You know that feeling when you eat maggots? I sure do. I ate some once on a rice cracker, without noticing. If you think about it, a rice cracker is kind of like a pressed disc of maggots to begin with, only dryer. But I did that, andit was gross. THat was a few years ago. Yesterday, I was looking at the cayenne pepper, in the spice jar, and I notice little maggots in it. I have no idea how they don't get burned up in the spice, but ehere they were. It was bad, made worse because I just ate a bowl of food liberally sprinkled with cayenne, and presumabley a few maggots. Stranger still, in a way, is that after launching a full investigation of all spices, cereals, flour and grains, nothing had maggots except the cayenne pepper. So maybe wherever they grew the pepper had a lot of flies or something, but I would still have thought pepper is not something maggots like.

THis is part of a trend lately, since we had a moth problem as well. The whole place looks like a hurricaine hit it, since honey went crazy looking for mothns. SHe has a little moth phobia to begin with, but once some clothes were discovered to have moth holes, she took out everything from all closes, washed with bleach, dry cleaned, laundered, and packed verything in new plastic containers, that we got from Bed Bath and Beyond. Plus sprayed with moth poison, put out cedar chips, cakes of camphor, the whole works. She keeps using the word contaminated, though I feel that connotes a more pathogenic approach than I feel is merited. But there is no shortage of Piperonyl Butoxide, which killes roaches, silverfish, bedbugs, carbet beetles, flies, ants, mosquitoes, spiders wasps and probably people too. It might explain why the arches of my feet have gone into spasm.

I'm not skipping over Thanksgiving, in case you thought I was. We had that up in Mill Valley, which was a lovely meal and made lovelier still by having taken a bike ride first with the patriarch of the household Don. Then we ate a dinner that couldnt be beat and slept at Mark and Stephanie's house, where I stayed awake all night lidstening to a fountain they have in their yard. She is about to give birth, so it was kind of exciting just to be there for the final countdown. She is dialated and everything.

Yesterday we went up to Sonoma, had a fantastic lunch with Uncle Stan and Selma. It is very hard to find any decent Italian food down here, but we had first rate pianini and flat pizza there. Even though it was overcast and a little wet, the vineyards are still like a postcard to drive through. Luckily, I had a GPS, so the whole time I was able to follow where I was, via satellite.

Then we came back to the city and went to a party. IT was all really nice people, even the kids there were really nice. It was a housewarming party, and they had a fireplace, so they set up smores by the fire, and made all kinds of home made foods, like dates stuffed with feta cheese, and cheesy poufs.