From The Editor

Due to the technical difficulties mentioned in my comment to Mom's latest post, I installed this new template until I can get around to fixing up something else.

Semantics

This morning as I was drinking my second cup of tea, my husband came and stood beside my chair with his hands behind his back and a little grin on his face. I asked him what he had behind his back. He wouldn't answer. Finally I said, "Is it the little metal hammer?" The grin got wide and big. He held out his hands and there it was. I saw immediately what our problem had been. He calls it his little metal hammer. The catalog from which I ordered it calls it a Japanese punch. I ordered two of them one year at Christmas time and gave the other to one of our sons. It does look like a little hammer. The six inch handle gradually tapers to a rather large rounded point. The one and a half inch top cross piece has a quarter inch square at one end. The other end tapers to a point like the handle does, only it's a much smaller point. On the handle below where the two pieces cross are some Japanese figures, kanjis I think they're called. So all is well. Although I'm not as sharp as I once was, my memory is not failing precipitately. My husband is not confusing his dreams with reality. And last, but not least, I'm pretty sure that there is no other gifting woman.

Baking day

When my son Peter visits me, he goes through the refrigerator and shows me all the things that have passed their expiration dates. Last time, after he left, I cleaned the refrigerator and threw out all the old stuff. Then I did the same to the medicine cabinet and invested some money in new cough syrup and Pepto Bismo. (Later I read that expiration dates on medicine bottles are mostly another money-making ploy of the drug companies. The article said that most drugs are stable for several years.) One place that I didn't check was my kitchen cupboards. I was poking around in there this week looking for an idea to make a sweet treat for my husband and me. I found a white cake mix with a recipe on the back. With strawberry yogurt and some strawberry jam I could make it into a beautiful, refreshing summery delight. So I set to work. When I got to the part where you open the box, there it was in bold print right on the top--Best if used by June 2003. Well, I can't say that it raised up real high, but it tastes pretty good. Peter, they have a new kind of Crisco now. It's a little more expensive than regular, but 0 trans fat. It comes in one cup sticks, so you don't even have to scoop and measure.

The little metal hammer

This morning, as I was drinking my first cup of tea, my husband suddenly asked me, "Do you know what ever happened to that little metal hammer that you gave me?" I had no idea what he was talking about and I told him so. "I don't remember ever giving you a little hammer." He said that he thought it had been a birthday present one year. I asked him what color it was. "It was metal", he said. "It was all metal." I wondered just how little it was. "Oh, about six inches by two inches, I think", he replied. I had not even the slightest glimmer of a memory of ever giving him a little metal hammer. "Maybe it was some other woman who gave it to me", he said. Very funny. We're dealing with one of several possibilities here. Maybe another female admirer DID give it to him one year in the distant past. He forgot it wasn't me and the question about it just popped out. Or maybe my memory, which has been slipping a little, is starting to slip more than a little. My husband has been having a lot of dreams lately. He groans and kicks his feet. Once when I tried to wake him, he clobbered me one, so now I leave him alone. Possibly in a calmer dream I gave him a little metal hammer. I'd hate to think that he's having waking delusions. He looked for it today and wasn't able to find it. If anyone from our family should read this, do you remember a little metal hammer at our house, about six inches by two inches?