Sweet Yet Sour

My 5 Least Favorite Things

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | Seriously? | 6 Comments

In December, I wrote a post about my 5 favorite things (the top of list is of course Mike and Anna) and discussed that Oprah was at the top of my least favorite things list.  I think I’ve waited long enough to do a post on the least favorite things list…

5. General American Laziness: It’s been a while since I’ve been out of the country, so this could be “human” laziness, but I’m pretty sure that we Americans in general are lazy.  I think we’re a little too pampered, without entirely realizing how much and how nice we really have it.  For example:

a) Caller id that appears on the t.v. – This is a feature of our DirectTv service and frankly I have to admit it’s nice, but it certainly attributes to my fat ass.  The phone rings while I’m say, watching Biggest Loser, and a caller id box pops up on the screen telling me the name and number of the person/company calling.  Without getting up, I can make the “I’m not even getting up to answer that” decision.

b) People who leave their shopping carts right next to the place where they parked.  Come on people – I know that the distance to the cart return is probably less than the distance from the chip aisle to the chocolate aisle, which I just KNOW you covered in less than 5 seconds.

c) Only when gas reached $4 a gallon did we as a nation start to cut down on our driving.  Lazy much?

d) The drive through line at our local Starbucks is generally 10-12 cars deep, while the parking lot is EMPTY.  Seriously? Could you not park your car, walk in and probably get your Grande Decaf Moccachino faster? And people wonder why we are getting fatter as a nation…

4. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS):  After doing a bunch of reading on this stuff, I’m also thinking that we are getting fatter as a nation because this stuff is in all of our processed food.  I checked out all of the stuff in our pantry that has it and it’s scary, everything from the soda, the Saltines, Rice Krispies, the fruit and grain bars, to the ketchup.  Does anyone else think it’s bad that the thing they use to stuff down the throats of geese to make their livers be foie gras is in all of our foods? Oh and now there’s this study about HFCS and mercury… Neat! More please!

3. Sodium Laureth Sulfate: This chemical is in practically every shampoo, body wash and soap on the market.  It’s a chemical grade degreaser that also helps to make your shampoo nice and frothy.  Several years ago an email floated around about sodium laureth sulfate and how it could give you cancer.  While it seems that has been disproven, there is still talk of it being a skin irritant.  Just to give it a try, several weeks ago I banished all of my shampoo and body wash that had sodium laureth sulfate in them.  The results? I no longer have dry scalp, or the little red bumps on the back of my upper arms that I have always had.  I always though these were the result of how dry it is in Colorado, and perhaps that’s part of it.  But I also can’t deny that my skin and scalp are a lot less itchy and dry this winter since I went sodium laureth sulfate free…

2. People who still deny that Global Warming is occurring:  I have an Aunt like this and I regularly want to smack her.  For far too long the Bush administration denied it and then doctored all scientific research they could get their hands on to make it look like it’s not happening, but it is people, get a grip.  The ice caps are melting, the seas are rising, the temperature is going way up and people and animals are dying.  Get your head out of the pollution cloud!  We’ve had an extremely warm winter here in Colorado, and although I know that sometimes that’s just the way that it is, we have spent almost all of March, our “snowiest month” without any moisture (except some in the mountains) and most of it above 60 degrees.  When I made a comment about how warm it was a few weeks ago my Aunt had the gall to say “it’s always like this in the winter”.  Um yeah, I’m sure the ski industry would say the same.  Seriously?

1. Oprah.  Here’s my problem with the queen of talk shows.  Although I know that she is benevolent and giving, she does it in a way that rubs me the wrong way.  She’s so “This is the way it should be done and this is the way I like it – so you should too”.  As if she is the ultimate authority on how you should live your life, while frankly, sometimes she seems like she could use a little advice herself…  And she has a tendency to get all “you must freak out about this NOW!” that I’m sure sells ads, but also creates panic in all but her most discerning viewers. For example, when Anna was about 3 months old, and I was still severely deprived of sleep, I made the mistake of not napping and instead turning on Oprah.  The show that day was about child molesters and I could only watch about 5 minutes of it before wanting to puke and then never let my daughter out of my sight.  Don’t get me wrong, I will always worry about my daughter being some pervert’s prey, but the way Oprah made it out you shouldn’t even trust your own husband with your kids.  I simply cannot spend my life not trusting everyone – I’d never get out the house.  This is okay for Oprah because she has bodyguards, private jets and no real contact with the public, but for the rest of us, we need to live our lives…

Hallelujah! I finished a book!

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

First, for those of you reading my blog only for the pictures of Anna, there will be no need to read further.  I am going to try to complete a series of posts that have very little to do with the kiddo.  As adorable as she is (no bias here), I want desperately not to become one of those mothers who have nothing to say about themselves and can’t complete a sentence without mentioning their children.  In general, when you have a cute kid like mine (again, no bias), you have a tendency to feel like you are the tree holding the baby.  People ignore you and pay attention only to the baby, even addressing questions like, “How old are you?” to a child that cannot possibly answer for themselves.  If I only do blog posts about Anna I might as well put leaves on my head and try my best to blend in my surroundings.  But I digress, suffice to say, come back another time Anna devotees…

For Valentine’s day, Mike who is the best husband in the world, at least for me, bought me a book.  A nice, thin book that I might actually be able to finish with the limited time that I have to read.  Bill Bryson, of “A Short History of Nearly Everything” fame, and many others, has written a book on Shakespeare for the Eminent Lives series: “Shakespeare:The World as Stage”.

Now I have to admit that although I do like Shakespeare when I read (and can understand) his work, I generally don’t seek it out to read.  It reminds me too much of high school English class where I was forced to read volumes of Shakespeare.  I do own a three volume set of Shakespeare’s “Complete Works”, but I am a person who sometimes buys books because they smell nice and this was the case for these books.  It’s a lovely hardback set and smells old – I couldn’t resist buying the set.

Despite my general lack of devotedness to Shakespeare, I really enjoyed Bryson’s book.  Bryson is quite frank that the volume is thin because we really know very little about Shakespeare and he’s not going to make stuff up.  I was actually amazed at how little we know about Shakespeare and how much conjecture Bryson had to wade through about his life.  With ease and humor Bryson pieces together what is known, dispels as best he can myths and fairy tales and still leaves you feeling as if you know much more about Shakespeare than you did before you opened the book.

Having a background in anthropology and a special interest in linguistics, the best parts of the book were those where Bryson discussed Shakespeare’s profound influence on the English language.  I had no idea how many phrases and words Shakespeare either first documented or made up himself.  I use the phrase “One fell swoop” all the time, without ever having a thought to the fact that this is a phrase that I borrow from the Bard.

I highly recommend this book for anyone even slightly interested in Shakespeare or the English language. It was fun, enlightening, and best of all for me, short!

Dallas made us all sick…

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 2 Comments

Literally.  Dallas made me, Anna and Mike all sick.  Granted, I can’t blame the actual city of Dallas, but still, I have to blame someone.

I am finally beginning to recover from the two viruses we picked up on our trip to Dallas, and so can finally sum up our trip.

Anna did really well on the trip – I’m so proud of her, she missed multiple naps, never got regular meals, spent far too much time in the car seat and did really well sleeping in the play pen in the hotel room.  All this and she was working on getting her first top tooth.  She also did really well getting held and passed around by multiple people she had never seen before.  She was in constant demand by all of the relatives, and was always a good smiley girl.

She snuggled a lot with Mike’s Uncle Dave, who seemed to have a real soft spot for her:

Anna and Uncle Dave

Of course, wouldn’t you know it my camera battery died right after I took these pictures, so I have no pictures of Anna with Aunt Pat (Dave’s wife) and Aunts Evelyn, Barbara and Becky.  Don’t worry, they did plenty of holding her as well, but without my camera, you’ll just have to believe me.

After I got my battery recharged we spent some time with Mike’s dad and his sister Marylou.  Marylou and Anna played a little as well and did some quality snuggling:

Anna and Marylou

Mike’s dad did a little playing with her as well:

Anna and Grandpa Munhall

The most fun that we had while we were in Dallas was at the house of Mike’s friends Heidi and J.J., who have kids of their own.  There were plenty of toys there and it was babyproofed, a nice break from Mike’s parent’s house and our hotel room, which were not.  Anna and the kids even did a little wrestling – Anna won of course:

Anna with Heather and Graham

It was really good to get home and get back to our normal activities.  We got her straight into the bath and she seems happy to be home in this picture:

Anna after her bath

This was taken before she (and Mike and I) all got the cold and the stomach virus.  We didn’t take any pictures of that – be thankful!

She’s starting to feel better these days and so in a constant search for trying new foods that she can feed herself, I gave her a little hummus to try for lunch.  She seemed to like it:

Anna and hummus

We were even feeling well enough on Monday to head to the park with Rhiannon and Brendan.  Anna loves the swing:

Anna in the swing

And then yesterday we were feeling well enough to head downtown for lunch with Mike.  Anna charmed everyone around us at the Cheesecake Factory and then it was back to work:

Anna and Mike's desk

I think if she could tell us what she was thinking it would be something along the lines of, “Isn’t this child labor?”

Anyway, we survived Dallas, the two viruses we got while we were there and now Anna is working on getting lots of teeth.  There’s still not much sleep around here, but we’re home and that’s what counts…