A fair place to part with your money

February means the fair has come to Highlands County once again. We missed it last year and the children have given us no end of bellyaching since this horrible injustice was committed. This is the reason we absolutely had to go this year.

It is probably a good idea to space out the number of times a person is willing to risk their lives on carnival rides over the course of a year. My husband, daughter, and son went on a rickety contraption I will always think of as the “Gravitron,” but its current name is something that actually sounds a little outdated, “Starship 2000.” This is a ride that utilizes sliding angled panels and centrifugal force to plaster your brains to the top of your skull.

After having children, my body’s constitution was forever altered resulting in the facts that I can no longer watch scary movies or partake in certain thrill rides which is why I chose to stand by the exit railing counting the number of missing or broken lights around the rim of “Starship 2000” rather than board the mother ship. I think I reached 25, but it was hard to tell because I kept losing track of where I started.

The ride came to a stop a little early and my husband and daughter walked out alone. Apparently, she had become distraught after her shoe fell off and would only answer Daddy’s concerned question “ARE YOU OKAY?” with “MY SHOE!” Centrifugal force negatively influences effective communication skills.

“Fireball” used to be called “Ring of Fire” when I was a teenager. I’ve often wondered if Johnny Cash and a team of lawyers had anything to do with that name change. My son went on this one alone after we passed it several times thinking it was closed because no one seemed to be running it. As it turns out, the operator was just hiding around the corner, but he started the machine unwillingly enough upon request.

My son isn’t seasoned enough to recognize a shady game or outright scam when he sees one and we had a difficult time steering him and his money away from the heckling calls of the midway carnies. He finally had to fork over three bucks to shoot a few holes through a star, but we did manage to talk him out of the basketball game by pointing out the side view of the hoops which revealed an obvious squished oval-shape instead of the preferred round holes usually reserved for actual spherical objects.

Along with death-defying 120 second thrill rides and throwing money into hypothetical garbage cans, the fair is also a good place to increase your blood glucose levels. We chose to accomplish this with three different items. The first was a funnel cake that was almost completely cooked. I thought the raw batter in the middle may end up being too salmonella-ish for my taste so we ate around the edges just to be safe.

Next, nothing says “I’ve taken something perfectly healthy and ruined it” like a caramel apple. I prefer mine with peanuts because they help to keep the sticky sauce off the tip of my nose. My son ate his with chocolate sprinkles which I think is a bit much because I’m judgmental about these things. Finally, you can’t leave the fair without a huge bag of spun rainbow-colored sugar: cotton candy.

We all had a great time, even if it was 44 degrees. The best part is, the only bellyaching we’ll hear this year will be about the food we ate.

One more way to enjoy bacon

It’ been awhile since I’ve written about exciting, new culinary adventures, but with Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, I cannot resist the yearnings of my sweet tooth. Of course, this may have more to do with the current stress I’ve put myself under concerning our taxes and the fact that my sister seems to rake in a seemingly effortless refund each year while we scramble to find a legal way to claim the dog as a dependent. Anxiety never fails to awaken my chocolate cravings.

Almost twelve years ago, my brother, Adam, sent me a box of chocolate-covered potato chips and I have never forgotten the delicious mix of salty-sweet heavenly goodness that coated my pleasantly surprised taste buds. Had I known I’d never find that specific quality of chocolate chip again, perhaps I would’ve taken more time to savor them.

I just received word of a new treat at Jack in the Box. Unfortunately, we don’t have this fast food chain available here in the Sunshine State which makes me sad because they have tasty burgers. Before you want to go dig up a twenty year old E. coli story, remember that the contaminated beef originated from a supplier, not the restaurant chain, and the outbreak sparked a change in hamburger cooking temperatures across the United States (much to the chagrin of medium rare lovers).

Jack’s newest campaign is centered on bacon which is probably the most unhealthy food ever sliced off the belly fat of an animal. In fact, bacon may be partially responsible for cardiovascular disease, as well as greatly contribute to the formation of cankles.

I love bacon as much as the next person who isn’t philosophically opposed to eating swine and other cloven-hooved beasts, but Jack in the Box took America’s love of bacon to a level that may challenge the fabric of our very being: the bacon milkshake.

Before you react with negativity, let’s consider the flavor combination for a moment. I’ve already confessed that the mixture of salt and sweet made a favorable companionship on my palate, so I want to give the bacon milkshake the benefit of the doubt.

There isn’t actual bacon in the shake; instead, it is syrup flavored like bacon. I’ve watched several videos of people trying the concoction and from what I can surmise the shake is a lard-colored, overly sweet creamy treat with a smoky aftertaste. The taste testers are staunchly divided into lovers and haters of the shake.

When I finished watching the videos, the neurons in my brain began rapidly firing their “invention” sequence. I thought to myself, “We have the bacon shake, the coffee shake, and every Christmas someone puts out the eggnog shake. So what’s missing? That’s it! Damara, you’re a genius!”

I began to write out my big idea to make millions, but when I did an online search, I discovered that a company in Japan already invented a maple pancake milkshake. It would seem that the breakfast milkshake family has been completed. If anyone desires to send themselves into complete sugar shock by utilizing only appropriately flavored milkshakes before 9 in the morning, the tools are available, if not advisable.

I wonder if taste testers are needed for other meals. Lunch and dinner are untapped reservoirs of possibilities. Think of it: meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, green beans, and lasagna. I think I’ll leave these things up to the experts. They say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but I think I’ll play it safe for now.

The case of the missing dart

Many people have new toys and gadgets after the holidays. Over the years, our family has had our share of broken devices with the damage occurring anywhere from minutes to days after the initial unwrapping.

It’s bad to break your own present and worse to have your gift broken by someone else. I still remember the boy in my second grade class who snapped the tail off my Breyer model horse one show-and-tell Friday at Creel Elementary. Dante, if you’re reading this, I haven’t forgotten.

The absolute worst feeling is damaging the gift of a person you love who lives in your house, like my husband, Chris.

One of his Christmas gifts was a dart set with real metal tips instead of plastic. He set it up in the carport and has been playing with our son almost nightly.

There is a logistical problem with the placement of the board in that our carport has a concrete wall about 4 feet high with lattice filling in the remaining gap to the roof. This creates the potential for mishaps if you have bad aim and miss the board which leads to a break in the game to search for wayward darts that flew somewhere in the grassy area between our carport wall and the side of our neighbor’s house.

My eleven-year old son had been playing one afternoon when he came in looking worried. He announced that he couldn’t find one of the darts. I blew him off and told him to put more effort into his search.

Several minutes later, I glanced outside and saw the frustration written all over his face. The clock said it was 5:30 pm. Chris would be home after 7, but daylight was fading so I decided to help.

One would think a dart would be fairly easy to find in grass, but this was not the case. We took off our shoes figuring that our feet would immediately alert us to the discovery of the dart. We tore through two nearby bushes and cautiously peeked around in our neighbor’s flower bed.

We even went back into the carport and began moving around what little there was to move. I can’t tell you how many times we searched the same area, but eventually, we threw in the towel. I broke the news that he was going to have to tell Daddy that he lost a dart and find a way to make it up to him.

He looked at me and said, “I have some money, Mom. I’ll just pay him 20 dollars. That’ll be enough to buy him a new dart and make him be not too upset.” I couldn’t believe my ears. My son was actually going to pay off his dad! I knew this kid may have a future in politics, but I didn’t know he’d start so early.

When Chris got home, he was disappointed, but I assured him that we had done everything we could short of buying a metal detector.

Chris grabbed a flashlight, went outside, and I swear within five minutes, found the dart! It was deep in the neighbor’s flower bed after all. I guess my son and I were too skittish in our own plundering of their property.

I’d like to say a lesson was learned, but my son takes after me and I can be pretty thick-headed when it comes to learning lessons. In the meantime, I hope he might ease up a bit on the force of his throwing power. I hope.

Daughter picks a fishy career

Parents often find themselves torn between wanting their children to hurry up and grow up or, the complete opposite, wishing we could freeze them at their current age.

My daughter has recently decided she wants to be a mermaid when she grows up. Apparently, the other children in her class mocked her future career decision and essentially labeled it “unattainable.” Little do they understand that she is too stubborn to allow popular opinion to influence her goals.

I find her dream adorable. When I was her age, I wanted to be a cheerleader. I never even got to dress as a cheerleader on Halloween. How pitiful is that?

Our family watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” one night and, lo and behold, there is a mermaid scene right in the middle of the movie! My little girl literally squealed with delight when she spied the beautiful fin-tailed maidens gliding through the ocean. She became giddy when she was trying to point out the one she thought she would most resemble as an adult when, all of a sudden, the innocent lady fish began a violent attack on the sailors!

Naturally, she wasn’t aware of the pirate tales of lore concerning mermaids and I guess I never paid much attention myself. In any case, we both decided she would be a nice mermaid rather than a wicked sea nymph.

I’m thinking she has maybe one or two more years before she outgrows her imagination which means we don’t have much time left if we want to take her on a trip to Weeki Wachee State Park, home of the live mermaid shows.

I showed her pictures of the performers online and she begged to go immediately. I called out to my husband, “Hey, honey, children five and younger are free admission!” This information sent her screaming through the house “I’m free! I’m free! I get to go for free!”

My good friend Wendy, who says I’m technically her second cousin’s wife’s daughter, offered to get my whole family in for free, but I didn’t want to burst the bubble of elation that had enveloped my darling angel, so I kept that quiet.

When she completed her laps around the inside of the house, she returned to view pictures of the mermaids and decide which was prettiest. This was when she saw the black hoses. “What are those tubes, mommy?”

“That’s so they can breathe underwater, sweetie,” I honestly replied.  She asked, “But why do they need those?”

I explained their need for oxygen which led to a disagreement about mermaids requiring the use of assistive air devices when she suddenly stopped and looked a little closer at the picture. She asked in her most distrustful voice, “Is that a costume?”

I sighed and confirmed her suspicion. I said that mermaids weren’t real, but it was fun to pretend. She said, “No, mommy. These mermaids aren’t real, but there are real mermaids. I still want to go see these mermaids.” With that declaration, she skipped away, her world still intact.

Her innocent imagination and the fuzz I saw growing on my eleven-year old son’s upper lip last week really makes me yearn for the power to freeze time. In case that doesn’t happen, I’ll keep taking these mental snapshots then document them for posterity, but I’d better laminate the pages. Mermaids don’t do well keeping things dry.

Displacement

The spring semester in nursing school has introduced my class to Mental Health which is a subject I have been eagerly anticipating for obvious reasons. From the very first day, I knew I’d gain insight into myself and begin enlightening everyone around me with their undiagnosed mental illnesses.

We already explored the ideas of Sigmund Freud, who really should be respected for his work in pioneering psychoanalysis, even if he did go a bit overboard with dream interpretation; at least, I hope he did, otherwise I’m in big trouble on the nocturnal wanderings front.

Freud’s daughter, Anna, discovered ego defense mechanisms. These are things we do to protect our minds from stress and anxiety. For instance, if something traumatic occurs, like a major accident, our brain will block it from our memory. This is called repression.

A defense mechanism I use frequently is displacement. This happens when a person or situation upsets you emotionally, but instead of releasing your true feelings at that point in time, you put a temporary cap on it and let the geyser explode later on some innocent victim.

I’m sure you can all think of a situation in your own lives when this has occurred. Maybe you had an argument with your spouse and then you pulled through a drive-thru and unleashed on the person who forgot to give you napkins. It happens to all of us, but I prefer to take my anger out on inanimate objects.

One of these incidents transpired on a day that I was running late, was stressed out, and Chris and I were at a tense point in our relationship. My hair dryer’s “on” button had been malfunctioning for a couple of weeks, but I could always force it to do my bidding. Not this day.

I jammed my thumb deep into the button for the 1000^th time and the dryer finally gave up. I knew the components were in good working order on the inside, it was just the button wire part not making the connection. Not for the last time, I thought to myself, “My dad repaired televisions, I’m sure I can figure this out.”

With time ticking away and my hair dripping wet, realization dawned on me that the dryer had won. I took the time to unplug it and securely wrap the cord around my right hand before I repeatedly slung the body of the dryer into the bathroom counter about a dozen times.

I smiled maniacally as little bits of plastic and wire guts flew around the bathroom, some landing in the toilet, some landing in my hair. In the end, it looked like an electronics equipment murder scene. All that was missing was a white chalk outline of a mangled hair dryer.

I walked into the hall and there stood Chris with a look on his face that was obviously asking the question “What happened in there?”

I calmly said, “My hair dryer broke.”

Years later, I witnessed my mom murder a phone. It was a land-line phone with a faulty cord and I watched her methodically stab the handset into its cradle until the phone was good and dead. I realized then that there must be a genetic predisposition to killing inanimate objects.

I’ve broken scores of other things in my life: glasses, lamps, pictures, an umbrella, a chair, but I’ve never physically hurt another person. Trust me, if you feel like you’re going to let loose on someone, go find a hair dryer and a concrete block. You’d be surprised how therapeutic it can be.

Feed at your own risk

At least once or twice a year, a media report surfaces about an incident involving a store employee clashing with a mother who is in the process of publicly breastfeeding her infant. I’ve always felt fairly neutral on the subject seeing as how I’m not outraged over the fact that women have the option of feeding their infants via lactation, nor am I grossed out over this perfectly natural function of the human body. If I were, I guess I’d rethink the idea of Registered Nursing as a future career.

Normally, I have tunnel vision when I’m shopping and I am easily distracted by flashing lights and bright colors, so unless a woman is breastfeeding her child under a strobe-lit sign that says “99% OFF,” then I’m probably not likely to notice her or her baby at all.

Before I had my son, I would, on the rare occasion, catch a glimpse in my peripheral vision of a mother nursing her baby. It was always being conducted in a very discreet manner and seemed like a sweet, tender moment that I had inadvertently intruded upon. At the time, I always wondered if I would have the courage to do the same with my own child someday.

My questions were answered soon after my bundle of emotion-fueled testosterone entered the world and staked his claim on my body’s schedule. What I had imagined would be a pleasant bonding experience turned into a nightmarish episode right out of a horror movie.

Babies have what is called a rooting reflex. This happens when you lightly brush the side of their cheek and their body receives the signal that it’s time for some maternal-aided nourishment so they turn their head towards wherever the source of food will most likely be. My son’s reflex was set off by the wind, my voice, or just lying horizontal.

When it was time to eat, he would come at me like a rabid octopus with his arms flailing wildly around his head, grasping at anything in reach. If I tried to cover us with a blanket, he’d rip it off and throw it to the floor. His head would whip back and forth while he grunted and snorted like a starving pig. His tiny baby fingers would scratch and claw at the skin on my chest. It was like trying to feed an agitated badger.

Even while nursing, he’d growl and grunt while squeezing my hand in a tight baby death grip. Sometimes, he’d stare up at me with one eye like he was making sure I wasn’t going to run away in the middle of his meal. It wasn’t as precious as it was creepy. Needless to say, I never attempted public breastfeeding because of his antics.

My daughter was another story. She’d calmly open her mouth in a small “O” and wait until the proper position was attained. Then she’d politely fold her hands together and quietly finish her feeding in relative peace.

Even though I could’ve nursed her in Walmart, I never did. Call me modest, but I found it more tranquil to schedule shopping trips around my children’s needs. I still try to do that even though they are now strictly self-fed by hand.

So if you’re a new mom who is considering attempting this slightly controversial yet totally natural method of feeding your new baby, heed my warning:  public breastfeeding should be conducted only with a cooperative child; otherwise, people will think you are trying to smuggle a frightened possum under your shirt.

Countdown to domestic disaster

“Stop being unnecessarily annoying!”

 I actually said this to my children in the hopes that a flicker of understanding would penetrate through their auditory canals and into their brains for immediate processing. Needless to say, it didn’t work. I think it may have had something to do with the wording, but it made me start thinking about children annoyance levels and the need for a universal standardized scaling system. In my own estimation, there are at least six steps in this process.

The first would be “under the radar.” This is where I chose to conduct most of my kid-time operations, but my own progeny lack the element of subtlety. If they ever figure out how much unnoticed trouble they could create at this stage, I might begin to get worried. In the meantime, they act more like crazed chimps wearing cow-bells while shouting “LOOK AT ME!” through a megaphone, so I’m not real concerned about them being sneaky.

The second level would be an acceptable or minor infraction. This would result in a single word correction from a parent like “Stop” or “No.” The child would listen and go about their business with no further action needed. I may as well call this the imaginary level because I never see this happen in my house.

The third is the aforementioned “unnecessary annoyance” which, on this particular day, consisted of the children’s insistence on sharing the love seat. There are five seating choices in our living room, but they continually choose the one option that possesses a high probability rate for an accidental leg or feet touching episode; bickering results and the progression of annoyance exacerbation continues on its natural course.

Level four leads them into imminent danger. This usually happens when the whole family is in the car together for more than 30 minutes which puts us all in an uncomfortable type of extended close proximity. The children can’t handle the pressure and take their angst out on each other which sends a ripple effect of aggravation to the front section of the vehicle. This level has the potential to be rapidly reduced to a level one or two by suddenly pulling over to the side of the road, preferably in a dramatic fashion so as to elicit the maximum fear response from the kids.

Level five causes severe parental irritation. As a mom, this is when my body starts producing involuntary reactions like eye twitching, slurring of words, sudden-onset potty mouth, and calling one child by their sibling’s name or, even better, the dog’s name. The worst thing they could possibly do at this point is laugh in which case, level six becomes fully engaged.

Level six should actually be called “DEFCON 1” because there is maximal force readiness on the part of the parental unit. This danger zone would necessitate immediate evacuation of any child from the parent’s visual field if they knew what was good for them. Usually, they either don’t know what’s good for them or aren’t aware enough to care and opt to stand around looking confused concerning what is about to happen and surprised that they had anything at all to do with it.

Thankfully, the kids are back in school after their recent winter break which is probably a good thing for all of us. We haven’t reached level six in almost 5 days which is pleasantly refreshing. If they stay on their present course, my body’s internal chemical balance should be fully restored by next Friday.