PRODUCT REVIEW: Armor All Protectant Wipes

My family, a big sassy bunch of rudesters if there ever were any, tease me mercilessly about my infatuation with Armor All Protectant Wipes. I carry a canister of them in Applesauce Anne, in the little cargo net that sits between the two front seats, so that I can whip them out frequently and use them to nourish her dash and all vinyl or plastic areas of her interior. I don't know why they find this so endlessly amusing. Applesauce Anne is an old minivan, having had her tenth birthday last September, plus she's been a busy old girl, logging 156,000 miles on her odometer. I figure that maintaining her interior is an important thing to do and I don't want her dashboard to get all faded and dessicated-looking, which is what happened to another vehicle we got from my grandpa.

Because the girls and I make judicious use of a local DIY carwash, Anne usually sparkles on the outside, but on the inside, she really shines. We shampoo the carpet and floor mats, clean the dog prints off the windows and sweep all the debris that collects on the floors -- little stones from the driveway, straw wrappes and even a used Band-Aid, which was very gross. The grossest thing is that I don't know whose Band-Aid it was; none of us have had a Band-Aid on our persons, which means that somebody else's used Band-Aid must have stuck to the bottom of my shoe in a parking lot somewhere and then come unstuck. *horf!*

But I digress. These Armor All Protectant Wipes are really excellent for cleaning, shining and adding moisture to your dashboard and surrounding areas. They're so easy to use - just yank one out of the canister and get to it. They aren't expensive either, and come in a 25-wipe canister for around $4.38, a 50-wipe canister for $6.80 and a soft pouch of wipes for an unknown price at most discount department stores and even the grocery in the automotive section. But they do have them if you want them that way. I've been using them for several years and I think Anne's shiny, unfaded dash is a sold testimonial to the efficacy of the Armor All product.

By the way, I store the canister lying on its side so that the wipes don't dry out.

You can use these on plastic and vinyl stuff in your house, too. A very versatile product. I rate them an A+ for ease of use, price and general, all-'round spiffy idea.

It's that time of year again!

Seventeen years ago, we were both a lot younger. My gosh. In our twenties. Babies, practically. It's a wonder our parents didn't roll us down the aisle in strollers.

And considering that we'd known each other for about six weeks, it's a wonder that we weren't both in straight jackets, as well.

It was a very nice little wedding, even though my wedding gown made me look like I'd fought a losing battle with a bolt of white tulle. No one fainted, no one screamed, no one stood up and gave a good reason why this woman and this man should not be joined in marriage. There was Mozart and cake and my Uncle Mike drawing my husband aside, shaking his hand and then saying sotto voce in his ear, "If you hurt her in any way, I swear to God I'll kill you." Oh, good times. Goooood times.

Seventeen years later, I feel that I can truly say, with chanteuse Anita Baker, that I'd bet anything on my wedding ring. What a happy, happy time it's been.

Come again?

Today I stumbled across a blog written by an extremely anti-Catholic mommy of four.

I read some of her posts -- nothing much to report, just the same old misunderstandings and inconsistencies that virulent anti-Catholics usually cling to; you know what I'm talking about. "Catholics worship idols" and "The Pope wears a pagan fish hat." That sort of thing -- but my favorite one was titled, in cheery pink letters, The Whore of Babylon.

And the first sentence of this piece was, "This post was written with love." Heh.

Okay, missy. Now I'm going to have to scold you.

First of all, if you're writing something with "love," you don't start out by being rude and offensive. It's like those people who send you a smoldering, vicious email and then sign off by typing "God Bless!" at the end of it. Please. I got one of those a couple of months ago and there's no way I'll ever be convinced that the writer wanted God to bless me. No, it was pretty clear from what she wrote that it would have been more honest if she'd signed off by saying, "I hope this day ends with you getting eaten by a tiger." I didn't believe her and I don't believe you either.

Second of all, if you want to engage in apologetics work, you're going to have to do some reading from the source. In your article, I didn't notice that first bit of actual research from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which is very, very easy to find) or from the Catholic Encyclopedia (easy to find) or even from sources like Catholic Answers or the Vatican website. If you're going to construct an argument based on the alleged fallacies of the Catholic Church, you're going to have to do a little bit more than lift quotes out of the Scofield Study Bible and Halley's Bible Handbook. Good grief, woman. I wouldn't have allowed my sixth and eighth graders that kind of sloppy scholarship.

And thirdly, I noticed in your article that you deplored a Pope who "killed 70,000 Christians in one day" but you cited no reference and you admitted that you didn't even know which pope it was who supposedly did this deed. "I think he was Pope Innocent III, but I'm not positive," you wrote. Why are you, as a Christian, okay with condemning a person like that? Because what you're doing is bearing false witness, which is a specific no-no straight from the Ten Commandments.

______________________________________________

You deplored a Pope who "killed 70,000 Christians in one day, and you admitted that you didn't even know which pope it was. "I think he was Pope Innocent III, but I'm not positive." Why are you okay with condemning a person like that? What you're doing is bearing false witness...

______________________________________________

Couldn't you even have done a simple Google search? I did one and found that Pope Innocent III, who lived in the twelfth century, was responsible for fighting against the Manichean and Albigensian heresies, which is something for which all Christians should be grateful. That was a time when religious leaders took heresies very seriously, as opposed to our time when they are tolerated and even embraced.

There was, by the way, no mention of his involvement in the deaths of 70,000 Christians.

And I found these things at Wikipedia. Not at a Catholic site that would be biased in my favor, as you did, but at a neutral secular source.

It's not the whole idol-worship-and-pagan-fish-hat stuff that really torques me in anti-Catholic writings. I can't be angry about those things because I used to believe some of them. (Well, I never believed the pagan-fish-hat thing because that is really, really stupid. I'm sorry. It just is.) But I did believe that Catholics worshiped idols and Mary. And I believed stuff like "Catholics think they can be saved by good works" and the always-popular "Catholics believe they can sin as much as they want to and then just go to Confession."

So those things don't irritate me because I can remember.

The thing that frosts my doughnuts about most Catholic haters is the lack of intellectual honesty. I read my way into the Catholic Church. I am not a Biblical scholar or even a scholar of any sort. I'm just a reader. And when I read things about the Catholic Church, I read stuff written by both Catholic and anti-Catholic writers. I read everything I could find on the internet, at Amazon.com and at my local public library. My mind could not be content with reading just one side of the story: I wanted to be able to hold Catholic and anti-Catholic things side by side and take their measure. I wanted to discern which side had it right.

I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but that kind of honesty takes a lot of courage.

It takes more courage than you, and many others like you, will likely ever have. Because I know why you don't want to read the Catechism and the Catholic Encyclopedia. I know why Cath dimiss books by Scott Hahn and Karl Keating. I know why you don't want to hear about the lives of the saints and the miracles God allowed them to perform.

I've been there, and it was the hardest hurdle I've ever climbed over in my life.

It's because you're afraid if you actually read those things yourself, you'll find out how much sense they make. You're afraid that something -- a lot of somethings -- will speak to your mind, your heart and your soul. You're afraid of being jolted out of your comfortable niche and catapulted into a place where you'll be forced to admit that you were wrong.

And then you'll have to do something to make things right. And, as these things go, it will mean alienating some friends and family members. It might mean leaving a church or denomination that you've been established in for a long time. It will mean getting used to a whole new way of doing things. And those things are just really, really hard because, as human beings, we are resistant to change, even when the change is positive.

But you'll also know that "peace that passes all understanding" and you'll feel alive and refreshed and renewed at the prospect of knowing Jesus on a deeper level than you ever thought possible. You'll be able to take note of the way the sacraments will change you. And, maybe for the first time, you'll get a chance to kneel in worship in love and humility and say, "Lord, I'm not worthy to receive You. But only say the word and I will be healed."

Unless you're willing to have courage and intellectual honesty and a true will to serve Him, you'll never find that pearl of great price. What a sad thing that is.

Another thought about Mass readings

I've been thinking about the new goodie I added on yesterday, near the top of the right hand side of the page -- that cute little Daily Mass Readings widget. I luuuuuuuuurrve that widget.

So anyway, did you know that if you follow the Mass readings every day -- which shouldn't be hard because they're very short, except for the ones during Holy Week -- you can read the entire Bible in three years, minus all the genealogy stuff? Plus, the Church in her wisdom has generally organized them in a three-year cycle of related topics so that you will have a general idea of how Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled by New Testament events. The readings follow the liturgical calendar of the year, which makes things really click.

For example, I have a Catholic Bible-in-One-Year and that is a nice thing to have, and you start it on January 1 and start reading the assigned snippets, or, if you're like me, you start on some random day during the year: this is kind of a straight-through way to appraoch Bible reading, with Genesis and Matthew being right there for you on the first day. What this doesn't allow you to do is read all the beautiful prophesies of the coming Messiah during Advent, or read the Gospel Christmas stories at Christmas or read about Our Lord's Passion during Holy Week, etc. Following the Lectionary makes everything flow together so nicely.

And down there below the Monstrance...

If you are a lector at your parish, I've also added a link to LectorPrep.org farther on down on the right side. LectorPrep.org is a fantastic resource for learning the history and context of your assigned reading, even telling you how to emphasize words and phrases. More to the point, it also gives a pronunciation guide for those fuh-reaky hard Old Testament people and place names. Many's the lector whose tongue has become tied in front of the congregation, or worse yet, you give it your best shot and then find out later that you said it all wrong. Eeek.

I've also added a link to the online Adoration site called Savior.org, which is run by the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful thing - not the same as actually being at Adoration, but if you're like me and have uncertain transportation, or if you're a mom at home with little ones, or if you're having a good or bad kind of day and just want to check in and see the miracle of Jesus's very personal offering to us, click and go!

What is it? What? What?

I think there's something strange going on.

I just looked out the window. And in the sky? There's this...object. It appears to be round, although it is so bright, I can't look directly at it.

There's a memory -- an elusive, will-o'-the-wisp sort of memory -- telling me that this thing in the sky means no harm. Yellow is its color, and it is warm on my face.

And the sky. There is blueness. It doesn't look like God left the trousers of His best suit lying on heaven's floor anymore. Apparently, He took them to the dry cleaner's.

I hope He'll forget to pick them up, which is what I always do.

Check out some new stuff on InsomniMom

I've add a few fun things to InsomniMom over the past few days and thought I'd take a minute to point them out, just in case you're reading here with a woolen cap pulled down over your head, in which case you're peeking so stop acting like right now. Don't make me come over there.

First of all, I have recently become a member of The Mom Blogs and Catholic Moms Online because I am all of those things: a mom, a Catholic, a blogger and -- if we don't forget to pay the bill -- online. Our ISP is funny about stuff like that and doesn't seem to appreciate the humor of my sending them an IOU written in glitter marker on a Post-It. They will, they have indicated, shut us down, PDQ.

Another thing I've add which appears at the top of the page to your right is a great little link to the daily Mass readings, provided by CatholicContent.com. I really like this one, mostly because you don't even have to go grab your Bible. Just give it a click -- 1st Reading, 2nd Reading (on Sundays), Responsorial Psalm and Gospel -- and you'll be whisked right off to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' online lectionary, which is pretty cool.

The last item is nifty thing from Shelfari - a virtual bookshelf of the things our family is reading/has read and loved. Scroll down on the right and behold - you can mouse over each selection and go right to its page on Amazon.com and read the comments reviewers have left, or even buy the book. I've put a few up there and I plan to write my own reviews of them, which you'll be able to read by looking either at InsomniMom's main page or by scrolling down on the right and clicking "Book Reviews" in the index.

There's lots of fun to be had at InsomniMom. Because? I'm always thinking of others. You're welcome.

Calling all yeasty, beef-headed whey-faces

If you'd like do some literary hooting and general highbrow ROTFL, check out Chris Seidel's Shakespearean Insulter Kit. He says it's from an unknown origin, but since he put it on the web about a thousand years ago (actually, 1996), I figure I should at least credit him with finding the kit and typing out all those words and formatting it and all.

Get ye over there forthwith, thou puny, hell-hated hedge pigs.

He was HAPPY, okay?

Yesterday being Friday, the girls and I took ourselves out for our usual fast-food lunch, choosing from among a vast array of such places in our city, the Chain Restaurant Capital of the World. I pulled up to the drive-thru speaker of our chosen venue in Applesauce Anne and immediately, a polite and cheerful male voice greeted us, somewhat in the style of a radio announcer.

"Hello and welcome to Arby's!" the voice said. "How may I help you today?"

I was immediately charmed, because who doesn't like to hear a friendly voice at a restaurant drive-thru? Usually the people who are assigned to the speakers have an air of ennui about them that is so pervasive, you wonder why they haven't just fallen prostrate to the floor in a coma. Either that, or they speak in clipped tones that suggest you have a lot of frigging nerve, driving up to the speaker and bothering them with your needy neediness and your hunger and all. When, clearly, you should have known that they were standing there, like, scratching their rash.

Sometimes, people at drive-thrus even go out of their way to be unhelpful, like the girl at another Arby's, as it happens, whom I encountered a few years ago. I made the mistake of saying that I wanted a "loaded potato," which seems to indicate that I wanted a baked potato with a range of toppings, right? Cheese, bacon, green onions, sour cream....the works.

But the girl at this particular speaker, who is probably now serving prison time for running a scam to defraud the elderly, spoke up with a clear challenge in her voice: "Do you mean you want A DELUXE POTATO?"

Deluxe, loaded - whatever. They mean the same thing, right? Or maybe they don't. I sat and pondered for a moment and then said thoughtfully, "No, I want the loaded potato. The one with the gun powder and shell casings."

Ha. That shut her up.

So anyway, on this day, I felt really pleased to be offered that thing...you know, that thing? Where people who work at a fast food restaurant actually act like they're glad that you chose their establishment rather than the million others in the city you could have pulled into? Oh, yeah, I remember. CUSTOMER SERVICE. Yeah, that's what it's called. So when we got up to the window to pay and get our food, it was even nicer to be greeted with a smile from the teenage boy standing there.

"Hi!" he said. "That'll be nine dollars and forty-seven cents, ma'am."

(Ma'am! He actually called me ma'am!)

"He's very cute," said Meelyn appreciatively, observing him from the safety of Anne's very tinted windows.

"That's what I was just thinking," Aisling chimed in. "I like his curly hair."

"I like his polite, respectful attitude," I said fervently.

"And he has nice teeth," Meelyn noted.

"Yes, and we know that because he smiled. Don't let anyone ever tell you that miracles don't still happen, girls."

"It's too bad he has to wear that goofy-looking shirt," Aisling remarked sympathetically.

Just then, the boy came back to the window with our sack of sandwiches. "Here you are, ma'am. Have a nice day!"

"Thank you, you too," I returned politely. "And by the way, my two daughters think you're very cute."

Both Meelyn and Aisling immediately hit the floor of the van, gasping.

The boy's nice smile grew even wider and he tried to peer through the tinted windows into the van's interior. He blushed. "Well, thanks!" he said, his nice teeth showing again ("I wonder what orthodontist his parents used," I mused to myself), pleasure written across his face.

"You're welcome." I smiled back, and pulled away.

As soon as we were in the street, the girls got off the floor of the van and started administering a tongue-lashing.

"Mom, how could you do that?" Meelyn said severely. I met her gaze in the rear view mirror and flinched a little bit.

"Yeah, how could you do that?" asked Aisling. "Could you be more embarrassing?"

"Or inappropriate?"

"Or wierd?"

I thought it over. "Yes," I said, squinting my left eye and pursing my lips in a contemplative moue. "Acutally, I believe I could be more of those things. Much more, in fact. Shall I turn the van around and go back?"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" they both shrieked in chorus.

"Well, then," I said smugly.

"Seriously, how could you do that?" Meelyn asked rebukingly. "You made us look like idiots."

"Yeah!" said Aisling. "Idiots!"

"Oh, fiddlesticks," I scoffed. "Those windows are so tinted, I could have had a couple of chimpanzees strapped in back there, for all he knew. He couldn't see either one of you."

Meelyn was not finished with me yet. "It's the PRINCIPLE of the thing," she said, flipping her long, blonde hair around like a diva.

"Yeah! It's the principle of the thing," said Aisling. "Whatever that's supposed to mean."

"The principle of the thing," I said, wheeling the van smartly into the driveway, "is that what I, a fat, middle-aged housewife, just said probably made his day. The principle of the thing is that I spread some happiness in the world and you two are the biggest couple of happiness-grabber-backers I've ever known. Sheeeeesh. Go eat your lunch, already, you big poopheads."

Later on, as we were driving back home after picking up my husband from work, Meelyn tattled on me by saying, "Daddy, you can't believe what SHE did today."

"Who?" asked my husband, I bit unfairly, I thought. "Mommy or Aisli?"

"Mommy," said Meelyn firmly. "She told the cute guy at the Arby's driveway that me and Aisli thought he was cute."

"And....?"

"Daddy," said Aisling with the air of explaining the obvious, "would you like it if someone told you you were cute if you were a teenager working at a drive thru window?"

"Heck yeah," my husband said, grinning at us roguishly. "I'd like that now. Word. Give me some dog, girl." He held out his hand for me to bump his knuckles.

"I am the spreader of happiness," I said serenely.

"You're the spreader of something, all right," Meelyn muttered. "But I don't think it's happiness, mostly because of the way it smells."

"Yeah!" said Aisling. She paused and then turned to her sister. "So...what does it smell like?"

Random thought

It might be kind of FUN to go to the POOL if the RAIN would ever STOP.

Seeing as how it's SUMMER and all.

RECIPE: Slow-cooker pulled pork sammidges

I have no doubt violated all known rules for barbecue with this recipe and can only feel thankful that this blog is so sparsely read that I won't have to worry about angry Texans and residents of Kansas City showing up at my front door and trying to spear me with ka-bob skewers. All I can say in my defense is that it is really good and that Aisling has stopped referring to the crock-pot as the "crap pot".

We had these sandwiches for dinner tonight in a picnickery sort of meal. I found that I couldn't wait until next week's grocery foray to buy another brisket for barbecueing, so I groped my way through the freezer and found a butcher's pack of center-cut pork chops. Yup, it was most definitely going to be a pulled pork dinner.

I wish I'd had time to make a potato salad or even a macaroni salad, but by the time I'd thought of doing either one, the time had passed for their fridge-chilling requirements. And as my husband said with a shudder, "Warm macaroni salad is just...wrong."

Instead, we had these sandwiches with frozen corn (dressed with a touch of milk, a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of sugar and some salt and pepper to approximate the taste of off-the-cob corny goodness.) Again, I wish I'd thought to make a green salad, but my mind has been on HISTO Indiana History all day today and my head is kind of clogged up with information about the Adena-Hopewell Indians and Indiana's state bird (the cardinal.) We had potato chips, making this a meal that defies everything Atkins lovers profess to be good and right with the world and its food.

RECIPE:

3 or 4 center cut pork chops

1 bottle Heinz chili sauce

1 T butter

3 Vidalia onions, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic

3 T brown sugar

1 T prepared mustard

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup of jalapeno pepper slices (optional)


DIRECTIONS:

Spray slow-cooker with nonstick spray and add enough water to just cover the bottom of the crock. Place pork chops directly into the crock; there's no need to brown them.

In a saute pan, melt the butter. Add the garlic and chopped onions; cook over medium heat for about a minute. Add bottle of chili sauce, brown sugar, mustard, salt and jalapeno peppers, if desired. Cook mixture until bubbly, stirring constantly. Pour over chops in slow cooker. Cover slow-cooker and allow pork to bake for about four hours. Remove lid from cooker and de-bone chops, pulling the meat apart with two forks. Cook for another hour or so until enough liquid has evaporated from the barbecue sauce to allow it to thicken a bit.

Serve onto hamburger buns or onion rolls with a slotted spoon.

Makes about eight sandwiches.

This pulled pork barbecue can also be served as a main course inside a big baked potato, sprinkled with shredded cheese and chopped green onion. This would be good with a green salad, too.

RECIPE: Beef Brisket in the Slow-Cooker

This is not a Quick Cooking recipe; it's one I've been making for years, therefore putting it into the tried and true category of dinner dishes that are well-nigh impossible to screw up.




For this dinner, I simply took a nice little brisket, threw it into the slow-cooker with some beef broth and some herbs and spices -- I like fennel, coriander and peppercorns, with about a half-clove of garlic -- and turned it on low heat and let 'er rip for about eight hours.

Traditionally, brisket is cooked the day before you plan to serve it, removed from whatever cooker you have used, covered and placed in the fridge until it's time to reheat for next day's dinner. It's supposed to taste better -- and it does -- and it also comes out ready to cut into the nice, firm slices you see in that photograph because it's had time to rest. Since I served mine only about four hours after I'd cooked it, it was still pretty "new" and it fell apart into tender, juicy chunks.

I included some carrot and potato chunks in the mix, but elected not to serve them at the last minute because the beef broth made them turn dark and they didn't have the look I wanted them to have (if I'd been home, I would have sneaked the potatoes under the lid when the meat had been cooking for around four hours.) The potatoes and carrots aren't a loss though: they'll be delish for tomorrow's lunch, mashed with some butter, salt and pepper. Yum.

I served this meal with fluffy white mashed potatoes and green beans. Kids and husband all fervently agreed that I should keep making this dinner, which is fine with me. It couldn't be any easier, and it's nice to make something that everyone will actually eat, instead of the crock-pot slop I've ruefully been serving over the past couple of weeks that Project: Dinner has been cooking along.

This meal was such a delightful success, I think I'll buy another brisket this week and slow-cook it in some homemade barbecue sauce, which makes a wonderful summery dinner with sliced tomatoes, corn (preferably on the cob, but we haven't reached that part of the summer yet. Or the tomato part, come to think of it) and strawberry shortcake or watermelon for dessert.

Because it's fun to torture my husband

My husband and I, as I have mentioned before, often sit out on our front porch, reading. It's such a pleasant place to sit that it's possible to stay there for hours, enjoying our library books, watching the traffic slide past and occasionally greeting passersby.

But as we've spent so much time out there, it's been impossible for me to ignore the fact that The House Has Dirt on It.

Our house is covered by a very pretty buttery-yellow vinyl siding, the color of yellow that acts as a magnet for every little cloud of dust stirred up on the city street that runs past our lot. Because I am afflicted with a spousally diagnosed case of Occasional Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that breaks me out in feverish activity from time to time, I suddenly became unable to sit still out there today after we got home from Mass, looking at the House, which had Dirt on It.

"The house is so dirty," I said unhappily, closing my Dean Koontz book on my finger and regarding the dingy exterior. I've been pointing this out for about three weeks and he's been stonewalling me remorselessly.

My husband, stolid in his determination not to wash the house, kept his gaze firmly fixed on his book. "We have no garden hose. We can't wash the house."

"Why not?"

"Because we don't have a garden hose."

"But we have big sponges. And some liquid soap and warm water."

"But we have no garden hose to rinse off the liquid soap and warm water. We can't wash the house."

Defeated, I opened my book and read a sentence. Then I slammed it shut again and said brightly, "We can just get a bucket of fresh water and rinse out the soapy sponges and use the fresh water to rinse the house!"

My husband looked at me over the tops of his sunglasses and said, "You aren't going to leave me alone about this, are you?"

I thought for just a moment. "No," I finally said. "No, I just can't see my way clear to leaving you alone. The House Has Dirt on It."

He quietly muttered a word that he has no business saying on a Sunday and put down his book. "Go along with you, then, and get the soapy water and the fresh water and your big dumb sponges and let's get this over with."

I did him the favor of washing the plant stands and the little bistro set and then I held the bucket for him while he climbed up and got the uppermost level of the siding. The dirt that rolled down the the porch floor was a sight to behold; it was nearly as black and ominous as my husband's attitude.

"I can't believe we're out washing and rinsing the house like a couple of hillbillies, with no power washer, or even garden hose," he said, scrubbing with a vigor that not only removed the dirt, but incidentally speckled my top with droplets of mucky water.

"Hillbillies don't wash their houses," I replied smartly.

It took him half an hour to wash the house with me helping and he grew almost baroque in his description of what an onerous task this was without access to a garden hose, an item which nearly took on the proportions of the Holy Grail by the time that last bit of siding was swabbed and rinsed. The Knights Templar really missed out when my husband was born a thousand years too late.

Once the house was finished and the porch furniture was put back, I went in and hunted down my treasures that add to the welcoming cuteness and curb appeal of our house: a favorite pot of silk ivy, a glass jar full of marbles, a throw for the back of the bench, a pretty blue bowl. Once I'm able to get the flowers out in the hanging baskets, it will be quite lovely indeed, a bower of comfort.

"Thank you, honey," I said, squeezing his arm.

"You're welcome, I suppose," he said, relenting. And squeezed me back.