Antibiotics rule! Antibacterials don't.

N-man and B-man came down with strep throat this week, and scarlet fever.

No surprise, a few days later, I was at the doctor. Strep throat for me too. Wow, that hurts!

Anyway, we're all on antibiotics. The boys are much, much better, and I'm well on my way. How awesome are antibiotics? You hear "scarlet fever" and think of some wicked terrible disease. Turns out it's quite easily treatable and no big deal as long as you get on antibiotics. Who knew?

This got me thinking about one of my pet peeves: the overuse of antibacterial products. I think people are starting to understand why it's dangerous to overuse antibiotics. But what I can't understand is why supermarkets (and to a lesser degree, toy stores) are filled with antibacterial products. Unless someone in the house is immune-compromised, why does anyone need it? Just like with antibiotics, antibacterial products can create resistant strains of bacteria. Here's a good article from the CDC.

It seems to me that companies who sell antibacterial products are really being irresponsible, relying on fear-mongering and misinformation.

Not to mention, triclosan, one of the most commonly used antibacterials, pollutes the water supply and may have potentially dangerous health consequences (check this for more info).

What do you think of things like antibacterial soap or products impregnated with antibacterials? Do you use them in your house? If so, are you aware of the risks? My theory is that most people who buy them think it's a good thing that will protect their family and don't realize they are contributing to the rise of "superbugs", polluting the environment, and potentially contributing to health problems. Now there would be some good truth in advertising: "buy our antibacterial soap! It probably won't help you, but it will screw up the world!"

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Green tip for the day: Unless there's an extremely compelling reason (i.e., an immune compromised family member), just say no to Microban products and cleaners containing antibacterials.

As always, do your own research and/or talk to your doctor if you have any concerns. The internet is filled with nutjobs making wild claims about the dangers of this or that. I tried to include links that contained actual scientific research rather than someone just screaming "antibacterials will kill us alllllllll!" I am not a scientist. However, I do find the research compelling enough that we don't use antibacterial products. Says the person who has a house full of strep throat :)

Dratted Time Change!

N-man came into our bedroom at 5:30 this morning. He happily exclaimed, "It's MORNING!" I, who had just gotten into bed 15 minutes earlier after being up with Z-man for well over an hour replied grumpily, "No it's not. Go back to bed."

N-man went over to TK and said just as happily, "Daddy, It's MORNING. Mommy says it isn't but she's wrong. I see the sun."

Daylight savings time, I say, shaking my fist in the air.

It must be morning!

Okay, sleep experts. I appreciate your years of schooling and experience. However, you can't just randomly define "sleeping through the night" as 6 continuous hours of sleep*. I am happy Z-man is sleeping from 8:30 to 2:30 most nights. However, I don't think any rational person would call that "sleeping through the night". It's not morning now. It's nighttime still. I'm not sleeping through the night. I'm up in the middle of the night.

Which is fine. I mean, Z-man is only 6 weeks old. This is a-okay with me. Just don't patronize me and try to convince me that I'm now officially sleeping through the night.

*Note for non-parents or non-obsessive readers of sleep related books: I think I should clarify this. Every time you read something by one of these supposed infant sleep experts, you'll see all over the place something along the lines of "sleeping through the night is defined as 6 continuous hours of sleep". Which, I must admit, makes me sorely doubt the sanity of said authors, let alone the validity of their advice. Did you really think you could pass this off? Did you really think sleep deprived parents would somehow be convinced they were magically sleeping through the night just because you said so? I mean, I can make definitive statements, too. That doesn't make them true. Here, let me try:

A "good blog entry" is defined as this one.

Did I fool anyone into thinking this wasn't rambling and obviously the byproduct of someone who is not particularly well-rested since she is NOT, no matter what anyone says, sleeping through the night?

John Travola's Bread

I went to the grocery store with 4 items on my list. How many of those items did I come home with? Three. Yes, I had a list. Yes, I looked at the list. Yes, it was a ridiculously short list. Yes, I still managed to forget one of the items.

And what did I forget? Hot dog rolls. I have the hot dogs, but no rolls.

I have a good excuse, though. Well, maybe not *good* but it's an excuse. See, I had to buy sandwich bread, too. I'm extremely high maintenance about bread. Here's what I'm looking for: whole grain, no high fructose corn syrup, tastes good, and is nut-safe. That's harder to find than you'd think, but we finally decided on Pepperidge Farm Whole Grain Oatmeal Small Slice. The boys like it, I like it, TK likes it. You don't know how many loaves we tried until we found this.

I was standing in the bread aisles, searching futilely for my bread. Luckily, the guy who delivers the Pepperidge Farm bread happened to be there stocking the shelves. He asked if he could help me find something, and I explained what I was looking for.

"Oh, that's been disco'd," he told me.

Now, I'm guessing that doesn't mean the bread has been dressed in a white leisure suit and given choreography by Doriana Sanchez.

I'm bummed. Not only am I missing my hot dog rolls, but now I also have to search again for the perfect bread. Luckily, Pepperidge Farm still makes the same bread in a regular size slice. It's just inconvenient since the regular size bread makes too large a sandwich for the boys to eat all of, but too small a sandwich for them to only have half of. I know, my life is so fraught with difficulties.

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In other news, I'm going to be posting on another group blog, The Book Nook Club. It contains book reviews and has a monthly online book club component. I'm sure I'll let you all know when my first post is up!

Geez, I move my recipe stuff over to The Veggie Project, now my book stuff over to The Book Nook. All I need to do now is find a parenting/twin blog, and sci-fi TV blog, and a general craziness blog, and I'll be completely out of topics for my own blog. Although I guess I could continue to recount the conversations I have in supermarkets. That makes for some really engaging reading.

As an aside, I have my apple peach blueberry pie recipe up at The Veggie Project. And I made that pie for my last book group meeting. It all ties together, doesn't it?? Food, book groups, me just generally being crazy...

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Replies to comments on Okay, who's watching Heroes?:

Nancy: I'm so glad the boys were well enough to go to school today. It was fun talking to you for 15 seconds :)

Goddess In Progress: You're so right...his taste in TV shows is right up my alley! Thank you :)

LauraC: Glad you got a chance to watch it. Great episodes, right? Oh, I can't wait for this season to unfold!

Trish: Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed your SITS day!

Melodie: Yay! A Veronica Mars fan! I love you!

Mary Ellen: Scarecrow? Heresy! You've obviously never watched Babylon 5, or else his Scarecrow and Mrs. King days would be overwritten by his wonderful turn as Captain Sheridan!

Kimberly: I hope you caught it over on NBC. Wasn't it great??

Twilight Series Rant

Oh, hold on to your hats, because you're going to be subjected to some ranting the likes of which you haven't seen since I read that piece of trash My Annoying Sister's Annoying Keeper.

Okay, fine, that helped me get some perspective. I'm nowhere near as annoyed at the Twilight series as I was at My Boring Sister's Whiny Keeper. In fact, I found the Twilight series to be entirely engaging and surprisingly readable. I mean, there was never any risk it would make my "best books ever" list, but I was enjoying them quite a bit.

But I'm going to complain anyway. Because the further it got into this series, the more disappointed I became, until I was completely disgusted with how worthless Breaking Dawn was.

Before I go any further, let me say right now that I know Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon. I have no problem with that. In fact, anyone who knows me knows that one of my favorite authors is Orson Scott Card, who happens to be a Mormon. Many of his books make my "best books ever list". Heck, I even like his Memory of Earth series, which is based on The Book of Mormon. So I'm not going to give her a pass for the problems I have with this book simply because of her religion. Nor am I giving her a pass because she writes for a YA audience, since you all know I'm in love with YA fiction and it *can* be done well.

This just wasn't.

Anyone who hasn't read the series, go ahead and stop reading this post now. First, this is going to be filled with spoilers galore, and I don't want to ruin it for anyone who might read the series in the future. The author does a fine job of that all by herself.

Besides, this will probably be phenomenally boring if you haven't read the series. Okay, fine. It might be boring even if you HAVE read the series.


So last warning: Here be spoilers. Read on only if you want to be spoiled. Like a rotten tomato. Or my sweet boys. As an aside, I had a tomato sitting on my counter from last week's CSA, and it looked fine. Until I gently touched it. And it exploded. Seriously. It was disgusting and amazing all at once. I love science. Luckily, my boys have not yet exploded when I let them play one more game of Bingo or eat some ice cream. Yes, I spoil them. Okay, back to the annoying book. No way are my cute kids distracting me from my rant!

So, here's my main problem with the book: everyone sucks. Hee, get it? They're vampires? Okay, seriously, there is no one likable.

Bella: whiny, co-dependant, ignores her friends, treats people badly.

Edward: controlling, abusive, whiny, annoying.

Jacob: Okay, I kind of like Jacob. So of course SM totally emasculates him by having him be completely obsessed with Bella. And don't even start me on Nessie. What a cop out. "Oh, nothing makes me happier than to be tied to all the people I hate forever. That's awesome, and I'm not even being sarcastic. Thank goodness I had this lobotomy."

Alice: Ugh. She sees the future so uses that power to plan parties Bella will hate? And, she spends money obsessively. Great, you're going to live forever so you mess up the world by buying endless amounts of expensive clothes and only wearing them once? And, she became more of a means to progress the plot rather than an actual character.

Charlie: Completely helpless, and so detached from his daughter. And could he be at all effective as a police chief when he's completely clueless?

Renee: Not a very good mom, and doesn't really do anything for the story. Is she supposed to make Bella look mature? It doesn't. It's just odd, and a useless character.

The werewolves: "We hate the vampires. But I guess we're okay with *these* vampires. And I guess it's okay if they can kill people, as long as they go a few miles away. Because even though our entire purpose, passed down through generations, is to protect people, it really wasn't *that* important to us. Oh, and we're totally ninnys."

The "bad" vampires: "We're super powerful. No really. We are. Shut up! I mean it. We're the most powerful. Yes we are. Yes we are times one million. We're not? Okay, we'll go away now." Um, yeah, are we supposed to believe they just walk away? They don't plan to pick the Cullens off one at a time, even if it takes a hundred years?

Bella's school "friends": Just placeholders. Was Mike just there to prove how beautiful and desirable Bella was? Was Jessica nice or not nice? Was Lauren the "mean" girl? Or was Bella? The school friend stories were never fully developed, and just dropped at a whim. All they did for me was prove that Bella was a terrible friend.

Problem number two: I'd joked a few posts ago that what Twilight needed a little more of was some sex. Yuck, who thought getting my wish would leave me disgusted? First, the sex was pretty much all behind the scenes, which is fine (and even preferable) to me. But it was just...gross. I mean, the first sex scenes were pretty much abuse. But Bella *liked* it? That's messed up. And of course it immediately results in pregnancy. And later sex...um, it's just jokes about wrecking beds and houses. That's just disturbing. This wasn't at all entertaining. And, authors always give away a little about themselves when they write, but I hate for it to be obvious and have it pull you right out of the story. But there was plenty of it in this story. I have to give one example about sex, that was actually kind of disturbing to me. It's about Bella being nervous after her and Edward get married, about the first time they're going to have sex. Okay, that's a completely understandable emotion, and certainly could have been done well. But instead we get this:

How did people do this--swallow all their fears and trust someone so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had--with less than the absolute commitment Edward had given me? If it weren't Edward out there, if I didn't know in every cell of my body that he loved me as much as I loved him--unconditionally and irrevocably and, to be honest, irrationally--I'd never be able to get up off this floor.

Really? That's your best argument against premarital sex? That all girls should be ridiculously insecure? That they should have so little confidence in their own worth that they should require a commitment of MARRIAGE before they are willing to expose their imperfections to the person they supposedly love? I mean, I'm certainly not one who is ever going to convincingly argue against premarital sex, but at least I can understand some of the arguments (i.e., risk of pregnancy, risk of disease, lack of maturity, etc). But not to have sex because a person is too embarrassed of themselves? That's not right. Geez, reading this makes me want to go out and tell some high schoolers to start having sex. Just kidding. I would never tell a high schooler to start having sex. I trust they can think of it all on their own. But seriously, if I had a daughter I would hope she would be a strong enough young woman to wait until the right time because it was the right time, not because she was embarrassed of her body, or even worse, embarrassed of who she was.

The ending of this series was just a mess, a "neatly" tied up "and they all lived happily ever after". And by "neatly" I of course mean, "cheatly". Because it was all a cheat. The Bella-Edward-Jacob triangle was interesting, but the Nessie solution was a big cheat. You can't solve the problem of Bella and Jacob being in love by introducing a magical creature who negates it with absolutely no ill-feelings. Cheat!

And all of the Cullens and their allies having the superest super powers? Cheat. Especially given that Bella was magicially the most powerful of the powerful immediately. I'm willing to suspend disbelief, but that was going a bit too far.

And the "bad" vampires just being so easily defeated? I read hundreds of pages gearing up for a fight. And no fight? Yes, a let down. And unbelievable, as I stated earlier that those vampires so committed to fighting Cullens at any cost would walk away so easily, presumably for all time.

Okay, I'm stopping now as this is getting long. I wish I'd picked these books for my book group choice, although I think they would have all shot me if I chose a 4 book series :)

Have you read the series? Please share your opinion. Love it, hate it...just tell me why! I'm just feeling incredibly let down by the end of this series. While I enjoyed the earlier books so much, I feel like I'll never be able to enjoy them again knowing how badly it all ends.

Wait, I forgot. I'm stopping now. Really. Right....now.

Inappropriate public conversation number 963

I took my boys to the library today to return their books, get out some new ones, and put a hold on my impossible-to-find next book group selection (Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri).

Then I decided to spend two minutes looking for a book for myself. I've been wanting to read Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin for quite some time. It's been on my list to look for in used book stores for over a year, and I just haven't found it yet. But she was mentioned briefly in The Omnivore's Dilemma, and then I just read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time which is a fictional story of a boy with autism so I decided this was just too much of a coincidence and I needed to read Thinking in Pictures right away.

Of course my library is a total disaster. Even with the call number, it's usually impossible to find the book you need since they seem to use numerical order more as a suggestion than a fixed rule. Hey, maybe they're following my system of organizing books by color! Who knows, I haven't managed to figure out their system yet. It's a bit of a mystery.

But I digress with this long explanation simply to set the stage. N-man had picked a book about trains, so I set the boys in a chair as I start my search for Thinking in Pictures and let them read their new books. I'm up on a ladder, searching through books far above my head, and of course, even though I'm in the right call number section, my book is nowhere in sight. Suddenly I hear, quite loudly in the silence of the library, "Mommy, I see Percy!"

Now, anyone who has little boys probably knows that Percy is the green Thomas the Train character. And sure enough in his book was a picture of a real train that was painted green. What a great connection for him to make!

But here's the problem: the boys don't say Percy. They clearly say "pussy". So he's yelling: "Mommy, I see Percy!" but that's not what it sounds like he's saying. Then B-Man comes over to look. "Mommy, green Percy!" "That's nice honey, but let's use our inside voice." "Percy! Percy!" "Shhh, we have to be very quiet in the library." "Mommy, there's Percy!"

This goes on for a few minutes until finally, cheeks blazing, I take away the book to try to get them to look at B-man's book about trucks. That was the worst idea ever. Because what did they both yell immediately? "Mommy, I want Percy!" Sigh. I bet all the guys sitting around were wondering if we found the secret porn section of the library.

Random related thought: I finally had to ask the reference librarian why I couldn't find the book I wanted. Here's the explanation I got:

Librarian: "Oh, is that a biography?"

Me: "Yes."

Librarian: "We pulled all the biographies off the shelves and put them in a section upstairs."

Me: "I thought we weren't allowed to go upstairs."

Librarian: "You're not, but I can go get it for you in a few minutes."

Me, looking at my watch and realizing I'm supposed to be home in 5 minutes for the start of the SIX hour window the gas company gave me for when they're coming to switch our meter, but that's another rant for another day: "That's okay. I guess I don't really need it."

I guess all my signs to read Thinking in Pictures immediately were canceled out by the sign from my ill-organized library not to read it. It's not like I don't have enough books to read. I'll just keep Thinking in Pictures on my list. Maybe it'll be at the used book store next time I go!

Nickel and Dimed

I just finished Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. It was an interesting book. The author took a variety of low-wage jobs in different areas of the country and tried to live on that wage. I didn't love it, and some of it was a little dated (it was published in 2001, researched in 1998-2000), but overall, it was a very thought-provoking read.

I came across this quote at the end that got me thinking:

When someone works for less pay than she can live on--when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently--then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life.

I'm mostly quiet about politics, but I may as well come out of the political closet just a little and admit my leanings are definitely in the socialist direction. I find inequities like this disturbing, and I don't have a solution besides giving to charities. But that seems so distant and inadequate. I don't know. It just seems like there's something wrong in America where the people who we rely on in so many ways are paid so little while others are raking in millions of dollars as a result of their work.

Shortly before the time when Barbara Ehrenreich was researching this book, I was right out of college and working my first job. TK was in grad school, and we were living together in Atlanta. The job I took paid $20,000 a year, which comes out to about $10/hour*, far more than the approximately $6 - $7 the author made at any of the jobs she worked while researching this book. I'll be honest: we couldn't make ends meet at $10/hour and had to rely on credit card debt to get us through that first year. We lived in a sketchy area. Nothing like the places the author described, but we did have to call the police a few times, and shortly before we'd had enough and moved out, a delivery truck driver had his truck stolen at gunpoint out of our parking lot. We had almost no furniture, just a bed, a cheap table, a futon, and the tiny TV I had used in my dorm room. We didn't buy much of anything, or do much for entertainment besides hiking in local parks. But we were never really in trouble. First of all, we were able to qualify for credit cards, which let us float for a year under the assumption that better times were ahead (thankfully, they were). We both had health insurance through my job. TK always could have dropped out of school and gotten a job had he needed to. And I could have gotten a better paying job quite easily. So we were never really living anything like the lives described in this book.

But still, I think back on that time, seeing how difficult it was for us making nearly double what the people working jobs like waitressing, housecleaning, or retail were making. How can anyone be expected to live on that, let alone support a family? And most of those jobs were hard on a person's body...the biggest risk in accounting (besides all those paper cuts**) is carpal tunnel syndrome.

As I said, I don't have a solution. I just think that the first step is to even recognize there's a problem.

So, book review time: would I recommend this book? Surely, although I didn't love it in many ways, I think it was a very worthwhile book to have read. It's one of those books where the idea of the book is far better than the execution, but the execution is good enough (and the book is short enough), that it is still a wonderful read. Anyone know of any similar books I may enjoy?

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*That assumes a 40 hour work week, which anyone who has ever worked accounting knows does not exist during month-end close, when I'd work somewhere between 60-80 hours a week. I remember during one particularly hellishly long week calculating out my actual salary and realizing it was below minimum wage.

**I'm not kidding about the paper cuts. Filing was especially rough on the cuticles. I'd always keep bandaids in my desk as I'd end up bleeding from a paper cut usually at least once a day. I don't know how normal this is, though. I'm admittedly klutzy.

Phonics Er-ant

My boys have a Leap Frog Fridge Phonics set. I'm not big into the "learning" toys, but this has been awesome. They love it, and have known all their letters and letter sounds since before they were two.

So, why am I about to embark on a rant? I just can't help myself! See, I don't expect perfection in a children's phonics toy. I mean, phonics are confusing, and it would hardly be fair for them to have to cover every single sound "y" makes in their "Y says..." song. (For the record, /y/ quite commonly says a long E sound although their song only tells you that y says yuh and y says I).

But, there's one hugely glaring error. R. According to their song, /r/ says -er. Um, no. It doesn't. Do you pick an er-ed er-ose? No. The -er sound is only if there is an r-controlled vowel, like in butter or mother. And here in Boston, even that's debatable. Hee, hee, I just teased about the Boston accent! But back to my point, /r/ never says -er on its own...there always has to be a vowel with it for it to say -er. On its own, r more commonly says something closer to ruh, especially at the start of words. So that's my rant. Or er-ant, as Leap Frog would have you believe.

Does this really matter? No, it just grates on me. I've gone so far as to hide the R from their phonics set, but then I feel all guilty, like N-man and B-man are going to have to recite their ABCs to graduate from preschool or something and they'll be all "A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q ummmmm, uhhh, what comes next?" So then I give the R back. And it ends up being their favorite and they play it again and again and again. And I slowly lose my mind until I'm forced to purge my insanity via this blog.

Errrr.

Random Unrelated Thought: We finalized our preschool plans, and are pretty happy with our decision to go with our second choice preschool. At least this way we know the boys have a slot for the fall, and I don't have to spend all summer wondering and hoping, and we don't risk them not getting into preschool at all. However, I did get a call from crazy preschool with the ridiculous "lottery" that is so biased against everyone who doesn't live in their pricey neighborhood. They wanted to know why we hadn't turned in an application. Um, if I could afford to put down a deposit for two kids at one preschool while sitting around with my fingers crossed waiting to get into your preschool, I'd just move to your overpriced town and then wouldn't be stuck at the very bottom of the lottery. Well, that and the fact that I'm a total control freak and can't stand the uncertainty of a wait list. So in exciting news, our boys are officially preschool bound come September!