Hope Is the Thing With Feathers That Perches In The Soul, Or That Buries Seeds, Or That Puts Bumper Stickers On Cars. I May Be Confused.

Every year at New Year's, when I'm dutifully vowing to save more money, sign up for a yoga class, and eat more fiber, my brilliant friend Elizabeth makes a totally different kind of resolution. She resolves to do something really fun. One year, she resolved to learn how to make perfect cocktails -- and, believe me, she does. One year, she resolved to learn to ride a motorcycle -- and she does. This year, Elizabeth resolved to try all of the DC restaurants in the Washingtonian's 100 Best Restaurants List that she hadn't already tried.

Today, because I'm the kind of really good friend who can always be counted on to help her pals meet their goals, I joined Elizabeth for lunch at one of the places on her list -- Le Paradou. As the name implies, it's French. Located over near the now-deserted Capitol Hill, Elizabeth and I basically had the restaurant to ourselves. I had the Homard du ''Maine" ti au Beurre de Sauternes, Gingembre et Zestes de Pamplemousse (Roasted ''Maine" Lobster with Sauternes Wine Butter, Ginger and Grapefruit Zest), which was amazing (but Janni, and, you know that I love you, but the quotation marks around "Maine" are a bit too much; I'm just saying) and the Carre d’Agneau Roti, Puree d’Aubergines et Confit de Tomates, Jus aux Olives (Rack of Lamb, Eggplant Puree, Tomatoes Confit, Olive Jus). We split a very nice cheese tray. I'd go back, especially for the "Maine" lobster.

Afterwards I got into a cab to head back to the real world (aka that pleading I still need to write. Dorothy Parker once dismissed herself from her guests when she needed to finish a bit of writing by announcing, "I have to go upstairs and do that fucking thing, and I don't mean Allen" (her husband at the time, who hadn't come downstairs to join the guests). I would neeeeeever refer that way to some writing that I need to get done. Out loud) and the cabbie had the radio on. There's a certain group of cab drivers in DC who keep xian radio on in their cabs, hoping to convert the heathens during the 15 minutes that we're sitting in the back seat of the cab checking our Blackberries. For all I know, it may even work on occasion. Just as I got in the cab, the announcer said, "Can a mouse be a farmer? Find out in Our Creation Minute." So I put down the Blackberry and listened. Turns out that there's a species of mouse living in the Amazon jungle and that there are also seeds in the Amazon jungle that would be poisonous to this mouse. So the mouse finds the seeds, buries them, just as the squirrels bury acorns in my yard, and then -- here's the beauty part -- eats the seedlings when they sprout which, it turns out, are NOT poisonous.

So I'm listening and thinking this is pretty neat; here I was watching squirrels bury acorns this morning and here I am hearing about mice burying seeds this afternoon and maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something, although I don't think it's, "Hecate. Bury your food!", but I could be wrong. But then the narrator of Our Creation Minute says, "Evolutionists assert that learning how to farm was a turning point in human evolution. How is it then that this little mouse already knows how to farm? The ONLY OBVIOUS answer is that the Creator imparted this bit of wisdom to the mouse when he created him." And you know, obvious as that answer may have been, it wasn't the answer that occured to me. Sweet Kali dressed in madras! Apparently Americans really ARE incapable of even semi-logical thought. I hope when those farmer mice from the Amazon take over the Earth, they teach their children how to think.

So, by then, we were almost all the way to my office and the cab slowed down to let me out and, right there, in front of my office, was a car with a bumper sticker that said: "WWWD? What Would Weicker Do?" Maybe there's hope after all.