The Difference Between Splits and Spit is an "L"

I want to be able to do the splits, but I don't have the patience to stretch daily.


There's something about the lack of immediate results that greatly affects my ability to push through a tedious task. Trust me, I know it's a personality flaw.

Silas recently started learning to spit. At first I was thrilled, because we were brushing our teeth and he was trying to imitate me; a great next step for him in his own personal care.

Then he realized that this wonderful trick could be applied to everything he put in his mouth. Now he was chomping onto toys and spitting them out. Now he was taking big sips of water and spraying it on the floor, nearly choking on his laughter.

I know that I have to be patient. It will take many explanations that we spit in the sink while brushing, but not on the floor while drinking. There will be messes. I get Silas to help clean up his messes in an attempt to gently rebuke him (but the kid really likes blotting up spills with paper towel so I'm worried this might encourage him).

Just like the splits, I know I have to work with Silas every day as he learns to navigate the basic activities we take for granted (brushing our teeth, using the toilet, putting on clothes). All of these have a vague starting point and a defined ending point, but the steps in between are brutally slow going and the day to day changes are essentially non existent. Only when I stop to think back to a few months ago do I realize how far Silas has come in any of his skills.

I am not a particularly patient person - I am all about the destination rather than the journey - but hopefully teaching Silas will help me to change my viewpoint. And maybe one day, I'll look back to a time when I thought I was incapable of doing the splits.

Maybe.

I wish I were making this up!

In the past two weeks, I've seen so many people run red lights that I'm starting to suspect I'm part of a mass hallucination whenever I "see" a red traffic light. Clearly, the light must be green and all the other people who are stopped with me are also hallucinating. It is obvious that these bold, innovative drivers have unlocked the secret of faster travel - through the strength of their own will, they are finding ways to shave precious minutes off of their drive time.

The first time it happened, I watched as a car turned left in front of oncoming traffic, treating the red light as more of a suggestion. I blinked several times, expecting to hear some sort of ugly crash noise. There was none. This driver had successfully played the traffic light and won, to a prize of moving through the intersection two minutes faster than me.

The second time it happened, I watched in lesser amounts of awe as three cars took lefts despite the left turn arrow turning to red a few seconds ago. I suppose I wasn't as shocked for this one because the left turn arrow had been green and sometimes I will play with the yellow arrow to make a left turn. The sheer number of cars going through an obvious red instead of dashing through the yellow is what still punctuated this event as "terrifying," especially since it wasn't like they had been stuck at the light for several cycles.

It happened a third time. The driver simply decided there was no reason to stop and continued straight through the intersection. As I said, it is this sort of bold driving that will continue to get the fine people of my city to their destinations faster, most of the time. Probably. Until they eventually, maybe get a ticket or get in an accident.

I have also seen more than a handful of right turns in the face of "no turn on red" signs. More common, yes, but still frustrating. Plus, I'm never sure whether I'm dealing with drivers who are just terribly unaware of their surroundings or drivers who assume the rules are for other people to deal with.

In the meantime, you'll recognize me as the "person not leaving her house until all of this dumb driving sorts itself out." (And also as the "person who is really surprised I haven't seen an accident yet.") I thought about walking everywhere, but I'm sure avoiding turn signals and not taking the time to look for pedestrians are two more ways that these drivers are saving themselves precious time.

Things I Hate - The Shopping Edition

I hate grocery shopping. I like the part where I get home and can make food for my family. I don't like the part where I have to sift through countless amounts of BS buzzwords and comparative math. Here are a few of my least favorite things that come up in the grocery store:

1. Anything that is " 'something' - style."

The moment, nay - the millisecond your brain perceives this two-word phrase, drop whatever you are holding. For what you have in your hand is not what you think! Certainly, it will be similar to the product you are hoping to buy, but in a sinister way.

Let me draw my example from Greek yogurt. I have slowly been branching out to try different brands (also known as different brands from the one I normally buy have been on sale) and what I came across was a "Mueller" brand yogurt that had the little corner compartment with fruit. They were on sale for a dollar each, so I grabbed a few that looked tasty.

When I got home, I noticed my grievous, horrible mistake. I hadn't paid a full dollar for actual Greek yogurt. I had paid extra for "Greek-style" yogurt. You might be asking what's the difference. The difference is, instead of straining the yogurt to achieve the thick and creamy texture, this brand has simply realized it is much cheaper to add some gelatin and corn starch. There is also a dash of whey protein to up the protein content of the yogurt, but at 9 grams per container, it does not come close to other brands.

I should have looked closer; I shouldn't have been pulled in by the price and by the blaring "Greek Corner" label that very much wanted me to assume I was obtaining Greek yogurt with my money. But my point is, I shouldn't have to take a minute to verify that the product I'm trying to buy is actually what it says it is. And, I understand that legally, the product is exactly what it says it is. But it is also BS, so I will not be buying the Mueller Greek Corner yogurts again.

Also, they don't taste that good.

2. Chocolatey Whatever.

Admittedly, this isn't too much of a problem for me anymore, since I've moved away from certain brands of granola bars and cereals. But it still scratches me the wrong way, so let's look into it.

Actually, there's not much to look into. Companies use "chocolatey" to get you thinking about chocolate while they conveniently don't include any sort of actual chocolate in the product. Quaker oats bars are guilty of this. You might wonder how they can afford to dip their granola bars in chocolate and keep the prices somewhat low! Well, wonder no more. They simply dip their granola bars in "chocolatey whatever" and it's kind of like chocolate except it's not. Again, saving money while staying in the legal confines of convincing people that they're getting something they're not.

Come to think about it, Quaker also appears to own the fake Greek yogurt brand mentioned above. I used to trust them. Now I just assume that whatever they claim to be selling is not what I can expect to buy.

3. Ice Cream

Well, I was going to go on a rant about the annoying trends in ice cream, namely, shrinking the container sizes while charging the same or higher prices.

But then I decided I'd rather talk about Publix brand ice cream.

Look, I moved over a thousand miles away from my family to live with my husband down here in Florida. It is some small compensation that Publix brand ice cream is actually the best ice cream I have ever had in my life.

You know how you buy the store brand when you want ice cream and the name brand isn't on sale? That's how I ended up with my first container of Publix brand ice cream. (Which, might I add, is still a half gallon and not endlessly expensive!) Imagine my surprise when a month or so later, a name brand went on sale, I bought it, and subsequently realized that Publix brand was better. Bam. That's it. I'm a believer.

Publix does all sorts of flavors and styles. I stick to the regular style - no splenda or low fat or whatever they do - and I love it. Also, they make great seasonal stuff. When we had roommates, our fridge always had several containers of Publix ice cream.

So no, it doesn't completely dull the achy homesickness I occasionally (often) feel when I think about how my parents are literally at least seventeen hours away from me even in the direst of emergencies. (And my siblings who are off at school are even further north from me!) But it is like an extra tasty consolation prize.

Apparently I'm on "Rantmode"

Almost before my first trimester was over, I had scoured the internet and bookstores for information on pregnancy. I like to know what information is out there and I like to read a lot of it to see all the different perspectives. One "piece of advice" that came up time and time again was to "remember you're not eating for TWO! You only need about 300 extra calories a day!" This advice always came, without fail, with an example of what these three hundred extra calories would look like: "that's the equivalent of a small bagel - WITHOUT cream cheese!" or "that's only a small apple and a piece of whole-wheat toast - NO BUTTER".

 Maybe it's something about the way that this advice always felt so criticizing, as if pregnant women were so stupid that they needed to be told in the most basic terms that food, surprise, has calories.

I'm not saying that we, as a human population, don't have problems with estimating portion sizes and the amount of calories in a meal or snack. I am saying that the way to teach someone about portion sizes is not to wait until they are at their most emotionally vulnerable (aka being pregnant and hormonal and probably seeing numbers on their scale that they don't want to) and then start shouting about how many calories are in that bagel they ate for lunch.  And don't forget to use all-caps when you assure this hypothetical pregnant woman that this calorie count is WITHOUT cream cheese. God help you if you added cream cheese to that bagel.

I don't know. At first I thought it just bothered me because it felt criticizing. I tried to rationalize it. I thought to myself, well, maybe a lot of women see being pregnant as a time when they really can eat anything and maybe we need to address that somehow.

But, no. Not like that.

While it is important to know that pregnancy doesn't require more than 200-400ish extra calories (depending on the individual person and the pregnancy), there's no reason we need to be so critical. I would argue that 90% of the reason that most women feel like they can eat anything while they're pregnant is because being pregnant is the only time in their entire lives that they feel like they don't have to be hyperaware of what they are eating and it is the only time in their lives that they feel like they can just enjoy what they eat.

As women, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we eat, and how much of it we should eat, and how much society will hate us if we eat the wrong amount of the "wrong" stuff. Aren't there always studies coming out about the high percentage of teenaged girls who say they need to lose weight and who say they have dieted within the last few months? Isn't it obvious that we are messing up girl's minds?

So then we have a problem. On the one hand, we need to fix society somehow and work towards having a healthy relationship with food. In the meantime, what do we do with this condescending eating advice for pregnant women?

This is the part where, if I were a smarter person, I would lay out a solution. I don't really have a solution.

Healthy eating (and living) starts with a simple concept - eat less and move more. Be mindful of what you eat and make an effort to move around during the day. And then it gets complicated by foods that taste really good but have a ridiculous amount of calories and by social norms and by entire industries (beauty, food, diet, etc) that might not have our best interests at heart. It gets complicated by the fact that each person will respond a little bit differently to the information they hear.



I do feel that if we could start with a healthier relationship with food, pregnancy might not be viewed as the only time that a person can "cheat" on their life-long diet.

With that in mind, I'd love to hear your opinion on whether or not I'm overreacting! Smiley says I might be reading just a bit too much into everything. I'm always game to hear what other people think!

A short HGTV rant - granite

Well, this is it folks. Now, don't get me wrong. I know that trends in housing decor and such change as the years go by; one only need look to the (in my mind) terrible, terrible practice of black and white kitchen tile from decades now long past for an example.

Stepping back for a moment, in fact, I know it's safe to say that pretty much everything goes through trends everywhere, constantly. It's why the "emo" kids of my high school years are becoming replaced by "hipsters" and in a few years, some other "unlikeable" group will come along next.

But this isn't about that; this is strictly about housing trends that I have noticed from watching copious amount of HGTV.

Once upon a time (about, let's see - 3 years at the most), granite counter tops were IT. They were what sold the kitchen to annoying buyers who would say things like "Oh, all of those appliances will need to be replaced" simply because the appliances were black instead of stainless steel. The buyer would then say, "But since I'll save so much money not having to upgrade the  counter tops to granite,  I think I can manage."

Decorating shows would give hints and tips for how to obtain your granite counter tops for less; use granite tiles with no grout line! Negotiate on scrap granite!

And then as granite has saturated the upper end market and been brought to the mid grade market through tile and scrap, a new call has emerged from those who can afford it all. Now it is simply not enough to have the granite. Now it must be an elite granite.

On HGTV I have seen design shows ding the homeowners for using "builder grade" granite. (I guess that's now considered the McDonald's burger meat of the design world?) Now buyers will come in and lament about how the counter tops they see are all granite. They want something different.  They want the previous owners to guess exactly what color granite they like best and use that.

I guess maybe I'm just slow on the uptake. I never had a chance to obtain coveted granite counters and with my complete lack of internet fame for the next year and a half, I will certainly never have enough money to get granite. Probably by the time I do, it will be some new, ridiculously expensive material. And people will look at my sad, pitiful kitchen and comment about how the appliances don't match and that the counter tops are so 2010. And it will hurt.

I have more HGTV rants and you'll probably hear them... or have heard them... (for example, do stainless steel appliances really cook better? I feel like the majority of people who HAVE to have stainless steel probably don't even cook all that often) but that's all for now.