Soup Is Not A Finger Food

On cake and misnamed holidays

Instead of being in school, thousands of school children are sitting at home today, on a holiday we've come to know as Presidents' Day, when in fact, the Federal law designates this holiday as Washington's Birthday. Check this out, from www.opm.gov:
 
This holiday is designated as "Washington’s Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.
 
What? And all this time I've been thinking that we were supposed to be at home, quietly and reverently contemplating the anniversaries of the birth of two of our country's Founding Fathers: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  I'm sure George and Abe would have wanted the Metro trains to run on a modified (read: fewer trains) schedule and those scary, panic-inducing changing-direction highway lanes we have around here to be something other than what we all expect on a Monday morning.
 
Well, whatever. The point is, it was a school holiday long before they canceled the Whole Entire World during last week's Snowpocalypse, and people, I pledge that that will be my one and only reference to the weather today.
 
All this talk about birthdays makes me think of cake! Cake is a funny thing, isn't it?  I mean, you can't not have a birthday without a cake. This would be in violation of some cosmic law. To do so would tempt the fates, and not in a good way.  No, you gotta have cake. That's just the way it is, forever and ever, Amen.
 
Yet, it is my observation that while people are in love with the idea of cake, they don't so much enjoy eating it.  Cake is ceremonial.  When someone starts cutting the cake, everyone demurs. "Oh, just a tiny slice for me, please," Mary says. "Smaller than THAT for me," chimes Beth.  That accidentally huge corner piece with all the icing? It immediately gets passed around the room to the largest man present. As if his size requires him to eat more.
 
This reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Office Space." Having suffered through any number of office birthday parties, it always makes me cringe:

You can't have a wedding without a cake. But honestly, I don't remember too much about the cake at my own wedding. I think it was a marble cake, and there was white frosting with some flowers. It was both pretty and yummy. I also know it was of modest size, and when it went to the kitchen to be cut and served, many guests may have received a piece of sheet cake instead. (Because how would you have known the difference?) After the ceremonial cake cutting, I don't think I ate anything more of it than the bites we exchanged.  (And no, we did not smear it into each other's faces. Why, oh why, has that become a wedding tradition?)
 
This year, I made a really cool cake for Peezer's birthday party. The theme was medieval, so the easiest cake to make was a shield:
 


 
The kids all loved looking at it, they couldn't wait to eat it - but not one kid at the party took more than two bites of their piece of cake.  I threw most of it away.
 
And yet, cake can trigger memories.
 
I remember that every year, my Grandma Losch would ask me what kind of cake she should make me for my birthday. I always chose a red velvet cake, and hers was the best. Oh, and my Aunt Doll (Grandma Losch's daughter, my mom's sister) makes this thing called Grandma Cake, but it probably should be called "rot your teeth and bust yer gut cake" - it's made with brown sugar and butter measured in POUNDS, not fractions of a cup. She always had it when I visited her house, and I enjoyed sharing cake and milk with my Uncle Bill. I have the recipe somewhere and will share it one day soon.
 
Now it's your turn. What are your cake memories? Or your memories of Washington's birthday, Lincoln's Birthday, or Presidents' Day?  Leave 'em in the comments, please.

Peezer makes snow smoothies

Making lemonade from lemons, as they say, except we used fruit and some of the two-plus feet of snow that fell here over the weekend. This was entertainment on snow day number one. Schools are closed tomorrow, and guess what? We're supposed to get another 10-20 inches of snow here. On top of the 26" we already have.  Good times.

Unfiltered

As it happens most nights, Soup Husband Curt tucked the Peezer into bed last evening. I tiptoed in to give my sweet baby boy a goodnight kiss. He was all snuggled beneath layers of fuzzy blankets. The disco light was tossing soft beams of colored light around and around his darkened bedroom. (Don't judge. It's his night light, OK?) I leaned down and rubbed his head, and bent to lightly brush my lips against his forehead. And as I whispered, “Sleep tight, sweet dreams, I love you,” he began thrashing his head from side to side and yelled

MOMMY, EW, YOU HAVE BAD BREATH!

So much for the tender moments shared between mother and child.

I brush, I floss, and I get regular dental checkups. But it was 9pm, I had just had a glass of wine and nibbled on some barbecued roast beef leftover from dinner, and I guess that was obvious to my son.

As shocking as it is when kids do that, I think that's also what's refreshing about them. They will never hesitate to tell you how they feel. They completely lack that filter we grown-ups have spent most of our adult years fine-tuning.

Think about it: If you’re talking with someone who has bad breath, you will become distracted by it, and as they continue blathering speaking, you’ll weigh the pros and cons of mentioning it, carefully select just the right words so as not to completely offend, rehearse saying them and anticipate the possible reaction, all before deciding whether to say it with our out-loud voice. And after all that, you’ll probably just take a step backward and offer the other person an Altoid, and hope they get your drift.

But not kids! Kids will yell things that we grown-ups only wish we could. At the grocery strore: MOM! YOU FARTED! Or in church: I’M BOOOOOREEEED, WHEN IS THIS OVER? Or at a birthday party, I WISH BILLY GOT ME POWER RANGERS INSTEAD OF SPIDERMAN! Or at a friend’s house for dinner, I’M NOT EATING THAT, IT LOOKS GROSS!

These things still occur to grown-ups, but we have been conditioned to suppress that urge to just blurt it out. We have been trained to ignore the fart in public. (Well, most of us have.) To sit still during church and, if we must, quietly occupy ourselves by scribbling grocery lists on the church bulletin. To paste a toothy smile on our face and say, “Wow, thanks, you shouldn’t have!” when opening a gift that obviously has immediate regifting potential. Or to demur at the dinner table, fibbing that we’re watching our calories or have a “touch of something” and aren’t all that hungry.

Even my oldest son, in eighth grade, is still developing his filter. He has a teacher he doesn’t really like and has been saying to us that she's mean, she's fat, and he "hates" her. I keep explaining to him that in life, you will have to deal with people you’d rather not deal with, so you have to figure out a way to get along. Eventually I hope he’ll understand that. I don’t know when. And I don’t remember when it was that my filter became as finely-tuned as it is. Was it high school? College? My first job? I don't know.

Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go brush and floss.

 

Maybe January isn't so bad after all.

We're just back from having spent a long weekend at Eagle Rock Resort located just outside of gray dirty scenic Hazleton, Pennsylvania. (Thanks, Aunt Anne & Uncle Bob!) The Resort's main selling point in winter is skiing and tubing, and that's exactly what we did on Saturday, and again on Monday. I'll let the photos do most of the talking (hover over each for a quick caption):

Peezer in the lift line.

 

Peezer riding up on the lift.

 

The tubing hill, where Peezer and I spent most of Saturday.

Daddy and Peezer.

On Sunday, the weather forecast promised cold rain, and delivered exactly as promised. Not ones to be deterred by such abysmal hideous adverse conditions, we all piled into the Suburban and set off to explore the greater Hazleton area, via a geocaching expedition. And it was all

...and all

...and all

...and is this reminding you of any other Soup Family Vacations that involved outdoor activities during torrential rain? Oh, yes, that's right -

 

click here to read about crabbing in the rain in North Carolina last year.

...but the Best Trooper Award goes to Peezer, who marched through slush and mud and weeds and moss to locate all the geocaches -

...because he scored some sweet swag for his efforts.

After the cold and wet excursion, we settled back into our comfy digs, built a fire, poured some wine, watched some football, and played Qwirkle, which the kids really liked:

Come back tomorrow for two bonus photos from our Coal Country Weekend.

Kids' torture methods applied to Gitmo detainee interrogations

WASHINGTON, December 9, 2009 – Acknowledging that the Obama administration will likely not make its January deadline to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Defense Secretary Robert Gates presented a revamped U.S. policy designed to intensify pressure on Al Queda prisoners and ease political pressure on the White House. 

At a Pentagon briefing Gates announced deployment of a new weapon in the war on terror: The American Family. Gates said, “While unconventional, the plan we’re proposing has the potential to be especially effective in acquiring key intelligence, while saving America’s taxpayers millions of dollars. Our military is using [interrogation] techniques that are sooo 50 years ago. It’s time to bring our armed forces into the twenty-first century.”

Gates has authorized a special task force comprised of American mothers representing 14 states and the District of Columbia. Their purpose is to develop final recommendations on new interrogation techniques to be included in Army FM 34-52, the Army’s standard for interrogation of captured enemy personnel.  The plan involves embedding prisoners in the homes of the homes of select American families.

“Intelligence has identified time-tested quasi-torture approaches that have been in use for decades in households across the US,” explained Gates. “It’s imperative that we employ them to achieve important national security objective." Gates added, “We will house [the detainees] inexpensively while integrating an aggressive approach intended to urge them towards full cooperation with interrogators.”

While final details are pending, unnamed sources have revealed how the new strategy would work.  A detainee will assume the role of MOTHER in a home where three or more young children reside. Ideally, each home will also feature large, lazy hairy and/or old and ailing pets and/or husbands. The actual mother will relinquish her role for as long as necessary, usually not more than a week or two. The program provides the added bonus of restoring Mom’s sanity, freeing her up to have her hair done, eyebrows waxed, go to the gym, read the newspaper, think, and other activities she doesn't normally have time for.

Children are critical while the detainee is in residence. They are tasked with deploying various techniques designed to bring the resident detainee to the brink of insanity, at which point he will be more likely to cooperate with interrogators. These include:
 
• Leaving dirty socks strewn about the house
• Failing to pick up wet bath towels off of the wood floor
• "Hanging" coats in the shoe basket
• Removing shoes and leaving them next to, but not in, the shoe basket
• Tying the laces of said shoes into tight knots
• Hiding the remote control and/or the cordless phone handsets
• Leaving empty cracker and/or cereal boxes in the pantry
• Scattering unpopped popcorn kernels on the family room carpet
• Refusing to eat dinner, then crying "I’m hungry!" at bedtime
• Arguing over complete minutia for hours on end
• Shower and personal hygiene aversion
• Turning on all the lights and the TV, then leaving the room without turning anything off
 
Gates said the Obama administration has tapped as Homeland Mom Czar Meg McCormick, who was enthusiastic about the approach. “In recent trials, these methods took only a few days to drive the detainees to the brink of utter madness,” she said. “It’s a win-win for the nation and for our family.”

Detainee Ali Abdul Ahmed Ali-Aziz confirmed McCormick’s assertion. "Seriously? If I have to hang those goddamn coats up one more time, I'm gonna scream,” he said. "Come ON, guys, how many times do I have to tell you, THERE IS NO MAID HERE! Who the hell did you think was going to pick up all these candy wrappers and cracker crumbs?"  His voice rising, he added, "All right already! That's enough! May a thousand virgins curse me in the next world, but I'll talk! I'll tell you where Bin Laden is hiding, just please, stop fighting over the f#$%ing computer!!"

Fathers in the homes of the task force mothers were skeptical. When asked to comment on the program, McCormick’s husband scratched his head and said, “Whoa! Wait a minute…so you’re telling me that the reason why she rolls her eyes and threatens to throw away all shoes not placed neatly in the shoe basket next to the door is...because it tortures her? Huh. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but if you say so…”

Gates hopes to deliver the panel’s final recommendations to the president’s desk before Christmas and implement placement of detainees into households before the Super Bowl.

Staff writer Curt McCormick contributed to this report.