Fresh grated parmesan, sir?

Newsflash: Raccoons like spaghetti! And, of course, the first question that should come to anyone's mind after reading such a statement is "How would you know?"

We ate sketty and meatballs for dinner one night last week and had quite a lot of cooked pasta left at the end of the meal. I packed up the leftover sauce and meatballs to freeze for another meal, but did not want to keep the leftover spaghetti...while I like most foods as leftovers, that courtesy does not extend to plain cooked pasta. I do try to be economical but since a pound of spaghetti is less than $1.00, I can't get all worked up about throwing out a few cents' worth.

So J suggested that instead of tossing into the garbage, we see if the raccoons would like it. We simply dumped it out on the floor of the deck and wondered if it would be there the next morning. Before we went to bed that night, I turned on the deck light and interrupted a raccoon mid-feast. There was spaghetti scattered over a four foot radius! I didn't know if that meant the raccoon really liked it or was really annoyed to find out there was no sauce or garlic bread.

The next morning revealed a pristine deck - not one bit of spaghetti remained. There may even have been a few lick marks still showing. So apparently raccoons have not bought into the no-carb trend and are more than happy to help us get rid of leftover pasta.

Diana, Princess of Wales

Much will be said and written about this tenth anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, and there is probably nothing original that I can add. No matter. My eyes still tear when I think about her death and my heart still breaks a little for her.

We were visiting my parents when it happened. My father, the news junkie, had heard the announcement when his radio turned on that morning. His first words to me as I came downstairs that morning were "Princess Diana is dead." He might as well have said "Aliens have landed on the front lawn" as much sense as it made to me.

Many people do not understand the impact her death had on many of us of a certain age, particularly women. I certainly had little in common with her. But we had watched her grow from a sad, shy girl to a confident, joyful woman and we understood how exciting it was for her to finally come into her own, to finally begin to figure out who she was. She was just starting to live the life that she wanted to lead and not the life that her parents, the royal family, even her adoring public wanted her to lead. As her confidence in herself grew, so did her beauty and radiance. Yes, she made some foolish choices. But they were her choices to make. And how many foolish choices have each of us made? Thank goodness I did not have a worldwide audience to witness my bad decisions.

And she was dead, just when her life was taking off, and it seemed so terribly terribly unfair then and it still seems terribly unfair now. The only positive that I have ever been able to see in regards to her death is that she will be forever young and beautiful. She will never age, sag or grey - she will be 36 forever. And sometimes I envy her for that.

While I am not sure that I believe in any kind of heaven or afterlife, I think that somewhere, somehow, Diana can see what decent men her sons are becoming and know that it was her doing, and can see that we have not forgotten her. And I think that maybe she finally feels loved.