shut it. quiet. what what

I’m a bit off-balance this week so I’ve been pretty quiet – or not, depending on where you live. A few things are gnawing at me and I haven’t fully sorted them out in my head.

First, I’m off meat in a much more permanent basis than the last five or six years. I’d say that I’ve been about 95% off since then – I’ll nibble on leftover scraps from the kids’ dinners – but we don’t do any mains for adults that include meat, and for varying reasons. You can ask X about her reasons since they’ve been well in place for most of her life and who am I to address her choices. Mine were primarily a cholesterol-avoidance plan that turned into the norm after years of not cooking anything with meat for meals. I haven’t missed it, really, so it didn’t even seem like much of a sacrifice back in about 2004 when it started. Right, there’s that. I’ll expand more on it at some point over the next week or so.

Second, (note: I just deleted and entire sentence of profanities and have begun, anew…) the healthcare insurance reform bill. I think it’ll get done over the next few weeks and we can move on to other issues that are presenting loads of other problems in our country. But, I need to take a few lines here to chastise people for ignorance. By ignorance I mean specifically the method of putting head to sand and refusing to have any type of debate on an issue that is causing so much wasted time and effort. I don’t even know that it bothers me when people yell and scream “facts” that aren’t actually facts – not much I can do about that. The rub here are the people that are too lazy, too unwilling (is that the same?), or too blinded by their people, to actually study an issue before screaming from the rooftops. Unless you can give me one actual fact that supports a position you hold (without using something like the CBO as a prop but then throwing it out when you don’t agree with you) then you don’t get to play. I’m fine with giving up a year of our governing life to get this done – I’d like it to do even more – but we are at the end. Maybe it might seem wrong to say but I’ll give it to you straight: it will get rammed down your throat and I’m cool with that. I’m not concerned about the elections – they’ll take care of themselves – and the time has come for this to be done. I’d say that it’s been a good debate but it hasn’t been: it’s been nothing more that an embarrassment. If you don’t have a plan you can go sit in the corner and color with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. Good fucking riddance.

I feel better.

(Enter less hostile Todd from stage left)

Everything here is going well – kids and school seem to be working in a temporary emulsion – and the weather has come to spring, finally. The damn cats (damn cats!) have posed a problem that initially seemed like a batch of bad cat food (we only feed them dry) but may be more centered upon warm weather, mole-snacks, and less eating required. I returned the first bag only to see the second bag receive the same treatment. I changed stores and brands, thinking I would avoid a bad delivery truck or company, only to get similar results. At this point, they can eat it or not – they’re smart enough, right?

The orthodontist issue is almost sorted out (see previous work), but not quite. We have a “consultation” appointment next week (“Hmm, you have braces, I see…”) and then hopefully everything will get off the start line.

The Eleven is planning a long (one-two week) crazy vacation for about a year from now. We’re tempted to just find the cheapest, late-booked, vacation packages and hit the road – nearly blind. But, if anyone has any suggestions on warmer and less-touristy worldwide destinations, please submit your inputs to our anonymous comment box near the door as you exit.

One more thing: the Formula 1 season kicks off this weekend in Bahrain and here’s a photo from yesterday’s festivities and practice session. If you don’t know me too well, or don’t follow F1, then you won’t find this picture nearly as ironic or sacrilegious as I do:

meatloaf, not Meat Loaf

I don’t want you to turn away from this timeless entry because you’re not a fan of rock opera. I happen to own both the Bat Out Of Hell entries from the Meat Loaf catalog so neither title would have thrown me off the scent.

I bring up meatloaf because, for some ungodly reason, the other night I asked X if she’d ever had the legendary middle-American dish known as “green bean casserole with crunchy onions on top.” (Meatloaf and the casserole go hand-in-hand.) She was clearly perplexed by the lowbrow title because she’s simply not well-versed in Midwestern, nine-year old naming conventions. I described the royal dish to her in the simplest terms possible: can of beans, can of cream of onion soup, can of crunchy onions, and baking. That is the recipe. Those aren’t terms passed along in an attempt to make it easy for discussion purposes with the unknowing, that’s it – three cans and an oven. The memory of the ‘dish’ made me think about meatloaf and Minnesota, and they need to be addressed separately. First, the meatloaf. Anyone raised east of California and west of Cincinnati, in the area known to coastal liberals as ‘the large square-ish states region’, will swear that their mother’s meatloaf is the best meatloaf in the world. The World. They’ll swear on their mother’s meatloaf…it’s deathly serious business. I’ve had meatloaf "made" by other kids’ mothers and it isn’t any good, none of it. What I was thinking while I eating at their house, picking away at something dry and brick-like is, “Hey Brock, you need to come over to my house and get some really good meatloaf.” Of course, if he ended up staying for dinner the evening we happened to have meatloaf, he’s probably thinking, “Hey! This is the best meatloaf in the world.” I rest my case, your witness. About that Minnesota part. As I’m pontificating on my mother’s cooking I’m adding in little swaths of color and passing along witty anecdotes about my youth in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. I’m building a scene, directing a movie, giving my girlfriend some background on why I am the way I am. You see, I lived in Minnesota between the ages of 5 and 7, in a colonial-like house on Fondell Drive in Edina (if you click on the blue tacks you can see some of the sights!). The thing about neighborhoods in those days (the opening of the 1970s) was that the backyards on abutting blocks didn’t have fences…it was like open range. All the kids ran rampant through yards and streets playing kick-the-can and capture the flag. One of the families on the block behind us even had an early-70s, free-standing ‘tree’ house that we used to play on all the time. Late one fall afternoon I fell off the top of that son-of-a-bitch, broke my right forearm, and ended up waiting for the emergency room doctor to get back from dinner…just so he could re-break it over his knee before setting it. Wait, I digress, as is often pointed out. I was in the middle of this same idyllic background story, building to a crescendo, wending my way towards an anecdote about Mrs. Mary’s day care/nursery school, when X stops me, looks across the table, gets a goofy look on her face, and asks “how old were you?”; and “what street did you live on?”; and “the kid’s name was Rink?”; and “there were green beans in it?”. Yeah, I get it. She’s not much for details.

I’m going to give the green bean casserole with crunchy onions on top a shot this weekend. I sense the boys will move slowly around the pan, wag their tails, and sniff at it like it’s a new dog in the neighborhood. I’ll wait for my mother to forward the meatloaf recipe to me before I give that a go.

Love.

T.