Do you know that there are people who get paid to design book covers and album covers and CD covers??? Lucky stiffs.

I know I have bought books just because I liked the cover.

I used to own and operate a Medicare Certified Nursing Home Care Agency. We had such fun, our little family, and provided great care to the immediate community. It got complicated and overwhelming so we sold it. We all miss it.

It is difficult to find top quality home health aides. There are many who get to the patient's house and sit all day. They talk on the phone and eat and generally do very little. I see it every day. Some patients do not like to complain, some can't complain, others do not even know how to complain. So I do it for them.

There are many who are good and then there are a bunch of very, very special people who happen to work as home heath aides. It is true that a person can do any job at all with compassion and patience and dignity and it will be special and wonderful. Some professions or job titles get immediate positive recognition. A registered nurse is one of them, a physician or surgeon is another. A mother of four sons is another. A fashion designer. Maybe a chef. A writer. These positive reactions are formed opinions and can be dangerously off the mark.

What about those that get an immediate negative reaction. A car salesman, a lawyer, a single mom, a home health aide. Most people think they all steal. Some of them do. So do some mothers of four sons (NOT ME!) and surgeons. Maybe it is less likely but it still happens.

Anyway, my point is I also had a formed opinion. Plus "judging a book by it's cover" did not help.

Trying to run a business is hard. Hiring good employees is very hard. People are generally nuts! Dealing with all the personalities and problems and schedules is taxing. We decided to train and certify home health aides. The requirements were a small tuition, showing up for class and passing basic tests and C.P.R. We instructed the students until they passed. We stated we would hire those that completed the course and had a clean criminal background.

The first night of class our doorbell rang. At that time, we were on the second floor of a walk up office. I looked down the steps and buzzed the woman into the building. Ramona entered and with a toothless smile saying she was here for class. As her cigarette burned between her fingers I took a couple of minutes of speechless inspection and thought: "this is never going to work". Her hair was sticking up on all ends, her other hand held a Mc Donald's bag and she had NO FRONT TEETH. I almost cried. I said: "There is no smoking in here, and no food. The class will begin in about 30 minutes".
I do not think I was extremely nice in tone.

Ramona came back and started the class. She did not have a clue what to do or how to do it. She paid for the class every week..a few dollars here and there and I heard every cash gathering story she had in her. She came to class without food and only smoked during her breaks. At the end of the 9 week session she passed and was hired.
You know I am going to say Ramona was one of the best aides I ever hired. She is honest, compassionate and friendly and kind. She now knows her stuff. She has been working 40-50 hour weeks ever since. She now has teeth and a proper hair style. She bought herself a house and a car. Just last week she drove by my house as I was outside cleaning. She shouted "Hi, Debbie". I saw her arm as it waved out the window with a cigarette between her fingers.

Tonight, after dinner and a baseball game, my husband and I took my youngest son and his friend for an ice cream. Luca said he wanted gelato, not American ice cream. He is Italian after all and because I bow before all REAL (as he puts it) Italians, we went for a ride. Olive and the four of us took a 5 minute ride across the expressway toward center city Philadelphia.
Perfect evening weather allowed the soft wind to flap through our open car windows. The tall buildings twinkled illuminating the sky line. Cars zoomed like free birds that were just out for fun.
Philadelphia really is beautiful especially when the sights are all you are after. I relaxed and enjoyed it.
Around about 20th and Sansom Streets is a little parlor strutting the creamy stuff called gelato almost like that of Rome. The singles are ridiculously small, 1/4 of what you get in Italy. Nonetheless we enjoyed it.
We sped around in our little Mini trying to catch a glimpse of all the people out tonight. Heading home Luca and Antonio talked incessantly.

I remembered MANY Sunday afternoons when we "went for a ride".

Could you imagine taking kids for a ride today? Just a ride. Nothing else. No McDonald's meals, no toys, no movies or games, no crayons or i pods or gameboy or portable dvd players, not even a destination like grandma's or the beach. I think my kids would faint.

When I was young my parents would announce we were "going for a ride". We would roll our eyes and think of a hundred excuses not to go but it never mattered what WE said...we were going. We did not have a SUV or a van or even a station wagon (well, we did when I was older but it had paneling on the doors and I was mortified to be seen in it). The three of us kids could never understand why someone would want to put the whole family in the car and just start to drive.

NOW, I really do understand. It IS a pleasure to NOT have a destination or a place to be or a schedule to keep. It is nice to just talk to each other or listen to the air flying by or checking out the other people in the world with no cell phone or computer or ear phones.

Maybe these rides really contributed to my desire for adventure. I love to explore and hunt and find. I drive all day for my job so driving isn't always so relaxing. To get into the car and just explore is kind of nice. I like new places and taking new roads. Also, I love to have my family all together without interruptions. I like having them all to myself and have, in the past, gone through a lot of planning and effort to get us alone and together for a while. But this takes time. And time was what my father had...ALL DAY on Sunday. My sister and I would rather stay home and get along than sit in the back seat of the car smooshed together. I remember playing games and talking and dreamily looking out the window. My father would be singing along with Frank or Dean. Problem was my dad always liked to go to New Jersey or to Northeast Philadelphia. THAT was torture. There really is NO reason to go to those places in my head. Sometimes we'd get out to see a sample of a new house. We liked that dreamy "Oh can this be my room?" kind of wishing and wanting. That is when we discovered some people had bathrooms right in their bedrooms and doors that slide open wide to yards and garages. Sometimes those homes were cool in EVERY room and when it was summer and hot out we felt relief and cozy and wanted to stay a while. Anyway..there was ALWAYS a point when we got lost, usually when we were taking a short cut (?to where??) and then the tension in the car would be as thick as Mississippi Mud. We would all get real quiet and try not to breathe. And then we would sulk to ourselves. If my dad heard us sulking he'd yell at us. And then we'd get sad. Inevitably, we would happen across a Dairy Queen or as my father preferred a real farmer's Dairy farm (I think this was always his secret incentive). The tension would miraculously disappear and we would no longer feel sad at all. We'd get double ice cream cones (nothing like those little prissy things we had tonight) and we'd eat until we couldn't breathe as my father told us, "Now this is what you call ice cream"!

I remember falling asleep in the car on the way home hearing the turn signals click, click, click and my parent's muffled voices and my sister and brother's R.E.M. sleep breathing. I can see how my mom liked these excursions maybe so she'd have my dad all to herself and time to just sit and talk without chores or ringing phones or dinner to cook. Did they hold hands? I'd even give my sister and brother a little hug as we snuggled sleepily on each other's arms.

Oh how we hated those drives.

Since I like to write I pay attention to writers and journalists who are awarded prizes. I am really disappointed to see the journalists that exposed domestic surveillance won the Pulitzer...why do we insist on rewarding people for doing dum things that seem like they are for the good but are really grandious gestures to get them literary attention. Treason used to be punished.

Bill Bennett used to be a top official for Regan and Bush:

Dana Priest of The Washington Post, who wrote about the CIA's "secret prisons" in Europe, and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times, who exposed the National Security Agency's domestic (a.k.a. terrorist) spy program are the recipients of the prize.

According to an E&P transcript of the audio of his radio program, Bill Bennett said that the reporters "took classified information, secret information, published it in their newspapers, against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and others, that they not release it. They not only released it, they publicized it -- they put it on the front page, and it damaged us, it hurt us.

"How do we know it damaged us? Well, it revealed the existence of the surveillance program, so people are going to stop making calls. Since they are now aware of this, they're going to adjust their behavior . . . .on the secret sites, the CIA sites, we embarrassed our allies....So it hurt us there.

"As a result are they punished, are they in shame, are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer prizes. I don't think what they did was worthy of an award - I think what they did is worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward. "

He urged his listeners to write the top editors of the two papers and said their addresses were posted on his Web site.

Bennett said he was not opposed to Pulitzer prizes "to liberals" or even those at The New York Times. He hailed the Pulitzer for the Times' Nicholas Kristof. "But these people who reveal our secrets, who hurt our war effort, who hurt the efforts of our CIA, who hurt efforts of the president's people--they shouldn't be given prizes and awards for this, they should be looked into--the Espionage Act, the investigation of these leaks," he advised.

"I'm telling you, I'm hot. I want you to write Bill Keller, I want you to write Len Downie. You can read Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post and decide if you want to write him."

You must always do the thing you think you cannot do.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

(don't I know it!)