The New Normal

As I am writing this, my thermometer reads 17 degrees.  This was our third consecutive night in the teens and the cold weather is the only thing anyone is talking about around here.  The Atlanta news keeps reporting on an “Alberta Clipper” (when did Alberta get a basketball team?), everyone you see – whether at the grocery store, at work, or while dropping the kids off at school – reminds you to bundle up… as if you forgot it was cold, and Sarah Palin is accusing Al Gore of contributing to Global Cooling by overdoing his Global Warming tour (and inventing the internet).  I have to say the three consecutive nights in the teens seems cold to me now, but there was a time when this would have been downright tropical.

I spent most of the past decade moving all around the country.  I know, I know – we don’t actually start the new decade until 2011, but you know what I mean.  Back in 2000, we lived in Indiana and moved to central Florida; in 2002, we moved to northern New York; in 2004, we moved to northeastern Nebraska; and in 2006, we moved to the northeast Atlanta area.  In 2008, just for good measure, we moved about two miles down the road just because we were used to moving every two years but really liked the area where we were living.

While we experienced different cultures and landscapes everywhere we went, probably the biggest change at each location was the climate.  In central Florida, for example, I could wear shorts year round and people freaked out when it got down to 40 degrees at night.  I remember driving around looking at Christmas lights while people were watering their lawns.

We moved from there to northern NY in October.  This was not “Upstate NY”.  Instead, the locals called this area “The North Country”.  I called it Hoth.  We lived just off the northeastern shore of Lake Ontario – an area known for severe lake effect snow that will make Buffalo look appealing.  The coldest it got while we lived there was negative 35 degrees Fahrenheit.  That wasn’t the wind chill – that was the actual temperature.  We also experienced 10 feet of snow in 48 hours during one severe lake effect storm.  I don’t even know how much snow we got for the year, but I do know that we bought our house in October and I never saw our yard until April… only to have it covered by a foot of snow again in May.  How people continue to live there is beyond me.  Oh sure, it’s beautiful in the summer – all two weeks of it, but after that not even emperor penguins would want to call that place home.

The interesting thing is that people up there didn’t understand why Southerners would want to put up with the heat and humidity of the South.  My thinking was as follows:  100 degrees is uncomfortable.  Negative 35 degrees is painful.  In the South, you can go get the mail in the middle of summer and immediately break a sweat – inconvenient.  In The North Country, you can go get the mail in the middle of winter and loose extremities due to frostbite – crazy.

Here’s my point.  Our perception of what is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or painful is based on the climate to which we are accustomed.  In the South 35 degrees is cold; in the North it’s springtime.  To a childless couple, a screaming baby with a stinky diaper pinned underneath her older sister is chaos; to the parents of young children, it’s Tuesday night.  To an adult who’s been out of school for 20 years, enrolling in a college course can be frightening and intimidating; to a  third year college student; it’s just part of the routine.

We have the amazing capacity to adapt and cope.  Today’s chaos is tomorrow’s normal.  This is reassuring if the path we are on leads to our intended destination – we just endure and adapt and eventually we’ll be where we want to be.  It can be tragic, however, if the path we are on leads elsewhere.  We become so accustomed to following the wrong path, it just becomes routine until we finally get to the destination and wonder how we got there: How did we end up with so much debt?  Why don’t my children obey me?  Why am I out of breath after climbing one flight of stairs?  Why don’t I ever have time to spend with my family?

What is your normal?  Could a little chaos today lead to a better normal tomorrow?

 

Hold the Lutefisk

My wife was born in Minnesota and has a Norwegian heritage.  Every heritage and culture is known for its history, traditions, and often – food.  So what are Norwegians known for?

About all I can come up with is:

1.  The Vikings

2.  They talk funny

One thing they are not known for (at least favorably) is their cuisine.  I mean, when is the last time you saw a Viking restaurant?

Sara has an aunt and uncle that live a few miles away from us and wanted us to share in the traditional Norwegian Christmas feast – Lutefisk (pronounced “loot a fisk”).  Unless you are from the upper Midwest (or Scandinavia) you have probably never heard of this, so let me explain.  Note:  any food that needs an “explanation” should automatically raise a caution flag.

Lutefisk starts out as perfectly normal whitefish or cod.  What happens next would probably be protested by PETA if they knew about it.  This is an expert from a website I found on Lutefisk.  I am not embellishing, this is direct quote.

Lutefisk is made from dried whitefish (normally ling, but cod is also used), prepared with lye, in a sequence of particular treatments. The watering steps of these treatments differ slightly for salted/dried whitefish because of its high salt content.

The first treatment is to soak the stockfish in cold water for five to six days (with the water changed daily). The saturated stockfish is then soaked in an unchanged solution of cold water and lye for an additional two days. The fish swells during this soaking and its protein content decreases by more than 50 percent, producing its famous jelly-like consistency. When this treatment is finished, the fish (saturated with lye) has a pH value of 11–12, and is therefore caustic. To make the fish edible, a final treatment of yet another four to six days of soaking in cold water (also changed daily) is needed. Eventually, the lutefisk is ready to be cooked.

In Finland, the traditional reagent used is birch ash. It contains high amounts of potassium carbonate and hydrocarbonate, giving the fish a more mellow treatment than would sodium hydroxide (lyestone). It is important to not incubate the fish too long in the lye, because saponification of the fish fats may occur, effectively rendering the fish fats into soap. The term for such spoiled fish in Finnish is saippuakala (soap fish).

YUM!!!

Let me summarize.  This is a fish that takes on a jelly-like consistency, is caustic, requires special treatment to become edible, is intentionally stripped of its nutritional value, and turns into soap if its treatment isn’t timed just right.  All of the sudden Twinkies look like health food.

After it is cooked, the fish is mercifully served over mashed potatoes and covered in a white cream.  The fish itself looks like translucent, gelatinous cabbage.  The taste is VERY fishy.  I don’t like fishy tasting fish, but if you do, it might not be that bad.  The kicker is the consistency.  Imagine a killer whale’s phlegm after it just had a huge herring dinner coughed up on your dinner plate.  If that doesn’t work, try fish Jell-o that hasn’t been refrigerated quite long enough to completely congeal.  I have no idea why people would choose to subject their palates to this culinary atrocity.

I had my Lutefisk experience and will stick to turkey and dressing for now on.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and wish you a happy and safe New Year.  Now I just need to find some hog jowl, black-eyed peas, and mustard greens (you Southerners will understand).

 

Silent Night…

Christmas Day will soon be upon us, so here’s a little tune to put you in mood.  Sing to the tune of Silent Night:

Late at night a parent’s plight

To put the kids in bed without a fight

A brain surgeon would be angry and riled

Assembling these gifts of splendor reviled

Oh, is that an extra piece?

Yes, it’s an extra piece.

 

Later that night I get in a fight

With a bulb that just won’t light

This bulb was supposed to go in the main star

On top of the tree that now looks bizarre

Boy my nerves are worn

I glare at my tree with scorn.

 

After the night at dawn’s first light

Little faces lit happy and bright

Unwrapping presents at a frantic pace

Wrapping paper all over the place

This is what it’s all worth

At least I didn’t go through childbirth!

 

Hey, I never claimed to be a songwriter.  Merry Christmas!

 

Deck the Halls

Now that our youngest is able to walk around the house and collect little treasures, Christmas decorating has become a daily routine.  The Advent calendar that my wife bought for the kids is a bare Nativity scene with the little Velcro figures (Olivia calls them “cookies”) spread throughout the house and our Christmas tree, which was once beautifully decorated, is now bare to a height of about 3 feet as the ornaments have slowly migrated up the tree and out of the reach of curious hands.

Of course the actual day of decorating had its usual stresses and blunders.  It literally took about ten trips to the basement to bring up all the decorations – it looked like we were getting ready to move again once everything was upstairs.  Then we got to work on the ginormous 10 foot artificial tree that takes about three weeks to put together with the help of a construction crane.

After completing the tree, I took the empty boxes back downstairs while Sara got to work on the outdoor lights.  We’re not the Grizwalds, but we have a decent amount of exterior illumination and Sara actually enjoys putting the lights up.  I have no problem letting her run with that…

After getting the empty boxes (and a few  boxes of decorations that we never use, but I always carry upstairs, unpack, repack, and take back downstairs) back in the basement, I went out to check on Sara’s progress.  She proudly showed me the routing of her lighting around trees, shrubs, porch rails, columns, and flag poles leading all the way up to the electrical socket on the porch where she held up the wrong end of the plug and asked me if we had an adapter so she could plug it in.  Yep, she started way out in the yard with the end that it supposed to go into the wall and ran the whole thing backwards.

I gave her that look that every husband has given and every wife recognizes.  She still didn’t get it…

I don’t mean to belittle Sara – I’m sure many of you have made this same error and at least she was out there putting up the lights, but there is a good lesson here.  No matter how creatively Sara put up the lights, no matter how good they looked, how hard she worked, or how good her intentions, her plan would fail because she started with the wrong end.  Sometimes we realize that we started in the wrong place and try to correct it by working harder, rationalizing, or simply ignoring our error when what we really need to do is go back to the beginning and look at how our endeavor began.  With Christmas lights, the fix is pretty simple.  With careers, relationships, and life priorities, the required correction can be intimidating, but it is necessary if we want our lives to light up.

 

I’m Entitled to a Week Off

I’m giving finals, turning in final grades, and wrapping up the end of the semester, so it has been pretty crazy lately.  Because of this, there will not be a posting this week.  Give me a break – it’s my birthday!

 

Gluttonfest 2009

This Thanksgiving was yet another gluttony-fest for my family.  When my oldest daughter became old enough to really get into Christmas a few years ago, we decided to stay home for Christmas.  This means that when we travel to see my family for Thanksgiving, we do Christmas in the same weekend.  That’s right, Thanksgiving on Thursday and Christmas on Friday.  Take that, marketing geniuses.

On Thanksgiving Day, we get up early embark on a 400 mile journey from Atlanta to West Tennessee.  We have dinner at my grandmother’s that consists of the typical Thanksgiving fare: turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, peas, various casseroles, and enough desserts make the entire field of the Tour de France diabetic.

On the next night (our early Christmas) we have a tradition of having breakfast for dinner.  I’m not talking about bacon and eggs here.  We have a breakfast casserole that is filled with sausage, eggs, cheese, bread, and deliciousness, hash brown casserole, some sort of blueberry, buttery, sugary, bready thing, bacon, ham, and biscuits.  This is my favorite meal of the year.

The next night, we overeat for no particular reason: barbecue, beans, and potato salad – good Tennessee food.  It’s interesting that during the holiday season we hear a lot of people talking about how not to overdo it and how to counteract all of those additional calories consumed.  I say, who cares?  It’s a special time that only happens once a year.  So what if I gain a pound or two?  As long as overeating does not become a habit, there is no real harm done.

I generally eat well and have healthy habits.  I run 15 miles a week and lift weights 4 days a week.  Why should I get all bent out of shape over a weekend of eating like a Roman emperor?  I think this is a fallacy that we experience not only with regard to our physical well being, but in all aspects of life.  We focus too much on the rare occurrences (a weekend of overeating, a big presentation, an upcoming exam) while neglecting the daily habits that truly shape our lives.  If you want to make a change in your lifestyle, don’t go out and do something big once or twice a year, do something small every day.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

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Mr. Mom

My wife had a conference in Phoenix last week, so I was in charge of both of our girls for three days (and nights).  While having two kids is more demanding than two, at least you’re not outnumbered when both parents are present.

I was outnumbered last week.

I’ve learned that when there are more children than adults in a household, you have to switch from man-on-man coverage to a zone defense.  I was essentially trying to cover the middle third of the field and not give up any big plays.  Fortunately, we are blessed to have two very good girls and there were no major catastrophes, but any time you have sole responsibility over a 1 year old and 4 year old, there will be some stress.

Take dinner time for example.  I like to eat.  I enjoy dinner with my family.  I even like to cook!  But when all the extraneous demands of parenting hit at once, dinner can easily become a race to see how fast I can get my kids to down cheese toast covered in ketchup (hey, that’s what they wanted) before anything too bad happens.

As a special treat, I cooked my homemade pizza Friday night.  Here’s a rundown on how this went:

I’m about to take the pizza out of the oven.  Olivia is watching iCarly.  “Olivia, go wash your hands.  We’re about to eat.”

“Ok, daddy.”

I begin slicing the pizza.  What’s that smell?  Amelia walks by – gotta change a diaper.

I change the diaper and bring the baby back downstairs where I finish slicing the pizza.

“Olivia, wash your hands, please.”

“Ok, daddy.”

I get the plates fixed up for the girls and put Amelia in her high chair.

“OLIVIA, WASH YOUR HANDS NOW!”

“Can I pause the TV?”  My 4 year old daughter knows how to operate a DVR – if only she could teach my wife.

The girls are at the table, blessings have been said, and I’m about to take a bite out of my delicious pizza.  Olivia takes her bite first and the 4000 degree molten cheese under a pepperoni scalds her mouth.  I get her to drink her milk and after much consoling convince her to continue eating.  Now I can enjoy my dinner.

Not yet!  Amelia thinks the tomato sauce from her pizza would make a wonderful shampoo.  Not only that, but she thinks it feels wonderful in her ears. 

I get her cleaned up.  Olivia needs more milk.

I get Olivia more milk.  Amelia needs more food.

With everyone temporarily satisfied, I get ready to take my first bite.  Before I can even get my slice of pizza off my plate, Olivia says, “I need to go poop.”  While she’s old enough to go on her own, I still have to clean up.  So I put down my pizza and wait for her to take care of business so I can clean her up before eating my dinner.

Back at the table, I finally get to enjoy my room temperature pizza.  It is at this point that my dog, who is under the table, decides to release some of the nastiest gas that has ever emanated from any creature.  I finally get to eat my cold pizza while smelling dog gas after recently wiping a child’s rear end.  How appetizing!

 

Too Much of a Good Thing

I like muffins.  Who doesn’t?  When you think about it, the word “muffin” is really little more than a euphemism that makes us feel slightly less guilty about having cake for breakfast.  I made some muffins the other day, but rather than using our regular brand, I tried a Fiber One muffin mix.  I wanted to try the Fiber One mix because I am pretty health conscious and try to take care of myself (okay, I had a coupon).

After having my muffin breakfast, I soon realized that my stomach was making noises that sounded like a spirited debate between humpback whales. 

The debate escalated.

I checked the nutritional information on the muffin mix to learn that each muffing had 5 grams of fiber.  I ate three of them.  In case you’re wondering, this means that I had about 60% of the recommended daily fiber intake over a span of about 5 minutes.  Oh yeah, and that was followed by three cups of black coffee.

Normally this wouldn’t be too big of a deal, but I would soon be teaching a two-hour long class.  I made it through the class, but I had to time my voice inflections just right to drown out the cries of rage from inside my stomach.

We all know that fiber is a good thing, but get too much at once and… well you know how that sentence ends.  In fact, too much of anything (even if it is supposed to be good for you) is bad for you.  A little sunshine lifts your mood and provides a dose of vitamin D – too much and you get cancer.  If you hear Hanson’s Mmm Bop once (yeah, you remember that song) it can put a little pep in your step – hear it more than once and you become a threat to national security.  We’re supposed to drink a lot of water for numerous health reasons, but guess what – you can even die from drinking too much water!

The point is, just about anything taken too far is going to have some negative effects on you… and it doesn’t end with what we eat and drink.  Too much work, too much play, too many responsibilities, too many commitments – sometimes it’s best to just simplify.  I’m all for setting the bar high and striving for great achievements, but sometimes the act of pursuing an achievement can get in the way of that which we wish to achieve.

 

What Did You Do With Your Extra Hour?

There was a time in my life when rewinding of the clocks by one hour in the fall represented an extra hour of sleep.  Unfortunately my two little girls can’t tell time.  I was up a little before 6 am this Sunday to put milk in a cup, a S’mores Pop Tart on a plate, and to turn on Little Einsteins. 

It was still dark.

That’s fine with me.  I’m usually an early riser and the whole getting an extra hour to get stuff done is fascinating to me.  I spent my hour making spreadsheets for one of my MBA classes… exciting, I know.

I don’t like the sun going down earlier, but I love the one 25 hour day of the year.  As I go through the house turning those clocks back, I feel like I have somehow cheated the space-time continuum.  I feel so much more efficient and wonder why every day can’t be 25 hours long.

Aside from the fact that this would require the rotation of the earth to slow substantially, I’m not sure if it would be such a good thing.  Although I got a lot done and felt great all day long, I woke myself with a loud snore in my chair at 9:15 that night.

Maybe more time isn’t the answer.  It seems that my mind and body can only take a 24 hour day.