Mothers Day: Sadly, Overcommercialized

By Joy Pullmann

I do not like to receive gifts for Mother's Day or Valentine's Day. And don't even think about Sweetheart's Day or whatever else they're calling further additions to the list of "buy crap no one wants because commercials made you feel guilty."

Mother's Day advertisements on my Kindle and email sidebars began a solid three weeks before Mother's Day. It may have been four weeks. Whatever it was, it was indecent. Mother's Day is not even on the A-list of holidays. That, for me, includes Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. And maybe the Fourth of July. Those would be the top two Christian holidays and the top two American holidays. (By the way, President's Day and Labor Day are also stupid.)

You can have a great marriage without any superpowers. (Right?)

by Mary C. Tillotson

Marriage is hard, everybody. Really hard.

Luke and I dated for a while, then he proposed and I said yes and we were engaged. We glowed for a few days, and then the bad news started coming in droves.

"Marriage is hard, you know," I heard. Over and over again.

This one retirement-aged lady from church: "Marriage is really hard. You know, my sister-in-law got married before we did, and she told us the first five years were the hardest. At the end of five years, I called her and said 'At least we're through the hard part!' And she said, 'No, the first 10 years are the hardest.' At the end of 10 years, I called her again and she told me the first 15 years are the hardest. You know, it's really all hard."

Let me describe that conversation in two words: Not encouraging. Or seven: Not what engaged people need to hear.

She was laughing in that way moms laugh about kids throwing up all over everything and ruining your life goals and your priceless, inherited-from-four-generations dishes. If you want to commiserate with people who have already experienced the same thing, go for it, but don't talk to me about it! You're just making me doubt whether this is really a good idea after all.

We turned out okay: for one thing, Luke is the sort of man you don't not marry when he asks, and for another, we had very supportive parents so we could mostly deflect these kinds of comments. But aside from our parents, we mostly heard two messages about marriage:

Not Washing Dishes: A Tribute to My Mom

By Mary C. Tillotson

Image by Sarah Korf

Once upon a time, when I was a child, my mom made impossible pie for dinner. One of my siblings asked why the quiche-like food was called "impossible pie." (We were too young at the time to have "quiche" in our vocabulary, and that may have been the reason.)

"Because it's impossible to make anything better!" my brother piped up.

"Or because it's impossible to make anything worse," I grumbled.

My poor mother. Despite my picky eating and just plain not eating, I learned a lot of important life lessons from her, many of them regarding food. For example, whenever my dad cooked, she'd say, "Marry a man who's as nice to you as your dad is to me." (I did.) I also learned things like "Don't eat soap" (I don't), and, most importantly, "Don't wash more dishes than you have to."

My mom is a master at this last one, as you'll notice from her comment on my chili recipe a few months ago. She's amazing. This isn't something every woman gets to learn from her mother, so I thought I'd share her secret here and show you exactly how it's done. (She'll probably leave a comment that will eliminate one more dish. Just watch.)

Some general tips: Cutting boards double as plates when you're just having a snack -- especially if it's cheese and crackers or a sliced apple. Meat can be cooked in a saucepan before adding spaghetti sauce. And the only reason not to mix measured ingredients right in the measuring cup is to support the mixing bowl industry.

For the real demonstration, I'll make impossible pie (which I like now -- it's funny what adulthood does to you), after which I'll only have to wash the following:

one cutting board

one knife

one one-cup measuring cup

one four-cup measuring cup

one fork

one 8x8 pan

Here's the recipe: