Yesterday evening, we shared a potluck dinner with old friends (I brought the chocolate torte, and I had a picture of its remains up, but then decided it wasn’t doing the torte justice and ditched it for this wallflower instead.) We laughed till our sides were sore. Some of them hadn’t heard the story about the skunk’s tail caressing my husband’s arm that I wrote about on my Profile page on this blog. It reached right over that campfire… Good times.

While my parents were here visiting over Christmas, my dad actually ate a tiny piece of good European chocolate we had lying around, just to taste. My father never eats chocolate! Mom generally could take it or leave it, so we simply never had it around when I was growing up. Me? Pfft. I buy cocoa by the 25 lb bags, when I can find them at baking supply stores. Now, if I could only get Valrhona cocoa at wholesale, my life would be perfect.

A story on my folks from their visit at Christmas: it was time for saying the prayer before the dinner one evening. My husband, as head of the household, deferred to my father with the word, “Boss?”

And with perfect comedic timing, my father hesitated the slightest second, then turned to his left, and asked, with the most perfect upward lilt to the voice and gentle twinkle in his eye towards his wife: “Frances?” We laughed ourselves absolutely breathless. It took a moment before the prayer got offered and dinner got started, but, hey, God was definitely there already.