Dinner Wars

Eating dinner has always been a difficult thing in our family, a battle really. All three children initially had to be forced to eat anything not coated in sugar, except child #3 who would eat bread and some things coated in sugar. I forced her to eat a very small bite of banana cream pie the other day and it very nearly put her into hysterics. I can’t even begin to count the number of pleas, deals, threats, rants, tears, missed desserts, early bedtimes, and cold-dinners-for-breakfast over the past decade. I can count the number of times we had to “recycle” a non-eating child (once), but that’s a story for another time.

This brings me to last night: tomato soup and quesadillas. Surprisingly, it was not the tomato soup that prompted the problem, it was the quesadillas. I made the quesadillas from whole-wheat tortillas, which apparently violated some sort of dinner armistice. My only defense was that the package was already open and I didn’t want open a new package of regular tortillas until this one was gone. After some bellicosity and undiplomatic saber rattling, child #2 launched the opening salvo: she gagged on her first bite and affirmed that the quesadilla was too “wheat-y.” I countered with “the look.” Child #2 retaliated in kind. Julie attacked the flank with the classic, “it’s perfectly good – even [child #3] likes it.” Child #3 crossed the neutral zone and said she “kind of” liked it and requested more cheese. Child #0 took pleasure in being a neutral observer and fled to his bedroom as soon as he could. As the intensity escalated, Julie lobbed in the, “It’s all in your head,” and “don’t get yourself so worked up” grenades. On the verge of biological warfare, we switched strategies. We promised a trip for soft-serve ice cream cones at a local fast food place for all who finished their dinner. I had to leave the room to de-escalate tensions and permit settlement talks. Child #3 stopped asking for more cheese, but child #2 resisted. I returned to the negotiating table and Child #0 and I both got on our coats, upping the ante. Finally, with extra milk, child #2 dry-heaved her way through the entire quesadilla. The conflict was over. It had lasted nearly an hour, but Julie & I won. For those that think we bribed our way out and that this was merely an empiric victory, you are mistaken. The kids each got a free ice cream cone coupon from school that expired at the end of the week. We had to do it regardless. Ha, ha ,ha!

The aftermath made the battle ironic. Once we sat down with our ice cream (I got an Oreo shake because I had no free ice cream coupon), child #2 kept sharing her cone with others because she is a sloooow eater and her ice cream was to “melt-y.” I suppose some of you are not disgusted by trading licks on ice cream cones, after all one of the many parental responsibilities, particularly for dads, is eating a child’s leftover food after conceding a loss in one of the many food battles. However, this lick sharing was worse because after fixing child #2’s melt-y problem, I left little black flecks in the ice cream. (I had been eating my Oreo shake.) Rather than be disgusted by it (I was mortified personally and was planning on fixing the problem with a couple more good licks), child #2 was delighted. “Oh, I get Oreo bits in my ice cream cone – awesome!”

Coprophagia

Every family has favorite pet stories. As Julie & I have not permitted pets beyond fish, our children love the stories of their parent’s childhood pets, particularly the stories of Ginger the dog. Here’s their favorite story: Ginger ate her own poop. That’s it. That’s the story. There are other stories, even other stories about Ginger. But that’s their favorite.

Why do I mention this story you ask? Well, I was working on a blog entry about my basement that had turned into a rant against personal odysseys, home-improvement and scrap books, when I remembered this story and decided to research why a dog would eat it’s own feces. (What can I say, I’m easily distracted.) Here are the important, earth-shattering discoveries I have made since googling “feces eating animals.”

It is not known why dogs engage in coprophagia or coprophagy (from the Greek, copro = feces and phagy = eat), but according to the well titled article, “Why Dogs Eat Poop” by Daniel Estep, Ph.D. and Suzanne Hetts, Ph.D. (www.AnimalBehaviorAssociates.com), “One theory is that it may be related to boredom or stress. Another is that it is related to digestive deficiencies. Neither theory has any support at the present time. No one really knows what causes it.” (So if your children ever tell you they are bored…) The article does provide comfort to some dog-owners whose pets suffer from coprophagia; rats, rabbits and horses also eat their own feces.

Another article on peteducation.com suggests that poop-eating habits can be curbed by making the poop “taste bad.” As a matter of fact, www.peteducation.com makes and sells a product to make poop taste bad. It advises against putting cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce on the feces, because, unfortunately many dogs “acquire a taste for Tabasco.” The site does suggest however, that dogs be leashed, “in case a luscious pile of feces is found along the way.” Mmm Mmm, feces with Tabasco sauce; luscious.

After all this research I have finally concluded that Ginger’s coprophagia was not caused by stress, anxiety, intestinal disorders, primal carnivorous urges, or the taste of the feces. She was just a really dumb dog.

Where to Start...

I have truly spent the last month temporarily out of order. By way of example, last evening (Monday), at dinner, while discussing the pending book report of Child #2 that has been on-going for the past several days, Child #1 blurts out, “Oh, I have a Heritage presentation I have to do.”

“Oh, what are you supposed to do for this Heritage presentation?”

“You know heritage stuff.”

“Do you have a requirement sheet or an instruction sheet about this presentation that might be more specific?”

“Maybe.”

“Where?”

“In my backpack?”

“So, when is it due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And you were playing DS and not working on this before dinner because…”

“I forgot.”

At this point the parental dam breaks and the lecture on responsibility, work ethic, video games, 6th grade, and “If I ever did this…” commences.

Ten minutes later…Child #1 and I are in his room, sorting through the papers in his backpack. Some have clearly been there since the first week of school. Others, like the ad for the Jog-a-thon, have only been there for a week and a half. As I straighten a crumpled paper and start reading about the Heritage presentation assignment, Child #1 goes to the other room and announces to his mother, “I can’t find it.” Her response? Something like, “I’m surprised you can find anything in that room.” This is going very well.

I spend much of the next hour taking turns with Julie as we try to guide Child #1 through a 3-5 minute presentation using 4-5 artifacts, while still continuing our work with Child #2 on her book report, without completely neglecting Child #3, who wonders around, singing loudly and asking me if I would like to color with her.

Attempt number one on the presentation lasts 30 seconds and involves a series of disjointed facts read aloud from a sheet of paper; back to the drawing board.

I try to help Child #3 with her reading homework while Julie gets Child #2 started typing on the computer. Child #1 wanders aimless around the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

Child #1 begins turning over various papers on the counter. “Looking for paper.”

“Isn’t there lined paper in the drawer?”

“Oh.” After rummaging through the drawer, he pulls out a phone list. “Can I use the back of this?”

“No. Isn’t there new, unused, lined paper in the drawer?”

“I can’t find it. I think it’s in the girls’ room.”

“No, it isn’t. If the paper in the drawer is gone, we have a whole box in the garage.”

Child #1 wanders down the hall to the girls’ bedroom. I say, in a rather loud voice, “Where do you think you are going?” as I march into the garage.

Twenty minutes later, Child #1 is giving the next draft of his presentation. It lasts 45 seconds, involves an imaginary photo of a frying egg, a refrigerator magnet of an alligator, and a tomato from our garden. At least he made eye contact when presenting the imaginary photo.

Exasperated, Julie & I begin the, “if I were telling that story, I would do it like this” and I start to wonder if that’s what Child #1 was waiting for the entire time.

By 11pm, the presentation is over three minutes long, involves the requisite artifacts and can be made with some eye contact with the audience. A thought finally occurs to me, so I ask Child #1, “is this sort of like a fancy show and tell?”

“Yeh, one kid brought in his LEGOs.”

“So some of your classmates have already given their presentations?”

“Yeh, I’m kind of the last one.”

“So these presentations have been going on for the last couple of days and it didn’t occur to you that you might want to work on your presentation?!”

“Pretty much.”

“Don’t tell your mother. She may kill you.”

“Oh, and Dad, I just remembered that I have a book report due on Wednesday.”

At this point I head off to Walgreens to print out the frying-egg photos. I am demoting Child #1 to Child #0.

Changing the Subject…More Thoughts from the Fountain

Apparently the fountain in front of my office has morphed into a cool, teen-age hangout. I don’t know if this is because these youth identify closely with the homeless regulars, but their unkemptness appears intentional at this point. Watching these young people has led me to a couple of conclusions:

1) The U.S. needs to institute forced labor camps for idle teens. (Teen idols would also be well served by such a program.) If they have the time to lounge around the edge of the fountain and go for a soak and a smoke when they think no one is watching, they have time to make license plates, pick up liter along the freeways, and other life skills commensurate with their life choices.

2) If young people wear their belts around their thighs and old people wear their belts around their arm pits, I really must be middle-aged.

3) Trouble is not a destination; it’s where people end-up when they have no real destination in mind.

4) If the term “Dress for Success” has a corollary, it’s “Fashion of Failure.” In this case, it refers to the self-selected sample of youth that are drawn to public access fountains designed for the homeless to use for clothes washing and the odd, elderly couple to wade in while strolling the streets of Salt Lake City in bathing suits. Based solely on their "Fashion of Failure," I see a future as customers of a Cincinnati Sweet ‘N’ Eats and as contestants on a rehab-based reality TV show. Who knows they may eventually rise to the level of fry cook, but only until the photos of their after-hours hot tub parties in the fry cooker start circulating on You-Tube.

Indeed, these youths have been, um, something else.

The Games We Didn’t Play

The other night, after the kids were in bed, Julie and I decided to play a game. We then went through the list of possibilities:

Ticket to Ride: One of my personal favorites. Julie shot it down; we played it together once and Julie decided the 2-player version was not fun.

Sequence: This time we both agreed that the 2-player version left a lot to be desired.

UNO, Rook, or other card games: No. Not in the mood.

Yahtzee: Maybe, but it’s probably too noisy and we would soon have a five player game, in stead of two player, so not tonight.


Rummikub: It’s a dumb name. That and the fact that every time Julie & I play this game, it ends in an argument. It’s always the same argument too, but I can’t remember the exact details. It has something to do with substituting a tile in your hand for a wild or something like that. Then Julie accuses me of taking liberties with the rules, I open the rule book and demonstrate exactly why my move is complex, but perfectly legal. She compares it to all of the complex, but “legal” moves at Enron, AIG, Lehman, Bear Stearns, and every other failed, corrupt institution. I compare her views to obtuse regulators that like to kill patients in order to stop the spread of a non-communicable disease. She says I’m in Banking and know nothing about disease. I try to explain that I was speaking metaphorically and that it means that there isn’t a financial problem that regulators can’t make worse. She says I’m in Banking and know nothing about metaphors. I explain that regulators are a necessary evil, but more evil than necessary. She says that’s irrelevant.

It never ends well.

We haven’t played the game in six years. We nearly had an argument about what the Rummikub argument was about. If Julie reads this post, she will undoubtedly say that our arguments never went anything like that and point out that if we haven’t had this argument in six years, than the entire diatribe about regulators, Lehman, Enron & metaphors could never have happened. We agreed to never mention Rummikub again.

Chocolate-opoly: I don’t like this one, so I didn’t even mention it.

Every Other Game in our Closet: Need more people, not in the mood, etc.


Boggle: I always bring this one up last, because it’s the game we always play. I get the big words, Julie gets the little words. The tattered, formerly-paper-backed Merriam-Webster settles all disputes. I have at least one long, quasi-word in each round. Julie always finds a few extra onomatopoeic words of dubious quality. I suppose “dit” is a word, referring to the non-dash part of Morse code, but it’s a lesser word. If we can demote Pluto to “dwarf planet” status, surely words like “dit” can be demoted to midget-words. They would no longer count in games like Boggle and Scrabble, and would be ineligible for crosswords. They could be in dictionaries with proper footnotes, like they have for “ain’t,” that let all users know that these words are really midget-words and are only included for completeness.

By this time Julie was into her second game of Cash Cow 2 on the Webkinz site and just responded with a u-huh to every thing I said. I laid down on the bed, waiting for her to finish so we could play, *sigh*, Boggle.

An hour later, I woke up when Julie asked me if I can remember the password to one of the on-line bill pay sites. I mumbled incoherently about midget-words and metaphors. Then I drifted off again, thinking of all the games we didn’t play.

Arresting Development

As I was working with Jordan on some of his Boy Scout rank advancements, I realized that I have become that parent I made fun of many years ago. Parts of the conversation went like this:

Me: What is the first ‘R’ of personal safety?

Jordan: Recognize.

Me: Recognize what?

Jordan: Recognize that any one could be a child molester.

I did not read the Scout Handbook before hand. I didn’t know that the three Rs of personal safety dealt with child molestation.

Me: Do you know what “molest” means?

Jordan: No.

Me: It means to harass or bother or assault.

Jordan: So a child molester bothers children?

Me: You could say that.

I will end the re-cap right there. I couldn’t do it. I know that shortly Jordan will be joining a deacons’ quorum and that nearly every month there will be a lesson on chastity or purity or modesty or some such thing. I know that he is fast approaching the point when far worse will be explained in biology classes. But I still couldn’t bring myself to speed up the maturation process. I really like the idea of Jordan being very interested in video games, juvenile literature and things that explode. I like the fact that when camping with other 11 year-old scouts, they spend their time discussing “blue darts,” the best soda pop for belching, and roasting Starbursts.

It’s like the time Julie & I borrowed a book for children on where babies come from. I went to read the book and found it in Jordan’s room.

Me: Oh, did you read this already?

Jordan: Yes.

Me: Do you have any questions?

Jordan: No.

Then I read the book to see what he might have learned. I was relieved that the target audience was seven year olds.

Yes – I have become that parent.

Snow White & Gooseberries: The Awful Truth

About a year and a half ago, I convinced Julie that we needed gooseberry bushes. They would be perfect along the back fence and the gooseberries I tried on my mission were very tasty. Plus, Snow White made gooseberry pie. It would be a great new gardening experiment. In no time, I had two lovely gooseberry bushes growing in my garden.

Fast forward to late July, 2009. Harvest time for our new gooseberry bushes and I began the on-line research into gooseberry pie recipes. All of the recipes were about the same: gooseberries, sugar, thickener (usually tapioca) and pie crust. All of the recipes had the same general instructions: remove the steams, steam the fruit, mash about 1/3 of the berries, mix with the sugar & tapioca, pour into pie shell, & bake. So, Julie & I sat at the table late into the evening, removing the stems from the gooseberries. Julie tried one.


“These are disgusting. I don’t like the texture or the flavor.”

I tried a couple. Tart, nothing to write home about, but certainly steaming the berries, adding sugar and baking into a pie will do the trick. It works for sour cherries. I like rhubarb pie. This is bound to be good. Snow White made it.

Julie gave me a look. “I’m going to bed.”

Undaunted, I steamed the berries, crushed up the required amount, and added them to the sugar & tapioca mixture, all in the proper sequence. This was going to be my finest culinary moment. I was going to make the rare gooseberry pie and both of my daughters and three neighbor girls who were coming over for Sunday dinner the next morning were all going to be so impressed with the wonderful pie from Snow White.

I watched the thickening goop molt into a grey-green color. “It smells like split-pea soup.” Julie was checking in one last time before really going to bed.

Now that she mentioned it, it did smell like split-pea soup. I stirred the pot of pie filling for another three minutes & then turned off the burner. I cleaned up and waited for the filling to cool.

I tried it. I gagged. I tried it again to be sure. It still tasted like split-pea soup with three cups of sugar.

“Julie, you have to come try this.”

“Humph. Wha….I already brushed my teeth.”

“Julie, if you don’t try this, I going to start adding things like sour cream to make it taste better. I need your help. You don’t want me to waste perfectly good ingredients, do you?”

Julie was still only half-awake when she nibbled on the pie filling that sat in the pot. She was fully awake when she spit it into the garbage can.

“Too hot?” I asked hopefully.

“That’s awful. There is no saving that. There’s no point in wasting pie crust on that.”


I began to wonder whether I should have noticed that gooseberry pie was a traditional English dish. I began to consider whether Snow White were really trying to poison the dwarves to steal their vast mineral wealth and if her step-mother was actually trying to protect her height-challenged subjects from an evil step-daughter. I began to wonder if gooseberry pie is like animals that talk and clean rustic cottages. I began to wonder if anyone would buy two gently used gooseberry bushed on eBay.

I poured the pie filling into a quart-sized jar and put in the fridge.

“Why are you saving that disgusting mess?”

“Maybe I can give it to Garrett.”

The Fountain & the Plaza

When you have a first floor window on the world, you see things that you never expected to see. I’m not talking about dead pigeons, elderly people breaking their hips, creative nose-picking and the waddle-walk of the morbidly obese. No. Those are the expected things. People do strange things when they think no one is watching. And they do these things in front of my office window or around the fountain across the plaza (about 20 yards from my window).

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that my window has been mistaken for a public mirror. I’ve raised my eyebrows as people seemingly stared right at me while combing their hair, putting on lipstick, and doing other activities of varying hygienic value. The best/worst example of a window-mistaken-for-mirror incident: the lady who, upon seeing her reflection in the office window, decided that some part of her upper torso needed adjusting. My co-worker reported that it left my boss speechless for two-minutes (a new record) and caused him to turn several shades of red.

But the highlights this summer have all been about the fountain. It started when I looked out my window to see two bizarrely dressed people, a man and a woman, standing on the edge of the fountain in odd poses. Then I noticed the photographer. The two were clearly doing a fashion shoot, because no one on this side of the Atlantic tries so hard to look that indifferent while wearing clothes like that.

A few days later the “fashion fountain” became the washing machine. One of homeless regulars furtively glanced around the plaza before dropping his entire backpack into the fountain, swishing it back and forth and taking it for a few laps. I wasn’t sure that I had just seen what I thought I had just seen until later on in the day when the groundskeeper pulled out a pool cleaning pole and retrieved a few items that had fallen out of the backpack. (I don’t know what the groundskeeper did with them, but I almost want to believe he kept them; I spent the first six to nine months on the job thinking that the groundskeeper was one of the “regulars.”)



But the incident that took the cake happened a few days ago. I got a call from the second floor asking me to check out the people outside my window. I was stunned to see a frumpy, egg-shaped couple, mid-sixty-ish, in bathing suits, “swimming” in the fountain. After rubbing my eyes a few times, I remembered that my cell phone has a camera, but by then, the couple had exited the pool and were slowly walking across the plaza, hand in hand, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

Though perhaps I should be less harsh in my judgments; a co-worker sent me this picture while I was out of the office with the caption of “former Bank employee.” At least he still has a mirror and a washing machine.

ADHD: A Modern Scourge

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder has been diagnosed in approximately 87.6% of all boys under the age of 13. I know this because I have worked in cub scouts. I don’t know the statistics for girls, but I suspect it’s something like 0.876%. They have other diseases, like cooties for example, according to experts. I also know this from working in cub scouts. But both of these facts are irrelevant to my point: adults who suffer from ADHD are obnoxious and a scourge to many in modern society.

Take “Geoff.” He does suffer from adult ADHD, which means he paces a lot during meetings, can’t listen to more than the first sentence or two of any conversation, including his own, and frequently forgets things that everyone else seems to remember with a great deal of clarity. It also means he has a hard time looking at his latest epiphany in the context of a bigger strategy. At one time, this would also have been diagnosed as MBD, Minimal Brain Dysfunction. Either way, Geoff needs Methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin.

Let me illustrate the ill-effects of an unmedicated Geoff:

Geoff: I am planning to hire this guy. He is a former consultant from Deloitte & Touche and knows banking.

Me: Oh, okay. What is he going to do?

Geoff: I don’t know yet.

While I realize that there are negative side-effects to any medication, I am prepared to let Geoff suffer them for the greater good of society. Anything to stop this modern scourge that afflicts so many otherwise innocent co-workers.

Please.

On My Sister’s 26th Birthday

I once had a sister names Lisa,
And she hated for you to tease her.
Flattery was fine,
Though at this time
I must tell her she’s now an old geezer.

With that, I wish Stompy-Tuna-Lisa many happy returns. Thanks for the melodrama through the years. For your birthday gift, I would like to present a synopsis of the beloved classic, “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.” Yes – zombies. You see the Victorian idea for suspense: can the Bennett name be salvaged after Lydia runs off with Wickham? Will Liza ever get another matrimonial proposal after rebuffing Mr. Collins? Is Mr. Darcy really as insufferable as he initially appears? – all of these need a little updating in an era of widespread running off and insufferableness, not to mention matrimonial declination. So I present a widespread plague that has overcome England and is slowly moving north from London, as is common in this genre, the plague enlivens rotting corpses (“unmentionables”), causing them to seek out their not yet departed loved ones for lunch, tea, dinner, breakfast, and even a midnight snack. The Bennett girls, of course, have had an obligatory tour of Southeast Asia where they took time to study from Shaolin masters. They now are key defenders of Hertfordshire from these unmentionables that roam the countryside and crash parties in the most unsuitable ways. Remember the classic scene where Jane Bennett meets Mr. Bingley (funny how all Victorian men have the same first name, “Mr.”) and Lizzy is snubbed by Mr. Darcy’s refusal to dance? Well now imagine that it concludes with a dramatic assault on the party by a hoard of flesh-eating zombies. Truly spectacular – particularly when the Mr. Bennett calls his girls to pull their daggers from their stockings and form the “pentagon of death,” and they single-handedly destroy the unmentionables. Extra tragedy is added with the death of Mrs. Long (was she even in the original book?) and others during zombie attacks and plague infections, but certainly a few liberties can be justified if it brings such a timeless classic to a new audience with more modern sensibilities.

So Happy Birthday Lisa! May your pride & prejudice continue without zombies.

Blogger’s Note: I found this insightful quote from Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on Wikipedia, “You have this fiercely independent heroine, you have this dashing heroic gentleman, you have a militia camped out for seemingly no reason whatsoever nearby, and people are always walking here and there and taking carriage rides here and there,” he said. “It was just ripe for gore and senseless violence. From my perspective anyway.”

Tips for Ensuring a Good Job Interview

As promised, this post in an attempt to elevate the cultural value of the blog (see the Wayne & Wanda sketches from the first season of the Muppet Show for the targeted cultural standard; they were introduced by Sam the Eagle after all). I have also promised to maintain the highest level of moral turpitude; no small task. So given that and the fact that in the current economy most of us never know when we might need to start looking for our next job, here goes:

Tips for Ensuring a Good Job Interview:

1) Forget the dress code used in the office for which you are applying. Giant rabbit suits, street walking attire, wife beaters with baggy pants, anything camouflage, bling in excess of 14 carats or 14 pounds, sequined jogging suits, headbands, sweat bands, and anything that reveals your belly-piercings may be considered in poor taste by some, but fashion statements are always important. Dressing like Willie Nelson and singing “On the Road Again,” while acoustically playing the guitar is always sure to impress.

2) Bring a resume and list of references. While some might hold that a resume should only be one page unless the description of your second Nobel Prize requires additional space, I personally prefer to read through two full pages or more of inflated, self-promotion to figure out why I should hire a candidate. Oh, and I love grammatical or spelling errors; the really good ones make me laugh and laugh and laugh. And do try to add famous celebrities to your references, that way when some on tries to contact them (and who wouldn’t want to call Eric Estrada), they may be so excited from the conversation that they will forget the celebrity had no idea who you were. Just don’t use the same pizza delivery number for all of your celebrity references.

3) Do discuss what was wrong with your prior boss, job, company, or girlfriend/boyfriend. The interview is about them, not you; let’s face it, every employer wants to hear about bad jobs, bosses, significant others, and other assorted troubles, particularly if he or she is a country music fan.

4) Do your homework and learn about the company before the interview. If the company is small and no information is available, or you are just too lazy to do research, make it up. That way, when the interviewer corrects you about their firms recent delisting from the DOW and government-backed bankruptcy, you can either reply that you are relieved that that was another company, or, if its not going well, you can simply declare, “What?! I have been deceived. We have nothing more to discuss.” And then storm out of the interview.

While I don’t have first-hand experience with all of these tips, I have seen most in action. And while I do admit that I do not follow my own advice, following these tips will make you at least as successful as Wayne & Wanda.

Cubically Speaking: Little Things from a Small Office

I sit in an “office” by a lovely window on the first floor, as some of you may know. (Granted it is a mammoth assumption to assume that the ‘you’ in the prior sentence is, in fact, plural, but humor me.) The view from the window looks across a lovely concrete plaza to the Sugar House bus stop. It’s wonderful for monitoring smoke breaks for everyone in the building and reflecting on the homeless they come by in between the smoke breaks, scavenging used cigarette butts. A week or so ago, one of the older, grubbier regulars had brought a newly-minted high school drop out by to show her the best cigarette-scavenging spots. It was quite touching, in a circle-of-life kind of way.

Making this so much better is the fact that the building backs onto an urban oasis; the drainage from the Sugar House park pond flows through the open air, creek-like as it meanders through cottonwoods and half-submerged shopping carts. The drainage area has several paved and unpaved trails around it with green mesh park benches. It’s called Hidden Hollow. It’s really the perfect place to catch a glimpse of the upscale homeless. ‘Upscale homeless?’ you ask. Yes, the ones who abandoned their shopping carts in the creek for beat-up ten speeds and bungee cords. They often spend warm afternoons under the shade of the cottonwoods, talking to their other selves about the best places to scavenge cigarette butts. When I am feeling particularly generous (which is rare for a banker, regardless of the economic times), I leave my half-eaten lunch at the top of the over-flowing garbage can so they don’t have to dig as far to find it. It’s those days that give my little, little heart a warm, happy feeling that lasts until I can reject some one else’s pathetic loan request.

I love my office.

Apple to Apples

The other day, we invited two other families over for dinner. Afterward, we decided to play a game of Apples to Apples. For those of you who are not familiar with this game, Apples to Apples consists of two sets of “apple” cards: green ones (adjectives) and red ones (nouns). Each round one player turns over a green adjective card and the other players chose the red noun card from their hand that, in their opinion, best matches the adjective. I like this game because with the right players, wit and humor are rewarded. With the wrong players, well, never mind. So we began the game with six adults… After the first two rounds, two eight-year-old girls and an illiterate five year-old girl entered the room and in giddy, squeaky voices said, nearly in unison, “I love Apples to Apples, can I play?” Seeing as only two of the girls belonged to me, I started to say, “of course not; you won’t understand half the words and at least one of you will cry if you don’t win.” But I quickly realized how ungracious it would be so I shortened my sentence to, “Of course.” And then there were nine.

Now you may be wondering, 'how do you play with a five year-old who can’t read?' Well, as long as she is the only illiterate player, then she selects a random card and places it in the pile. If no one else claims the winning card, then it must be hers. You would think that six college educated adults and two semi-literate elementary school kids would have no problem beating a randomly selected card by an illiterate five-year-old, but you would be wrong. More on that later.

One round after the girls joined, three eleven year-old boys entered the room, which ultimately made us an even dozen. That’s a lot of apples, nouns, and adjectives.

The game quickly devolved like this:

Eight year-old girl #1, reading through the nouns to determine which she thought best matched her adjective: “Princess D.I., there’s a D.I. princess?!”

Parent: “That’s Princess Di.”

Eight year-old girl #2: “Princess Die? Did she die or something?”

Another parent: “As a matter of fact she did…”

Eight year-old girl #2, interrupting: “Then shouldn’t it be Princess Dead, not Die?”

Another parent, continuing: “Di is short for Diana”

The adjective was irrelevant; the D.I. Princess card won.

The eleven year-olds also changed the dynamics. What adjective aptly describes a Giant Squid, a School Cafeteria, and Chickens? These were the finalists according to one 11-year-old for the word, glitzy. The next 11 year-old had to select a noun to match “honorable,” and determined Charging Rhinos to be the most honorable. Cleaning Bathrooms, Picking Your Nose, Vomit, the nouns were obvious, even if their connection to the adjective at hand was not.

So now back to our five year-old. You might be tempted to believe that it was the randomness of her selections that appealed to the younger players, but it turns out her selections appealed to the more rational thinking. For example, the adjective was “spooky,” the chosen selection? Darth Vader. Everyone was surprised to discover that the card belonged to the five year-old that couldn’t read.

When the clock struck eight, and we ended the game, the five year-old had won three times. I had only won twice. Several adults hadn’t won a single round. The wit and humor had to be reward enough.

Cheerios vs. the FDA

As a concerned citizen, I have been following the Cheerios/FDA scandal over the past week with keen interest. After all, 26.4% of our one-year supply of cold-cereal is some form of Cheerios (Honey Nut, Fruity, Multi-Grain, Regular, with Metamucil, and Super-mallow crunch). Up until the news broke, I had not realized the hazard this breakfast cereal posed. In the words of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, “The agency said that claiming the cereal can lower cholesterol levels by 4% in six weeks amounts to marketing it as a drug and violates the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.” Clearly, I needed a prescription to purchase these Cheerios for food storage. I don’t know whether I should feel clever for getting a regulated medication without a prescription, or concerned for letting my children abuse prescription drugs. What if my children don’t finish their cereal and it gets soggy, can I dump it down the sink? Would that add to the unintentional medication of society, like the Prozac/water problem in Utah county? Can I throw it away in the trash without using a biohazard bag?

Of course, in a prepared statement, General Mills said, “The scientific body of evidence supporting the heart health claim was the basis for FDA’s approval of the heart health claim, and the clinical study supporting Cheerios’ cholesterol-lowering benefit is very strong.” This would have been more comforting had they admitted their claims were false, now I really do have to worry about possible side-effects and other drug interactions. Is there a risk of dependency? What happens to Cheerio prices when a prescription is required? $50 an ounce? How will Mormons be able to afford to medicate their children during sacrament meeting? Will junior high kids start smuggling Cheerios to school? What about cheap Mexican imports and generic brands, are they safe? I’m going to have a panic attack just thinking about it.

To make matters worse, according to the USAToday there’s more, “companies that make claims about their whole grain foods are supposed to mention that fruits and vegetables are also part of a fiber-rich diet. General Mills' labeling does not include that information. ‘Therefore, your claim does not convey that all these factors together reduce the risk of heart disease and does not enable the public to understand the significance of the claim in the context of total daily diet,’ states the FDA.” If I had only known that I needed fruits and vegetables as part of my fiber-rich diet! I thought that because regular Cheerios showed a picture of sliced strawberries on the box, that the fruit part of my diet was taken care of; that all the strawberry goodness I needed was on the box. How could I have been so foolish?!

Just as I was coming to terms with my new Cheerios reality this broke, “Last week, the [Food and Drug Administration] scolded General Mills for claiming that Cheerios lowers your cholesterol by 10 percent. Well, they're not stopping there. Today, under pressure, Captain Crunch admitted he lied about his military record.” It was on the Tonight Show. Now I have to start worrying about the rest of my cold-cereal food storage. The whole scandal has caused a spike in my blood-pressure. I probably need to eat more Cheerios.

Blog 2: I’m Ba-a-ack

After briefly blogging last January and February, I blew-up my blog in March. Over the past couple of weeks, both people who had read it commented, “What happened to your blog?” With that outpouring of support and insistent encouragement, I decided I would try again. I knew it would be difficult, but I couldn’t let my faithful readers down. I had to carry on, for the good of society. So, without further ado, welcome to my new blog. Isn’t it lovely? Both of my fans can once again tell me how wonderful I am.

The Sticky

Every year, we dye Easter Eggs a little differently. We tried translucent egg stickers (they look so much better on the box, literally). We tried an egg crayon that keeps part of the egg from absorbing any dye (don’t press too hard). We tried making our own dyes out of food coloring and vinegar. This year we tried something new: glitter.

Along with the usual dye tablets, egg-dipper (we already have a half dozen from prior egg dying experiments) and instructions, the kit came with a bunch of silvery, sparkly glitter and an extra packet of “sticky” powder that when mixed with water would coat the colored egg and adhere the glitter to the egg. So after uneventfully dying a few eggs, Katie and I decided to add glitter to her plain blue egg. Katie put her egg “in the sticky” and we rolled in around a bit to get it nice and covered. Unfortunately, the sticky removed most of the color from the egg, leaving it a pale, pathetic version of its former self. When Katie moved the egg from the sticky to the glitter bag, the glitter clumped onto the egg in round, sparkling sores and ugly, glittering gashes. While I’m sure the company meant well, it must have copied the tri-methyl benzoate concoction used by a crazed Christopher Lloyd to kill cartoons in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

After that, Jordan, Sarah and Katie tried to dip their eggs only in the glitter and pleaded, “Don’t put my egg in The Sticky!”

Perhaps it was the panic in Sarah’s voice that did it, but near the end of the dyeing, Julie got an evil gleam in her eye. “This egg is going in The Sticky!”

“No! Not my egg!”

“Yes, your egg. Ha, ha, ha, ha,” then came the heart-rending cries of egg in the color-flesh-eating Sticky; the faux distress of children as their precious Easter eggs faded and then clumped.

“Into the Sticky! Into the Sticky!” and with that, Julie began the egg-icidal round-up. No one’s eggs were spared. When all that remained were two un-dyed eggs (one of them mine), Julie smiled: super-dye suicide. It consisted of dipping an egg in each color successively, for a marvelous mauve-brown look. When she finished and left her egg to dry, it was my turn. I refused to let my egg commit super-dye suicide. Julie insisted. A great struggle of wills commenced. I finally, triumphantly, plopped my egg into a lovely blue color. That’s when Julie added all of the other dyes to the glass containing my egg. It was a spectacularly indescribable color.

Then, of course, the last of the eggs was ceremoniously marched into The Sticky. It was terrible. It was gruesome. It was disgusting.

It was the best time we ever had dying Easter Eggs. I highly recommend The Sticky.