Tag Archives: eve schaub

A Year of No Sugar: Post 35

A Year of No Sugar, , , , , , , ,

“Children today are increasingly dependent on junk food, fast food, and microwave meals, and they are disconnected from growing, preparing, and appreciating food. The family meal, once an important social ritual, is now endangered.”

-Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy

Getting our two kids on board for a year of no sugar hasn’t been exactly easy. Several months ago we were all driving somewhere when Steve and I first proposed the idea to the girls. They both promptly burst into tears.

“Well, that went well,” Steve said to me over the hysterics coming from the backseat.

Which is why I’m so delighted that our older daughter Greta has become somewhat more favorably inclined toward the No Sugar Project since we began on January first. Part of this has to do with her mercurial personality (“I love it!! I hate it!! What are we talking about!?!”), and part of it has to do with my attempt to give her more of an personal investment in the whole idea. She’s interested in writing, since it’s something her mom seems to do an awful lot, so when I proposed she keep a journal of her thoughts about our No-Sugar year her face lit up; I began to see a glimmer of hope for a perhaps-not-too-totally-awful year after all.

Since then she’s made three journal entries, which impresses me endlessly- totally unbiased parent that I am- and she’s given me permission to share some of the highlights with you.

“Today we ofishily started the ‘NO! Eat sugar Project.’” she writes in her first entry. “I’m so worryed about this. I know my firends already think I’m kind of weird… you need to know my family eats really healthy and so my friends think thats some what crazy. I mean. We don’t eat dorieados nor at fast food Places. Like for instance. I’ve never been to mcDonals & I’ve also never been to sub way”

The second entry is slightly less subtle: “I hate this project! I hate it! It’s know fair. Mom is taking all the sweets in the house and giving them away… And she’s giving away the caramel popcorn that Grandpa just gave us a week or two ago. I DON’T THINK IT’S FAIR!!”

My family is kind of weird: check. My parents are totally unfair: check. So far I think we’re doing fine in our preparation for the teenage years.

Then one night, as I was making dinner she asked me “Mom? What’s that word when you can’t figure out how you feel about something? Like when you feel more than one way about it?”

“Ambivalent?”

“Yes- ambivalent.”

Later on I realized she was writing another journal entry which began like this: “I feel more and more ambivalent about this project every day… I mean me and my family can only eat 4 kinds of cereal now.”

Be honest with me: does that scream “future therapy candidate” to you? Probably not… but that doesn’t mean I don’t obsess about possible future ramifications of our No Sugar Year for our children: who are the participants in this endeavor without a veto vote. Yesterday someone told me the project would be something “she’ll laugh about” when she’s twenty-five… which is a nice way to think about it: at worst, fodder for future stories about what her crazy-ass mom decided to do when she was ten. That I’m okay with. As my Mom used to say, “Tell your friends it’s my fault. I don’t mind. Blame it on me.” What a mom thing to say, to feel. I recall being endlessly impressed by her willingness to be uncool, to be the fall-guy for me. It isn’t until you get to be a mom that you realize there are so many things way worse than being weird, or uncool.

I must admit, however, that the end of Greta’s last journal entry is my favorite part, giving me a few hopeful glimmers to hold onto for now as we continue on our year-long journey: “We had pancakes this morning and boy were they good!! Even if we can’t put on maple surup.”

Welding is Dead

One in a Thousand, , ,

E. O. Schaub

I’m pretty depressed. I mean, I am a good, irony-appreciating, iPhone-packing, Lost-watching citizen of the twenty-first century. I knew liberalism and/or conservatism was dead. I knew the thong was dead. Except in New Jersey. I had heard God was dead; ditto atheism. Also: figurative painting, campaign finance reform and Tab. Also: content, privacy and— apparently— Jewish Hip Hop.

What I wasn’t expecting was the assessment last week, by the National Council for the Preservation of High Temperature Metal Joining Technologies (NCPHTMJT), that, in fact, welding is dead. (!!!!) I know, right?

I mean, it was one thing when photography died. Sure, that was sad. And when the death of newspapers and magazines followed so quickly thereafter, we were all still a bit stunned. When book-publishing was declared dead last year, we all observed a moment of silence at the gym, during which everyone pretended to turn off their iPods. The subsequent news that clothing was dead certainly caught everyone by surprise, only to be followed by the news that cheese was dead, as well as goat herding, geometry, Cirque de Soleil, and— strangely— toothpicks. But this…? This really was too much.

I mean, I had always meant to take up welding more seriously, and now… well, now it was just too late. Sure, after a tiring day at the Twitter Factory I’d come home, pour myself a nice glass of chablis, and dabble in some underwater shielded metal arc welding… but it never amounted to much. Not more than a hobby. I guess I just always thought there would be time for all that, down the road.

But the fact is— and we all knew this on some level— there’s just no money in welding anymore. For one thing, there’s so much free welding out there now, no one feels they should have to pay for it. I mean, everyone’s a welder now, right? Who among us doesn’t own an acetylene torch just for fun? For casual spot welding at family picnics and so forth? And then the realization comes that, if everyone is a welder than, by the inverse appropriative law of suckiness, no one is. And suddenly, just like that, all the best anode and slag suppliers go belly-up and poof! It’s over. Welding, as we knew it, is as dead as the apostrophe.

So friends, heed my cautionary tale. Pretty soon, we’ll all just be sitting around reminiscing about all the things people used to do before they became valueless. In the meantime, I’m going to pursue my new hobby while still I can: neurosurgery.