Big congrats to Mya and Jo Beaufoix for entering the competitionette. I loved both your entries. I realize that most people couldn’t cope with competing as well as registering the news that I am signing off from blogging for a while. I should know by now – one thing that requires mental attention per blog post; that’s all we bloggers can cope with.
Now, back to my Reasons to be cheerful: Part III. It goes
Hammersmith Palee, the Bolshoi Ballee,
Dijon mustard, Freddy’s Frozen Custard.
See. You’d never have guessed that, would you?
Dijon mustard is easily available here, and obviously that is a reason to be cheerful (and let’s face it, not much else rhymes with ‘custard’). I don’t need to tell you much else about Dijon mustard. But when it comes to Freddy’s Frozen Custard, well, I could blog on for hours.
“Frozen Custard” says the notice on the wall “is a frequently misunderstood product”. Now, dear Bloggy Friend, lest you be one of the many who misunderstand frozen custard, let me tell you more. According to the notice, it is like ice cream, but the recipe uses more eggs, and a time-tested process that closely replicates the hand-churning method of old. This forces air out of the mixture, minimising the formation of ice crystals. Just in case you aren’t jumping round the room with sheer cheerfulness, let me point out the significance. “This combination prevents the product from melting too quickly and allows it to be served at a higher temperature than ice cream.” Still haven’t quite got it? Do you remember how, when you were a child, you used to mix your ice cream in the bowl round and round and round, as quickly as possible, to soften it to a lovely semi-runny semi-solid consistency? Frozen custard is just that temperature and consistency, but creamier, and you don’t even get told off by your parents for making a racket with your spoon. What it means is that this is the perfect product for people who like ice cream but who have sensitive teeth. Like me. You don’t have to eat it half a teaspoon at a time, holding it carefully on your tongue in the very middle of your mouth, till your body temperature has warmed it up enough to risk allowing it past your touchy back molars. And it's very creamy. Very very creamy.
You can have frozen custard either as a sundae with a choice of toppings, or as a concrete – which means that the toppings are whizzed in, somewhat like a McFlurry (although truly, I hesitate to use that word in the same blog post as frozen custard, as the two could only be compared by the deeply unimaginative). So, you might hear a customer order “a large vanilla concrete with marshmallows and rainbow sprinkles”. It sounds like a Mafia threat, I think. My favourite order is “the Signature Turtle” – both for taste and for obscurity of title (although once you’ve had one or two, you do begin to see a small resemblance to a turtle, and the pecan nuts round the edge look a bit turtley too). Of course the portions are huge, so that even a mini concrete would be enough to point a small wall with, but experience shows there’s just no future in expecting reasonable size servings here in the US. You can’t blame Freddy’s for that.
Frozen custard is a frequently misunderstood, but totally delicious, product. It wouldn’t, however, have the same charm if it wasn’t Freddy’s. When you go to Freddy’s, you feel his presence. The décor and ambiance are nothing special, but on the walls and on each table are black and white photos of Freddy, his lovely wife Norma (sic), and their four children. Each time you go, you can sit by another little window into his life. Or if you have a blog to write, you can wander round, looking at the pictures and reading the captions, intruding rudely into the personal space of families and friends sharing intimate moments over a frozen custard. There are photos of Freddy and the family at Christmas, the children sitting by the tree in patterned sweaters, their hair smartly brushed. There are photos of Freddy and the family visiting his brother in California, standing self-consciously on the beach in waist-high swimming trunks and squinting at the camera. There are photos of Freddy as a young man, in uniform, and as an older man, visiting a veteran’s memorial in the Pacific. There are photos of Freddy on a tractor. Freddy spent most of his life as a farmer, but was always interested in frozen custard, and over the years, refined and perfected his recipe. He opened his first outlet in 2004, and celebrated his 77th birthday by opening his second soon after. There are now several across four states. What could epitomize the American dream more neatly than Freddy’s life? He served his country in wartime, spent most of his life running his farm with his wife and four children at his side, dreaming dreams of the perfect frozen dessert, and in his retirement, became an entrepreneur and melted his frozen dreams into reality. He must have a bit of help – a burgeoning army of marketing people and corporate executives. I imagine he keeps them all in line. He graduated in 1949 from Wichita University with a degree in Accountancy (there’s a photo), and I’m sure has a good head for business. I’m told that Freddy often visits his outlets, so I hope I might bump into him one day. I’ll buy him a Signature Turtle.
You must watch out for Freddy’s Frozen Custards in Britain – it can only be a matter of time before they arrive. Or you can go to the website, click on ‘Franchise’, and put in an application to open your own one. If Freddy, in his mid-70s, found the energy to launch the chain, what's your excuse for not opening a local one?
Well now, nearly time for me to go off on my blogging break. I’d just like to remind you of two things I said in my last post. First, it’s intended to be a break, not a complete departure, and I am planning to be back at some point. I’ve set up that clever RSS feed thingy so you can sign up to know when I’m writing again (actually, it's so clever, that it had set itself up already by default – amazing). Second, I’m still going to be around reading your blogs and commenting.
Thank you all for your kind comments, and for being such wonderful Bloggy Friends. I’m sure you know how much I’ve enjoyed and valued, and needed, the fun of being part of it all over the past 6 months.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Taking a break
I’m going to be taking a break from blogging. It goes something like this.
The usual complaint: life getting in the way. This is a good sign, though. It means that my life is busy, and that I don’t have so much time to sit and write about it. I no longer have to go to Wal-Mart to make sure that I have had at least one face-to-face adult conversation with someone who isn’t my husband in the course of the day. The week. You think I’m joking. I tell you, it was bad when I first arrived here. So the fact that I have things to do, people to talk to, balls to juggle, visitors for Christmas, is good news. Yay! (as I've learnt to say...)
I haven’t yet empirically tested the theory that my house would be tidier and cleaner if I didn’t blog, but I don’t need to. I know it is not true. However, there is a parallel theory that I think is worth testing. It says that if I didn’t blog, I might go to the gym or the pool or even just walk around the neighborhood (having changed into my sports gear and put my walkman on, to blend in a little) and be a bit fitter. It’s a theory worth testing. There’s that blog post I haven’t quite dared write yet about the American way of life and the big O. When you’re not walking briskly about in the course of your day, it does take its toll, and that gym really needs to see more of me. Obesity, by the way, if you were wondering. I’m not there yet, but something called middle age spread is doing a 360 degree job where my waist used to be, and I’m not ready to admit defeat yet. ('Middle age spread' sounds like something you buy in a jar and put on your toast, doesn’t it? If only…)
So there’s life, and then there’s children. 6-yo has said, on more than one occasion, “you tell us not to get addicted to video games, but you’re addicted to the computer”. He has a point. I mumble stuff about “important jobs”, but then there’s 10-yo who says “what, your blog you mean?” Now, before you leap to my defence and tell me not to be bullied by my children, let me thank you for your support, and tell you that I’m not, but of course they are a large part of this thing called “real life” which intrudes upon blog-writing and blog-reading time. I imagined fondly that when 3-yo started preschool, I would have 3 mornings a week to myself. What I couldn’t have foreseen (it’s really not fair being a parent, is it?) is that going out to preschool would make her more needy of proper time with me when at home. She used to potter independently and happily, but now she seems to need much more in the way of entertainment, and insists on my company, even for watching television. I don’t really mind, as being needed, though demanding, keeps your maternal mind away from such horrors as no longer being needed. The whole process of gaining time for yourself has a bittersweetness to it, I’ve always found (it's really, really not fair being a parent). For months, nay years, you have a small person attached to your breast, hip or lower leg, and dream of the day when you might nip out somewhere spontaneously without finding shoes, thinking up creative ways of making the car seat an attractive prospect, and fast forwarding through endless nursery rhymes in order to find the favourite of the day, which you do just as you arrive at your destination. Then those times come, and you’re not quite sure what to do with them. It probably takes a bit of practice. Sorry, I digress. What I was trying to tell you was that, yes, I do have three 2-hour blocks of time to myself that I didn’t used to have, but for the rest of the week, I have a small person who is deeply jealous of the computer. She worked out a long time ago that she could interrupt a blogging session by putting her shoulder against the side of our wheelie office chair, and pushing me sideways away from the desk. She has now perfected the manoeuvre, and rotates the chair through 180 degrees, so I end up a few feet to the side and facing the room with my back to the desk.
So there’s life, there’s children, and on a happy note, there’s this. I love cruising round the blogosphere, and catching up on what everyone is doing in Scotland, France, London, deepest Africa, Northumberland, other bits of the States, and everywhere else where people who know how to write darn good blogs live. I realize, however, that as the weeks have rolled by, I no longer feel quite the same urgency to do so. I’m not falling out of love with you all, honest, it’s just a sign that I like my own four walls rather more, and am not so desperate to escape them any little spare moment of the day. This is all positive stuff. Do I sniff the words “feeling more settled” in the autumn breeze? (sorry, I love that word too much to exchange it for the prosaic “fall” which to me has a glum feel to it, even if you open up that vowel to make it “fahl”). We arrived in the Midwest on December 4th last year (Iota Day, put it in your diary, send me a cheery email), and I feel that perhaps now is a good time to start looking at my life here through a different lens. It’s time, I think, for it to become not wrong, not different, just ordinary life.
Life, children, happier at home (though still reserving the right for the occasional vent), and – bear with me - one more thing. I’m just wondering, just just wondering, if perhaps, instead of regaling you with blog-sized chunks of my life, I might just keep them all together, and just see if I can write a book. Perhaps just maybe. Just. Dorothy Jones’ Diary (ooh, now there’s a big clue as to my location). I wasn’t going to confess that, but I feel I’m among friends…
I need to write one more blog post. This is partly because I must set up some clever RSS feed or something, so that you can sign up, and then when I run screaming back to the computer in few weeks’ time, unable to face a life without blogging, and begging forgiveness humbly on my knees, you will be notified and can come by to leave a comment saying “what? you think you can just walk away and then expect us to take you back?” (Actually, I'm probably going to carry on reading and commenting, and just give up the writing; I can't see the full cold turkey approach lasting.)
The other reason is that I ploughed my way through Reasons to be cheerful: Parts I and II, in order that I could get to Reasons to be cheerful: Part III, so it would be a darn shame to miss the opportunity. You remember that mad but marvelous song, by Ian Dury and the Blockheads? I’ve always found the reasons to be cheerful/count your blessings approach to life rather a good one, and I’ve relied on it much over the past year. In fact, our decision to come to the Midwest was nudged along in its early days by a 'reasons to be cheerful' moment that saw me sitting on a grass verge, holding 2-yo tighter to my chest than any 2 year old has ever been held before, looking at the wreck that was the car we’d been in, watching the trees swaying in the wind, and thinking “there are worse things than moving to the Midwest”.
But back to Ian Dury. I thought I’d run another wee competitionette while I’m incommunicado on vacation in San Diego (mmm, lovely). I was going to ask you to guess my forthcoming reasons to be cheerful, but it’s very obscure and you’d have no chance unless you lived in the Midwest, and life has enough disappointments for us all without me deliberately setting you up to endure another one, good losers though you are. So instead I’ll ask you all to think up your own reasons to be cheerful, two of them, which rhyme and scan, and if you were Ian Dury, would have made it into the song. You’ll find it easily enough on Youtube and Lyricsmania.com if you need to be reminded of lines such as my favourite which goes:
Hammersmith Palee, the Bolshoi Ballee...
You get the idea. So tell me your reasons to be cheerful. Indulge me for one more post.
The usual complaint: life getting in the way. This is a good sign, though. It means that my life is busy, and that I don’t have so much time to sit and write about it. I no longer have to go to Wal-Mart to make sure that I have had at least one face-to-face adult conversation with someone who isn’t my husband in the course of the day. The week. You think I’m joking. I tell you, it was bad when I first arrived here. So the fact that I have things to do, people to talk to, balls to juggle, visitors for Christmas, is good news. Yay! (as I've learnt to say...)
I haven’t yet empirically tested the theory that my house would be tidier and cleaner if I didn’t blog, but I don’t need to. I know it is not true. However, there is a parallel theory that I think is worth testing. It says that if I didn’t blog, I might go to the gym or the pool or even just walk around the neighborhood (having changed into my sports gear and put my walkman on, to blend in a little) and be a bit fitter. It’s a theory worth testing. There’s that blog post I haven’t quite dared write yet about the American way of life and the big O. When you’re not walking briskly about in the course of your day, it does take its toll, and that gym really needs to see more of me. Obesity, by the way, if you were wondering. I’m not there yet, but something called middle age spread is doing a 360 degree job where my waist used to be, and I’m not ready to admit defeat yet. ('Middle age spread' sounds like something you buy in a jar and put on your toast, doesn’t it? If only…)
So there’s life, and then there’s children. 6-yo has said, on more than one occasion, “you tell us not to get addicted to video games, but you’re addicted to the computer”. He has a point. I mumble stuff about “important jobs”, but then there’s 10-yo who says “what, your blog you mean?” Now, before you leap to my defence and tell me not to be bullied by my children, let me thank you for your support, and tell you that I’m not, but of course they are a large part of this thing called “real life” which intrudes upon blog-writing and blog-reading time. I imagined fondly that when 3-yo started preschool, I would have 3 mornings a week to myself. What I couldn’t have foreseen (it’s really not fair being a parent, is it?) is that going out to preschool would make her more needy of proper time with me when at home. She used to potter independently and happily, but now she seems to need much more in the way of entertainment, and insists on my company, even for watching television. I don’t really mind, as being needed, though demanding, keeps your maternal mind away from such horrors as no longer being needed. The whole process of gaining time for yourself has a bittersweetness to it, I’ve always found (it's really, really not fair being a parent). For months, nay years, you have a small person attached to your breast, hip or lower leg, and dream of the day when you might nip out somewhere spontaneously without finding shoes, thinking up creative ways of making the car seat an attractive prospect, and fast forwarding through endless nursery rhymes in order to find the favourite of the day, which you do just as you arrive at your destination. Then those times come, and you’re not quite sure what to do with them. It probably takes a bit of practice. Sorry, I digress. What I was trying to tell you was that, yes, I do have three 2-hour blocks of time to myself that I didn’t used to have, but for the rest of the week, I have a small person who is deeply jealous of the computer. She worked out a long time ago that she could interrupt a blogging session by putting her shoulder against the side of our wheelie office chair, and pushing me sideways away from the desk. She has now perfected the manoeuvre, and rotates the chair through 180 degrees, so I end up a few feet to the side and facing the room with my back to the desk.
So there’s life, there’s children, and on a happy note, there’s this. I love cruising round the blogosphere, and catching up on what everyone is doing in Scotland, France, London, deepest Africa, Northumberland, other bits of the States, and everywhere else where people who know how to write darn good blogs live. I realize, however, that as the weeks have rolled by, I no longer feel quite the same urgency to do so. I’m not falling out of love with you all, honest, it’s just a sign that I like my own four walls rather more, and am not so desperate to escape them any little spare moment of the day. This is all positive stuff. Do I sniff the words “feeling more settled” in the autumn breeze? (sorry, I love that word too much to exchange it for the prosaic “fall” which to me has a glum feel to it, even if you open up that vowel to make it “fahl”). We arrived in the Midwest on December 4th last year (Iota Day, put it in your diary, send me a cheery email), and I feel that perhaps now is a good time to start looking at my life here through a different lens. It’s time, I think, for it to become not wrong, not different, just ordinary life.
Life, children, happier at home (though still reserving the right for the occasional vent), and – bear with me - one more thing. I’m just wondering, just just wondering, if perhaps, instead of regaling you with blog-sized chunks of my life, I might just keep them all together, and just see if I can write a book. Perhaps just maybe. Just. Dorothy Jones’ Diary (ooh, now there’s a big clue as to my location). I wasn’t going to confess that, but I feel I’m among friends…
I need to write one more blog post. This is partly because I must set up some clever RSS feed or something, so that you can sign up, and then when I run screaming back to the computer in few weeks’ time, unable to face a life without blogging, and begging forgiveness humbly on my knees, you will be notified and can come by to leave a comment saying “what? you think you can just walk away and then expect us to take you back?” (Actually, I'm probably going to carry on reading and commenting, and just give up the writing; I can't see the full cold turkey approach lasting.)
The other reason is that I ploughed my way through Reasons to be cheerful: Parts I and II, in order that I could get to Reasons to be cheerful: Part III, so it would be a darn shame to miss the opportunity. You remember that mad but marvelous song, by Ian Dury and the Blockheads? I’ve always found the reasons to be cheerful/count your blessings approach to life rather a good one, and I’ve relied on it much over the past year. In fact, our decision to come to the Midwest was nudged along in its early days by a 'reasons to be cheerful' moment that saw me sitting on a grass verge, holding 2-yo tighter to my chest than any 2 year old has ever been held before, looking at the wreck that was the car we’d been in, watching the trees swaying in the wind, and thinking “there are worse things than moving to the Midwest”.
But back to Ian Dury. I thought I’d run another wee competitionette while I’m incommunicado on vacation in San Diego (mmm, lovely). I was going to ask you to guess my forthcoming reasons to be cheerful, but it’s very obscure and you’d have no chance unless you lived in the Midwest, and life has enough disappointments for us all without me deliberately setting you up to endure another one, good losers though you are. So instead I’ll ask you all to think up your own reasons to be cheerful, two of them, which rhyme and scan, and if you were Ian Dury, would have made it into the song. You’ll find it easily enough on Youtube and Lyricsmania.com if you need to be reminded of lines such as my favourite which goes:
Hammersmith Palee, the Bolshoi Ballee...
You get the idea. So tell me your reasons to be cheerful. Indulge me for one more post.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
A convoluted puzzle
Now you know how I enjoy a brain-teaser when I'm out shopping. Well, I spotted another one yesterday. I was in Wal-Mart, and as I walked past the bedding section, I read the following sign above one of the aisles:
bed pillows
foam pillows
feather pillows
convoluted pillows.
Intriguing. Convoluted pillows. I like my sleep time to be simple and straightforward. The last thing I would want is a convoluted pillow giving me convoluted dreams.
The amazing thing is that not only do enough people want to buy convoluted pillows that it is worth Wal-Mart's while to stock them, but that so many people want to buy them that they merit a listing on the aisle sign.
Picture me this Saturday morning, propped up on my convoluted pillows, sipping my aseptic drink, and exclaiming "good jahb" at intervals. Do you think I'd pass for a local?
bed pillows
foam pillows
feather pillows
convoluted pillows.
Intriguing. Convoluted pillows. I like my sleep time to be simple and straightforward. The last thing I would want is a convoluted pillow giving me convoluted dreams.
The amazing thing is that not only do enough people want to buy convoluted pillows that it is worth Wal-Mart's while to stock them, but that so many people want to buy them that they merit a listing on the aisle sign.
Picture me this Saturday morning, propped up on my convoluted pillows, sipping my aseptic drink, and exclaiming "good jahb" at intervals. Do you think I'd pass for a local?
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Hallowe’en – a festival of two pies
It seems to me that Hallowe’en is something of a medley. It’s a mixture of the ghoulish and the twee, anything orange or black is at liberty to make an entrance, and something a bit reminiscent of harvest festival has got involved too. I’m not quite sure what you are wishing someone when you say “Happy Hallowe’en”, but it’s a rather jolly sort of thing, I’m sure. The Americans have done a better job of forgetting the darker side of the origins than we have.
Centre stage is the Pumpkin. The Pumpkin (as well as being a splendid word made up of a most appealing selection of consonants) provides an excuse to visit the pumpkin patch. The pumpkin patch is a small field, with a very very much larger field attached, full of a large number of children’s activities. There are a couple of mazes, a fort made out of hay bales, a tricycle track, water pumps set up to race plastic ducks down lengths of guttering, tractor and trailer rides, and various agriculturally-themed pieces of play equipment. I thoroughly enjoyed the pumpkin patch. I went twice: one visit with preschool, and one week-end visit with the family. You get to pick your pumpkin, and I had fondly anticipated this would involve a sharp knife and a living demonstration to my 21st century city-dwelling children that fruit grows on a vine (ha! I bet you thought the pumpkin was a vegetable). Actually, it involved a trip to the small field in an orange trailer pulled by an orange tractor, where the pumpkins had been laid out on the bare ground. We got to pick our pumpkins as in “pick out” or “select”, not as in “pluck from the vine”.
I do feel that there should be some story about the pumpkin patch. There should be some character, like the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny, or Santa. Hallowe’en needs a character and a story. How about this? Peter Pimply Pumpkin, the wicked pumpkin elf who cuts off the toes of children who don’t go to bed early. His brother Jack Jolly Pumpkin was a good elf, who fought Peter and banished him from the land, making it safe for children to dangle their feet over the side of the bed once more. That is why children make jack o’lanterns, to remind them of the importance of going to bed when their parents tell them. You should all tell this story, so that in a few years’ time it has become a Hallowe’en legend. I’ll tell you why. If you don’t, the character who is hovering in the wings, ready to become a Hallowe’en character is Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. Orange and black, you see. I can’t tell you the number of gratuitous Tiggers I saw last week – they’re everywhere. So come on. Start passing on the legend of Peter Pimply Pumpkin, or Tigger will win the day, and bouncing around vacuously will become the message of the Hallowe’en season. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The best thing about the pumpkin patch by far was the pumpkin cannon. It was a dollar a shot, but worth every cent. I have no idea quite what the contraption was, but once charged, it could fire a pumpkin into the sky, to the height of two electricity pylons one on top of the other (there was a handy pylon just by, and I visualized another one on the top of it). That is a very great height for a pumpkin, and when it speeds down, it hits the ground with a very satisfying “thud” and splatters in all directions. I can’t explain why any thinking adult would derive pleasure from this procedure, but I tell you, if it had been free instead of a dollar a shot, I’d have been there all week-end.
As an aside here, I should tell you, dear Bloggy Friends, that, knowing your attention to detail and desire for accuracy, I had a discussion with Husband in which we tried to estimate the height reached by the pumpkins. My usual method of estimating height, ie imagining men 6’ tall standing on each other’s shoulders, wasn’t up to the job, but I wasn’t persuaded by Husband’s either. He uses a cricket wicket (22 yards) as his standard, and although he maintained that he could easily imagine a stack of vertical cricket wickets stretching up into the air, I wasn’t convinced. I decided that “the height of two electricity pylons” would have to do. The really big ones, by the way.
The other great tradition of Hallowe’en is, of course, trick or treating. For this your children need costumes. For at least two weeks before Hallowe’en, people ask you “have you got your costumes yet?” in the way that from December 1st onwards, you are asked “are you all organized for Christmas yet?” My children were becostumed as follows: 3-yo was a butterfly (pink top and pink tights with pink swimming costume over both, wings, home-made antennae, much prancing about), 6-yo was Spiderman in a much-loved much-worn black Spiderman costume (black and therefore ideal for Hallowe’en), and 10-yo was a rather reluctant ghost, in an old clerical surplice underneath a Woolworth’s ghost outfit designed for someone half his age which only just covered his head, shoulders and chest (hence the need for the surplice underneath).
We’d been invited to a party, which was very nice, since Husband had to be at work, and it felt rather jollier to be in company than setting out on our own. The trick or treating was all very friendly and fun, and it’s easy to see why Americans have happy Hallowe’en childhood memories rivaling those of Christmas. There was one house which we didn’t go to, as it was done out as a haunted house, and freaked out Spiderman and the butterfly. It had a skeleton hanging outside, bats at the windows, and eerie music playing, interrupted by the occasional screech or cackle.
Having got the hang of it all, when we returned home from the party, the children were keen to try trick or treating in our own neighborhood, so we went out again. By this time, we were pretty good at sniffing out the best houses (this isn’t hard – you just go to the ones where the porch light is on, and where there are Hallowe’en decorations). The ghost could have flitted from house to house all evening, filling his bag with more and more candy, but Spiderman started complaining of the cold (great power, great responsibility, not enough body fat), and the butterfly’s legs got tired (surprisingly heavy to carry, is a butterfly), so we returned home before too long. While I put the butterfly to bed, the ghost and Spiderman finished the evening on our porch bench (I have to say bench, not glider, as my British readers wouldn’t cope with the visual image of a glider on our front porch, but it is a glider, if you’re interested, my $25 bargain from an estate sale). I lit them a candle or two for effect, and wrapped them in rugs, and they had a fine time handing out candy to other children. I think they almost enjoyed it more than collecting.
So why a festival of two pies? Well, pumpkin pie first, totally delicious, and distinctively American and autumnal. Next, humble pie. You see, there I was, all ready to denounce Hallowe’en as just another cooked up opportunity for retailers to make a quick buck, more evidence of the materialism we are so quick to accuse America of, and an unavoidable adversary in the maternal battle against unhealthy eating. But actually, it was great fun. Good clean fun. Sure, you could go out and buy fancy costumes if you wanted, but no-one minded if you didn’t. Sure, you could spend what you liked on all kinds of decoration and other Hallowe’en tat, but you didn’t have to. (I came across my favourite example while looking for a present for a friend’s new baby: Hallowe’en scratch mitts, orange with a black jack o’lantern face on the back.)
Of course it’s a problem knowing how to process so much candy, but I wasn’t, as I had feared, a lone voice in worrying about this. 10-yo’s teacher suggested to his class that they should consider collecting money for UNICEF instead of (or as well as) candy. This struck me as a good development in the Hallowe’en tradition. When I was brave enough to express my feelings that the candy was a problem, rather than a marvelous free gift, I found other mothers agreed. In a society where obesity is the biggest health problem (and that’s a blog post which I haven’t been quite brave enough to write yet), it did feel uncomfortable to send children out to get a huge amount of free candy, but I was pleased to discover I wasn't the only witch of a mother who felt that way. My kids amassed 140 items, which, if I rationed it out at a piece per child per day, would last for over six weeks. I decided against this approach – why start a habit now that I’ve carefully avoided for years? I decided on a week-end of gluttony, with that terribly misguided adult hope that they would get so sick of the candy, they would be pleased to see the stuff taken away. We got through about half of it. Anything sampled and left to one side, any packet opened and not finished, any lolly licked and forgotten, it all found its way to the trash. No saving for later, no sharing around. The nicer bits of chocolate got diverted into a secret parents-only stash for future use. Some of it I’m keeping back for our trip to San Diego next week. Some of it I took, after discussion with the children, to a project which gives food to homeless people. Please, before you get all cross with me and ask me why I think homeless people benefit from sugar and artificial coloring any more than my own kids, you should know that the candy never made it that far. (I try not to lie to my children, but I am not above occasionally resorting to a very careful choice of words. I can't remember exactly how I phrased it, but it was technically truthful, and in my defence, I plead that I have their interests at heart.)
So while you were singing Harvest Festival songs and teaching your children to be grateful for the produce of the land, I was finding ways of sneaking candy into the trash. My generation was brought up to think of wasting food as a crime, and for most of us it goes against the grain not to finish up every mouthful on the plate, but times have changed, and I was merely applying the old Harvest lesson of making the best use of the resources I had. Best use is a flexible term.
Centre stage is the Pumpkin. The Pumpkin (as well as being a splendid word made up of a most appealing selection of consonants) provides an excuse to visit the pumpkin patch. The pumpkin patch is a small field, with a very very much larger field attached, full of a large number of children’s activities. There are a couple of mazes, a fort made out of hay bales, a tricycle track, water pumps set up to race plastic ducks down lengths of guttering, tractor and trailer rides, and various agriculturally-themed pieces of play equipment. I thoroughly enjoyed the pumpkin patch. I went twice: one visit with preschool, and one week-end visit with the family. You get to pick your pumpkin, and I had fondly anticipated this would involve a sharp knife and a living demonstration to my 21st century city-dwelling children that fruit grows on a vine (ha! I bet you thought the pumpkin was a vegetable). Actually, it involved a trip to the small field in an orange trailer pulled by an orange tractor, where the pumpkins had been laid out on the bare ground. We got to pick our pumpkins as in “pick out” or “select”, not as in “pluck from the vine”.
I do feel that there should be some story about the pumpkin patch. There should be some character, like the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny, or Santa. Hallowe’en needs a character and a story. How about this? Peter Pimply Pumpkin, the wicked pumpkin elf who cuts off the toes of children who don’t go to bed early. His brother Jack Jolly Pumpkin was a good elf, who fought Peter and banished him from the land, making it safe for children to dangle their feet over the side of the bed once more. That is why children make jack o’lanterns, to remind them of the importance of going to bed when their parents tell them. You should all tell this story, so that in a few years’ time it has become a Hallowe’en legend. I’ll tell you why. If you don’t, the character who is hovering in the wings, ready to become a Hallowe’en character is Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. Orange and black, you see. I can’t tell you the number of gratuitous Tiggers I saw last week – they’re everywhere. So come on. Start passing on the legend of Peter Pimply Pumpkin, or Tigger will win the day, and bouncing around vacuously will become the message of the Hallowe’en season. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The best thing about the pumpkin patch by far was the pumpkin cannon. It was a dollar a shot, but worth every cent. I have no idea quite what the contraption was, but once charged, it could fire a pumpkin into the sky, to the height of two electricity pylons one on top of the other (there was a handy pylon just by, and I visualized another one on the top of it). That is a very great height for a pumpkin, and when it speeds down, it hits the ground with a very satisfying “thud” and splatters in all directions. I can’t explain why any thinking adult would derive pleasure from this procedure, but I tell you, if it had been free instead of a dollar a shot, I’d have been there all week-end.
As an aside here, I should tell you, dear Bloggy Friends, that, knowing your attention to detail and desire for accuracy, I had a discussion with Husband in which we tried to estimate the height reached by the pumpkins. My usual method of estimating height, ie imagining men 6’ tall standing on each other’s shoulders, wasn’t up to the job, but I wasn’t persuaded by Husband’s either. He uses a cricket wicket (22 yards) as his standard, and although he maintained that he could easily imagine a stack of vertical cricket wickets stretching up into the air, I wasn’t convinced. I decided that “the height of two electricity pylons” would have to do. The really big ones, by the way.
The other great tradition of Hallowe’en is, of course, trick or treating. For this your children need costumes. For at least two weeks before Hallowe’en, people ask you “have you got your costumes yet?” in the way that from December 1st onwards, you are asked “are you all organized for Christmas yet?” My children were becostumed as follows: 3-yo was a butterfly (pink top and pink tights with pink swimming costume over both, wings, home-made antennae, much prancing about), 6-yo was Spiderman in a much-loved much-worn black Spiderman costume (black and therefore ideal for Hallowe’en), and 10-yo was a rather reluctant ghost, in an old clerical surplice underneath a Woolworth’s ghost outfit designed for someone half his age which only just covered his head, shoulders and chest (hence the need for the surplice underneath).
We’d been invited to a party, which was very nice, since Husband had to be at work, and it felt rather jollier to be in company than setting out on our own. The trick or treating was all very friendly and fun, and it’s easy to see why Americans have happy Hallowe’en childhood memories rivaling those of Christmas. There was one house which we didn’t go to, as it was done out as a haunted house, and freaked out Spiderman and the butterfly. It had a skeleton hanging outside, bats at the windows, and eerie music playing, interrupted by the occasional screech or cackle.
Having got the hang of it all, when we returned home from the party, the children were keen to try trick or treating in our own neighborhood, so we went out again. By this time, we were pretty good at sniffing out the best houses (this isn’t hard – you just go to the ones where the porch light is on, and where there are Hallowe’en decorations). The ghost could have flitted from house to house all evening, filling his bag with more and more candy, but Spiderman started complaining of the cold (great power, great responsibility, not enough body fat), and the butterfly’s legs got tired (surprisingly heavy to carry, is a butterfly), so we returned home before too long. While I put the butterfly to bed, the ghost and Spiderman finished the evening on our porch bench (I have to say bench, not glider, as my British readers wouldn’t cope with the visual image of a glider on our front porch, but it is a glider, if you’re interested, my $25 bargain from an estate sale). I lit them a candle or two for effect, and wrapped them in rugs, and they had a fine time handing out candy to other children. I think they almost enjoyed it more than collecting.
So why a festival of two pies? Well, pumpkin pie first, totally delicious, and distinctively American and autumnal. Next, humble pie. You see, there I was, all ready to denounce Hallowe’en as just another cooked up opportunity for retailers to make a quick buck, more evidence of the materialism we are so quick to accuse America of, and an unavoidable adversary in the maternal battle against unhealthy eating. But actually, it was great fun. Good clean fun. Sure, you could go out and buy fancy costumes if you wanted, but no-one minded if you didn’t. Sure, you could spend what you liked on all kinds of decoration and other Hallowe’en tat, but you didn’t have to. (I came across my favourite example while looking for a present for a friend’s new baby: Hallowe’en scratch mitts, orange with a black jack o’lantern face on the back.)
Of course it’s a problem knowing how to process so much candy, but I wasn’t, as I had feared, a lone voice in worrying about this. 10-yo’s teacher suggested to his class that they should consider collecting money for UNICEF instead of (or as well as) candy. This struck me as a good development in the Hallowe’en tradition. When I was brave enough to express my feelings that the candy was a problem, rather than a marvelous free gift, I found other mothers agreed. In a society where obesity is the biggest health problem (and that’s a blog post which I haven’t been quite brave enough to write yet), it did feel uncomfortable to send children out to get a huge amount of free candy, but I was pleased to discover I wasn't the only witch of a mother who felt that way. My kids amassed 140 items, which, if I rationed it out at a piece per child per day, would last for over six weeks. I decided against this approach – why start a habit now that I’ve carefully avoided for years? I decided on a week-end of gluttony, with that terribly misguided adult hope that they would get so sick of the candy, they would be pleased to see the stuff taken away. We got through about half of it. Anything sampled and left to one side, any packet opened and not finished, any lolly licked and forgotten, it all found its way to the trash. No saving for later, no sharing around. The nicer bits of chocolate got diverted into a secret parents-only stash for future use. Some of it I’m keeping back for our trip to San Diego next week. Some of it I took, after discussion with the children, to a project which gives food to homeless people. Please, before you get all cross with me and ask me why I think homeless people benefit from sugar and artificial coloring any more than my own kids, you should know that the candy never made it that far. (I try not to lie to my children, but I am not above occasionally resorting to a very careful choice of words. I can't remember exactly how I phrased it, but it was technically truthful, and in my defence, I plead that I have their interests at heart.)
So while you were singing Harvest Festival songs and teaching your children to be grateful for the produce of the land, I was finding ways of sneaking candy into the trash. My generation was brought up to think of wasting food as a crime, and for most of us it goes against the grain not to finish up every mouthful on the plate, but times have changed, and I was merely applying the old Harvest lesson of making the best use of the resources I had. Best use is a flexible term.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Another puzzle
Whilst I've been puzzling about aseptic drinks, people out there have larger questions on their minds.
I've got a sitemeter, and this is what happens when a blogger gets a sitemeter. They find out what weird and wonderful search terms people put into Google, to land up on their blog. Then they write a blog post about it. This is mine.
Not wrong, just different is full of pretty mundane subject matter, it must be said, and those who land up here by mistake are mostly people interested in cures for verrucas or ways of dealing with bugs and critters. They won't get much by way of an answer to their problems, but they may be comforted to know they're not alone. Hello, if you're one of them.
The Pledge of Allegiance has attracted the largest number of unintentional visitors. There is one that has got a whole story behind it; I just wish I knew what the story was. Someone typed into Google "How can I pledge allegiance to him when he can't pledge allegiance to the US?" Oh my dear girl (I assume you're a girl), I wish I could help. You knew, though, well before you hit the return button, that a Google search wasn't going to give you an answer to that one, didn't you?
I've got a sitemeter, and this is what happens when a blogger gets a sitemeter. They find out what weird and wonderful search terms people put into Google, to land up on their blog. Then they write a blog post about it. This is mine.
Not wrong, just different is full of pretty mundane subject matter, it must be said, and those who land up here by mistake are mostly people interested in cures for verrucas or ways of dealing with bugs and critters. They won't get much by way of an answer to their problems, but they may be comforted to know they're not alone. Hello, if you're one of them.
The Pledge of Allegiance has attracted the largest number of unintentional visitors. There is one that has got a whole story behind it; I just wish I knew what the story was. Someone typed into Google "How can I pledge allegiance to him when he can't pledge allegiance to the US?" Oh my dear girl (I assume you're a girl), I wish I could help. You knew, though, well before you hit the return button, that a Google search wasn't going to give you an answer to that one, didn't you?
Saturday, November 3, 2007
A puzzle
I know, I know. You want me to tell you what Hallowe'en was like here. Be patient, I will. Perhaps I'll use the extra hour we have tonight to do that. But first, here is something that is puzzling me.
When I go shopping in my local Dillons (you know me, life in the fast lane), there is an aisle where the sign tells me I may find water, juice, soda and aseptic drinks. Hello? Aseptic drinks? I haven't actually managed to identify which are the drinks in that aisle that are the aseptic ones, but when I do so, am I to conclude that all the others are, in fact, septic? Oh goody. I knew they tasted better over here.
When I go shopping in my local Dillons (you know me, life in the fast lane), there is an aisle where the sign tells me I may find water, juice, soda and aseptic drinks. Hello? Aseptic drinks? I haven't actually managed to identify which are the drinks in that aisle that are the aseptic ones, but when I do so, am I to conclude that all the others are, in fact, septic? Oh goody. I knew they tasted better over here.
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