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Posts Tagged ‘American Girl Doll’

I married a man, a doctor no less, who HATES golf. I’ve tried sweet talking him out, into the open air of a country club, to hit a “birdie” or a “bogey” or anything, just to give it a try, but nope, not happening, never, ever. He would always say he sees no reason to follow a tiny ball around a vast, grass wasteland, even if driving a golf cart might be fun.

On the other hand, we now have a President who cancelled a trip to Poland, then ventured out to his branded and manicured golf course – all while Hurricane Dorian raged – to “chip” away at his “links.” On the last day of his third August in the White House, this was Mr T’s 226th day of GOLF!

What happens when an ace journalist, Susan Glasser, collects the mega data of 3 years of AUGUST Tweets from our Golfer-in-Chief? You get a compelling picture of the escalating and devolving speech process (and therefore thought process) of a presidency that resembles a hurricane, even without an enhanced Sharpie diagram!

Mr T has gone from a Category 1 to a 5 faster than a toddler can disintegrate into tears because… well, pick a reason.

Trump not only makes us believe it now but, as we approach the three-year mark of his upset victory, in 2016, his project has succeeded in such a confounding way that it seems as though Americans will now believe anything—and nothing at all. Today there are few things too extreme not to have plausibly come out of the mouth, or the Twitter feed, of the forty-fifth President. In August, Trump called himself the “Chosen One” for his confrontation with China, grinned and flashed a thumbs-up during a photo op with the family of mass-shooting victims, accused Jews who voted for Democrats of “great disloyalty,” and called the chairman of the Federal Reserve an “enemy” of the United States. He cheered the robbery of a Democratic congressman’s home and labelled various critics “nasty and wrong,” “pathetic,” “highly unstable,” “wacko,” “psycho,” and “lunatic,” among other insults. The daily stream of invective was dizzying to keep track of, and so voluminous as to almost insure that no one could, in fact, do so.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trumps-wacky-angry-and-extreme-august-twitter

And is that the point, if he has a point? To create so much havoc, to take funds away from building schools for military personnel in order to build his border wall, to propose the next G7 happen at his Doral property? To reframe the American Dream in a thought bubble of nonsense? His helicopter summits elicit hyperbole rather than any real “Breaking News.” The number of times he has insulted a perceived adversary has multiplied threefold in the past three Augusts!

No wait, the number of direct insults from Mr T’s Twitter fingers went from 14 his first August to 52 last month! His list of humiliating monikers reads like a middle school diary: “Lunatic; “Crazy;” “Psycho;” “Pathetic;” and “Sleepy.”

The irony of listening to Democrats speak out about Climate Change while Trump, our Climate-Denier-in-Chief, played golf (as Dorian destroyed the Bahamas) was not lost on me. And the one thing the GOP picked out of CNN’s excellent environmental summit was that Bernie Sanders linked population control to Global Warming and therefore he wants less brown babies?!!

This is a real existential crisis, it is not a joke and it is NOT about straws, or plastic bags, or birth control. Our leadership must first accept science and enlist the rest of the world in its multifaceted solution if we actually want to save our planet, let alone our species.

We need a “Mulligan” I’m afraid. Or we could take a cake decorating class with our American Girl Doll?

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I call us the Christmas party babies – the seven family members who celebrate their births during August and September. The Rocker almost always had a beach party in August; I remember painting a hundred rocks gold for a Dick Tracy treasure hunt one year. The Bride’s party, in September, was a bit easier rounding up (or rather down) a guest list since school had started. We could invite her whole class instead of the whole beach club. This was before Evites and cell phones people!

And today is Bob’s big day. Happy Birthday to my honey.

Bob is now officially older than dirt, um me, for a few weeks at least. He’s been celebrating early, recreating our time in Tuscany last year, by making pasta with Ms Berdelle’s vintage pasta machine. We figure he’s got the ravioli down, which is a good thing since our local Italian market was just demolished to make way for progress. Will this new chef be able to recreate Lazzaroli’s goat cheese and pear ravioli? He’s already perfected the classic spinach and ricotta.

And I must admit Bob’s fettuccini this week, paired with our home-grown-home-made pesto, was bellissima!

What to get the man who wants nothing? I married a guy who defined “Minimalism” long before it was cool. Every few years we go into a store to buy him the same number Levi jeans he’s been wearing since I first met him 57 years ago! No wait, he needed a new alarm clock this week so he tried battling it out at Target with incoming Vandy students. He lost. Only two small travel clocks were left on the shelf. So he gave up and drove home in a huff, reluctantly searching the evil Empire of Amazon.

Which only reaffirmed his opinion of shopping.

Tomorrow the Love Bug turns 7! I think she grew 3 inches this summer. I was lucky enough to have Nana Camp extended another week because she came down with an ear infection and persistent fever; unlucky for her, she missed her first week of second grade. We played games, watched Disney channel, painted with water colors, and once we even ventured out to the Farmer’s Market. So even though I wanted to give her a new bike for her birthday, she told me she wanted another American Girl Doll.

Now I hate, really hate to sound old, but when I was young we got ONE doll and lots of different clothes. That doll would even cry and wet her diaper! Sometimes our mothers would even sew the doll clothes, and if we were lucky we had a doll trunk or a wardrobe to keep everything nice and organized.

But the Bride had lots of Barbies growing up since her allergies only allowed for plastic toys. The price differential however of a 1980s Barbie and an almost 2020 American Girl Doll is off the charts. My effort to convince the Bug that she only needed one doll was futile.

We’ll have a small family party tomorrow, highlighted by my 3-layer carrot cake, the Groom’s favorite. She has already had a class party shared with one of her school buddies – now why hadn’t I thought of that?

How is it possible Labor Day is right around the bend? We’ve been thinking if the Second Coming returns from the G7 with his proverbial foot in his puckered mouth, we may have to reinvent ourselves and go back to work. I could always try selling my necklaces and Bob could start a pasta food truck! Here are my birthday babes learning all about honey!

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All good (and lapsed) Catholics remember St Francis of Assisi, standing around with birds on his shoulders and animals curled around his stone feet. He was the one saint everybody loved because his tenet was, “All Creatures are One Family.” So it’s only right that the modern day Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church should be named Francis; he sleeps in the most spartan bedroom at the Vatican and rides around in a Ford. He washes the feet of the poor.

And now Pope Francis said that the death penalty is unacceptable in all cases. He called it an attack on human dignity and has actually changed the Catechism (that little book I started each and every day with at Sacred Heart School) to reflect the Church’s new directive.

Maybe it’s time I went back to church? Right before the papal news broke, I was telling the dermatologist, who was digging a crater of squamous cells out of the back of my hand, all about my escapades at Camp St Joseph. Sure enough, he knew if the girls were on one side of the lake, the boys were on the other!

I was 16 when I lost my faith, and almost 30 when I found Judaism. Granted I was marrying Bob, but my decision to convert was deeply rooted in my desire to raise a healthy, cohesive family. There would be none of that back and forth from one place of worship to another, and neither did I want my children growing up without ANY religious foundation. That just seemed wrong to me.

And early on in the process of learning about the Jewish people, I had a vivid dream that the Pope forgave me! Of course, that was the year of three Popes, so I’m not sure which one it was!

The year 1978 will long be remembered as the year of the three popes. The not unexpected death of Pope Paul VI on August 6th, 1978, was followed on August 26th by the election of the “Smiling Pope,” John Paul I. Reigning only 33 days, the length in years of Our Lord’s earthly life, he died in his sleep of a heart attack on September 28th. Only a few weeks later on October 16th, 1978, the College of Cardinals elected Karol Cardinal Wojtyła, Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, as the first non-Italian Pope since Adrian VI (1522-1523). His pontificate has been one of the most remarkable in history.  https://www.ewtn.com/johnpaul2/life/1978.htm

Even though that last one, the first non-Italian, Polish Pope, John Paul II, never officially apologized for the Vatican’s Holocaust-era activities, and he defended Pope Pius XII, who did very little to help the Jews and Christian priests during WWII, even advancing him toward sainthood.

I knew I liked Pope Francis when he was asked about homosexuality on a plane, he replied to the reporter, “Who am I to judge?” Well he IS the Pope. And just this morning I was reading about his visit with 500 schoolchildren. A little boy asked him how he felt when he heard that he had been elected Pope, and he told him he felt “PEACE.” And it made sense, because the current Pope has turned away from divisive social issues like abortion to minister to the poor. The Flapper always said you can get more bees with honey.

I thought perhaps Francis’ legacy would eventually allow women into the priesthood! Even thinking this in the past would have been a mortal sin! But he took the name of the saint to all creatures, and recruiting nuns in this day and age cannot be easy.

I wish Pope Francis would visit the Ayatollah, Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei aka the current Supreme Leader of Iran. He seemed to be getting along with President Obama, and currently, I’m pretty sure he views Mr T as the rest of the world does, a wild card. We might actually rid the world of nuclear weapons if the Pope walked into a bar with the Ayatollah. #WorldPeaceSummit

And maybe this American Girl could grow up to be President one day!

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