Role Model Lunch

Great news story on NPR the other day. It was about school systems that were trying to ban bad, fatty, unhealthy snacks from school cafeterias and vending machines. Now if you are one of my three (ok I am exaggerating) loyal fans you know that obese children is one of my pet peeves (see earlier blogs). So I was listening with great interest to this great thing the teachers and school boards were trying to accomplish. Just think, you put in your .5o and get a little pack of carrots? Or an apple? An orange juice? The cool ideas are pretty much endless. It reminds me of the Automat in New York when I was a kid. I loved the Automat. It was a huge cafeteria style place (seemed huge to me at the time) and all along the walls were what seemed like hundreds of little glass doors. Each door had some wonderful food item behind it. You lifted up the door and took out your selection. The difference between this and modern vending is that you paid the cashier at the end of the line. The cashier would add up your choices and you paid. But the prices, if I remember correctly, were on each item behind the door. Anyway, I loved it. An endless variety of tempting food choices! Anyway, back to Public Radio. So I'm listening to this great health effort and they get specific to one school. The focus of the story, it now appears, is that at this particular school while the teachers are all about healthy vending for the children, they are outraged that the same crappy, fatty disgusting snacks are to be removed from the vending in the teacher's lounge. Way to go role models.

The Funny Part of the Seder

Okay. So I am usually immaculately well organized around these important events. I know well in advance precisely who is coming; I have the silver polished; I have the linens ironed. Generally the soup is made and froze at least a month in advance. The shopping is done in advance and whatever else can be done, is done. Boy this year...not even close. I mucked up inviting people, although it worked out in the end since clearly I needed to have less than my usual 20 or so. This year we were just a comfortable, intimate 1o. The soup I managed to do before the fact. But the day before, which I did take off from work, I intended to bake the flourless chocolate cake. I called tech support for my printer and 5 hours on the telephone later, I had the promise of a new printer but nothing else and definitely no chocolate cake. I did manage, before calling tech support in India, to start the onions sauteing for the chopped liver. My dad has always made it, and more. Now, it is all he can do and it takes a long time and makes a big mess. So I try to make the parts ahead and he "chops" on the day of; first thing so it is out of the way. Meanwhile I managed to obsess about the ritual items so much on the day of that I forgot to put silverware on the table! I put wine instead of water in Miriam's cup, etc. All through the day I thought, oh, I'm doing fine. Then I would realize some crucial item I had forgotten. Like Charoset. Good grief, forgot all about it! Whipped up my two versions. I didn't feel like using the haggadot we had that were very long so I picked up a bunch of the old Maxwell House ones to use (some of you will remember those, never should have been reprinted!). It is unbelievably old fashioned. Full of "he" and "thee" and "thine" and actual whole sentences and paragraphs that nobody could read aloud because they made no actual sense. I couldn't stop laughing. And the Cantor took to using the sonorous voice you imagine of a deity, speaking in God's voice. And even the teenagers were laughing. Until Cantor began to lose his voice because he is allergic to cats, a fact we forget about all the time. We only had one young child so she got to find the afikomen. Jacob pretended to search too and declared that he should get money too because he "came in second". All in all we had a pretty nice time, with people we love, and a pretty funny time. I will always think of this seder as the coming in second seder because I was so not together and of course I have very high expectations. But laughter is a better second place prize than anything.

Chag Sameach!

It is passover! I know, I know, it is Easter too. For some reason these two are inextricably linked in the minds of many, but they have nothing really to do with each other so far as I know. Every religion has a spring ritual of some kind, just as they all have a winter ritual of some kind; all going back to the pagan, pantheistic days. Of course more "modern" explanations, I don't know 1,000 years or so, grow up around these rituals. And they continue to evolve, holding their core meanings, into what we have today. If you haven't done it, or don't do it. It is hard to explain why you cook for two days and then sit down to a three hour ritual. But there is pleasure in it, especially now for me as I don't know how much longer my son will be here for it. He pretends not to like it, but he looks forward to my dad's chopped liver, the matzoh ball soup, the hard boiled eggs. He's too cool to admit this now. But I caught him snagging that extra matzoh ball! For me, I set the table with real love, with my grandma's things, with silver and china and flowers. Really the only time of the year I do it all. And I feel so connected to the people who have gone before. I still miss my grandma after a bunch of years. Our family is very small but we have people we love and that makes every holiday special. We have always had a varied group of people at our holidays and my son, I hope, has learned that you build a family in many ways. You build yourself a firm network of love and support and you live in it. This year we had his best friend who is from Gudrat [sp?], in India. It was very different for him, I'm sure. My son goes to lots of their ethnic celebrations. A little cross-pollination can't hurt in this world. I hope he can do it for himself when he has his own home. Or maybe, he'll just keep coming home?

What happened to the "g"?

I know we all noticed it during the McCain-Palin run, this dropping of the "g"s in speech. Palin was the master of the folksy "workin" folks, "hearin" you all, "lovin" her kids, etc. We even made fun of it. Saturday night live certainly did. And I do live in central Florida, kind of a southern place, home of Nascar and beach driving. In our neck of the woods there is a lot of "g" droppin in the speech of ordinary local folks. This is mixed in, of course, with the french of the Quebecois that winter here and the New York accents of those that retire here (and there are a lot of those). But a strange thing has been happening. Regular people, who don't do a lot of "g" dropping, have started doing it in their regular speech. I even caught myself doing it, It was scary. I heard myself and thought "why am I speaking this way"? I had no really good answer. But boy I am trying really hard not to do it any more. I am reminded that all my son's life, as log as he could talk, I have said "don't say ain't". This past week the chidren informed me that "ain't" is now in the dictionary. I think I don't care, they still shouldn't say it. Their description is that its in the dictionary but doesn't really mean anything which I thought was kind of cute. At any rate the reflexive use of the word ain't is similar to the dropping of "g"s when there is no call to drop the letter. And even if it comes naturally to you culturally, there is no point in not tryin to get it right!

Is there any hope at all?

So yet another advertising rant; I think my last for a while it must be time to move on. But I could not let this pass. So it was another dog thing, there seems to be a lot of dog stupidity going on in advertising at the moment. Yet another ad desultorily caught my eye, as usual while I was doing something else at the same time. It was stupider than breakfast for dogs, by a mile, but different. It was for a movie. I have to assume that this was a movie that never made it to theatres. I am hoping against hope that it really never made it to anywhere. The movie was called the Hollywood Chihuahua. The ad featured the usual silly looking little chihuahua but this one had large pink sunglasses and other accessories. That in itself is ridiculous enough, but this stupid looking dog also speaks. More insane it speaks some faux hollywood drivel/cant. I can't remember what the dog says but it caused me to actually look up and think, oh my god, this is what we present to the world. So we have this new president, full of change ideas, masterful strokes, new ideas and hopeful solutions. This is a great thing that the world sees and begins to view us differently. At least other nations can hold some hope that there is a new level of intelligence, maybe, at the highest level of American government. And what happens, I ask you, if the ambassador of some allied nation catches this ad for the Hollywood Chihuahua? Or any random citizen of a nation whose respect we hope to earn? All hope must be lost that there is any intelligence at all in the American landscape.

What on Earth is Wrong With Us? Liqui-gels?

Apparently I am still on an advertising rant. Some strange things just stick in my head. As usual I am reading e-mail, or writing this blog thing, or reading Facebook and a tv ad catches my attention. First I should say that all those "silent" ads, the ones where you never hear the name of the product or a human voice, are in my opinion the stupidest marketing idea ever. They may be really cute and artsy and attractive to look at but since most of us multitask through the commercial, they are not very effective as advertising. If you watch the commercial you might say, oh how clever. But if you are looking at your Facebook while you watch tv, that commercial is a million bucks right down the drain. The purpose of advertising is to sell stuff, not to make art. That being said, there is also a level of stupidity that is stunning but I'm not sure if it says more about the advertiser or the viewer. So back to the ad. It is a Claritin ad. I am a Claritin user, so I maybe pay a bit more attention than I otherwise might. The whole ad is about the "new" Claritin in liqui-gel form. First, liqui-gel is not a word. We all know what it means from watching tv ads and taking those squishy little capsules. Second I listen carefully, for some mysterious reason, and I can find no substantive claim. There is no claim made that taking this medicine in squishy form works better, faster, more thoroughly or anything else. We are supposed to buy it because squishy is better. We don't know why or how but its "NEW!" and therefore better; probably more expensive too. I can only imagine how many people register the "new" "improved" and go out and spend the money. It astonishes me that you can create an ad that is presumably effective in getting people to go out and purchase something with no evidence or claim as to why or how its better. Its just squishy.

Dog Food For Breakfast

So I was half watching television the other night and a commercial caught my eye. I know I hadn't seen it before because I would have remembered it. It was an advertisement for dog food. This advertisement brought to my mind the discussions I have had throughout my life as a pet owner; conversations that I think all kids in particular have. Can dogs see in the dark? Do cats know their names? Do horses have tastebuds? There is a word for attributing human characteristics to animals. It is anthropomorphizing (I think I got that right). I remember when I learned that word, I just loved it. How great that there is this wonderful big word for what children (and adults) do with their pets all the time. We think our pets are glad to see us when they probably are just hungry. We talk to our pets. I often think, while I am talking to my cats, "what must they be thinking about this crazy human babbling on." The implicit assumption is that I believe they understand English; interesting. We wonder what is in the mind of a dog, probably nothing but eating, sleeping and so forth. And eating brings me back on subject. The ad was for dog food flavored and named as eggs and bacon, and various other breakfast foods. They were actually referring to them as "breakfasts". Do we really think a dog knows eggs and bacon are for breakfast, do we really think the dog cares? Dog food for breakfast anyone?

My Husband Thinks Menopause is a Permanent Condition

The poor dear. My personal version of menopause (including the mini hell they call peri menopause) started in my mid forties. A little more than a decade ago. It all began with severe fatigue (the kind where you can't get out of bed) and vicious mood swings. At first this was hard to distinguish from my usual emotional volatility but it ultimately became clear that it was a bit more than the crazy we were used to. A good doctor helped a bit with some low dose birth control which morphed into low dose compounded (yes there was actually a pharmacy still compounded custom medications!!!!!) hormones as things went from bad to worse. Of course you have to keep in mind that I still got the monthly pms. In my naive mind I always thought my periods would get less problematic as this time of my lilfe approached. HAH! I had never had particularly difficult periods, until now. As things progressed I had periods from hell, pms that wouldn't quit, hot flashes and night sweats, all at the same time. This made it easy to believe in some cosmic punishment although I can't imagine what I could have done to deserve this. Meanwhile my husband is marginally surviving crying jags, screaming harridan episodes...you get the picture. The other peculiar metamorphosis that began taking place was the sleeping temperature at our house. When first we were together, I was always bundled up in a down comforter and nightgown. My husband was always naked with a leg sticking out from under the covers in order to keep cool enough. Now I had windows open, fans running and the temperature as cool as I could get it. Tanks tops and panties was about as much as I could, still can, stand (too much information?). So now my poor husband is putting on long sleeved shirts and extra blankets in an effort to keep off the menopausal chill. The doctors say when you go a year without a period you are through. I clung to this thought like a life raft. And each time I approached a year... you can guess. This went on for years. I have finally passed the magical year mark and now they say well, some folks never lose all the symptoms. How encouraging. There is good news, however. As time has passed the mood swings have subsided and we are back to the old crazy which is familiar (although after this long not as familiar as you might think). The heat is less persistent but is still part of my daily life. In fact I write this from my side of the bed, covers thrown aside, fan droning.

Throwing Kitties

Wow. Consistency is just harder and harder. I have been ridiculously sidetracked by many things but currently by Facebook. My sixteen year old says that Facebook is social networking for old people. He of course would not be caught dead. Its Myspace, texting or nothing. What I find fascinating, among many things, is how I can be affected emotionally by a visit to Facebook. I find myself oddly envious of the apparent vivacious sociability of others; by what appears to be their terrifically busy lives filled up with friends, people. Sometimes I can feel weird, as if my life isn't also full of people? And I really believe the vivacious social life to be primarily conducted on the Facebook site, not in real life. When thought of in that way, who cares. And really, who cares what other people's social lives are? It has nothing to do with mine. Other times, however, I feel oddly happy, so far two friends from past times have found me and I really like that. One I don't much care about other than its nice to be "thought of". The other I am genuinely pleased to reconnect with. That, I think is the true value of the social network. I am mystified by most of the gimmicks of what you can "give" "send" or otherwise do on the site. Except my very favorite which is "throw a kitty". You collect the kitties that are thrown to you and you get access to more. As I am a cat lover, I find this "throwing" of kitties pretty amusing. What I don't want is to start thinking that the number of kitties I have on my profile is how I should judge my worth in the world. It is easy to disappear down a facebook hole and not really come out.