For today's story, please go here.

Also, when I confessed to Jan Reisen, managing editor of Momtalk in the Twin Cities, that I feel mildly pre-Alzheimer's lately, she wrote back that "it's all right not to remember what type of tree that is as long as you remember what a tree is." We both find that comforting.

Then there's this email I got at the end of last week:
"Yesterday we had a day trip to a major Mayan ruin where, among other things, everyone except me (vertigo) zip-lined over a cenote for about 50 yards and about 40 feet above the water.  Then we all (including me) rapelled down the vertical sides of a narrow well-like vertical hole into the water of an underground cenote where we paddled around for a while in inner-tubes.

I'm getting too old for this s--t!"

That is from my 75-year-old dad. Not only am I not rappelling down the sides of a well-like vertical hole today, but I had to ask what a cenote is. Who's old?

(It gets even better: He writes, "A cenote is either an underground river or small pond (we were in the latter) that, to the Mayans, was/is sacred. They were sort of considered part of the transition from the nether to the real world and, among other things, people who were sacrificed were thrown into them. We were blessed by a shaman before we were allowed to go in."

Meanwhile, I'm about to go clean up last night's dinner dishes. What's wrong with this picture?



Coming in July 2008 from Algonquin Books:
The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World

If you'd like to receive (infrequent and very short) e-mails when I have pieces in real publications, and when my book comes out this summer, sign up here.

And for a link to a little piece I wrote for my publisher, go here. The type is small and kind of hard to read, but frankly, I don't know how to fix that. Sorry!