ALERT there are bees in my kitchen.

Or something like bees. Two of them, to be precise. Plural: bees.

Why? Because I am chopping mint and making tabbouleh? Or because there was sugar out for the pie?

Bees, like spiders and moths, do not belong in the house, in my opinion. And mice. Bees, spiders, moths, and mice all belong in the out of doors where there will actually be more opportunities for them. Or, fewer opportunities. I am, actually, stony and hard of heart on the subject of bees, spiders, moths, and mice. Circle of life, my friends, circle of life.

[note: I do want there to be bees in the world. I am not without mercy. I am not killing the bees. But I can't believe that the two bees in my kitchen are actually doing the bee-world any favors. The future of bees cannot lie in hanging around my kitchen while I chop mint. That just wouldn't be sustainable.]

All I'm saying is that I was making tabbouleh, but the bees have forced a retreat. As in, I cannot be in the kitchen, tabbouleh, mint, pie or no, if there are also bees, end of story.

America: keep your bees outside, with the flowers and trees and heat and dirt and wasps and, hopefully, spiders, moths, and mice. I need to add the mint, parsley, red onion, garlic, salt and pepper to the tabbouleh, stat! It's like a Mexican standoff up in here, with the two bees and their stingers and me with my scaredy-cat ways.

Bees! Get out!

That is all.

Qu'est-ce que c'est, "super"?

Ah yes, the Super Bowl:  the moment in the sporting year when football concludes and we can all heave a sigh of relief.  That is what it means, right?  

Okay, I watched the last maybe five minutes (game minutes--we all know that game minutes are infinitely expandable, so those five lasted, what, an hour? an hour and a half?), and that was exciting, all the touchdownery and awesome receiving and sharp passing and whatnot.  In fact, if I could watch about ten minutes of action-packed football--what I believe is called "the highlight reel"--I might love football.  I used to think I didn't like football because I didn't understand it.  I have made an effort to understand it better, with the result that I still don't like it very much, so I guess it's because all that strategery (technical term) and marching up the field and lateralizing and all the lines--it just doesn't lift my heart and make it sing.  I will be happy to concede this is something wrong with me and nothing wrong with the game.  But my heart doth beat a little faster, now that football season is over for a good long while, and baseball doesn't get going for several weeks and so there is basketball:  beautiful, soaring basketball, which is currently a little hard to watch because of the horrible injury crisis plaguing the Utah Jazz.

Cooking news:  I had the splendid idea of making popovers this morning but the not-fully-splendid idea of putting them in the oven before the oven had fully preheated.  Alert: popovers require a fully preheated oven in order to pop, as it were.  I blame it on my not-fully-awake status.  Thus, our popovers were dense rather than airy, edible but not inspiring, a little bit sad, a little bit disappointing, and yet, still breakfast, so we ate them like the hungry people we were,  and are.