What with all the talk of belt tightening, The Rock Star and I knew it wasn’t going to be possible for a winter or summer get-away this year, so instead opted to spend a day in the company of our favorite musicians and crossed our fingers that the weather might cooperate; not like last year.

Our trips down to London in the last year or so have rarely EVER gone off without a hitch, so after dropping the Prawn off with the Barmaid*, The Rock Star, myself, BoyRacer and Trumpet headed off in the right direction and waited for the Map of Damocles to descend at any moment.

And descend it did, in the middle of the A40 which was apparently closed due to a “demon”**, which lead us all to speculate about which minion from the Seventh Circle had decided to manifest on the outskirts of London and for what purpose. (We could only assume it had been inadvertently summoned by Boris Johnson while trying to find his keys or something.) Luckily, we were equipped with our trusty Thomas Thomas who, while still in doghouse for all manner of stupidity in regards to navigation in the city, managed to get us where we were going while avoiding all Satanic traffic problems.

Our destination was our favorite secret parking garage near Hyde Park which leaves us feeling like a poor relation in the automotive department, but smug and righteous post-concert. We were happy to see our old friend the orange Lamborghini Gallardo parked just where we’d encountered it the year before; at the entrance of the garage. We found ourselves a space several down from a twin pair of Ferraris and a Rolls Royce.

All being full of bladder, and not wishing to use a port-a-loo any more than humanly necessary, we were force to all pile into the gents in the garage due to the fact that the women’s restroom was conveniently locked. Obviously nothing deviant has EVER happened in a men’s room.

The weather for the previous year’s concert was totally diabolical. Cold and drizzly. We were woefully underdressed and by the time the headliners appeared, we were wet, freezing, miserable and surrounded by a lot of people who were a LOT more intoxicated than we were and didn’t seem all that bothered. The Gods of Rawk must have been moved by our perseverance, however, because we were rewarded with an unbelievably perfect day in which to enjoy the sunshine and great tunes this time around. (Of course, I had packed in my bag a change of clothes, bin bags and a new pair of shoes just in case. This probably had something to do with it.) Since none of the acts were ones that we desperately wanted to get up to the front for, we were able to relax on a blanket further back into the crowd and bask in the sun with drinks rather than being jostled with the fervered masses near the stage.

Trumpet and I were engaged in collective knicker-wetting at the prospect of seeing John Mayer live. This is not surprising if you watch his concert videos; the crowd is largely that of the oestrogen producing variety accompanied by reluctant partners who have to endure two hours of potent lust emanating from their other halves and being directed squarely on the stage. However, being a bit of a guitar/songwriting fangirl, the fact that Mayer is attractive is the visual icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned. Not only is it refreshing to see someone truly gifted at playing an instrument, (with seriously amazing tone, I might add) but the quality of his writing is totally top notch. It was gratifying, judging by the crowd’s reaction, to see that he has a large fan base here in the UK. Maybe people are finally catching on to the fact that people who sound the same when they play live as they do on their records ARE BETTER ARTISTS. His voice is equally suited for his folk/funk/soft rock numbers as it is for more raucous blues. The Rock Star observed that his singing style is Stevie Ray Vaughn meets Dave Mathews and I think that’s pretty much spot on. His set was spotless and tight and really the highlight of the show for me.

The turnaround between acts was really incredibly quick, as less than 40 minutes and a bottle of pear cider later, Sheryl Crow took to the stage. I’ve wanted to see her in concert since 1995, so it was a treat to catch her live. Crow is another performer that seems totally at ease with herself on stage and totally puts others in the shadows when it comes to singing live. Her vocals are honest and powerful and she makes performing look incredibly easy. She started out with 3 tunes from her newest album “Detours” which was a refreshing change after the previously self-indulgent “Wildflowers”. (off which I don’t know a single song) After that, it was a string of crowd pleasing favourites such as “All I Wanna Do”, “My Favorite Mistake” and “Every Day is a Winding Road.”

The Rock Star says that listening to Eric Clapton is kind of like going to church. It might not be your favorite part of the day, but you have to pay your respects. Clapton, being the musical legend that he is, is NOT in the business of crowd pleasing and tends to stick with a lot of old and obscure blues favourites that are more known to a small core of admirers. Heading down the home stretch of the set though, he pulled out the big guns; “Layla”, “Wonderful Tonight” and “Cocaine” to remind everyone why there were standing there watching him instead of down the pub somewhere. However, the topper of the set was the Mayer/Crow/Clapton collaboration on seminal favorite, “Crossroads”. (also present was slide legend Robert Randolph) There’s not a whole lot I can say about it that this video doesn’t say better.***

After having judiciously gravitating toward the exit during the last number while still enjoying it’s bluesy goodness, we shot out the nearest available exit, managed to elbow our way past the paparazzi congregating like flies on shit outside of the Dorchester hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the 20 famous faces staying there over the week, stopped off in the same men’s room we’d started out in and were away into the London twilight before most concert goers had managed to stagger past the kebab stand and into Park Lane traffic.

We were satiated, satisfied and gorged on rock and roll.****

*We received a text roughly half an hour later that said, “There are now hula hoops floating in my fish tank. Lol!” I didn’t know whether to be more worried that the Prawn was eating Hula Hoops or that there was a fish tank low enough for her to throw them in.

**As the sign flicked round to the second page, we learned it was in fact a “demon” “stration”, which was much less exciting.

***When we showed the Prawn our video of Crossroads the next day, she focused intently on John Mayer after declaring him to be a “babe”. And then promptly fast forwarded through Clapton’s entire solo. The Rock Star nearly wet his pants. Old Slowhand might be married to a 32 year old, but he might be losing his touch with the youth market.

****And Pear Cider, beer, doughnuts and foot long sausages. And soon after, some Zantac.

I would like to point out that the current financial crisis facing most of the globe at the moment both sucks and blows, completely contravening most of the laws of physics.

It’s strange; when you’re a child, the news is something that happens to other people. An abstract collection of anecdotes that have little, if anything to do with you. But suddenly, you get your own house and family and the news has EVERYTHING to do with you. You watch to find out if your mortgage is going to go up next month. How much you’re going to have to pay to drive to work.  How going home for Christmas will require you to bend over and grab your fiscal ankles so that 5rd son of the 4th son of the King of Saudi Arabia can have a 3rd Bentley.

However, complaining about this makes me feel like a whiny Westerner, reaping what I’ve sewn by my dependence on fossil fuels and disposable consumerism. I haven’t lost my house. I’m not GOING to lose my house. I can feed myself and my family. I can even buy an odd little trinket or to per month and maybe go to a movie once in a while. I’m thinking that I need a good old kick upside the head. It seems like there’s been a awful LOT of whining going on  in a lot of quarters where it is wholly unnecessary. “Struggling” now seems to be the definition of “not sure how we’re going to pay for our second trip to the South of France this year” rather than a meaningful expression of hardship and an insult to those who are actually looking down the back of the couch for change to buy a loaf of bread or facing a home repossession.

As for us, it means shopping to a tighter budget; less fresh food (fruit and veg, especially), more frozen. It means thinking before embarking on minor journeys for less important items. It means an end to holidays, other than our trip to the States for Christmas. (Getting home once a year is pretty important to me.) It means cutting back on fun stuff.

I’m aware that we don’t have it badly.

I’d be interested to hear about how the world economic situation is affecting YOU.

Okay, so I’ve obviously scared the living shit out of everyone by linking to the rather disturbing pictures featuring creatures as diverse as “penoctopi” and “scroturtles”. Sorry. So to compensate, I give you some long overdue shots of the Prawn who is neither scary, disturbing or NSFW.

Sex education has changed a bit since my day.

I remember being shown a film (made by Disney, no less) in which little battalions of syphilis and gonorrhea marching happily two-by-two, hurrah, hurrah, all over your no-no place, all the while laughing at the ignorance of the hapless victim. “If he’d only not shagged the town bicycle, he’s not be in this mess!” they chuckled to themselves. Far more frightening was the shadow of AIDS, which there were no pleasant, animated films about.

These days, the Western world has become slightly more complacent about The Big A due to the prevailing attitude of “Isn’t that something that people in Africa get?” The medical establishment is most likely tearing it’s hair out trying to prevent the infection of a new generation of sexually active teenagers and young adults who didn’t grow up in the 80’s under the specter of the certain and painful reality of a disease that no one could cure or treat, leaving weeping partners to add their loved ones as patches on a giant quilt.

Obviously, they’ve got some interesting people on the case. This link is not even REMOTELY safe for work.

I don’t like to shill for enormous corporations, but I have to admit that our Skybox is pretty nifty. While browsing through the Anytime TV feature this morning, the Rock Star found the entirety of President Bush’s interview with a red sock wearing Sky correspondent and decided to have a gander at what our Chimp-in-Chief had to say for himself.The Rock Star is a better man that I in the sense that I have trouble watching interviews with Bush without throwing up in my mouth a little.

“You need to KNOW your enemy, Potamus,” he says sagely. Yeah, all I need to know is that my enemy is like a drunk teenager at the wheel of an enormous pick up truck that he has just crashed into a deep ditch. Scarier still are those Chinese guys at the edge of the gully going, “Hey, you want that we should dig you out?”

What opens up the bottomless pit of fear in my stomach most is watching the man speak. He’s the guy that sits next to you at your favorite bar who you’d happily attend a cookout with, but wouldn’t trust to lend him your lawnmower, let alone your economy. He lacks presidential-ness. He is utterly devoid of gravitas. And yet, he has been given the helm of one of the most powerful nations on earth and allowed to treat it as his playground for the last 8 years.

It truly boggles the mind.

I am a woman of the road.

I’ve been behind the wheel since I was 15, although I’ve only had my UK driver’s license for about 2 years now. There was a fairly steep learning curve when I took to the highways and byways of this little island. I had to adjust to the opposite side of the road as well as the opposite side of a car. Not only that, but I was also forced to learn to drive a manual transmission, which sent me into a neurotic spiral and resulted in me having to take the driver’s test 4 TIMES before passing. (A trained monkey could have acquired a license from the State of Maryland .)

The area we inhabit is an intersection of 3 counties. Ironic, as the place that I grew up was ALSO a meeting point of 3 counties. (The only reason I mention this was that there was only ever 1 liquor store open in town on Sundays, as we discovered on one of our rare New Year’s visits.) While finding liquor on a Sunday here in the UK is never an issue, (where it is almost MANDATORY to drink on the Sabbath) being at an intersection of 3 counties means that you are never quite sure who’s responsible for ANYTHING, least of all the state of the roads.

I set out on Saturday with the Prawn with the intention of purchasing some yummy comestibles for Father’s Day breakfast. Part of my route took me down a rather notorious country road which is impassable by two cars at more than one point. This would not be a problem, but the road is also prone to biblical flooding, which tends to wash out the pull offs, creating Grand Canyon sized potholes in the sides of the road.

I don’t know what it is about Mercedes drivers. If you do happen to drive a Merc and are not a tail-gaiting, road hogging asshole, my deepest apologies for the characterization, but more often than not, if I see a car in my rear view mirror that’s following so close that they can most likely make out the expression on my face and see me mouthing the words, “back off, dillweed”, chances are that it’s a Merc. So, while bumbling happily down the road, a Merc approached from the opposite direction. While there are plenty of places where one driver must pull over to let another pass, where the Mercedes and I met was not one of them. However, the other driver obviously didn’t want any minor contact with a hedge that might microscopically damage his paint job and rather unexpectedly veered over to my side of the road. Having not anticipated this turn of events, I was travelling a little too quickly to avoid going full tilt into one of the aforementioned Canyon-esque potholes. While Merc driver sailed smoothly into the distance, I was treated to a dreaded fwap-fwap-fwap sound issuing from my left front tire.

While my first instinct was to turn around, flat and all to chase after my wronger and kick in his expensive tail-lights, I am, of course, an adult and must set a decent example for my daughter. (I’d far rather teach her to get the license plate number, find out where he lives and let down his tires.) So, I coasted to the end of the road, found a convenient pull-off and went to inspect the damage.

When I first started driving, my father gave me a quick course into how to change a tire. But seeing as how that lesson occurred more than half my life ago, needless to say, I was a little rusty on procedure. In addition, I had The Prawn in the car and so decided that I was most likely going to have to phone for help. It was only that that some things occurred to me.
1. The Rock Star and PPD were in London.

Well, that’s okay I’ll just call…

2. BoyRacer and Trumpet are in Windsor.

Well, I guess I’ll have to phone for….

3. Are we even MEMBERS of a breakdown service?

Crap.

Trying to talk to someone who’s standing in the middle of a trade show for electric guitars is an exercise in frustration, but I discovered that we ARE indeed members of the RAC, so I duly phoned them up to play the role of damsel in distress. Since I had a baby in the car, I was put on a priority service, although I’d have hated to have been a single strapping bloke who’d broken down, because priority STILL entailed a 1.5 hour wait. However, it was a nice day, The Prawn was mercifully well behaved, I had some snacks and drink for her, so we sang some songs, watched a clutch of VERY stupid partridges screeching and honking their way up and down the road and generally chilled out until the orange truck hoved into view.

It was at this point that I discovered that our car does not have a spare tire.

Instead of a spare, it had a puncture repair kit that fills the affected tire with some unholy goop that allows it to get to the nearest garage. This is fine as long as you run over a nail. It is entirely useless if there is a hole the size of Nebraska in your tire. The RAC minion (who was nice enough, but perhaps not the sharpest tool in the box) told me that he wasn’t entirely sure what to do since a) he had no flatbed truck and b) no way of getting me home with a baby since the van did not accommodate car seats. Having informed his headquarters that I was stranded WITH A BABY, I was a little put out at this.

“So what you’re telling me is that I have to find my own way home?”

“Er,” he said, embarrassed, “yeah. Or you can wait for me to phone for another truck.”

The words “another truck” and the possible 2 hour wait that they implied got me back on my mobile to The Rock Star and managed, over the cocophany of several hundred guitars being played at full volume, to get a ride with the parents of our friend Mr. Steve (he of Danish Muffin and Coneass the Barbarian fame) who just HAPPENED to be passing through the area. Thanking the universe for the kindness of virtual strangers, the Prawn and I piled into Mr. and Mrs. Steve Senior’s car and were soon in the comfort of our little flat once more.

Non-helpful minion had informed me that I should ring the RAC back as soon as I returned so they could arrange to collect the car. I should have expected a hitch, but I was so pleased to be home that I hadn’t really thought terribly far ahead. Of course, the first question I was asked when I phoned back was, “why didn’t you stay with your car?”

The story from this point becomes pointless and boring (as if it wasn’t already) and suffice to say that we now have our car back thanks to an employee of RAC who truly went above and beyond the call of duty, but I am still left with a small and bitter ball of customer service rage festering away quietly in my gullet.

Oh, and Mercboy? I hope you have RAC membership.

Since reading His Dark Materials, I’ve invested a significant amount of thought into what the nature of my daemon might be. Everyone, I imagine, would like to think that they’d have an impressive physical manifestation of their true self but the truth is that some people are wormy. Or froggy. Or platypus like. As much as I’d like to think that my soul is cuddly and warm, the truth is that I believe that my daemon would probably be a magpie. I don’t mean to imply that I have a Sex in the City type obsession with the material, whether it be shoes, clothes or designer men, but I love beautiful things, colorful language and shiny ideas and want to gather them around me.

I got my chance to cast my beady eyes around a glut of shiny this weekend at a rock and gem fair near Kingston, where I spent far too much on things that didn’t take up all that much room in my purse.

Part of my motivation for going was obviously to pick up some much needed supplies. Ordering stones on-line, while convenient, is a little bit of a crap shoot; you can never be sure of what fire or lustre that you’ll end up with. Being able to pick up a stone or strand of beads and watch what happens when the light hits it is a real luxury.

The other incentive to make the trek was to meet the lovely 3’s of Etsy fame who’s equally beady of eye when it comes to stones and beads.

After meeting up with 3’s , The Rock Star (who is actually a living saint in the getting-dragged-around-to-boring-shit department) generously became Prawn Bitch for the afternoon and toddled off after our daughter and tried to make sure she didn’t either steal or destroy anything, leaving 3’s and I free to peruse the staggering mountain of shiny glinting seductively, “come-and-buy” at all and sundry.

The people watching at an event such as this is always a good time. A gem show can draw professionals, enthusiastic amateurs and those that fit into the category of “other”. (I realized, while standing at a booth, that the woman next to me was holding a crystal in each hand while chanting and swaying. People watching is always slightly more interesting when minor celebrity enters the mix, so we were kind of surprised when a voice from behind us informed us that we “couldn’t get out” of the door that we were determinedly pushing on that we were face to face with none other than Rolf Harris.

US readers most likely would not know the inimitable Mr. Harris from a hole in the ground, but he’s a minor legend here in the UK for just being one of those guys who’s just always been a nice guy on TV for as long as anyone can remember. He was reclining on a couch, apparently taking a break from the show floor. He told 3’s that she looked “dramatic”. (3’s is a very tall, lovely girl with bright orange hair, so he wasn’t too far off in his assessment.)

Peppering this post are pictures of the shiny that I brought home with me. I’m looking very much forward to playing with all of the beautiful cabs and beads that I brought home to feather my nest.

Now that it’s become quite obvious that The Prawn has become a small playback machine, more than ever we are watching our language. (”Melon Farmer” has become a staple word in our vocabulary.) My virtual sister-in-law even takes it upon herself to thwack my brother-in-law when he lets a choice word slip. And as for her grandfather…well we just make sure that she’s too far away from him to hear what he’s saying when he’s in a mood.

My virtual sister and brother in law just recently purchased a Wii, which I now covet highly. We spent a lot of the weekend playing on the unique console, trying everything from tennis (which nearly resulted in broken furniture and the dog getting stepped on more than one.) to ski slalom. (which was about 10 times harder than it looked.)

Our biggest group effort was in bowling, however, and we all had a rather good time trying to thrash eachother on the virtual and scarily accurate lanes. The dog, who was recovering from tennis, was obviously excited as 6 people seemed to be THROWING THINGS. IN THE HOUSE. So he bounded around, the concept of virtual reality too baffling for his tiny, doggy brain, wondering WHERE IN THE HELL ALL OF THESE THINGS WERE GOING before looking up at us ruefully as if to say, “You know, this looks like it should be fun, but it’s really not.”

In the Wii world, one chooses an avatar to represent you. For reasons too difficult to explain, my father-in-law’s team was represented by a black “Mii” in their sporting exploits. The bowling program has an announcer who comes up from time to time if you get a strike or a spare who, rather predictably, shouts, “NICE STRIKE!” or “NICE SPARE!” The Prawn, of course, was sitting around, observing quietly (although her view of the proceedings was probably not all that different from the dog’s.) and eventually toddled up to the television screen to see what all the fuss was about.

Just as father-in-law stepped up to play with his Mii of color, the Prawn happily shouted, “SPADE!”

It would have been pointless at the time to point out to my howling family that she was obviously trying to say, “spare” which had been shouted at top volume frequently over the last 10 minutes.

I’ve talked about how I feel about racial humor before. My feelings, in short, are that the best way to take power from something is to laugh at it. In an era where everyone lives in terror of words, racism can become stronger quietly, since everyone is afraid to talk about it for fear of using the wrong term, the wrong combination of words, the wrong tone of voice. Someday I’ll have to have a conversation with the Prawn about hurtful words and I hope that while she takes my advice to heart, I also hope that there is never a combination of letters that makes her afraid.

One person who definitely ISN’T afraid to mock just about anything is Kevin Smith. In this scene from Clerks 2, terminal slacker Randall Graves makes a serious faux pas. Not in the least bit Safe For Work.

Parenthood is full of small absurdities. Yesterday, I discovered the entirety of the alphabet (in magnet form) inside my Doc Martens. Instead of wondering what my life was coming to, I merely thought, “Oh THAT’S where those went.” I often think of my mother-in-law, who once opened the freezer to discover the ice cube tray contained not only ice, but several Han Solo action figures “frozen in carbonite.” I think I can just be grateful for the moment that I don’t have a boy, because I don’t think I could handle waking up with an excruciating pain in my back to discover that I was lying on Action Man. At any rate, I digress.

The absurdity came to a head yesterday afternoon while on a routine shopping trip with The Prawn. Due to the misery of the weather, she was safely ensconced inside her rain bubble cockpit with trusty sidekick, Sir Humphrey Bollagaurd as I completed my errands. When I came to Waitrose in order to purchase cupcake making supplies for the up coming natal festivities of The Rock Star and Trumpet, I glanced down, and discovered, to my horror, that Humphrey was, in fact, AWOL.

“You’ve lost Humphrey!” I said out loud, and promptly burst into tears.

I blame my mother for this.

When I was small, she managed to instill a sense of extreme empathy that lingers with me today and unfortunately includes the anthropomorphication of inanimate objects. “Oh no!” she’d say, upon waking me up in the morning, “Bear fell out of bed! He must have had an awfully cold and lonely night on the floor.” Of course, this would emotionally cripple me for the day, imagining Bear spending the night on the floor, gazing up at me sadly, and wondering why I would be so callous as to ACCIDENTALLY KNOCK HIM OFF THE BED IN MY SLEEP.*

An instant search was mounted. I retraced my steps and stops all around town. I called back at shops I’d been in and shops along the route to see if anyone had handed Humphrey in. Then I did it again. And a third time. The town of Berkhamstead was treated to the sight of a grown woman with streaked mascara desperately hunting for a stuffed donkey.

The Prawn, meanwhile, who still has the short term memory of a goldfish, was fairly content to go along for the ride. She, of course, has no concept of “gone” or “lost”; to her, Humphrey simply IS. “Humfra!” she said happily, from time to time, deepening my despair as it became apparent that dear Sir Humphrey was nowhere to be found.

I wept bitterly all the way home, the Prawn in the backseat, happily oblivious. I could not help but imagine the sense of abandonment this well loved donkey must have felt as he tumbled from the buggy into the rainy street. I’m a 33 years old and I was devastated by the loss of this stuffed toy that my daughter had brought to life, just by loving him. I felt miserable and utterly absurd. The Rock Star was equally devastated when I tearfully informed him of the tragedy over the phone. I prefaced my confession with “Something awful happened!” leading him to believe that I’d crashed the car. I love that I married a man who would have PREFERED that I’d crashed the car.

The only thing that kept the disaster from becoming a catastrophe was that for once, the two of us had some foresight. Months ago, when it was obvious that Humphrey was becoming a fast favourite, we bought a “stunt double.” (This is when we discovered that he was, in fact, a pony called Parsley. It was a bit like finding out that your high school English teach that you had a crush on was gay.) Stunt Humphrey has been used once or twice when the One True Humphrey has been indisposed; either in the washing machine or left behind at Grandad’s house. The Prawn, of course knows only that Humphrey is white and soft, and has never been bothered by these substitutions, so when we returned from our ill fated trip, I went, with heavy heart, to the toy shelf to deploy Stunt Humphrey into active duty. In my head, I asked whatever spirit that formerly inhabited his predecessor to imbue the New Humphrey with the same spark of life, and then tentatively handed him to the Prawn, who’s face lit up as she embraced him.

To her, he is the One True Humphrey and always has been.

I remember eating out. I think it used to have something to do with eating. And maybe talking, but I can’t be sure.

We’ve been meaning to get together with the Cheerful Idiot and the Barmaid for sometime to celebrate our goddaughter’s birthday, so when we finally found a few hours that worked for 4 adults, it meant taking 3 children out in public and trying to get them to ingest something, which is always a situation to be avoided at all costs. To make matters worse, we chose a local branch of a crappy and overly pricey Italian chain joint with notoriously bad service, so we were obviously setting ourselves up for big fun. The Rock Star is also in the process of trying to get off of caffeine, so he spent the day thinking withdrawal related thoughts and wishing that he could sleep until forgetting that he’d ever HEARD of coffee, so his general fatigue was yet another factor to add to the general mayhem.

Even without the child factor, our local branch of Frankie and Benny’s (a restaurant that tries hard to convince you that it is oozing with New York Italian charm while simultaneously employing underage chavlings from the wrong side of Aylesbury.) is not exactly the venue for a restful repast. This was proven within moments of being seated when, in lieu of the traditional annoying, but generally innocuous, congregation of waiters to wish a guest Happy Birthday, the entire establishment was plunged into darkness and treated to a cacophonous version of the popular natal hymn the blared from every corner, followed by a fit-inducing light show. And then they did it again. And then a third time. The waves of hate emanating from my body could have killed small mammals.

The Rock Star and I don’t get out to restaurants much these days, but generally when we do get a chance to eat al fresco (al fresco translating to “not sitting on the couch watching The Simpsons”) it’s not quite the relaxing ordeal that it used to be seeing as how the third member of our party chews with her mouth open, belches loudly and feels that her hair is just as good a place as any for the main entrée. When wait staff as us “How many?”, “Two and a half” has become a standard answer and we tend to leave a fair amount of work for the poor sod who has to clean the table in the form of partially chewed pasta and baby wipes covered in various organic substances.

We miss dining mano y mano, the Rock Star and I.