There's a Reason They Call it "Classic"

We're considering getting a minivan and it was kinda freaking me out. I was getting all stressed about what sort of impact this would have on my self image, my style, my general psyche and outlook on life. I was even asking friends who drive minivans what sort of effect it'd had on them. I was worrying way too much about it. I told one person I was afraid it was going to be my first major step into midlife and that I feared there would be no turning back. I was a bit surprised when this person pointed out that perhaps I already had my toes in the water of midlife. I had to sit down and think about it, but in the end, I'm afraid they're right. Let me lay out the evidence for you:

• I have a baby and a mortgage
• I don't remember the last time I ate ramen
• When I go to the movies, I'll choose a Saturday matinée over opening night every time
• I watch more VH1 than MTV
• All the country songs I know the words to are on the "Classic Country" station

I had all this in mind when we went to test drive a minivan. Then the more we drove around, I started to realize that for every reservation I had about the situation, the minivan had an answer. I thought about "classic" county, it had magic stowaway seats. I tried to remember what ramen tastes like, the van had dual power sliding doors. In the end, the van had answers to questions I hadn't even thought of yet. So now we're on the lookout for a good used van. I'm completely over the anxiety of buying a minivan because the thing they don't tell you about getting older is that the only people who think you look "uncool" are the people half your age trying to look cool. So I'm done worrying about how I'll look when the windows are rolled down. It only took one test drive to realize that part of getting older is caring less about whether I look cool and more about what makes my life easier.

If you don't know me by now...

I would make a horrible celebrity. I would be the kind of celebrity who shows up looking fantastic on the red carpet, but doesn't want to go on Oprah or be interviewed by Diane Sawyer or say anything public about my private life. In other words, I would be a very boring celebrity for my throngs of adoring fans. I discovered this about myself when I recently re-started this blog during a rash of blogging by some friends. My friends new blogs are wonderful and insightful and provide a peak into their thoughts and lives. I, on the other hand, blog about babies riding in boxes and speak philosophically about the differences between the menus at McDonald's and Taco Bell. There is nothing wrong with either kind of blog, I've just been stuck by the differences and it's shown me something about myself that I always kind of knew but never really put words to. I rarely let people in on the details of my personal life. I love hearing about other people's lives...their thoughts and hardships and joys...but I'm not liable to ask any more than I think they want to tell me or tell much more than they ask. It isn't that I'm embarrassed about my life or have some big secret I'm hiding, I'm just a "good fences make good neighbors" kind of girl. But even Frost wrote that "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" and maybe he was on to something. Maybe I should be more forthcoming so that the people who know me feel like they actually know me. With that in mind, I'm making two offers. The first is that I'll try to be more forthcoming in general with the people I hold near and dear. The second is this...if there's anything you want to know about me, now's your chance. Any takers?

Vroom Vroom

I used to think that people who worked at liquor stores had access to the best boxes, but now that I’m buying a box of diapers every couple of weeks I’m rethinking that position. I still think a liquor store employee is your best friend if you’re moving anytime soon, but I think that what moms lack in sheer volume of boxes, we make up for with quality. Diaper boxes are the perfect size, they’re made of glossy corrugated cardboard, and , they have cut-outs on the sides for easy portability. I even tested a diaper box this afternoon and learned that it can even double as a baby sled, if necessary.

If I Plant It, Will They Come?

Now that I'm staying home with Emily, I'm always on the lookout for free or low-cost things to keep us busy. Not that Emily doesn't keep me busy enough as it is, but I like to have things that give me goals and routines. Otherwise, E and me just end up in the floor playing with blocks all day. While she may not mind that, I'd rather take the initiative to go to storytime at the library or make a trip to the zoo. My newest idea for a productive activity is to grow some vegetables. The spots in our back yard that get the best sun aren't the spots I wanted to tear up to plant vegetables, so I picked things that could planted in containers. I've got a tomato plant in a 5-gallon bucket, some peas, some carrots, basil, and oregano. I'm not sure if I have a green thumb or not, but I'm two days in and so far nothing has sprouted. I'll keep you posted.

McDonald’s and Taco Bell

The menu at McDonald’s is a fairly static thing. I know they have tried to change this in the last few years by adding premium chicken and fancy salads and mixed coffee drinks, but if you want any of those things, there are better options elsewhere. Most people I know who eat at McDonald’s get the same one or two things everytime they go. People go to McDonald’s for double cheeseburgers, Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, and french fries. The things I order when I got to McDonald’s have been on the menu since before I was born. The McDonald’s menu offers an anchor of stability in this ever-changing world. I appreciate that.

On the other end of the spectrum is Taco Bell. Every time I go to Taco Bell, their menu seems completely different since the last time I was there. One week they’ll start grilling burritos, the next week they’ll start putting potatoes in everything. The interesting thing about these “new” menu items is that they’re usually just a rearranged version of something they already had. First they added gordita and chalupa shells. Then they mixed it up by adding something called “ranchero” sauce to the gorditas. Once we get tired of that, they’ll take the sauce from a ranchero gordita, put it on top of some nachos, and you have the new and exciting Ranchero Nachos! I get the feeling that most of the new items originate in the back of the kitchen sometime around 3 a.m. when the minimum wage employees get bored and start mixing things together in weird ways.

Today when I went to Taco Bell, they had a new “blackjack” taco. It’s a regular taco, but it has a blackish shell and some pepper jack sauce. Previously, they featured tacos with orangey red shells and something called “Volcano” sauce. If the Blackjack sauce is a hit, I’m sure it’ll follow the same path as the Volcano sauce and start showing up on nachos and burritos. Sometimes I feel like I’m being conned into getting excited about this stuff, but I have to give credit for their ingenuity.

Cooking

Now that Emily is here and I have less free time overall, I'm somehow finding more time to cook. And by "cook", I don't mean whip up a blue box of mac 'n cheese (although I do make a mean box of mac 'n cheese). I'm talking about actual, recipe based dishes that involve pots, pans, and occasional trips to the grocery store. In trying to figure out how I've been able to do this, I realized that cooking the perfect activity for me right now. First off, it requires me to get out of the house, but only on trips to the grocery store, where I can leave Emily happily strapped in her car seat while I roam the aisles in search of ingredients. Secondly, it gives me a something productive to do while she's sleeping, otherwise I end up playing too much Farkle on facebook.

When I really got to thinking about it, it dawned on me that cooking is like a live version of a WoW quest. You have to accept the quest, go out in search of the required items, and perform a designated number of steps in a particular order. The only difference is that when you're done, instead of having a Fine Leather Cloak, you've got a cider braised pork medallion. In either case, you get +2 to stamina.

So off I go to the grocery store, where instead of buying things like frozen pizzas and canned soup, I'm buying whole chickens and pork roasts and ricotta cheese. Which by the way, if you're looking for ricotta cheese, it's not with the other cheeses like parmesean and chedder. It took a phone call to my mother to figure this out, because neither I nor the walmart employee knew where it was. Turns out, it was near the cottage cheese, which I'm not entirely convinced is a cheese at all. But I could be wrong...I'm still kinda new to this.

Score One for the Human Race

Emily is 8 weeks old today. She stays awake more now than she used to. She holds her gaze on objects that interest her, and she'll grasp things placed in her open palm, but she can't walk yet, or even stand up! Crazy, huh? She pretty much just lays around. Apparently this is normal for newborn babies. Human babies, that is. Giraffe babies are up and walking within 30 minutes of being born. See for yourself:

I was a bit disappointed when I realized how far behind giraffes Emily is, but then I found out that the gestation period of a giraffe is between 400 and 460 days, compared to around 280* for humans. This means that a giraffe has had 57-65 weeks to develop before it's born, whereas a human has only had 40 weeks. So a 1 day old giraffe has been developing for as long as a 4-6 month old baby. This still puts giraffes way ahead of humans, since I have never heard of a 4 month old baby that could walk, or even stand.

This has me wondering whether a baby that stayed in the womb for 60 weeks would come out with legs strong enough to hold their own weight. While I was mulling this over, it occurred to me how silly this whole debate is to begin with. I'm comparing apples to oranges here! I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but giraffes walk on four legs and people walk on two. The coordination required to balance on two legs has got to be significantly more sophistocated. So to even the race a little, I should be comparing a giraffe baby that can walk to a human baby that can crawl, and from what I can tell, human babies usually learn to crawl somewhere between 6 and 9 months. So if you compare a giraffe that stays in the womb for 65 weeks to a 6 month old baby that has learned to crawl, they're actually at about the same point developmentally. Of course, after that, the human leaves the giraffe in the dust by learning to do things like dance, read, operate cell phones, drive cars, etc. So in the end, I guess we are the more advanced species after all.

*I think this number is actually high, because it represents a period of 40 weeks, which technically includes 2 weeks before conception. It might be a moot point if a similar method is used in calculating animal gestation periods, but I don't know.