...with cookies that is.
My 21 month and almost 4 year old daughters had a blast creating in the kitchen.
We began with vanilla wafer cookies, which we decorated with half cream cheese frosting, and half strawberry frosting, then marshmallow pieces atop.
These we nuked in the microwave for a few seconds until they got slightly gooey and then dashed sprinkles on top while still warm to adhere to the goo.
Decadent.
... Like a beer in a martini glass.
Yesterday for lunch, the kids and I shared a Brie cheese wheel, sliced up on crackers, accompanied by apple slices.
Their milk, in crystal goblets.
Very continental.
Today, we had fried chicken.
Their milk cuppies snug in their NASCAR cozies.
The wife and I open the door with the little jingly bell on it, hop over the raised doorway lip (truely wicked) and stroll into the local boozeria.
She is quickly dazzled by naughty labeled wines and lost to the brightly neon corner of the shop to giggle.
I press on, to the furthest darkest back corner.
Man-country, where they keep the whiskeys and bourbon.
Old Charter is a new addition for this shop. (I've read it's part of the Buffalo Trace Distillery, Lexington, KY.)
They have a puzzling variety of vintage; 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 8 year, 10 year and 12 year.
Not to be overcome with indecision, I grasp the 12 year (90 proof) and emerge back to the fluorescent light of the cash register.
On the way, I do the wife a favor and grab a big ol' tear-drop bottle of Rain vodka. Lovely container, organic contents.
The kind of vodka that doesn't need to hide behind flavorings, mixers, or additives.
The wife won't buy it for herself, because it makes her feel guilty to buy anything but Popov.
On the other hand, I have every incentive to buy her good vodka because well...
The old man behind the counter is restocking the hip/boot size bottles and doesn't notice my arrival.
I clear my throat.
Nothing.
I set the bottles down again, jingling them together a bit. Clink, clink, nothing.
Right about here, lizard-brain is telling me to just side-step back on out through the door to the car with my prizes.
The wife walks up.
Just then, old man turns around and jumps with a start, "Will that be all then?"
Yeah, she was wearing one of her boobie shirts.
Old man's still got the radar.
Wife looks at the receipt in the car, "Did you really need the 12 year?"
"Well yeah. I've never had Old Charter before."
"So?" she says
"Here's the thing, if I started off by trying the younger stuff, each bottle would have been cheaper, true, but might have been more expensive overall."
"Huh?" she says.
"Look, if I try the one year, and it sucks, I would think, well, maybe the three year would be better, so then I buy that, and if it sucks, I might think, well maybe the five year is better and so on, until I end up buying the twelve year old anyway. So, this way, I start off with the twelve year old. If it sucks, I don't need to try any of the others because this is as good as it's going to get. If I do like it, I can always downgrade until I find the one that's too young, then go back up just one notch from then on."
"You way over-analyze your booze, but thanks for the vodka."
"Anytime. Anytime."
Just after Christmas, when the visiting in-law grandparents were safely stuffed back on an airplane, my 3 3/4 year old decided she wanted to learn to read.
It has been an explosion of knowledge.
I am not keeping track of a word list that she can recognize or spell yet, as I'm not sure day to day how much of it is sticking in long-term memory, but it would be impressive.
Our favored method is to use an email client to compose a message (in super huge font)
one word on one line at a time.
This past week, she expressed an interest (i.e. "NO, I want to do it!") in typing the words herself.
So, she's also learning the letter location of the QWERTY system as well.
She's been copying some of her favorite sections of Doctor Seuss books in this fashion.
Now she's hitting up educational game websites to master their spelling games.
She long ago became bored with the content on noggin.com and nickjr.com having explored every link on their sites.
She is more competent with the use of the mouse and navigating via browser bookmarks than my parents are.
Her latest expansion is math fractions games.
She was on a spelling game when I left the room to go make us nachos.
I came back and bam, she's doing math.
My wife's response, "Are you going to save anything at all for her teachers when she starts school?"
I'd write a child development book on how it all happened, but dude, I don't think it's me.
We haven't pushed either of our kids, but simply provided resources for them when they expressed an interest themselves in exploring a given topic.
Now the 21 month old, I'll just be glad when she's finished potty-training (about 90% there now.)
She's also learning her alphabet, animals and sounds they make with a ringed flipcard set.
She started potty training (felt like early) because she wanted to keep up with big sister.
Now she looks like she wants to do the same thing with playing on the PC and reading her own book words.
It's daunting, this whole parenting young kids thing, but I think I might not have screwed up too bad.
I think they'll both be ready for school on time, likely way ahead of peer grade-level.
I am anticipating feeling incredibly relieved at that hand-off of learning to the teacher and at the same time weirded out, considering that at this pace they should surpass my own knowledge of most topics somewhere around middle-school age.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I will cop to having purchased a pack of domestic macro brew this week.
The aforementioned beer was in fact Michelob Amber Bock (Anheuser-Busch product).
I have had it before, a long time ago at a university far, far away.
It was in my exploratory phase. I tried one of everything I could get past my liver.
There being so many options in the wide world of suds, and it being widely available, I just never circled back.
Standing in the beer aisle there were always other options that I'd never tried before that called to me instead of something that I'd had before. And I figured it'd always be there if I needed it. Afterall, it seems every store carries the majors and their sub-imprint labels. The benefits of a massive distribution logistical empire and marketing machine.
And you know, Michelob Amber Bock is not bad. It is actually quite a good beer. Roasted, caramelized malts with Bavarian hops, rich and smooth.
Here's why I generally avoid macro produced beers:
I harbor a streak of beer snobbery combined with conspiracy theory.
Even though the macro producers are now serving up alternatives to the ubiquitous light American lager (Coors, Bud, Miller), I simply don't trust them to continue doing so if the little guys weren't there taking market share.
It's not that I think the big brewers have inferior product. They produce a reliable product on mass scale efficiently and at low cost.
They are very good at what they do best, mass-produce to the lowest common denominator and marketing blitz.
My problem with them is that I find their motives for producing alternative craft styles suspect.
They didn't offer anything other than a lightweight lager style until the small craft guys challenged their domination and proved that their was a market for the alternative styles.
If the beer consuming public begins to choose the Macro alternative versions now instead of staying loyal to the innovators that revived the craft styles, then the small guys will dry up and blow away.
This would leave the market in the hands of the big macro producing giants again, and they might just as easily cease production of anything other than their light rice-beers again, having regained the market share and seeing no point in continuing to produce expensive smaller niche alternatives to their main brand recipe.
There shareholders might well demand that they do so, to drive expenses out of the business.
This is a concern because unlike most of the smaller houses they are all publicly traded entities and are beholden to shareholder interest.
Note: Sam Adams Boston Beer Company is publicly traded and yet is defending the high cost basis of their quality ingredients and broad lineup as integral to their product and brand. For the purposes of this conspiracy theory and snobbery, I'll classify them as a craft brew house, not a macro brew.
So, I try to buy the small craft brews as a way to keep the market for choice open and to force all the players to provide more than one style of beer.
However, my selection at the local grocer here is alas, limited and I'd tried everything else multiple times. So, I gave in and grabbed an Amber Bock sixer.
I will only regret my decision if I hear that one of the three local micros is going out of business because I didn't purchase their product instead.
This is a dedication to all the fuck-ups out there.
The bravest of you acknowledge who you are.
As for me; I like to know how I'm doing.
One measure of that is to compare myself to others to see how I stack up.
To make it reasonable, I should sample from those with similar characteristics.
Factors could be a combination of age, region of residence, life/work experience, occupation, education level, relationship-status, or income.
It would be unfair of me to use Warren Buffet as my yardstick.
He didn't grow up where I did.
He is in a different field.
He is older with much more experience.
He is in a different life-stage, relationship-status than I am.
His children are grown.
Compared to him, I am very, very far behind.
Therefore, I exclude Warren Buffet (and Jimmy Buffett for that matter) from my comparison.
However, there is an individual I know of that I can use, within a year of my age (older) , that had a similar socio-economic background, same hometown, same education level (up to a point of his choosing), same degree (up to a point), same field, same talents as myself.
We walked the same halls in the same shoes at the same time.
I feel that he is suitable yardstick for myself. As many of the same environmental factors acted on both of us.
I had lost touch with him, and was made aware of him through a mutual acquaintance.
When I have a bad day, when I doubt myself, when I am discouraged; I think of him.
He is a fuck-up.
While I hold on to hope that he will change and not squander his potential, it does bring me some sick sort of comfort.
I know how my choices have worked out for me. Through his posts, I know how his have worked out for him.
And that, selfish as it is, brings me comfort; and things just aren't so bad as they might otherwise seem in a vacuum.
So, here is a toast, to all the fuck-ups.
Heartfelt thank you for the service and peace of mind your travails bring to the rest of us by comparison.
I deeply value my personal dip(shit)-stick yardstick and am now better for having made your acquaintance.
I hope you close the gap soon (and that I am not the one closing the gap to you.)
Viva Dino McFly!
Wife was out of town last week on business.
Back for the weekend.
Then left again yesterday for a full week of business.
I went shopping for my usual moping food to see me to the other side,
but found my desire straying from the usual frozen pizza selection.
Fried chicken.
Bacon.
Fried chimichanga frozen burritos.
Chips.
Cookies.
Cigars.
Domestic macro brew (more on that later.)
OK, and one token frozen pizza.
Things that I don't buy when she's around to scold me.
And that is how I know that she's a positive influence.
My wife; the anti-vice.
Our 21 month old daughter had a cold with runny nose, which seemed to morph into a sinus infection which we feared had become an ear infection after she began wailing and pulling at her ears.
Then I tried this remedy, since it was New Year's and the doctors offices were closed and we were in a pickle.
Did I mention that youngest was wailing? Yes, she's got a pair of lungs on her, no problem in that regard mind you.
So, I mixed up a non-iodized saline solution (with Epsom salt to boot for good measure) warmed it up, dissolved it, and found a modified use for the mandatory toddler nose-bulb de-snotter. Instead of pulling mucous out, I shot the saline solution up her nostril.
She protested; mightily.
Then, she coughed, and the world's largest snot-ball came flying out of her mouth.
She's was fine and spunky within seconds.
No more screaming.
Same cannot be said for my wife, who was holding her at the time, when she noticed where said snot-ball had landed.
But what's the cost of a good shirt compared with bringing relief to your youngster?
Particularly since it wasn't MY good shirt.
"But the day, after today, I will stop... and I will start."
-Violent Femmes "Add It Up"
