What we've learned

摘要

IPLACE a feverish phone call. "OK, so I'm making the strawberry pie filling, and I just dumped the strawberry Jell-0 in with the water and sugar and cornstarch, instead of boiling them first and then adding the Jell-O. Did I just mess the whole thingup?" "No! It'll be fine," she reassures. "Really?" "Yep. You'll never know the difference." "Awesome." She is my mother-in-law, Sharon, who is less than a quarter mile and a (local) phone call away. This is, admittedly, a rather unremarkable conversation; yet what is remarkable is the number of times some variation of it has taken place over the past 13 years. We share cooking questions (me to her), computer questions (her to me) and farming questions (Where the heck are they, anyway?) many, many timesover the course of the day. Which is to say, we get along pretty well.