My son, Life CEO

I am becoming that mom. You know which mom. That mom. The mom who acts cool and nonchalant (as long as he’s happy!) about her kid’s sports but spends the whole practice annoyed that he’s showboating and not listening to the teacher. The one that sort of nudges him not to play hockey like he wants, but gee, don’t you think you’d like soccer better? Because hockey is insanely expensive and time-consuming and would involve me spending a lot of time in a sunless, freezing ice rink while you get your teeth knocked out.

Not to mention my son does not have the killer instinct. He’s just so … nice. Last week at skating he spent an inordinate amount of time trying to buddy up to this kid who was, let’s put it diplomatically here, a total dipshit. He was bigger than Liam, with a stupid face and a piggy nose and he wasn’t all that nice to Liam. I’d never seen him before, certainly not in Liam’s class, but they and another little boy were playing with a hockey foosball game before practice and this kid kept trying to hog the controls and elbow Liam out. And Liam’s just not the sort of kid to stand his ground and elbow his way back in. It’s just not in his nature. Eventually I had to step in and remind “you guys” -by which I mean you, you little brat- to share. When it was time to go to class, the boy wouldnt go. Liam said to him, “Come on! Let’s go!” but the boy ignored Liam and just stood there, pretending not to listen. Liam asked him a couple more times and finally I said, “Liam, he’s not ready yet. You go on ahead and don’t worry about him.”

During class, the boy kept effing around with his stupid moony face, falling down and being a loser and proving to me that I have no business in any sort of career involving pediatrics, and Liam kept making a point of waiting up for him. Rather than keep up with the other students doing their drills, Liam would stop and slow down for this kid. At one point Liam actually offered his hand and helped the kid up off the ice, which he has never done before.

And the whole time I’m thinking, “Liam, let this deadweight GO.” And it dawned on me that I really am, deep down, that mom. I don’t really want him to be happy. I mean, I do, but what I really want is for him to be happy because he is a success. I want him to win. I want him to be first. I want him to be the best. And I don’t want some misplaced sense of camaraderie for a little shit he doesn’t even know, who isn’t even nice to him, to drag him down. I wonder how he’s going to fly with the eagles when he insists on hanging around with turkeys. I wonder what sort of group he’s going to fall in with at school, how that will ultimately affect his academic and career success. It’s not that I want him to become some sort of jerk. It’s just that I never want to see him suffer. I want him to be and have and do absolutely everything he has coming to him and I don’t want outside influences to hold him back from reaching his full potential. He may not be looking out for No. 1, but I’m his mother and I’m always looking out for him. Of course, I do acknowledge the selfish trickle-down, that if my children are a success, then it reflects well on me, although the correct thing to say is that I don’t care about that. But anyone who says they dont care about how their children reflect on them is a dirty liar. Otherwise you wouldn’t even bother to teach them decent manners and let them trash the grocery store and shout during church.

The reality check here is, of course, that he’s FOUR. And he’s not a loser. It’s entirely possible, nay, probable, that my son is a better human being than I am. That his happiness and success aren’t mine to define. That his gentleness and generosity of spirit could be an asset, rather than a hindrance. That in a society that is increasingly every man for himself, sink or swim, someone like Liam is even more special and even more needed. Someone who would help someone up, include someone who’s friendless, when there’s nothing in it for him, may very well be considered naive and may not achieve societal or financial success. But he’s already successful as a person.

Too bad they don’t test for that for kindergarten.

Ask and ye shall receive

In the six years we’ve lived in our house, there have been three families (or groups of people, since at times they don’t appear to make up any sort of discernible family unit) in the house behind us. I guess the house is a rental. When nobody lives there, the grass gets about 15 feet high and then I guess when the owners get a citation some dude comes over with a raggedyass lawnmower that hasn’t been serviced in 15 years to hack through the brush.

Once, there was a nice family living there. They had a little girl Liam’s age, a daughter in college and a friendly dog. They’d invite us over and we’d throw the kids over the fence in the summer so they could play. Then one day they were gone. Just … poof! We looked outside one evening and the lights were on in the house and there wasn’t a stick of furniture. They didn’t give any inkling that they were leaving and they didn’t say goodbye. We were sorry to see them go and wondered what to tell Liam, that his friend was suddenly gone. But we figured maybe they got foreclosed on or had to downsize and were embarrassed. So we could understand that there might be a reason for their leaving so quietly.

Then one day in the summer, the doorbell rang and it was the dad and the little girl. It turned out that they had bought a house a few doors down from the one they’d been living in. They could see our backyard from their backyard and the little girl wanted to see Liam and try out our new swingset. So it was nice to know they were still around. But the house behind us remained empty.

Until one day people moved in. And they were nasty. And they had an un-neutered male pit bull. Now I know what pit bull lovers say. They say, “Our pit bull is nice! Our pit bull would never hurt anyone! It depends on how you treat it!” And you know what I say to that? I say, “Bullshit.” That’s what I say. I say your pit bull is nice to you and then it jumps the fence and eats my kid’s face off and then it’s too late. It freaked me out having this dog behind us. Luckily, the owners didnt let it out much and rarely did they let it out without someone being out there with it. Frankly, I think they knew it was vicious. So whatever, at least they didn’t leave it chained to a tree to bark nonstop and eat small children.

This bunch of people, who we never saw all at once, also always left the blinds to their back door open and they had a gigantic TV that was always on. So if you looked out our back door, you could always watch TV. A couple of families before them had the same setup and also always left their blinds open and once one of the dudes was watching porn in the middle of the afternoon. So that was nice.

At any rate, two nights before Christmas, around midnight, we heard screaming. They were having a fight with the windows open. They woke up the whole house. We couldn’t even tell what the fight was about because pretty much they only words that we could hear was the woman hollering, “Aw hell naw!” and “muthafucka”. I have no idea why they chose to have an argument at midnight with the windows wide open while it was 20 degrees out, but they did a really nice job of making Lucas scream, and he continued to holler for hours after. I wanted to walk over to their house with him in my arms and just stand under their windows.

Eventually these weirdos got another dog. This one looked like a black lab on dachshund legs. They’d let it out with the pit bull and they’d run around. This morning while we’re trying to enjoy our Sunday coffee, we watched as the pit mounted the freaky mutt thing right there in front of God and all creation. It was so disgusting. I said to Adam, “I hate these fucking people. I hate looking out my back window and having to watch their dogs fuck and their TV shows. When are they ever going to leave? It makes me hate this whole place.”

I got dressed and went out to do errands. When I got back, three dudes were carrying furniture out the back door, loaded it up into a crappy white unmarked moving truck and drove away.

And that, my friends, is why this day has been awesome.

My grass is gonna get juiced.

So I’m listening to NPR the other night like any other God-fearing liberal, and this story comes on about how Scotts Miracle-Gro will be marketing the grass-seed mixes of major-league ballparks. That’s right. Come March, you can seed your lawn with the grass of your favorite ball team. You can have Fenway grass or PNC Park grass or even -barf- Wrigley grass. And you don’t just have to buy the grass of the team in your area. As long as the seed suits your climate zone, you can get it. So maybe Fenway grass won’t work in Florida, but it should be fine in say, Ohio.

So I’m thinkin’ we should go ahead and get Busch grass. Do they have a Mark McGwire blend? Because I want my yard to explode.

The Most Influential Book Of My Life, Hands Down.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me.  And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That’s all I do all day.  I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.” 

Sleep tight, Mr. Salinger.

More tales from the crypt

My back went out yesterday for the second time in three weeks. Everything was fine and I bent down to pick up a laundry basket and felt this awful, searing pinch in my lower back. I could barely straighten back up. I spent the whole evening in bed with a heating pad and I’m stuck in bed again today. I can’t bend over at all, so you can imagine how much fun it is doing things like “Needing Socks” or “Using The Restroom” or “Sitting”. I guess I”ll try to shuffle around the house today at intervals so things don’t stiffen up too much.

God, I’m going straight to hell in a handbasket, aren’t I? When you all come and peer in my casket (which at this rate should be sometime next week) and make comments like, “They did a really nice job on her makeup; I can’t see her age spot at all!” you’ll walk away thinking, “Criminy, that woman sure hit the wall.”

Time marches on. All over my face.

When I turned 30, I got an age spot on my cheek. It’s still there. My dermatologist says I’ll have to have it lasered if I want to get rid of it. So for nearly 4 years I’ve had this age spot and I switched to an SPF 90 facial sunscreen, thinking that I may have this stupid old lady brown mark in the middle of my cheek, but I will be ding-dang-dooed if I’m gonna get a wrinkle.

Yesterday I was putting on my makeup and noticed these teeny crinkly lines at the corners of my eyes that didn’t go away when I stopped smiling.

If I get a wattle before I’m 40, I’m jumping off a bridge.

I swear I don’t know where he gets this stuff

Liam likes to rhyme. Last year in his 3’s class, the kids learned about rhyming by thinking of words that rhymed with each other’s names. Liam was “Liam Biam”. Yes, I know “biam” isn’t a word. Anyway, all the kids thought their names rhymed with Biam. “What rhymes with Lexie? Lexie …” “Biam!”

Now Liam likes to come up with his own rhyming words, whether they are words or not. For instance, words that rhyme with “car” include tar, war and sar. Or fat, mat, wat. He just goes through the alphabet and adds the rhyming part at the end. So you can imagine my chagrin when we were at a restaurant last night and he says, “Let’s think of words that rhyme with corn! Corn … PORN!”

Crybaby McRoid

Man, I could say a few things about Mark McGwire. I shouldnt. I should just shut up, let it roll, continue with my regularly scheduled program. But that asshole makes me so mad. Of course he was on steroids. We all know this now. Nobody believed him when he lied to Congress (also a nice touch, by the way). But to come on TV a few weeks before spring training and fucking cry at Bob Costas, makes me want to punch him his the face. The part I loved best was how he said he’s been wanting to “come clean” since 2005. TWO THOUSAND FIVE. Not 1998. No guilt there. He was too busy defrauding the nation, shitting on Roger Maris’ grave and lapping up accolades and adoration to want to come out then.

Mark McGwire, you are a liar. And a cheater. And you have no conscience and no soul. When you say that coming out or shutting up about steroid use is a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation, it’s because of you. Nobody believes anything, because nobody knows what to believe. Because you’re a liar and a cheat. You destroy the integrity of the game that you profess to love. If you had a shred of decency you’d remain out of baseball forever. But you dont. You should be banned from baseball and banned from the Hall of Fame. Your accomplishments are for shit, because you didn’t accomplish them.

Shame on you Mark McGwire. And shame on the Cardinals for hiring you back.

Would you like fecal-borne illness with that?

A couple of weeks ago, Adam and I watched Food Inc. It was an interesting editorial-style documentary (by which I mean cleary the filmmakers have an opinion that is illustrated with facts, footage and interviews and not done in a straight-journalism, no-opinion way) that did give an eye-opening look into the health, environmental and societal impacts of America’s food production industry. The segment on exactly how much of our food is made with corn is crazy enough.

In one part, the movie showed how a company called Beef Products Inc. developed a way to presumably kill e.Coli and salmonella in ground beef by first running it through an ammonia bath. This completely grossed us out. The idea that your hamburger is safer because instead of eating bacteria and viruses you’re eating ammonia is preposterous. I reckon after bathing the meat in ammonia they rinse it off, since hamburger doesnt taste like ammonia. Or maybe it does. Maybe I dont know what real hamburger tastes like. It’s entirely possible you or I have only had ammonia burgers.

A week after we watched Food Inc. the New York Times ran an article about BPI and its practices, and it has been found that despite the ammonia baths, it’s still possible for e.Coli and salmonella to contaminate the meat. Not only that, but the USDA has not even been testing BPI products, which are, as the NYT article states, “fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil.”

So how much of your fatty pet food burger has been treated with ammonia, untested and possibly contaminated? Just about all of it.

According to its website, www.beefproducts.com, BPI is the “world’s leading manufacturer of lean ground beef” and that “BPI’s products are found in the majority of all ground beef produced in the United States. Current production of over 7 million pounds per week, makes BPI the world’s largest manufacturer of boneless lean beef in the world. Eating a hamburger from a Quick Service Restaurant or buying ground beef from your local retailer, the chances are you’ll be eating product produced by BPI.”

That’s right. The USDA has not been testing the world’s largest producer of ground beef.

This also means your standard grocery-store ground beef is also washed with ammonia and untested for e.Coli. You pretty much can’t escape. You’ll eat your dirty, poop-laden ammonia burger and you’ll like it.

Or will you? What’s a red-blooded American carnivore to do? Two words: Whole Foods. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Sandy, isn’t Whole Foods where obnoxious rich people and dirty hippies shop?” And my answer is, “Yes, yes it is.” To which you may reply, “But I forgot what I did with my Birkenstocks. And I haven’t gotten out my hackysack in years!” Fear not. They are legally obligated to allow you to shop, unless you are barefoot. And you can dig your Birkies out of your mom’s basement. They’re still just as comfy as they were in 1993. And now for your clincher argument, which believe me, I completely understand, “Whole Foods is expensive.” Yes, this is true.

Whole Foods is more expensive. But it’s only more expensive in the short-term. Consider the long-term costs not only of supporting BPI and lax USDA standards and testing, but of the future costs you or your children (yeah, you gave your kid that burger. They ate it at school. Guiltmuch?) will incur when you or they get cancer. Or Alzheimers. Or whatever the hell else a lifetime of eating ammonia or trace amounts of salmonella and e.Coli will give you down the road. We all pay for our cheap meat, believe me. We just unknowingly buy it on credit, with interest.

Besides, you know you’re not getting any younger. You know you’ve been thinking, back there in that dark, cobwebby recess of your mind that you ought to be cutting down on your red meat here and there. And you know you know fast food is poisonous. And I’m not proselytizing. I’m not. I eat this shit, same as you. And it tastes good. But what I am saying is that instead of eating a whole lot of crappy hamburger, eat a little bit of quality hamburger. You know the burger you make at home is a thousand times better than any greasyass burger from a restaurant. Pay the extra buck or two and A. have it taste better, B. have it be better for you and C. know you’re not lining the pockets of a company that thinks its OK to feed your kids ammonia and shit. Vote with your wallet. The more a grocery store sees you want untreated actual beef, the more likely they are to carry it and the more prices will drop. The more fast food chains see that you’re unwilling to treat your kids to McFattyMeatTrimmings, the more likely they are to find another beef vendor.

I havent been able to find a BPI client list. But I did get on the Whole Foods website, where “team member” Paige Brady states that Whole Foods does not purchase beef from Beef Products Inc. and they do not treat any of their meat with ammonia wash. So at least you know of one place you can get non-BPI ground beef and hamburgers. Maybe there are more.

Anyway, that’s it from me. Just a little food for thought. har har.

LINKS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html

http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php

http://www.beefproducts.com/about_bpi/index.cfm

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/forums/index.php?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3a8c8a349d-cbd8-4475-986c-2420c40686b5Forum%3ad88f70ec-1244-453c-8168-e304bf5c3114Discussion%3ac265f420-071d-4696-b7d5-f3f41095d327

Lego poop reports a HOAX!

Attention loyal readers! Yesterday I reported that a supposed Alert Reader confirmed the existence of excrement made out of Legos. Well, it is now my sad duty to report that his claims were a HOAX! A hoax, my friends, meant to trick us all into flooding the toy stores to fulfill our pipe dreams of one day owning our very own Lego poop. This man, who shall remain anonymous (unless you are my friend on Facebook, and then you know exactly who I’m talking about), will be known only as Lego Poop Boy. Clearly he is trying to score his own reality show, a la Punk’d. (This week’s theme: Let’s Make Sandy Think There’s Such A Thing As Lego Poop!)

This incident merely serves as a lesson about what passes for journalism in these days of blogs and bloggers. Where unnamed sources such as Lego Poop Boy can make assertions to any hack with a computer and a blog account such as myself and the next thing you know, its reported as gospel in the liberal media (Boo! Hiss! Liberals and their media!). Clearly my skills as an actual professional journalist have atrophied. I blame my children. If it weren’t for them, I wouldnt be jazzed about plastic  European fake shit in the first place. They’re also totally the reason I don’t spell check this thing or use correct punctuation. While of course I understand the usefulness and need for apostrophes, frankly, they just get in the way of my fast typing.

Anyway, there’s no such thing as Lego poop. I apologize for my unprofessional failure to check facts and instead believe my beloved, trusted friend of nearly 20 years, Lego Poop Boy. Let this be a lesson unto you! If you want facts, don’t get your news from a blog! Read a real newspaper! Except the Post-Dispatch. They dont have copy editors either.