Category Blog Posts

I spend hours each day on my iPhone. There are games. I cannot go on unless I can solve the Spelling Bee from the New York Times. Also Instagram–the cat and dog reels are all consuming. And of course, there is my news feed, but that is way too depressing.

But I fall into the rabbit hole of the “influencers.” They are unbelievable. These are people with enough time and apparently followers to make videos giving the rest of us advice on, and here comes the list–grab your pencil:

• How to do your makeup–using tools like marble rollers that you run over your skin erase wrinkles. But the influencers using these tools are at best in their late twenties, so they have no real credibility with the rollers. There are other tools: little combs to shape your unruly eyebrows. Tiny razors to remove God knows what off your face. Masks. Toners. Lotions. Contouring creams. Foundations. Blushers. The rainbow of makeup colors they use-on a single face, my God! Do these women have jobs? So they get up four hours early just to put on their makeup for the day?
• What stuff you should eat to be in tip top health. Beetroot is a big one. Let that just sit for a minute. And smoothies. The things they put in blenders are horrifying.
• Exercise. Apparently, doing some sort of squat on top of the kitchen counter ought to make you live at least an hour longer.
• I have to admit that dogs and cats in hats are very entertaining. But think of the time that is spent knitting these little hats! From watching the pet influencers, I get the idea that all pets these days also wear pajamas.
• Every single influencer has incredibly white teeth. I want whiter teeth. I have tried those white strips, but they don’t make my teeth startle others with brightness. I want to know what these influencers, and all the newscasters out there, use. They probably go to dentists for expensive treatments that regular Daytonians like me don’t have access to. I asked my dentist about this, and he suggested brushing more aggressively. Ok then.
• How to stay safe in a hotel room, which involves tin foil and a paper towel.
• Finally, there are the influencers who do “hacks.” A hack is a creative way to use something that nobody has thought of before, and this will make your life EASIER. For instance, just today, there was a hack on Instagram on how to charge your phone using two raw potatoes and two quarters. It was so revolutionary that I went to the comment section, where the first comment was “I just plug my phone into the wall.”  Another commenter noted that “This is a great way to use those  two potatoes in my glove compartment.”

I will keep watching those videos, though. One day an influencer might tell me how to exfoliate without bleeding.

In my career as a wife and mother, in the fifty years that I made the evening meal for my family, the math comes out to 18,250 or so dinners that I cooked. During that time, there were of course some disasters, but the majority of the time, the things I made were completely acceptable, and quite a few were delicious. I could make recipes, follow directions, and even improvise. My family not once refused to eat what I cooked.

I have never liked cooking. No Julia, Ina, or Emeril over here. I just did what had to be done, and I managed pretty well. My kids still say that I “make the best tuna and egg salad ever.” So there is some pride involved with that.

However, when we moved into our apartment, my skills slowly deteriorated. We subscribed to meal boxes, and my husband took over cooking those. That left four nights a week for suppers I was responsible for.

I hated those four nights, and spent time online looking for “easy recipes for two,” and really leaned into the Crockpot. As many of you have experienced, Crockpot meals most often taste as if the cook just boiled a bunch of stuff and then served it.

Things got progressively worse. Sandwiches were frequent. I had high hopes for omelettes, but my spouse refuses to eat breakfast for dinner. I overdid spaghetti and Rao’s sauce. I continued to look for “easy recipes.”

I undercooked things, misread recipes, added herbs and spices that did not enhance the entrees, and tried to convince my husband that a lot of families have the same thing on the same night every week. I had hopes that I could get away with “Sandwich Sundays and a “Midweek Pot Pie.” That didn’t go down. He wanted variety. My dinners got worse and worse.

So. Last Friday, I thought I would make pizza. Easy. We have a pizza stone. You buy the dough ready made, and nobody cares if you stretch the pizzas perfectly round. Then, you preheat the oven to 450 or 475 with the pizza stone in there. Just throw on the toppings and cook. Easy peasy.

I have one of those pizza shovel things. I put cornmeal on the shovel, as that is imperative in order for the pizza to slide off onto the pizza stone without getting stuck on the shovel. “Smart,” I thought to myself.

I hit the 475 degree button, oven on, and sat down to talk to my husband during the pre-heating. The oven beeped. I had forgotten to hit “start.” So I got up and hit “start,” not realizing that when I did that, the oven reset to the standard 350 degrees. Not hot enough for the pizza.

I spread half of the dough (“makes two pizzas) on the shovel and topped with the sauce, the olives, etc., finishing up with lots of mozzarella. It slid right onto the pizza stone. In the not hot enough oven.

I did the same thing all over again on the shovel. Then it hit me: I needed the shovel to get the first pizza off the stone and onto the counter.

I remembered, somewhere in the depths of my brain, reading instructions that said “You can put the pizza directly onto the oven rack,” so I did that with pizza number two, on the rack above the one on the pizza stone. Sat down and relaxed.

Suddenly, my husband screamed,”Molly! THE PIZZA ON THE RACK IS MELTING DOWN ONTO THE PIZZA BELOW! IT’S DRIBBLING ALL DOWN!”

And sure enough, what I had remembered was instructions for store bought frozen pizzas, which as we all know, have crusts made out of dough that contains 90% cardboard. They don’t melt.

I tried to retrieve the bottom pizza, but as the oven was set to just the 350 degrees, that pizza was melty on top but raw otherwise-it sagged. It buckled. It became all scrunched up, because it was under cooked. Ugh. THEN, As we struggled to grab the globs of pizza hanging off the oven rack above, like stalactites, he burned his hand and said the “F” word, I became depressed, and we ordered pizza delivery.

After we had the really good delivery pizza, my husband looked at me, shook his head, and said, “You know Molly, I think your cooking days are over.”

I rejoiced silently. Then I rejoiced right out loud.

I am a cat person. I have had exactly two dogs in my entire life. My life has been filled with cats; at one time I had five. I will never have another dog, because my current cat would murder it.

And yet, when I have nothing to do, I spend a whole lot of time thinking about what I would name a dog if I got one. A dog’s name is important. If you have a dog, you probably say its name multiple times a day. I am very judgy about people who give their dogs dumb names. I mean, really: if your dog is white, and you name him “Whitey,” you have absolutely NO imagination.

It is trendy now give dogs human names. “This is my dog Robert.” I have mixed feelings about names like Robert, Thomas, and Theodore. Pet names get shortened all the time. So Robert becomes Bob, Thomas Tommy, and Theodore Theo. And for God’s sake, don’t name your dog Richard, because then your dog will become a Dick.

Naming little dogs big names and vice versa is popular. A Chihuahua named Bruno or a Mastiff named Penelope. Oh, and every Pitbull I know has a dainty name like Pansy, Sweet Pea, Holly, or Dierdre. Although Adam Sandler had a Pittie aptly named Meatball.

If I got a dog, I would look to food. So many dogs have cute names like Lentil, Pepper, Popcorn, or Triscuit. I think I would choose a more unique food name for my dog, like Gravy or Hoisin.

I might call a dog “Baby,” but I would never name one that. Talk about not being original. And I have often wondered why so many dogs are named “Chance.”

I know of a dog named “Lentil.” Kudos to that owner. I hate lentils, but what a good name. I also saw a dog named “Mayo” on Instagram. Another favorite dog on Insta is “Schmoo.” Another Pitbull mix.

I have a list in my head of good names for my nonexistent dog:

• If he looked ferocious, I would name him “Backbone.”
• If she were adorable, I would name her “Blanche,” as counterpoint.
• I like medium sized dogs. Brown ones especially. So I would name my brown dog a good medium brown name like “Sparrow,” or “Geraldine.”
• And who on the Internet doesn’t love “Olive” and her sister “Mabel?”
• “Ginko” is cute. I bet it isn’t that original.
•  Adjectives might make good names, like “Huge.” Especially if the dog is, you know–medium and brown.
• I could go for “Panko,” “Bookend,” or “Rosemary.” Maybe “Bookend” is too affected–strike that one.
• I like “Fiona,” “Dashboard,” and for a Beagle, “Flight Risk.”

Here are some names that nobody should ever name a dog:

• “Booger”
• “Buddy”
• “Adolph”
• “Flea”
• “Killer”
• “Bubba”
• “Tootie”
• “Stupid” UGH
• “Girl” or “Boy”
• “Donald”
• Any game name like “Mario” or “Roblox”

I worked at a veterinary office for eight years. And guess what was the most popular dog name in the practice?

You guessed it? MOLLY

You have your Republicans. You have your Democrats. That’s one way to look at things.

But corn. There are schools of thought on this. I am very much on one side of the corn issue, and the rest of my immediate family, heck, maybe the rest of the world, are on the other side of it.

How on God’s earth can a person sit down to dinner and have just one ear of corn on the cob? One measly ear? And what if that particular ear is starchy? What then–these “one ear” people just quit and eat their hot dog and coleslaw with nary another thought?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

I was raised right. When corn season rolled around, my mother knew how to do it. She made the rounds of every corn stand and farmer within sensible driving distance, and she got a half dozen ears at each place. AND, she went first thing in the morning, when the picked corn was fresh. Sometimes she went to farms where she could pick the corn herself. She was that dedicated.

This was unfortunately in the era of yellow corn. No Silver Queen yet. No bi-color (which is the only way to go these days). Because yellow corn is starchy by nature, my mom picked small ears only.

The corn was the star of the dinner. Forget steaks, fried chicken, hamburgers, or other filling entrees. She had my dad grill hot dogs. She made sliced tomatoes (she never heard of balsamic) nude (not my mom, the tomatoes) on a platter. Her cucumber salad was world famous. This, of course, was before the internet, so the definition of “world famous” was not what it is today.

Each family member was welcome to as many ears as they wanted.

This bountiful amount of of corn enabled my dad to butter an ear, take one typewriter row of bites, and then if that ear was disappointing, he would cavalierly throw it over his shoulder (we ate on the patio), declaring “No good!” and move on to the next ear.

Each one of us ate at least four ears. My dad could eat maybe six. The whole point was to consume maximum ears, because as we all know, corn season is limited, and one has to take advantage of it.

The corn was the whole point.

I think the reason so many people are indifferent to corn on the cob is that they have never had good corn on the cob. What they think of as corn is just yellow, starchy, old school corn. Few know the experience of biting into an ear, the corn bursting into their mouths with sweetness and crunch, the butter adding that blissful sheen and deliciousness. Salt and pepper not optional.

This sort of ear of corn leads to a second. Still fantastic. The sides are ok-grilled hot dogs and mustard were the tangy opposite of the buttery kernels. The cucumbers, just a bit vinegary and bright. More corn? Pass the platter.

We staggered from the picnic table afterwards, heading for the dental floss. It was so worth it, and nobody was constipated for the rest of the week.

If you eat just one ear of corn, you are a member of the wretched masses. I will die on this hill, thank you.

MY MOM’S CUCUMBER SALAD

Get some good, small cucumbers. Early in the season, you can get those little “pickling” cucumbers. If not, English cucumbers are best. But regular cucumbers will work as well, but you may need to peel them.

Figure one cucumber per person if using big ones; two per person if using pickle cucumbers.

Slice them very thin. Get a colander. Put a layer of cucs in the bottom. Salt them. Keep adding layers and salt until all the cucs are in there. Set the colander in the sink and let the cucs drain for at least an hour.

Rinse them very briefly to wash away some of the salt. Set a dish towel on the counter and spread out the cucs on it. Cover with another towel and press the cucs to get them as dry as possible.

Cut up some chives or a shallot (onions are strong, but if you like them, use onion sliced thinly).

Put the cucs and the chives/onions/shallots in a big bowl.

DRESSING

You may need to double this, depending on the amount of cucs you are having.

1 Tablespoon of vinegar–any kind of what Ina Garten would classify as “good.”

1 Teaspoon  of oil–NOT olive oil.

1/2 Teaspoon sugar

a bit of pepper

Combine well. Put in the fridge for at least an hour.

Serve with your GOOD corn.

(Lots of us eat them with other dinners as well, but they pair perfectly with corn.)

Chef’s kiss!

We are all worried, stressed out, furious, or some sort of combination of those things. Perhaps there are a few, maybe hard-core POTUS supporters, who are happy and care free, but I doubt that there are very many of those.

The issues are myriad. I am not going to list them.

My problem is that the people who read this blog have come to expect that I am so “talented,” that I can write a column that will make them laugh and temporarily forget their troubles. Unfortunately, I am not that talented. I wonder if even the brilliant Erma Bombeck, if she were still alive, could do this, given the million things that are happening to depress us.

I looked online for advice for this situation, and there were many articles, most of them giving what I think are lame pieces of advice. “Keep a positive attitude” is easy for them to say!

We all have to go on living. Putting one foot in front of the other. Certainly there are millions who have participated in the protests around the country in the past months. That gives those who protest a feeling of “doing something.”

But what if you don’t want to protest? What if you are not firmly rooted in your political silo, so joining a protest isn’t for you? Conservatives and liberals alike are unsettled and worried about current events.  Republican or Democrat–many feel hopeless and don’t know how to cope.

Here are some links that I think might be helpful for all of us, no matter our political stance:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/the-well-being-toolkit/202310/how-to-keep-anchored-during-difficult-world-events

https://screening.mhanational.org/content/how-can-i-be-ok-when-world-terrible/.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/15/theres-an-epidemic-of-demoralization-says-happiness-expert-how-to-fight-it.html

May peace be with you.

Do you know any poets? Most people don’t, but we all think of them as incredible wordsmiths. They know how to create beauty out of strings of words that leave their readers breathless. It’s a rare gift, and I appreciate all of those who can lead us into not only scenes of beauty, but of terror, fury, and romance. Words. The only tool poets have.

So why am I thinking about this? Well. I came across another listicle, and this one left me wondering if the internet has simply run out of things to put on lists, because this particular listicle provided a run down on the “most beautiful words in the English language.” And I was appalled.

Not one of the words on that list was beautiful, in my opinion. “Murmuring” does nothing for my soul. It has a cadence, granted. But beautiful? Not really.

“Tremulous” made the list. I know. How come? Of course, I bet it appears in a lot of poems, so I could be totally wrong on this one.

I can get on board with”crystalline,” I guess. It’s ok. “Felicity” these days is mostly a name, and frankly, it’s too much for me. Sort of like Tiffany. I brings to mind girls with long, wavy hair and too much mascara.

But according to the internet, the most beautiful word is CELLAR DOOR. I am not joking. You can Google it yourself. “Cellar door.” Really? In what way is that beautiful? For me, when I think of a cellar door, I imagine women chained to heating pipes down there in the cellar. Or concrete steps leading down to dank basements filled with spiders and cobwebs that stick to your face as you walk around in there. Who has happy memories of cellars? Anybody? Maybe serial killers.

When I think of beautiful words, I think of “purring,” “chocolate,” “seashell,” and “dessert.”

But some poets manage. Carl Sandburg managed.

More and more folks, when bored, turn to the internet. As a matter of fact, my iPhone has started sending me shocked notifications of how many hours a day I am spending there. My own phone has become judgmental.

Most days, after I spend way too much time trying to get to genius level on the NYT Spelling Bee game (I won’t quit until I get to genius level, which some days results in my staying in pjs until way after lunch) (” Way after” meaning all day).

Other days, on a whim, I look at my Google feed, which contains at least five “listicles” per visit. You know those:

• Seven little known hacks for using Q Tips
• The 20 best gadgets under $20
• Experts compare grocery store spaghetti sauces

You know these. Do you get sick and tired of them? I do. It’s as if Google is now exhausted and has started phoning it in.

I don’t want a hack. I am fine with using Q Tips for what everybody else in the world usually uses Q Tips. And my God. I have no interest in doing anything with a dryer sheet but throwing one in with my wet clothes so that they don’t stick together when twirling around in there.

I think the listicle people stretch these things too far. For instance, who in the world appreciates the suggestion that you should “clean your cabinets daily?” Honestly? Not one person.

And this “hack” suggests that you clean your shower curtain in the washing machine. We all know that. It is not a hack, it’s common sense. Of course, there might be a dim person who sees that and puts their plastic shower curtain in the washer. That person has no business looking for “hacks” in the first place.

Since when is it a “hack” to cut up old tee shirts for dust rags? Come ON.

There are some listicles that give me anxiety. The one that lists the Top Ten Dirtiest Major Metro Areas. I nervously clicked on that one, heaved a sigh of relief when Dayton wasn’t listed. But Cincinnati was. Yikes.

But this is what blew my mind: There is actually a listicle of Top Ten Types of Listicles. A listicle of listicles.

Anyway. Did you know that you can use Q Tips to start a fire? Or, alternately, to clean a gun?

There you go.

Every night after dinner, we watch a tv series. We like mystery procedurals, but we have noticed lately that if there are, say, 8 episodes, the people making the show like viewers to be confused.

The first episode is total chaos. We don’t know who anybody is, how they are connected, and what is happening. That guy, why did he throw a gun out the window? Is the swarthy guy a good guy or a bad guy? Who is that woman? Why do they all smoke? Who is the dead man? Yeah, it looks like he committed suicide, but we know now that he didn’t.

By the third episode, hopefully things are starting to make sense. Like that woman. We learn she is the sister of the swarthy guy, but we still don’t know–are they both good? Is one of them good, but the other is bad? Who had a motive to murder?

Then, by the fourth episode, we get it. We know who the bad guys are, and we know they all had motive. So now the hero can just proceed to solve things. There are shocks, twists and turns, but we go right along and really are surprised at the end that the person we least suspected did it.

Not so with Monsieur Spade. I like Clive Owen, and he is inscrutable and does a very good American accent. But what the hell? There is a mystery child, an orphan girl, a swimming pool, three suspicious men, and none of the plot is apparent. We figured that it was the usual–things would come together. They didn’t.

The series was SO confusing that they had to bring in–out of the blue, I might add, Alfre Woodard. She got out of a car in the last five minutes of the show to gather together all of the cast to EXPLAIN what had happened in the other episodes.

She “explained” what had happened, but not who in the hell she was, or why she was there. As she dismissed each cast member, she told them to leave the room. As if that made sense. Finally, she was left with Clive Owen, who seemed as if he already knew everything, anyway.

But we didn’t. We turned to each other and I asked, “Wait. What happened? Who was the kid? Why was he silent during the whole thing? Why did everybody want him?”

My husband, stunned that the show was over, clicked back. “There must be another episode.” There wasn’t. “I don’t understand any of it.”

“Neither do I. Why was there a crazy monk? Why did all the nuns get killed? (Oh, yeah, there were nuns). Who was the girl’s mother? Who was the girl, and why was she so important? She had nothing to do with anything that took place, did she?”

“I have no idea.” My husband, whom I rely upon to explain everything from tariffs to tv shows, was as stumped as I was. He ran his fingers through his nonexistent hair and said, “Are we just dimwits? Do you think everybody else who watched this knew what was going on?”

I thought back to when I watched The Usual Suspects on tv. It made no sense at ALL. So much so that I rewound the film (back in the old Blockbuster days) and watched it again. Who was Kaiser Souzai? I was lost, and that was four hours I would never get back.

I got pretty defensive. “We are not dimwits! We get some of the Jeopardy answers! I know what ganache is. You can read music. We have college educations! No. I think the people making it realized how confusing it was, and it was too late for a do over, and so somebody called Alfre Woodard’s agent and offered her a big sum to come to the set for a day to explain everything in the final minutes of the last episode.”

He nodded. “It didn’t work.”

When times are tough, and times are definitely tough right now, about the only way to distract ourselves is to read. I think at the moment it seems as if I have read every single book ever published, but I know that isn’t exactly true.

In case you need one, here is a list of books that I have read recently and want to share:

• I just reread Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbit. It is a classic children’s book, but manages to touch on so many current issues.
• Splinters, by Leslie Jamison. A tour de force memoir.
• The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, by Liz Jensen. I have never read a book like this.
• Entitlement, by Rumaan Alam. What it means to be rich, and what it means not to be. That’s all I can say without ruining it.
• The Tell, by Amy Griffith. Another great story, about secrets and what keeping them can do to you.
• Alternate Side, by Anna Quindlen. Any book by Quindlen is excellent.
• Sociopath, by Patric Gagne, PhD. Fascinating.
• Colored Television, by Danzy Senna. Side note: she is the wife of Percival Everett, who wrote the book James. This book is wonderful .
• Good Material, by Dolly Alderton. I want to read all of her books.
• I loved all of  the Spellman series by Lisa Lutz. So funny and entertaining. The opening paragraph to the first Spellman book is one of the best ever.

Here is a suggestion: if you love a book, look up that author on Instagram and follow that person. Send them a DM telling them how much you loved the book. It is such an uplift to a writer.

Review the books you read on Amazon. That really helps that author sell more books.

Oh, and another suggestion:

A woman sent her husband out to pick up a few groceries. But he came home with a duckling instead. Not this particular duckling, above, because as you can see from the little arrows in the photo, it’s another stock photo I copied.

I only read the headline, because I have no attention span any more, due to the fact that social media has reduced my ability to concentrate on any one article to exactly five seconds.

I envy this woman. I would be thrilled if my husband came home with a duck, or any baby animal (barring elephants or kangaroos). I imagine walking around our apartment with a little duckling following at my heels. So cute, so adorable.

I don’t let myself think about the fact that all farm animals poop whenever they feel the urge, no matter if it is on a bed or inside your bedroom slippers. Or how farm animals need space. Or how we would get kicked out of our apartment.

What would I name the duck? The trend these days is to name your pet something human, like “Alan.” So Alan the duck would quack, poo, and follow me around. I would want to train him to be a “lap duck,” because what good is a pet if you can’t set it on your lap and cuddle with it?

Do ducks smell, as in have a distinct farmyard odor? Even if they live on the fifth floor? If so, that might be a deal breaker. I know that chickens do stink, and you wouldn’t want to have one inside the home.

And the feathers. There would be feathers everywhere.

I wonder what that woman did. Did she have a big yard, where the duck could live? Did she call her husband words starting with “F?” Did she imagine sometime in the future roasting said duck?

I know that around Easter, fathers bringing home baby ducks and chickens has been a problem for decades. My bet is that at least 90% of those little fowls never make it to adulthood.

If I had a duck, Alan would have a little pen in the TV room, filled with shavings, a tiny washtub to swim in, and he would be so happy. Until my cat murdered him.