I contemplate my immediate universe tonight:

1. Dan Bern sounds like the young Bob Dylan. I find this really cool.

2. My son is an awesome cook. We’re making sarma again, for tomorrow’s family party at my sister’s house in Indy. The sauce? I dunno. Something he made up.

3. Only a fool would try to cook wearing a big red sweater.

4. “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (the one with James Mason) is fun to dice garlic and onions to. This was my first grownup movie, and I still love it. Got kids? Rent this flick. It’s ridiculously corny and therefore wonderful. The worst dinosaurs ever, but it just makes you laugh. Your kids will think they’re great.

5. My son has become a really cool and interesting young man, but whenever I look at him, I still see a tiny little boy with flaming red hair, jumping on the end of my bed singing “Oh do you know the huggie boy, the huggie boy, the huggie boy, oh do you know the huggie boy, he lives on huggie lane” and falling down giggling uncontrollably. I will say it’s been a while since he’s done that.

6. My hands really stink. How come my kitchen smells so good?

7. Inventing sauces and dips and sarma fillings is fun. Zappa and I don’t need no stinkin’ recipe.

8. Sunday is my last day of vacation. Classes start back up on Monday morning. I’m ready.

9. Belle isn’t coming to the family party. She’s going to an Anime Convention. Can you BELIEVE that? I can.

10. I love my kids. Sometimes this fact hits me afresh, and I almost laugh out loud from joy. I’ll walk into a room or a situation and there are my kids, doing their thing, and I’ll look at them and my heart will nearly burst.

11. Of course, sometimes my kids are humiliating and disappointing. They’re human. So are yours. But the good stuff far outweighs the bad. It will for you, too.

12. If it didn’t, evolution would have seen to it that humans devoured their young.

13. I’m not joking.

14. Excuse me while I go take off this huge red sweater and put on a t-shirt.