Dad's turn

Gabe - almost 5

1. What is something dad always says to you?

"I love you."

2. What makes dad happy?

"play soccer with me"

3. What makes dad sad?

"when I don't obey him"

4. How does your dad make you laugh?

"tickle me."

5. What was your dad like as a child?

"I don't know"

6. How old is your dad?

"I don't know"

7. How tall is your dad?

"50 feet tall"

8. What is his favorite thing to do?

"play with me"

9. What does your dad do when you're not around?

"shoot guns"

10. If your dad becomes famous, what will it be for?

"winning the Piston cup" (too much Cars movie??)

11. What is your dad really good at?

"shooting guns"

12. What is your dad not very good at?

"playing soccer--I always win"

13. What does your dad do for a job?

"he makes sure people aren't cheating"

14.What is your dad's favorite food?

"Macaroni and cheese"

15. What makes you proud of your dad?

"Making my lunch" (not sure he knows what proud means)

16. If your dad were a cartoon character, who would he be?

"Curious George" (same as mommy!)

17. What do you and your dad do together?

"play soccer, go to the gun range and go pow, pow, pow"

18. How are you and your dad the same?

"we each have two eyes. and one nose. and one mouth and one heart and two legs and we both like the Cardinals"

19. How are you and your dad different?

"Daddy doesn't have a Cardinals shirt, becept (except) I do"

20. How do you know your dad loves you?

"Because he takes me to school." (once)

21. What does your dad like most about your mom?

"teasing each other"

22. Where is your dad's favorite place to go?

"gun range"(true that)

Interview with Gabe

Just a few fun questions:

Gabe - almost 5

1. What is something mom always says to you?

"I love you."

2. What makes mom happy?

"cuddling with you"

3. What makes mom sad?

"when I don't obey you"

4. How does your mom make you laugh?

"When you tickle me."

5. What was your mom like as a child?

"I don't really know"

6. How old is your mom?

"I don't know"

7. How tall is your mom?

"15 tall" (??)

8. What is her favorite thing to do?

"play baseball with me"

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?

"playing with Reese"

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?

"winning a race" (???)

11. What is your mom really good at?

"baseball"

12. What is your mom not very good at?

"racing" (I thought I was going to be famous for winning a race???)

13. What does your mom do for a job?

"work at home."

14.What is your mom's favorite food?

"sandwich" (um, NO! ---oops, he can read the word NO.)

15. What makes you proud of your mom?

"You playing baseball with me." (can you tell this kid's a baseball freak?)

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?

"Curious George" (I guess I'm mischievous?)

17. What do you and your mom do together?

"most of the time, read books"

18. How are you and your mom the same?

"we each have two eyes. and one nose. and one mouth"

19. How are you and your mom different?

"I don't have a breast, and you have a breast" (just one? I'm nursing the baby, so I think that's why he answered this way.)

20. How do you know your mom loves you?

"Because we cuddle a lot."

21. What does your mom like most about your dad?

"cuddle with him"

22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?

"Cracker Barrel"

So much for sushi

I've gotten Brooke to expand her gastronomical horizon in recent months and have successfully gotten her to incorporate sushi into her regular dining repertoire. At first it was baby steps, just something simple like the California roll -- certainly nothing raw. Slowly, though, she's begun to open her mind and will now eat the fresh tuna or salmon, but still can't bear the thought of the masago. Admittedly, after years of using salmon eggs as trout bait, it's a tough one for me to swallow as well, but my tastes mature.

To our delight, a new sushi/oriental restaurant opened just a few blocks from our house about three months ago. We hadn't tried it -- it looked like the all-too-familiar strip center "Golden Dragon" or "Hong Kong Chef" where the house special is takeout sweet and sour pork -- until I read a review in the weekly free paper that told of the chef's elite west coast experience. So we tried it. The food was really good. The lack of English skills by the staff proved difficult at times, but ultimately we thought it added to the authenticity of the place. The kids liked the sesame chicken, while we really thought the sushi was marvelous. We were even treated to a "baby geiko" on the house. It instantly became a favorite, although we still had to order it "sans masago." Another benefit of this place, besides its location and great food and value, was that it was nearly empty. And anyone with kids our age knows what a great benefit this is -- no worry of bothering other diners. This would prove shortsighted in the end.

We returned several times, each time trying something new along with a favorite. I suppose we saw the handwriting on the wall. The empty or near empty tables at 7 on Saturday. The sudden lack of straws. The equally sudden reappearance of straws that I think came from Subway.

We felt bad. I wanted these guys to succeed. We told friends about the place. Here we have people taking risks, coming to America, working hard. This was the American dream. If our own population would get off their duff and work this hard at something besides getting food stamps, our economy wouldn't be in decline. But, alas, it was not to be. We loaded up the SUV last Saturday and made our way to (very literally) "our sushi place". Locked. Tables gone. Gabe, who had only moments earlier when told where we were going commented on how they have the "very best chicken," broke down and lost it, as he is well known to do when something familiar in his world disappears. We settled for Mexican and it just wasn't the same.

Tea Party

I took the family to the local Tea Party at the steps of state capitol today. Early estimates put the crowd at over 5,000.

Some observations:

• This was a family-friendly protest. My kids were safe among these tax-paying, God-clinging, law-abiding citizens. There were also probably a lot of Glocks being clung to in the crowd. I didn't have to worry about filthy language or obscene T-shirts. Contrast this with any R-rated anti-Bush rally. A nice older lady in the crowd gave the kids each a small flag to wave.


• This was a grass roots effort. Professional politicians were not welcomed here, at least to speak.


• There was unanimity of purpose. These people were of one mind. There were no anti-abortion or pro-gun signs. This was about out of control government spending.


• This was an anti-Government rally, not anti-government. People here want the Constitution back in government. Apparently, this puts you on a government watch list these days.

Some of my favorite signs: "Don't spread my wealth, spread my work ethic." "Obamanomics is trickle up poverty" "Don't tax me Bro" or "My piggy bank is not your ATM." I also like the people who painted "DEBTOR" across their children's faces. Point well made. Best comment overheard yelled at the rally: "When's the governor gonna speak?!"

Omnivore's Dilemma book review

This book is about the modern industrial food system. The government long ago decided that cheap food was a political winner. Except with the farmers. Enter the government subsidies to corn farmers. This begets a lot of cheap corn. Despite the subsidy, the corn farmer still struggles because of low corn prices. To make up for it, he plants more corn. And prices go even lower as a result. So he plants more corn. This all leads to a bunch of corn. At the same time, scientists have discovered that you can do a lot of things with that corn if you take it apart and chemically process it - sweetners, plastics, fuel. It's in everything too, at least at the grocery store. If we are what we eat, then we're corn.

Alas, we've still got mountains of the stuff. Here's an idea, let's feed it to our cattle. Never mind that the cow isn't designed to eat the stuff. But they'll eat if they have to, plus it makes them big really quick. Aha! cheap corn begets cheap beef!

Do you know where your hamburger comes from? Most likely from a feedlot. Let the corn feast begin. Here's the ramifications of that. Unlike any other time in history, beef is now affordable to the masses. I guess that's generally a good thing, except for the increase in obesity and heart disease that we've seen as a direct result. But back to the feedlot. Here the cattle is kept in compact feeding lots with millions of other cattle, feasting on vast amounts of corn (as well as beef and other animal parts) and living ankle deep in their own waste. These confined feedlots are literally breeding ground for pestilence and disease. Another problem: cattle don't naturally eat grains, they eat grass. In fact, eating corn makes them sick. To combat both of these problems, we feed them large quantities of antibiotics. When they finally get their date at the slaughterhouse, they've got months of excrement caked on their bodies from the feedlot pits full of disease. Try as they might to get it off, some of it still gets through to our meat, along with the pathogens, most notably E. Coli. And yet another problem ensues. We've taken healthy cows off of healthy, disease-free farms to a cattle gotham and force prophylactic antibiotics on them in massive quantities and then wonder why all the sudden antibiotic-resistance pathogens keep creeping up.

Do you know what's on that Chicken McNugget? It's called TBHQ, or tertiary butylhydroquinone and it's to "help preserve freshness." The problem is that ingesting a single gram of the stuff can cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse. Ingesting five grams can kill. My kids are no longer allowed Chicken McNuggets.

Do you know where that incredible, edible egg comes from? The poor egg laying hen perhaps gets perhaps the shortest straw of all the agricultural animals. Given life for these hens consists of living in a cozy cage the size of four normal pieces of paper with a half dozen of her mates,

every natural instinct of this hen is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral "vices" that can include cannibalizing her cage mates and rubbing her breasts against the wire mesh until it is completely bald and bleeding...the 10% or so of the hens that can't endure it and simply die is built into the cost of production. And when the output of the survivors begins to ebb, the hens will be "force-molted"-- starved of food and water and light for several days in order to stimulate a final bout of egg laying before their life's work is done.

Prior to WWII, our farms were multi focused. We grew corn and beans and chickens and tomatoes and pork and milk. The cycle was complete. But for efficiency's sake (a la Adam Smith's division of labor) we abandoned this model and went for a single product farm - most likely corn. The cycle was broken. No longer did the pastured beef and pigs and chickens fertilize the crops. We had to bring in chemical fertilizer to do the job. This of course has larger geopolitical and environmental ramifications itself.

Regardless, we're now a nation of people much like those feedlot cows. We're happily eating an unnatural diet that is making us sick. We're blithely eating whatever the figurative feedlots put in front of us. At least until you read this book. Recommended.

Toothbrushes

The kids each got a new toothbrush in their stockings at Christmas. They are the kind that play a little music while the kids brush. One got a red and orange Lion King toothbrush and the other got a yellow one that plays a "If you're happy and you know it, brush your teeth" diddy. I don't even remember who got which one. But apparently, for whatever reason, the red one has become the popular one. They both wanted to use it everyday. We tried taking turns but it was hard to remember who had it last, and asking them was extremely unreliable (they each have a memory biased in their own favor.)

Enter the easiest solution: the luck of the draw. At night time, I started holding both toothbrushes behind my back, and letting them pick a hand. At first, if they didn't get the red one, a fit ensued. Admiringly, both have learned to be happy, even if they get the yellow one. A quick look of dread is quickly replaced by a "Yea!", even if we all know it's insincere. We've since altered the process slightly, because we couldn't remember who picked first last time. Now we flip a coin to decide who gets to pick the hand behind the back. Gabe runs and finds a quarter every time.

Now we're just waiting for them to be repulsed by the idea of sharing toothbrushes or for the next set of toothbrushes to be identical.