Oreos no longer contain trans fats.
And they don't taste any different.
This may be old news to you or, though it's hard for me to imagine this, maybe this isn't a big deal in your life.
But listen: I was willing to risk all of our lives in order that Oreos not change. I was okay with the fact that KFC changed (and not for the better) in order to dump the trans fats. They're hideously bad for you. I was outraged that Burger King wouldn't play along, and we don't eat there anymore. But I wasn't really in support of trans fat banning legislation, because...well...it might affect Oreos.
It didn't.
I'm very happy.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
So, Someone Stole My Recycling Bins...
Okay, I know this isn't exactly breaking news...but come on. What the hell?
It was very cold on Monday, and when I went out in the afternoon to bring in the garbage can and recycling bins, they were gone.
All of them.
Two recycling bins.
One garbage can on wheels.
Gone, without a trace.
Now, this would be inconvenient enough. I mean, I'm going to have to replace them, and I drive a Neon, so lugging around outdoor trash cans is a little tricky, anyway, unless I make my kid run alongside the car. And I mentioned that it's been holding at 4 degrees for the past few days, with a wind chill of -13, right?
And who steals garbage cans and recycling bins?
But it couldn't have come at a worse time. If you've been reading this blog from the beginning, you know that I moved into this townhouse almost two years ago, but because I was working full time and commuting 3.5 hours a day round trip and trying to raise a kid and bouncing in and out of the hospital and all that, I just recently started unpacking.
Monday, my daughter had a school holiday and I had the day off work. Yes, off work. It's a bit of a shock to the system, having President's Day off while still in recovery from a job where I had to work on Christmas Eve, but I had the day off. We were Highly Motivated.
My daughter packed things up to take to storage. I sorted through my filing cabinets and boxes of paper and created piles of recycling. We bagged up clothing to take to charity. Then, with piles of recycling in every room, one corner of the living room, the upstairs hall and my daughter's bedroom doorway stacked with things ready to go to storage, and a full lawn and leaf garbage bag at the top of the stairs, I went out to get the garbage cans...and you know the rest.
Undaunted (well, okay, we were daunted, but there was nothing we could do about the whole recycling bin thing), I called my parents to ask if we could borrow their Jeep to take all this stuff to storage and charity. (I mentioned that I drive a Neon, right?)
Before I had a chance to say a word, my mother said, "You're not going to believe this. Your father just went outside and someone threw a beer bottle through the back window of the Jeep."
It was very cold on Monday, and when I went out in the afternoon to bring in the garbage can and recycling bins, they were gone.
All of them.
Two recycling bins.
One garbage can on wheels.
Gone, without a trace.
Now, this would be inconvenient enough. I mean, I'm going to have to replace them, and I drive a Neon, so lugging around outdoor trash cans is a little tricky, anyway, unless I make my kid run alongside the car. And I mentioned that it's been holding at 4 degrees for the past few days, with a wind chill of -13, right?
And who steals garbage cans and recycling bins?
But it couldn't have come at a worse time. If you've been reading this blog from the beginning, you know that I moved into this townhouse almost two years ago, but because I was working full time and commuting 3.5 hours a day round trip and trying to raise a kid and bouncing in and out of the hospital and all that, I just recently started unpacking.
Monday, my daughter had a school holiday and I had the day off work. Yes, off work. It's a bit of a shock to the system, having President's Day off while still in recovery from a job where I had to work on Christmas Eve, but I had the day off. We were Highly Motivated.
My daughter packed things up to take to storage. I sorted through my filing cabinets and boxes of paper and created piles of recycling. We bagged up clothing to take to charity. Then, with piles of recycling in every room, one corner of the living room, the upstairs hall and my daughter's bedroom doorway stacked with things ready to go to storage, and a full lawn and leaf garbage bag at the top of the stairs, I went out to get the garbage cans...and you know the rest.
Undaunted (well, okay, we were daunted, but there was nothing we could do about the whole recycling bin thing), I called my parents to ask if we could borrow their Jeep to take all this stuff to storage and charity. (I mentioned that I drive a Neon, right?)
Before I had a chance to say a word, my mother said, "You're not going to believe this. Your father just went outside and someone threw a beer bottle through the back window of the Jeep."
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Happy Birthday to Barb....Happy Birthday to You
Today is my friend Barb's birthday. You might know her, since you're obviously a blog reader. Her blog is So the Thing Is... and she has an outstanding collection of columns online at So the Thing Is...
If you're able to see the humor or would like to see the hope and life lessons in the little ins and outs of everyday life, you should definitely check them out. Or, you know, if you want to see all the latest in GI Joe fashion accessories.
I'm not a big fan of birthdays, at least not beyond childhood. I steadfastly refuse to celebrate my own. But there's a reason that we celebrate birthdays, a reason that often gets overlooked in the ingrained ritual of gift exchanges and blowing out candles. It's not just a day designated for people to sing to you--it's a day on which the people who love you stop for a moment and say, "This is the anniversary of the day something really good happened."
And THIS, my friends, is the anniversary of the day something really good happened. Something really good for me, since I've had the benefit of Barb's friendship and wit and support and many talents in my life for several years now, but something bigger than that as well because of the generosity with which she shares those things with the rest of the world.
Happy birthday, Barb. And congratulations to the rest of us for the gift WE got on this day.
If you're able to see the humor or would like to see the hope and life lessons in the little ins and outs of everyday life, you should definitely check them out. Or, you know, if you want to see all the latest in GI Joe fashion accessories.
I'm not a big fan of birthdays, at least not beyond childhood. I steadfastly refuse to celebrate my own. But there's a reason that we celebrate birthdays, a reason that often gets overlooked in the ingrained ritual of gift exchanges and blowing out candles. It's not just a day designated for people to sing to you--it's a day on which the people who love you stop for a moment and say, "This is the anniversary of the day something really good happened."
And THIS, my friends, is the anniversary of the day something really good happened. Something really good for me, since I've had the benefit of Barb's friendship and wit and support and many talents in my life for several years now, but something bigger than that as well because of the generosity with which she shares those things with the rest of the world.
Happy birthday, Barb. And congratulations to the rest of us for the gift WE got on this day.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Everything Looks Different in Your Own Backyard
Don't get me wrong; like everyone else in the United States, I've looked on in horror and shed tears and drawn my family closer after Columbine, after September 11, after the shootings at Virginia Tech, after every time that evil or insanity or something even harder to understand intruded itself into otherwise normal everyday life. And every time I've been painfully conscious of the much greater trauma for the people who were there, the people who had friends and family killed or injured, the parents whose children were just there and couldn't be reached for hours--or minutes that seemed like hours.
What I didn't think about was how much worse it could be simply because your safe zone had been invaded, even if you didn't know anyone involved and the people you loved were all safe and in sight. It's surprising, in retrospect, that I didn't think of that, because I attach deeply to places. Once, many years ago, I said that if I had to choose between staying where I was and knowing no one or being transplanted and taking all of my friends with me, I would choose the familiar place over the familiar people. Maybe that's not such a good thing--that's another issue for another day. But the place I was talking about that day, the place that has been my primary safe haven and comfort zone for almost a quarter of a century, was the campus of Northern Illinois University.
I lived for four years in a dorm complex directly across from Cole Hall; you probably saw it on the news last night. I cut through Cole Hall to save steps in the winter, and to look at the Indian artifacts displayed in glass cases in the walkway. I had math classes there and later took the GRE there.
My four years at NIU were pretty idyllic, as those four years can be for many of us. Away from home but still not on our own, free but largely free of responsibility. Certainly it's possible that those factors, along with the fact that all of my closest friends lived in the same building with me, that we spent long hours over meals that had been paid for in advance and never had to worry about things like cash on hand and keeping the utilities on made a difference.
But I have a tendency to set roots, and I set them at NIU. College memories of singing at the lagoon on warm spring nights over wine coolers in paper cups blended easily into late-night walks with a friend and from there into writing by the lagoon, and then to my daughter feeding ducks there and naming them all Sarah. My husband worked in DeKalb once upon a time, and my daughter and I would take sandwiches in and pick him up and eat lunch by that lagoon, or in one of the campus restaurants that was nearly as familiar to me as my own kitchen.
The little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that you used to enter through a screen door in the alley, where my three friends and I could get dinner platters and beers for a total of $11 has grown into a bar and restaurant with outdoor seating, a respectable entrance, and much higher prices, but the food hasn't changed and it still feels like tradition.
Mostly, though, there's an inexplicable way in which the ground is the same under my feet. I walked that ground as a student, as a visitor, as a teacher, as a mother showing her child her roots. I walked the same ground that would later be walked by a mass murderer. I held open a door for my child that I'd later see on the news, shattered by gunfire or by rescue teams, looking broken and deserted in the aftermath.
In a sense, I'm in the same place I was after 9/11, after Virginia Tech, after any of those other senseless acts of violence and destruction. I don't know anyone at NIU any more. I didn't have to wait without breathing for a phone call, of for names to be released. My daughter was in the next room and I didn't have a hint of the horror of not being able to reach your child in a moment like that.
But I did have a feeling I'd never had before, never really contemplated before--a feeling that evil had wandered (or crashed its way) into my house, that it wasn't something lurking "out there" but something right here, turning everything upside down, stripping away an invisible layer and leaving something below that LOOKED just like it always had, that LOOKED familiar and comforting, and yet was, somehow, something else entirely.
What I didn't think about was how much worse it could be simply because your safe zone had been invaded, even if you didn't know anyone involved and the people you loved were all safe and in sight. It's surprising, in retrospect, that I didn't think of that, because I attach deeply to places. Once, many years ago, I said that if I had to choose between staying where I was and knowing no one or being transplanted and taking all of my friends with me, I would choose the familiar place over the familiar people. Maybe that's not such a good thing--that's another issue for another day. But the place I was talking about that day, the place that has been my primary safe haven and comfort zone for almost a quarter of a century, was the campus of Northern Illinois University.
I lived for four years in a dorm complex directly across from Cole Hall; you probably saw it on the news last night. I cut through Cole Hall to save steps in the winter, and to look at the Indian artifacts displayed in glass cases in the walkway. I had math classes there and later took the GRE there.
My four years at NIU were pretty idyllic, as those four years can be for many of us. Away from home but still not on our own, free but largely free of responsibility. Certainly it's possible that those factors, along with the fact that all of my closest friends lived in the same building with me, that we spent long hours over meals that had been paid for in advance and never had to worry about things like cash on hand and keeping the utilities on made a difference.
But I have a tendency to set roots, and I set them at NIU. College memories of singing at the lagoon on warm spring nights over wine coolers in paper cups blended easily into late-night walks with a friend and from there into writing by the lagoon, and then to my daughter feeding ducks there and naming them all Sarah. My husband worked in DeKalb once upon a time, and my daughter and I would take sandwiches in and pick him up and eat lunch by that lagoon, or in one of the campus restaurants that was nearly as familiar to me as my own kitchen.
The little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that you used to enter through a screen door in the alley, where my three friends and I could get dinner platters and beers for a total of $11 has grown into a bar and restaurant with outdoor seating, a respectable entrance, and much higher prices, but the food hasn't changed and it still feels like tradition.
Mostly, though, there's an inexplicable way in which the ground is the same under my feet. I walked that ground as a student, as a visitor, as a teacher, as a mother showing her child her roots. I walked the same ground that would later be walked by a mass murderer. I held open a door for my child that I'd later see on the news, shattered by gunfire or by rescue teams, looking broken and deserted in the aftermath.
In a sense, I'm in the same place I was after 9/11, after Virginia Tech, after any of those other senseless acts of violence and destruction. I don't know anyone at NIU any more. I didn't have to wait without breathing for a phone call, of for names to be released. My daughter was in the next room and I didn't have a hint of the horror of not being able to reach your child in a moment like that.
But I did have a feeling I'd never had before, never really contemplated before--a feeling that evil had wandered (or crashed its way) into my house, that it wasn't something lurking "out there" but something right here, turning everything upside down, stripping away an invisible layer and leaving something below that LOOKED just like it always had, that LOOKED familiar and comforting, and yet was, somehow, something else entirely.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Tell the Truth...Do I Look Like an 80s Metalhead?
If you've visited my writing blog, you've seen a couple of recent pictures of me, including a charming family portrait with a llama from Christmastime. And really, it's time for you to step up and be brutally honest.
The other night, I was sitting at the kitchen table working on my laptop when my daughter came in and started playing with my hair. "Your hair looks so pretty," she said, and I was happy about that, because a little over a year ago I cut my hair very short for medical reasons and it's bothered me ever since. I'm not one to get hung up on looks--I don't wear much make-up and I wear one pair of plain flat black shoes the vast majority of the time, and I've had a lot of my clothes for longer than I've had my middle-schooler--but with short hair I just didn't look like ME. It's finally starting to grow out. Slowly.
So I said, "Thanks," and she continued to examine my hair and pointed out that it was a lot of different lengths and she really liked it. And then she said, "It looks like this guy."
And she pointed to her t-shirt.
A t-shirt of my husband's, from the eighties.
A t-shirt with Metallica on it.
This isn't the exact picture on the shirt, but it's the same era. It was the guy in the front on the right she was pointing to.
So...you know...guys...it's time to take a deep breath and do the right thing. If I look like a guy from Metallica, someone needs to speak up.
OMGMMR! (And who really needs $353, anyway?)
Yesterday, I wrote about paying $353 for two tickets to the Jonas Brothers Concert at the Allstate Arena.
Tradition in our family is that we celebrate birthdays on the weekend; on the actual birthday, if it doesn't fall on the weekend, we just have a nice dinner and give one gift. Of course, in my daughter's case this usually means one gift from me and one from my parents and sometimes one from my sister.
Of course I wanted to give her the tickets as soon as possible, and of course I don't have them yet, so I printed out the seating chart for the Allstate Arena and marked her seats and gave that to her over dinner.
Her eyes got very wide and she said, "I can't scream in Chipotle, right?"
The remainder of our dinner conversation was a series of comments like, "It will be the real actual them."
At one point she actually said that her cheeks hurt, but she couldn't stop smiling.
She tried. She really couldn't.
We talked a little more about the fact that we'd be in the same room (albeit a very large one) with the Jonas Brothers.
We talked a little bit about how she'd tell everyone she knew, one at a time, at school today.
She folded up the seating chart, wrote "look at me all the time" on the outside of it, and said that she was going to carry it in her pocket today.
When we got back in the car, she got on the phone, and said, "OMG MMR!"
Apparently (you may already be aware) this means "Oh my God, My Mom Rules!"
When we got out of the car she asked if she could finally scream and I said yes and she did, and it didn't seem the least bit put on. She stood in the kitchen and stomped her feet and yelled, "I'm going to see the Jonas Brothers!" and then she did it again. And then she covered her mouth, but the foot-stomping took a little time to die down.
At bedtime, since she's still on the cusp, she showed the seating chart to her stuffed animals.
And I started understanding those thousand-dollar tickets.
Later, I talked to my mother. My mother's outlook on my spending money is very predictable. She gasps lightly and says, in a drawn-out and rather dramatic way, "Yo...u'....re craaaaazy!"
Not this time. She said, "I can still remember the look on Tori's face the first time she saw the carousel at Charlestowne Mall. And dancing in the aisles at Molly. No, it's worth it."
Tradition in our family is that we celebrate birthdays on the weekend; on the actual birthday, if it doesn't fall on the weekend, we just have a nice dinner and give one gift. Of course, in my daughter's case this usually means one gift from me and one from my parents and sometimes one from my sister.
Of course I wanted to give her the tickets as soon as possible, and of course I don't have them yet, so I printed out the seating chart for the Allstate Arena and marked her seats and gave that to her over dinner.
Her eyes got very wide and she said, "I can't scream in Chipotle, right?"
The remainder of our dinner conversation was a series of comments like, "It will be the real actual them."
At one point she actually said that her cheeks hurt, but she couldn't stop smiling.
She tried. She really couldn't.
We talked a little more about the fact that we'd be in the same room (albeit a very large one) with the Jonas Brothers.
We talked a little bit about how she'd tell everyone she knew, one at a time, at school today.
She folded up the seating chart, wrote "look at me all the time" on the outside of it, and said that she was going to carry it in her pocket today.
When we got back in the car, she got on the phone, and said, "OMG MMR!"
Apparently (you may already be aware) this means "Oh my God, My Mom Rules!"
When we got out of the car she asked if she could finally scream and I said yes and she did, and it didn't seem the least bit put on. She stood in the kitchen and stomped her feet and yelled, "I'm going to see the Jonas Brothers!" and then she did it again. And then she covered her mouth, but the foot-stomping took a little time to die down.
At bedtime, since she's still on the cusp, she showed the seating chart to her stuffed animals.
And I started understanding those thousand-dollar tickets.
Later, I talked to my mother. My mother's outlook on my spending money is very predictable. She gasps lightly and says, in a drawn-out and rather dramatic way, "Yo...u'....re craaaaazy!"
Not this time. She said, "I can still remember the look on Tori's face the first time she saw the carousel at Charlestowne Mall. And dancing in the aisles at Molly. No, it's worth it."
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Nick & Joe and My Visa Card
And some other kid--I'm probably going to get in trouble for this. Nick and Joe and...um...and...
I could look it up, but that would be cheating, right?
I just paid $353 for two tickets to the Jonas Brothers concert at the Allstate Arena on the 22nd. And as if that weren't enough, now I have to...
um...
go to the show.
I read a lot about the insanity of suburban parents who pay a thousand dollars for concert tickets for their middle-schoolers, and I usually agree with it. And while I'm inclined to point out that this ISN'T a thousand dollars, I know that's kind of a cheat, too. Just like looking up the third Jonas Brother's name. Because we all know that those parents with their matching SUVs and $750,000 houses who are buying those thousand dollar concert tickets have a heck of a lot more money than I do. Their thousand dollars is in a very real sense a lot less than my $353.
But here's the thing.
Today is my daughter's twelfth birthday. I suspect that her days of wonder are nearly over. I hope that I'm wrong, and I might be. She's a very different kind of person than I ever was, and she delights in things and people. But the world does tend to become more ordinary as we age, and it takes more and more to impress us.
I remember the first time my daughter saw a flag flapping on top of a building and recognized it from a picture. She stopped dead in the middle of the parking lot and said, "That's in my book." I remember the first time she saw a helicopter, and how long she was content to stand and watch a stick float down the creek, and her delight in suddenly finding a lone purple flower growing in the midst of a patch of hardscrabble grass. I remember the first time she tasted hot buttered toast, and the wonder in her voice as she said, "You took me to the BEACH?" when we got out of the car. I remember her first 3D movie (SpyKids 2) and how she unconsciously reached out to touch the bubbles in the movie theater.
My baby is twelve today. She likes to act casual now, and she favors ripped jeans and t-shirts. She's developing suspicious hints of alien curves ahead, and the Disney Princesses are gradually losing their place in her life. But she's not all grown up yet. She's not entirely jaded. I know exactly the look that will come over her face when she realizes that she's REALLY in the same room with Nick Jonas. And I'm willing to pay through the nose for it.
Update: Her reaction made it all worthwhile.
I could look it up, but that would be cheating, right?
I just paid $353 for two tickets to the Jonas Brothers concert at the Allstate Arena on the 22nd. And as if that weren't enough, now I have to...
um...
go to the show.
I read a lot about the insanity of suburban parents who pay a thousand dollars for concert tickets for their middle-schoolers, and I usually agree with it. And while I'm inclined to point out that this ISN'T a thousand dollars, I know that's kind of a cheat, too. Just like looking up the third Jonas Brother's name. Because we all know that those parents with their matching SUVs and $750,000 houses who are buying those thousand dollar concert tickets have a heck of a lot more money than I do. Their thousand dollars is in a very real sense a lot less than my $353.
But here's the thing.
Today is my daughter's twelfth birthday. I suspect that her days of wonder are nearly over. I hope that I'm wrong, and I might be. She's a very different kind of person than I ever was, and she delights in things and people. But the world does tend to become more ordinary as we age, and it takes more and more to impress us.
I remember the first time my daughter saw a flag flapping on top of a building and recognized it from a picture. She stopped dead in the middle of the parking lot and said, "That's in my book." I remember the first time she saw a helicopter, and how long she was content to stand and watch a stick float down the creek, and her delight in suddenly finding a lone purple flower growing in the midst of a patch of hardscrabble grass. I remember the first time she tasted hot buttered toast, and the wonder in her voice as she said, "You took me to the BEACH?" when we got out of the car. I remember her first 3D movie (SpyKids 2) and how she unconsciously reached out to touch the bubbles in the movie theater.
My baby is twelve today. She likes to act casual now, and she favors ripped jeans and t-shirts. She's developing suspicious hints of alien curves ahead, and the Disney Princesses are gradually losing their place in her life. But she's not all grown up yet. She's not entirely jaded. I know exactly the look that will come over her face when she realizes that she's REALLY in the same room with Nick Jonas. And I'm willing to pay through the nose for it.
Update: Her reaction made it all worthwhile.
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