HumaNatural

Musings on the life of a writer, baker, enviro-mom, soapmaker.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

To Engineer is Human

I have often joked that I should write a book called When Smart Men Say Stupid Things. Being the daughter, sister, wife, and best friend of various engineers, I have nearly an honorary doctorate in the field. The book could be my dissertation.

My husband has contributed more than he knows to its formation, with questions like:

"Do I have time to change clothes?" (This is an example of something rendered stupid by context, which in this case was me, panting in labor with our first born, greeting him at the door after I had just ordered him home from work.)

Or analyses such as:

“I really hadn't noticed you were gaining weight until I saw your double chin.”

He often preceeds these statements with things like, "I know I'm not supposed to say this...”

And I always interject: "Comma, but."

I suspect the unspoken clause following the comma, but is "I can't help myself!!!"

My husband is too, too honest, too earnest, too straight-up to pansy around with dissembling and pleasantry.

Yes, you look tubby in that dress.
Is it supposed to taste like this?
Wow! You really have a lot of grey hair.


It's hard to hold this against him, because for so long I had dated men who were charismatic, smooth-talking liars. Or sometimes dummies. Or both. From whom I nevertheless heard the most beautiful things. The sorts of things you cart around with you in the back of your psyche and take out once in awhile to admire, to remind yourself of what it was like to be charmed, to be smooth-talked.

Like the gorgeous California boy who said, “Call me when you have those nightmares. I’ll come over and hold you and remind you that everything will be fine.” But forgot to add, “As long as that’s OK with my live-in girlfriend.”

Or the other gorgeous California boy who said, “When I look into your beautiful blue eyes I just lose myself,” but stopped short of the full truth: “which really isn’t hard to do because I’m completely shiftless and irresponsible.”

Or the long tall Texas cowboy (who I met in California) with this husky whisper: “I’ll think of nothing but the curve of your hip until I see you again.” Which means, apparently, that my body’s morphology is still plaguing him to this very day.

Eventually I came to realize that if a man said all the right things, it was a red flag, a detour sign, flashing lights and ambulance sirens on the highway of life.

When I met my husband, this is what struck me about him first: Here is the most honest man I have ever met. It’s still true, even today when – ensconced in marriage – love has less to do with beautiful blue eyes (although he does have those) or curvaceous hips and more to do with being straight up and not dissembling.

So in the end, I’ll always take my straight-talking man. Besides, my sister-in-law pointed out the problem with my book's premise: no one reads anything that long anymore.

In The Green! Natural Housecleaning Tips

In addition to this delightfully insouciant blog, I also publish a monthly newsletter called "In The Green." Each month focuses on a different topic with some relevance to living a more environmentally pleasant life. Last month's (and the inaugural) edition - quite well-received, if I do say so myself - was all about gardening: the Green Thumb Edition. This month it's the Spring Cleaning edition, full of information (and scare tactics, let's not forget the scare tactics) to help you clean your house of chemical toxins as well as dirt.

If you'd like to subscribe, visit my website and sign up.

If you'd like either of the back issues, though, email me at erica@emrusso.com and I'll send those out to you.

Thanks!

- Erica

Monday, March 14, 2005

Disney Whores: Mud & Bucks

My mother-in-law has this little trick she likes to play on me: She gets my kids really unhealthy breakfast cereals. Did you know there is a cereal comprised of tiny Oreos? Or little itty bitty donuts? Diminutive S'mores??? My kids receive these for special occasions, like Christmas or, in the most recent case, one's 3rd birthday.

OK, fine. I have a sense of humor. I can handle it. My kids unwrap the box, they're thrilled, my MIL laughs, and I have only one rule: Not for breakfast. If you're going to eat this crap, it will be once your stomach's already (mostly) full of something at least sligthly nutritious.

But I happened to really *look* at the box the other day. And now I'm pretty pissed off. This particular gift cereal is Mud & Bugs, made by Kellogg's in cooperation with Walt Disney to promote the latter's "Lion King" empire. And that's when I realized exactly how manipulative this whole scheme is.

"Kids... You Gotta Try 'Em!" implore Timon and Pumbaa.

"Snack with all your Disney friends!" They wheedle, listing a selection of those friends: Nemo, Buzz Lightyear, Winnie the Pooh...

As a parent who has watched and enjoyed these movies with my kids, I can't help but feel a little, well, used. Nemo, for instance, is a great movie. It's fun, it's well-crafted, and it carries a couple of very important messages: Kids, listen to your parents or you'll be abducted by scuba divers. Parents, trust your child and honor their need for independence or they will resent you and take stupid risks. Whew! That's a mouthful.

Unfortunately, though, so are the food-product spin-offs..

"Look, Mom! Nemo Cereal! Fruit Snacks! Quiescently frozen almost fruity treats! Can I have it? Puh-lease????"

It's not just the marketing that bothers me. It's what they're marketing. A few years back, we were all astonished to learn that over 90% of 10 year olds recognized Joe Camel. Massive public outrage! Lawsuits! Forbid the advertising of cigarettes to minors! They're bad for their health!

And, um, "Incrediberry Blast Pop-Tarts featuring wildberry filling and superhero-worthy “Wham-Bam” star icing" (Here I must pause to borrow a line from Dave Barry: I swear I am not making any of this up.) aren't? Hasn't anyone heard of OBESITY? The soaring rate of adult-onset diabetes in CHILDREN? Here! Have some Scooby-Doo Berry Bones, Sponge-Bob Square Pants "lightly sweetened, puffed, *jellyfish-shaped* cereal" (and yes, that is an acutal descriptive quote from the maker, Kellogg's), Spider Man Spidey-Berry, Limited Edition The Incredibles, Limited Edition Star Wars, Robots, Lilo & Stitch (indistinugishable except by expert analysis of marshmallow bit shape from our own Mud & Bugs)... Sounds like a great way to start the day, hmmm?

WELL WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, WHY NOT JUST HELP THEM LIGHT THEIR PINT-SIZED CIGARETTES? OR POP THE TOP ON THAT BUDWEISER?

And we wonder why so many kids are being diagnosed ADHD in school? Let's take my daughter's breakfast cereal as Exhibit A. A single serving size (described as one cup) contains 110 calories, 60 of them from sugar. That's 55% sugar. If you're giving them a one-cup serving, and let's say that's really about 3/4 cup once you get the air out, you might as well just hand them a heaping 1/3 cup of sugar and a spoon because that way at least you'll be sparing them the BHT and - let me count - four separate artificial colors. Oh, but wait! the box claims it's "naturally sweetened" so it must be OK.

Let's look at those natural sweeteners for a minute: the number one ingredient in Mud&Bugs cereal is... SUGAR. the number three ingredient is... "MARSHMALLOW BITS". Number 4 is "SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE," (?) and a little further down we find "CHOCOLATE COOKIE PIECES" and, the mother of all sweeteners, "HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP". All in all, Mud & Bugs contains *34* ingredients, not counting the fortifications. It all ends, of course, with BHT, a fabulous preservative which will in theory make sure it never goes bad, although we often ignore a fact I once heard expressed thusly by organic farmer Eliot Coleman:

"But it was never good in the first place."

I will contrast this, just for a moment, to a sweetened cereal popular among the crunchy granola set: Gorilla Munch. The ingredients are, in toto: ORGANIC CORN MEAL, ORGANIC CANE SUGAR, SALT. That's it, the end. three ingredients. You still wouldn't necessarily want to build a meal aorund it, but at least you know what's in it.

Consider the hype surrounding a popular cookie-like cereal:

"Post® Oreo O's® now tastes creamier! New Oreo O's now combines the great OREO® taste of the original with creamy tasting marshmallows to create a whole new "Extreme Creme Taste" experience that kids will love. Oreo O's is made with the genuine taste of Nabisco Oreo® cookies."

Italics mine. blah.

I know I'm coming a bit late to the whole peddling-to-children outrage, but bear with me. I generally avoid the kinds of stores that sell this stuff, partly on principle and partly on practicality. If I'm going have my own kids pestering me for treats as we shop (and trust me, I will), I would rather it was for a piece of organic string cheese or some roasted almonds or whole-wheat crackers.

A couple of years ago I heard Yale University's Kelly Brownell speak at the annual CT NOFA End of Winter Conference about his book Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It (co-authored by Katherine Battle Horgen). Just to pull a few highlights from the book:

About 1/3 of the $30 BILLION spent each year on food advertising is targeted to children. The advertising budget for soft drinks in 1998 was $115.5 Million. The annual advertising budget for the National Cancer Institutes's 5-a-day program is $1 million.

On marketing tie-ins with popular movie characters: "The hope is that children will tranfer the emotional attachment they feel about a character to a product."

And in case you need a more authoritative voice, here's the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on marketing aimed at children: "Advertising directed toward children is inherently deceptive and exploits children under 8 years of age." (Italics again mine.)

And just for fun, if you have older kids, you can send them to the Smart Mouth website, geared to help kids make healthier eating choices.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to go bitch-slap Timon and Pumbaa.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Me and Jill on the Auntie Ward

My friend Chris called me early the other morning - too early, like 6:00 - sobbing. She choked out,

"Can you take my kids for me?" and of course I said yes, imagining based on her unusual display of emotion that she had either just lost a parent or her husband .

When she arrived she handed me her kids and explained,

"Jill's dying."

Jill is a sheep, one of her prize-winning Cotswold ewes, and pregnant with triplets. Jill was the prize ewe of the previous year's herd, a natural mama and all around lovely sheep. And Chris had made what she saw as a tragic error as a farmer: Getting attached to her animals.

Jill was the first of Chris's ewes to lamb this year, and it was a moment all four of our collective kids had been anticipating for weeks. Every day my Kindergartner would bolt to the phone, hoping it was Chris calling to say the lambs had been born.

It was a long, unhappy day. Jill had been prolapsing and straining for a couple of days prior and finally, the evening of the day I took her kids, Chris found a vet to come out and perform a C-section. In the end, Jill had three lambs - two ewes which perished immediately and a ram who lived one day longer. To Chris's considerable relief, Jill herself came through the operation just fine, altohugh she couldn't be bred again.

The kids were morose but philosophical when we explained that the long-anticipated lambs had died. Jill was morose but philosophical when her barn-mates began to lamb.

And that's what she and I have in common, ever since my husband had a vasectomy. It's me and Jill on the auntie ward, admiring all the newborns and thinking back to what it was like, back in the day.

It's not that I was opposed to the dawning of V-Day, exactly; I did have some say in the matter. But I never really came to it feeling as if I were really *ready* for it. My own baby just turned three. In the days since the party, her mantra is an indignant, "I not baby! I THREE YEARS OLD!"

Mine is, "You'll always be Mommy's baby."

She seems to accept this, at least so far. But I don't. I spend an awful lot of time with visons of my daughters as teens - sullen, distant, hormore-wracked teens - waking me in the wee hours. Just a couple of days ago, my daughter shouted "Yay!" when she learned it was yet another snow day.

"I thought you liked school," I said.

"I do," she answered. "But I like staying home with you more."

How much longer will I hear compliments like that?

OK, so she's only five. I guess I have awhile.

In the meantime, I check in on Jill. She's doing just fine, and I think she's enjoying auntie-hood. If sheep were capable of long-range planning, she might be thinking about how she'll never, ever, have to waddle around at twice her normal girth again, or endure labor. She enjoys the lambs' antics, I think, but not quite as much as she enjoys being the only ewe in the yard whose teats don't drag the ground. Then again, I could be projecting.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Is It Still Novel?

Time now for my novel update. Those of you who know me - even tangentially - were undoubtedly gored upon the multifarious horns of my novel dilemma. But it's been awhile, so here's my update:

Back in mid-'03 I decided to finally Write That Novel. The catch: I had three months to do it in order to make a deadline for entry into the Bellwether Prize. Three months turned out to be just long enough: one month of drafting and two of revising, and then several of (ultimately fruitless) hoping until I got the results.

I did not, of course, win. I wasn't even a finalist. And re-reading my novel after a several-month hiatus, I could see why. But the whole process was emminently educational. It taught me a thing or two about discipline (never my strong suit), about writing, and about how very much I should appreciate those people who were willing to watch my kids while I did so (Hi, Mom!)

It also taught my daugther to appreciate the finer things in life, as evidenced by this exclamation in the wake of the manuscript's completion:

"Mommy! The potty's WHITE again! Thank you for cleaning it!"

So flash forward a year, to the end of 2004, when I realize that my hard-won MS is still sitting half-revised on my shelf. Then enter personal coach Lynn Colwell with her enticing offer of 30 minutes free coaching, and suddenly I have unblocked my inner writer and completed my revision.

Then comes the agent querying. First round - dingding! - results: 17 queries, a handful of mostly-personalized rejections, another handful of no-responses, and one glorious agent who wanted to READ A PARTIAL.

Off went the partial... two weeks passed, not that I would have noticed, what with the amount of time I spent panting slack-jawed at the mailbox.

And then I got it. The Rejection. Oh! The sadness.

But not really. It was the nicest rejection I have ever received. In fact, I think I shall frame it. She had to pass - for very legitimate reasons which she was kind enough to detail - but did so "with compliments"!

Hoo-rah!

But now, of course, it's back to that old beast Revision. And the way it's going, it will be a very long time before my toilet is white again.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Being Too Nice and Other Hate Crimes

The other day (OK, really, this took place about 5 months ago but to me that *is* the other day because it is "any day in the vague past" but I gather I am alone in this belief) I was pushing my kids in their jogging stroller. It's red - really, really, red - which in my paranoid-masked-as-pragmatic way I told myself was good because it was more visible. And we walk in a fairly rural area, and during the nice weather months, we walk regularly. Which means that my highly visible stroller (or, in New England parlance, "carriage") has become a bit of a fixture around here. Like the other day (a year ago?), when a man asked me,

"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"

And I thought he might just possibly be hitting on me until he smacked himself on the forehead (really) :

"Yeah! You're the lady with the carriage!"

Now I don't care how narcissistic you are, there is no conceivable way to believe you are being hit on when someone identifies you as "The Lady With The Carriage." It is akin to being called "The Lady With The Ample Birthing Hips," a role I also play admirably.

So yes, I am The Lady With The Carriage. And I had stopped said carriage by a little creek that runs by our route so that my kids could engage in their jogging-stroller-ritual of throwing stones into the water, which is, I swear, sometimes the only way of bribing them into going for a ride.

When we were visited by The Drunk Crazy Guy. Only of course I didn't see him at first - there was just a big pickup parked by the creek, with no one in it but a German Shepherd puppy. Not uncommon. So I proceeded to the edge of the turnaround and picked up some stones for my kids to throw and when I turned around, there he was - leaning on his pickup unsteadily, and standing between My Carriage and the road.

"Don't worry." He gestured to the dog. "She don't bite."

It wasn't the dog I was worried about. But I couldn't really put my finger on what about this guy was giving me the HEEBIEST of JEEBIES, aside from the fact that he was drunk and leery and a little dirty and I was standing there with my two beautiful little girls and my typical running attire suddenly seemed skimpy and OK - so it's a GUT INSTINCT but I am a NICE GIRL which meant that I just stood there trying to justify why I didn't like this guy.

He started talking to us, telling us where he lived and what he did and the alcoholic vaoprs wafted around and my daughters admired his puppy who was by now out of the truck and I just stood there, making polite conversation, although I really just wanted to leave.

Then he looked at my younger daugther - my gorgeous big-blue-eyed blonde-haired TODDLER and said, "Can I tell you something?"

And she just looekd at him.

And he said, "Can I just tell you something?

And she looked down.

And he said, holding up his oddly trembling puppy as exhibit A, "She may be beautiful. I mean, she's gorgeous, right? But she's nowhere near as gorgeous as you girls and your mother are."

And for once I was so, so delighted my kids are shy by nature, because then he said, "What's your names?"

And I said, "Wow! Look at the time! Gotta go!"

And I started pushing the stroller, pushing it right past him, but he eyed me head to toe - I mean really, that up-and-down look, and said, "Hey, where do you live?"

Oh god oh god oh god. I walked out onto the road and tried to look calm but my knees were positively knocking and I went the wrong direction intentionally - not to my house - and watched as he then got into his pickup and drove away and I waited until he was long past me and THEN I stopped. And took a breath. And walked home.

And locked all my doors and wished my husband were home and called a friend of mine who lives on the same road as this guy. And she said why yes, she did recognize his truck and he had once offered her teenage daugther a ride (She had declined. Good girl!) and by the way, it is odd but now that you mention it some guy was walking his puppy on the road the other day - it could've been him - and two dogs came out of their own back yard and started to attack the puppy and THE NEXT DAY they found those two dogs DROWNED IN THEIR OWNER'S BACKYARD POOL.

OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD.

OK. maybe just coincidence. I'm not saying they should *arrest* this guy based on my instinctive distrust. But it crystallized a parenting goal for me: I want my own daughters to be RUDE girls. The kind who wouldn't prattle with someone that made them squeamish even if the only thing they had to go on was their own gut instinct. Even if they deep down suspected themselves of being racist or classist or reeling-drunk-ist.

I need to become that girl, myself.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Anthropomorphic Fish and My Oceanic Crush on Will Smith

OK, when I first saw the cover of the Shark Tale DVD, I just *knew* I wouldn't like it. For starters, the fish were too, well, human-looking. Totally creepy. And it just looked, well, annoying. Open-minded, I know.

So my mother bought it for my daughter. Thereby, of course, taking the "I only buy my grandkids toys that make annoying noises, will end up in a landfill in about 2 weeks *and* are cheaply made of unrecyclable plastic in Chinese sweatshops" guideline to a new high.

Of course you can imagine what a bitch it is now to have to admit (Hi, Mom!) that it's a terribly fun movie. And I should know, as I have watched it at least twice a day for the past three weeks.

It is a movie with an all-star cast which for once (contrary to, say Mars Attacks) lives up to its potential. And as has become de riguer in adult-oriented animated kids' movies, there are oh-so-many funny homages (or are they parodies?) of previous movies - from the wiseguys' "Fuhgeddaboudit" to Ali to "You had me at hello". Even the *soundtrack* is fun. You can't HELP but like this film, I tell you. Except for my friend Nick, who I-bet-dollars-to-donuts will hate it.

Robert DeNiro as the mob-boss shark is worth the price of admission, alone. Not to mention Martin Scorcese as his pufferfish underling and Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley as Rastafarian jellyfish henchmen. Angelina Jolie is a fishy femme fatale, Renee Zelwegger plays a girl-next-door worthy of 1990's Meg Ryan, and Jack Black is the strangely effeminate vegetarian cross-dolphin-dressing shark...

And then, of course, there is Will Smith. Much to my husband's bafflement, I have always had a little thing for Will Smith. I mean, not a *thing* thing, but just a "I would watch any stupid movie he's in - even Independence Day" kind of thing.

But now, unfortunately, it's a THING. I knew we had been watching the movie too often when my 3-year could sing all the words to "Three Little Birds" and shouted "I be dancing!" (We don't, as a rule, speak in the progressive subjunctive in our sub-rural neighborhood). But I just can't help it, because they say "Let's watch Shark Tale!" and I think, what the Hell? It's one more chance to watch - well, not exactly - Will Smith be so damned charismatic and funny and growly-voiced and, well, AFFABLE.

Now affability has not generally been an immediate turn-on for me, but perhaps it's just the very long New England winter that has me re-evalutaing its sheer appeal. My mail carrier - who tosses packages OUT OF HER CAR as she DRIVES BY - isn't affable. Most of the folks at my church aren't affable. My overworked darling of a husband is frequently un-affable, and I am often less than ideally affable toward my snow-day children.

Take a good measure of affability, and gussy-it-up with a little charisma, some urban as-my-daughter-puts-it "hippy-hop" cool, and that terribly, terribly masculine voice and well. THAT'S sexy. Espcially as far as fish go. I find myself having bizarre icthyological fantasies. And to think I have my mother to thank for all of this.

Well. Ahem. Clearly I need to change up my movie watching routine. I hear I, Robot is good...