You tube learning: Maths (2002, made to look circa 1980)

I've tried it, and it does help me keep the kitchen a bit neater and saves a little time. However, it's just a big mixing bowl. Not something that you need to pay $18 for to get one that's got Rachael Ray's name on it.

This.

I'm all in favor of the GB concept, but I use an old cookie tin usually lined with a plastic grocery store bag (not a shopping bag, the kind you put produce in). It cost me nothing and doesn't have RR's official seal of approval stamped on the side, and yet somehow, it still holds my trash.

It's kind of stupid, but you know people have been writing in on her website or something asking where they can get a GB. And if I'm honest, I can't say that I wouldn't probably be more likely to remember to use something like that. Or maybe it just gets you over the reluctance to dirty an extra bowl? (I personally just use the sink, and counter space is at a premium when I'm cooking. But you know, in theory.)

YouTube learning: How to Dance, with James Brown.

The garbage bowls Rachael Ray originally used on 30 minute meals were vintage, so when people werw writing in asking where to find them, she couldn't tell them where to get them. I can't really blame her for selling them if there was a demand for them. I like the idea, but I use a mixing bowl I already owned. TCG likes the idea too, since he does the clean up and it makes it easier for him.

Yeah, I don't know about the quality, but they seem like kinda pretty bowls, and you can do whatever with them once you've got them.

ION, feeling slightly better what with the drugs, but between them and the coughing, sleep is a long lost love, whose embrace I dream of, but fear I will never feel again. Morningistas and posting from bed are some consolation, anyway.

Those bowls look like the bowls we had at camp when I was a kid - for FOOD. Ugly, industrial bowls.

javachik is coming to Philly soon!!!

squee!

Rachael Ray is now selling bowls specifically for use as a garbage bowl: [link]

I kinda love it. But, yeah, I usually just use a mixing bowl or the sink.

What kind of social programs, and by "social" I mean "socializing" rather than "social security" would be available in the suburbs of a place like Cleveland?

Andi, does your mom fall, age-wise, into the "senior" bracket? The Cincy community centers have a lot of activities for seniors -- fitness, coffee hour, book groups, tax preparation, shopping trips, lunches, etc. -- and it looks to me like the Cleveland community centers do, too: [link] (scroll down to "Seniors Fifty and Fit*;" it's not all fitness-related -- it looks like there's various social activities, etc., too).

I don't know how close she lives to any of the community centers, but it's a place to start.

I feel the same way about my dad -- I wish he would get more involved in activities, because I feel like he needs more human contact than just calling me. But, to his credit, he has joined his community center so he can use the fitness facilities; he just needs to stop having heart crises so that he can actually, you know, exercise without fear of keeling over.

*(The "Fifty"part of "Fifty and Fit" makes me giggle, because -- and I know my mom is WAY outside the norm -- my mom is 62 and is more active, in terms of physical fitness, than most people my age. She and my stepdad just took up kayaking last year. It makes me feel a bit lazy.)