Before I go to the college, I’ve been taking my MIL to the cancer clinic every morning for radiation treatment. She’s a newspaper reporter: a scrappy little fighter whose lifelong faith enables her to not fear death, but she has chosen to delay it as long as possible because she’s simply not finished living yet.

Today is the only day I won’t be taking her, because I’m, like, on the radio and stuff, but Belle took the morning off work to come down and take her grandmother for the treatment.

Everyone at the cancer clinic has been extraordinarily kind, and has treated my MIL like a queen when she is there. Someone is standing in the lobby waiting for her when we walk through the doors, and every step of each procedure has been explained to her thoroughly and patiently. She has never once been treated in any kind of brusque, clinical, hurried, or condescending manner.

The facility isn’t bone-chillingly cold, as hospitals so often are, and the magazines in the waiting room are up-to-date. Imagine!

She was desperately frightened, and naturally so, but now, much of the fright has gone and while it’s not something to look forward to at all, it’s at least lost its teeth and claws and can be faced calmly, know that this, too, shall pass.

After her treatment, she usually feels perky enough to spring for lunch, even. Bless her heart.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

On a beautiful sunny Sunday such as today, one’s thoughts really ought to be turning to proper, serious, classical things, such as opera, or political debate, or baking a pecan pie for our visiting children, or religion, or ballet. . .

Speaking of which:

The pecan pie is in the oven as I type, and I did think some serious political thoughts for a few minutes. They were about how one candidate always seems to be having a bad hair day, and how another seems to have his very own Rasputin, and how another might be a viable choice if not for his truly horrible morning radio show, but I still call them “political thoughts.”

Also? I don’t care for pecan pie, myself. I make them for other people.

I don’t really like any kind of pie. I just like to make them.

Today’s quotes:

Where brains are what you need, force will not succeed. – Yiddish proverb

Whom the gods would make bigots, they first deprive of humor. –James M. Gilles

To destroy the Western tradition of independent thought, it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a couple of generations. –Robert Maynard Hutchins

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. –Thomas Paine

Behavior is a mirror in which everyone displays his image. —Goethe

Well, my husband and I would have enjoyed being Southern Baptists, but we decided we just weren’t physically equal to it. –Anon.

I am inclined to judge a belief quite differently, according to whether it asks the right to be one or insists on being the only one. –Jean Rostand

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. –Groucho Marx

The illusions of childhood are necessary experiences. A child should not be denied a balloon because an adult knows that sooner or later it will break. –Marceline Cox

Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary circumstances. -Jean Paul Richter

Reporter: Mr. Ghandi, what do you think of Western civilization?
Ghandi: I think it would be a very good idea.

If you see a snake, just kill it – don’t appoing a committee on snakes. –Ross Perot

I love cats because I enjoy my home, and little by little, they become its visible soul. –Jean Cocteau

A bird is a bird, a dog is a dog, but a cat is a person. — Mugsy Peabody

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. –Michael Redgrave

You can’t use tact with a congressman. A congressman is a hog. You must take a stick and hit him on the snout. –Henry Adams

Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life. –John Cunningham Geikie

The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person. –Andy Rooney

He and I once had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.
–Dorothy Parker

The artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before, and he does it without destroying something else. –John Updike

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. –Stowkowski

There is no education like adversity. –Walt Disney

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was? –Satchel Paige

Pat: He was an Anglo-Irishman.
Meg: In the blessed name of God, what’s that?
Pat: A Protestant with a horse.
–Brendan Behan

An administrator is a legless man who teaches running. –Anon

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm. –Elizabeth Bowen

When the free market rules in the world of art, you don’t get Beethoven and Bach, you get Beavis and Butthead. –Pieter Breitner

Don’t be afraid to be amazing. –Andy Offute Irwin

We are each other’s angels; we meet when it is time. –Chuck Brodsky

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. –Thomas Henry Huxley

It does not require many words to speak the truth. –Chief Joseph

In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of a story. –Walter Cronkite

The teenagers aren’t all bad. I love’em if nobody else does. there ain’t nothing wrong with young people. Jus’ quit lyin’ to ’em. –Jackie “Moms” Mabley

I do love a good quotation! Did you know?

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly