The Big 38

Curt's birthday is today. 38 is he. In the spirit of keeping with our current modus operandi, I got him a Pampered Chef grill pan. He's the cook, you see. I'm the organizer. I hate to cook. Actually, I wouldn't mind cooking if you could go to the grocery and buy kits with all your ingredients premeasured, precut, prechopped, preeverything. Then I wouldn't mind dumping it all into a pan or pot and shoving it into a 350 degree oven. I'd keep my kits shelved neatly in the pantry (or the freezer if that's what it took). My shelves would be so tidy and neat. And we'd have healthy meals every night. If my family wanted to heat lasagna for dinner, then I'd grab the lasagna kit and, presto, serve it! That's my idea of cooking. All those recipe pages in my favorite magazines are a waste of trees. I breeze right on past them in search of pretty pictures or cool ads.

Pretty picture of the day: Camden and Benjamin helping Curt blow out his candles on his Giant Eagle birthday cake.

Cool ad of the day: the Sure Fit slipcover catalog that arrived today. I don't want any slipcovers, but the living rooms on its pages were inspiring.

Tragedy of the day: Barn fire down the highway. I heard at least 15 ambulances/fire engines/rescue trucks blaring down the road outside of our neighborhood this morning. About the same time I heard three big explosive booms. I looked out the back window and saw billowing plumes of black smoke rising nearby. Neighbors drifted outside to check it out, but we couldn't see anything. Camden rushed to put on his firefighter hat and jacket, and grabbed a pretend hose from the garage. He took off out the back door to save the day, staying out until the smoke began to settle and we called him indoors where it was easier to breathe. Later today when we all headed out, Camden reminded us to turn left on the highway so we could see what had burned. That's when we discovered the still-smoldering barn at the horse farm a half-mile away. An excavator was already hard at work moving debris. So sad. Camden was crushed to hear that the horses could have been hurt. We pray nobody or no animals were injured. We'll find out tomorrow when the Tribune arrives.