Delilaah

Somewhere along the line I got the reputation of being an egghead.

Nah, no way. Would anyone who listens to the Delilah show be the Volvo-driving, NPR-listening type?

Aw, come to think of it...

Do you know who Delilah is? She's a grandmother and a late night painter who has a radio show at night when she takes dedications -- here she is played on B101, a soft rock station. Delilah's got the kind of voice that makes you feel like maybe you and she could be friends -- as though you'd run into her on your village street and were catching up on the local news. Wives send songs to their husbands who are overseas, would be lovers to the object of their desire, daughters to their mothers.

Every twenty minutes or so in the car, after hearing Kelly Clarkson and Fall Out Boy's latest masterwork once or three times over, I torment my kids with Delilah and her listener's sometimes fascinating stories.

And sometimes night, driving home from a meeting or time with a friend, I'll find it relaxing to check out the gentle dialogue between her and other listener

Oh, but those songs -- wasn't living through them in the 80's enough for America?

Easter at the American Bar & Grille

We decided we would go out for Easter this year, since I was going to be exhausted, and my ex didn't want to cook. Easter and Christmas and birthdays we do as a family, because we are, of course, still a family by virtue of having these two kids. I wonder what could happen if someone else becomes a part of the celebrations. Interesting. Easter dinner really was one of those occasions that seem very funny -- after a week or two has gone by. I was chatting with a guy I didn't know, innocent stuff about his kid and eating with kids, and how tiring it coud be. The good thing is, there are no dishes, I said. When I got to our table Mr. C told me the guy I was talking to was a secretary in his lunchroom at school. As the DQ pointed out, there's no such thing as a lunchroom secretary, although maybe there ought to be. Anyway, each that man came back to our room, Colin refused to get up to say hello. The DQ ate chocolate cake and cheesecake, and then complained about how sick she was. Slightly dazed from the letdown goes with preaching and celebrating two services, I didn't hear my son hurl a firecracker across the table. What I did hear was the DQ say : "you jerk!" Anyway, you know the drill -- he won't tell me, she won't tell me, I threaten, the ex wants to move to someone else stable. When we finally get outside near his RAV4, she hisses into my ear: "he told me the dress was sthe only pretty thing about me!" I have to confess, I started to laugh, hazed with the food and the sun and the end of a week of very hard work -- and cracking up at his apparent glee at giving it back to her for all the times she's called him a nerd. I'm not sure, but I think I may even have seen a smile on the DQ's face.