"Wait a minute. They're not baking any cake!"

This weekend was another one of those "Celebrity Birthday Cake" weekends. Danhole and I were going to make up for a ton of slacking that happened in April and May due to weddings and other uncontrollable events (ha). Come to think of it, it's a wonder anyone made it out alive during those months. Anyway, here is the list of the celebrity birthdays close to our small, cold hearts that were honored:

Jennie Garth - April 3
Eddie Murphy - April 3 (coincidence?)
Rick Schroeder (aka "The Ricker") - April 13
Sarah Michelle Gellar - April 14
Conan O'Brien - April 18
Valerie Bertinelli - April 23 (remind me to share with you my thoughts on Jennie Garth, Valerie Bertinelli, and Shakespeare - whose birthday also happens to be today, mind you)

Oh, wait, here's a fun fact: Did you know that Nick Ashford, Lance Bass, and Maynard Ferguson all share a birthday (May 4)? Somewhere in Oviedo, a Messer's head is exploding.
Bea Arthur - May 13 (Woot!)
David Boreanaz - May 16
Mr. T - May 21
Danny Wuerffel (awww yeah!) May 27

Okay, enough of that.

Anyway, since cake time was due, we decided to also celebrate the birthdays of two very important people to Banana World: Lisa from Armsweat and lengli from the lengli blog. They often lure me into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and have driven me to sloppy, ugly tears. They appreciate a good Tacky Blonde Lady now and again.

And, if nothing else, Tri-State Area (excluding Connecticut, of course), Fucking Represent!

Sorry about that.

So, we set out to bake this cake. Lengli told me her likey via blog comments back and forth. I had problems posting comments to Lisa's blog, and forgot to ask her what she liked during the week; but when I finally did get her preference, I felt like a badassmofo because we did manage to get her likey in, too. And when that crazy bitch currently stalking Kylie and Fleur Delacour in France told me she wanted little silver balls on the cake to make it a disco ball cake, well, it was off to the fucking races, my friends!

Well, that was the plan, until we got to the worst-equipped grocery store ever for making a disco ball cake.

Publix usually is a pleasant shopping experience, but this particular Publix had very little of what we needed for our baking masterpiece. Hell, we were lucky to come out of there with the cake mix and eggs! There were no silver cake decorating balls to be found, no cool edible props for the top. I was extremely disappointed, especially at the prospect of letting the bloggirls down.

We did manage to get some yellow cake and triple chocolate cake mix, and headed back to Casa Danholio (hasta el fin de Septiembre, putitos.

The standard plan applied: big-ass heart-shaped cake. This one would have one layer of yellow, one of triple chocolate, chocolate frosting in the middle of the layers, whipped vanilla on the outside. This would give us the opportunity excuse to ladle on extra chocolate frosting between bites. Yes, we're amazingly stupid. But at least we got some milk.

Since I've always been the prep girl, I decided to allow Danhole the honors of mixing this time around. He did so, and we happily put the cakes into the oven at the same time, as they both required the same bake time and temp.

The result was, well, odd.

The yellow cake did not rise as much as the triple chocolate, and the triple chocolate puffed up huge on one side. It looked like a skate ramp coming out of the oven. We figured things would get better once the cakes cooled and settled. We watched a little Garden State and ate subs while we waited.

I went back to the cakes. Yeah, they settled, all right. The yellow one actually shrank in size, and looked like a damned trapezoid; the chocolate did a little, but not nearly as much, and still looked like a puffy, cakey skate ramp. Fahk. I did my best to level them out, throwing slivers of unfrosted cake at Danhole to eat so that I wouldn't feel bad about wasting.

Then, I put the yellow cake as the bottom layer, thinking it looked more dense and would serve as a better anchor. I trimmed the chocolate layer to the size of the yellow, except the curves of the heart really couldn't be trimmed down without making them look like triangles. I had to accept that the top layer would be slightly larger than the bottom; but it would be all right, since the frosting would cover everything.

I am just stupid enough to think that putting a chocolate layer on top, then using whipped vanilla frosting to cover said layer would be an effortless job.

The chocolate layer kept producing refugee crumbs that would mar the perfect layer of icing I was attempting to slather on this masterpiece that was speeding downhill. What was worse was that the can of icing we got, for some ridiculous reason, was not enough to cover the whole cake! I only managed to get the top of the heart, with none left to coat the sides! This was bullshit, because every heart-shaped cake we've ever baked made do with one good can of frosting! We'd even have enough to spackle the curves of the heart to the base! Mother scratcher!

Never mind that the whipped frosting, although delicious, was so thin, it slipped into the cracks and crevices of the cake, screaming to the casual observer that this was not baked as a heart, but as individual parts. Gah. And frick. On a stick.

I still manage to steady my hand enough to scrawl a message on the cake. I have no artistic talent, so any attempts on my behalf to draw a likeness of Michael Vartan (yummy in his own right!) would be poor stick figures, at best. Also, there is no room on this Cake of Doom to pen something terribly witty. So, I did the best I could with what I had:


Photo courtesy of Danhole Portraits.

I hope you ladies like it enough to not yell at me. And I promise that for the next cake baked for celebrity birthdays, I will do my best to include those balls you love so much.

Sorry. Just had to stick that one in.

That's what he said.

Yikes!

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The dumb leading the blind.

I try to keep my therapy background nonexistent at work and assorted other situations, for the very reason that often when someone hears that I am/was/will again be a therapist, I get put into one of two very convenient little boxes: the "Pity" box, and the "Oh, well, then you can help me with this then, right?" box.

The latter of these two seems to be the main factor in random people at work coming up to me and blathering on about anything and everything in their personal lives.

I have a co-worker who is a very nice guy, but a real pushover. He is very much a Mama's boy, and I think he seizes any opportunity he can to let out a flood of his thoughts out through his mouth. He easily frustrates, wears his heart on his sleeve, and is basically dead meat if anyone finds out about it. Sometimes, he confides in me about random things in his work life and personal life, and I know that's because he knows I don't talk to anyone else at work about anything other than work, and please see the first paragraph of this entry for further illumination.

In the past couple of days, he's been finding his way to my cubicle to make more small talk than usual. Luckily, he's comfortable enough with me that he can ask me a direct question concerning what's really on his mind well within the two hour window of patience I've set up for him. Mind you, this window is much smaller for people who have known me much longer, but I can't help but think he needs this big window. If I had to classify him under the Sesame Street Standards of Social Characteristics and Interpersonal Relationships (copyrights and trademarks of the Children's Television Workshop may or may not apply here), all I can tell you is that he most resembles Big Bird (yeah, Big Bird with an almost effeminate southern drawl who uses his hands expressively even more than I do). So, it stands to reason that Big Bird means bigger window than normal.

Please disregard seventy-five percent of that last paragraph.

Anyway, Big Bird cuts a swath through the small talk and asks me if I think a twenty-four year old is too young of a woman for him to date (as he is thirty-eight). I tell him that it depends on the twenty-four year old, and it certainly depends on the thirty-eight year old. Hell, I'm not one to cram people in little boxes. Much.

This opens up the floodgates as he then goes on and on about his best friend, who, according to the Bird is "the more attractive of the two of us." This friend is setting him up with this girl, who's a nurse, and has weird "family stuff" like him, and who has the same religious background as him. This is the most excitable I've seen Bird since I started working at the Hovel, and that's counting all the times one could see him from across the office to see him pulling at his hair and motioning to the phone and the computer monitor in an aggressive manner, waving his hands and silently screaming. Obviously, he's really excited about this impending date.

I'm happy for him, because Bird seems to be kind of a loner, and really sheltered, and I think the social interaction will do him good. I tell him that it'll be good for him to get out and about.

He smiles and agrees, and then he says, "So, what do you think I should do?"

"About what?"

"About this date, or whatever."

I look up to see him eagerly awaiting sage words to come out of my mouth. Bird looks totally alive, and totally ready to charge ahead and meet this girl. And he wants my advice on how to go about it.

I am somewhat touched that he would look to me for advice on something so important to him. But for crying out large yellow avian creatures, how the hell am I supposed to help? You're a grown-ass man who has (hopefully) been on at least a handful of dates in your life (particularly since you had that "gorgeous girlfriend" with the two kids, the girl who gave "the best backrubs" who nobody at the office ever met and who mysteriously moved back "up North" to be closer to her family, again, without anyone making a visual confirmation that she ever existed)! You're asking a girl you work with, whose infrequent conversations with you at lunch are usually limited to her listening to you talk about the latest science fiction novel you're reading or reminisce about going to Catholic school, to help you plot out date strategy?

Why not ask that best friend of yours who's hooking you up - after all, he's got to have a better idea about what you can do for your date, since he already knows her, right?

At this point, Bird does bring up the best friend, then talks about how that guy was in the Navy, and is really fit, and meets and dates girls so easily, and is so much better looking...

Oh, hey, insecurities, here you are.

Bird's shoulders dip a little, in rhythm with his confidence, and suddenly, I've got a six-foot-four third-grader before me. I've got the kid who's been picked last yet again for dodgeball, got the least amount of Valentines in the class, and who never had anyone ask him over to play after school, standing in front of me, focusing mightily on digging the toe of his shoe into the industrial-grade carpet. His face tells me that he honestly doesn't know what to do, and he's sure not going to ask for more advice from his buddy, since well, any advice he may give may work for Ex-Navy, but it certainly won't work for someone so imperfect and bad at this as Bird thinks he is.

I give Bird a little smile, and tell him to not bring his book to lunch.

We're going to talk strategy.

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Oh, Michael.

And this time, I'm actually not talking about Vartan or Vaughn. (Somewhere in Europe, Lengli has to sit down and ponder whether she should smack me.)

I'm talking about the Boy Wonder. Number 10 for England and Newcastle. Mr. "I Rock the Lavender Turtleneck Like It's Nobody's Business."


"That's me. Right-o!"

(Lucky for you, I won't torture you with the turtleneck this soon after its original posting.)

While he is certainly very pretty, I'm not that into Beckham, who everyone and their mothers love; for me, it's Michael Owen. It has been since he was a teenaged lad playing for Liverpool (and even though he is only a couple of years younger than me, when I became a fan of his back in college, it still seemed a little dirty). Hell, anyone who was ever at my apartment during grad school can testify to the HUGE black and white poster of his sweet mug that adorned my living room (much to the chagrin of my roommates, but like I gave a shit. Oh, where is that poster now? I think it needs to make an appearance at work, because lately, I certainly give less of a shit about them than I did about my roommates in grad, who were, for the most part, the bomb, by the way. Shout-outs to Lunchbox, Lauren, and Coxy!).

And just moments after entering the game yesterday against Sweden, he ruptured his ACL.


Funny, but throughout all of my knee injuries, I was never surrounded by hot paramedic type dudes. It was usually mannish female PE teachers or coaches. Dammit.

Ah, the wince of familiarity washes over me. Upon hearing this, I know that his World Cup is over, and he's got at least six months of rehab to do. And that's being optimistic, considering he could have injured his medial as well, and that could be another problem altogether.

Oh, but enough of that. I'm just sorry you're hurt, Michael. Do get better.

And now, if you please, enjoy this image of Michael chowing down on a wholesome, Limey bowl of "Sporties":


I'm telling you, I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

I need to find me a box of Sporties to go with my Gators Frosted Flakes.


Hmm.

New project!

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Tagged. Like a little bitch. Again.

What follows are the last three of the Six Weird Things From My Childhood.

If you missed the first three, for discontinuity's sake, scroll to the post below so you can be brought up to speed.

And yes, I realize it's been almost two weeks since the first part, but I've been swamped, and I promise that I did start this half the next day. So, be happy. Or at least, get over it.

Party Line.
Ask anyone, they'll tell you I'm a talker. Apparently, this started back when I was a small child. I received a Mickey Mouse Talking Phone for Christmas. All I can remember about how the phone looked was that the base was red, the handset was sky blue, and the "cord" connecting the handset and the base was white. When you pressed a button with a Disney character's picture on it, that character would "talk" to you (in reality, a grainy, pre-recorded message, but dammit, I really did think Goofy and Daisy were talking to me. And at all hours of the day, no less. I was impressed at the Disney characters' availability).

Well, one day, my phone broke. I was so focused on Goofy saying hello to me that I pulled the handset off the base. As my attention span was too short to bother trying to fix it, I decided to go use the phone on the desk in the living room.

Luckily for me, the phone had nice big buttons, a lot like mine. And, my brother, good old Sideshow, was nice enough to leave his address book next to it, so I had plenty of people to call.

I proceeded to open it up and started dialing. I think I may have actually spoken to four of my brother's friends from school. My brother tells me that all I did was dial the numbers, ask for the people listed in the book, then told them I was Sideshow's little sister, and how are you today? I apparently hung out on the phone for a few moments until I couldn't come up with anything else, then said goodbye.

I am told this all happened when I was five, and my brother was fourteen. I say that I'm told this because apparently, I've blocked out everything that happened after I started dialing.

However, Sideshow the Magnificent didn't bring up the fact that I did drive-by phone calls to his friends until I was ten years old. And by then, I was horrified, because 1)I was just at that age where boys started getting cute to me (especially much older ones); and 2)I realized that for five years, those guys I called would be at the house all the time and knew I was the crazy little bitch who called them for no reason, but they never said a word about it.

Mortification? That comes with the territory of being the sibling of a Sideshow. I could never look those guys in the face again. Luckily, we moved out of state soon after that.

Add this to the list of retributions to the Sideshow. It's ever-growing.

Me and My Filthy F***ing Mouth.
When I was in middle school, I was a big fan of listening to Eddie Murphy. I had a tape copy of his self-titled comedy album, and I would often fall asleep listening to it. I have no idea how I procured this tape; after all, I was eleven and there was no way in hell my parents would buy me something so rich with profanity. But, I had it, and I enjoyed listening to it very much. I listened to it so much, that I'm quite sure to this day I can recite the "Drinking Fathers" and "Hit By A Car" routines to near-perfection. (Yes, the Girl Full of Useless Information has made room for that. What had to go? Grades 8, 10, and about ten credits earned sporadically during freshman and sophomore year in college. As Dr. Elliot Reed: Moment Killer, would say, "Frick!")

Anyway, the middle school years were oddities, as my Mom continued to live in Jersey for those years. She stayed there to work as a nurse, since nursing gigs in Jersey paid much, much more than the same gigs in Florida, and she figured she'd live up there and earn the extra dough, then come down once I started going to high school. This worked out okay, I suppose.

However, when my mom would come down to visit for a week or so at a time, I tried to play catch up with her on those mother-daughter moments that we were supposed to share before the ones that came when we were supposed to be walking on the beach and talking about feeling skunky (and by the way, those beach moments are ones I don't plan on having. Ever. 'Cause I don't intend to be skunky. Ever).

So, on one of these happy occasions when my Mom was down to visit, we hung out in the kitchen just chatting. I decided that this was the perfect time to relate to her a fabulous snippet from the Eddie Murphy Comedy Gold Collection. As I was eleven at the time, I was just old enough to have enough common sense to self-censor with "gosh-darnits" and "shoots" instead of giving her the full R-rated performance. I can't even remember which bit I was trying to tell her; all I know is that I had her full attention, and she seemed very into my tale.

As the routine went on, I became more and more confident in my delivery, gesturing as I imagined Eddie gestured, adding inflection, tone. My mother was actually smiling and chuckling, which was boosting me higher and higher, and I became more and more animated.

Then, as I was coming to the crux of the tale, it happened.

"So, these motherfuckers..."

Gasp.

Silence.

My mother and I stared at each other in shock. My mind was reeling. I just said "motherfuckers" in front of my Mom!

The silence continues for a few more seconds. My Mom stared at me, expressionless! No fair! I needed a gauge! What was I to do, how was I to proceed? First thing that came to mind was this:

I looked at my Mom, said "Oh, shit!" then booked it out of the kitchen and into my room, before she finally decided to react in some way.

I didn't come out of my room for a few hours after that. But I could have sworn I heard my Mom chuckling under her breath as I ran for my life. I do think she was secretly amused, but I wasn't about to push it.

That evening, I decided it was probably safest that I didn't try to do any more Eddie Murphy routines for the family. They would be restricted to my Catholic school classmates and my volunteer time at the nursing home only.

My Cousin, The King of All Media in the VCR at the Moment.
I spent the summers of my adolescence escaping the blistering heat of Florida and reveling in blissful ignorance in South Jersey. By this time, relatives from the Islands had migrated over to Jersey, including my cousin Jay, who you may remember from my previous post about the duck pond.

Jay and I spent our days playing Nintendo, tooling around on bikes, and setting things on fire in the back yard (in fact, I am proud to say that I introduced the concept of the aerosol blowtorch to him when we were thirteen). We mastered Contra (sure, we needed the thirty lives, but who didn't?), re-enacted the WWF in the den (much to the chagrin of my aunt and her coffee table), and recorded "commercials" suitable for radio (a personal favorite was our series for "Bill And Ted's Excellent Proctologists"). Yes, we had a grand time.

During most of that time, my aunt and her family lived down the street from my uncle and his wife. My uncle would spend the week working in North Jersey, then come home for the weekends. When he'd come home, he would bring food and supplies from a Filipino food store in my old hometown, as well as videos rented from that same store for everyone who understood Tagalog (the national language of the Philippines,) to watch.

Needless to say, as I was the lone savage not forced to learn the language at an early age (my parents feared it would hamper my grasp of proper English), I was never interested in watching these movies, as they had no subtitles, and, as previous experience had shown me, they were all cheesy as hell.

I quickly learned to consider the person choosing these movies. Don't get me wrong; I love my uncle, but this is the same man that asked me and my cousins if we wanted to see an "awesome" movie, then proceeded to put Gymkata in the VCR.

Anyway, my parents flew up to Jersey one week to attend a wedding in New York and have a little family reunion. That same weekend, my uncle brought over the usual supplies, as well as a couple of movies. My aunt thought it would be a good idea to pop one of those movies in so my Dad could watch something while everyone else was getting ready to go out. She tasked Jay to set up the movie, and my Dad settled in to watch. My older cousin, Tracy was ironing a blouse for work, and Jay settled into the recliner. As I was bored and had nothing to do anyway, I plopped down on the floor.

I couldn't understand a damned word anyone in the movie was saying. My Dad and Jay understood, but didn't react to anything on screen. Tracy continued to iron. This went on for about six minutes.

That is, until the crazy porn music started.

Suddenly, I looked up at the television to see two very naked people doing something decidedly not suitable for the people gathered in this room to be watching! And from what I saw, I could tell that porn homegrown in the Islands is not the most glamorous production around.

I shot a look at my Dad. He looked absolutely startled, then laughed nervously and walked away, suggesting that Jay shut the television off. Jay looked shocked, mouth open, but leaped from his seat to stop the cavalcade of awkward. Tracy, who had not been looking at the television as she was ironing, heard the commotion and scrambled up the stairs to tell my aunt what was going down.

It was as if the entire house erupted.

You could hear my aunt screaming on the phone at my uncle, who was only six houses away. "What were you thinking?!" she screamed in Tagalog (thanks go to Tracy for translating). "There was porn in my house!" (that part she yelled in English).

She yelled at him for a good ten minutes. Just enough time for curiosity to get the better of Jay.

As the yelling continued upstairs, Jay crept toward the VCR and popped the tape back in again. The movie resumed, but Jay turned down the volume and stood inches away from the screen. After five seconds, he ejected the tape and leapt away from the television as if burned by a hot stove. He jumped up and down, whisper-screaming "Oh shit! Oh shit!" over and over again.

Screaming continued upstairs. I migrated over to talk to Tracy over by the ironing board, because damned if I was going to get caught helping Jay watch crazy Filipino porn. After Jay let out about a dozen "Oh shit!"s, he creeped back over to the tele, popped the video back in, and played it for another few seconds. The backwards leaping and cursing started over, but now he was jumping around the whole den.

By this time, Tracy was just about done with her ironing. She told him to calm down, cut the crap, and bring the tape up to their mom, who was still screaming. He waved her off, saying he would do so. But, only after popping the tape back in first and jumping around the room some more. Tracy rolled her eyes at him, and kept ironing.

This routine of playing the video for five to ten seconds, then ejecting it, leaping back, and hopping up and down with a litany of "Oh shit!"s continued on for a couple more cycles, until my aunt yelled down the stairs for him to bring her the offending celluloid.

Later, after the madness died down, Jay showed me the hard plastic case the tape came in. It was plain case with a label on it, like any local video store would have, but he tugged on the plastic covering the label, which revealed a second label underneath it, simply labeled, "Sex." This video store's organization system no doubt rivaled the concepts of binomial nomenclature and the Dewey Decimal System.

At the time of this travesty, I was fifteen, and Jay was just getting a handle on fourteen. We haven't talked about it since that day, but I think it's safe to assume that since it was unfortunately mine, it was his first-ever glimpse of porn. And let me tell you, it has definitely affected me. That's right; I think that should I ever choose to view porn again, I'm going to stay away from the home-grown Filipino porn. This is simply because should I ever see it, I would shudder to think that maybe, just maybe, I may somehow be related to one of those people.

Eww, I can't think about it anymore. I'm done.

Hope you enjoyed. If you didn't, please don't tell me.

Now I'm off to work on the next thing I'm tagged for.

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Tagged. Like a little bitch.

As decreed by the Sweat O' The Arm, I must relay to you Six Weird Things From My Childhood, broken up into two parts.

If I can think of six things, that will be a victory in itself.

Why I Hate Model Rockets (Sort Of).
When I was four, living in the wilds of Passaic, the family took an excursion out to Bradlee's for some fun family shopping time. I remember wearing a little yellow gingham shirt that had snap buttons in the front and pictures of cowboys and Indians all over it. My parents, who wanted to look at various housewares, tasked my brother to watch over me while they went to the other side of the store. My brother begrudgingly took my hand and we started walking towards the toy section.

After about fifteen seconds of walking, my bro decided that he was tired of me tagging along. "I want to go look at the model rockets," he said. "You can't come." He then turned me around and nudged me back in the direction we came, and told me to go with our parents.

Four years old, I was.

My parents? Not in the place I'd left them. How silly of them.

I turned back around to go back to my brother. He wasn't where I'd left him, either.

Of course, my little four-year-old mind that amazingly held on to the memory of the yellow gingham cowboys and Indians shirt for retrieval twenty-five years later, quickly deduced that my family had obviously abandoned me.

I ended up sitting on the curb in front of the store, bawling. My parents and brother finally found me out there. We went home. I got the first spanking of my life.

My brother and I both got the belt, wielded by our father, although Mom did protest mightily. However, that seemed to make it sting more.

The weird thing about this? I distinctly remember thinking, as the lashes came, that it was horribly unfair for me to get a beating. After all, I was supposed to follow my much older (and supposedly wiser) brother. I mean, come on; I was fuckin' four!

After that, I made it my life's work to become an ever-present nuisance in my brother's life to get him back. Still working on that one.

And that is why I (sort of) hate model rockets. Nah, I still like them (how can I not, what with the whole "model" and the whole "rocket" thing?). It's bitch-ass beatings I don't deserve that I hate.

My Cousin, the Hero.
Within that same year, my Mom and I travelled to the Philippines (one of the resulting pictures is up in the top right corner of this page). This was the first time meeting a lot of my cousins, in particular my cousin Jay, who is less than a year younger than I am.

We were sitting on the edge of a duck pond on my aunt's property, when I leaned back too far, and fell in. Since it was a little duck pond, and very shallow, it was as if I was just sitting in a puddle of water; I could have easily stood up and walked out.

Jay, however, became very alarmed. He jumped up, and declared, "I'll save you!" (which is remarkable, considering English was not his first language,) and leaped into the pond after me. He ended up landing on his feet, then plopping on his behind in the water next to me.

There we sat, our asses soaked, looking at each other, dumbfounded. Of course, at any moment, we could have stood up and walked out, but we sat there and cried until our moms extracted us from the scary four inches of water.

Yes, we were in Deebo's duck pond, sweating like slaves... and only our Mamas could get us out!

For some reason, our moms still love telling that story to anyone and everyone who will listen.

Keeping the Sabbath Holy...and Refreshing!
Summertime Saturday mornings in Passaic meant I got my Dad to pull the kiddie pool out of the garage and set it up on the front lawn so I would stay occupied while he did yard work.

The pool was always set up by mid-morning so I could enjoy the outdoors before it got too hot. This always happened to coincide with the morning service at the synagogue down the street from my house.

Every Saturday, a parade of families dressed in their best walked past the front of my house. Many, if not all of the adults would smile and wave, so I made it my job to stand up in the pool whenever someone would go by to greet everyone. My father, momentarily pausing his landscaping efforts once in a while to make sure I hadn't either drowned or been abducted, found this mildly amusing.

All the kids my age looked royally pissed that they couldn't be enjoying sweet kiddie pool freedom like I was. I felt genuinely bad about this until I heard one of the parents chastise a whining little boy, "What are you complaining about? You have one just like it at home!" I always offered for the kids to come and play in my yard, but the parents always politely declined, as they were on their way home from Temple, and their children weren't wearing their bathing suits. This seemed to make those kids even more pissed.

I remember once I asked my Mom what going to "Temple" was. She explained to me that for Jewish families, it was like what going to church on Sundays was for us Catholics. I also asked her what the difference was between being Jewish and being Catholic, and she said that there wasn't really any big difference, because we were "all people" (got to love my free-thinking Mom!). However, she also said something about how Jesus played a different role in our church (why she was humoring me with mini religion lessons, I'll never know).

I came to feel bad for those poor Jewish kids though. I concluded that their God was a crappier planner because he insisted they had to show up for Temple during the all-important Saturday Kiddie Pool and/or Cartoon Block. How sad for them.

Part Two, tomorrow (hopefully).

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