WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MEN

A lone bull swaggered towards a small pack of musk oxens. The fight of intimidation had begun. They glared. The younger one pacing back and forth, swinging it's head, testing his chances. The old bull feeling threatened pawed the ground. His position as the alpha male was at stake. But he would fight to the end.

Like men. Like alpha men. And it was only when I married, ate and slept with a man and had more sons than daughters did I begin to grasp a deeper understanding of the beast mentality. I found it wondrous in its primitiveness, its wildness, its beastliness and most of the time I would be flabbergasted. At times I would be stunned into a subservient silence.

My early introduction to men's minds was of course gleaned from my father. He loved cars that looked masculine. Like the Valiant. Or the Ford Cortina. Being overtaken was one of his pet peeves. He would turn dark and fume silently. And I knew exactly what would happen next. He would step on the accelerator, the car would speed up and finally he would be Overtaker. I could almost feel the vibrating strings of satisfaction drifting in the air. As a teenager I was mostly bewildered by such a display of childish competitiveness by my father. The working of men's minds were completely beyond me. They were alien.

Then I watched my sons fight opponents in the ring. Their karate keikogi snapping sharply with each kick or punch. Sweating, soaked, each intimidating the other, each psyching the other, each glaring, occasionally stamping their feet or pawing with their fists, each strategizing their next move. Like musk oxen bulls. But when the final score was on their side my heart swelled. "Them, my friends, are my alpha sons!" my mind would shout, my head would nod and my fist would punch an imaginary sand bag. Short of thumping a hairy chest I was for that very moment quite the man. My alpha husband would be close to the ring. Stamping and roaring like a triumphant bull.  But in the secret pocket of my woman heart I am thankful that theirs is a fighting sport that is controlled. Where full contact is not allowed. 


When they emerge from the ring with their keikogi unraveled, their black belts loose and pendulous, their hair disheveled, strands of it glued to their foreheads with sweat, skins glistening, eyes shining, bodies a little bruised and their breaths coming fast and heavy I would feel primitively and beastly proud. Like a man. Like a beast.

So it is only now I know that a tattered keikogi is macho in men's eyes. I've always wondered why Z treasured his and was taken aback when asked if he was going to throw it away. Quite the contrary he wants it framed, hung and displayed. It is only now I know why some young alpha men have their hair closely cropped. It makes them look intimidating to their peers. It is only now I know why some alpha men have their hair longer than usual. It makes them look rugged and rough. It is only now I know why alpha men sit at the head of a table facing the entrance. So they will be the first to sight an enemy when he enters. It is only now I know why alpha men make every littlest thing they do appear important. They regard everything as a contest. To get the upperhand. To prevent others from pushing them around. It is only now I know why my alpha men love Swiss knives. It makes them feel like a MacGyver. And it is only now I know why alpha men never ask for directions. It makes them feel incompetent. And literally lost. Sometimes, exasperatingly and alpha-ingly, lost. Like little boys. Forever. 

Now let me see....is there anything else I need to know about alpha men? 

Uh-uh I don't think so. That about covers it all, don't you think?

*SIGH* We women. Therefore we are............More complicated. 

Image taken from here.

SLEEPLESS AT FIFTY

When I fell fast asleep amidst the raucous roar of Godzilla with tiny screaming humans at its feet a few years ago I realised that I was heading towards serious trouble.

Fast forward. 

Tonight a few years later. It’s two in the morning, almost three, and I’m still up. I reflect and realise, at the ripe age of fifty three (or whatever), that life can be categorized into two main phases. The deep-sleep phase and the no-sleep phase. I have come to be aware, literally, that keeping awake at night is no longer a struggle or an option. It is a fact of life. Middle aged life. I cringe at the word middle age but use it I must. For in denial I live not.

Gone are the days of those deep, sonorous sleep sessions. When an earthquake would have failed to rattle me awake or the screeching wail of a baby would have whizzed past my ears and make me snuggle even deeper into my pillow. 

Today, I’m in the no-sleep phase of life and I can now empathize with older folks who fall seriously asleep in the middle of an animated conversation. Without warning. Or when their heads tilt back as they sit on a couch. Not with dignity but with sleep, their mouths gaping as if in awe. I feel for them. Sleep becomes elusive but at the same time creeps up on you without warning, usually in public and in embarrassing places, in a middle of a noisy conversation or even while clucking playfully at a grandchild. I’m no longer the giggling youngster entertained by an old man comically dodging sleep during the day and willing it to come in the middle of the night. I no longer find it amusing or worse laughable. I repent. For I might just get there.

Six hours, claim my middle aged friends, is the maximum stretch of time that they can sustain sleep. The clock inside of you sets for six hours of sleep but you’re up before it goes off and beat it at its own game. You win every time and yet you’re still a loser.

The click of a switch or the rustle of clothing as someone walks past, the faint padded footsteps and the sigh of your partner all become unwelcome companions as you struggle in your bid for sleep. You wonder if you should have separate beds or separate rooms or separate lives. So you can court sleep again without struggle and without pain. 

Now I know why my father was up at a ghostly five in the morning, every morning while I slumbered on to ten or eleven. Ten hours of sleep when I was young was a luxury that I took for granted then. Ten hours of uninterrupted sleep now would only mean one thing. A coma.

As my husband and I drive past mamak shops during sleepless nights I marvel at those young men and women who deliberately take the option of keeping awake to sip, nibble, drink and eat their sleep away into the small hours of the morning. Unaware that one very old day they would wish they could have it all back. The sleep I mean. I feel anxious for them.

Past fifty sleep becomes a word that smatters conversations with your friends during your eternal waking hours. It becomes foreign and distant and desirable like some knight in shining armour or a desirable damsel in distress for aging males. It becomes simply a word, a desire, a wish, a hope, a yearning, an obsession, that keeps you awake.

How I envy those who sleep like dolls, like dead men, like trunks of trees. How I resent those who find comfort in their pillows and in the crevices of their bed. But I tell myself that there is another phase yet to come when I would most probably wish that I could live on even if it means a lack of sleep. So I thank God that He keeps me awake. Still. After all there is more in life than there is in sleep. 

Image taken from here.

THE GREAT MALAYSIAN WILDEBEESTS

The Malaysian peninsula’s ecosystem is considered to be perhaps the last of the ecosystems in which such species still thrive. They are often described as ‘those blundering and voracious little mammals that strategize little but brim with dense joy and determination’ so that their thrusts over the plains at specific times of the year are watched in endless amazement, worry and disbelief. 

Nowhere else in the world do migrations of such madness occur except in the valleys and plains that carpet Malaysia. And in no place on earth have there been witness to movements of beasts in such deranged droves and manic unison that leaves one gapingly awed. These migrations begin in the weeks before the onset of the Great Feasts.

The migrations could involve about several million beasts of three or more species at any one time. They speed and stampede along the same worn paths each year. By instinct they bolt in clumps, each made up of two adults and three or four young ‘uns, and it is in this formation that they start off in unison and with but one insane mind. 

Peculiar only to this region, a big number are victims of their own follies, for they are their own predators and victims all in one. The spectacle of this suicidal phenomenon can only be understood when seen in person and only then will it be comprehended as the Seventh Blunder of the Modern World.
 

This manic migration is a dramatic story. It takes place amoung the various states of Malaysia and is the greatest, brainless show on earth. Amoung the open plains of the West Coast and the East Coast, the North and the South and all the crevices in between these foolhardy Mammalaysians get into gear and stampede blindly at full speed in almost all directions and head for the backwaters of Everywhere.

With a show of camaraderie some will band together at certain stops to embark on the journey in groups of twenty or thirty and spend hours huddled in a tight pack. If they are lucky they will arrive at their destination intact and then disperse into smaller flocks. Those unfortunate enough to have totally incompetent leaders, who lead them like blinded and lobotomized freaks, may never see the light of a living day again.

The precise timing of these migrations changes annually, according to the waxing and waning of the moon, the occasions being very spontaneous, auspicious and natural events. While on the trip to the backwaters of Everywhere wild hoots of “Balik Kampung! Balik Kampung! Balik Kampung!” often accompany them and with this they grow manic and crazed and get out of control. So driven are they that it is not uncommon to see many of them entangled and splattered in fatal accidents resulting in sad but not unavoidable deaths.  

Before the onset of each migration, wild life patrols often attempt to regulate their movements with warnings of dangerous patches along their journey but these warnings, as always, fall on deaf beasts. They prefer instead to expose themselves to danger and throw caution to the wind in romantic and problematic waves and sweeps.

The movement back is just as dramatic albeit with less enthusiasm for the climax of the great migrations have been achieved. From then on, the migrations take on a downhill dip but with no less number of crashes and splatterings. Their reckless bravery culminates during these seasonal migrations, when they turn into feverish, sub-normal Mammalaysian wildebeests.

The casualties each year are high but do nothing to discourage a repeat performance the following year with the exact same casualties, in almost the exact same spots, for the exact same reasons and in the exact same witlessness,  And thereon we witness, in awful disbelief, the migrations of these two legged, dying-to-be-dead Malaysian Wildebeests.

"Balik Kampung" may be likened to the original sentiments of " Take Me Home, Country Road". The difference being that this happens at least four times a year marking every festive season and its family reunions in multicultural Malaysia. It is particular only to Malaysia and its inhabitants. Me wildebeest.

STATE-OF-THE-ART APPLIANCES AND TECHNIQUES TO GIVE COOKING A BOOST

I am cooking chicken curry in my steamy kitchen and I attempt to bat my eyelashes to give those very Nigella come hither glances to god-knows-whoever-is-watching-me-while-I-cook-in-the-kitchen. My mascara curdles, my make up is being reduced and my hair just got sautéed along with the onions so that they are now limp while turning a crisp golden brown around the edges. But why suffer? Cooking is getting pretty savvy and every serious cook, born or bred, needs to invest in the latest and in a hundred percent foolproof cooking appliance that will ensure gourmet meals while you look glamorously splatter proof, inspired, intelligent, sociable, famous, rich, British middle class eccentric, madly American or indecipherable Australian but most of all to revive that ever dwindling passion in the kitchen.

If you invest in this state-of-the-art appliance and adopt these savvy techniques I will guarantee you results every time and you will live never to regret it. So save up and invest in a Television Crew and plug it into your kitchen socket at all times and cooking will be really fun and inspiring.

It is good idea to look for the ones that come with a real live dishwasher attached so that it will also collect and wash all those dishes that you mess up while you put together the Thai green curry or after you fiddle and bash that plump garlic.

Be sure to purchase this appliance while it is on offer because that is when they throw in one of those beautiful built-in kitchens. You will be spoilt for choice from the down to earth, practical town house kitchens to the most elegant European designer kitchens some with French windows that seem to sprout sprigs after sprigs of fragrant herbs so that you can, at long last, alluringly stretch out your arms all the way across the island top, grasp those crunchy herbs with your cutexed finger tips and tear them apart while displaying your gleaming white teeth and pouty lips through the lens of the Television Crew.

Don’t worry about the excessive amounts of fat or oil that you use because the Television Crew ensures that it doesn’t all go to your hips and thighs or to your heart. You don’t even need to use those ugly aprons that cooks from the previous century used if they want to look good after the cooking. Wear your best while you are at it because after all if you are seen to look good, you feel good and that in turn ensures that your food will taste good.

Pour compliments all over your own cooking yourself because there is nothing like self-encouragement when you are swathed in attention. While you are thinking ‘a pinch of salt’ practise multi-tasking and pour in that sinister handful of salt instead. Add those garnishes that appear to cost so little but seems to be worth all the extra effort of chopping and mincing that is needed. After all, you do need to encourage and tempt your guests’ eye balls with colours which also happen to be so necessary to keep the Television Crew in good working order.

Have a bunch of gluttons ready at your dining table so the Television Crew can zoom in on them to show how much they love you because you invited them for a free meal and a television appearance. Never think of washing up after because, remember, the Television Crew is there. Always, always have a dish ready and cooked to perfection to speed things up. It would be very rude to keep your guests waiting or to allow the food to get cooked.

Memorize the vitamin contents of fruit and vegetables for that extra edge in entertaining so that even if you are serving foods high in cholesterol you can still save your guests’ lives by telling them about the superfluous amount of vitamins that your sweet and rich dessert exudes.

Develop that forearm so that you can ‘simply’ whack a big bar of chocolate on the counter or grind the pestle into the mortar with manly gusto. You might even lose a few pounds along the way. No guarantees though especially if you lisp. However, do learn to lisp, bat your eyelashes, develop that Australian accent and be a socialite in your spare time to give your cooking character. Oh did I say character? Swing those dirty utensils and pots and pans to the left and right of yourself, good naturedly, to bring out that highbrowed cheffy character that lies hidden in you.

Be creative. If your television crew dishwasher attachment does not manage to wash the pot or pan that you need, in time, due to a faulty brain, get it to fetch a spade from the garden shed for that fried bacon and eggs that you so eccentrically want to demonstrate. While you are at it, think mobile and get your creative and cooking juices flowing by converting your toaster into a toastermobile or your automobile into a toaster, whichever came first. That way you can drive right up to your guests’ front door and generously entertain them in your pyjamas and with your hair standing up.

 Don’t forget that embellishments are very necessary when you invest in a Television Crew, so a row of Samburu warriors in full tribal gear and mud huts will do much to enhance your passion for those exotic Kenyan dishes of the African Safari. Again, don’t worry about the washing up because the Television Crew will always be right behind you wherever you may be in Africa, the Antarctic, rumbling along on a train or strolling and gesturing between grapevines in Italy or Spain.

I guarantee you, that with this amazing appliance and all the latest techniques recommended, you will be madly brimming with inspiration in your kitchen and cooking will be ridiculously easy-peasy.

CARS AND ME

I have never been able to develop an affinity for cars, no matter how hard I try. The emotional bond that men have with them is completely absent in me. I regard the car not as another human being but as the ‘thing’ that transports me from point A to point B. Period.

I lack the skill of discernment when it comes to cars or for anything that sits attached to four wheels. As far as I'm concerned, each and every one of them has the same set of four whirl-able wheels, two bright lights right in front, two red ones right at the back, four entrances and no maintenance. They are all of them one and the same. The only feature that differentiates them, one from the other, is the colour which is something that I can refreshingly relate to. Because colours are what I live and breathe for.

Because of that, it has become quite characteristic of me to walk purposefully up to a car that is not mine and attempt to embark simply because it's of a similar colour to mine. I've also attempted to break into someone else’s car for the same reasons. As I was wiggling my car keys in the lock one day a gentleman came over and, seeing that we were all women, asked politely what our intentions were in forcing the lock (his lock in particular). We babbled. In a chorus. And at that instant the true owner realized, to his complete disgust, which by the way was spelt correctly on his forehead, what we were all suffering from (we suffered from car-bungles). In a state of shameful shock we backed off and whimpered. Hurt and disorientated.

So the day that a complete stranger walked confidently up to our opened car door and happily snuggled into the back seat while hugging a bundle of groceries on her lap was one of the happiest days of my life. She sat comfortably for a good few seconds and then started to blink at an unprecedented speed. My husband, children and I stared benignly back at her not unlike the cows on my son’s t-shirt. It was not until the light of revelation had dawned on her that she flustered, turned into a beetroot, hurriedly disembarked and stumbled over to her employer’s car nearby. Now that is what I call a soul maid mate.

I have also come to realize that cars have another very important purpose in life and I can vouch with absolute certainty that my daughter, N, would wholeheartedly agree with me.

For some, cars are not really cars in the sense of being cars, if you know what I mean. For men, it is a Form, an Idea, the Platonic perfection of their unnecessary infatuation. Cars are made to look good, shapely and are blessed with that effervescent glow, so that men are taken in, woo them, caress them, fall in love with them and treat them with such useless, idealistic tenderness the result of which, we women, being the pragmatic green-eyed monsters that we are, have come to regard cars as a substance for abuse.

I, being woman, believe that cars were made, unwittingly, as a panacea for the demented warrior women of the twenty-first century. In order to get from point A to point B, the highway is the holy war path, the car engine the steed and the horn, the jousting stick. And the car, the whole car and nothing but the car? It is mine armour.

What better armour than thy car, me ladies. Thou art damsels within their mighty embrace. Tis why after a war weary day when the fair maiden cometh home she dismounts and leaves her armour safely clamped outside for it to recuperate from the day’s battle and to prepare for the next.

As a mark of all her heroic attempts at bravery my daughter’s car scathingly shows for it. Two long scratches that scratch to infinity on the left side, a whimpering dent in the left corner of her back bumper, a rebellious hollow on her right front door and an amputated wing mirror on the driver’s side. All mustered in good time and speed and I appallingly applaud her.

It is with much reluctance then that I reveal to all men, husbands, fathers and sons alike that in all our girlish attempts at feminizing the car with cuddly toys, dainty tissue box covers and fluffy cushions, those acts are merely beguiling ways to disguise the dark, demented truth of the inner workings of warring women at their height of combativeness.

So beware you small minded road bullies and caressing car adulators out there. We care not for what the car looks like nor for which is ours but for what it is capable of. Period.

Image taken from this interesting related article.

FATALISM AND THE HOMEMAKER

                                                                                      

The Greeks were great believers in fatalism. Fatalism is a belief that whatever happens is predestined. Are we homemakers predestined to suffer holidays or to enjoy them?

In preparation for a trip to the United States for her daughter-in-law’s sixth delivery and for a month’s stay there Jamilah Din had envisioned a holiday of sorts in a cooler clime. Then reality struck and she was brought down to earth with an acute thud.

She remembered the story of The Girl and the Ring Cake. A story that has always lived with her forever, it seems. Nobody else has ever heard of it so perhaps it was a sign of an innate destiny of hers that she should have, inborn, such a ridiculous story that it was to haunt her in her later years.

A mother and a young girl lived together in a forest far, far away from civilization.  The girl’s grandmother died one day and the mother had to leave her daughter to see to the funeral arrangements of the deceased. The trip would take about a week. The mother worried and was flustered over how her daughter would survive the week on her own. The poor mother sat down and rummaged her head for a solution. There was only one night left before her departure and she suddenly got an idea. The mother decided to bake a ring cake. A large one. And so she did. When she had done that and the ring cake was ready, the mother happily packed her bags in the morning and before she left she put the ring cake around her daughter’s neck and said,

“Now daughter dear, while I am away all you need to do is to eat this ring cake that I have put around your neck. This will keep you from starving until I get home.”

The mother left and returned a week later. Her daughter had died. She looked and saw that the ring cake had only been half eaten. Her daughter had been too lazy (or stupid), or both, to turn the ring cake around so that she could eat the other half. She starved to death.

Now, Jamilah Din did not bake any ring cakes. Ring cakes would not have lasted a month.

So what she did was to cook, in batches over a period of a month, two hundred and fifty meals, packed them individually, labeled and froze them in re-heatable plastic containers and zipper bags. She listed instructions on how to use the electric steamer, the oven, the stove and ample warnings of the dangers lurking in the kitchen. She made a food chart or a periodic table of sorts of all the meals that her five children would have for a month. Then she printed them out and plastered them all over the walls in the dining room and the kitchen.

An example follows.

	CHICKEN       CHOP	RENDANG	CHICKEN     CURRY
Childl 1	6  ******	5  *****	6  ******
Child 2	6  ******	5  *****	5  *****
Child 3	9  *********	5  *****	6  ******
Child 4	9  *********	5  *****	6  ******
Child 5	9  *********	5  *****	6  ******

	BEEF       STEW	YUMMY   CHICKEN	BEEF       KICAP
Child 1	6  ******	7  *******	5  *****
Child 2	5  *****	5  *****	5  *****
Child 3	6  ******	7  *******	5  *****
Child 4	6  ******	7  *******	5  *****
Child 5	7  *******	8  ********	6  ******

Jamilah Din then instructed them to strike off the relevant asterisk each time they took a pack of food from the freezer. The chart above ensures that everyone has their fair share of their favourite meals without crossing over into another’s domain. This prevents strife and civil war. And probably mud slinging and hair pulling as well.

She then took an excruciating seventeen hour trip to the US, sprinted five hundred meters in her high heels to gate fifty in New York, took the connecting flight to Baltimore, arrived, and in two days her daughter-in-law delivered her sixth child. She cooked and cleaned and wrestled with her five older grandkids for a month, gaped at their crazy antics, answered scrutinizing questions and cooked for a party of ten a day before her flight back. 

She then took another excruciating seventeen hour trip back to Malaysia, sprinted the same five hundred meters, in her high heels, to gate fifty in New York, took the connecting flight to Tokyo and then to Kuala Lumpur and arrived to a home cocooned in dust and to relieved five alive children. They wiped their brows and sighed, "Now,we no longer need to strike off asterisks.".

Jamilah Din's holiday was anything but.

PS: This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. The protagonist now resides in Kuala Lumpur and is living the life of a recluse.


The food chart/periodic table is an actual one that worked well. Everyone had food that they liked. And each person could keep track of how much of their ration had been used up without having to check into the freezer (provided they marked off the appropriate asterisk diligently each time). Even if they skipped meals no one else would be able to eat into the other' share by mistake.

The numbers indicate the number of packs there are for the particular type of food followed by the same number of asterisks. For example if there are 5 packs of chicken curry the number 5 followed by 5 asterisks will indicate that. Each time a person takes a pack of chicken curry he or she will cross out 1 asterisk leaving 4 asterisks which in turn indicates 4 remaining packs of chicken curry left in the freezer. And so on and so forth

 

16 WAYS TO NOT COPE WITH HOUSEWORK

Here's an article I had written years ago that has been published a couple of times.

Throw all those schedules out the window and…

SHAKE. Shake the word routine out of your silly head. Buddy up to pause, waver and vacillate. Routine is the killer of all inspiration in housewife world. It would be wonderful to have a routine for your quilt project or for your tai chi group or to get your facial hair zapped but to have a routine for something as uninspiring as housework is bound to make you a permanent failure in this very lonely field.

REST ASSURED. Housework is a very lonely job. Why do you think maids never last or that no one else wants to do it? Nobody notices what you have done but only what you have not done; when the meals are not ready on time, when the bathrooms have not been cleaned, when the clothes have not been sorted, when the dust has not been dusted or when the dishes have not been dished. Who would think of promoting a housewife? But rest assured no one is going to make you redundant either.

NO OBLIGATIONS. To all budding housewives out there, if you really want to survive in this very lonely field never say “I will”. “I might” is much more realistic. If you do not set such daunting goals for yourself you have absolutely no obligations to keep them.

HOUSE GUESTS.  Never treat dust and dirt as your number one enemy and never underestimate them. I am not saying you should adopt a defeatist attitude but do not think that you can eradicate something as formidable as dust and dirt from the face of your home. Give them the treatment they deserve. Treat them as permanent house guests. 

DO NOT EXPECT your children to share a common enemy. They do not for as long as they are living with you. They do not see the dirt because they so blissfully believe in it.

DO POORLY. An area half cleaned today is better than an area you hope to bring to a pristine shine tomorrow. That is for the simple reason that you may, could or will not get around to it. So " A job poorly done is better than a job not done at all. " should be the motto of the day……everyday, for the rest of your housewife life.

TOMORROW NEVER COMES. Never soak rag rugs to be hand washed tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Either treat it raggedly and throw it out or use large towels in front of your sink so you could dump it in the washing machine the next day.

GIVE UP. Learn to give up. Don’t drive yourself like a dog because you are not. You are a housewife. Stop when you are tired, step out of your dog suit and have a soak in the tub.  It keeps you from feeling dog tired.

PLAY DICE. Play dice with your universe. Go ahead play dice and go with your instincts. Don’t do what you don’t feel like doing. If you don’t feel like mopping the floors today, don’t. You can think about it tomorrow, just never be too specific about your plans.

DELEGATE but don’t expect it to be carried out. High expectations and housework don’t go together. It helps keep your sanity in check.

ANTICIPATE. Learn to anticipate. Learn to anticipate when you might have unexpected visitors. That way you will not be greeting them in a sweat, breathing heavily and with your tongue hanging out while your hide the mess. Know your unexpected visitors well. You surely know them otherwise they will not be visiting you. Observe and anticipate their movements. Always be one step ahead.

AVOID DISASTERS. Although one must be creative don’t try a new recipe on your family unless it has been tried on the neighbour. Keep yourself well informed of the latest disasters. Nothing like prime news.

DO NOT MAKE THE CAKE that you have been meaning to. Buy fruits instead. They are much healthier to begin with and you save yourself from a lot of beating and bashing in the kitchen. If you are nostalgic about baking cakes and cookies just watch Nigella Bites on TV. Learn to derive satisfaction from watching and listening rather than doing.

 NOOKS AND CRANNIES ARE FOR NANNIES. So don’t have too many of them in your home. Straight forward furniture, clean, clear cut lines are everything. Do not indulge in the clutter ideology of those country decorating magazines. You live in a city not a nightmare.

A BACKYARD IS A BACKYARD IS A BACKYARD. Drum that into your head and leave it exactly the way you found it. Don’t try turning it into a front yard. Unless you have French windows opening up to the back and hills in the horizon where you can trot off into the sunset, don’t fool yourself into thinking you can religiously cope with two gardens in your housewifely life.

DO NOT BE BAFFLED. Do not be baffled by so called facts because these are myths masquerading as truths. Things like “Nothing like home cooking” or “Mother’s cooking is best”are just meaningless proverbs. Not necessarily true. Mr. Kentucky,  Mr. Macdonald cook just as well.