sMoov

One more thing....

2008-10-31T09:51:00.002-05:00

I forgot to mention this in the previous post, a bit of Hayden's character I noticed again last night. Her teacher was talking about a recent event some of the kids played at where they were judged individually on their piece, they had to play solo for the judges. She recognized the few girls who had scored a 1, which is a perfect score and had them stand while the audience applauded. She then pointed out the few 7th graders that had played and scored a 2, which is 'Excellent' with barely a mistake. Hayden was one of them and she said her name and motioned for her to stand. As everyone applauded it was so clear that Hayden is extremely humble and modest and does not want to be the center of attention. She doesn't just pay lip service to that either, she really doesn't want everyone looking at her. So as we all clapped loudly, she tried to hind her face behind her shaggy bangs lol. She is not ready to embrace her awesomeness just yet I reckon.

Pride

2008-10-31T08:40:00.006-05:00

Hayden has been playing cello for a year and a few months now. Last night she had a concert where the 7th grade, 8th grade, 7/8 full symphony and then a small alternative strings group played. She plays in all of them but the 8th grade group (She's a 7th grader). Lots of people left after the 7th graders finished, not having a kid in the other groups. Those people missed the best parts of the show in my humble opinion.

Watching Hayden playing made me feel real pride, not the easy words you say to a kid when they've done something and look over at you to see if you saw it, but the physical manifestation of real pride in another person. That feeling grows from the love you have for that person and from the deep connection you feel with them. It wasn't the sort of pride like, 'look at what a great mom I am and how awesome my kid is turning out!' it's the pride you feel when you see someone you love deeply, forging a life for themselves and tapping into their talents and discovering who they are. It always makes my eyes well with tears, and I am soooo not a crier!

As someone who can't play her way out of a paper bag so to speak, I always feel admiration of people who can play. But watching Hayden, and knowing that she's done this all on her own, with pretty much zero prompting from me or Kevin, makes my heart swell. We have merely provided her the tools she needs to play and to get better, she's done all the work herself. She stays after school often partly to practice and partly because I think she adores her teacher and she has developed close friendships with other girls in orchestra. I love seeing her so devoted to something, so determined. It simply makes me smile.

Last night during some of the pieces they played, I stared in awe watching their hands.....if you have ever watched someone play violin or cello, you know what I mean. It's so impressive to me to see kids, who are at the most awkward stage in their lives....clumsy, distracted, messy....making these stringed instruments play beautiful music. Their hands move so fast, their faces were so focused. Hayden looks altogether different when she plays, not at all the distracted goofy 12 yr old that lives with me. She's focused, sharp, in her element.

It was the very last piece, Viva la Vida by Coldplay that did me in. That's when the big fat tears made their way to the edge of my eyes. The group that played this was the smallest group of the night and the teacher played with them, some songs she played violin and for Viva la Vida she sat next to Hayden and played cello but she also tapped a bass drum with her foot!. Viva la Vida means live the life...it's a simple but pure statement. They played a video they had made on a screen overhead as they played the music. It was just a simple video of the kids being goofy and having fun.....living the life so to speak. They played it beautifully, the group was tight and very on. The combination of the music, Coldplay being one of my all-time favorite bands, and the video of the kids living the life, really choked me up.

This is what we want for them, we want them to grow and make their own friends, carve out their own life and be happy most of all. But it's bittersweet, with each passing year Hayden grows more awesome, more mature, more wise, but she takes another step away from me. She has this whole part of her day, her life, that does not include me and that is a hard pill to swallow damn it! I don't yearn for her baby days and I don't mourn the passing of those early childhood days either, she was an easy baby and toddler, she brought us sheer joy. I do still feel the sting of time passing though, sometimes. Most of the time I am able to push it aside, not think about it and carry on. Every now and then a moment or a day comes upon me and there it is.....the inevitable truth. Some day they will all be gone from me, living the life. I hope that we've forged a close enough bond to bring them back from time to time. For now, they are all still here and it's times like last night when I remind myself that I too must live the life. I have to savor each moment I have with them no matter how boring or trivial....I must enjoy watching Jonas play through level 3 again or make sure my eyes are glued when Tristan urges me to watch him skate in the kitchen in his socks. I have to remember not to be short with Hayden when she just has a simple request. Soon enough, it will be so quiet at home. All this time I've wished for just some quiet, so I could think an uninterrupted thought...one day I am going to have endless quiet and I am sure to miss the noise.

Spare me.

2008-10-13T08:50:00.002-05:00

If I hear one more supposedly educated adult whine about how they can't wait to stand in line for socialist cheese or some fucking shit like that, once Obama gets elected, I shall spoon my eye out. For real.

Are people this dumb? Are they unaware of the socialist practices that have been around over the last century? Buddha, God, Allah...someone...please help me.

News break

2008-09-24T14:14:00.005-05:00

I am taking a break from the news. I haven't listened to NPR in nearly two weeks. I haven't read hardly any news, although the NY Times is my homepage when I open my browser, I've only read the headlines and not bothered to read articles. I need to cleanse or some people would call it, burying my head in the sand. That's fine with me, it's warm and peaceful here in the sand.

Instead of the news, I've been reading nothing but fantasy and indulging in more TV than is normal for me. I have rediscovered Wolverine and all the other X-Men, I'm enjoying thinking that our little economic problems are trivial in comparison with the things that the X-Men or Batman have to deal with on a regular basis. And of course, all the monsters out there roaming the Earth...vampires, werewolves....I mean, who can worry about Merrill Lynch being bought by Bank of America when there are bigger problems, right?

Morning people

2008-09-16T08:12:00.002-05:00

What does that even mean? I hear people say they are morning people, does that actually mean...they prefer waking up, functioning, in the early morning hours? What is wrong with these people? It's completely wrong. Sure, I love the early morning hours but I like seeing them from the other side, the side where you've been up all night and out (sometimes even in) doing something exciting or noteworthy. I loathe having to set my alarm clock and force my body awake before its natural rhythms wake it. I thank God pretty much ever day that none of my children are really morning people either. I suspect the little ones, who are now 6, will eventually sleep away the morning like their older sister does. Them being so small still, they wake up hungry but they don't wake before 7:30am any longer and that I can handle. These people who get up at 5am, on weekends for the love of all things holy, what the fuck? It boggle the mind I tell you.

Cleaning house

2008-08-28T08:33:00.003-05:00

I've cleaned out and dumped some blog links in my sidebar. I've admittedly been using my blog lately as a bookmark for finding the blogs I read sometimes. I need to do better about journaling here. Anyway, I dumped some blogs that I don't wish to read anymore because the fascination wore off (Dooce mainly) or blogs that the authors never write in anymore (Brandie!!!!). Some blogs that never get updated remained because I remain hopeful that their owners will someday write in them (Fireball!).

So yeah, I dumped some blogs, added some new ones, it's like rearranging the furniture in here! Sweet.

Happy.

2008-08-20T13:03:00.003-05:00

Yesterday marked our 15th anniversary. We've been married...for 15 years! Man that's a long time. I have to admit though, I love him at least 15 times more now than I did when I married him. Here's to another 15 years of wedded bliss!!!!!! Cheers!!!!

Earbuds

2008-06-24T07:28:00.002-05:00

It's amazing the difference in the sound quality you get with a decent pair of earbuds. These are a must for working for me anyway. I stick them in my ears and go to it. The music helps me focus on what I'm doing and helps to tune other noises around me out. And also, it's suppose to discourage my co-workers from trying to chit chat with me. When I have the earbuds in most of the time they keep on walking by my office.

Almost 15 years

2008-06-06T11:23:00.003-05:00

I love him. I love him more today, after 17 years together and nearly 15 years married to each other and three children and a host of ups and downs, I love him more. I love him for the father that he is, for the friend that he is, for the lover that he is. I love him for the way he thinks of us, his family, first. I love him for how he provides for us. I love him for the way he does small things for me like make coffee each morning so it's there when I come downstairs. I love him for making me laugh when I feel like crying and for having the wicked sense of humor that he has. I love him for his thick, wavy hair with just a touch of gray in it. I love him for growing a beard just for me. I love him for reaching across the bed in the middle of the night to touch my back or shoulder. I love him for always being there, no matter what. I love him for staying beside me when I've been at my worst and I love him for still loving me even though he's seen me at my worst. And believe me, it's pretty bad! I love him for making huge, difficult changes because he loves us that much. I love him for the great sex but mostly I love him because he's my best friend.

Time

2008-05-29T08:10:00.002-05:00

On the last day of school I was overwhelmed with a lot of different emotions. It's not really like me to be teary and weepy over stuff like kids growing up, I'm not a cryer and if I do cry you can bet I won't be doing it in front of other people. But on the way to work that day I was pretty weepy.

Time is one of those elements in life that we have no control over, we have to embrace it and work with it, we don't have any choice. People get plastic surgery in an attempt to turn back time or slow it down. It doesn't work though and it's misleading. Time marches on, no matter what you do or say. And I know we have all heard people say, "It seems like only yesterday that the kids were babies." It's such an overused phrase isn't it? But it's one of those that completely rings true.

I turned 35 on May 6th and it's been a difficult birthday for me, inside my own head. I keep thinking, damn...I am half way to 70. My life is essentially half over. Goddamn it, I'm not ready for my life to be half over! Stop the madness!!!!

My kids just finished 6th grade and kindergarten. It was bittersweet for me. The last year I will ever experience my children in kindergarten, which is such a momentous year for children. They learned to read, they learned to be pretty darn independent. My daughter is just shy of passing my height and her feet have already passed the size of mine. She's got her own life now, her own friends. She loves to be with them and it's been hard to accept that there is a part of her life that I am not part of. I know it's a natural progression and it's healthy for her to have that, but it's still hard and these feelings were unexpected. My job as a mom is to raise these kids to grow up and leave and live on their own, but it's not so easy to let go. I am thankful that mother nature gives us a kind of slow transition from childhood to adulthood. I know that with each passing year they will become more and more their own person and less and less mine. My head knows that and is glad for it, because that's how it's suppose to work. My heart feels differently. My little guys still want to cuddle and hug and kiss and they are still small enough to pick up and carry, for a few minutes anyway. But soon that will be gone. And it's hard to accept.

I look forward to the time when Kevin and I will have less child rearing work to do in our daily lives and more time to be with each other, reconnect and get to know each other as older people. I look forward to having grandchildren and a son-in-law and daughters-in-law. I am happy knowing that my family will still grow and expand in the coming years, but I am extremely sad that those babies are gone forever. This journey has been full of surprises, lessons, frustrations, joy and love. Lots of love. I've experienced love in ways I never imagined. I think that I didn't really know what I was capable of until I became a mother. I have learned what it feels like to love someone more than yourself, to know that I would give my life without thought or consideration in order to preserve theirs has given me a sort of freedom that I am not sure I could have found otherwise.

I would like to say thanks to the children. Thanks for what you teach me every day and thanks for showing me what innocent love is. Thanks for being the people you are and giving me gifts that are unique, precious and completely personal. You start your parenting journey thinking that you have all this work to do and all these things to teach them and then you learn that really, it's pretty much 50/50. They teach me just as much as I teach them. They are all amazing people with the potential to improve the world we live in. Being part of their lives, for however short it may seem, has been and will continue to be an honor and privilege.

I have to fetch a tissue now. I am weepy yet again.

My kid

2008-05-05T10:05:00.002-05:00

Short entry today. I know I should write more, but things get busy and time to think quietly becomes short. Anyway.

My kid has a myspace page now, with our permission. When I went to it and saw the songs on her profile, I was so proud. She has excellent taste in music. She's got U2, Audioslave, Dave Matthews, Van Morrison, Greenday, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rocco DeLuca and the Burden, They Might be Giants, and Jack Johnson. My kid rocks :)

Spring fever

2008-03-03T13:40:00.002-05:00

Kevin and I went out Saturday night and since the weather was so lovely, we rode on his motorcycle. And now I regret selling mine. As the weather turns, my mind goes back to motorcycles and riding free in the sun. I miss my bike! It's been just 6 months since I sold it and here I am, wanting another one. If Kevin's bike weren't so damn huge, I could get my fix riding his. But alas, I can't hold up his almost 800 pound bike. Still, it was wicked fun to ride around on his. All I had to do was enjoy the ride and hold on tight!

Family dinner

2008-02-07T10:46:00.000-05:00

On NPR this morning they were discussing how studies and data show that kids who eat dinner as a family tend to have less issues with drugs, drinking, smoking, eating disorders, etc. And then went on to say that families who have dinner together and have conversations at dinner more often function as healthy families. Oh, and also kids who have parents that read to them and play with them on a regular basis do better in school.

And all I could think of was DUH! I mean, come on, do we really need studies and research to tell us that spending time with our kids makes them turn out better? Is that rocket science?

The dog must have gone to a rave last night.

2008-01-11T10:37:00.000-05:00

Because this morning we woke to a house covered in vomit and poop. He was in our room, panting like a freak as we were waking up. I was all, "Oh hey Sam, do you need to go out or something?" As we all got ready and headed down the stairs we saw the trail of vomit. He must have run down the hall to Hayden's room in a panic or....something. He threw up in her room, down the hall and I think he hit every room downstairs but the office and bathroom. I was an hour late to work and Kevin and I were cleaning for 2 hours this morning. And all the kids were late to school.

HAPPY FUCKING FRIDAY!

God it rocks to have a dog sometimes.

No training wheels

2008-01-09T09:33:00.000-05:00

Monday as I lay in bed dying, my husband took Tristan out to the park and taught him to ride his bike without training wheels. Jonas had stayed behind and slept. I was so surprised because Tristan has always been so cautious and reserved, he waits for his brother to try it first and then if Jonas lives, maybe he'll try it too.

I heard the front door being flung open with fervor and then heard his little voice yelling, "Mom! Mom! Mom! I rode my bike without the training wheels!!!!" I have not heard such pride in his voice ever that I can recall. It was such a great sound that I wish I would bottle it up and release it on those days when I want to run myself through. His joy was so uplifting, it made me so happy. But, I threw up again anyway.

So, yesterday we all went to the park so Jonas could have a go. Tristan was riding like a semi-pro, he needs to get the hang of those brakes or I'll be spending the tax return on new Vans all fucking year long. Jonas was a bit wobbly but he got it moving for short stretches. Tonight I expect to see him zooming around as well. I got some video footage last night on Hayden's tiny new video camera (this damn thing is way cool AND it's pink, I might have to get me one!) and I'll try to get some uploaded tonight.

Kevin's such an awesome dad like that. He has now taught all of our kids to ride their bikes and so far no one has broken anything! A very different story of my own childhood bike riding. I was taught by my older brother who didn't really give a shit about me but was after the new bike he was promised if he taught me to ride mine. I can vividly remember riding up and down our dirt driveway at about 5 years old. He did it, he taught me to ride it and without imparting any safety knowledge to me whatsoever! Good job Ray! I had to learn about the brakes the hard way, by smashing into my father's huge, red work truck. But damn I was one hell of a daredevil on my red Huffy! I would jump anything, any time. That explains my seven broken arm/hand injuries over the years.

Now that they can ride with no training wheels the world becomes a much faster place. Last night they didn't have their helmets on but they'll have to wear them in the future. I can't risk those adorable little boy faces to road rash or broken bones! We've passed yet another childhood milestone with our last kids, our last babies. Sad? Oh hell no, I love this. I love watching them grow up and learn and become whomever they are going to become. It's the best entertainment out there honestly. Oh sure, they were all such cute babies, they all smelled all sweet and yummy and they were all such fun to cuddle. But baby schmaby! I dig these kids. Not all kids, in fact generally other kids annoy me. But these kids I like. And I like them more with each passing birthday, not because they are getting closer to leaving the nest (well, maybe a little) but because every year I get to see more of who they really are, I get to witness their evolution. I have a hand in that, but I am trying really hard to leave the evolution to them so that they can find their own path in the world. And I hope and pray that path always has a short-cut trail to home.

Politics

2008-01-09T09:03:00.001-05:00

I just have to say real quick, that I am so excited about this year's election. I am really, really excited that we actually might be governed by someone other than an old white guy. Sweet!

Six weird things.

2008-01-04T12:38:00.001-05:00

I have been tagged by Jewels who lives in the frozen north. You all now get a chance to read, Six Weird Things About Me! (Lucky you)

"THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the "6 weird things about you." People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog."

1. I hate talking on the phone, just like Jewels! I screen pretty much all calls. Sorry guys, don't take it personally!

2. I really believe that if I want it badly enough and put my heart in soul into it, I can obtain it.

3. I hardly ever cry, particularly in front of other people. Not even my husband.

4. I can't stand to go to bed angry which is why I almost always resolve a dispute ASAP.

5. I am pretty conscious about what I eat but I love, love, love Totino's frozen pizzas. They are my wicked junk food indulgence. And Doritos sandwiches.

6. I am newly in love with bad TV. I have been watching 'The Hills', 'The Real Housewives of Orange County' and 'The Real World'. Most people find that hard to believe because I tend to be more on the intellectual side. Even my husband made fun of me for quite some time about this, and now I catch him watching with me. And he admitted recently that he can see why people might watch this garbage.

I shall tag:
Brandie at Skipping Along
Kristie at Kris-T
Melodee at Actual Unretouched Photo
JA at Home's Jewels
Alesia at Bitch
Nicole at Chicken Scratch

Bad dream

2007-12-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

Last night I dreamed that I was walking around the edge of an old quarry with the kids. We were going there to swim as the quarry was no longer in use and was filled with water. Tristan ran ahead of us along the edge and I was shouting to him, "Stop! Stop! Wait!" as I tried to hurry and catch up to him. He slipped and fell off he edge. The water was clear at the top and got murky the deeper it went. I watched for a moment as his little body disappeared down into the deep murky water. I jumped in right away, gasping to Hayden to keep Jonas safe. I swam and swam and couldn't find him, he was gone. In an instant, gone.

I woke up gasping in horror in the middle of the night. I went and put my ear to Tristan's chest to make sure his heart was beating. I've never been so happy to see them as I was this morning when they woke up. What a horrible, horrible feeling that was, and it was one of those dreams that felt entirely real. When I woke up I felt as if I had been terrified and not breathing, my chest ached and my heart was racing. As I write this now, my eyes are welling up with tears. I pray every day that I will never know that pain for real, to lose a child and have to continue living on without them. That my friends, is my worst nightmare.

12 years

2007-12-07T15:12:00.000-05:00

Today, 12 years ago, Hayden was born. My life changed that day, for the better and the way I looked at the world suddenly changed. Today Hayden is 12 and I can sometimes still see the little girl in her. She'll hug me and sigh and say 'I love you Mama'. Or she'll imitate me in the way she talks or the things she's interested in. Lately she's been very interested in photography and has been using Photoshop to tweak some of her own photos. She still likes for us to tuck her in at night, although that really consists of us sitting on the side of her bed and chatting for a minute and then kissing her goodnight. For her gift she asked that I take her to a salon for a perm. She's got stick-straight hair just like mine and of course wants to have curly hair. She's very into clothes and loves to go to the mall and shop. She's becoming the very typical pre-teen girl! While she's had some struggles with organization at school this year, she continues to be one of the brightest and creative students in her classes. Always thinking outside of the box and more often than not, turned off by the traditional way of going about things. She's got one hell of a temper (I wonder where she gets that from?) and she's passionate about the things she's into, sometimes to the point of high drama. Tonight we'll go out to eat, just our family and my mom. Tomorrow night she's having her party and has invited 7 friends over for skating, laser tag and a sleepover. We'll eat lots of junk food and the girls will stay up all night and I'll take loads of pictures for sure. Next year is 13 and I am thinking of some sort of really special-big-deal party to celebrate her first year as a 'teen'. For now, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sweet, feisty, witty, smart-as-hell first born precious baby. I love you so much big girl, that it hurts sometimes!

Buying jeans

2007-12-07T08:04:00.000-05:00

So I love jeans from The Gap and I have recently been cleaning out closets and replacing older jeans or ones that don't work for my 34 yr old mommy body anymore. Now, I have always thought of myself as an average size in pretty much all respects. I seem to be as tall as most women I see out and about, I'm about 5'5". I wear an 8 or a 6 depending on the clothing and an 8 in shoes. I assume lots of people are my size because my sizes are often scare on the clearance and sale racks. So, I'm buying jeans online from The Gap and the inseam choices are: Ankle, Regular and Long. I look up the size chart and discover that regular means an 32 inch inseam. Is that really regular? That's just 2 inches shorter than my 6'2" dad's inseam. But Ankle is 29 inches. What the fuck? Where is 30 or 31 inches? I'm pretty much a solid 30 inseam, a 31 gives me the trendy style that drags under my feet a little, which kind of annoys me unless I'm wearing heels. 30.5 inches is my ideal inseam but yeah, no one sells jeans in that size. So, I get the 32 inseam and good Lord they are too long! I love the jeans, so much that I did a load of laundry to specifically wash them. I wanted to wear them to work Friday. I will eventually get them hemmed but today I had to wear my blue suede boots with 3 inch heels so that I wasn't walking all over my jeans at the office.

Gap, please....rethink what you call "regular" inseams because really, the average woman isn't that damn tall!

Why?

2007-11-27T14:41:00.000-05:00

Why would a builder put carpet in a bathroom? I don't get it. Our house was built in 2000, it's not that old. They put carpet in the master bathroom and I have never understood why. I am forever telling the kids to not splash, don't get water on the floor because wet carpet=gross.

I dripped hair dye on it today and promptly had a tantrum and called the contractor friend of ours for a quote on tiling the floor. Enough with this fucking bathroom carpet!

The Police

2007-11-20T10:06:00.000-05:00

The last time the Police played in Atlanta was November, 1986. I was 13 years old and didn't have the finances to secure tickets and transportation to this show. It was at The Omni which no longer exists as an entertainment venue. The Omni Hotel does exist and serves the current Phillips Arena that was built on the same spot once the Omni was torn down. I have so many memories in the Omni! I've seen loads of concerts there...Def Leppard, Robert Plant, REM, Jimmy Page, David Bowie....and the list goes on. Big names, musical legends, all in my very early teen years. That was the one thing I spent most of my money on, concert tickets. All the hours waiting in line for tickets, all the attempts at getting backstage or getting just a fleeting glimpse of the artists as they left the venue. I wish I had been into photography at the level I am now because I would have some great pictures! Oh and just a little bit of trivia on the Omni, The Police's "Synchronicity Concert" was filmed at the Omni in November 1983. Def Leppard's live home video "In the Round, In Your Face", was filmed at the Omni in October 1988, which was the show I saw. Alas, the Omni was rusting and began losing business so it was demolished in 1997 and Phillips Arena was completed in 1999 . Since then I've seen lots of shows at Phillips ;)

Kevin and I went to see the Police on their reunion tour last Saturday. I paid more for those tickets than I have ever paid for concert tickets, and was glad to do it. Kevin got to see the Police as a teen but this was my only chance to see them live. They were fantastic, didn't miss a beat. They were musically tight despite being somewhat on the outs off the stage, from what I had been reading. We had a great time at the show, Kevin's broken foot and all. I got a few really nice pictures that I will forever cherish. Here is the last shot of the night:

Thanksgiving

2007-11-16T15:51:00.000-05:00

Me: What do you mean we'll just have dinner without Ray and Lesley (my brother and his wife)?
Mom: Well, they are eating with Lesley's grandmother and won't be over until later, maybe around 4:00. And you guys have to go over to Lisa's house (Kevin's sister), so we'll just eat when you get here.
Me: That sucks mom, why don't we just all get together Friday instead. It makes more sense, we're all off from work and don't have to be anywhere that day.
Mom: No! We can't do that.
Me: (loud sigh) Why not mother?
Mom: It's not Thanksgiving if you don't do it ON Thanksgiving day.
Me: Well mom, what sort of Thanksgiving is it if our whole family isn't there at the same time? What's the point?
Mom: (sounds like a spoiled child) Because, we have to have Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving day.

Oh how I love the holidays when I get to gather with my insane extended family.

Baking

2007-11-14T10:03:00.000-05:00

So...I have to make a load of cookies tonight for an open house thing at work tomorrow. My boss specifically asked me if I could participate by bringing in some cookies (normally I would volunteer for stuff like drinks, chips, chicken nuggets I can buy from Chick-fil-a) so of course I was all, "Sure! No problem!" Then I realized I also have to cook a dish for 20 people tonight, for tomorrow night's school family dinner (Tristan is in this family program at school where they keep all the kids together through K,1 and 2 so they do stuff like dinners, field trips, etc together). Anyway....

I did one batch of cookies last night and used that Reynolds release stuff, which, Oh My God!, rocks. Why didn't I know about this stuff? No more baking sheet scrubbing. So I decided that I should get some silicone baking sheets because now that the cleaning up is easier I'm going to bake like a mother-fucker (not really, this is just a phase, but still). I'm looking online at Target so I can decide what I'm going to get when I run out at lunch and I am reading these reviews of these silicone baking sheets. This one literally had me in tears laughing:

Way to flexible, February 21, 2006
Reviewer: Sandra (Southern California)
This cookie sheet is so flimsy that you can't move it without supporting it completely underneath. The only way to use it is to take your oven rack out of the oven, place the cookie sheet on it, put cookies on the sheet and put the whole rack back in the oven. To remove from oven you have to remove the rack again. This is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient, especially when hot. The only good thing is you can roll it up like a rug to store. Yes, roll it! I am very disappointed.

This person gives this product one star because it's too flimsy to use! I'm certainly no Betty Crocker, but come on! How stupid do you have to be to think you are suppose to put just this silicone baking sheet in your oven? I can see maybe a kid not getting it right away, but an adult? Who should have basic public school education? Oh Lord!

Anyway, I'm totally getting these sheets because there is no waste to throw out (cue tree-hugging hippie music) and we love raw cookie dough and seriously, it's pretty damn relaxing to make cookies and then bring them to other people..it makes them smile. And...since we're no longer drinking at home (another long story for another day) what the hell else am I going to do at night? You can only have so much sex and read so much...I need variety!

Dwindling lunch account

2007-11-13T10:04:00.001-05:00

The kids all have accounts with their schools for lunch money. I put money on the accounts online and they just go through the line and then the cashier deducts their total from their accounts. Easy and eliminates lost lunch money or the classic bully who takes lunch money from kids. The accounts are set up to email me when the balance gets low. So I get this email last week for one of the boys telling me his account balance is low. I thought it was odd that I got an email just about one boy's account and not the other one because they eat lunch in the cafeteria on the same days and bring their lunch from home on the same days generally, so their balances should be pretty similar.

Last night I checked the purchase history to see what was going on, I though maybe the cashier was getting the twins mixed up or something. I opened up Jonas' account and see two weeks of purchases that went breakfast, lunch, breakfast,lunch, breakfast lunch every day. Now, sometimes they eat breakfast at school because they are having something the boys really like or because we got up late. But they certainly don't eat at school every morning. I called Jonas over to talk to him and asked him if he had been eating breakfast at school recently. He got a sheepish grin and said "Yes mommy, I've still been hungry when I get to school. I've been sneaking breakfast." I laughed for 5 minutes solid. He's been eating a full breakfast at home every morning and then going to school and eating again an hour later. Growth spurt? Hollow legs? The kid barely weighs 40 pounds and is 5 years old. Where does all this food go? I assured him he wasn't in trouble and it was fine to eat breakfast at school if he preferred that. He then told me, "I love the sausage biscuits they have at school and the breakfast pizzas too. And they have strawberry milk there mommy." So there it is, the mystery of the dwindling lunch account solved.

And God bless Pokemon

2007-11-13T09:49:00.000-05:00

The twins have recently discovered Pokemon and I'm not really sure how that came about. The big kid went through a Pokemon phase around age 9 and 10. We have some leftovers from that era and the boys found the little stuffed Pokemons we had in the basement. I of course have indulged their new obsession because I completely understand addictions. We have a 10 DVD set of Pokemon shows and they watch some of that every night before bed. They know lots of lines of Pokemon dialogs and now during bedtime prayers, we God bless Pokemons. Unfortunately I know lots of Pokemon dialogs and character names onces again and I actually talk to the boys about these "pocket monsters" as if they exist. Is that normal?

God bless Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Charizard, Squirtle, Jigglypuff, Blastoise, and Bayleef.

The Crumpler Six Million Dollar Home

2007-11-09T09:42:00.000-05:00

Since I'm a braggart and like to show off the things I buy, I figured I would give a review on the new camera bag (because, WOW, other people who take pictures have asked about bags or lenses or whatnot) I bought recently. I got the Six Million Dollar Home from Crumpler.

After reading some reviews and ordering a different bag that sucked and didn't fit the things I wanted it to carry, I tried this one. It's great for a few reasons. It doesn't look like a camera bag so hopefully would-be thieves won't suspect there is expensive camera equipment in it. It holds my newest camera, the Canon 5D with the 24-105mm lens AND hood attached so I can just quickly grab it from the bag when I want to use it. It also easily holds my flash and an extra lens. I can stick my personal items like a phone, wallet, keys, and crack in the smaller side pockets.It's got an inner zip pocket inside the top where memory cards and the remote shutter release will fit. There is also a front pouch for more storage, maybe you could put your fruit roll-ups in there or something. Or perhaps a flask of vodka.

I still have another camera bag that holds most of the other equipment I have, including the Canon Rebel camera body. But the beautiful thing about this Crumpler bag is that I can fit the extra camera body in it, with a lens attached if I need to. And the little Crumpler guy on the front of the bag makes me smile.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-09T09:22:00.000-05:00

Turkey day arrives in just two weeks. The yearly dilemma of how to fit everyone in on the holiday is upon us. Mom wants you to come there for dinner, sister-in-law wants you to come there as well although she's cool with it if you can't. The thing is, you would rather go to her house than mom's, but you feel nagged by the guilt your mother will bestow upon you if you pass her over this year.

Maybe I'll call in sick for Thanksgiving. Is that allowed?

Night and day

2007-10-21T20:08:00.000-05:00

Saturday night we put our kids to be completely exasperated with all three of them. They make lots of noise, they argue with each other, they block us out when we give them instructions, they dawdle around at the worst possible times, they forget the books they need for weekend homework, etc. and so on. I told my husband Saturday night that I didn't want to be a parent anymore, I was all done. He just laughed at me and said "Me too".

Sunday morning the kids were different. All of them. The little ones slept late and then once they got up, they simply crawled into bed with us and turned the TV on. They didn't whine about being hungry or argue with each other over who got the green and blue pillow. They played nicely all morning long...drawing, Play Doh, trains, Leapster games, in the sandbox, riding bikes. The big one spent most of the day reading a book for a book report and then played with friends. I took the little ones out in the evening. We went to two different parks and walked in the woods and played on the play sets. They didn't argue at all over whose turn it was on the swing or who got the red cup at snack time. They cleaned up their toys and went to bed without incident. Tonight I told my husband that I adored being a parent and maybe he should not have had that vasectomy.

Europe

2007-10-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

I went to a meeting last night about a trip to Europe through Hayden's language arts teacher. She organizes these student group trips every other year or so and since Hayden is in the advanced content class, she gets the invitation to go. And parents can come too.

At first the cost for both of us going seemed crazy and bummed me out. But as I listened to the itinerary last night and heard them tell stories of previous trips, I kind of forgot about how much it would cost. I left feeling very, very excited. To travel around Europe with my daughter and some of her friends seems like such a great opportunity. It will be worth every penny I'm sure and the memories we'll have are going to be awesome. And the pictures I will take.....man!

12 days...London, Paris, Vienna, Munich, Lucerne...I'm on it. I've already changed the cable package to a cheaper one since we hardly watch TV anyway. $100 per month for fucking TV? That's crazy. I'll pass.

Shoes

2007-10-16T09:28:00.000-05:00

I went on my annual fall shoe shopping binge at Zappos.com. I came away with these:

These are Uggs and let me just say...LOVE THEM. No socks required which is great for me because I can throw them on when I need to just run out and I don't have to go back upstairs yet again to fetch socks.

These cowgirl boots are awesome. They are so comfortable and required no breaking in at all and they are just flat out cute. Rocket Dog represents!

Blue suede boots. What's not to love about that?

Comfy boots, again did not require any breaking in.

Impulse buy. Fun sneakers but certainly not for running 5Ks or anything. Rocket Dog again.

Dude, pink plaid Mary Jane's. How could I not get these? Awesome. I love Rocket Dog shoes.

Finally, the boots that Hayden stole. Technically they are mine but I went ahead and relinquished control over them. They look really great on her and she can pull off these boots with skirts better than me. And, Rocket Dog....again. I think I have about ten pairs of Rocket Dog shoes now.

Time to upgrade

2007-10-15T10:35:00.000-05:00

A new camera, due to arrive Thursday. With an amazing lens.

The Canon 5D with the EF 24-105 L lens. You thought I took a lot of pictures before....just you wait.

Just right now

2007-09-26T15:24:00.000-05:00

It's been a few weeks since I've uttered anything here. Busy...sure, isn't everyone? I've been practicing living in the right now. It's such a simple concept but so fucking hard to practice. Things in the past are just that, in the past. They are gone. Let them be gone. Things in the future shouldn't carry so much weight because what happens to the right now when you worry over past and future? Most of our focus should be right now. Just right now. If we can do that, really live our best right now then the other stuff works out without much effort.

I've been trying so hard to be more patient with the kids. More understanding with friends and family. More tolerant. Less hurried. I've been trying really hard to spend my time doing things I want to do and even when I am doing things I have to do, like work and laundry, I'm trying to just be in the right now. Give my best effort to whatever task is at hand, be it work, dishes or lounging. It's actually really hard!

On a tangent, I've been loving age 5! The twins are so much fun, even when they are naughty. They make me feel young again and they make me laugh. This time with them will pass so quickly, I am trying to capture it any way possible even if that means I have to buy storage bins to hold all of their kindergarten work that comes home every day! Hayden is a 6th grader, that curious, odd and moody creature known as a pre-teen. Sometimes she's so great and sometimes she makes me feel like sticking a rusty fork in my eye. Last night we went to dinner, just her and I and had such great conversation. I am going to use that memory the next time I find myself reaching for a fork....

Vacation in progress

2007-09-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

It's almost 11pm. We're in Blue Ridge, GA where we've come to hang out for the weekend. In lieu of a sugar-crazed birthday party, the boys elected to come here to take a ride on a real train. Our friends came along with us. We had a blast today. The train ride was great and included a layover in a quaint little mountain town called McCaysville. This town lies right on the state line with Copperhill, TN. We were able to stand with one leg in TN and one in GA and the kids thought that rocked. We ate ice cream and french fries and various other really bad for you foods that bring nothing but utter joy to the tummies of youngsters. Even the 11 year old girl who is famous for sulking had a great time and reconnected with her old friend, the neighbor's son. Right now the kids are zonked out hard-core in the beds which are insanely comfortable and king sized. Kevin is playing ping pong with the friend who came along and the rest of the neighbor's family is zonked out in their room next door. I'm taking advantage of the free internet service and the heavenly peace and quiet.

Listening to the little boys snore away behind me brings me a lot of happiness. They ran around today like crazy folks do and they had such fun doing it. The sleep they sleep right now was brought on by sheer exhaustion. It does my heart good to hear the three of them sleep so completely soundly, without a care in the world. The innocence and blissful ignorance of childhood fades soon enough and to be able to provide for them a safe and loving cocoon from the treacherous big world seems like one of the most important things I could ever do.

And in the morning we'll let them eat Belgian waffles with loads of whipped cream because...you only turn 5 years old once. Here's to the great year that lies ahead of you boys! Sleep tight.

Happy Birthday

2007-08-30T12:48:00.000-05:00

Jonas and Tristan turned 5 yesterday. It's weird how it feels like the first 2 years went on forever and ever Amen, but the next 3 years zipped by. In a flash here they are all five years old and going to Kindergarten on the bus. They are going through this board game phase now, just like Hayden did when she was 5. Their personalities have developed and we see that they are so unique and individual and not really a package after all. We did dinner and cake and pinata last Saturday with the grandparents. Last night we went out for a hibachi and sushi dinner with their buddy and his mom (neighbors) and this weekend we are going to Blue Ridge, GA for a train ride on an actual train and maybe some apple picking in an orchard there. They boys are looking forward to going on vacation with their friend (same neighbors) and staying in a hotel room. I love five years old. If I could have kids that started out at this age then I would have a dozen. Everything from here on out is total fun and excitement.

First Day of School

2007-08-13T09:20:00.000-05:00

The boys were totally excited and cute with their new backpacks, etc. We dropped Tristan at his class first and Jonas hugged him bye and then off we went to his class. Both of them sat right down and got started with a picture they had on their desks. They seem so much older now!

I didn't cry at all, I used the camera as a distraction and took pictures. Wishing I had taken the day off from work so I could be home having a mimosa and watching a movie, but unfortunately I have to work.

On a side note, everyone on the road is an asshole. No one wants to let anyone merge because God, it might delay them 3 seconds. People talk on their cell phones and honk their horns at you and when you pull up next to them at a light and roll your window down to inquire just what the fuck the honking was about, they go all passive-agressive and pretend they are so busy with their phone call that they can't see you. Bitches. The traffic this morning was INSANE but damn, we're all in this together ya know? Why can't people just be a little nice sometimes? Nice goes a long way.....

Speaking of nice, I totally bought this old man's groceries Saturday because he didn't have enough money and he couldn't figure out the ATM machine and left his check book at home. He was so distressed over not having enough cash it made me sad. And he reminded me of my grandfather, so I bought his stuff. It was only $12, so no big deal, but he made me feel good because he gave me a hug and walked me to my car. Nice goes a looooong way =)

Weekend

2007-08-06T07:33:00.000-05:00

Good things, all weekend. Despite drinking too much for 4 days and never sleeping more than 4 hours a night, it was great. Spent it with friends, just being friends. No responsibilities other than filling my belly with food and my liver with booze. We canoed, we laughed a lot, we vented to each other, we played LCR, we did cartwheels. And then I got home and went to a concert. John Mayer and Ben Folds. They rocked the house, for real. Pictures here.

Oh yeah, and the whore of a washing machine is working now.

Kenmore He2plus

2007-08-01T09:26:00.000-05:00

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. And fuck Sears too. Never again you facist motherfuckers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When it rains it pours.

2007-07-16T09:35:00.000-05:00

Our brand new washing machine needs a new mother board. A motherfucking mother board! What the hell? The washing machine has a mother board. We bought this new machine in January. It's one of those front-loading high efficiency ones. We like to be kind to environment as much as possible and using less water seemed great. Except that now this $800 motherfucker is broken. Sure, we wash a lot of clothes, but there are 5 of us. I expect a washing machine to last more than 6 months before breaking. So, the repair guy came and said he had to order parts and then would come back once we called to tell him the parts had arrived. And he recommended we get the extended warranty. We didn't have a washing machine all last week and won't have one this week either. Can you imagine how this sends me into a panic? I washed 2 loads of laundry at my friend's house Saturday while we got ready for a wedding. Then I washed 4 loads of laundry at my neighbor's house yesterday. Six loads of laundry in 2 days. And it's already starting to pile up again!

Oh yeah, and Kevin spent most of yesterday replacing the kitchen faucet. Well, actually he spent most of that time trying to get the bitch of a bolt off from the old, leaky faucet. Now we have a new shiny one that doesn't leak, that makes me happy.

St. Vincent

2007-07-13T11:40:00.000-05:00

I went to The Earl in east Atlanta Wednesday night. I was there to take some pictures of a band called St. Vincent, headed up by singer Annie Clark. I had never heard of this band before, until a co-worker of mine happened to mention them one evening at work (He's just about to become related to Annie via her sister). Annie Clark has also been part of the Polyphonic Spree.

Despite being very, very tired from being out until 1am the previous night at The Fray concert, I went to the show anyway. There were two bands that came before St. Vincent and unfortunately I can't recall their names. I spent a fair amount of that time in the restaurant part having some dinner. St. Vincent was really quite good and Annie's vocals are great. I was happy to listen to her mellow and smooth voice. The pictures were very difficult. The Earl is a very small venue and the lighting in there was seriously lacking. I am still in the process of processing the pictures but they are do dark! Despite my great effort with changing shutter speed, aperture and ISO, still, very dark pictures. I am somewhat disappointed because I wanted to have something great to give to Annie Clark, she was so friendly and obliging.

The Fray

2007-07-11T08:23:00.000-05:00

I got to shoot at The Fray concert last night at the Hi-Fi Buys amphitheater in Atlanta. This was the first time at a large venue with a well-known band. There were three bands - Eisley, Gomez and The Fray. All of them had the 3 song rule - you can shoot for the first 3 songs and then you have to leave the press pit and leave your camera there. What? Leave my camera? I was concerned about it until I saw the very large security guards who were manning the gate. I put my camera bag right up behind him on the edge of the stage and he promised me he would love that camera as if it were his own. And he even gave me a bottle of water for free, which was most excellent because water was $4 per bottle! Ack!

The bands were great and it was a very pleasant experience. The girls who had to meet us and walk us in from the backstage area were really nice and friendly, the security guys were all very nice. I Had a rather long conversation with one of them about growing up in the south, divorce, kids and working for the government. These few times I have been taking pictures at concerts have given me a whole new outlook on those menacing guys. So far they have all been nothing but nice, helpful gentlemen. And the care they take removing the tiny girls getting squished in the pit is heartwarming.

Transmission woes

2007-07-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

Our 1999 Suburban needs a new transmission. Mother fucker. We had the stupid thing rebuilt a couple of years ago and here we are again. I hate that car with a passion and I'll never own another Chevy (Corvette being the exception) as long as I live. But alas, this car is paid for and we have no car payments so it only makes sense to pay for the $2400 repair and move on. Damn it. That just puts more distance between me and a new camera. Fucking car. I hate you.

The Cat Empire

2007-06-29T12:58:00.000-05:00

I shot my first concert with an official photo pass last night. I brought Macy, one of my oldest friends, along to be my wingman. Every girl needs a wingman when out in bars or at concerts. And a good wingman knows when to intervene and when to stand by and observe quietly. Macy did pretty good, although once or twice she was completely lost in her mad dancing in the crowd. But I'll cut her some slack because she's got a 2 month old baby and an 18 month old toddler. She needed some mad dancing in her life.

So, the band, The Cat Empire. Very nice. Six guys from Australia, the sound is kind of a jazz-ska-rock thing and they did some jamming as well. I have a soft spot for jam bands. And really, any band with a trumpet player is alright in my book. These cats were energetic and tight together. The music was great. I went in to it having only heard a few sound bits from the web. I went to the show only because I was given a photo pass and put on their guest list, so I didn't have to pay for the tickets. A free concert is always a good thing, nothing to lose. But I think I'll buy their album because I really enjoyed it and it's something different and it's time for me to have something different. Their music is completely danceable and in fact it is very difficult not to dance. But taking pictures and dancing don't go well together, so I didn't dance much.

I did take a lot of pictures, once I got the photo pass that is. It wasn't at the box office as it should have been so I had to find someone with the band to sort it out. Dan, with the band (Tour manager?) was more than helpful and got it all fixed for me. Turns out people ask you weird things when you have any sort of access pass. In summation, no, I can't get you backstage or on stage or in the singer's pants. I'm just taking some pictures for them, sorry. Having the permission to run amuck at a concert with a huge bag of camera junk and the freedom to take pictures was great. I climbed up on stage over on the sides and shot from there. The security guard, who used to be a formidable hurdle for me at concerts, got me a chair so I could climb up on the stage easier. All because I had a little green pass. I liked that a lot. I want to do it some more.

I've got another pass to shoot at Rocco DeLuca and The Burden in August. I only get to shoot the first three songs at that one, but that's better than nothing. In the end, if all I get out of this is admission to concerts for free, that would be just fine. I love concerts and I really enjoy taking pictures of musicians doing their thing because it can be so beautiful to watch. But wouldn't it be cool if some of the pictures were published?

Rodeo and sunscreen

2007-06-18T09:40:00.000-05:00

We went to a rodeo Saturday night. It was okay until the calf roping event began. The kids did not like that at all, in fact Hayden was downright offended and said the cowboys were stupid and why is tying a calf up a sport in the first place? I didn't have a good answer for that.

We've been using lots of sunscreen lately and prior to the summer really kicking in I bought a bunch of this spray suncreen. The label claims it goes on in an even mist and hooray you don't need to rub it in! I thought, hey this will be great. It will be really fast to get it on everyone and I can get my own back. Yeah, this stuff sucks. The spray is really wide so it goes everywhere, you really have to do it outside. So since the spray is so wide you waste a bunch of it if you are applying it to small 4 year old boys. And the coverage, not so even. That's apparent by the weird spots of horrible sunburn I got last weekend. So, I end up spraying it into my hands and rubbing it on. Brilliant.

Actions and brushes

2007-06-09T22:26:00.001-05:00

I used some of the actions for RAW conversions on this. And then added some brushes that I got from Designfruit.

Camp

2007-06-05T13:08:00.001-05:00

My kid is at camp this week. She is having a blast I'm sure, but we miss her. She is the fourth one from the left.

Food spending, revisited.

2007-06-05T12:38:00.000-05:00

Well, we've done so much better at not eating out in the last week! I'm impressed with my constraint. No Starbucks or Bruster's! Kevin and I did go to a music festival type of concert on Saturday and spent quite a bit of money. I mean, seriously, $10 for a 24oz beer? What the fuck is that? $6 for a salty pretzel and $8 for a small personal cheese pizza. Good Lord! But what can you do? I mean, the beer, you must have that right?

Anyway, other than that, not a whole lot of eating out. Well, wait a minute, I did drop a large sum of money at Macaroni Grill last Friday when I took the preschool teachers and directors from the boys' school out as a gift from us. Those teachers, they like the wine and really who can blame them?

I joined a group of people at work for a weight loss contest. I joined because they needed one more person for our department and I am highly competitive. Yeah, I don't need to lose much weight but I could certainly spare 10 or 15 pounds! So, I've eating really well (aside from that pizza and beer at the concert) and I ran (well, mostly) 2 miles last night. I'm in this for the big prize!

Expenses

2007-05-29T13:09:00.000-05:00

I don't really use a budget and haven't in a long time. We have chunks of money that come out of paychecks before they ever land in our bank accounts, forcing us to save for retirement, etc. without even feeling it really. I know how much has to be paid out in bills each month and then rest I just kind of keep track of in my head. If we need food, we go get it. If we need clothes, we just get them. If we want to eat out, we do.

Recent curiosity has driven me to add up expenses. So, I looked over the month of May and this is what I found:
$1273.27 on food. That includes all eating out too.
$456.60 on gas. Ack!
$650 on clothes.

The food sum is exceptional because my birthday was this month and I also graduated. We celebrated a lot this month. I will be interested to see what June looks like. Also, it is the start of summer and everyone needs new clothes, particularly my daughter who is just too big for everything she had last summer. We don't typically even come close to $650 for clothes in a month! I don't expect that there will be any new clothes bought until the weather begins to get cool again. Well, Hayden may get a couple of things right when school starts, but there won't be any large sums of money spent.

The food expense is what blows my mind! I am going to try and see if that number can be brought down drastically. The easiest thing to do is not eat out much. I mean, we dropped $31 just on lunch one day this past weekend! I'll have to make a run to Trader Joe's for the $2.50 wine they have, so I can make a personal contribution to cutting the food expenses ;)

Happy

2007-05-25T09:42:00.001-05:00

Because I installed this:

And processed this:

Thank you Marina who puts out the Underground Set List.

RAW

2007-05-22T08:44:00.000-05:00

I am going to begin experimenting with shooting pictures in the RAW format and then post-processing them. I am so excited, this is just what I need to keep my brain happy since school is over!

And, is it terrible that I critique everyone's photos in my mind? There was a woman who was taking pictures of the gymnasts Saturday at this competition Hayden was in. Yeah, I left my camera at home, I suck right? So, I went ahead and paid for a small package of photos by this woman. She used the exact same camera I have, but she had better lights. When she took some shots and then showed them to me on the LCD screen on the camera, I was like...um, there are shadows here and here, you should move the light over and try them again. Well...what was I to do?

American Idol

2007-04-26T07:59:00.000-05:00

I recorded American Idol last night because I heard Bono would be on it. I didn't realize that it was a 2 hour show last night. And of course, I had to skim through the entire show to get to Bono, at the end. And his appearance was so brief, just talking, no performance.

American Idol sucks. Big time. Why do people like this show? All of the contestants sound like they came from the same singer-mill. They all suck in an equally generic kind of way. Well, there is one woman on there, Melinda, who actually sounds pretty good. She has a gospel kind of voice, which I really dig, but I imagine if she should win they will turn her into yet another cookie cutter performer. Blech.

While I appreciate the effort American Idol made to raise money for the needy, the large cheese factor really did turn me off. The host was cheesy, the judges are cheesy, and Madonna's little bit about Malawi....what's her deal? She wasn't very inspiring at all. The highlight of the show was the part where they showed all those celebrities lip synching to 'Stayin' Alive' by the Bee Gees. That was pretty funny.

American Idol sucks. The whole premise of trying to find an "American Idol" is fucked up anyway. Do we really need a generated idol up in here?

Lost was pretty good though. It would have been better if Kevin had been home and watching with me. He got bumped from his flight last night so he's on standby right now, waiting to get out of Chicago.

Happy graduation and birthday to me.

2007-04-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

I bought this yesterday:

My birthday is May 6 (I'll be 34) and since I know myself very well and I am a good judge of electronics, doing lots of research before purchasing, and my beloved husband is really busy with work and doesn't need any distractions, and the weather was beautiful yesterday and the kids were well-behaved and I am going to graduate next week with my third degree, and all the experts say you must show some love to yourself every once in awhile.....I bought myself a new 22 inch LCD monitor. With an iPod dock. That guy on the monitor, he didn't come with it. He's just an image used for advertising, in case you were wondering. I have my very own hot, scruffy guy with a beard anyway.

I stayed up too late last night getting it all hooked up. I got a little sad when I realized that my iPod got left in the Jeep, which is parked at the airport because Kevin went to Chicago. But it was still lovely to just stare at the beautiful, sharp, HUGE images on the new monitor. You could say I have become spoiled by the 24 inch monitor I have at work, and you would be right. But I will also be working on some map stuff at home so I can finish by my deadline, so buying this big monitor was really quite necessary don't you see. And Hayden was thrilled to discover she will get my 17 inch LCD monitor for her room because Hello, CRT monitors are practically antiques - duh Mom!

Music

2007-04-24T15:47:00.000-05:00

I've been going to some concerts lately. I have missed that so much and I am totally loving having the time and money to go to live shows again! We saw Rocco DeLuca and the Burden, Mat Kearney and The Killers over the weekend. Awesomeness. I preferred the Rocco show because it was at a small venue and I got hugs from Rocco himself. The Killers were good too, it's always a good time to go out with good friends and pay way too much money for drinks! I love The Fox theater in Atlanta and The Killers played there.

We've got several more shows coming up....Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, John Mayer/Ben Folds, Cake/Chris Cornell/Interpol/bunch of other bands at a music festival...should be a lovely summer!

I've been told!

2007-04-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

I made comments on Mommylife.net and got handslapped for "swooping in to argue". There was talk of women choosing to work out of fear, which is ridiculous, and I commented, defending my position. That's not cool, apparently.

I cried a little, but I'm ok now (this is sarcasm by the way). I got a personal email from the blog owner, who is an actual writer of published books and everything! Exciting stuff.

Beating a dead horse.

2007-04-04T15:46:00.001-05:00

This book Feminine Mistake - Are We Giving Up Too Much? has caused a bit of a stir out there it seems. And so we discuss the stay-home vs. working mom topic again. This is a battle that will never be won because women tend to simplify it when it is really a vastly complex issue. And women like to tell other women what is best for them, based on what has been best personally. Women are really hard on each other.

I found this on a message board and wanted to post it here, because it's funny and sadly, a lot of it is true. It touchs on the double standards between mothers and fathers and the rabid viewpoints of women towards each other with regards to parenting. But, try not to take it too seriously.

I present to you, the 2007 new and improved version of the Script, complete with new additions from the last 2 years worth of Rabids. Keep in mind that many of these items (and all of the most recent additions) are verbatim statements of actual Rabid Mommys on this or other boards.

1. All Moms should stay at home with babies because it's better.
2. Why is it better? Well, it just IS. Because that's what *I am doing, and what *I do is what is best for all.
3. It is ok for a Mom to work for "financial necessity". Necessity as determined by *me. No Coach purses, luxury cars, European vacations or other luxury items are allowed. Working for *luxuries (defined by said Rabid SAHM) may also include, but is not limited to: retirement plans, investments for college, planning ahead for financial stability in the event of a catastrophe (unforeseen divorce, medical condition, death of spouse), and health insurance. Men are allowed to work (even to the extent of being gone for extended periods of time or long hours on a regular basis) for such luxuries -- they are being noble. Working women are not.
Working women care so much about material things.
Working moms who choose to work for the "mental health" or because the don't want to be home with their babies are sub-standard mothers, and all Rabid Mommys are entitled to feel superior to them.
If I took a job outside the home, the cost of day care would take all the money I make. (This one of course applies to all women, because moms couldn't possibly be working in a higher paid professional field -duh!)
4. It is better to be on welfare and stay home with the children than work to support them.
The father needs to work 2 or 3 jobs so that the mother can stay home.
5. All families with two parents working outside the home "dump" their children at daycare for 10+ hours per day, spending only one hour a day during the work week with their children.(This is the one that paints the picture that all situations are the same and everyone in the world works the same hours)
Once you figure in the typical 3 hours of commuting that working parents do each day, such parents only spend 20 minutes a day with their children.
Ok let's look at this - drop child off at daycare by 8 am, pick them up between 5-6 - quality time in the car as you rush home to cook dinner and do other household stuff. Or, stop at the fast-food place to fill them up with fat....then get home, change clothes or eat (whatever), give child a bath, put them to bed - GEE, maybe an hour of quality time? How nice for your child.
6. If you aren't going to stay home with your children you should not have children. Just get a cat. Don't get a dog. You are also required to stay at home with dogs when they are puppies.
7. None of the rules against working outside the home apply to working fathers. *They are still raising their children. Working mothers do not. Working mothers are not "full time mothers" either. Working fathers are still full-time fathers, however. Something about that penis that makes a difference.
8. All Rabid SAHMs have husbands who work shorter hours than anyone else, and therefore spend more time with their children than other working fathers.
9. Rabid SAHMs can send their children to preschool. Preschool is not the same thing as day care, even if they do the exact same things and children spend the same amount of time there.
10. I know daycares are awful because I worked in the Best Daycare in Our State, and children were left to sit in dirty diapers and cry for hours on end while the OTHER teachers took a cigarette break. They spanked and bit the kids and forced them to clean their plates. It just broke my heart. Of course, I never did call CPS or talk to the parents- I just quit."
11. It is ok to send children to school. Teachers are not "raising" children, even if children are in school as much or more than they are in day care. Besides, it is only the first 5 years of life that matter. As children get older, they need less of their parents' time and attention.
12. Kids of SAHM's are much better behaved because they don't feel neglected like those kids of WM's do. You can tell right away who goes to daycare and who doesn't. Plus kids of WM's always seem so "needy."
13. None of the rules against working apply to divorced (abandoned by their husbands) or widowed mothers. And all rabid SAHMs have perfectly healthy husbands and perfect marriages, so there is no need to plan for either of these possibilities.
14. The neighborhood children all get dumped at their house because they're the only ones home and who really care.
15. WM's always assume SAHM's will be home for emergency back-up child care, because of course, they have *nothing else to do.
16.They really don't sit around all day and eat bonbons ya know... and besides *other chocolate is preferred. They don't watch soap operas all day either. Dr. Phil is the show of choice. Or hanging out on AOL message boards.
17. The truly Rabid SAHM is staying home because of a special needs child, and no one else could possibly understand her life.
18. I thought about doing day care from the home, but couldn't stand a second away from my little darlings.
19. There is nothing better to do all day than stare adoringly into my child's eyes.
There is something truly special about the bonding a mother experiences when changing her child's diapers. Day care workers don't have the same bonding because they are paid to change diapers.
Really special rabid SAHMs use cloth diapers and berate anyone who uses disposables because they are uninformed and don't care about their babies. Those who don't use cloth diapers spend $100s each month on disposable diapers, or let the child set in a wet, dirty diaper for hours at a time. This Cloth Diapering wing of the rabids often spend hundreds on the cloth diapers, but that is different. Somehow.
20 Only a mother can kiss a boo-boo. Children *need their mothers to attend to all boo boos, and all mothers should want to be there for all of them.
21. Don't all you working Moms hate missing out on all the "firsts"? As a SAHM, I *know I have seen EVERY first. And videotaped them all for dh. It is an important part of the bonding experience for a mother to see every first. Even the first tooth. And the first successful deposit in the potty.
22. I stay at home because that is how nature meant it to be. Throughout history, women have stayed at home. Those that didn't would have if they could. {Rabids don't seem to have any explanation for the use of Governesses and Nannies among the elite thru history}23. Babies don't keep.
23 A. Being a SAHM is the Hardest Job in the World, but it is worth it because you are paid in peanut butter kisses (or butterfly kisses).
24 I may go back to work when my kids are in school, because they won't need me as much then. But I will only work during school hours. I know there are plenty of jobs out there that will allow me to have those hours plus summers and all school vacations off. Or I can be a teacher, so I can leave at the same time as my kids.
24 A. The most critical years in a child's life are from birth to age 5.
25. I am willing to sacrifice everything because my babies NEED me.
26. When writing a goodbye post, rabids include this: "Now that I see that even the sahm's here do not express their opinions and beliefs openly here towards the op , for fear of conflict & disagreement, and to perhaps it seems, to 'preserve unity'"
27. When a rabid doesn't like what's going on in this folder she complains that the posters aren't posting the way she wants them to.
28. A. At the time of leaving the board, the rabid will complain that she was only in search of like-minded friends and can't believe how mean we were to her to disagree with her.
29. Some Rabids like to leave and come back under other names, pretending that they don't care what we say here.
30 Day care workers get rich off of mothers who dump their kids in child care.
31 I feel sorry for those poor women who work because their loser husbands don't make enough money to support them.
32. Children of today have so many problems because mothers no longer stay at home. Day care is the reason for all the problems with children we hear about in the news. Of course, none of those things ever happened before women entered the work force. (this is known as "rampant BeaverCleaver-itis")
33. If a fire breaks out in a day care, who will grab your child to make sure they are safe? Mothers should not work to avoid this oh-so-likely scenario.
34. I had my child in a day care that provided inadequate care, therefore all day care is inadequate care.
35 When confronted with the fact that Andrea Yates was a SAHM, Rabids protest that it just isn't fair to use such an extreme example.
36 It is so sad when WM's can't attend their child's kindergarten graduation. They should move heaven and earth to be at every such event. If a SAHM can't attend this event, it is because the school is uncaring about her need for care for other children.
37. Working moms doing chores around the house with their children are NEGLECTFUL. SAHMs doing chores around the house with their children are spending QUALITY TIME and TEACHING their children useful skills.
38. My kids are more to me than just a cute picture in my wallet.
39. When FATHERS travel for work, it's an unavoidable part of life, but whenMOTHERS travel for work, it means that they love their job more than theirchildren. No real mother would choose a career that could take her away from her child.
40. There are plenty of women who haven't yet had children or whose children are grown and out of the home who can be doctors and lawyers. If you spent tons of money on an education-great! Use it on teaching your kids and when they are grown get a job in your chosen field. Or don't get married and have kids. Or postpone having them until you can be available to take care of them.
41 Even single mothers can get assistance so that they can stay home with their kids at least when they are babies. I have much more respect for a woman receiving public assistance and raising her own kids than going to work and leaving them everyday. There's plenty of time for that when they are older and in school.

Concerts

2007-03-26T08:51:00.000-05:00

I have been going to shows again lately and in doing that, realized how much I love concerts! Growing up, from about 13 and on, going to concerts was the main focus of my social life. My friends and I would save our money and keep our eyes peeled for ticket sales. I went to tons and tons of concerts over the years. Once we had kids, we didn't get out as much and the concert-going kind of slowed almost to halt.

But now, I am back on it! I've been to three shows since December. We have four already lined up for the coming months:
Rocco DeLuca and Mat Kearney 4/20
The Killers 4/22
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club 6/7
John Mayer with Ben Folds 8/5

Good stuff!

Quit whining for the love of God!

2007-03-26T08:36:00.000-05:00

This morning as I was getting dressed I was grumbling to myself about how I am so over my rather jiggly physique and how I need to just get back into the habit of exercising so that I am not scary at the pool.

On the way to work I was listening to the radio and they were talking about the ING marathon that happened this weekend in Atlanta. They talked about a guy who is a double, below the knee amputee that ran the race.

Yeah, a freakin' guy with no legs ran a marathon! Isn't that amazing? Awe-inspiring? I decided this morning that I need to stop whining about my large, jiggly ass and do something about it instead. I mean, if this guy can manage to train and run a marathon, surely I can get in 30 minutes of cardio 5 times a week, right? The next time I wake up and tell myself that I am too tired to get up and run for half an hour, I will think of this man. This man who would love to have my two capable legs to run with I'm sure. So, 5am tomorrow, I am up and running.

To lift your spirit

2007-03-20T11:43:00.000-05:00

Listen to The Proclaimers. They are very uplifting, the music is catchy and may very well make you sing out loud, at work, while all your co-workers stare at you in horror.

Up to....

2007-03-20T11:27:00.000-05:00

I have been busy lately. Busy with work, busy with school and busy trying to rethink how I eat and how I treat my body. I am almost 34 and it is clear to me now that I can no longer eat Oreos and milk for dinner, go out binge-drinking and rise for work/school with no problems, skip meals, eat Dorito sandwiches, etc. I need to take care of myself! This is the only self I get, at least as far as I know it is.

I wanted to share this wonderful article about food with you. It is really long, but it is worth the read, because all of it rings true! I found this in the NY Times Magazine online.
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January 28, 2007

Unhappy Meals

By MICHAEL POLLAN

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I'm tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I'll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won't kill you, though it's better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you're much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That's what I mean by the recommendation to eat "food." Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you're concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

Uh-oh. Things are suddenly sounding a little more complicated, aren't they? Sorry. But that's how it goes as soon as you try to get to the bottom of the whole vexing question of food and health. Before long, a dense cloud bank of confusion moves in. Sooner or later, everything solid you thought you knew about the links between diet and health gets blown away in the gust of the latest study.

Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing — this from the monumental, federally financed Women's Health Initiative, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease . The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had been confidently told, help prevent colon cancer. Just last fall two prestigious studies on omega-3 fats published at the same time presented us with strikingly different conclusions. While the Institute of Medicine stated that "it is uncertain how much these omega-3s contribute to improving health" (and they might do the opposite if you get them from mercury-contaminated fish), a Harvard study declared that simply by eating a couple of servings of fish each week (or by downing enough fish oil), you could cut your risk of dying from a heart attack by more than a third — a stunningly hopeful piece of news. It's no wonder that omega-3 fatty acids are poised to become the oat bran of 2007, as food scientists micro-encapsulate fish oil and algae oil and blast them into such formerly all-terrestrial foods as bread and tortillas, milk and yogurt and cheese, all of which will soon, you can be sure, sprout fishy new health claims. (Remember the rule?)

By now you're probably registering the cognitive dissonance of the supermarket shopper or science-section reader, as well as some nostalgia for the simplicity and solidity of the first few sentences of this essay. Which I'm still prepared to defend against the shifting winds of nutritional science and food-industry marketing. But before I do that, it might be useful to figure out how we arrived at our present state of nutritional confusion and anxiety.

The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding what is, after all, the most elemental question an omnivore confronts. Humans deciding what to eat without expert help — something they have been doing with notable success since coming down out of the trees — is seriously unprofitable if you're a food company, distinctly risky if you're a nutritionist and just plain boring if you're a newspaper editor or journalist. (Or, for that matter, an eater. Who wants to hear, yet again, "Eat more fruits and vegetables"?) And so, like a large gray fog, a great Conspiracy of Confusion has gathered around the simplest questions of nutrition — much to the advantage of everybody involved. Except perhaps the ostensible beneficiary of all this nutritional expertise and advice: us, and our health and happiness as eaters.

FROM FOODS TO NUTRIENTS

It was in the 1980s that food began disappearing from the American supermarket, gradually to be replaced by "nutrients," which are not the same thing. Where once the familiar names of recognizable comestibles — things like eggs or breakfast cereal or cookies — claimed pride of place on the brightly colored packages crowding the aisles, now new terms like "fiber" and "cholesterol " and "saturated fat" rose to large-type prominence. More important than mere foods, the presence or absence of these invisible substances was now generally believed to confer health benefits on their eaters. Foods by comparison were coarse, old-fashioned and decidedly unscientific things — who could say what was in them, really? But nutrients — those chemical compounds and minerals in foods that nutritionists have deemed important to health — gleamed with the promise of scientific certainty; eat more of the right ones, fewer of the wrong, and you would live longer and avoid chronic diseases.

Nutrients themselves had been around, as a concept, since the early 19th century, when the English doctor and chemist William Prout identified what came to be called the "macronutrients": protein, fat and carbohydrates. It was thought that that was pretty much all there was going on in food, until doctors noticed that an adequate supply of the big three did not necessarily keep people nourished. At the end of the 19th century, British doctors were puzzled by the fact that Chinese laborers in the Malay states were dying of a disease called beriberi, which didn't seem to afflict Tamils or native Malays. The mystery was solved when someone pointed out that the Chinese ate "polished," or white, rice, while the others ate rice that hadn't been mechanically milled. A few years later, Casimir Funk, a Polish chemist, discovered the "essential nutrient" in rice husks that protected against beriberi and called it a "vitamine," the first micronutrient. Vitamins brought a kind of glamour to the science of nutrition, and though certain sectors of the population began to eat by its expert lights, it really wasn't until late in the 20th century that nutrients managed to push food aside in the popular imagination of what it means to eat.

No single event marked the shift from eating food to eating nutrients, though in retrospect a little-noticed political dust-up in Washington in 1977 seems to have helped propel American food culture down this dimly lighted path. Responding to an alarming increase in chronic diseases linked to diet — including heart disease, cancer and diabetes — a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by George McGovern, held hearings on the problem and prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called "Dietary Goals for the United States." The committee learned that while rates of coronary heart disease had soared in America since World War II, other cultures that consumed traditional diets based largely on plants had strikingly low rates of chronic disease. Epidemiologists also had observed that in America during the war years, when meat and dairy products were strictly rationed, the rate of heart disease temporarily plummeted.

Naïvely putting two and two together, the committee drafted a straightforward set of dietary guidelines calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm, emanating from the red-meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee, and Senator McGovern (who had a great many cattle ranchers among his South Dakota constituents) was forced to beat a retreat. The committee's recommendations were hastily rewritten. Plain talk about food — the committee had advised Americans to actually "reduce consumption of meat" — was replaced by artful compromise: "Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake."

A subtle change in emphasis, you might say, but a world of difference just the same. First, the stark message to "eat less" of a particular food has been deep-sixed; don't look for it ever again in any official U.S. dietary pronouncement. Second, notice how distinctions between entities as different as fish and beef and chicken have collapsed; those three venerable foods, each representing an entirely different taxonomic class, are now lumped together as delivery systems for a single nutrient. Notice too how the new language exonerates the foods themselves; now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless — and politically unconnected — substance that may or may not lurk in them called "saturated fat."

The linguistic capitulation did nothing to rescue McGovern from his blunder; the very next election, in 1980, the beef lobby helped rusticate the three-term senator, sending an unmistakable warning to anyone who would challenge the American diet, and in particular the big chunk of animal protein sitting in the middle of its plate. Henceforth, government dietary guidelines would shun plain talk about whole foods, each of which has its trade association on Capitol Hill, and would instead arrive clothed in scientific euphemism and speaking of nutrients, entities that few Americans really understood but that lack powerful lobbies in Washington. This was precisely the tack taken by the National Academy of Sciences when it issued its landmark report on diet and cancer in 1982. Organized nutrient by nutrient in a way guaranteed to offend no food group, it codified the official new dietary language. Industry and media followed suit, and terms like polyunsaturated, cholesterol, monounsaturated, carbohydrate, fiber, polyphenols, amino acids and carotenes soon colonized much of the cultural space previously occupied by the tangible substance formerly known as food. The Age of Nutritionism had arrived.

THE RISE OF NUTRITIONISM

The first thing to understand about nutritionism — I first encountered the term in the work of an Australian sociologist of science named Gyorgy Scrinis — is that it is not quite the same as nutrition. As the "ism" suggests, it is not a scientific subject but an ideology. Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it's exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather, all pervasive and virtually inescapable. Still, we can try.

In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help.

But expert help to do what, exactly? This brings us to another unexamined assumption: that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health. Hippocrates's famous injunction to "let food be thy medicine" is ritually invoked to support this notion. I'll leave the premise alone for now, except to point out that it is not shared by all cultures and that the experience of these other cultures suggests that, paradoxically, viewing food as being about things other than bodily health — like pleasure, say, or socializing — makes people no less healthy; indeed, there's some reason to believe that it may make them more healthy. This is what we usually have in mind when we speak of the "French paradox" — the fact that a population that eats all sorts of unhealthful nutrients is in many ways healthier than we Americans are. So there is at least a question as to whether nutritionism is actually any good for you.

Another potentially serious weakness of nutritionist ideology is that it has trouble discerning qualitative distinctions between foods. So fish, beef and chicken through the nutritionists' lens become mere delivery systems for varying quantities of fats and proteins and whatever other nutrients are on their scope. Similarly, any qualitative distinctions between processed foods and whole foods disappear when your focus is on quantifying the nutrients they contain (or, more precisely, the known nutrients).

This is a great boon for manufacturers of processed food, and it helps explain why they have been so happy to get with the nutritionism program. In the years following McGovern's capitulation and the 1982 National Academy report, the food industry set about re-engineering thousands of popular food products to contain more of the nutrients that science and government had deemed the good ones and less of the bad, and by the late '80s a golden era of food science was upon us. The Year of Eating Oat Bran — also known as 1988 — served as a kind of coming-out party for the food scientists, who succeeded in getting the material into nearly every processed food sold in America. Oat bran's moment on the dietary stage didn't last long, but the pattern had been established, and every few years since then a new oat bran has taken its turn under the marketing lights. (Here comes omega-3!)

By comparison, the typical real food has more trouble competing under the rules of nutritionism, if only because something like a banana or an avocado can't easily change its nutritional stripes (though rest assured the genetic engineers are hard at work on the problem). So far, at least, you can't put oat bran in a banana. So depending on the reigning nutritional orthodoxy, the avocado might be either a high-fat food to be avoided (Old Think) or a food high in monounsaturated fat to be embraced (New Think). The fate of each whole food rises and falls with every change in the nutritional weather, while the processed foods are simply reformulated. That's why when the Atkins mania hit the food industry, bread and pasta were given a quick redesign (dialing back the carbs; boosting the protein), while the poor unreconstructed potatoes and carrots were left out in the cold.

Of course it's also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims , while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.

EAT RIGHT, GET FATTER

So nutritionism is good for business. But is it good for us? You might think that a national fixation on nutrients would lead to measurable improvements in the public health. But for that to happen, the underlying nutritional science, as well as the policy recommendations (and the journalism) based on that science, would have to be sound. This has seldom been the case.

Consider what happened immediately after the 1977 "Dietary Goals" — McGovern's masterpiece of politico-nutritionist compromise. In the wake of the panel's recommendation that we cut down on saturated fat, a recommendation seconded by the 1982 National Academy report on cancer, Americans did indeed change their diets, endeavoring for a quarter-century to do what they had been told. Well, kind of. The industrial food supply was promptly reformulated to reflect the official advice, giving us low-fat pork, low-fat Snackwell's and all the low-fat pasta and high-fructose (yet low-fat!) corn syrup we could consume. Which turned out to be quite a lot. Oddly, America got really fat on its new low-fat diet — indeed, many date the current obesity and diabetes epidemic to the late 1970s, when Americans began binging on carbohydrates, ostensibly as a way to avoid the evils of fat.

This story has been told before, notably in these pages ("What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" by Gary Taubes, July 7, 2002), but it's a little more complicated than the official version suggests. In that version, which inspired the most recent Atkins craze, we were told that America got fat when, responding to bad scientific advice, it shifted its diet from fats to carbs, suggesting that a re-evaluation of the two nutrients is in order: fat doesn't make you fat; carbs do. (Why this should have come as news is a mystery: as long as people have been raising animals for food, they have fattened them on carbs.)

But there are a couple of problems with this revisionist picture. First, while it is true that Americans post-1977 did begin binging on carbs, and that fat as a percentage of total calories in the American diet declined, we never did in fact cut down on our consumption of fat. Meat consumption actually climbed. We just heaped a bunch more carbs onto our plates, obscuring perhaps, but not replacing, the expanding chunk of animal protein squatting in the center.

How did that happen? I would submit that the ideology of nutritionism deserves as much of the blame as the carbohydrates themselves do — that and human nature. By framing dietary advice in terms of good and bad nutrients, and by burying the recommendation that we should eat less of any particular food, it was easy for the take-home message of the 1977 and 1982 dietary guidelines to be simplified as follows: Eat more low-fat foods. And that is what we did. We're always happy to receive a dispensation to eat more of something (with the possible exception of oat bran), and one of the things nutritionism reliably gives us is some such dispensation: low-fat cookies then, low-carb beer now. It's hard to imagine the low-fat craze taking off as it did if McGovern's original food-based recommendations had stood: eat fewer meat and dairy products. For how do you get from that stark counsel to the idea that another case of Snackwell's is just what the doctor ordered?

BAD SCIENCE

But if nutritionism leads to a kind of false consciousness in the mind of the eater, the ideology can just as easily mislead the scientist. Most nutritional science involves studying one nutrient at a time, an approach that even nutritionists who do it will tell you is deeply flawed. "The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science," points out Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist, "is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle."

If nutritional scientists know this, why do they do it anyway? Because a nutrient bias is built into the way science is done: scientists need individual variables they can isolate. Yet even the simplest food is a hopelessly complex thing to study, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in complex and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another. So if you're a nutritional scientist, you do the only thing you can do, given the tools at your disposal: break the thing down into its component parts and study those one by one, even if that means ignoring complex interactions and contexts, as well as the fact that the whole may be more than, or just different from, the sum of its parts. This is what we mean by reductionist science.

Scientific reductionism is an undeniably powerful tool, but it can mislead us too, especially when applied to something as complex as, on the one side, a food, and on the other, a human eater. It encourages us to take a mechanistic view of that transaction: put in this nutrient; get out that physiological result. Yet people differ in important ways. Some populations can metabolize sugars better than others; depending on your evolutionary heritage, you may or may not be able to digest the lactose in milk. The specific ecology of your intestines helps determine how efficiently you digest what you eat, so that the same input of 100 calories may yield more or less energy depending on the proportion of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes living in your gut. There is nothing very machinelike about the human eater, and so to think of food as simply fuel is wrong.

Also, people don't eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain. Researchers have long believed, based on epidemiological comparisons of different populations, that a diet high in fruits and vegetables confers some protection against cancer. So naturally they ask, What nutrients in those plant foods are responsible for that effect? One hypothesis is that the antioxidants in fresh produce — compounds like beta carotene, lycopene, vitamin E, etc. — are the X factor. It makes good sense: these molecules (which plants produce to protect themselves from the highly reactive oxygen atoms produced in photosynthesis) vanquish the free radicals in our bodies, which can damage DNA and initiate cancers. At least that's how it seems to work in the test tube. Yet as soon as you remove these useful molecules from the context of the whole foods they're found in, as we've done in creating antioxidant supplements, they don't work at all. Indeed, in the case of beta carotene ingested as a supplement, scientists have discovered that it actually increases the risk of certain cancers. Big oops.

What's going on here? We don't know. It could be the vagaries of human digestion. Maybe the fiber (or some other component) in a carrot protects the antioxidant molecules from destruction by stomach acids early in the digestive process. Or it could be that we isolated the wrong antioxidant. Beta is just one of a whole slew of carotenes found in common vegetables; maybe we focused on the wrong one. Or maybe beta carotene works as an antioxidant only in concert with some other plant chemical or process; under other circumstances, it may behave as a pro-oxidant.

Indeed, to look at the chemical composition of any common food plant is to realize just how much complexity lurks within it. Here's a list of just the antioxidants that have been identified in garden-variety thyme:

4-Terpineol, alanine, anethole, apigenin, ascorbic acid, beta carotene, caffeic acid, camphene, carvacrol, chlorogenic acid, chrysoeriol, eriodictyol, eugenol, ferulic acid, gallic acid, gamma-terpinene isochlorogenic acid, isoeugenol, isothymonin, kaempferol, labiatic acid, lauric acid, linalyl acetate, luteolin, methionine, myrcene, myristic acid, naringenin, oleanolic acid, p-coumoric acid, p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, palmitic acid, rosmarinic acid, selenium, tannin, thymol, tryptophan, ursolic acid, vanillic acid.

This is what you're ingesting when you eat food flavored with thyme. Some of these chemicals are broken down by your digestion, but others are going on to do undetermined things to your body: turning some gene's expression on or off, perhaps, or heading off a free radical before it disturbs a strand of DNA deep in some cell. It would be great to know how this all works, but in the meantime we can enjoy thyme in the knowledge that it probably doesn't do any harm (since people have been eating it forever) and that it may actually do some good (since people have been eating it forever) and that even if it does nothing, we like the way it tastes.

It's also important to remind ourselves that what reductive science can manage to perceive well enough to isolate and study is subject to change, and that we have a tendency to assume that what we can see is all there is to see. When William Prout isolated the big three macronutrients, scientists figured they now understood food and what the body needs from it; when the vitamins were isolated a few decades later, scientists thought, O.K., now we really understand food and what the body needs to be healthy; today it's the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem all-important. But who knows what the hell else is going on deep in the soul of a carrot?

The good news is that, to the carrot eater, it doesn't matter. That's the great thing about eating food as compared with nutrients: you don't need to fathom a carrot's complexity to reap its benefits.

The case of the antioxidants points up the dangers in taking a nutrient out of the context of food; as Nestle suggests, scientists make a second, related error when they study the food out of the context of the diet. We don't eat just one thing, and when we are eating any one thing, we're not eating another. We also eat foods in combinations and in orders that can affect how they're absorbed. Drink coffee with your steak, and your body won't be able to fully absorb the iron in the meat. The trace of limestone in the corn tortilla unlocks essential amino acids in the corn that would otherwise remain unavailable. Some of those compounds in that sprig of thyme may well affect my digestion of the dish I add it to, helping to break down one compound or possibly stimulate production of an enzyme to detoxify another. We have barely begun to understand the relationships among foods in a cuisine.

But we do understand some of the simplest relationships, like the zero-sum relationship: that if you eat a lot of meat you're probably not eating a lot of vegetables. This simple fact may explain why populations that eat diets high in meat have higher rates of coronary heart disease and cancer than those that don't. Yet nutritionism encourages us to look elsewhere for the explanation: deep within the meat itself, to the culpable nutrient, which scientists have long assumed to be the saturated fat. So they are baffled when large-population studies, like the Women's Health Initiative, fail to find that reducing fat intake significantly reduces the incidence of heart disease or cancer.

Of course thanks to the low-fat fad (inspired by the very same reductionist fat hypothesis), it is entirely possible to reduce your intake of saturated fat without significantly reducing your consumption of animal protein: just drink the low-fat milk and order the skinless chicken breast or the turkey bacon. So maybe the culprit nutrient in meat and dairy is the animal protein itself, as some researchers now hypothesize. (The Cornell nutritionist T. Colin Campbell argues as much in his recent book, "The China Study.") Or, as the Harvard epidemiologist Walter C. Willett suggests, it could be the steroid hormones typically present in the milk and meat; these hormones (which occur naturally in meat and milk but are often augmented in industrial production) are known to promote certain cancers.

But people worried about their health needn't wait for scientists to settle this question before deciding that it might be wise to eat more plants and less meat. This is of course precisely what the McGovern committee was trying to tell us.

Nestle also cautions against taking the diet out of the context of the lifestyle. The Mediterranean diet is widely believed to be one of the most healthful ways to eat, yet much of what we know about it is based on studies of people living on the island of Crete in the 1950s, who in many respects lived lives very different from our own. Yes, they ate lots of olive oil and little meat. But they also did more physical labor. They fasted regularly. They ate a lot of wild greens — weeds. And, perhaps most important, they consumed far fewer total calories than we do. Similarly, much of what we know about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet is based on studies of Seventh Day Adventists, who muddy the nutritional picture by drinking absolutely no alcohol and never smoking. These extraneous but unavoidable factors are called, aptly, "confounders." One last example: People who take supplements are healthier than the population at large, but their health probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the supplements they take — which recent studies have suggested are worthless. Supplement-takers are better-educated, more-affluent people who, almost by definition, take a greater-than-normal interest in personal health — confounding factors that probably account for their superior health.

But if confounding factors of lifestyle bedevil comparative studies of different populations, the supposedly more rigorous "prospective" studies of large American populations suffer from their own arguably even more disabling flaws. In these studies — of which the Women's Health Initiative is the best known — a large population is divided into two groups. The intervention group changes its diet in some prescribed manner, while the control group does not. The two groups are then tracked over many years to learn whether the intervention affects relative rates of chronic disease.

When it comes to studying nutrition, this sort of extensive, long-term clinical trial is supposed to be the gold standard. It certainly sounds sound. In the case of the Women's Health Initiative, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health , the eating habits and health outcomes of nearly 49,000 women (ages 50 to 79 at the beginning of the study) were tracked for eight years. One group of the women were told to reduce their consumption of fat to 20 percent of total calories. The results were announced early last year, producing front-page headlines of which the one in this newspaper was typical: "Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds." And the cloud of nutritional confusion over the country darkened.

But even a cursory analysis of the study's methods makes you wonder why anyone would take such a finding seriously, let alone order a Quarter Pounder With Cheese to celebrate it, as many newspaper readers no doubt promptly went out and did. Even the beginner student of nutritionism will immediately spot several flaws: the focus was on "fat," rather than on any particular food, like meat or dairy. So women could comply simply by switching to lower-fat animal products. Also, no distinctions were made between types of fat: women getting their allowable portion of fat from olive oil or fish were lumped together with woman getting their fat from low-fat cheese or chicken breasts or margarine. Why? Because when the study was designed 16 years ago, the whole notion of "good fats" was not yet on the scientific scope. Scientists study what scientists can see.

But perhaps the biggest flaw in this study, and other studies like it, is that we have no idea what these women were really eating because, like most people when asked about their diet, they lied about it. How do we know this? Deduction. Consider: When the study began, the average participant weighed in at 170 pounds and claimed to be eating 1,800 calories a day. It would take an unusual metabolism to maintain that weight on so little food. And it would take an even freakier metabolism to drop only one or two pounds after getting down to a diet of 1,400 to 1,500 calories a day — as the women on the "low-fat" regimen claimed to have done. Sorry, ladies, but I just don't buy it.

In fact, nobody buys it. Even the scientists who conduct this sort of research conduct it in the knowledge that people lie about their food intake all the time. They even have scientific figures for the magnitude of the lie. Dietary trials like the Women's Health Initiative rely on "food-frequency questionnaires," and studies suggest that people on average eat between a fifth and a third more than they claim to on the questionnaires. How do the researchers know that? By comparing what people report on questionnaires with interviews about their dietary intake over the previous 24 hours, thought to be somewhat more reliable. In fact, the magnitude of the lie could be much greater, judging by the huge disparity between the total number of food calories produced every day for each American (3,900 calories) and the average number of those calories Americans own up to chomping: 2,000. (Waste accounts for some of the disparity, but nowhere near all of it.) All we really know about how much people actually eat is that the real number lies somewhere between those two figures.

To try to fill out the food-frequency questionnaire used by the Women's Health Initiative, as I recently did, is to realize just how shaky the data on which such trials rely really are. The survey, which took about 45 minutes to complete, started off with some relatively easy questions: "Did you eat chicken or turkey during the last three months?" Having answered yes, I was then asked, "When you ate chicken or turkey, how often did you eat the skin?" But the survey soon became harder, as when it asked me to think back over the past three months to recall whether when I ate okra, squash or yams, they were fried, and if so, were they fried in stick margarine, tub margarine, butter, "shortening" (in which category they inexplicably lump together hydrogenated vegetable oil and lard), olive or canola oil or nonstick spray? I honestly didn't remember, and in the case of any okra eaten in a restaurant, even a hypnotist could not get out of me what sort of fat it was fried in. In the meat section, the portion sizes specified haven't been seen in America since the Hoover administration. If a four-ounce portion of steak is considered "medium," was I really going to admit that the steak I enjoyed on an unrecallable number of occasions during the past three months was probably the equivalent of two or three (or, in the case of a steakhouse steak, no less than four) of these portions? I think not. In fact, most of the "medium serving sizes" to which I was asked to compare my own consumption made me feel piggish enough to want to shave a few ounces here, a few there. (I mean, I wasn't under oath or anything, was I?)

This is the sort of data on which the largest questions of diet and health are being decided in America today.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

In the end, the biggest, most ambitious and widely reported studies of diet and health leave more or less undisturbed the main features of the Western diet: lots of meat and processed foods, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything — except fruits, vegetables and whole grains. In keeping with the nutritionism paradigm and the limits of reductionist science, the researchers fiddle with single nutrients as best they can, but the populations they recruit and study are typical American eaters doing what typical American eaters do: trying to eat a little less of this nutrient, a little more of that, depending on the latest thinking. (One problem with the control groups in these studies is that they too are exposed to nutritional fads in the culture, so over time their eating habits come to more closely resemble the habits of the intervention group.) It should not surprise us that the findings of such research would be so equivocal and confusing.

But what about the elephant in the room — the Western diet? It might be useful, in the midst of our deepening confusion about nutrition, to review what we do know about diet and health. What we know is that people who eat the way we do in America today suffer much higher rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity than people eating more traditional diets. (Four of the 10 leading killers in America are linked to diet.) Further, we know that simply by moving to America, people from nations with low rates of these "diseases of affluence" will quickly acquire them. Nutritionism by and large takes the Western diet as a given, seeking to moderate its most deleterious effects by isolating the bad nutrients in it — things like fat, sugar, salt — and encouraging the public and the food industry to limit them. But after several decades of nutrient-based health advice, rates of cancer and heart disease in the U.S. have declined only slightly (mortality from heart disease is down since the '50s, but this is mainly because of improved treatment), and rates of obesity and diabetes have soared.

No one likes to admit that his or her best efforts at understanding and solving a problem have actually made the problem worse, but that's exactly what has happened in the case of nutritionism. Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health. Perhaps what we need now is a broader, less reductive view of what food is, one that is at once more ecological and cultural. What would happen, for example, if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?

In nature, that is of course precisely what eating has always been: relationships among species in what we call food chains, or webs, that reach all the way down to the soil. Species co-evolve with the other species they eat, and very often a relationship of interdependence develops: I'll feed you if you spread around my genes. A gradual process of mutual adaptation transforms something like an apple or a squash into a nutritious and tasty food for a hungry animal. Over time and through trial and error, the plant becomes tastier (and often more conspicuous) in order to gratify the animal's needs and desires, while the animal gradually acquires whatever digestive tools (enzymes, etc.) are needed to make optimal use of the plant. Similarly, cow's milk did not start out as a nutritious food for humans; in fact, it made them sick until humans who lived around cows evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. This development proved much to the advantage of both the milk drinkers and the cows.

"Health" is, among other things, the byproduct of being involved in these sorts of relationships in a food chain — involved in a great many of them, in the case of an omnivorous creature like us. Further, when the health of one link of the food chain is disturbed, it can affect all the creatures in it. When the soil is sick or in some way deficient, so will be the grasses that grow in that soil and the cattle that eat the grasses and the people who drink the milk. Or, as the English agronomist Sir Albert Howard put it in 1945 in "The Soil and Health" (a founding text of organic agriculture), we would do well to regard "the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject." Our personal health is inextricably bound up with the health of the entire food web.

In many cases, long familiarity between foods and their eaters leads to elaborate systems of communications up and down the food chain, so that a creature's senses come to recognize foods as suitable by taste and smell and color, and our bodies learn what to do with these foods after they pass the test of the senses, producing in anticipation the chemicals necessary to break them down. Health depends on knowing how to read these biological signals: this smells spoiled; this looks ripe; that's one good-looking cow. This is easier to do when a creature has long experience of a food, and much harder when a food has been designed expressly to deceive its senses — with artificial flavors, say, or synthetic sweeteners.

Note that these ecological relationships are between eaters and whole foods, not nutrients. Even though the foods in question eventually get broken down in our bodies into simple nutrients, as corn is reduced to simple sugars, the qualities of the whole food are not unimportant — they govern such things as the speed at which the sugars will be released and absorbed, which we're coming to see as critical to insulin metabolism. Put another way, our bodies have a longstanding and sustainable relationship to corn that we do not have to high-fructose corn syrup. Such a relationship with corn syrup might develop someday (as people evolve superhuman insulin systems to cope with regular floods of fructose and glucose), but for now the relationship leads to ill health because our bodies don't know how to handle these biological novelties. In much the same way, human bodies that can cope with chewing coca leaves — a longstanding relationship between native people and the coca plant in South America — cannot cope with cocaine or crack, even though the same "active ingredients" are present in all three. Reductionism as a way of understanding food or drugs may be harmless, even necessary, but reductionism in practice can lead to problems.

Looking at eating through this ecological lens opens a whole new perspective on exactly what the Western diet is: a radical and rapid change not just in our foodstuffs over the course of the 20th century but also in our food relationships, all the way from the soil to the meal. The ideology of nutritionism is itself part of that change. To get a firmer grip on the nature of those changes is to begin to know how we might make our relationships to food healthier. These changes have been numerous and far-reaching, but consider as a start these four large-scale ones:

From Whole Foods to Refined. The case of corn points up one of the key features of the modern diet: a shift toward increasingly refined foods, especially carbohydrates. Call it applied reductionism. Humans have been refining grains since at least the Industrial Revolution, favoring white flour (and white rice) even at the price of lost nutrients. Refining grains extends their shelf life (precisely because it renders them less nutritious to pests) and makes them easier to digest, by removing the fiber that ordinarily slows the release of their sugars. Much industrial food production involves an extension and intensification of this practice, as food processors find ways to deliver glucose — the brain's preferred fuel — ever more swiftly and efficiently. Sometimes this is precisely the point, as when corn is refined into corn syrup; other times it is an unfortunate byproduct of food processing, as when freezing food destroys the fiber that would slow sugar absorption.

So fast food is fast in this other sense too: it is to a considerable extent predigested, in effect, and therefore more readily absorbed by the body. But while the widespread acceleration of the Western diet offers us the instant gratification of sugar, in many people (and especially those newly exposed to it) the "speediness" of this food overwhelms the insulin response and leads to Type II diabetes. As one nutrition expert put it to me, we're in the middle of "a national experiment in mainlining glucose." To encounter such a diet for the first time, as when people accustomed to a more traditional diet come to America, or when fast food comes to their countries, delivers a shock to the system. Public-health experts call it "the nutrition transition," and it can be deadly.

From Complexity to Simplicity. If there is one word that covers nearly all the changes industrialization has made to the food chain, it would be simplification. Chemical fertilizers simplify the chemistry of the soil, which in turn appears to simplify the chemistry of the food grown in that soil. Since the widespread adoption of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in the 1950s, the nutritional quality of produce in America has, according to U.S.D.A. figures, declined significantly. Some researchers blame the quality of the soil for the decline; others cite the tendency of modern plant breeding to select for industrial qualities like yield rather than nutritional quality. Whichever it is, the trend toward simplification of our food continues on up the chain. Processing foods depletes them of many nutrients, a few of which are then added back in through "fortification": folic acid in refined flour, vitamins and minerals in breakfast cereal. But food scientists can add back only the nutrients food scientists recognize as important. What are they overlooking?

Simplification has occurred at the level of species diversity, too. The astounding variety of foods on offer in the modern supermarket obscures the fact that the actual number of species in the modern diet is shrinking. For reasons of economics, the food industry prefers to tease its myriad processed offerings from a tiny group of plant species, corn and soybeans chief among them. Today, a mere four crops account for two-thirds of the calories humans eat. When you consider that humankind has historically consumed some 80,000 edible species, and that 3,000 of these have been in widespread use, this represents a radical simplification of the food web. Why should this matter? Because humans are omnivores, requiring somewhere between 50 and 100 different chemical compounds and elements to be healthy. It's hard to believe that we can get everything we need from a diet consisting largely of processed corn, soybeans, wheat and rice.

From Leaves to Seeds. It's no coincidence that most of the plants we have come to rely on are grains; these crops are exceptionally efficient at transforming sunlight into macronutrients — carbs, fats and proteins. These macronutrients in turn can be profitably transformed into animal protein (by feeding them to animals) and processed foods of every description. Also, the fact that grains are durable seeds that can be stored for long periods means they can function as commodities as well as food, making these plants particularly well suited to the needs of industrial capitalism.

The needs of the human eater are another matter. An oversupply of macronutrients, as we now have, itself represents a serious threat to our health, as evidenced by soaring rates of obesity and diabetes. But the undersupply of micronutrients may constitute a threat just as serious. Put in the simplest terms, we're eating a lot more seeds and a lot fewer leaves, a tectonic dietary shift the full implications of which we are just beginning to glimpse. If I may borrow the nutritionist's reductionist vocabulary for a moment, there are a host of critical micronutrients that are harder to get from a diet of refined seeds than from a diet of leaves. There are the antioxidants and all the other newly discovered phytochemicals (remember that sprig of thyme?); there is the fiber, and then there are the healthy omega-3 fats found in leafy green plants, which may turn out to be most important benefit of all.

Most people associate omega-3 fatty acids with fish, but fish get them from green plants (specifically algae), which is where they all originate. Plant leaves produce these essential fatty acids ("essential" because our bodies can't produce them on their own) as part of photosynthesis. Seeds contain more of another essential fatty acid: omega-6. Without delving too deeply into the biochemistry, the two fats perform very different functions, in the plant as well as the plant eater. Omega-3s appear to play an important role in neurological development and processing, the permeability of cell walls, the metabolism of glucose and the calming of inflammation. Omega-6s are involved in fat storage (which is what they do for the plant), the rigidity of cell walls, clotting and the inflammation response. (Think of omega-3s as fleet and flexible, omega-6s as sturdy and slow.) Since the two lipids compete with each other for the attention of important enzymes, the ratio between omega-3s and omega-6s may matter more than the absolute quantity of either fat. Thus too much omega-6 may be just as much a problem as too little omega-3.

And that might well be a problem for people eating a Western diet. As we've shifted from leaves to seeds, the ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s in our bodies has shifted, too. At the same time, modern food-production practices have further diminished the omega-3s in our diet. Omega-3s, being less stable than omega-6s, spoil more readily, so we have selected for plants that produce fewer of them; further, when we partly hydrogenate oils to render them more stable, omega-3s are eliminated. Industrial meat, raised on seeds rather than leaves, has fewer omega-3s and more omega-6s than preindustrial meat used to have. And official dietary advice since the 1970s has promoted the consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, most of which are high in omega-6s (corn and soy, especially). Thus, without realizing what we were doing, we significantly altered the ratio of these two essential fats in our diets and bodies, with the result that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in the typical American today stands at more than 10 to 1; before the widespread introduction of seed oils at the turn of the last century, it was closer to 1 to 1.

The role of these lipids is not completely understood, but many researchers say that these historically low levels of omega-3 (or, conversely, high levels of omega-6) bear responsibility for many of the chronic diseases associated with the Western diet, especially heart disease and diabetes. (Some researchers implicate omega-3 deficiency in rising rates of depression and learning disabilities as well.) To remedy this deficiency, nutritionism classically argues for taking omega-3 supplements or fortifying food products, but because of the complex, competitive relationship between omega-3 and omega-6, adding more omega-3s to the diet may not do much good unless you also reduce your intake of omega-6.

From Food Culture to Food Science. The last important change wrought by the Western diet is not, strictly speaking, ecological. But the industrialization of our food that we call the Western diet is systematically destroying traditional food cultures. Before the modern food era — and before nutritionism — people relied for guidance about what to eat on their national or ethnic or regional cultures. We think of culture as a set of beliefs and practices to help mediate our relationship to other people, but of course culture (at least before the rise of science) has also played a critical role in helping mediate people's relationship to nature. Eating being a big part of that relationship, cultures have had a great deal to say about what and how and why and when and how much we should eat. Of course when it comes to food, culture is really just a fancy word for Mom, the figure who typically passes on the food ways of the group — food ways that, although they were never "designed" to optimize health (we have many reasons to eat the way we do), would not have endured if they did not keep eaters alive and well.

The sheer novelty and glamour of the Western diet, with its 17,000 new food products introduced every year, and the marketing muscle used to sell these products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and marketing to help us decide questions about what to eat. Nutritionism, which arose to help us better deal with the problems of the Western diet, has largely been co-opted by it, used by the industry to sell more food and to undermine the authority of traditional ways of eating. You would not have read this far into this article if your food culture were intact and healthy; you would simply eat the way your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents taught you to eat. The question is, Are we better off with these new authorities than we were with the traditional authorities they supplanted? The answer by now should be clear.

It might be argued that, at this point in history, we should simply accept that fast food is our food culture. Over time, people will get used to eating this way and our health will improve. But for natural selection to help populations adapt to the Western diet, we'd have to be prepared to let those whom it sickens die. That's not what we're doing. Rather, we're turning to the health-care industry to help us "adapt." Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick. It's gotten good at extending the lives of people with heart disease, and now it's working on obesity and diabetes. Capitalism is itself marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into lucrative business opportunities: diet pills, heart-bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But while fast food may be good business for the health-care industry, surely the cost to society — estimated at more than $200 billion a year in diet-related health-care costs — is unsustainable.

BEYOND NUTRITIONISM

To medicalize the diet problem is of course perfectly consistent with nutritionism. So what might a more ecological or cultural approach to the problem recommend? How might we plot our escape from nutritionism and, in turn, from the deleterious effects of the modern diet? In theory nothing could be simpler — stop thinking and eating that way — but this is somewhat harder to do in practice, given the food environment we now inhabit and the loss of sharp cultural tools to guide us through it. Still, I do think escape is possible, to which end I can now revisit — and elaborate on, but just a little — the simple principles of healthy eating I proposed at the beginning of this essay, several thousand words ago. So try these few (flagrantly unscientific) rules of thumb, collected in the course of my nutritional odyssey, and see if they don't at least point us in the right direction.

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn't recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They're apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don't forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg's can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won't find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer's market; you also won't find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There's no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

"Eat less" is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. "Calorie restriction" has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called "Hara Hachi Bu": eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the "eat less" message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don't know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what's so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they're probably really good for you and certainly can't hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you'll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less "energy dense" than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians ("flexitarians") are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren't a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn't still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can't possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of "health." Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It's all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn't bordered by your body and that what's good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

Writer

2007-03-02T16:17:00.000-05:00

Hayden had to write a short story for school. She wrote about a boy who had been orphaned and then raised by pirates on a pirate ship. The project was called message in a bottle and the class had to use a water bottle to make something related to ships or life at sea. She made hers into an hourglass (it was more like a 45 second glass) by sticking two water bottles together. They had to write a story that involved their item and she wrote about this boy who had been orphaned at sea by a storm. This hourglass was all he had left of his parents and he treasured it.

But the impressive thing was, she used the words laboriously and inauspicious in her story. The whole thing used words that I wouldn't expect from an 11 yr old. But those two jumped out for some reason.

She rocks, obviously.

Book list

2007-03-01T08:39:00.000-05:00

I found this meme at Brandie's blog.
If you read it, you are automatically tagged. And I read it, so I am counting myself tagged!
Look at the list of books below:

Bold the ones you’ve read
Italicize the ones you want to read
Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.
If you are reading this, tag, you’re it!
If there are any books on this list that I didn't italicize and you think I should read, let me know in comments! Also, what other books do you think belong on this list and why?

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Validation.

2007-02-27T23:08:00.000-05:00

All the time and effort we have spent reading to the boys and gently, lovingly correcting their grammar has been validated. Tonight when they were getting ready for bed, they got this weird disco light thing from Hayden's room and brought it into their room. They turned out the lights and brought in some toy trains. Then, they proceeded to act out and entire Thomas the Tank Engine Christmas Story right there in front of my eyes. They did voices for each train, they included action, drama, problem resolution (Thomas was stuck in a snowdrift and needed help) and love and holiday cheer and all that shit!

They amaze me each and every day. The things they say, they things they ask, the things they throw at each other.....every day is a new adventure.

Everyone should have twins. I actually am feeling guilty that I didn't give birth to a twin for Hayden, I feel sad that she has missed this whole sibling-up-your-ass-every-second-of-every-day- thing.

One more thing about home

2007-02-27T14:07:00.000-05:00

In the previous post I talked about how I didn't really have any kind of support or interaction with my parents during those difficult adolescent years. I pretty much came and went as I wanted to, especially once I had a car at 16. 99.9% of the time, my parents had no idea where I was or who I was with.

During that time I had (and still have) a very special group of friends. They were the ones who were there for me when I needed to cry or when I needed to ask an intimate and private question or when I needed to tell a secret. They were there for me and they still are. Friends are the family we get to choose and I really did choose well! They are a very special group of women, my sisters for life.

Stephanie, Barbara, Macy and Angela, thank you so much for everything. I love you guys.

Home

2007-02-26T09:13:00.000-05:00

My parents sold their house last year and moved into a smaller, newer one. The house was bought by a developer who will tear it down and build expensive loft/condo homes in its place. I felt a little sad about it initially, but now I hardly even think of it. This morning, I came across a postcard on Post Secret about a person looking for home and not finding it. That made me think of the house I grew up in.

My mother had occasion to go by that old house last week, and in true dramatic form, it upset her greatly. She told me how terrible it looked, how a storm had brought down a tree on one of the storage building on the property and how overgrown everything was. I asked her why she kept going by there, because it didn't make sense to me. I don't force myself to do things that make me cry or make me sad, I avoid those things at all costs. But not my mom, oh no. She lives to for that kind of shit! Anyway, she said she had to see it "one more time". Why?, I asked her. She went on in a somewhat fake sad voice to say that it was the house we all lived in together as a family, that there were so many memories there, etc. and so on.

I don't feel that way about it. To me, it is just a structure. All of the things inside of it have moved on and grown bigger. My brother has his own family, I have mine and my parents sre lucky enough to still have each other. I told my mother this, in an effort to help her see the positive side of things for a freakin' change. She did one of her dramatic sighs and said, "I guess so".

My mother seems sad and she seems lonely. She never really spent any time developing herself, finding out who she was and what she liked. She didn't build a tight circle of friends and now she spends most of her days at home alone while my dad is at work. My dad, God love him, isn't a big talker. He never has been. When I speak to my mother on the phone, I get to say hello and then say that I'm doing fine, and then I spend 30 minutes listening to her tell me all about the groceries she bought or the doctor appointments she has lined up for the week or the hair and nail appointments or sometimes her cleaning and laundry plan for the week. I always end up wishing I had not called or answered her call, halfway through it. I always have to cut her off and say, "Mom, I really have to hang up NOW, I have to go!" I feel bad, I feel guilty, but most of all I feel sad. Sad for her, that she doesn't have a lot of people to talk to and even if she did, she doesn't have much to say. Sad for me because I understand (finally) that I will not get the mother-daughter relationship I have wished for since I was a little girl. We just don't work like that and we never will. She loves me, yes. She doesn't listen to me and she doesn't understand who I have become. She doesn't seem interested in learning that either. When we talk, she will ask me how I am, how the kids are, how my husband is. I will answer, and sometimes attempt to expand on it and tell her some story about what they have done, and she will give me the "ummmmm, oh!" and then begin talking about herself. Everything ends up being about her. Always. And that is just how it is.

During my adolescent years, I was angry and frustrated and did a lot of things I should not have done. I understand now that I did those things in an attempt to get attention from my parents. I had been the good kid for years, making all As and following directions, staying out of trouble. I got a job when I was 14 and have worked ever since. It seemed like the more self-sufficient I became, they less they noticed I existed. That made me angry. I wanted my mom to ask me about my friends, be interested in the 8th grade gossip. I wanted her to listen to the new album I bought and pretend to think it was cool or at least tell me it was too loud and she was too old for that kind of music. I wanted her to go shopping for clothes with me and get frustrated when she had to go back and forth to the rack and bring me different colors or sizes. I wanted her to force my bedroom door open, angry that I had stayed out way too late or that I had not called home to check in. Well, I wanted her to require me to call home in the first place really. And most of all, I wanted my mom to care that a boy had broken my heart and made me cry for days. I wanted her to shred his picture with me and then take me out for dinner, just her and I. I wanted my mother to clean the deep knife wound a boy made in my arm out of anger and jealously and I wanted her to hug me and tell me that I wasn't stupid for caring about him still, even after he did that to me.

But, I didn't get that. She was detached from me so I felt alone for the most part. I was angry about that for a long, long time. I feel like I have put most of those feelings behind me, but every once in awhile they come back.

And that brings me to finding home. I realized how lucky I am when I read that postcard. I have found home and it is a wonderful home. My home isn't attached to the house we live in, but to the people inside it. My own family, as whacked as we are at times, has provided me with all of the things I wished so hard for as a young girl. My husband listens when I have to let out my feelings about my mom. He listens to me and he doesn't judge me. He still grabs my butt when he passes me in the kitchen and he still thinks I'm hot, even though I am not really. My daughter asked me every day, first thing, if I had heard the results from a kidney test I had done last week. She was worried about me and it was touching to know that. My boys hug and kiss me and hold my hand, for no reason at all. My family is mine, and in it I feel safe, loved, understood and happy. This is home and the best thing about it is, I can take that with me anywhere and it isn't tied to a structure or to trinkets from childhood or to old pictures. It is tied up in our hearts, in our souls. That is where family lives.

As I go about the business of raising my own children, I try really hard to remember how I felt. I get really angry with my kids sometimes and I lose my temper. But I also feel really happy with them sometimes and I hug them and let them know that. I hope that when they are grown, they will understand that I loved them, in my angry response to them doing something dumb that could have caused injury to themselves, and also in my happy hugs and kisses. I feel very accomplished this week because I am close enough with my 11 yr old daughter to know that one of her very best friends started her period. My mother never knew that kind of stuff about my friends, because she never laid on my bed at night and chatted with me. My daughter told me about her friend because I was there and I was listening. She told me that she wasn't worried about herself and that she thought she knew what to do, but she would definitely call me if I was not home when it happened to her. She may have felt a little shy talking about that stuff with me, but she did it. I felt like I had won a medal, being given that in with her. I must stay diligent and stay connected with her, it is going to get increasingly harder over the next few years, but it has to be done. She is at a place in her life where things will start to change for her and these things she feels comfortable talking to me about. Not dad (she has always been Daddy's girl), but me. I am so honored and so thrilled that I get the chance to be the mother that I wanted to have. Wish me luck.

Circus

2007-02-15T13:57:00.000-05:00

We went to the circus last night. I paid $12 for cotton candy. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Getting played on my iPod

2007-01-16T14:33:00.000-05:00

Lately...........

HOW TO SAVE A LIFE by The Fray
SWING LOW by Rocco DeLuca and the Burden
PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS by Jet
ALL THESE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE by The Killers
HERE IT GOES AGAIN by Ok Go
GOD'S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN by Johnny Cash
DOESN'T REMIND ME by Audioslave
DEAR GOD by XTC
INTERSTATE LOVE SONG by Stone Temple Pilots
NO RAIN by Blind Melon
THE WEATHER WITH YOU by Crowded House
GOING THE DISTANCE by Cake

Follow up to last night.

2007-01-16T08:15:00.000-05:00

I had planned this museum/dinner thing so that we would absorb a lot of time before Kevin's flight arrived. Things didn't take as long as they were suppose to.

The museum was cool, they were impressed with the dinosaur skeleton. I bought them little stuffed birds that twerp when you squeeze them, because I am cool like that. They made nests for their birds next to their beds last night, which is just cute.

On the way from the museum to the restaurant, we got to see a drug deal go down. Fantastic.

The restaurant was cool too, I have eaten there before but it has been a long time. Hayden was concerned about the menu, on our way to the The Flying Biscuit, she asked me what kind of food they had. She seemed concerned. The menu is a little hippieish, with all whole grains and no french fries. But everything was cool, she found an omelet and grits that she actually ate, almost entirely (The grits were totally out of this world, and I am a grit connoisseur). The boys had the most delicious french toast, of which they ate almost all gone. While we were waiting on our to-go food, which the waiter forgot about, the boys decided to perform for us. There was some great music playing in the restaurant and Tristan stood in his chair and played air guitar and made up some words. Jonas joined him, playing air drums. The show was entertaining (Hayden was fairly mortified they were doing this), until Tristan lost his balance and fell into his plate of french toast and raspberry sauce. It was awesome. Cream went everywhere. I was kicking myself for leaving the camera in the car.

We arrived at the airport too early, but luckily I was able to burn up some time by making FOUR passes through the south terminal, trying to figure out how to get my car into the parking deck. Then, inside the airport we had ice cream, again in an effort to burn some time. Since we can no longer go down to the gates, riding the cool airport train was out as a form of entertainment. We went to a level that is right above the atrium where people hang out and wait and eat and the boys ran laps up and down the curved corridor that overlooked the atrium below. I think they ran for about 15 minutes non-stop. Whee.

Once Kevin showed up, we had to spend a considerable amount of time getting the bag, because it only makes sense to put the baggage from 6 flights at one baggage carousel. I mean, why use the one right next to it that has three bags circling around and around?

By the time we pulled into the driveway at 9:30pm, all had returned to normal. The children were bickering and fighting, I had yelled at Hayden for being an antagonist and Kevin's hair was standing on end from his having run his hand through it. Sweet family bliss!

Weekend without Daddy

2007-01-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

Kevin has been gone since very early Friday morning. He has been off on a vacation in San Francisco, visiting his BFF. He has had good fun and been able to only be responsible for himself, although I am not exactly confident that he was very responsible at all. A guy who lives in the Bible belt, away for a weekend, sans wife and kids, in San Francisco....what can you really expect? Anyway, he is coming home tonight (yaaay!).

While he was gone, things here were actually great. I thought for sure I would lose my mind and tie the children in the closet while I mixed drink after drink for myself in the kitchen. But no, we had a good time and I managed to maintain control of my temper (mostly). We went to a puppet show at the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts and saw THE coolest puppet show. Then we visited my parents and even brought them a gourmet dinner from Zaxby's. We went shopping at Costco and made a meal of all the samples they had, then went home to ride bikes and play trains. Well, the twins did that, I hung out and supervised and drank wine. Hayden went to sleepover with a friend where she certainly stayed up too late. She called me at 11:30pm Sunday night, while I was in the middle of watching the season 6 premiere of 24. I was initially irritated to have to pause the show, but when she said, "I thought you might be lonely with dad and me gone so I wanted to call and tell you goodnight", my heart nearly exploded into a million little pieces. She can be so sweet at times, love that! Today we plan to visit Fernbank Museum of Natural History and then have dinner at The Flying Biscuit, and then on to the airport to pick up Daddy.

We have had a busy weekend, every night we have all gone to bed tired. It feels good to have crammed a lot into one long weekend, I like to feel that the days haven't been wasted. But the reality is, I don't know how to relax. It is difficult for me to just hang out at home. I get extremely restless. In between all the goings and doings, I also did laundry, cooked, cleaned, organized toys that were scattered all over the house, hung a rack thingy in my closet, organized a bunch of recipes that had been stuffed in a binder forever, and watched 12 episodes of 24, season 5.

I feel pretty tired. But yet, restless.

Limerick

2007-01-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Looky, Daddy! wrote this most fantastic, special limerick. It just cracked me up because it totally hit home with me.

Surely There Must Be Some Mistake

I could hardly believe it was true
All we did is what other folks do
But the doctor was there
And he said, "Look, I swear
There's not just one heartbeat, there's two!"

Tagged

2007-01-10T09:52:00.000-05:00

I got tagged by Jewels, who is apparently a mud duck or lives with them or something...what the hell is a mud duck anyway?

So, here is the deal:
THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the "6 weird things about you." People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog."

1. I can't stand feeling crumbs on the floor with my barefeet, it sends me into a fit of cleaning.

2. I can't stand wearing shoes in the house, which sort of exacerbates the issue above.

3. I like the smell of gasoline, bleach and fresh paint.

4. I hate talking on the phone, only because I can't seem to focus on the conversation. I have to be doing something else while on the phone and then I get all distracted and find myself saying, "I'm sorry, what?"

5. I worry like crazy about my mom but I would never let her know that.

6. I love to get dirty outside. I like getting sweaty and I like camping and all things outdoors and dirty. But I hate dirt in my house, I am a clean freak.

So, I am not going to tag anyone else because the people I would tag have already been.

Assurance that this baby factory is closed for business.

2007-01-09T10:15:00.000-05:00

I saw a mom with 8 kids at Target yesterday. It made my uterus hurt and my ovaries run and hide.

I was standing in line behind her in the customer service area, waiting to return something. Her oldest looked to be maybe 10 or 11 and then the others were all younger than him and she was pregnant. I watched them in awe/fear. I made the assumption that they were homeschoolers, just because our schools are back in session and this was in the middle of the day. Or maybe they were all skipping school. She did a good job maintaining order, she barked out commands like a CTU Field Agent. As she was returing her items, one kid in a stroller freaked out and started screaming and trying to escape. She snapped her fingers and pointed at one of the older boys who immediately went over to attend to his sister. When she finished with her return, she rattled off stroller assignments to the older kids, three strollers! Mom carried a baby in a carrier. She didn't smile, she seemed very, very focused on the tasks at hand. Her kids were all talking to her at once, or ordering each other around. There was a lot of talking. And a lot of people saying, "Mom". I started to feel panic just watching them!

I kept thinking to myself, A) Wow. I could never do that. She must have been trained by the Navy Seals, and B) Why does she let her kids go out in public with their pajamas tucked into cowboy boots? That's just wrong. No matter who you are.

For Stephanie

2007-01-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

My friend, Stephanie, emailed me today commenting that I had not written since before Christmas. She said, "you must be super busy!". Well, no, not really Steph! I am just pathetically addicted to 24 and have been doing nothing in my free time other than working out on the elliptical (while watching 24) and watching 24 on my couch while drinking wine. So, I haven't written because I have not had any profound or entertaining thoughts!

Stephanie is currently in India on business and is out of range for me to chat with her on the phone. She and I share the same birthday and have known each other for 20 years now. Often I will call her on my cell phone while driving home from work because I know she is also driving home from work. I love those conversations and have come to rely on chatting with her often. So, hey Stephanie! I miss talking to you! Oh and I read the book you gave me fro Christmas (The Memory Keeper's Daughter). I loved it, it was excellent and thanks very much :)

Crack is whack

2006-12-22T11:01:00.000-05:00

I have been out almost every night this week. Monday night it was The Killers concert, then Wednesday night it was dinner with friends, Thursday night dinner with friends again. I have been getting up at 5:30am every day and going to work. This morning, as I peeled myself out of bed one more time, I was dragging. I have consumed more wine and beer this week than I would in a month normally and stayed up far too late for too many days in a row.

So, on the way to work I had a Red Bull. And then a giant cup of strong coffee at work. Now I feel like I am on crack. I think they actually put crack in Red Bull.

You complete me.

2006-12-20T15:35:00.000-05:00

I heart you.

Asshole.

2006-12-15T14:48:00.000-05:00

A woman on a message board posted this in response to me asking her what she loved so much about Disney World:

And frankly-you don't get the riff raff at Disney like you do in regular coaster parks. I just really appreciate that. Maybe the riff raff is thinned out due to the cost of things.

Seriously. What the fuck? What a stupid, elitist thing to say. And then she went on to site the fact that you can get spa treatments from Goofy there as another pro to vacationing at Disney. Yeah, cause that is right on the top of my list of things to do in life.....get spa treatment from Goofy, get it on with Mickey......

Apple

2006-12-15T09:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I ordered an iPod Nano for my daughter for Christmas. I IMed my husband to let him know what I ordered and he said, "I wish you had bought the 8GB one." I called up Apple not 10 minutes after I had ordered it to try and change it to the 8GB one. I was told it was too late, the order was too far in the processing stage to change it. I was pissed.

"What? That is ridiculous." I said to the customer service agent on the phone (who by the way spoke perfect English). "I just ordered it 10 minutes ago, how is that possible?"

I got angry, I yelled a little, she asked someone else if it could be changed, and I was told no again. I tried to argue that I would be giving them MORE money, that this change was an upgrade. Still, the answer was no. I slammed the phone down, I was off-the-hook pissed. I mean seriously, what the fuck?

I got home, did the evening thing, checked my email around 8pm and there was an email from Apple. The iPod had already shipped. For real. The damn thing had already been engraved and shipped, in 10 hours. Apparently they have quite the operation going on over there at Apple. I had imagined little elves slaving away at workbenches, engraving iPods.

So, now my attitude has changed. Instead of being pissed off at Apple, I embrace them. If their order processing operation is that fucking efficient, their computers must be the bomb. I'm totally sold, I need an iMac.

I bet Jack Bauer has an iMac.

December

2006-12-14T14:41:00.000-05:00

I haven't had much to write about lately. I was very busy up until last night, with school. Now that is all done. And I am newly obsessed with the show "24" so I am watching all the old seasons while waiting for the new season to begin next month. All that with the grueling task of Christmas shopping, or for that matter, thinking about Christmas shopping, hasn't left me much time to string together noteworthy thoughts.

Oh and the fact that now all three of my children are way into computers, either playing games or emailing friends, etc. that I don't get much of a chance on the machines at home! We have three computers at home, so that works out great for the kids. One for each of them. But obviously we need to buy two more, because there is nothing like technological excess.

Current stack of books in progress

2006-11-20T01:37:00.000-05:00

The Iowa Tests

2006-11-09T22:08:00.000-05:00

I am going to brag, with sheer abandon, about my daughter. So consider yourself warned.

We got her Iowa Test of Basic Skills results today. Now, I know that these standard tests don't really give you the whole picture of a child's intelligence. But, since they are a measure of academic progress used across the nation, I will respect that they do serve a purpose.

My kid, who is in 5th grade and turning 11 in December, scored in the 99th percentile on 11 of the 19 categories. The rest were really high too, in the 90s, except for the one little section on math computation, which had about 6 questions and she most likely made those careless mistakes you make when you are rushing through boring math computation. She tested higher than 99% of 5th graders nationwide. Her grade-equivalent results put her at 10-13+ grades (I guess 13+ means college), except for that one section again, which put her at 7th grade level.

So....Hayden is really smart. But I knew that already. I didn't really get it until she got a bit older and I was able to see her next to her peers. She stands out, she's not like them.

I can't wait to see what she becomes when she is all grown up! Despite her sassy mouth and her strong will and lack of patience (where in the world did she get these traits from?), she rocks.

Time to walk the plank

2006-11-08T15:15:00.000-05:00

Goodbye Donald Rumsfeld.

Another reason I married him

2006-10-30T12:06:00.000-05:00

Often people take each other for granted, especially when they have known each other for a long time. We become accustomed to a person always being around, always listening and responding, even to trivial things.

Well, my husband isn't the chattiest of men, nor is he always tuned in to my running mouth. Sometimes he will look at me after I have finished speaking and just blink a few times and then say, "huh?"

But, despite this seeming inattentiveness, he is actually really, really in tune with me. And he just has no idea how much the small things he does from day to day, can make my day. For instance, I worked last night and got home at 1:30am. I had to be up at 5:30am for work today. And, I started my period while at work Sunday night. So, Monday morning was going to prove to be a challenge to put it gently. But no, it was fine. Granted I was (and still am) extremely tired, I was cheerful. He did tons of laundry over the weekend. Anyone know how lovely it is to walk into your closet to a stack of your favorite clothes all folded and clean and ready to go? It is like living with a fairy. And, to top it off, he had the twins' school bags all packed up and sitting right at the door, so all I had to do was grab them and go out the door.

My husband rocks.

No more 365 Days

2006-10-26T08:21:00.000-05:00

I started this 365 Days thing over on Flickr. You take a self portrait every day for a year. It was fun for the first week, but I got sick of it quickly. I hated feeling like I had to take a picture of myself every day, even on those days when I didn't want to be me.

I think I will stick to taking photos when I am moved to take them. The 365 days thing started to feel like an assignment. And who the hell wants to see so many pictures of me anyway!

Invisible

2006-10-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

According to Merriam-Webster, invisible means: a: incapable by nature of being seen b: inaccessible to view

I have established myself, in my life, as a strong and outspoken person. I am thought of as being somewhat abrasive and rough, even a little insensitive (or a lot, depends on who you ask).

There is another layer of who I am that is invisible to others. I am very sensitive, but not really so much about myself. I carry a lot of worry and anxiety around inside and I keep it hidden, so that those who depend on me to have it together get what they expect. The invisible part is the place inside where I put all of the things that concern me. Things like......

global warming, the HIV epidemic that seems to be sweeping the globe, the Military Commissions Act that was recently signed by Bush, the abuse that children suffer at the hands of adults, the fact that thousands of people die from hunger every day and I don't finish my food at dinner, the large disparity among the haves and the have nots in our world, the awesome and sometimes overwhelming task of raising children in a world where people seem to be losing value as people, the search for God and figuring out how to let Him in, the fear that I am not able to be a good wife to a man that really deserves it

And sometimes I can't sleep because this invisible part of me requires that I nourish it with more worry and concern. "What's wrong?" my husband will ask me. I can never find the words to explain, because there is just so much. And the conflict I feel over being so incredibly blessed in my own life while others suffer in ways I could never imagine, eats at me and takes root inside. Following that I often feel hope that the generation coming up can be the one to make changes. I feel hope that my children and their peers will be able to turn it all around, because I have to have that hope.

Rental

2006-10-19T14:08:00.000-05:00

I have been driving this around last night and today. It is a tiny, tiny car but I am surprised how much I am enjoying it. After driving a huge, gas-guzzling Suburban for 4 years, this car feels so zippy! We had to finally rent a car while the Suburban is getting a new engine. Rain came and Kevin decided that while he loved riding his motorcycle, riding in cold rain really does suck. So, hence, the Kia.

This car has no power options. No power locks or windows. I had no idea how much I had come to rely on power locks and windows until now. Last night at the grocery store, I had to actually unlock the front door and then reach through to unlock the back door for Tristan! Yes, I know, shocking isn't it? The kids saw the manual window control and said, "What is this?" We showed them how to roll the window down with the handle and they thought that was wicked awesome. They played with it for quite some time. But as cool as that is for them, it is irritating as hell for me. The boys can roll the windows down with their feet when strapped into their seats, but can't roll them back up. So yeah, even though I told them NOT to roll the windows down this morning, and I said NO with much emphasis on the NO part, they did anyway. And then they freaked out because it was raining (duh, I told you it was) and I had to pull over and turn around to roll them up again.

Ugh....BOYS!

Mosaic

2006-10-16T12:34:00.000-05:00

Louvre Atlanta

2006-10-12T14:21:00.000-05:00

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta will have pieces on loan from the Louvre over the next three years. I have not been to the museum in ages and this seems like the perfect time to get a membership and force my kids to see historical art! My older child, who is now almost 11, always enjoyed trips to the High Museum, she even behaved like a civilized human while we were there. The thought of taking the twins to see art from the Louvre gives me the jitters and a nervous feeling in my stomach. While I am sure that I will be able to maintain control of them for the most part, I am skeptical about how much they will dig the whole experience. I can tell you right now that they will love walking (running) up and down the winding ramps that run through the main lobby and go from floor to floor. And of course, a trip to the bathroom will be in order because no new excursion can be complete without visiting the facilites and checking out the flushing power of the toilets.

Either way, I am totally jazzed that all of this famous art is coming to my town.

Shoe love

2006-10-11T09:09:00.000-05:00

I am, right now at this moment, wearing the bestest shoes ever. These shoes rock, they are so comfortable. Merrell has always made a great shoe, but being able to wear these lovely little gems to work, now that is special.

I also got these, which are mucho comfortable but a little too casual for work. Love the REI Outlet site!

Baristas

2006-10-03T09:49:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to do a shout out to all those Starbucks baristas out there, making the lattes, frothing the milk.

I love you, I love you all!

Columbus Day

2006-10-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

In honor of Columbus Day which approaches on 10/9/2006, let me just say.....Christopher Columbus was a fucking criminal and we should not be celebrating his thieving and murdering ass. Good riddance to him.

And every kid should be required to read this: A People's History of the United States before they are allowed to graduate from high school.

Blessed?

2006-09-15T11:12:00.000-05:00

Stop asking God to bless what you are doing. Get into what God is doing, that is already blessed.

Bono said that at a prayer breakfast, but he claimed a "wise man" once said it to him. So, I don't know who to credit for the quote, but I like it.

New

2006-08-28T23:23:00.000-05:00

It has been over a month since I said anything here! Wow.

New things....I have two new four-year olds now. The twins are four, on 8/29/2006. I remember when they were born, I told myself that if we made it four years, mostly intact, we would be alright. And here we are! Four years. It went by quickly. I felt a little bit sad when I tucked them in as three-year olds for the last time, but mostly excited for what the next year will bring.

New job. Started today as a GIS Analyst with a city about 14 miles from my house. First day was great, I get the feeling that I will really like it there and have been given a great opportunity to expand my horizons.

New perspective. While I have been letting God in my life, I have noticed a change in how I see things. A good change. But I still have a lot of work to do!

The next few months are going to zip by. We are all so busy now, we are going from the time we get out of bed until the time we get back in at night. But, I thrive at this pace. It makes me happy to be busy.

Crossroads

2006-07-25T09:23:00.000-05:00

I am at a place in my life, with regards to my career, where I have to decide what I want to do and where I want to head. Normally my path is clear and I don't have any trouble deciding. Now it seems I have a few choices and I am finding it hard to make one, or even two! I wish there were more hours in a day, more days in a year, and more years left in my life. There are so many things I want to do and not enough time to do them all. Having to choose is very difficult!

So many things to consider...is the salary the most important thing? What about the length of my commute? How much would I need to be paid in order to commute for 30 minutes? An hour? How much would I need to move? Is moving really an option? Will the kids care? Which job is best for me? Where will I learn the most? Where will I be challenged? Which work is going to be more rewarding? Which job will get me closer to employment bliss? Is there such a thing?

Every time

2006-07-03T13:36:00.000-05:00

When I get together with my extended family, my aunts, uncles, and cousins, I love it. And when I hear my aunt Judy talk about how she still makes Brian's favorite dinner every year on his birthday, I cry. He has been dead for 10 years now, my cousin Brian. We were close, we spent a lot of time together and we shared a lot of scary, happy, sad, and special moments. I think about him a lot, what his life might be like now if he had not killed himself. He was 2 years older than me, so he would probably be married with kids, a house with a fenced in yard and a dog. I miss him and I know his mom and dad miss him too. RIP Brian.

Reading

2006-06-26T17:48:00.000-05:00

The Long Emergency
I came across this book while doing some reading for a course I am taking, 'Political Geography'. The course has turned out to be pretty informative and has led me to researching some things that are kind fo scary, such as what may happen when we run out of oil. I actually refrained from ordering this book on Amazon and used the good old library to obtain it! I am trying to curb my enthusiasm for purchasing books.

The Omnivore's Dilemma
This book I had to buy. And I love the cover anyway, so there. It is a really cool book all about how we eat and what our food says about us. Very interesting indeed.

I promised my self that the next few books will be lighter, fiction works.

Loud

2006-06-14T17:30:00.000-05:00

The louder the better. Vroom vroom!

New Pictures

2006-06-09T13:50:00.000-05:00

I have uploaded a bunch of new pictures over at the Flickr site. Check them out.

I have been busy. working a lot, between the lab and the internship, I am only off on Mondays. Kids are still demanding my attention too, oddly enough. I thought that once you taught them how to use the remote control and the microwave they would leave you the hell alone. Hmpf.

Another reason to hate Wal-Mart (as if I really needed one)

2006-05-25T22:27:00.000-05:00

Tonight I caved to the beckoning, convenient call of the huge Wal-Mart monstrosity that is near my house. I needed some stuff and I didn't have a lot of time before the vodka would be all gone, thus I sucked it up and went to Wal-Mart.

And of course, they didn't have any recycled paper towels on offer there, at all. Not any. And of course, they had one lane open and 4,271 customers in line. And all the little kids were throwing tantrums and crying.

Sweet Jesus, please deliver me.

All that you leave behind

2006-05-25T22:15:00.000-05:00

What is it going to be? Will your time on earth count? What will you look back on when you are old and in a holding pattern? Will you live long enough to be old? Do you even think about that? What will people remember about you? Will people come to your wake? What will they say...those who knew you, what will they tell your children? What impact are you going to have? Who will remember you when you are gone?

"We enter the world with a pure, unaffected point of view. As such, we perceive it with unadulterated clarity, but we lack the understanding to appreciate what we see.

With experience comes this understanding, but at what price? We lose the clarity of perception we were born with.

As understanding increases, though, we realize this. And then we become whole. Only through innocence can we become experienced. Only through experience can we appreciate innocence."

Organizations of note

2006-05-24T09:17:00.000-05:00

ONE

What is ONE?

ONE is a new effort by Americans to rally Americans – ONE by ONE – to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. ONE is students and ministers, punk rockers and NASCAR moms, Americans of all beliefs and every walk of life, united as ONE to help make poverty history. ONE believes that allocating an additional ONE percent of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs like health, education, clean water and food would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation in the world's poorest countries. ONE also calls for debt cancellation, trade reform and anti–corruption measures in a comprehensive package to help Africa and the poorest nations beat AIDS and extreme poverty.

What does ONE aim to do/change?

ONE aims to help Americans raise their voice as ONE against the emergency of AIDS and extreme poverty, so that decision makers will do more to save millions of lives in the poorest countries.

Amnesty International USA
About Amnesty International

Founded in London in 1961, Amnesty International is a Nobel Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with over 1.8 million members worldwide. Amnesty International undertakes research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights. Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) is the U.S. Section of Amnesty International

About Human Rights

Human rights are the basic freedoms and protections that people are entitled to simply because they are human beings.

Human Rights are Universal
They belong to everyone, regardless of their race, sexuality, citizenship, gender, nationality, ethnicity, or abilities.
Human Rights are Inherent
We are all born with human rights. They belong to people simply because they are human beings.
Human Rights are Inalienable
They cannot be taken away – period. No person, corporation, organization, or even government can deprive another person of his or her rights.
Human Rights can be Violated
Although they are inalienable, they are not invulnerable. Violations can stop people from enjoying their rights, but they do not stop the rights from existing.
Human Rights are Essential
They are essential for freedom, justice, and peace.

Learn about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Oxfam America

Oxfam America is a non-profit organization that works to end global poverty through saving lives, strengthening communities, and campaigning for change. We are an affiliate of Oxfam International.

UNICEF

Since 1947, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF has supported the work of the United Nations Children's Fund by raising support for its programs and increasing public awareness of the challenges facing the world's children. As the oldest of 37 national committees for UNICEF worldwide, the U.S. Fund is part of a global effort to advance humanity with health, education, equality and protection for every child.

UNICEF's lifesaving programs are funded entirely by voluntary contributions. Staff and volunteers at the U.S. Fund raise money for those programs through donations, sales of UNICEF greeting cards and gifts, joint projects with non-governmental and corporate partners, and youth action campaigns such as Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF.

We keep the public informed about children's issues in developing nations and urge Congress to back legislation that puts kids first. We visit schools and campuses, talking about UNICEF and creating educational materials for teachers.

U.S. Fund for UNICEF donors improve children's daily lives in the 155 countries and territories where UNICEF works — not just with food, water and medicine but with safety, peace and hope. And we're proud of the way we manage our finances. Last year, the U.S. Fund spent only 7 percent of our budget on administrative and fundraising expenses, with 93 percent of contributions supporting efforts to help kids.

Activism

2006-05-23T23:21:00.000-05:00

Today I was talking with a friend via emails exchanged when we were both suppose to be working. We talked about how we felt idle in a world where there was so much to be done. We talked about starting a ONE group somewhere locally, perhaps on the campus of the univeristy I attend. We talked about how we felt so blessed and lucky to have what we have and simultaneously felt paralyzed by the overwhelming sadness, violence, corruption, and general abuse of our fellow mankind that we were stumped as to what to do.

I feel so very small in the world. I feel like I should do something, but I don't even know where to begin. Maybe the Amnesty International table at the upcoming Dave Matthews Band show?