NOT for Drinking!!

At one point a couple of years ago, in our communal kitchen at work, we had a sign on the wall that said, “MILK IS NOT FOR DRINKING.” The sign went on to explain that while it was OK to use milk in your coffee or on your cereal, you should not drink glasses of milk.

There was a reason for this, of course. The adult-education centre I teach at provides free breakfast food to any participants who want/need it. This is funded by a grant from the Kids Eat Smart foundation. While we’re all in favour of people getting calcium in their diets, we found we simply couldn’t afford to keep up with the demand for milk.  So, to reduce the milk burden, we tried to encourage people to use it only for cereal and coffee.

This wasn’t explained on the sign. It didn’t need to be, because most people understood the context, and those who didn’t, could simply ask one of the staff about the reason for the milk ban (or ignore the sign, as people generally do with signs in communal kitchens).

Now, we live in a ridiculously literate society, in which people are able to write and record the minutiae of their lives in excruciating detail — unlike most people in history, who left very few written traces behind.  But let’s just imagine that some computer holocaust in the future wipes out all records of our websites, blogs and Facebook pages, and after the collapse of fossil fuels society breaks down and people have to burn all the billions of books in the world to keep themselves warm. So most written records of our society get destroyed, placing us in the same bracket as people in antiquity.

Now let’s assume that two thousand years later, society has rebuilt itself and historians of the future are digging through the debris for clues to early 21st century culture.  Among the traces found by archeologists is a sign, bizarrely preserved in the ruins of what was once The Murphy Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland, that says: “MILK IS NOT FOR DRINKING.”

NaNo Rebel

This awesome video blog would be even cooler if I hadn’t cut the top of my own head off…

Over the Top

Remembrance Day is always an odd, conflicted time for me — as a confirmed pacifist who considers almost all wars stupid and wasteful, and also a confirmed softie who cries at “In Flanders Fields” and a variety of war-related triggers.

This makes me cry too. Nothing sums up the stupidity and tragedy of war better:

If you’ve seen Blackadder, you’ll remember how six episodes of ridiculous slapstick farce in the World War One trenches (highlighted, for me, by a very young and fresh-faced Hugh Laurie) suddenly faded to that very poignant ending. If not … well, we’ll leave it at that.  Remembering is complicated, but for me it’s always coloured by the certainty that war is not glorious and heroic, even though the men and women who fight and die often are heroic — as well as frightened, confused, even angry. I try to remember and honour them while holding to the hope that we can work to prevent more such deaths.

Church Politics

The cartoon comes from the wonderful Dave Walker at CartoonChurch.com. And it expresses how I’m feeling this week.

I hate, despise, and loathe church politics.

Actually, that’s not even 100% true. I hate church politics a lot,  and I want to have a complete and utter hatred of church politics, because I believe infighting in the church is contrary to God’s will.  But there is a tiny, evil part of me that loves church politics, that raises its head like a racehorse at the starter’s pistol when controversy drifts my way.  The better part of me shrinks away, but there’s still that tiny part that loves a fight and wants to dive in to the fray.

H1N…1 down … 3 to go???

I’m not sure how the rest of the world is doing this week, but here in Newfoundland there’s only one news story. The H1N1 “swine flu” virus has hit, just ahead of the vaccine and accompanied by truckloads of confusion, fear and hysteria.

We have sick people, people who are afraid of getting sick, people who want to keep their kids out of school on the off chance they might get sick, people who want schools to be closed till the virus passes.  We have people who believe the vaccine is an evil government plot, and people who are jumping the lines to get vaccinated illegally.

Here in the Morgan-Cole household, what we have is one sick boy, now improving, and three people who are desperately hoping not to get sick.  Chris has been down since Sunday morning with fever, aches, fatigue all the typical flu symptoms. The fever lasted three days, the fatigue most of the week, and now he’s left mostly with a nagging cough. He’s missed a full week of school, and plenty of his friends are in the same boat.

More on Books

(No! No! Not “moron books”!! These are very intelligent books — or books for intelligent people, anyway).

First thing: I finally updated Compulsive Overreader with reviews of the books I’ve read in the last few weeks.  Some of them are really good, so go check out the reviews and join in the comments.

Second, remember Tina Chaulk’s novel and the copy of it I gave away? Well, Tina is giving away copies too, and she has a really neat contest on the go inviting people to send in stories about women in non-traditional occupations (like her character Jennifer, an automotive mechanic) and win copies of both her books.  Something else for you to check out: Contest rules here.

Financial Planning for Fourth Graders

So, financial responsibility and money management are big things with us — with me and Jason, that is.  With the kids, not so much, but we’re working on instilling it.

Amid the usual complaints that I am the meanest, strictest, most overprotective mom EVER, Christopher handed out a little badge of praise the other day when he told me that he gets more allowance than most people in his class.  He and Emma both get $10 a week, which seems generous for elementary school kids. What they don’t realize is that most of their friends who get $5 allowances get to actually spend their money on whatever they want, while parents foot the bill for school milk and other delicacies.

In our house, we’ve worked on the premise of giving the kids a bigger allowance but requiring them to pay their own expenses — which usually works out to between 50 cents and a dollar each day for milk at school, and a little more on Fridays when they can buy pizza for $1.25 a slice. They are also required by household law to pay tithe and offering at church, and if they have any left over after that, it can be saved up for toys and frivolous pleasures. The plan is that this is supposed to teach them something about budgeting and money management — like, that even an apparently generous allowance doesn’t stretch that far when you have expenses.

Book Giveaway Update: Calling Mary!

Last week I ran a contest to give away a copy of Tina Chaulk’s new book A Few Kinds of Wrong.  The book was won by a blog-reader by the name of Mary Ward, but so far Mary hasn’t contacted me to let me know how to get the book to her.

Mary, if you’re reading, please post in the comments or email me at trudyj65@hotmail.com .  If I don’t hear from Mary by Sunday night, I will draw another winner.

Situation Comedy

 

I was raised on situation comedies.  As soon as I graduated from Sesame Street, my formative years were spent watching the great sitcoms of the 70s, usually with my dad.  My role model for life as an independent career woman was Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show; my ideal dream guy was Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H.  And my political views were the opposite of whatever Archie Bunker thought.  (All of which explains quite a lot about me).

The last sitcom of that era I can remember getting avidly involved in was Cheers, but that got interrupted by me going away to college, where I didn’t have a TV in my dorm room.  By the time I finished college and got my own place, Shelly Long had left the show and been replaced by Kirstey Alley, and it just wasn’t the same. I found I didn’t really care what was on TV and didn’ t have one in my apartment until about 1992.  I thought I’d outgrown situation comedies and my tastes had become more refined and sophisticated — till I got into Mad About You, and then Friends debuted in 1994.

Another Book Giveaway!

Update: This contest is now closed, but the author has a great contest on her own blog to give away copies of the book — check it out!

Not one of my books this time, but a great book by a friend of mine.

A Few Kinds of Wrong is Tina Chaulk’s second novel.  I have a more detailed review of it up on Compulsive Overreader, but for now I’ll just say it’s a fast-paced contemporary novel about Jennifer Collins, a woman who is struggling to come to terms with her father’s death.  You might think Jennifer would be tough as nails since she works as a mechanic in the garage her father owned, but she’s always been a daddy’s girl, and when Daddy’s gone she falls apart, alienating her husband, her mom, and her best friends. The novel will make you laugh in places and cry in a lot more places, and its as skillful a portrayal of someone trapped in a web of grief as I’ve seen in a long time.

I highly recommend you rush right out and buy it (if it’s not in your local store, buy it online), but I will give one lucky blog-reader the chance to win a copy autographed by Tina herself.  Just post in the comments below if you’d like a copy, and I will draw a winner from those who have entered by … let’s give it till Sunday night, shall we?