The only thing wrong ...

I baked seven-grain bread this afternoon. It's one of the two breads I make regularly. As I sliced it, I remembered the first time I made it, about three years ago.
Mike was here, just waiting for the bread to cool enough to slice. I wasn't confident in the bread, fearing it would be too dry. It was the first time I'd made up my own bread recipe, so I was ready for failure.
But as I was looking at that first slice daring myself to taste it, Mike had already cut himself a piece and had slathered butter on it.
I looked at him as he bit into it -- my brutally honest taster was about to render his verdict.
"Oh man," he said with his mouth still full. "The only thing wrong with this bread is that it isn't at my house."

Razzing my son

Is it wrong to tell a former Marine you're going to get him the new Tinkerbell movie for his 37th birthday?
It's been a long time since Danny and I have just been silly together. His problems in his life and Mike's death have kept us pretty serious.
But the other night, I just messaged him on Facebook and told him that's what I'm going to do.
He called immediately and asked where that came from. I told him I was watching one of my socialist TV shows and there was a commercial on for the new movie, which is coming out om DVD the day before his birthday.
It was good to just laugh with him like we did in 2004, when I put a Red Sox screensaver on his computer after my team won the World Series (he's a Yankees fan). He told me he had put a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on my car and I told him I would put a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on his truck if that was true.
"You don't have one," he said, and then started chanting "Mom's votin' for Bu-ush."
I pulled a bumper sticker out of my briefcase and we just laughed.
He took Mike's death hard -- we all did. But he's finally coming out of his grief and starting to find some peace.
I am getting him that movie, though.

Root for the Yankees? Me?

Well, maybe. I'm a die-hard Red Sox fan, but Rob is thinking about finally getting a new TV (ours is 16 years old) if the Yanks make the World Series.
Now, I hate the Yankees with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns. I'm a Red Sox fan.
But our TV is so old I can't have cable AND the DVD player hooked up at the same time and it's a royal pain to unhook and rehook, so I only am able to watch Star Trek on my computer, and that's just a 19-inch screen, which I can't see from the couch.
So it's not really about the Yankees; it's about Star Trek.
OK, I'm rationalizing. But the World Series only lasts a few days and then I'll be free to watch Captain Kirk and all my outer-space heroes.
It's not like I'm selling my soul to the devil, is it?