Parent Company

Our waffle house

On our recent DC trip, we spent one night in a chain hotel with a breakfast buffet. I hate the typical chain hotel breakfast. The coffee is always horrible, the bagels are lame, and in general I dislike the feeding trough atmosphere.

But at this rather cheap hotel, they had a waffle iron in which you could make your own waffles. Batter was handily dispensed into cups that were sized to hold a perfect amount of batter to fill the iron with no spillover. So I opted for the waffle. Various kids in our family saw this and thought it was cool, then started to make theirs. I ignored the sign “Adult supervision required” and sat and enjoyed my waffle in peace while my kids made theirs. I believe there were spills that ensued; this was the end of our vacation so I pretended not to notice.

The waffle-making process had a bonding impact on our family. Suddenly we actually cooked something together -- although in a serial fashion -- albeit a high-carb food in a hotel lobby. So upon returning to Buffalo, I bought a waffle iron – the Wal-Mart, not Williams-Sonoma, variety. For less than $20, I was now equipped to technically provide a hot breakfast.

Since then (about 10 days), I have been providing waffles every day for breakfast. On Tuesday I didn’t know what to have for dinner, so I announced to a collective groan, “waffles.” We had run out of several boxes of mix so I actually had to make them from scratch. Quite good, but so is anything with a heavy dose of butter. And now we have leftover mix for breakfast tomorrow. Anyone for waffles?

As New Yorkers, we can be proud that one of our own invented the waffle iron, though there is some controversy around this. Which day is the correct day to celebrate Waffle Day? I report, you decide.

I long ago gave up the consumerist notion that I was one electronic device or small appliance away from happiness … if only I had a new camera, new CD player, breadmaker, pasta machine, I would be happier. But in our recessionist cocooning mode, our mere waffle iron has added some morning cheer. There is actual excitement when you lift the lid and see a perfectly toasted waffle. It’s nothing like the cardboard variety that comes in our grocer’s freezer.

We now actually cook (or more correctly, heat) our breakfast instead of dumping chocolate sugar cereal into a plastic bowl. Though since some of us add chocolate chips to our warm waffles, the nutritional effect is neutral, but it feels like we’re doing something wholesome. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “Waffles – now there’s a temporary solution!”

---Allison

The cost of a free lunch

Last week I was due to have lunch with a family friend, a grownup. It was a lunch we had been trying to make happen since mid-November.

The day finally dawned, and I had decided to treat myself to putting our dog in doggie daycare. The tab for that is about $25, and I usually only resort to it when both Allison and I are working during the day. But on that day I was splurging on it because I had a doctor's appointment before the lunch, and I wanted to feel unrushed for a change.

That was my first mistake, the desire to feign unrushedness. No parent ever truly gets to experience that, and to even think of the idea is to anger the gods, to overdraw your karmic account with a brazenness that would make Bernie Madoff blush.

So what happened that day? I took the dog out on the leash for his morning constitutional. Exactly one minute after we stepped outside, he somehow found a bush that was well-defended by burrs, those tangly things that embed themselves in a dog's fur. So I rushed him home and attempted a home burr removal operation. It was only partially successful.

Our dog daycare place employs groomers. I threw myself upon their mercy when I dropped off the dog, asking if a groomer could help us out with the burr situation. They said sure, they'll check it out.

They called an hour later. Burr removal would be $30. OK, what other choices did I have?

I drove downtown for lunch at a restaurant near Dunn Tire Park. Drove around the block three times looking for a parking spot. No luck. A space in a parking lot cost me $6.50.

Finally met my friend for a very pleasant lunch. I had turned off my cell phone as a courtesy, but then he took two cell calls at the table, so I reconsidered. Turned on the phone about 1 p.m., and there were two texts and one voicemail waiting for me. Our son was in the nurse's office. He had gotten sick to his stomach at lunch, and could I rush to school and pick him up?

I called the school nurse and she said it was no emergency, but he was feeling a little ill and wanted to come home.

So we wrapped up our lunch visit, and I departed to pick up the boy. As soon as he got into the car he was suddenly well again. He asked to go shopping so we could buy a present for the birthday party he was invited to that week. I rejected the shopping suggestion.

My friend graciously paid for our lunch as a gift for my birthday back in November. But that free lunch cost me $61.50 in dog care and parking fees.

It also taught me once again that not only am I never finished being a parent, but I dare not even take a lunch break.

---Greg

Room at the table

We have a new mouth to feed in our house. A classmate of our 16-year-old daughter is a Korean exchange student who has just moved in with us after we agreed to be her host family.

In the first couple of weeks there hasn't been as much emphasis on the "exchange" part of things as I would have thought. She kind of lives her life and we live ours, although that's partly because she is at school every day until about 5 p.m.

We do eat meals together, and that's where I notice the difference in having a new person around. It seems like I need to stop at a grocery store every three days, just to keep food on the table.

The funny thing is, she eats about as much as a bird. The food consumed by her and our older daughter combined would barely get me through the first four hours of a day.

I can't wait to try some Korean food, too. Chinese and Indian cuisine are both high on my list, but I'm always on the lookout for something new, gastronomically. I guess that's why when I tip the scales, I TIP THE SCALES.

I don't think our new friend is inclined to do much cooking, but we will take her out to a Korean restaurant one of these days.

If anyone has any suggestions on where to get good Korean food, or other cultural items such as newspapers or whatever, please pass them along.

---Greg

Martyrs 'R Us

Our family just got ourselves a used, but not too old, minivan. One of the features it came with is a factory-installed DVD player. I believe this device is a perfect representation of our kids-first society.

When playing a DVD in the car, the sound works through the same speakers as the radio and CD player. Thus, for the kids to watch a movie in the car, the speakers need to be set to "auxiliary" rather than to the radio or CD player.

This means those of us riding in the front seat … as in the parents … cannot see the screen, but are forced to listen to the movie rather than play music or a CD of our choosing.

As I write this I realize it sounds like one of those petty problems that used to grip the psyches of the characters on the old TV drama "thirtysomething." And it's not that I'm complaining, really, it's more that when I'm driving the family car and ceding control of the audio system to kids in the back seat, I feel like Troy McClure acting in a John Rosemond training film titled "The Martyrdom of Mom and Dad."

It's not that we let the kids play movies on every car ride. But I know that when we take a little trip somewhere over spring break, we're sure to run into territorial disputes over what gets played in the car and when. (And that's just between Allison and me.)

If someone is looking for a business start-up idea, they might want to think about producing a line of parent-martyr products. "Stigmata shears" would be a big seller. Maybe an 18-year umbilical cord make of fiber-optical cable. We can all come up with some, if we put ours minds to it.

--Greg

Valentine's Day duty

Valentine's Day crept up on me again, so at 8 last night, we raced to the drugstore to get valentines for the 4th and 6th grade classes. This year Kung-Fu Panda and Cartoon Network were selected.

I remember a couple of years ago sitting at the table as our younger two painstakingly wrote out a valentine for each classmate. A project that, while quaint, seemed to take hours. Then kids would come home with their decorated boxes and most valentines they received had a value-added candy, pencil, or over-engineered goody bag carefully affixed to the valentine; ours did not - yet more reinforcement of slacker momness.

Last night our kids worked on their own. No parental intervention. When they went to bed, I peeked in their bags to see what they had done. Our son had assembled his valentines in individual Ziploc bags with candy necklaces (a great childhood novelty that shouldn't just be for kids. (I want to wear one! Does that lead down a slippery slope to a red hat and purple dress?).

He also put together a tray of cookies adorned with drink umbrellas found when we cleaned the house last weekend. The teacher will think this was my touch, and wonder about my mental state. Oh well. Our daughter baked her own cupcakes and did a better job decorating than I would have.

So it was bittersweet, a sign of further independence; we're not needed for valentines anymore,except maybe to clean up the mess that was left when they sneaked upstairs at 10:30.

---Allison

Money talk, home edition

Are we having a recession yet?

I don't know about your house, but in ours every spare hour seems to be devoted to talking about how to make our money go farther, how to make ends meet, how to pay for college (starting three years from now). And it doesn't help our morale when Forbes magazine tells us how miserable we are. Or a friend from out of town, a Buffalo expatriate, e-mails me to suggest that the national recession is making the rest of the country more like Western New York. That was not meant as a compliment.

My co-blogger and I also have different notions about whether to discuss financial worries in front of our children. She's more for open dialogue; I'm for keeping things private.

In retrospect, I realize that my own parents shielded my brothers and me from much of their financial stresses during the 1970s days of malaise. I appreciate that now more than I ever could then.

How does this play out in your house? Are your children exposed to your recession-fueled stress, or are they kept in the dark about it?

---Greg

Dog days of winter

I really feel the pain of former French President Jacques Chirac, who recently received medical treatment after getting bitten by his Maltese poodle, named Sumo.

The dog had been under treatment for depression, news reports say. Since poodles are so smart, my guess is that Sumo had been listening when the 76-year-old Chirac would read passages of Albert Camus aloud, including:

"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."

That's probably the quote that put the dog over the edge.

Our puppy is also a Maltese poodle, though he seems fairly well adjusted. So far we do not have to sprinkle selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors on his puppy chow.

We had a poodle in our house at one point when I was growing up, and my mom vowed that it would be her last. "I never want to own a dog that is smarter than I am," she said.

And this winter we have been locked in a battle of wits with our dog, who about 20 times a day stands at the sliding glass door to our deck, asking to go out. Sometimes it's to do "his business," but mostly it's a ploy. After being outside for a minute or two, he will stand up on his back legs, leaning against the glass and asking to come back inside. He even has a way of letting his fur fly in the wind, making it look like he's even colder than he really is.

When I open the door to urge him to come in, he hesitates at the threshold. Why? Because he wants me to produce a dog biscuit to lure him inside.

But homey don't play that. As I used to say when our kids were toddlers and they would throw a tantrum, I don't negotiate with terrorists. I usually count down, "Three, two, one," and then close the glass door again, leaving Fiyero on the outside looking in. This little game REALLY gets old after the sixth or seventh time I have opened and closed the door.

Usually one of our kids will give in and throw a biscuit on the floor to get the dog out of the cold. But paying him his ransom, or giving him his fix, only encourages the furry little manipulator.

The tale of Sumo biting Monsieur Chirac has got me wondering if we are better off staying on the dog's good side and keeping him fortified with snacks, or if his biscuit addiction will eventually lead to harder stuff, such as pig ears or soup bones. I guess time will tell.

---Greg

Food policing

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Joshua Yaffa writes about growing up in a home in which junk food, fast food, sugary cereals and anything remotely unhealthful was banned by his parents. The law of unintended consequences kicked in, and he and his sister developed some strong cravings for Whoppers, Captain Crunch and other staples of the All-American diet.

One facet of the essay that jumps out is that Yaffa seems a little angry about the restrictions under which he and his sister lived. He writes:

I staged a demonstration of my own at age 9. I had found my wedge issue, the inherent contradiction in my parents’ dueling child-rearing impulses — their proud insistence upon a child’s right to self-determination versus the desire to feed the family as if we were a stable of horses.

A stable of horses? Yikes.

This brings up a question that's familiar to many of us: How much should we play the role of food police in our children's lives? Is it enough to stock the cabinets with healthful ingredients and snacks, and try to set a good example? Or do we need to ban sugar and white flour and processed foods from the family diet?

The various families I know fall on all different parts of the spectrum. Some would never dream of opening a box of dougnuts at their breakfast table. Others regularly let the kids grab cans of Coke when they are thirsty.

I'll preface my own opinion on the issue by stating up front: Whatever I do as a parent, I'm sure I usually pick the wrong option. (In the words of Emo Philips: I used to be a fatalist, but then I figured, What good does it do?)

Allison and I have always swung toward the permissive when it comes to food. That doesn't mean we let kids eat chocolate cake for lunch and ice cream for dinner, but neither do we expect our children to never taste a freedom fry or a Little Debbie snack cake before they reach voting age.

It does seem that if you clamp down too hard on what your children eat, they will develop cravings for the "forbidden fruit," the kind that's coated in corn syrup or milk chocolate.

How does this play out in your house? Feel free to hit the comment button.

---Greg

Power to the people

We don’t own a generator, so when the hurricane-force winds blew through Amherst on Sunday a tree branch fell somewhere on our neighborhood power grid and knocked out power to our block of houses, among thousands of others in our area.

With each successive storm, we’ve noticed more neighbors firing up generators. So now we are among the few who are powerless when an outage occurs.

We’re not the types who feel the need to plan for every conceivable contingency, so having an uninterruptible power supply has never been high on our priority list. In past storms we’ve sat by a fire and just winged it, or resorted to hotels during bigger storms. Should you call us irresponsible?

Years ago, Mike Myers played a character on Saturday Night Live called Middle-Aged Man. He would say things like, "At least I know where all my appliance warranties are."

We used to think this was funny; we weren’t middle aged.  No doubt Middle Aged Man had a generator.

So let's put it to a vote:

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P.S. Kudos to National Grid, whose people called my cellphone at 9:15 Sunday night to tell me power had been restored!

---Allison

Tree hugger

"Allison didn't disturb the tree," my mother wrote in my baby book on my first Christmas two score and seven years ago. Many years later, I entered the following First Christmas incident in my son's baby book: "Greg threw cream cheese at the tree."

You get the idea of how civilization, at least in this family, has declined.

We put up the tree over the weekend, always an event that brings out the best and worst in our family. We're "real tree" people, and we've taken this to various degrees of tree hugging in years past.

In the '80s — we were green before our time — we went the live tree route before we had kids, and after Christmas that year planted the tree in the backyard of the house we lived in. Unfortunately, we may have been green but didn't have a green thumb, and the tree got planted at a 20 degree angle. I'm picturing this tree today, 40 feet high, and looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Once kids arrived and were old enough to enjoy the adventure, we experimented with driving to a local tree farm in November to tag our Perfect Tree, and coming back in December to cut it down.

We gave up on that tradition; nice concept, but too time-consuming. Quaint traditions have an opportunity cost; we just couldn't fit this ceremonial tree ritual in. So now we go to a local nursery or tree lot and buy our pre-cut fraser fir. The practical compromise, but we're still keeping it real.

The tree gets hauled in, wedged into the stand, and then out come the lights. The lights are always a problem. I like a densely lit tree; Greg just likes to get the lighting over with. Various restringing ensues.

Boxes are hauled up from the basement, family cheer follows as favorite ornaments are unpacked from boxes. This lasts about 10 minutes. Soon various insults are hurled as someone drops an ornament, steps on another's toe, complains about the repetitive playlist on Star 102.5 FM, or hangs an ornament in the wrong place.

One by one, kids drop like flies, and the tree trimming is left to the parents. So late Saturday night, the tree was finally finished, and like childbirth, the pain of having put it up and decorated it was forgotten. (Actually, I'm not so sure that childbirth pain is really forgotten.)

While we're beyond the cream-cheese throwing stage, the family's concern this year is how our new dog will respond to the tree. Our oldest daughter is certain he will "mark" it as he does all other trees in the neighborhood. Time will tell. After reading this, no one will come to our house for wassail.

So here's a Parent Company poll. For those of you who put up a tree, are you fake or real tree people?

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--Allison