A couple of days ago before my 7 year-old nephew flew back home with his grandmother, I asked what he wanted me to make for his last dinner here for a while.
His response? “Let’s go to a restaurant I haven’t been to yet.” I know I did not carry this child. But some strange gene in my husband’s brother has given them our son. Aversion to leftovers, blithely mocking the abundant contents of our frig, this young man is clearly related to his Uncle Jim, how closely we need to find out.
We bought him a cowboy shirt, a prime country shirt of the same brand Jim buys. He likes it and repeated my phrase that the blue going through the plaid brings out his eyes. Lest Jim be aware of this, the shirt was on sale. Heaven forbid!
Jim’s mother, who also visited, always thought Jim was a snob for wearing undershirts with the Ralph Lauren label. I got them on sale and they were the ones with fewer seams and they took way more washings without shrinking.
Now I’m the princess with the proverbial pea. I can’t stand the sheets in the guest room. They’re all differently sized hotel sheets with tears in them, so a particular point has to go down to the bottom and be tucked under. For a guest spending a few hundred a night or a couple thousand a week to stay here, they may not notice. I notice. Because I plan for guests and make sure their room is good to go, and the first thing I did, even though we don’t own the place, is to buy us real sheets. Because life isn’t worth living without good sheets. Now I’m doing that for our guests, I don’t care that we don’t own the place or the beds. It’s for our guests, and it’s for me, to have sheets that fit the beds so that all of us are comfortable with the solution.
I think by now I should have a hotline to the “O” because I’ve been buying sheets there for years. Step up to the plate, Club O and let’s see how well I can treat our guests. It’s summer, let’s see friends and family! Cheers, Dee
Cooking with Dee 
Heh heh – yep, sheets are one of those things it just doesn’t pay to scrimp on!
[Still have a few that were Original Wedding Presents for MRJ/VKL – yikes! Need to retire those to clinic duty, but they just don’t wear out…]
I have been having 2nd, 3rd, & even 4th thoughts about my Big Summer Expedition to CA; in some ways I would rather be investing in a trip to visit long-lost family ;-) => but I suppose that is just my incriminating self-doubt coming to the forefront.
I’ve worked hard for this so I’M GONNA ENJOY IT!
Hope to see you soon.
Hey Val, I think we may be en route to CA. And I’m sure we can find somewhere to board the horses…. And bring those sheets to the clinic. We used them to cover crates at the ferals clinics, you could have fun tearing them up! Dee