I woke up late again. Susan and Matt were already busily preparing for the Prenatal Class Reunion. Matt drove in to Huntingdon to pick up 11 personal pizzas from the newly opened Pizza Express. Pizza Express is a growing chain that serves tasty boutique pizzas, like the "Noci", with Gorgonzola, spinach, and walnuts, and the exotic "American", with pepperoni and cheese. The day before, one couple had canceled, lowering expected attendance to nine adults, but the number of pizzas ordered did not correspondingly change. Beautiful.

I feel compelled, as I often do, to digress a moment. Pepperoni pizza is called the "American". A few days earlier, we had debated what to serve at the reunion. One option was big subs cut into party-sized portions. My brother said, "We could make some typically American subs, like the Classic Italian!" But I knew what he meant. It does seem typically American. I bet you could go into a sub shop in New York, California, Texas, or Iowa, and order an Italian. You might have to ask for a hero, torpedo, or grinder, but you'd get what you expected: a soft, white sub roll with water saturated ham and Oscar Mayer salami. But if you went into a sandwich shop in Rome and ordered an Italian, who knows? Maybe you'd get directed to a bordello. Even if you got the point across, it wouldn't be what you expected: "No, not this dry, salty stuff! You know, ham! And why does your salami taste so garlicky?" But it wouldn't surprise my if you could order something equally non-authentic called an "American". Maybe it would be a prosciutto sandwich with a square slice of low-taste yellow cheese and ketchup.

As American as the Classic Italian sub and pepperoni pizza. Though we usually say, "as American as hot dogs and apple pie." But Frankfurters and apfel kuchen are the same thing. We even call them Frankfurters sometimes. Surely we can find many things quintessentially American to use in our National Simile. And we have nice stuff, too. It's not like we would be limited to something like "as American as using nuclear weapons and slaughtering Lakota Indians." How about "as American as baseball and barbecue"? Or "as American as Coke and McDonald's"? Wait, maybe McDonald's should be out. After all, it specializes in Hamburgers and French fries. (I keep waiting for the culinarily proud French to stop using the term pommes frites and switch to calling them "American Fries".) Okay, back to my original digression. Where was I? Anyway, you get the point. Right?

Everyone had a nice time at the Prenatal Class Reunion party, and the four boys enjoyed themselves greatly, especially during the unveiling of the Awesome Secrets Of The Kitchen Cabinet. Only rarely do I really enjoy a good mixing bowl banging, and even then not for more than a few minutes. These guys were occupied for the better part of an hour before they were wooed away by The Mysterious Measuring Spoons.

Perhaps, though, no one enjoyed themselves as much as The Weight Watchers Martyrs. It turned out we ordered exactly the right number of pizzas: one per guest and five for Matt, Susan, and me. During cleanup, I was preparing for a return to point accounting, so I stuffed home two more "American" slices, a fat (fat, like a whole radian) piece of cake, and all the remaining bread sticks, slathered with cream cheese and red pepper dip.

Luckily for me, Matt and Susan hadn't likewise prepared. Later, they decided to heat up the left over pizza for dinner. So I had more pizza with them. You know, just to be polite.

I went to bed nicely full again, and nicely forgetting my friend Dina's birthday again.