Family--The Ties That Bind...And Gag! by Erma Bombeck

• After the land of make-believe came reality, and people who lived there didn't seem to have a whole lot of fun.
• The man who held your hand tenderly through sixteen hours of labor with your first child could charge you $135,000 for landing on Park Place without a trace of remorse.
• I promise by all that is holy, I will never observe another Christmas without meaning.
• Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.
• If a home is a man's castle...let him clean it.
• There are two things a woman should do by herself...give birth and shop.
• We have an entire generation of kids growing up who have been told that work must be "fun, relevant, and meaningful." The hell it is. It's discipline, competition, and repetition.
• I learned that he may love several wives, embrace several cars, be true to more than one political philosophy, and be equally committed to several careers, but he will have only one comfortable chair in his life. I learned it will be an ugly chair. It will match nothing in the entire house. It will never wear out.

3/2/2006