This is a picture of Oliver’s cousin Remy, in Baltimore today, desperate to get to Sports ‘R Us (I can totally relate) to get that Who Dat t-shirt she didn’t get around to buying before Snowpocalypse….

So I guess it’s time for the annual Mona Lisa bashing. Last year, they discovered and dragged out the nude portrait of her (you could just hear her spinning in her grave) and now they’re outing her as a woman with high cholesterol.

According to the N.Y. Times, some guy named Vito from Palermo, a self-declared expert in determining the health issues of the subjects of certain masterpiece portraits (where do you go to school to get good at that?), announced that old Mona has fatty deposits under her eyes, indicating that her famous gaze, which has of course been the subject of debate and poetry for centuries, is most likely a look of satisfaction (or maybe even belch suppression) after a few too many high fat meals.

If you are like me, you probably don’t have a whole lot of master painters rushing in with portrait offers. Are you wondering what it might take to get them interested, how you might aquire Mona’s painter-friendly, mysterious, what-the-hell-is-she-thinking attitude? Apparently, all you need to do is chow down a few of Paula Deen’s Lady’s Brunch Burgers and they’ll be banging on your door with their paintbrushes.

A Brunch Burger is guaranteed to skyrocket your cholesterol to unprecedented levels, so you too can be intriguing as Mona Lisa, pretty much overnight. Get this: it’s basically a burger with a fried egg and bacon on top. But the beauty part is, in place of a bun, that burger is tucked between two glazed Krispy Kreme donuts! I know, dreamy, right?

So, run, don’t walk, to click here for the recipe for Lady’s Brunch Burgers. Then text old Leo da V. a dinner invite.

I heard that Sweetheart Valentine’s Day candy is the holiday’s biggest seller. They’re those little hearts made by Necco (yep, purveyor of your favorite wafers), ya know, the ones that have messages stamped on them like, “Kiss me” or “Puppy love.”

Well, Necco, in an attempt to get with the century, has added a couple of new messages this year: “Text me” and “Tweet me.” (Yes, they already have “Email me,” and yes, they dumped “Fax me.” ) These new entries intrigued me so much, I almost bought a huge bag of Sweethearts today, just to see if I could find one of those up-to-the-minute hearts. I thought I could send them to my kids, who would then be fooled into thinking I was a savvy, techno-smart Valentine sender and not the bonehead they’d thought I was. But, realizing that examining roughly 1000 candy hearts was actually a useless time-sucker, I chose instead to shop for some useful, calorie-free Valentine’s Day gifts that are appropriate for crabby cooks.

If you know a crabby cook youi’d like to sweeten up on the 14^th, check out this heart paring knife, these heart measuring spoons, or a lovely heart egg molder. Just don’t follow up with a request that she cook Valentine’s Day dinner for you with her new utensils or she might whack you with her heart spatula.

BTW: If you find those sweethearts with the new messages, text me. Or tweet me. (Don’t fax me. That’s so last year.)

P.S. This just in: my friend David Coleman points out that you can really impress the kids if you click here to design and send them an electronic sweetheart message. As Dave says, “All the saccharine, none of the calories!”

I’m taking a minute to tell you about my newest kids’ book. It’s the third in my  Uh-oh, Cleo series, and it’s called, I Barfed On Mrs. Kenly.

I actually did barf on Mrs. Kenly, by the way; you might call this little book memoir-ish.

See, one Sunday morning in my childhood, I ate way too many pancakes, and then went to a birthday party, which involved riding downtown in a van stuffed with children and an unlucky lady named Mrs. Kenly.

Mrs. Kenly sat next to me, all squished in. She was wearing a beautiful mink coat, which at the time was not politically incorrect.

On the other side of me was Donna, who was chewing watermelon bubble gum, the fumes from which turned my stomach in the close quarters. Also, the temperature in the van must’ve been ninety, with all windows shut to keep out the Chicago chill, and Mr. Kling, the driver and dad of the birthday girl, was smoking a cigar.

So I was surrounded by barf-inducing elements.

Still, it took me by surprise when I violently threw up all over Mrs. Kenly’s lovely coat. (She was surprised too, of course, with a few other emotions mixed in.)  The humiliation was awful, made worse by the fact that Mrs. Kenly was a terribly nice person. If I’d barfed on, say, Mrs. Landon, who once laughed at me because I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe, I wouldn’t have minded so much

If you know any 7 or 8 year-olds who might be amused by this story, check out I Barfed On Mrs. Kenly. I mean, literally check it out, at the library, or just, you know, check it out out here.

I just heard on the radio that in the American Airlines Sky Mall catalogue, there’s a device for sale, a clock that only tells you what day it is.

Normally, when purchasing a clock, I look for one that has a few more bells and whilstles, one that tells you what time it is, for example. Of course, when I travel, my iPhone serves as my source of such information, plus anything else I might want to now, from the temperature in Dubai to John Mayer’s shoe size.

But last week I went to the Caribbean, and now I totally get it about  AA’s day clock: there is a land (and a state of mind) where the name of the day is all the temporal info you need.

We got to Nevis (in the West Indies) on Sunday. I was carrying three time-telling devices. Within hours, I’d shed my watch. By Monday, I’d shut down and stowed my laptop. By Tuesday, I was feeling hostile towards my iPhone: I clicked it off and threw it in my suitcase. That was it. I was time-less, as was the rest of my sun-stunned family, only guessing the hour by the length of the shadows cast by our hammocks.

The AA clock would have come in handy when we almost forgot to catch that plane home on New Years Day. But late one night (which the day clock would have told us was Thursday), we noticed revelers singing “Auld Lang Syne,” and we recalled our obligations and acknowledged that it was time to strap on our watches and pack our sandy bags.

We’re on the airplane now, revving up our various electronic things and preparing for re-entry. I think I’ll just leave my watch set for Nevis time, maybe put it away for a while and get one of those AA day clocks. Because it turns out that’s all you really need. Well, that and a hammock.

My favorite gift this season is one that really keeps on giving. Click here to go to Priscilla Woolworth’s site for the world’s finest fly swatter. Not only does it keep the little buggers at bay, it’s extremely cute, and you can also use it to swat badly behaving relatives at your upcoming holiday events.

I’m keeping mine handy to swat my husband’s hand when he reaches for his sixth piece of chocolate roll on Christmas night. I will also let loose on my daughter when she tries to make off with my new red sweater. It will morph into a dog swatter when Oliver opens his jaws to partake of the Christmas tenderloin, and Aunt Lucy will be sorry when she tries to pour her fourth glass of eggnog. If my sister-in-law indicates displeasure with my gift, whack. If anyone gives an Ab-O-Cizer for Christmas, smack.

See, this thing has infinite uses. Buy one and swat your way through December.

In recent months there’s been a rash of stories about animals getting their heads stuck in things.

Admittedly, these stories have surfaced only on slow news days, like, say, while we’re waiting for Obama to clue us in on Afghanistan. A reporter’s gotta come up with something while Barry keeps us hanging about troop numbers. I think that’s why we got the news about the raccoon with his head stuck in a peanut butter jar.

Then I heard about a hedgehog who got a yogurt container stuck on her head. That story slipped into headline position when people needed a break from the health care debate for a couple days. In a related story, a squirrel was caught on video, also wearing a yogurt container. Either he was bored with acorns and sampling dairy, or maybe, after he’d got his head un-stuck from a vodka botle,  he was wearing the squirrel equivalent of a lampshade. (You decide: click here.)

One week, when there was no tasty news about some governor having an affair, reporters seized on the story of that elk wearing a bar stool. This story has juice: how did that happen? Was he the loser in a bar fight? The elk story stirred almost as much discussion as Tiger Woods.

But maybe the most intriguing was the news about the cow who somehow got her head stuck in a washing machine. For a brief time, when Sarah Palin was neither resigning nor promoting a book, reporters loved this. It was such a refreshing change from covering the antics of humans.

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I just read a very upsetting news story.

The Australian police, fed up with alcohol-related violence at car racing events, are cracking down. At the recent Bathurst 1000, a three-day race in the town of that name, they decided to set some fun-killing limits: only 24 cans of beer per person per day. I mean, for Pete’s sake, we all know the fun doesn’t start till 25, right? Am I right?

Just when I was gonna cash in some mileage and head to Bratwurst, or whatever it’s called, for some awesome party time, I have to ask, what’s the point? I mean I might as well stay here and go to a damn Rams game (or are we the Vikings ? The L.A. Colts? I can never remember) where they no such limits and better hot dogs.

Not to mention the Aussies are limiting wine, too: don’t try to show up with more than four litres per person. I know, so what’s a litre, right? Don’t the Aussies speak English? Well, I Googled it: a litre is 33 ounces, roughly, so each person is limited to  uh, what’s 33 times 4?…uh, well you get the picture. It’s downright Draconian, if you ask me. If I imposed those limits on my book group, they’d never come over.

For a bunch of people who go around saying “cheers” all the time, you’d never guess Australians could be such party poopers.

I am sometimes accused of unnecessary gefilte fish-bashing. This is because, although I have never actually eaten the stuff, I just find it, you know, gross, to the point of being comical, so I write about it in scathing terms occasionally.

I know I should make an effort to choose more challenging subjects: it’s so easy to pick on gefilte fish. But then I heard this story in the news about a certain young woman in England who had an unusual encounter with the fish, and I just can’t help myself.

It seems Jessica Taylor went to the fridge for a midnight snack, her heart set on scarfing down a little gefilte fish. (Okay, time out. I can think of lots of things I’d like to eat at midnight, most of them in the chocolate family. Why gefilte fish at that hour, a food that has been known to cause nightmares? I know you’re with me on this.) Anyway, Jessica Taylor opened the fridge and found that her midnight snack was glowing in the dark. Witnesses (the mom and dad) were summoned and they confirmed: the gefilte fish was “brighter than a glow stick.”

A spokesperson for the Moshe company, who distributes the fish, said that maybe it had consumed some phosphorus before it got gefilted, but that in any case the family should have brought it in for testing if they wanted a refund or an apology. Then the Moshe man offered his personal theory on the glow-fish:  “It was an act of God.”

Now, I would never presume to know what’s on God’s agenda, but it’s my guess that, with all the other crap She’s dealing with right now, setting fish aglow is probably low on Her list of priorities.

Until Moshe’s company finds a better explanation for this phenomenon, I’ve got myself one new, compelling reason to avoid eating (and to ridicule) gefilte fish.

In a follow-up to my recent post about Killer Biscuits, I have some good news about Custard Crèmes.

You’ll recall that these innocent looking cookies were rated the most likely to cause bodily harm while you eat them, scoring a whopping 5.63 on the Biscuit Injury Evaluation Scale. (By comparison, the Ginger Nut Biscuit ranked a measly 3.78.) Being the devil-may-care, caution-to-the-wind kind of gal that I am, I decided to do a little evaluating of my own.

I found a British goods store in West L.A. that carries the hard-to-find Custard Cremes. I purchased three boxes, and, just to be on the safe side, I hired a PIAL (personal injury accident lawyer), before I opened the deceptively charming gold and red packages of pale yellow cookies.

I’m happy to report that a) they are delicious and b) although I ate a hefty number of them (I’m very thorough when conducting a study), I was unharmed by the little buggers, if you don’t count the weight gain.