Slave Labor

About a month ago David and I decided that Madi needed to start doing chores. Not like extensive chores, but daily things that help us out and keep her accountable. Some people think I’m pushing it, I mean she is only three, but I really feel like she needs to make contributions to the family and household. Maybe I should clarify so I don’t sound like a slave driver.

Madi’s daily chores are as follows:

Clean up toys downstairs and in bedroom

Feed Indiana

Brush teeth

Clear and wipe table after dinner

Clean bath toys after bath

So if Madi completes each task she gets a star on her star chart and if she gets all her stars then she gets a penny. I know cheap skate! But to her a penny is a “piggy” because it goes in the Piggy bank, she doesn’t understand the monetary value of it yet, so while we can we are trying to make the chores a habit without giving a three year old ridiculous amounts of money. I should add that at the end of every week if she has earned all her stars then she does get an additional dollar. Anyhow…

My point in sharing this is that the other day the most amazing thing happened, it was funny too which makes it that much more fun to tell you all about.

While I get breakfast ready Madi’s jobs are to let Indiana out, feed him and get his treat. Our dog usually only eats 2 cups of food per day, so when I continued to hear the sound of food being dumped into his bowl I had to ask what on earth she was doing.

“Madi, why are you putting more than one cup of food in his bowl?” I ask.

Her little head slyly pops up on the other side of the breakfast bar, and she responds, “If I fill his bowl ALL the way to the top then I won’t have to feed him again tonight.” She said it in a way that was sneaky but also like “I’ve just thought of the most ingenious way to save myself time!”

I was so proud of her. I should state that our dog isn’t the type to just gorge himself, he will eat what he wants then leave the rest for later, so I didn’t have to worry about him overeating. But I was really just beaming with joy…wow the chores are paying off! This was part of our point in having her take some responsibility, by sort of forcing her to do things she has to think of better and easier ways to get those things done.

I’ve decided that now when she does her chores and they aren’t quite to my standards, I’m going to focus on the outcome and not the method, I’m going to let her figure things out and use her noggin, because earning the “piggy” isn’t the real goal, it is training her to be a thinking and valuable member of our society.

So until my dog has gained an extra ten pounds I’m going to look the other way as she over fills his bowl, because I want to nurture the fact that she thought through the process and came up with a great idea to be more efficient.

Now if only our government thought like a three year old! (If I don’t have this baby this week maybe my next rant will be on that!)

Curious George: The Untold Story.

While reading this please keep in mind that I am 9 ½ months pregnant, translation “I need an attitude adjustment” but that attitude adjustment won’t come until this child comes out of me, so until then I reserve the right to be, well, a major pain in the rear!

I hate Curious George.

Wow that felt good to say. I hate him, that damn little monkey, oh he drives me insane! My 3 year old daughter on the other hand loves him, and I love that she loves him; I just can’t stand watching him and reading about him constantly. See I like the idea of him, I like the morals from all the stories, I think it’s great that they aren’t based on materialism, violence or any of that junk, but I am driven crazy by all the trouble he gets into. I know, I know, isn’t him getting into trouble the point? Yes it is. But I’m tired of it. He reminds me of a toddler that needs a time out and a good talking to. He is the unruly kid in the grocery store, pulling things off of shelves, damaging the produce, and spilling pasta all over the floor. He is the brat in the restaurant that continues to jump on the booth seat behind you, blowing milk out his straw and spilling food all over the floor. Oh man that monkey just ticks me off!

My daughter loves him though and so I can do silly things, like well write this posting, I give in and allow her to watch a few episodes, all along hoping she doesn’t get any crazy ideas like flushing huge toys down the toilet and flooding our entire house. While she watches my blood pressure rises, and every time I hear the damn Man with the Yellow Hat say “Be a good little monkey” I roll my eyes with a combination of anger and anxiety.

Okay, I’m crazy, I know. And now I’m sure you’re thinking that I probably need to be on some sort of anger plan or at least medication, I couldn’t agree more. But the truth is that the Man with the Yellow Hat is a horrible parent! George should have been taken away a long time ago! It is only because he is a monkey that the Man hasn’t been charged with numerous endangerment and neglect charges. I mean let’s think about this, the monkey obviously has the mental capabilities of a toddler, I’ll admit that his physical dexterity is more advanced, being a monkey and all, but he shouldn’t be left alone! And he certainly shouldn’t be sent to the store by himself only to end up at a construction site operating heavy equipment!

So I probably have a little more George experience than most people, my daughter is obsessed. We have all the George DVD’s, we have all the George books, she has stuffed George, she has bath tub George, she has George clothes, and I have George overload! Daily I see the recurring theme of the story and it goes like this:

• a) An event takes place.

• b) The Man with the Yellow Hat foolishly allows George to be by himself, warning “be a good little monkey.” GRRRRR…….

• c) George causes a huge mess, trouble, accident of some sort.

• d) George miraculously doesn’t kill anyone, including himself, although the property damage alone that this monkey causes over time must be greater than that of Hurricane Katrina.

• e) Someone else fixes the problem and George gets the credit.

• f) George is the hero! He has messed things up so badly that any ceasing in damage is enough to praise him.

• g) The Man with the Yellow Hat is never told he is a horrible parent and shouldn’t let the monkey out of his sight.

• h) And all in all it’s a pretty good day. (When George goes home.)

Maybe I’m jaded, maybe I need to put George away for a while, tell my daughter he is on vacation for a few months. I mean I’m not stupid I know George encourages kids to use their imaginations, to explore, to be well, curious. I just wish there was a little more accountability. I wish someone would pull the Man with the Yellow Hat aside and say “ya know if you would watch him he wouldn’t cause so much trouble.”

But isn’t that what we all want? In the store when we see that kid throwing a tantrum don’t we want to grab the parent and say “control your child!” In the restaurant as your being taken on the ride of your life, trying not to spill your clam chowder down your shirt as the kid on the other side of the booth bounces as if he’s on one of those inflatable castles, don’t you ever want to stand up and grab the kid and yell “KNOCK IT OFF!” Oh and the worst, those damn “Heelys wheel shoes,” had I ever rolled around people so rudely in a store or sidewalk my parents would have knocked me on my butt, telling me I was being rude.

So maybe it’s not just George, maybe it’s a whole generation of kids that tick me off, and maybe it’s a whole group of parents that need a good talking too. I know we’re all tired, I know we all have it rough, but seriously what will this next generation of kids look like as adults? As parents I kinda feel like we are dropping the ball, allowing our kids to be disrespectful little brats, and we just blindly carry on our adult lives thinking what the Man with the Yellow Hat must think, “Oh well he’s just a monkey, everyone will understand that I’m under a ton of pressure so I shouldn’t have to watch him that carefully. I mean no one will hold a monkey accountable.” Well guess what, Man with the Yellow Hat and all the parents out there that allow your kids to get away with ridiculous crap constantly, we’re all under stress! We are all tired! We all have seemingly more important things to do! So get over yourselves, grow up and take some responsibility. Tell your kids to knock it off! You can do it in a way that won’t hinder their growth, imagination, or hurt their self esteem. Let’s be parents, let’s tell our kids when they’re screwing up, if we don’t how will they ever learn to be contributing citizens?

Okay so my rant is complete. I should throw in that I am not exempt from this, I have a very strong willed child, so I know that sometimes no matter how hard you try as a parent, sometimes kids have a mind of their own and will do just about anything to make you look bad! And just so you know I’m sure the laws of Karma will come calling me soon, so my next post will probably be how my daughter somehow managed to burn down our neighbor’s house while roasting a marshmallow or something. I know I’ll pay for writing this! But if that does happen, I will be more than happy to take full responsibility for her actions and my own which led her to be in a situation where she could use a marshmallow as a weapon of mass destruction.

See I believe that the way to nurture and raise our kids effectively is to give them a good sense of accountability, and well that only happens through trial and error. So George I’m glad you’re curious, I’m happy that you seem to solve problems that you create in the course of a half an hour. I can only hope that when you make your little monkey noise at the end of every episode what you’re really saying is “wow, I’m so sorry, let me pay for the damages.”

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

I did something really stupid. I signed up for a daily notification from the FDA regarding all current food recalls, why is this dumb you may wonder… it’s dumb because almost every day I have between 5 and 15 emails from the FDA now telling me how incredibly horrible our nation’s food supply is! Okay not all the food is bad, but seriously I’m so frustrated, my anxiety has gone through the roof, every time I buy anything now I wonder, “will I get an email tomorrow telling me I’ve just poisoned myself by eating this?”

I am amazed at how many things get recalled, not only the peanut scandal, which still just pisses me right off, but then pistachios! This one really upset me. Since peanuts had been recalled, at our semiannual Costco shopping trip my husband and I splurged and bought “the biggen” which to non- David and Shauna people is our way of saying the mother load of all bags of pistachios! We love pistachios, and what is even better- our daughter loves pistachios. So being the brilliant folks we are we splurge and buy “the biggen” and put them in storage containers…it was all very Martha Stewart, err maybe closer to Rachel Ray, anyhow we were proud of ourselves. Not only are we being wise with our money, we are being healthy by eating nuts, and we are finally using the awesome food storage containers we bought a year ago that hadn’t been used yet...okay how many birds did I just kill?!

So we buy the nuts, we eat the nuts, we love the nuts, and then it happens, I get an email recall notice from the FDA, damn. So I being paranoid write Costco an email:

“We bought Pistachios at your Salem store, I don’t know the brand name, because I threw out the bag and put them into a storage container (had to throw that in, I wonder why on earth I am so proud of that?) Now I don’t know if these pistachios are part of the recall or not, and frankly I’m pregnant and craving pistachios, so if you could let me know it would be greatly appreciated.”(Yes I seriously wrote the part about being pregnant.)

I get a response the next day,

“The pistachios you bought are not part of the recall and have been cleared by the FDA.”

Thank you Costco. So we continue to eat the nuts, we continue to love the nuts, the nuts are almost gone… and in the mail comes a lovely notice from Costco.

“A product you bought on this date has been recalled; please return any unused portion to the Costco where you purchased the item.” WHAT????!!!!!!!

So first of all I was a little ticked off, after going to the lengths of emailing Costco and all, but I understood that the pistachio recall was in its early evolutionary process, if you will. Then I thought about how wonderful Costco was to send me a notice, I don’t think any other retailer would have done that, how thoughtful! But then I start to worry, see we loved the nuts so much that seriously out of a 6 lb bag there were like 2 cups left. What if they won’t let us return them? What if there is nothing wrong, I mean we ate almost the whole bag and nothing happened, surely we could polish these off also? But of course since I am pregnant and have a daughter we decide we will return them and since we couldn’t finish them we will be happy with getting our money back.

So I pour them into a bag, I bring the notice (we didn’t even have the receipt) and on our next trip to Salem I return the pistachios. I was embarrassed thinking that they would either say I couldn’t return them since there were hardly any left, or that there was no proof that these indeed were the supposed infected pistachios since I had disposed of the original bag. But good old Costco, God bless them, the girl behind the counter took my zip lock bag, took my recall notice and handed me a full refund! Wow! Costco has just scored major points with me, I couldn’t believe that they accepted literally less than probably 1/5 of the original purchase and still gave me a full refund.

Although I had a wonderful experience with Costco and the recall process I am still a bit perturbed about our food industry and the fact that it seems like every day I’m being bombarded with recall notices, I mean is no one paying attention to what is going on in the food processing plants? Do I need to start my own garden and raise my own livestock to guarantee that my family won’t get sick? Must I plant my own green olive trees so that the pimentos will not contain bits of broken glass? True story! Ouch!

Maybe, and a lot of people would argue that it would be a great idea to be totally self sufficient and take care of all of my food needs, I have thought about this plenty, and actually have grand plans of one day not being pregnant and being able to plant a garden once again… ahh dreams.

But I guess instead of being so freaked out by all the food recalls, I should be excited! I should be grateful that our government has a system to check the quality of our food, I should be excited that our government no longer (fingers are crossed) allows the dumping of potentially dangerous chemicals which will pollute the ground water and crops and various other elements of our ecology. I am thankful for that, but I am still concerned.

I’m concerned that our government is spending so much money and time on silly programs that they are ignoring a huge segment of important safety protocols like making sure that companies are producing safe foods BEFORE there has to be a recall, I mean wouldn’t that make more sense? I know there are so many companies and just simply not enough FDA employees to keep up, but maybe instead of throwing millions of stimulus dollars toward Hollywood, or millions toward investigating the pig odor in Iowa, maybe we should actually put money toward the FDA and keeping our food supply safe. I mean this isn’t rocket science… hmm with our government maybe that is part of the problem?

All I know is that I hope something will happen soon, maybe even something as foreign and crazy as more accountability from the food industry, because damn it I’m pregnant, and sometimes I feel like a nut and sometimes I don’t, but if they start recalling almonds I will seriously go postal, I mean is nothing sacred?!

Mirror, Mirror...

My husband and I were watching the news last night after we put our daughter to bed. We are horrible citizens and DVR our news so that we can fast forward through anything that doesn’t interest us, including the Portland traffic, because frankly, we live on the coast and well, we don’t care. I do want to say that I am so sorry for anyone living in Portland, when I do fast forward and see the lines and lines of cars on my TV screen I thank my lucky stars that I’m not sitting in it!

Anyhow… one of the stories we did watch was how Hollywood men are getting “chunkier” and that they are still “leading men.” Our initial reaction was “whoopty fricken doo, are they seriously paying someone to report this crap?” But after a few eye rolls we did talk about this phenomenon and how women are constantly under the cruel attack of anyone who thinks they know anything about fashion.

I think about the Jessica Simpson pictures that plagued the checkout line at my local Safeway. Here she is one of the hottest women in the world, and she gained a few pounds and now she is the biggest “cow” in the universe. How horrible! Most women may secretly love to see pictures like this, they may be secretly thinking. “Ha-ha Miss Jessica, you fatty!” Not me, to me when I look at the picture of her on the cover of those “magazines” I’m thinking, “holy crap she looks 50 times hotter than me and they are calling her FAT?!” What is also amazing to me is my husband’s reaction to these pictures,

“She’s still hot.”

Ah-hah! See that is one of the lovely and wonderful things about men, when they see a hot woman they don’t usually care about what anyone else thinks or what the stupid “magazine” cover is telling them to think, they see someone hot, well damn it- THEY’RE HOT!

So who is deciding that Jessica Simpson was a cow in those pictures? And who is deciding that men can be chunky leading men but women actresses must be a size zero? I can guarantee you that it isn’t the majority of straight American men; nope I think it is the women. I think that as women we are so self conscious and so damn competitive that we will take any chance to cut one another down. It’s the good old “if I can convince everyone to look at how horrible she looks then they won’t be looking at how horrible I look,” which of course is just a horrible way to do life.

If women banded together and chose to stop cutting each other down, if we agreed to dress modestly, if we agreed to be healthy rather than skinny, well we would change the definition of sexy. Men will always think women are attractive, if all the sudden all the women on film and in magazines were a size 6 or 8 or 10 then men would find them just as attractive as the size 0 that they were being told was attractive a year ago. As women we have the power to control this, and yet instead of changing things we diet, we whine, we develop eating disorders to please men, but really men don’t care! In fact they find it more annoying because as women we are constantly complaining about having to do all those things, when sadly we don’t have to do them at all.

Unfortunately I don’t think that I have the power to change the current situation, yes maybe a few women will read this blog, maybe a few will leave comments, but really what can I do?

I can teach my daughters to be different. That’s it! Maybe I can’t affect all the brain washed women and teenagers that are already out in the world ruining things for other women, but I can teach my daughters what true beauty is all about. It is about confidence, grace, and health. It is about modesty and gratitude. It is about loving life and actually living it. I’m only one woman, but maybe I can influence 2 little girls and maybe those 2 little girls will influence everyone in their circles someday.

I can also support companies like Dove Cosmetics, they have focused on health and true beauty for years now and to me this is inspiring. In our society any company that is willing to market their true morals and not just what is a money maker, well that is a company that I like to give money to! I can only hope that more companies will arise that support true health and beauty for our future generations.

Women: Let’s break the cycle of low self esteem and depression, let’s build each other up rather than tearing one another down, no one suffers but us and our little girls… and frankly when you’re dead who is gonna care how big your butt was, what they will care about is how much of your life you wasted while you worried about it.

Red Skittles

We all have our favorites, mine are red, red candies, usually indicating cherry or strawberry, I love them and will avoid all other colors unless absolutely desperate for a sugar fix. Purple are always a safe bet, but there is just something about the reds.

My friend Lacey knows this about me and for 12 years she has been giving me the reds. Red “Mike & Ikes,” Red “Skittles,” red everything. She sorts through the package during poker night and slides them my way with a huge smile on her face. She knows I love the reds, I assumed she didn’t like the reds; why else would someone sort through and get rid of them?

This has gone on for 12 years; it started at Ray’s Food Place. We were both in high school and I recall sitting at the break room table, talking about everything and nothing, and getting handed “reds.” She would even leave them on a post-it note at the video counter with my name on it. We lived together for a short time in Eugene, Oregon, after graduation, and once again I remember that even though I was a horrible roommate she would always hand over the reds. After a four year “break up” of our friendship we reunited, and once again I was being handed reds at every gathering. It wasn’t just that she would give me the reds it was also that she would always have the candy of my choice when I came for a visit, or when she came for a visit.

In my self-centered life I never thought anything of this for over 12 years. Wow… what did I do to deserve this?

I especially wonder this now, what did I do to deserve this? See for 12 years I assumed that Lacey didn’t like the reds. I found out just a few weeks ago that she indeed does, she actually loves the reds too, although her favorite are green, reds are a quick second. So what would make a person give up one of their favorite types of candies? I don’t do that, I’m too selfish; in fact I will dig through the candy jar at my house and pick out the reds before anyone else can get to them! My own husband and daughter… yes that’s right I will take candy away from a little girl… if it’s red! I think I have even told my daughter that the reds are yucky? Wow, I might just be a terribly horrible person!

Not Lacey though. She has selflessly given me the reds for over a decade, and when I asked her why, her response was simply, “because I want you to have the best.” Wow… yeah make a pregnant lady cry why don’t you!

To me this is incredible; this small, but HUGE gesture is just an amazing act of love. Could someone really think enough of me to do something like this? I know my husband loves me, my mom, my sisters, my friends, I know they love me, but to have someone say “because I want you to have the best,” well that’s just amazing. More importantly, to have them silently prove it for over 12 years, receiving no gratitude, or even acknowledgement…priceless.

I can only pray that my daughter will one day be blessed with a friend who will make her want to be a better person. But even if that never happens, I can guarantee that I will aim to teach her how to be that friend to someone else.

Thank you Lacey for being that friend, and for showing me how to be one in return, I don’t deserve you and I certainly don’t deserve the reds.