Choosy mice choose Jif. If only it were that easy to feed children.

Caught our first mouse today. Seeing it there with 2/3 of its body hanging out the back and upside down almost evoked sympathy from me and made up for all the skeeviness of yesterday. There is at least one more down there. I almost hate to waste the peanut butter on it. At least the mice aren’t picky.

Which is more than I can say for my children recently. Granted, I have about the least picky children I know, but they have their limits, and apparently I have found them. Flipping through my recipes, I decided to make sesame peanut noodles. Who doesn’t like sesame peanut noodles? My kids. I understand that people prefer some foods more than others but life is not a medium rare steak and garlic mashed potatoes every night. Once or twice a year, sure. Life is not a grilled chicken caesar salad, either, which is another favorite.

Today a cold, hard reality hit me: we are starting school very soon and I won’t have time to be chopping and stirring and sauteing for hours every afternoon. All of a sudden memories of last summer came back, when we were in the farm and I was having to use up insane amounts of onions, squash, potatoes, and melon. Nope, I need recipes that my children will eat, that are healthful, easy to make, economical to purchase, and occasionally conform to the fasting guidelines of my church. After the children turned up their noses at peanut noodles, I told them they were welcome to the job of meal planning, given those requirements. I got no takers.

Ideally, I would like my children to eat what they are served. We are pretty flexible with lunch and breakfast here and each person usually gets what they’d like. But dinner is different. They will come into the kitchen and ask, “What’s for dinner?” And I will tell them, whereupon they will either skip away joyfully or try to conceal their displeasure. They aren’t very good at it, and I usually react. Sometimes I say, “I’m just making something else you aren’t going to eat.”

I usually don’t do a lot of cooking on weekends, so tonight John was making dinner. An hour he is in there making tabboleh (turns out he used my old recipe, more complicated than my new recipe). I go in and help him and my daughter asks, “May I make macaroni and cheese for William and me?” “Oh no…no, no, no, no, no. It’s one thing to be a snot and not eat what I make, but your father has been in here an hour. I should send you to your room with no dinner at all. Besides, I thought you liked falafel.” “I do like falafel.” “Well, then.” And she disappeared into the black hole of her room. For the record, I don’t agree with letting children who don’t like what they are served eat something different, even if they make it themselves. That seems wrong on so many levels to me.

Truth is, there are a lot of things I don’t cook because I know my children don’t like them, and I miss those dishes. But I can only handle so much spaghetti and burritos. They think I am trying to be mean. Which is completely untrue, because if I were mean, I’d just put some peanut butter into a little device that chopped their heads off when they tried to reach it.

Compost, thy name is mouse food.

This morning I went out to inspect the garden and decide whether or not I should water. I’m pretty close to giving up this year. So far, I’ve had one tomato. And a zucchini. I have several more zucchini in the works. It’s the star of the garden right now, crowding out the borage and basil sharing its bed. The cabbage is a joke. The tomatoes are a joke. The bell pepper is laughing at me while it struggles with life. The eggplant is flowering the prettiest purple flowers, but I know they will languish as well. So as I stood there, this morning, contemplating life, the universe, and everything in my garden, I saw my neighbor. I wished her happy birthday, and we got to chatting. She very seriously told me, “Amy, I want you to know it’s been a very bad gardening year. Even Jackie has only gotten one tomato so far.”

Now, Jackie is one half of the team of gardening wizards that live two doors down. And if even she of the elite composting setup, drip lines, walls-o-water and fuzzy logic contraptions to keep away varmints isn’t getting tomatoes, there is no hope for me whatsoever.

So my neighbor and I were discussing this when I glanced down and saw something scamper down the fence line toward my compost bin. Admittedly, it wasn’t quite as shocking as seeing it inside, but there it was: a mouse. Running not three feet away from me. My neighbor had warned me we might have mice in the compost, but as I had not seen any there, I dismissed it. I mean, really. We have a cat.

Turns out the cat is mostly useless. I had some idea in my head that just her scent would be enough to keep the icky rodents away. I ordered her to go do something about it, but she yawned and dug in deeper into her nap. She thinks sleeping on her head upside down with her paw over her face is really cute. She practically accosted me this morning insisting on “special food.” Special food is a Saturday ritual, and her geriatric feline brain can’t count to seven any more, so on Tuesdays and Fridays she tries her luck at begging. And this is the thanks I get. John, aka Capital S, ended up giving her some treats. She’s really shattered my image of her.

I looked at the compost bin…which is in the complete wrong place, it is just outside our back door on the other side of the deck rail, and it’s pretty much a big open pit supported by some crumbling lumber and a little chicken wire…and then I saw the mouse run into the bin. And then I started getting double vision and I swooned and threw up. Oh wait. I just saw two mice! And really, I can’t blame them. A big fat smorgasbord of cantaloupe rinds and lettuce leaves, apple cores and broccoli stems. I’m surprised there aren’t more comers. (Except for the squirrel. He’s been visiting too, and in the height of my despair over mice, Carolyn tells me, “I can show you where the squirrel pees!” She is so lovely, really, but I wanted to clobber her.)

Suddenly I stopped caring about being green…in practice, as I was definitely green around the gills. I’ve been skeeved out all morning. I raced over to Home Depot and still feeling ill, chose some traps. Can’t do poison as there are dogs next door. And it’s compost, after all. Unfortunately I am not going into the back yard until December so John is going to have to set the traps for me. And pick the zucchini.

On the way to the store, I was ranting, “Give a mouse a cookie! As if! Disgusting disease carrying rodents! Nothing funny or cute about them!” Carolyn answers, “Okay, mom, I think you’ve made your point.”

“Watch your mouth, young lady. And I haven’t even begun to make my point!” And under my breath: “I can’t believe I liked that book. What happened to our snake? Where has he gone?” We have a garden snake that hangs around the back yard. I am always happy to see him, even if we do startle each other a little bit. If it’s possible to see eye to eye with a reptile, we agree about mice: they are the enemy. Actually, they are his lunch and my enemy.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to close down the compost bin. Our covenants don’t allow open bins like that in sight of other neighbors (although mine wouldn’t care). Maybe we’ll invest in a big green barrel one. We don’t even use the compost we’ve been making for the last 5 years. Well, no more. This year it’s all going to be mixed in to the tomato bed. There’s always next year, and my garden will be abundant! But there’s not enough for the mice too. They’ll have to leave.

I’m practically giving them away!

So way back when we all thought the Rockies were worth paying obscene amounts of money to watch, in the spring before the season started, John and I bought 4 tickets to a fireworks game. Gone are the family 4 packs that included good seats, hot dogs, and sodas for each for only $50. We paid about twice that for the tickets alone, and the seats aren’t as good as ones we’ve had before.

Then it turns out we forgot to look at the wall calendar to see if there was a conflict with the date. And of course, there was. We’ll be in NM at John’s dad’s family reunion. Doh!!! No refunds, either. So now I have the tickets up on eBay as I’d like to get at least a little money back on them. But the auction ends in about 3 hours, and there are a few people watching and no bids! I’ve never had an item not sell on eBay before. I’m hoping someone swoops in at the last minute to buy them…maybe one of the people who always seem to show up and outbid me at the very last second! Crossing my fingers…

More on vision therapy

Today I received an email from a friend with this info:

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More than a dozen American varieties of Kraft’s Oscar Meyer Lunchables kids’ meals contain artificial food dyes, but not so the British versions. Starburst Chews, Skittles, and M&M candies—all Mars products—contain the full spectrum of artificial colors in the U.S., but not in the U.K., where the company uses natural colorings. Even foods that aren’t particularly brightly colored can contain dyes, including several varieties of macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes. Betty Crocker’s Au Gratin “100% Real” Potatoes are partly not real, colored as they are with Yellow 5 and Yellow 6, both derived from coal tar. Remarkably, in Britain, the color in McDonald’s strawberry sauce for sundaes actually comes from strawberries; in the U.S. it comes from Red 40.

I pasted this from the following link

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200806022.html

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Clearly what these people need is vision therapy.

I started out saying that sarcastically (shocking for me, I know!) but on second thought, I think I’m right after all. The manufacturers of food in the U.S. need to get a grip. Most of these foods are targeted at children (although it is the parents who buy them–and if parents don’t buy them, companies won’t make them–and I’ve done my share of guiltily buying dill pickles swimming in yellow 5 for my spoiled chidlers), but surely there is a better way. I am not in favor of governing what companies make, being more into free commerce and caveat emptor and all, but maybe the companies can adjust their vision. With a little vision therapy. I only charge $100 for 45 minutes.

Eye Doctors or Witch Doctors?

Today I took the children in to an optometrist for an annual eye exam. William passed with flying colors (fortunately he didn’t see any flying colors, but was able to read and focus correctly). Carolyn is a whole ‘nother story. Last year she was prescribed glasses for her nearsightedness, which we got, and the doctor recommended that she take them off for close work as a way to try and prevent her nearsightedness from getting worse. Apparently her eyes do not work well together, something called teaming or somesuch. After a year of this, her distance vision is a little worse (duh, just look at her parents) and these other problems are definitely not worse. The doctor strongly recommended a bifocal lens (she did last year but we chose not to get one, having no vision insurance at the time, plus what 9 year old wears bifocals?) which we got, this year. This year we have fantabulous insurance and a $700 pair of glasses cost us $110. Seriously. We opted for a no-line bifocal (her choice) but if we’d gotten the lined bifocal it would have been completely covered, and we’d only be paying about $50 for the frames.

Anyway. Last year the doctor introduced the idea of vision therapy. “Whatever,” I thought. She really gave the hard sell this year, describing all the good it would do. I was about ready to consider it…

…then I googled it and it gave me pause. From what I can tell, the optometrists are all over vision therapy but the ophthalmologists and pediatricians aren’t on the bandwagon yet. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that it can help ADD, learning disabilities, etc. All the stories of Johnny not wanting to read, reading below grade level, and then he had vision therapy, and poof! He loooves to read now. And I’m thinking, Hello? Have you spent one day with my daughter? The girl reads more than anyone in our family. She is a reader. She does not have ADD, or dyslexia…but her eyes are not on the same team. The doc asked if she was performing up to potential. “Yes…,” I said. As if I know her potential. She is certainly performing at grade level or better. “Then she’s a bright kid who is compensating. I see it a lot.” Meaning what, exactly? That she would be brighter if her eyes worked better?

Another red flag against V.T. is that it usually is not covered by insurance. The V.T. office (conveniently located next to the optometrist’s office….hmmm…how special!) does not even bill for insurance, you are on your own to deal with insurance. And it’s worth trying, because it costs $100 for 45 minutes and you should go in at least every other week. I am in the wrong profession.

I have very mixed feelings about all this. I don’t completely trust the optometrist, and am thinking about asking my ophthalmologist about it when I see him next month. I have enough guilt in my life without thinking I need to spend hundreds of dollars a month on something that may or may not be useful to her. It kind of feels like the medical equivalent of shoe shopping at Stride Rite: “Well, these shoes have superior arch support and room to grow for developing feet, and they are white because studies show white shoes are associated with higher test scores on college entrance exams…” so of course I paid $45 for toddler shoes. Heaven forbid the child should have misdeveloped feet. I mean, what happens to families who can’t afford vision therapy and their child really does have dyslexia or something? And now I am facing a decision with no good guidance either way. Pfui!

The upshot is that I am going to think on it a while. I am leaning heavily toward no at this time, though. I mean, I already have the guilt of not taking her in for an eye exam at 1 year and 3 years old…when did that recommendation come up? I thought I was so ahead of it when I took them to the dentist at 3 years.

Maybe I’ll just invent a little cheer for her eyes: Go, team, go! Focus in, focus out, focus down and all about! G-o-o-o-o-o eyes! After all, that’s as proven to work with as much clinical data as vision therapy.