Have you ever noticed that holiday gifts are made up of a lot of normal things you could buy any day of the year wrapped up in a pretty bow?

What does spaghetti have to do with packaging, you ask?  Well, like most things in life, spaghetti just looks more interesting when it’s slightly modified. If you’ve ever looked at your cupboards and thought “ugh.  Spaghetti again”, never fear.  You only need about 30 minutes and a little slick marketing presentation (I always top a slice with sour cream).

I used The Sauce, but really any jar will do.  The trick here is to slightly change the ingredients for a whole new twist, but not so much that you have to go to the store or anything.  Mama’s tired.  And visiting the grocery store at 5 pm with a 4 year old is somewhere around the level of pulling my eyebrows out with nose hair trimmers.

Sauce 16 oz or so
16 oz Pasta of your choice (to really fool em, use elbow macaroni or some less spaghetti-like pasta)
A twist ingredient.  Surprise me!
Mozarella or cheddar cheese for topping, about 1/2 pound

Cook the pasta (I used elbow mac because it’s what I had) until al dente.  Drain and rinse with cold water.  Mushy pasta is no good, my friends.   To highlight the state of my refrigerator, I actually tore up some Kraft sliced american for this critical cheese stage.  Usually I’d slice mozarella all over the very top of the dish, but no mozarella to be had at this budget juncture.

For my twist ingredient, I browned about 1/2 pound of sausage that’s been hanging out in my freezer waiting for a good sausage biscuit breakfast.  I had to break it to Jimmy Dean that I could no longer buy stock in the company, since biscuits are on the out list.  It’s just no fun horking them up.  Anyway! I digress.

There was one lone bag of The Sauce left.  ONE!  Usually those batches lasts me 6 months or so, but what can you do—I gave it away to pretty much everyone.    I poured the sauce over the cheese/sausage/pasta combo, and then grated my last tiny wedge of Gruyere over everything.  Popped in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, and viola!  whole new dish. Bread crumb topping, olives, enchilada sauce, fritos, just throw whatever in there and give it a try.  If you bake it in a pie dish like I did below and let it rest about 30 minutes after baking, you’ll be able to slice it like a pie.  Top with the cream of heaven—sour cream—and you’ve got something.

Spaghetti, revisited.  Try it!

I’m a weirdo.  I pride myself on thinking outside of the box, but it’s my box I’m looking outside of.  I care very much about other people’s boxes, apparently.  Because my first thought was “oh no, people will start making fun of him or think he’s not quite bright”.  But the pill isn’t bothered in the slightescht.  He likes talking crazchy and is going to do it the rescht of hisch life, he saysch.  I caught myself getting pretty mainstream, listening to my mom who said she’d never heard of a 4 year old doing that, and we were pretty unhappy with each other for a minute or two.  Then I started—sorry, schtarted–thinking.  Why do I care how the pill expresses himself?  He obviously knows it’s a different way to talk, and he can talk normally.  He just chooses not to 100% of the time right now.  So if I make a big deal about it “stop!” or draw his attention to why it’s not okay “people will think you are weird!” aren’t I creating a little box around him?  All of a sudden, this free and happy, devilish little guy stopped saying words with s in them altogether so I wouldn’t correct him.  And if you’ve ever seen a 4 year old scanning his memory for words that start with s, you’ll understand why that prospect was completely laughable.

I’d rather have my odd little duck in a minute than a normal, does everything by the book because they told me to kind of kid.  It’s challenging.  It takes sometimes limitless patience, which I’m the first to admit I no longer possess.  But in the end, the boxes he has around him will be ones of his own making, I hope.  I just want him to soar.

See, she works for my sister (not her mom) and has been whipped up into a post-Obama frenzy that I will run off with her cell phone.  I explained repeatedly, with increasing levels of annoyance, that I didn’t have a new phone until I move.  NEXT WEEK.  I couldn’t understand why it was a big deal to wait another week because—after all—I do pay the bill every month.  This has the big Dr. B written all over it.

It’s a big deal because I don’t have a house phone and there is literally no way to contact anyone in an emergency.  One of my worst fears is that something will happen to me and the pill will not be able to let anyone know.  It makes me feel vulnerable and angry, and I wrote all sorts of nasty emails in my head after I found out I couldn’t use the phone.  I despise passive-aggressive people, and I can so hear my sister’s voice in my head.   My niece knows which side her bread is buttered on, and she’s young without much purpose right now in her life.   I get it…I get how entirely selfish you are before you have another person to think about.  I tried to explain, but I don’t pay her salary or bail her out when she needs it, so I do get it.   The whole thing pissed me off, of course, with pill piping in “why did Amber do that mommy?”  Oh dear, another conversation about how the only person we can depend on is God.

Then my dry sense of humor popped up and I realized that back in the days long before cell phones, people were lucky to even know anyone with a phone.  They certainly didn’t have one in every home.  And it made me wonder how many people in the world do not have a phone right now, in 2008.

From Answerbag.com
6 Billion people in the world.
~3 Billion are below poverty line, or can’t afford one.
Which leaves 3 Billion.
About 2 Billion of which are too young to own a mobile phone, never come across one, or can’t use one.
That leaves about 1 Billion people.
About 30% don’t need to use one, as they already have access to someone else’s, or just use land lines.

Just for kicks, how many live on per year what I live on per week?

from wikipedia.com

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US$ (PPP) 1 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day, estimating that “in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day.”

When put in perspective, it doesn’t seem worth getting angry about.  It saddens me that the person I’ve repeatedly stuck my neck out for and constantly encouraged the family to believe in has done this, but in the grand scheme of things it’s so small, isn’t it?  I wanted to share this song with you because I heard it for the first time driving home tonight, home from a long day spent cleaning and prepping the new place, home without a phone except the prepaid one Mr. A graciously lent me for the next week.  You only get one chance at life…don’t waste it being angry.

One Life to Love — 33 Miles