Miles and I have been playing powerful rounds of Frisbee in recent days, and we are really quite good—or approximately 10,000 times better than we were the first time we played together. Whipping the saucer across 60-70 yards during a period of thirty minutes or more is quite energizing.

I'm very accurate with my delivery, but something was lacking last night. I felt weighed down and lethargic. The wind was wreaking havoc (not something that usually deters our accuracy), the light was failing, and the rain was looming. I saw images of the wuss trying to spit like the 'manly' men, and then brushing his shoulder quickly so as to remove the wayward saliva before those other men noticed. My tosses were akin to that wayward saliva.

On came the rain. The ominously heavy clouds blanketed our park area, and the thunder growled grumpily. (as if a growl can be anything but grumpy) The lighting scattered to obscurity and the air became hazy, murky if you will. It felt like one of those graveyard scenes from the silver screen, fog raising from the ground, moans materializing from the trees.

It was eerie at best, and the atmosphere sent chills travelling along our spines. We were drenched, a little shocked at the sudden onslaught of the storm, and yet, skittish all the same. Then, it happened! I threw the Frisbee uncertainly at my partner, in a silent query of, "do you want to go in for the night, even though we've scarcely been doing this 10 minutes?" Through wind and rain, my projection endured; through wind and rain, my pass landed directly in Miles' hands. He gazed my way, and through the veiled distance I still detected his astonishment.

He returned the throw, which I ran to catch and then bulleted one back. Bulls eye again! It continued on this way for ten minutes before a flash of overhead lightning had us scurrying toward home. Miles draped an arm around my shoulders as we cleared the road and looked upon me with respect. I shrugged and replied the only way this Wisconsinite could: "I am the Brett Favre of Frisbee."

My family, especially my father's side, has blessed me with many unique recipes. I consider my ancestors nothing short of culinary geniuses...thank goodness they cannot see the farcical kitchen show that we of the 5th generation orchestrate. We do try....

A couple of years ago, I wanted to impress Miles with my then limited cooking skills. I called Mom and asked her for the recipe to great-grandma's chicken. It's always been called great-grandma's chicken—always! I knew it by no other name. My grandparents called it so, my aunts, uncles, parents, and cousins too.

So I'm trying to get the recipe for this terribly tasty chicken and Mom is fumbling with the recipe cards in her memory bank. After many painful moments of failed recollection, she stated, "Just get a box of cornflake crumbs. The recipe is on the back."

Disillusionment stung. Unless my family was sitting on a secret Kellogg's fortune, my great-grandma's recipe was not my great-grandma's at all. In the scheme of things, I've found that this matters very little. I still call it great-grandma's chicken. My children will call it great-great grandma's chicken...that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

And speaking of cookies...(How's that for a segue? *nudge, nudge...wink, wink*)

My brother and I grew up thinking that Mom's chocolate chip cookies were the very best of all things. They tasted better than all other chocolate chip cookies, I still attest. Barely out of the oven, they were warm and fluffy...the chocolate silky and smooth.

You guessed it: the recipe comes straight from the Toll House chocolate chip package...I doubt my family is sitting on a Nestlé fortune either.

Miles and I don't really watch TV. It isn't that we look upon sitcoms, or upon sitcom viewers, unfavorably; we simply lack the desire to engage in the "activity". We get our news from CNN.com. We get our weather from Weather.com. (notice a trend?)

I watch TV when I'm with my parents, though! I'm a "Social TV-Viewer". Whenever I return from a visit, I return knowing so much more about pop culture than when I left. I find this very sad: I chill with my parents to get up with what the kids are doing for fun these days.

I suppose we use our TV to watch movies...but we're just as happy to spend the evening reading—perhaps more so. In the on position, it receives the most attention when I manipulate the DVD player to stream compact disks. And off, it excels in the collection of dust...it has a nice big surface perfect for a healthy dust crop to grow between the weekly polishings. It's sort of a side project we're working on for supplemental income. It hasn't been real profitable yet.

The one shred of decency our TV holds, is its constancy in the 10:00-11:00P slot every night, seven days a week. "Who's Line is it Anyway?" ABC Family airs the reruns...good stuff, really, superbly good stuff. I laugh uncontrollably during every episode....and LOUDLY. I am a person of a soft-spoken sort, and rarely find myself untamed in my amusement. The drollness of my momma and my Anna are notable exceptions, along with this grand improv comedy show of bygone days.

Miles is still boggled by the volume of my cascading laughter during the show—"My silk-voiced wife? A closet "Who's Line..." hyena? My God! What have I gotten myself into!? If only I had known..."

In the early afternoon hours of Sunday, my consort and I willingly quit the house to tackle the challenge of the biweekly grocery trip. I use "willingly" in a playful sense. Willingly as in not at all voluntarily. Yesterday, we made things doubly, possibly triply, difficult for ourselves—as we are wont to do.

Grocery list at the ready, we make our way to Lowes Foods. But then—! There, in the depths of backward thinking, arose an idea so illogical as to make perfect sense. "Let's stop at Wal-Mart first," says the spouse. "I need to get socks." I nod sagely. I hear the hymn, "Holy, Holy, Ho—ly" when I see Miles in his stockinged feet...and they really don't smell pleasant enough to be considered divine.

Miles grabs a cart as we pass the threshold to the mart of wals, and I ponder to myself, "How many socks is he planning on getting?" I also take a moment to ponder why I hear so many people call shopping carts "buggies" in the South, but that is off subject.

Moments upon entering, he takes a sharp swerve to the right. We are in the produce section, speeding rapidly in the direction of the frozen vegetables. I stop in my tracks and my gaze pierces his left shoulder blade with such intensity that he jerks around counterclockwise, his stabbed shoulder blade an axis, to face me. "Well, I figure we'll get the frozen, canned, and dry stuff here, you know? Lowes has better produce, but they can't match these prices." Made sense to me.

We say "I figure", "you know", and "whatnot" an awful lot, and have been known to mutter, "Stubborn old cuss" often, to the confusion and amusement of Southerners in attendance. It's the Midwestern in us coming out.

As the clerk is tallying our bill, we are feeling pretty good about ourselves, if not slightly embarrassed at the volume of instant pudding mixes peppering the cart. What a selection they had! Pistachio and banana cream, butterscotch and lemon, chocolate and vanilla—oh they had 'em all! Sugar free-n-fat free! BLISS! With a delightfully low bill, the pudding-laden cart rides off into the sunset of our trunk.

Now, onto Lowes Foods. We arrive on a high. We have just filled the trunk with the riches of pudding—what's there to be low about, after all? We tick the fruit and vegetables off of the list as the cart fills quickly. We are not happy with the bakery selection...well I am not happy with the bakery section. I like my whole wheat, my multi-grain, and my fiber...don't give me that doughy white stuff, you hear?

Miles pipes in, "We'll go to Harris Teeter. You love their bakery section. We'll stop." My voice is best described as mewling as I try to get a word in edgewise. Three grocery stores in one day? To borrow my brother's phraseology, that's some kind of daffy. "I've already decided," he declared, and we made our leave.

We arrive in the beautiful bakery at Harris Teeter, and while I am cooing to the wheaty selection, Miles is rolling his eyes. My love of carbs is well documented and I need say no more. We pay for our bread and leave the store...my forehead is throbbing. Three grocery stores. Three! When did we get so picky?

We approached a Food Lion as we made our return journey home. Deftly, Miles turned into the the parking lot and said, "We might as well hit 'em all." He jumped out of the car. My head was aching. I stayed. He returned with Pepsi for himself, a diet Snapple Peach Ice Tea for me. "I just realized that we've been shopping for almost 4 hours!" he relays. I fix my eyes to be the poster child of pitiful, and nod my head druggedly, ever so carefully. "I'm satisfied. Let's go home," he all but sings. I press the cool glass bottle of my favorite drink against my temple and allow my head to loll to the side as he drives on.

Several trips from the trunk to the house would follow, and several grunts of, "I don't know how this is going to fit," too. With all of that pudding tucked safely away, freshly painted, "Duck When Opening" signs for the cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer, and the next fortnight's menu posted, I indulged in a pear. And, as temperament would have it, a prescription strength Ibuprofen.

Over the course of an hour, and in spite of Miles' grouchy grumbling and leaden feet shuffling, we walked around the mall last night. It was a cold, damp day, but my legs begged for movement. Briskly we ventured down this wing and that, until, alas, we entered the Dairy Queen's palace, and partook of her splendid hospitality.

It started with Miles' pout, "Since you got me here, I think I deserve a banana shake." I relented. "You'll have some too, won't you!?" he questioned hopefully.

"No," I replied, a little holier-than-thou-ness surfacing. Snottily, I continued, "I don't need anything, thanks."

We got to the counter and ohmigosh you wouldn't believe the size of the Cheesequake Blizzard poster that they had! It was overpowering...so much so, that I had a Blueberry Cheesequake Blizzard in my hand before I could get ahold of myself. Miles was kind enough to let me enjoy my treat instead of making me eat crow instead, which I find to be infinitely less scrumptious.

In retrospect, I consider that little cup of Heaven to be more of a health food, anyway. I mean...blueberries!—fruit! You need fruit!—and blueberries are a deity of a fruit! Blueberries are nicknamed the "brain berries" because of their aptitude in protecting your noggin! They improve your vision, clear your arteries, provide you with more antioxidants for disease protection, strengthen your blood vessels, enhance your memory, stop urinary tract infections, reverse age-related physical and mental declines, and they promote weight control—just to name a few!

So...it's really good that I ate the Blizzard...right? Maybe? Don't you think? Huh?

Of course, I'm not altogether certain that soaking blueberries in pounds of sugar and then swirling them in high fat ice cream and high-cal cheesecake allows them to retain their nutrition, but ignorance is surely bliss.