (which seems, thank goodness, to have ended) or the bucatini shortage going on now. Flour and sugar and yeast, okay; those are STAPLES. But WHAT is driving the shortage of more niche items like sherry? Has there been a lobster bisque upswing? An aperitif movement I’m not privy to? Perhaps we can blame it entirely on the UK, who, according to that one specific article, is going gaga for cocktails. I’m guessing there is some combination of increased demand and the shifting of resources to higher-demand products, but it is so wild to me that odd things keep running low.
  • Speaking of shortages: Every time I go shopping, I peek down into the cleaning supplies aisle, just in case. Today I was rewarded with a bottle of Clorox bleach spray AND a bottle of Lysol spray. Lysol is my preferred kitchen cleanser. I usually like the lemon scent (does not smell remotely like lemons) but have only seen it ONE TIME since March. There was a bottle of “mango & hibiscus” scented Lysol, though, and it was a family size, so I bought it. Okay, I just checked and it is in fact called “A Brand New Day” which seems quite aspirational for a cleanser, but here we are. The “mango & hibiscus” scent is noted in smaller print, so I think I’m supposed to feel more tied to the fresh start aspect of the aroma than to the mango and hibiscus. I tried it out and it has, so far, a fairly pleasant smell. It reminds me of hotels I used to stay in when I went to Florida for work: faintly tropical with an institutional essence. Only time will tell whether the scent eventually becomes repulsive. My grocery store also had a good supply of sanitizing wipes; I would have grabbed a container of those as well, but there is still a limit of two cleaning supplies per person, so it will have to wait for next time.
  • Moving right along to discussing more food-adjacent topics: my husband got me my all-time favorite tea for Christmas this year, Tea Squared Uncle Grey. The first time I had it was a million years ago when we could do things like travel to foreign countries and eat in restaurants. It was the tea served with my brunch at an adorable restaurant in Toronto, and when I make it at home it is just as aromatic and flavorful and luxurious tasting as it was then. It is expensive ($11.50 per box), compared to the tea I normally buy ($2.50 per box on sale), and I drink tea DAILY, so I am trying to keep myself to using two tea bags a week, as a special treat. It is difficult because Uncle Grey is so superior to all other teas but we soldier on. 
  • Why yes, in the background that IS a mug decorated with cats in tacos flying through space. It is another of my favorite Christmas gifts – this time from my daughter. I don’t think any piece of crockery has ever captured a person’s essence better than this does mine. 
  • To move away from food, but not out of the kitchen, I am wondering what to do about our gratitude tree. We started it way back in early April and gave up on it… at some point not too long after. It was always kind of a teeth-pulling sort of experience to get my family to participate, and it got to be too little reward for too much nagging, so at one point I was the only one adding any leaves or flowers. And then after awhile I just gave up completely, even though I continue to have many things for which I am grateful. But the tree remains. I don’t know if I have some delusional kernel of belief that we will pick it back up again? Or if I just no longer see it because I’m so used to it? But I am thinking about possibly taking it down. Or maybe I should leave it up! And try to jumpstart my family into helping it bloom again – maybe, this time, not requiring it, and certainly not DAILY, but just bringing it up time and again in case they want to add a leaf? That sounds really unlikely, doesn’t it. What would you do?
  • In other things-I-don’t-know-how-to-address topics: my return, apostrophe, and shift keys are… stuck. Not completely. But you have to press them REALLY hard to get them to work. Capitalizing letters is hardly worth it anymore and I am about ready to give up on paragraph spacing altogether. I have watched a few videos about how to remove the keys and clean under them, but it sounds very risky, and putting them back on seems VERY tricky indeed. (It took me three times to write the all-caps “very” back there which is too many times.) My husband’s taking a throw-up-his-hands let’s-just-buy-a-whole-new-computer approach which seems extreme. Sure, the computer is old and has some other issues, but I am not eager to spend the money on a new one. Especially when I have new towels to buy. (As if a person who has kept scratch, stinky towels for twelve years would just willy nilly replace an entire computer on the basis of some sticky keys!)
  • Today I finally gave away the last of the holiday gift bags I’d prepared for the various mail delivery people. Obviously my plan was to hand them out around the actual holidays. But those mail delivery people are slippery – they never ring the bell or knock to alert you to a package. And even if I am anticipating a delivery, by the time they drop it off and I get to the door, they are inevitably in their trucks already. A few times, expecting a delivery, I hung the gift bag on the outside door handle with a big note that said “FEDEX/UPS THIS IS FOR YOU” – but no one took it. We were able to give a present to the postal service worker; Carla spotted her coming down the other side of the street and set up camp by our mailbox so she could hand the gift off in person. But then the rate of package delivery slowed dramatically. Today, my husband had a new desk delivered. It came in several pieces, so while the delivery person was collecting the second box, I snapped up a holiday gift bag and handed it to him. He was a little surprised but said thank you and — this is the important part — took it with him. I hope it wasn’t too weird for him, because it was a little weird for me. Next year I think I will try pretending that I don’t know about the money restrictions and give out gift cards as I have in the past. 
  • I am in a bit of a book lull. I read my first book of 2021 last week (The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman – I enjoyed it immensely but it also made me very sad and I cried several times.). But since then, I haven’t really been able to get into anything. There’s no dearth of books, of course! I am reading four, currently – it’s just that none of them is grabbing me. I’m not sure whether to press on (meh) or give up on these four books entirely (I don’t wanna) or start a fifth book and hope that IT grabs me. 
photo from amazon.com
  • As I mentioned earlier, I have to take Carla to the orthodontist for the first time next week. It seems likely she will need braces, but the actual reason we are going is because we are playing Dental Tag, which I don’t recommend. A little over a year ago, her dentist suggested we see an oral surgeon to remove the frenulum between her top teeth. The oral surgeon said that he needed her to be under the care of an orthodontist first. At least, that’s my very vague memory of it; Carla gets super anxious about dental things (who can blame her?), so my husband and I went with her together to the oral surgeon last February for the consultation. I was very nervous (wherever does Carla get it?) and also quite busy trying to persuade a very amped-up Carla not to touch all the oral surgery equipment in the room, so I did not really register what the surgeon was saying. Unfortunately, neither did my husband, despite the fact that he was the designated calm, listen-y, ask-doctor-y-questions-and-listen-to-the-answers person. I must have had some inkling about the orthodontist aspect, because I asked our dentist for a referral when we went for a cleaning last fall. But my husband’s recollection (and he has the well-established Better Memory of the two of us) was that we were to come back in a year. An email I wrote to my mother after the fact said the same thing. It’s now been nearly a year, so I called the oral surgeon to set up the appointment and the receptionist told me I needed to have Carla see an orthodontist first. SIGH. So, long story very long and super boring, we are going to see the orthodontist next week. I am nervous. I don’t recall enjoying the orthodontist when I needed orthodontic work as a child. And I can’t imagine it’s any easier to deal with when it is your precious baby whose mouth is being fooled with. Perhaps we will go out for ice cream afterward as a reward for getting through it.
  • Oh, I see we’re back on food: We are having pizza tonight, per Carla’s request. Pizza, for Carla, is pizza CRUST with just the barest kiss of tomato sauce. She will eat pepperoni on the side as well as raw mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. But she will not eat pizza with those exact same things on them. My husband requested two small pizzas, one with pesto, chicken, tomatoes, and mozzarella; the other with tomato sauce, pepperoni, mushrooms, pepperoncini, and shredded mozzarella. I will just have my normal, which is tomato sauce, pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, and shredded mozzarella. That is the pizza combination I get 90% of the time. And usually if I order some other set of toppings, it’s because I don’t know how smooth the pizza sauce will be (or I know it will not be smooth). For me, pizza is a very specific thing. My husband, on the other hand, likes to get a wide variety of topping combos. Is that normal? Do people like to try different topping variations on their pizza? Or is there One True Pizza for most people, like there is for me? I wonder if I should branch out a little? Sometimes I bookmark pizza recipes that sound exotic probably because they aren’t my boring old norm. But it’s very rare that I actually commit to making or ordering something different. (I did make a delicious mushroom/goat cheese/onion jam concoction a few times, but I always come back to the old faithful.) Do you have a One True Pizza?

Well, now I am hungry. I hope you have a restful, healthy weekend my bloggy friends.