Tag Archives: memes
Squash Seed Harvesting
This year I was only able to do an herb garden, but I’m already preparing for next year. A friend of mine turned me to a website with a plethora of gardening info. I happened upon a post about saving the seeds from tomatoes to plant, which I haven’t done because my only access to tomatoes until very recently were only store bought. Tomatoes from the store have been looking sad this year, so I’ll just order some heirloom seeds. That post intrigued me though and I looked on the blog about saving other seeds. Ta-Da! She had just such a post, so today I packed away the seeds of an acorn squash.
Store seeds carefully by placing envelopes inside large glass jars with a bag of silica or powdered milk. These products absorb excess moisture.
I made a seed envelope out of parchment paper and then added the powdered milk to a zip-lock bag and put the envelope in it. I might hunt around for my canning jars instead of the zip-lock bag, but that’s where it is for now.
That pumpkin that I have the envelop propped up against…that pumpkin is next on the seed harvesting list.
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They Say We Live in the Land of the Free…
This afternoon I checked my Google+ stream and found an article with an intriguing title, “40 Seattle cops arrest woman for sitting down, opening umbrella”. I don’t watch the news on TV so I don’t really know how the old main stream media has been covering #OccupySeattle but I’ve been following #OccupyWallStreet on Google+ since September 29th when I saw a friend living in Ireland post a link to, “A Massive Union Just Voted To Side With The Wall Street Protesters”. Prior to that, I don’t think I had even heard there was a protest at all. You would think that the “liberal media” would have been all over this, but they weren’t. Not at all.
I watched the mainstream news today. I waited for the latest development on this huge protest that is now also taking place in Europe. Pretty much crickets. Seriously. Ok they do cover the protest, but it’s so different from all the photos I’ve seen from local photographers on Google+ following the footsteps of Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange, and they didn’t mention the woman who was arrested for sitting with an open umbrella.
Our truly liberal local news, The Stranger, was apparently the first to announce that the Mayor had declared umbrellas with a person sitting under it was declared a structure, and structures are not allowed in the park. I’ve been to Westlake Park many times. I know I’ve seen people sitting with an open umbrella there before. It’s Seattle for christsake! Next Mayor McGinn will attack the official Seattle dress code and wearers of flannel shirts will be banned from the city. Hopefully they’ll still be welcomed in our sister sate, Oregon.
Here is the video of the arrest: Deborah gets arrested for sitting while holding an open umbrella
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Little Devil on the Move
Before Lukas was truly mobile, I thought I had caught a glimpse of him attempting to move in a butt-scooting fashion, and he may have in fact moved. That was back in the beginning of July. My July 3rd Facebook post was, “Really? Do we have another butt scooting baby?”
I went on a two-week trip to Alaska in mid-July. There it was quite clear he was more than content just sitting in one place. He wasn’t even curious enough about the new surroundings to pretend to explore. He just sat, playing with the same toy the entire visit.
Picture taken 8/2/2011. Lukas with Great-Grandma
At his nine-month baby wellness checkup Lukas still wasn’t really mobile. The most he would do is shift his weight a bit or reach for something and fall over. A day after posting about Lukas’ nine-month checkup he learned how to push himself backwards on his belly with his hands. The only problem with it is that he actually wanted to go forward and the more he pushed the angrier he would make himself.
Picture taken 9/7/2011.
Last week Lukas finally became truly mobile. He even moves in the direction he wants to go and he is SO happy about it. He is a butt scooter just like his sister was but he doesn’t move in stealth mode like she did. I have video of Sophia crawling to the kitchen to find me and except for her hand hitting the floor there is no sound from her. Lukas squeals and laughs with every move.
Picture taken 10/5/2011.
Playing with his sister's birthday present. He loves wheels.
Today while I was getting laundry out of the dryer Lukas scooted from the playroom to the kitchen. He found the bag of potatoes from the neighbor on the floor and started taste testing each one.
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The Wimpy Generation
Lenore at Free Range Kids posted a story in February of this year about a mom who let her fourteen-year-old son watch his three-year-old brother for thirty minutes and was ticketed.
I remember babysitting my younger cousin when I was twelve. She was three. She is still alive and kickin’. I’m just sayin’.
You know how when we were young our parents and grandparents would tell us all the crap they were doing by the time they were our age, whatever that age was at the time, and they made us out to be wimpy little complainers…
I’m wondering how wimpy is this next generation going to be and will it ever go back a few notches? Imagine the reverse of the stories we used to hear from our grandparents. Instead of bragging about everything they did and how hard it was for them growing up, they say, “Shit, we used to just sit on our asses and play videos games all day. We were completely useless. We didn’t even have chores. We were told it was too dangerous to come out of the bubble wrap room.” It seems weird and maybe even a little unnatural doesn’t it?
This is a picture of me as a toddler. This was back before toys were invented, so I played with dirt and styrofoam plates.
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55 Flash non-Fiction Friday: Food Safety
It was hard not to notice the jars and canisters filled with expired food. Reading the dates on some wasn’t necessary. Those labels haven’t been used in years.
“With all the food I’m surprised that there aren’t more bugs here.”
“The bugs ate the food and died.”
“Where are the bug carcasses?”
“See the dust?”
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The Dumbing Down of Food
I know there are more mainstream ideas for why the economy has collapsed such as the systematic deregulation of business which I believe started with the Reagan administration and was copied here and there in little bits and pieces by every administration that follow including democratic ones, but I have more to add to that. With the deregulation of business, I find there to be more regulation in daily life for the average citizen, and that I believe is the combination that has crashed the system.
There have been books and magazines published with helpful hints in household management for homemakers for quite some time, and those are great. The old ones are a rather scary glimpse into the history of the woman’s roll in life, but all that I’ve seen assume a certain amount of intelligence on the receiving end. That’s the part that seems to be missing in modern helpful hints and it’s making my ass twitch. I could give the overused example of warnings on the use of hairdryers in the shower, but I have a more subtle example.
On my trip to Alaska this summer I was introduced to horseradish mustard and the wonderfulness it adds to a sandwich. I also fell in love with the lunch meat we purchased there and so when I got home I began buying the same Private Selection Home Style Slow Roasted – Roast Beef from Fred Meyer. One horrifying day I opened the clear plastic container and saw that the label had print on the other side which was only visible while the package is open. I took off the label and read it…
Sandwich Ingredients:
Makes 1 sandwich
1 each Club or Kaiser roll (Hard roll)
5 to 6 slices Private Selection Roast Beef
2 slices Private Selection cheddar
1 T Balsamic Vinegar
1 Lettuce leaf
2 slices Tomato
Method:
1. Split the roll in half lengthwise. Drizzle the vinegar on both sides of the roll.
2. Lay the roast beef and cheese on the one side of the roll.
3. Add tomato and lettuce and top with the other side of the roll.
1. What United States American doesn’t know how to assemble a sandwich?
2. If someone doesn’t know what to do with thinly sliced roast beef what the fuck are they doing purchasing it?
3. Would anyone really buy a packaged food hoping that there are instructions for use in the inside?
If we play along and believe that food needs to be dumbed down for us all then I need to point out there was a distinct lack of pictures, and they did not specify that the vinegar needs to be drizzled on the sliced side of each piece of bread. It was also not stated that the 5 to 6 slices Private Selection Roast Beef, 2 slices Private Selection cheddar, 1 Lettuce leaf, and 2 slices Tomato go between the two sliced sides of the bread. Lastly, they have it all wrong because there is no mention of horse radish mustard. Seriously, that makes the sandwich.
I had a friend from China who told me a story about her first potluck where some food assembly was required. She said she had never had a sandwich before and thought there was a specific way to assemble this meal so she was looking to her friends for help and instruction. Her story I completely understand, and now that she’s been in the US for a while she sees the humor in thinking that there was one way to assemble a sandwich. These instructions for a roast beef sandwich make me sad.
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Wordless Wednesday: Zombie Apocalypse Preparation
The Banning of Birthday Fun
My daughter had her fourth birthday a couple weeks ago and there were of course balloons, as there were for her third and second birthdays. We had them filled with helium, and there are still some of those balloons lingering in the house in various states of deflation.
Last week my husband took one and inhaled the helium to show her how it makes his voice sound funny, but the one he picked must not have had enough of the gas left in it. It changed his voice, but not by much. Days later Sophia poked a hole in one of the balloons. I don’t know if she was trying to suck the air out or not, but later I saw her try to blow it back up again. She spent all day with that deflated balloon and no harm came to her or her ten month old brother who also got a hold of it at some point.
Watching her try so hard to blow it up it made me feel bad that I’ve never bought her a bag of balloons to just play with, and now seeing that Europe has put a ban on balloons for kids under eight I think it’s imperative that I buy some for her. Right now she doesn’t know how to shape her mouth so that she can blow. She had a hard time blowing out her candles. She tends to make a straight horizontal line with her mouth and the air she blows either comes out the sides or under her top teeth (blowing downward). Maybe a bag of balloons will help. I just need to let her know that her baby brother should not play with the deflated balloons, because he is a baby after all.
This is a picture from Sophia's third birthday (hence the three). In this photo she is actually blowing on the candle, but clearly not forming her mouth correctly to do so.
I learned of the news link from Lenore of “Free Range Kids”.
*** Update 10/13/2011 ***
Is the EU going to ban children from blowing up balloons?
Although the claims made by the Telegraph doesn’t misrepresent the content of the EU safety directive, it does appear to exaggerate its case. The EU cannot in fact ‘ban’ the products mentioned, but merely require that warnings are carried on the packaging. Moreover, these are not ‘new’ requirements as the paper implies, and in fact have been in effect for over two decades.
Similar rules also exist in the US.
On Fisher-Price.com there is an article that answers the question, “Are Balloons Dangerous?” Their answer is yes, however in their answer they also have this…
According to the National SAFE KIDS Campaign, each year over 100,000 children under age 4 are treated in hospital emergency rooms for toy-related injuries, and 17 children die. Approximately one-third of the deaths result from choking; and one-third of the choking deaths result from latex balloons.
Now, lets do some math. Ignore the 100,000 injuries because that is from all toys. Let’s focus on the deaths, 17. 1/3 of the 17 deaths are from choking. 1/3 of the 1/3 of 17 deaths are from choking on latex balloons. 17 divided by 3 is 5.6, that’s the number of choking deaths. 5.6 divided by 3 is 1.8. 1.8 is the number of kids out of 17 toy-related deaths in a year. Two kids. Total. In the entire United States. Right now in 2011 there are about twenty five and a half million children ages five and under.
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The Road to My Sainthood
Twelve years ago Kurt spent a lot of time making up spreadsheets of various desired car attributes. He had narrowed it down to two cars that were virtually equal in every way. The one deciding factor at that point was the color, but because color is an emotional decision, the brain of the engineer began to spew smoke. He put the brakes on and held out for four months.
We purchased a new car on Saturday and receive it Sunday. We’ve sort of been in the market for a new one for a while now, but because of Thing One and Thing Two it added more data to consider in the spreadsheets.
Two years, that’s how long it takes an engineer to eliminate all the cars I never considered options in the first place and finally settle on the one that I originally wanted. Waiting so long in itself is performing three miracles, never mind that he forced me to try out a minivan, took my picture in one, and then posted it on Facebook. Bastard. I hate minivans. I know some people love them and that’s fantastic. I’m not one of those people.
You may grant me my sainthood for patients now. Thank you.
