145 posts from 2008

First of all, our new business website is finally finished.  Yay!

Also, I will no longer be posting on Vox.  However, I will, from time to time, stop by to see what's happening with you folks.  We're keeping our Vox accounts alive for that reason!

Oh, and if you'd like, check out the NEW Hurricane Hetta on Blogger!

I wish everyone a Happy New Year and a Merry Christmas!

Not everyone loves pie around the holidays (which is hard to imagine, I know).  Dave likes some pies...that aren't slimey, as he puts it :D  I looove just about any pie.  Though I have to ease up with the Pumpkin pie because it gives me gas. 

Anyway, I made this cake in October for a small gathering of people after my brother's wedding ceremony.  I've never been big on homemade cakes (I mean, I like them but I can't make one).  I think it's hard to make a homemade cake that doesn't seem dry.

Anyway, I ripped this awesome recipe for a pound cake from the Food Network.  If you know who Paula Deen is, you know her recipes are pretty rich.  I think that's why this cake is so good.  It's a pretty versatile cake that actually, doesn't require icing.  You could top it with fruit or just a serving of sorbet or regular 'ol vanilla ice cream.  I think it should be sufficient for up to 15 people, maybe more.  It's so rich that many folks will find one piece enough.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, plus more for pan
• 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon orange extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• Cook's Note: This is the basic recipe for a sour cream pound cake. This recipe would have to be modified to make into a wedding cake.

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Butter and flour a tube pan and set aside. In the bowl of a mixer, cream butter and sugar together and then add sour cream. Sift flour and baking soda together. Add to creamed mixture, alternately with eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition. Add extracts and stir to combine. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Cool cake in pan for about 10 minutes and then unmold and cool completely on a wire rack.

P1010032

Unfortunately, I have a habit as of late of listening to the news on the radio at night before I go to bed because I don’t have a lot of time during the day to catch up with the world.   I end up going to sleep, usually mad as hell by some of the so-called “news” I hear.

So, I guess the number of divorces in the Chicago-land area have decreased because people can’t afford to get divorced this year.  Gosh…now we’re being forced to live with each other and actually work out differences, workplace affairs, expensive vacations, greed and money crunches for the time being instead of being graced with the affordable convenience of filing for divorce whenever we just can’t take it anymore.

And affordable daycare facilities?  Since when is daycare affordable?  And shouldn’t it be expensive?  If you can’t swing it, maybe that’s a good hint to you.  It’s a pity.  A pity for the extent of the burden that having a child seems to have become. 

Daycare is nothing short of a chicken coop or hog pen as far as I’m concerned.  I don’t care how much you’re paying.  What could the inability to afford daycare mean for our children?  For their future?  Unfortunately, this means we are left with changing diapers and feedings more often than we’re used to.   Maybe this means our child could get our own undivided, less harried attention instead of the chopped up moments and discombobulated eyes of a daycare worker. 

And like every other “necessity” or expense you have when the bills roll around every month, it’s just another necessity to accompany the necessity to live beyond ones means.  A good daycare, if there is such a thing, will cost you.  It will cost one of the parents something and I’m guessing, on average, at the least a third or more of their income.  And if it isn’t costing you much, maybe you should be worried. 

I really like kids, personally.  They are the only thing I can think of at the moment that symbolize hope.   Of course, parents who put their children in daycare from infancy will act like they do by bragging, doting, and giving their child any thing they want.  Children are an amusement.   A living being worthy of digital snapshots and infrequent weekend trips to the zoo or park.  And even those parents who find within themselves to muster up some actual quality time with their kids on the weekend, it takes everything in them just to make it to Monday.  How do I know this?  Because I heard from the lips of parents.

I worked in a better than average daycare in Chicago for a while.  But I have to tell you, some daycare facilities might be clean, they might be posh with infants starting at around $1200 a head, but no daycare is worth the first three or four years of a child’s life…critical years your child and you will never get back.

What’s three or four years in the bigger picture?  I can hardly turn around before one year of my life is up.  Daycare took a lot out of me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  I came home many nights crying and feeling worthless, not just from the exhaustion of five or six kids to my one set of hands, but trying to divide my attention between those 10 infants who really needed undivided attention and with only two women in the room.  Oftentimes one woman was missing half of her teeth or couldn’t even write her name, and that woman wasn’t me.

Parents never think of what all that responsibility does to the daycare workers.   Many women can’t even handle the weeks before they put their child in daycare.  I mean, really, if you can’t handle the first six weeks on your own, how the hell do you think a daycare worker is managing 5 or six to herself?  Sure, most basic needs are being met like clockwork, but the real attentive needs take a back seat because someone else is sick again, needs his diaper changed, a nap, is sad and crying or one is waking from a nap and needs her lunch.

I guess I just can’t understand it.  It may have something to do with my, thus far, inability to have a child of my own.  Am I envious and bitter?  Maybe.  But more than that, I’m just heartbroken.  It’s one thing to send your 4-year-old to preschool, but I just can’t muster respect for women (other than single-parent women who have absolutely no choice) who throw their just out of the womb infants into the arms of a daycare facility for someone else to attend to.  I remember distinctly rocking a six week old preemie and thinking, this could be mine.  Would I want someone else rocking, perhaps the only child I’ll ever have, to sleep while I deal with the stress of ringing phones, disgruntled clients, bitchy co-workers and pressing deadlines?

I remember doctors, lawyers, consultants, dentists, teachers, etc coming to pick their kids up in the late hours of the afternoon around six or seven.  “This is it for us…one is enough.” “Well, come on kiddo…time to get home and get you to bed.”  I’m thinking, what a couple of  selfish wussies they are.  Between both parents, no doubt, making $100-$200 grand a year.  As it stands, they have only the weekends with their kid and I doubt they can hardly handle that now that they’re used to daycare handling five of those seven days for them. 

And what an injustice.  I mean, parents make a choice to bring a child into the world and then don’t even have it in them to take care of the child themselves.  It’s all easy come, easy go.  The truth is, raising a child, educating a child in the early years and showing that world, the world as you know it and being a part of that world, is a lot harder than any job you could ever have.  But I’d think it would be a lot more rewarding.  God forbid if you should learn something eye-opening or surprising besides how to consult a client or run a copy machine.  I watched my own mother with five children and not much money or resources.  But she did it, and she did it well.  God bless her.

These days it is a rare thing for any woman to admit to any reward that comes with being “just a mother” for the time being because this is the 21^st century…we women are beyond just motherhood.  Being a stay-at-home mom is nearly shameful, lazy, thankless.  It’s always comes down to not being able to cope, where’s dad, why can’t he do this?  Why must it be me because I’m a woman or I’m the mom or whatever?  The kind of job a mother has never gets you anywhere.  We can have it all.  And you’re right.  We can have it all because all or nothing is what we’ve chosen.  However, as far as I’m concerned, having it all is having nothing, if you can’t be there for the first few years of your child’s life.  I guess it is unfair to expect one parent to stay home and “sacrifice” while the other one follows his or her career dreams.  And so, it’s only logical, fair, that we dump the only child we may ever have, at a good local daycare.

Why even have a child?  Chances are, like a lot of the parents I knew when I worked in daycare, you’ll miss all their first times.  Surprisingly, I found that many parents thought all that through (or maybe they didn’t) and were ok with that reality because for them the acquisition of a child was just another addition to the home, another expense.  Some parents were heartbroken when they didn’t get to see Brian or Carly’s crawl or sit up for the first time and you could see it on their faces because they hadn’t really thought it through, or maybe they thought they could handle that reality when it hit. 

I can’t imagine carrying a child for nine months, the emotion, the physical discomfort and labor only to turn around and leave them in a strange place while I go back to my Career/desk job.  I don’t know how you can just turn that all off and walk in the direction that best suits you.  I don’t care who gave labor.  Someone, surely has some parental instincts here.  But what do I really know?  I’m not a parent.  I’m not grappling with all the expenses that have to get paid every month.

It just seems unfair that we have as a society chosen to invest in careers, homes, SUV’s and other pieces of junk that remain, even as we die.  We just can’t seem to invest in each other.  We’re always competing with one another and at the expense of others.  I know…we’re in hard times now…everybody needs the money these days.  For the typical middle or upper class family, one salary isn’t enough anymore.  These days one parent shouldn’t have to give up his or her career while the other one has to stay home and take care of the kid?  Seems unbalanced, seems unfair.

The fact is that it always comes down to the fairness of the adults and everything else but the child.  It always comes down to our own need to “find ourselves” pay the mortgage or the car payment, save for our kid’s college or cello lessons, the endless dining out because everyone is too tired to cook a meal much less chew our pre-prepared salads together.  Rarely does finding oneself ever happen in our own lifetimes, let alone the early childhood years of our own.

It’s funny how still, after eight years of living in the shadow of a materialistic, greedy president all we know how to do is point our fingers at the Bush administration for our economic mess, but we sure aren’t going to take any responsibility for ourselves and our own greed and insensitivity.  This is America!  Here we can do anything and have everything!  And with both salaries we can rest comfortably at night with the idea that our children will have all of the things we have and more. 

But right now, when it matters the most, they don’t have us.  At the expense of everything we still don’t have much because we’ve forfeited what really matters.  Our children learn from us and what we have found most valuable, and the greedy cycle continues.

I'll trade you one of my Imperfect Puuurfections B..a..r..b..z..y for one of your candy canes... ;)

PB090013

Actually, these nutty things look a lot better in the photo than the do for real :D

my response to a blogger's comments:

"I'm not so indifferent to the current economical condition of our country to think that raising taxes in recessionary times is a good thing."

Oh Hogwash.  Raising taxes for people who make $250,000+  And of course, many folks don't catch that because they were tuned into easy-listening "McCain radio"  but should read the facts at http://origin.barackobama.com/taxes/. From Obama’s website I didn’t even see anything about raising taxes for the wealthier except only that their tax would remain. 

Don’t you think it’s a bit of a gamble to say the dreaded words “raise taxes” when you’re trying to win an election?   All people have to hear is “raise taxes” and they go berserk regardless of the economic conditions.  If the average American is making the above figure, then I’ve really been out of the loop.

I am ashamed right now of this country because of our greed, and because of that greed other countries are feeling the weight of it too.

Nobody is forced to do anything.  College students now tote Prada and Chanel bags, people in their early to mid-twenties go to banks, buy expensive cars and homes, and do what they do out of their own willingness to do so.  I get sick of the greedy "Joe the Plumber" stereotypes that are supposed to mirror the common man and his “pie in the sky” dreams. It’s just your typical stubbornness to pay taxes now masked as a reason to not vote for Obama during a recession.

It looks to me like the plumber is delusional with the belief that he is somehow rich, I guess, or that someday he will make $250,000 as a plumber and someone who is successful shouldn't be "penalized" for that.   What is this some sort of lame attempt to get others to share their wealth? 

It gets pretty funny because he’s helping along the relief effort for the wealthier guy he hopes to one day become while he continues with his $40,000 a year salary (which will see tax relief under Obama’s plan).  We don’t even know how much his wife makes.  Maybe she makes more than he does, which means he could very well be making nearly $100,000 a year and that still isn’t enough.  In the end, recession or no recession, come spring he will still be taxed something, which will undoubtably piss him off.

Nobody wants to pay taxes regardless of how much he makes or what the law is.  It’s absurd for a plumber to act in such a manner because he’ll never make the kind of cash he doesn’t believe should get taxed unless he strikes oil on one of his clogged toilet runs.

Unless you’re a stock junkie who placed his future in the bets of the stock market, I ask you, how many people making $250,000 a year are seriously being that hurt by the economy?  I can’t guess the extent and maybe I’d be shocked, but that’s only because as your average American, I’ve never seen that kind of money.  If Americans are making $40,000 a year and living like they make two or three times that, maybe they are in a hole, I don’t know.  Doesn’t the president himself make a salary close to or around $250,,000?  Maybe Obama should throw a hissy and stamp his foot at this supposed tax plan. 

“I'm a conservative and I know what the average American can afford.”

I find it particularly insulting that anyone would think that because they are a conservative that they have some sort of "insider knowledge" about what people can afford.  I can’t assume anything based on what any average American is able to afford.  In a country where everyone prides themselves on what they can do or have, I think it is nearly impossible to know what anyone can afford right now because many Americans live on credit and most everyone is living beyond their financial means-- it's the only way.   And now, with the current situation, maybe they aren’t going to be able to do that as easily.  Maybe they are actually going to have to have the money for what they want.

The price of gas supposedly made people nervous, but not enough to take the bus or carpool.  In fact, here in the city it seemed to me traffic increased.  It feels like no one wants anyone or anything to tell them they can’t have what they want to have or do what they want to do.  Gas prices could have reached $7 or more, people would have become more angry and food prices would have sky-rocketed, and I seriously doubt it would have affected the traffic that much.

It is greed and the money hungry who have thrust this country into the recession it is in.  It is the rich, the greedy banks and the Americans who live beyond their means being driven by that greed.  Everyone believes they need or deserve everything and yet shouldn't have to pay taxes.  Everyone is pointing their finger at everyone when maybe they should be pointing at themselves.  It makes absolutely no sense to bite the hand that is holding the trough one is dining in.  And from the time George Bush took office it has been corporate greed down the line for eight...long...years.  

"While I enjoy your cynical posts on culture at large, the personal attacks don't work as well for either entertainment or quality in my opinion. But, maybe that's just me. I don't care for it from either party."…

You don’t care for it from either party but you care more when it’s aimed at the party you favor.  It doesn’t work for you because you are on the flip-side.  I don’t think it’s your place to decide for me what works.  Typically, whatever I rant about, whether it’s the prices at Whole Foods, UGG boot trends, Lance Armstrong affairs, or gay pride parades it is an opinionated attack.  And just because it’s a presidential candidate doesn’t make it less cultural or that it should be less of an attack because someone might get hurt.  However, I give you credit for stating your opinion.  I get a few lame, passive-aggressive comments and catty, insecure viewpoints.  But the positive feedback far outweighs any negative responses on my blog. 

You have a right to your opinion and that's fine that you find my personal attacks on the candidate I don't like to be offensive.  Who cares?  So I should keep my opinions to myself?  I find attacks on Obama offensive because he is the candidate I choose.  If I get some applause or a chuckle from those who also support Obama, fine.  If by chance I think I’ve stepped over the line and actually personally hurt someone’s I might apologize.  But if I don't, I won’t.  There are plenty of bloggers that are perpetual brag sheets, and I read many posts that I find lame, boring, and even offensive.  More often than not, I choose to say nothing.  But if I do say something, and the blogger doesn’t like or agree and I say it on their blog, that person has every right to ignore, delete, retort, or even tell me to go to hell if they choose.

I don't write my posts to appease or sprinkle fairy dust around anyone.  If you don't like it, fine.  But if you choose to say something on my blog that I don't agree with (depending upon the subject matter and whether I think it's worth it), expect a retaliation.

I do know this:  I’m not apologizing for not liking a bitter old man and his maverick-on-the-back. With all the pressure and problems we are currently steeped in, he will most certainly die before his term is up.  Though older folks have a lot to reiterate and things for us younger folks to learn from, I just feel there is something inherently wrong with someone of his age and bad health to be so power-hungry for the presidency.  I think he’s just fine where he currently resides.  I mean 8 years ago he was a better choice , but now? 

I voted for George Bush in the last election and nearly didn't vote at all because I thought both candidates sucked.  My decision to vote democratic this time is based in my own discernment of character I see in the candidates. 

I don't stamp myself as either Republican or Democrat, though it's obvious I'm leaning left this time around. 

I am not a socialist or a communist. 

I’m not a supporter of terrorism who thinks Obama is a terrorist because his middle name is Hussein and he can be friends with a Muslim. 

And though I am a Christian, I don’t believe that God is on the side of my political views.  As far as taxes, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

And, there is no argument in the idea that this sort of rant doesn't work for you-- and that makes perfect sense to me--you're a McCain supporter.