A quiet night, a stack of books, a tuna melt on rye

I just bought Creme de Methe for the first time.  It's always seemed kind of useless, and one of those things you buy once for a teaspoon or so and then never use again, but which takes up precious real-estate in a cabinet or on top of the fridge.  I made this terribly *eyeroll* monumental purchase because I've been invited to a pie party tomorrow.  After much deliberation I decided to make a Grasshopper Pie.  Which of course uses a half a cup of Creme de Menthe. 

I don't think I've had Grasshopper Pie in 18 years.  Not since Pop-pop died, which was in Fifth grade, so I must have been ten.  When I was little, we'd periodically go to my Grandparents house for Sunday dinner (my father's parents, who lived on the opposite side of the Philadelphia area from us, meaning they were in New Jersey and we were in Pennsylvania).  Every singe time we had baked macaroni and cheese, broccoli (and I still appear to be the only person who likes the trunks better than the leaves), and grasshopper pie for dessert.  I remember it being very good, so here's hoping that the recipe I found on-line is up to snuff. 

So what are other people's favorite pies.  I must admit to being a pretty big pie fan, simply because I really don't like cake.  Pie is often a good compromise when your mother is despairing about what to serve at a birthday party when the birthday girl doesn't like cake.  Particularly when said party is splitting the difference between Christmas and New Years and every one is royally sick of treats anyway. 

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I really stayed in the same school system for all of my schooling (except for Kindergarten), but I still somehow managed to get the new girl experience a couple of times. 

First, I went to a private Montessori school for Kindergarten (and pre-school for that matter) because both my parents worked, and the half day public school was not going to work out so well.  If you don't know, the Montessori method is based on presenting a lot of different information to the child and then allowing them to study and learn about their own interests.  It may not be the method for everyone, but it worked really well for me.  I thought I was going to get to learn multiplication in first grade and was terribly disappointed when I got to the public school and was told that we wouldn't be covering that until second grade.  In protest, I never bothered to learn my times tables.  No really, I still have difficulty with the sixes and higher.  In general I spent most of first grade terribly bored (and had the accompanying bad behavior) because I had already learned all the information.  I also developed a habit of looking at other kids test papers -- not to cheat, but to check their work while the test was still going on. 

Two years before I started school, my neighborhood had been the subject of redistricting at the elementary school level but not at the middle school or high school level.  So, when I moved to the middle school only nine kids from my elementary school went with me.  That's compared to the 40-50 who all went to the other middle school.  During the first week of sixth grade, one of the teacher's favorite games was to have people raise their hand if they went to a certain elementary school.  They would slowly tick down the list, people raising their hands with each suggestion.  Eventually, they would ask "who moved here over the summer?" thinking that was the only option left.  Still I couldn't raise my hand.  Finally, I would get asked: "what school did you go to?" I'd tell them, and usually the teacher wouldn't even be aware that that was one of the schools feeder elementary schools (I think those nine people were actually the most who ever got sent in a single year). 

The switch to high school was slightly better, as the three middle schools only fed into two high schools, so I ended up knowing a lot more people.  Then for university I purposely chose somewhere very far away so that no one else I knew would go there.  I did not want to end up at the high school after high school (as we called Penn State, but would apply equally to most of the other state schools).  I was actually super mad when I found out that one other kid from my school was going to Tulane.  How dare he choose my college!

    Earliest memories are funny.  Theory holds that they are moments of extreme emotion, either happy or sad, often traumatic, the kind of monumentus occasions that get burned in the brain for all time.  I don’t know if mine are monumentous, but they certainly establish themes for the rest of my life. 
   
 

    Junior year of high school everyone at my school was required to write and autobiography.  While going though stuff to bring down to New Orleans I found mine.  Some of it is awful.  Apparently, I totally forgot how to use spell check and developed some sort of written ADD, where I don't really develop anything that I talked about.  On the other hand, my sections, or even just sentences continue to crack me up all these years later.  So, I feel this strange need to retool an old high school project.  Toward that end, here are two short introductory sections.