Unconditional Love
7:14 a.m. - 2006-06-11


I was reading the accounts of the world's stupidest teenage girl who met some yahoo on My Space and flew to the Middle East to meet him. This is asinine on so many levels that it doesn't even need discussion. What I was thinking of was how the mom will now treat the kid, after getting her back. Imagining that the mom is normally intelligent, I mean, which might not be the case since she left the passport in the kid's possession or where she could get at it, and she did not check out the kid's story of the people she was supposedly going to stay with in Canada (very very bad Mom work, lady, the kid was only 16). But I feel that if a kid was so amazingly, astoundingly stupid, disobedient and foolish, how could you look on the kid with the same trust and affection again? Well, a normal person couldn't and the result would be restriction until adulthood, plus permanent removal of the kid's computer, cell phone, car and every other comfort of modern life.

Now that we have bought a new mattress for the other bed in the girls' room, we had to think of something to do with the old one, which was really in pretty good shape. Luckily, he has had past dealings with the Bay Area Rescue Mission, a great outfit in Richmond, so we put the mattress in a plastic cover, loaded it into the pickup and set off on a Saturday adventure. The people at the mission are really nice, and one of the guys in the donation section gave me a lovely bouquet of flowers, all orange lilies and calendulas. I was very pleased, because I do love orange. I wonder who donated the lovely bouquets to the mission? They were all gussied up just like you would buy in a market.

After that, we went to Berkeley to try out the cafe at the Scharfenberger chocolate factory. I think it is called the Cocoa Cafe or Cacao Cafe or something like that. Needless to say, it smells amazing in the cafe, but unfortunately, the food was not that great. I had lentil soup, because what can you do to lentil soup to wreck it (or so I thought), but it tasted charred, though it didn't look burnt. Maybe they put cocoa in everything and it gives it a weird flavor. I also had sweet potato fries, and they were a little too burnt. So it was interesting, but I don't think we will ever go there again. He was puzzled over the menu until I translated the Jambon and Gruyere Panini into a grilled ham and cheese sandwich for him. After lunch, we went to the gift shop, but I saw that the chocolate bars were grossly expensive (a little 1" x 2" bar for $2.00). Really folks, you can buy a big bar of Scharfenberger at Trader Joes for 1/3 the cost.

After that, we came home and puttered around the yard a bit. He has really been attacking the rampant weeds that grew after all that rain, and I started some more seeds in cubes. He had a nice conversation over the fence with the new neighbors, who are first-time homeowners and are amazed at how much work a house and yard are. I think there is more tilling in my future for today.