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Children of the Snuggies


Despite our elitist stance on television viewing, all of our children are addicted. The two oldest alternate between real time viewing and downloading their favorite serial fare by the season, and the youngest indulges in a cherished rite of passage known in our home as Cartoon Saturday.

A few months ago, Kat discovered a channel devoted to all the old cartoons Rob and I grew up watching. A mixture of American and Canadian fare, we allow it to continue for selfish reasons. Now that we have trained Kat to get her own breakfast, Cartoon Saturdays have become our sleep-in day.

But it’s not just the shows that hold our daughters rapt, they are commercial watchers too, and I probably know more about the junk being hawked to the consuming masses now than when I was watching television myself.

It all started with the Sham-wow, a muscular – almost superhero – chamois that may be the product of secret government experiments. Kat began by regaling me with its virtues and when I failed to be suitably impressed, started in on her dad.

“Do you know what a Sham-wow is?” she asked him one evening on their way to the bookmobile.

“Some kind of cloth you use to clean your car with?”

“Oh, but it is so much more.” Read Full Article

But Will It Play in the Bible Belt?


I haven’t been picked up for syndication via 50 something Moms in a while. It’s been bumming me out a bit frankly. I would like to say I write simply to hone my craft but the truth is I write to be read, and the more people who read me, the happier I am. Syndication is a chance to be more widely read and as I stated – I haven’t been picked up  for a couple of months now.

Three months. Not that I am counting.*

As I was reading a draft for Rob the other night, he remarked that I might want to tone down my language because I used the words bejeezus, hell and fat bastard. Just for effect and it was a funny. If I am going to mommyblog**, I am going to have fun with it.

“Why? I am just trying to be funny,” I was whining a bit because I don’t often try to be funny and succeed and because like most writers, I hate to cut what I think are good lines that work.

“Because I think it’s what’s keeping you from being picked up again. A lot of the papers that ran your early stuff were in the south. Not just Bible Belt but buckle and notches.”

Now I was confused. The Bloggess is more profane than I am – she posts kitty porn and holds discussions on Jesus’s sperm – and she lives in Texas. It doesn’t get redder or deeper in the pants than the belt that is holding up East Texas.

“When we were living in Kansas, Shelley liked to say that we weren’t just living in the Bible Belt but we were on its buckle. One time shortly after we moved there, and they still hadn’t figured out that our religious affiliation really was ‘none of the above’, a neighbor asked Shelley to help out with a school bake sale. They were driving somewhere together and the woman mentioned that she only baked for sales because she didn’t enjoy it. Shelley replied that she did and she sometimes baked just for the hell of it. And that was the end of that budding friendship.”

“Because she used the word hell?”

“Yep.”

“So I need to ask myself will this play in the Bible Belt from now on?”

“Only if you want to get picked up again.”

Which I do. Damn.

Um, I mean darnit. Or is that dang nabbit? No, it’s darnit. The other is Yosemite Sam.

 

 

 

*Three months on the 28th. Of course I am counting.

*Mommyblogging means exploiting the cute foibles of one’s loins for the entertainment of others as opposed to mentioning them in passing to preserve their privacy and/or dignity. I am endeavoring to exploit my womb and Rob’s loins as much as possible without throwing up on myself in disgust.

O, Canada, we stand on guard for thee


“What does it mean to stand on guard for thee?” BabyD asked me recently.

They have been preparing the kids for a spirit day assembly at school – which I missed … twice.

“Don’t you remember anything anymore, Mom?” was the stinging rebuke I took for that.

But getting back to Canada, the schools here do an excellent job of laying the Canadian pride groundwork at the elementary level, I am guessing the superiority  complex and intense disdain for America comes during the upper grade levels. BabyD and her classmates, in addition to learning songs designed to promote harmony and reduce bullying, have also been learning the national anthem.

“It means that we would defend Canada from its enemies.”

“How?”

A very good question because in the minds of many Canadians the most likely scenario for needing to defend Canada will come when America runs out of clean water and can’t afford to buy oil on the world market anymore. Plenty of both those natural resources up here and in addition our precarious claim to the Northwest Passage makes us a prime target for a revival of the old American standby “manifest destiny”, which simply means,

“We need it. We can take it from you. So we will.”

But BabyD is a U.S. citizen and always will be. And I, a U.S. citizen as well, am standing idly by while she is being assimilated. I mean every day she is less and less of an American. In a bit more than two years from now, she will have spent exactly half her life in both countries with the latter being far more formative from a conscious standpoint.

I think about my status, and hers, a lot because I love Canada. I can’t imagine living in the United States full time again – though I would never say never .

Last night, Rob stumbled on a series of short films that the CBC used to air in between shows when he was a child. They were called Canadian Vignettes. Just little history snippets supported by the Canadian arts council and used to the meet the very strict requirements that mandated that a large percentage of Canadian television originate in Canada. Have to admire the dedication to stemming the corrupting tide of American values.

Kinda reminds me of learning how bills become laws in between cartoons on Saturday mornings.