Today I volunteered to work at the snack bar at the baseball field where my children play. I will get to show off my math skills. Or not.
One of the mothers who was there said something that I have been mulling over all afternoon. When I showed up at the snackbar she said, “You know, it is always the same people are here. The same parents who volunteer.” I looked around and realized that she was right. I see the same parents over and over again, many I know by name, almost all I know well enough to wave and say, “Hello.” However, they represent probably one-fourth of all the children who participate in the sport.
And then there are a handful of parents who do everything. A handful who coach, volunteer their time and efforts, who lead the league. I am not among that handful, my husband is but I am not. I have too many children involved in too many things for both of us to devote that amount of time and energy. But I feel guilty about it.
Today, showing off my stellar math skills and handing out bottles of gatorade, I felt like I was contributing.
I know I have written before how much I love the weird news stories. When I was a child we used to listen to the weird stories in a radio segment that would come on during the weekends. The bank robber who wrote the note on his personalized stationary; the would-be robber who tried to break in by going down the chimney; the man who disguised his face by wrapping it duct tape… OUCH!
This morning I was checking email when I saw this news item pop up.
A woman who sneaked into a man’s apartment and lived in his closet undetected for over a year.
Could you imagine? The man became suspicious when food was disappearing from his refrigerator and set up a security camera hoping to catch the thief. He had no idea the thief was living in his closet, however.
Makes me want to go check out the back of my closets a little bit better.
The price of food has skyrocketed this past year. I think I read a statistic recently that overall food prices are up 30% So what do you do if your budget is already being strained? How do you decide which foods you should go organic with and which you can just buy the least expensive. One interesting fact, nutritionally speaking, non-organic foods are just as nutritious for you as their organic counterparts.
In an article at Forecast Earth,
According to the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) a research and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., peaches are the “dirtiest” fruit around, with the highest likelihood of containing pesticide residue of the 44 conventionally grown (in other words, non-organic) fruits and vegetables they reviewed.
Wow, peaches? Really? Followed by apples, strawberries, cherries, grapes, and pears. For vegetables: bell peppers, celery, and lettuce. All of these contained high levels of numerous pesticides.
I buy all of these items routinely. Not always organic… in fact I would be hard pressed to remember the last time I bought organic grapes. Lettuce I always buy organic. Green peppers… never. Not sure there is any rhyme or reason to my shopping, just the items that are readily available and affordable.
This morning I was enjoying my cup of coffee and watching the Today show on television. There was a segment that came on with a couple that has “invented” a placebo for children. They have packaged sugar pills into a container that resembles medication. On purpose. So that parents can give it to their children as a “medicine” when they are complaining about fake illnesses or minor real ones.
As expected, this is very controversial and touches many of the hot points in parenting.
We have all had children who pretend they are sick to get out of something or who go through a phase of chronic hypochondria. But do we want to give them a pill to placate them? Or do we want to get to the root of the problem? Are they seeking some extra attention? Do we lie to our children?
My concern is that we have become a pill popping society and I don’t want my children to think that a single pill can fix whatever ails them. Maybe I am being overly dramatic, but I think this sets the children up on a path that can lead to drug and alcohol abuse. Don’t feel good? Find a pill.
I realize that there have been numerous studies done which suggest that sugar pills are just as effective as real drugs. I don’t dispute that fact. I am sure that there are legitimate uses for sugar pills. I just don’t think my medicine cabinet is the place.
What do you think?
An 11 yr old boy from Nebraska won the National Geographic Bee earlier this week. The winning question: Cochabamba is the third-largest conurbation in what country?
Um, yeah. I won’t even pretend that I know the answer to that question. Or what the question means.
Want to see how you stack up? National Geographic has questions from the GeoBee Challenge online. Every day ten questions are posted from the actual bee. Go on and quiz yourself. And if you are like me, be humbled.
The other day I saw my daughter sitting at the table with her markers. She told me that she was making a book.
In case you can’t read it clearly, the page says: BEARS, RACCOONS, MICE, RATS, BULLS, BUMBLEBEES. Complete with thumbnail drawings. I suppose to help you recognize these things, though all the drawings look oddly similar.
What you never noticed the striking resemblance between a bear and a bumblebee? I especially love the horn on the bull, which really looks like an antenna.
And what could the title of this book possibly be?
ANIMALS YOU SHOULD NOT TOUCH
Sounds like pretty good advice to me.
Would you believe I took this photo at the baseball field?
Like my own reward from God for enduring baseball, specifically the endless games that are Little League.
Next week is chock-full of dentist appointments for my children. I am not sure why I do this. When I make the appointments it always seems like a good idea to group them together. However, when the time comes to go to the appointments I want to shoot myself in the foot. As much as I love the children’s dentist I don’t want to spend three consecutive days in their office waiting room.
This is also a crazy month because some of our activities are still going on, coming to an end, but still going on nevertheless. And on top of that some of the Spring/Summer activities have already begun. Every single day for the next two weeks we have multiple activities in the afternoons and evenings. Then appointments in the mornings.
It’s times like this that I wish I had one of those Star Trek things that could teleport me anywhere. Or barring that, that gas still cost $1 a gallon.
If you should need me in the next week, I’ll be driving around in my car. Wave if you see me.
People carrying around water bottles everywhere they go has got to be one of the most annoying things I have seen. I don’t mean people engaged in athletic pursuits, like hiking, or biking, or even going on long walks. I mean people who are running into their local Target with a bottle of water. Is shopping going to dehydrate them that much?
I also hear people talking all the time about getting their eight glasses of water in every day. On an average day I am not sure I have ever taken in that much water. And I have always felt guilty about it. In an article at CNN, Food Network dietitian Ellie Krieger said:
“The general guideline is to pay attention to your thirst,” Krieger said. “Your thirst is actually a good guide of how well hydrated you are and if you drink according to your thirst, you will stay hydrated.”
She also had more good news: Liquids other than water count.
Well, that is good news for those of us who don’t want to carry hip flasks of water everywhere we go. Or for those of us who like to drink things other than water also.
My newly turned nine year old has been bugging me to be allowed to mow the front lawn for a couple of years now. Until this year he really wasn’t tall enough or strong enough to maneuver the lawn mower. And definitely not old enough to make the nice, straight, criss-cross lines that please his father so. I think he believes the neat rows give the impression that the people who live in the house care about their home, in spite of what the multitude of brightly colored plastic toys strewn across the front yard might suggest.
Our unspoken rule of thumb regarding being ready for chores is that you know your child is old enough to do the chore when they no longer want to do it. This is why a 2 yr old wants to sweep the kitchen floor with every fiber of his being, a 5 yr old wants to wash dishes, and a 12 yr old will disappear into the bathroom for an hour after dinner hoping that some one else has done the chores before he comes out.
Last weekend we finally acquiesced and allowed him to mow the front lawn all by himself. I watched while he was doing it to make sure that he didn’t do anything completly crazy like run over the toys and wiffle balls in the yard. And when he was done had to admit that he did a great job.
He ran over to me afterward with a huge grin on his face.
“So, was it everything you hoped that it would be?” I asked.
“Yes! It was great! I Loved it!” he yelled.
My 13 year old son, former mower of the front lawn, laughed, “I used to love it too.”
