Has the world gone mad?

Top US directors Woody Allen, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese have signed a petition protesting the detention of Roman Polanski in Switzerland. I'm having a tough time understanding why Hollywood actors and directors think why ANY person, talented, gifted, artistic or not, should be exonerated after admitting to drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13 year old child while she begged him to stop. And here's the wording of the petition from Europe's artistic set: As members of the European Film Academy and the European film community we protest at the arbitrary treatment of one of the world’s most outstanding film directors. We declare our deep respect for our colleague and friend Roman Polanski and we demand his immediate release. We declare our deep respect for our colleague... Are you kidding me? How deeply can you respect a man who confessed to raping a child? I don't care if it was 5 years ago, 50 years ago or 5 minutes ago, this man raped a child. THIS MAN RAPED A CHILD. Woody Allen signed the petition. Big surprise. Woody Allen married his adopted daughter. Michael Moore signed the petition. No surprise there either. He thinks it's a huge deal for the government to screw people, but he doesn't think it's at least equally or even far more serious for a man to do the same to a child. Give me a break. Artistic license does not include a license to break the law. Whether it's drugs, sex with minors, hit and run accidents, murder, or domestic violence. This is a lesson Hollywood and cohorts need to learn and learn quickly. Every woman in the world should be up in arms about this.

Side Effects of the DASH Diet

I've been on this "DASH diet" for about 2 weeks now, and I'm adjusting. It's low-sodium, low cholesterol which is, of course, the antithesis of the Atkins diet I have been so successful with in the past. But before I even started this "new healthy way of eating" I realized this one isn't about losing weight. This one is about living. Hopefully, for many years to come. The weight loss part of it no longer concerns me. I didn't go on this diet to lose weight. I went on this diet because my blood pressure and cholesterol are too high. I'm going on a LIVE-it, not a die-it. Completely different mindset. So this morning I went to get dressed and thought hmmmmm... are these jeans a bit looser than normal? Weird. I hopped on the scale and found out I'd dropped 6 lbs! LOL Assuming my blood pressure and cholesterol have dropped at least a bit, that's a very nice side effect of this way of eating! I was brought up to be a meat/starch/veg cook. Every meal needed a meat, a starch and a vegetable. No more, no less. Do you know back in the 1950's mother's believed that they needed to put butter on everything so the child wouldn't choke on food? I'm not kidding you. To get me to eat anything I didn't like, all my mother had to do was put a big ol' blob of mayonnaise on the food, and I'd eat it up. Butter and mayo... to this day both are a big "yum" for me. I can quite literally eat mayo with a spoon from the jar. I try not to, but I certainly am capable. The DASH diet is very low (almost no) salt, very low saturated fats and, unfortunately, not a heck of a lot of taste. I'm looking for a local cooking class that might teach me more about using herbs and spices in place of the salt I'm missing. We never have used a lot of salt at the table, but I have always used it when I cook. I'm not trying to keep my sodium intake under 1200 mg per day. Last night was my first attempt at a meatless meal, and it was quite good! I made a tomato- vegetable soup with lentils and white beans, and I made a very good homemade "pizza" from whole wheat low-fat pita bread, with a sauce I made by combining tomato paste, basil "paste" (you can buy it in tubes in your grocer's vegetable section) and garlic. Then I chopped up one whole black olive for each pizza, added quite a bit of diced onion and green pepper, and topped it with a small amount of fat-free mozzarella cheese (not sodium free, unfortunately, so I couldn't use much). It really was very good! I've also been making my own whole grains breads. I calculate my breads have about 30 mg of sodium per slice, vs the store bought 130-180 mg per slice. This morning I made bread with peach/mango juice to replace the water, unsweetened apple sauce to replace to oil, and added cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves for some flavor, flax seed and unprocessed bran to add some fiber, and my usual whole wheat and rye flours. It's going to make great toast! I've given up all butters and margarines on my toast now, and just use Polander's All Fruit spreads (0 sugar, 0 cholesterol). A nice up of tea at night with a piece of toast with a smidge of peanut butter and the fruit spread - yum yum and more yum. So, I'm adjusting to this healthy eating, and hopefully I'm improving my health every day. See, I've got this little grandson around who is going to need his Umma imparting her wisdom for a long time to come...

Umma-fied

I had another full week of babysitting last week, after Mr. B's "other" babysitter's 4 yr old daughter went into the hospital. Mentally, I'm not sure I was quite ready for it, but what can you do? It is what it is. I wanted to start some preschool activities with Mr. B., and found many, many resources for "lapbooks". Lapbooks are simply file folders re-folded to create books that have an educational purpose. Our first lapbook was the letter "A". We did several activities, practiced writing the letter "A" and found words that started with the letter "A". Mr. B was... less than enthusiastic. But this week, we did a lapbook on "Feelings" and oh my! He was not only interested, but several times when I was busy doing housework, I'd turn around and find him looking through the related books we read or playing the games in the Lapbook by himself! Yay! We read the two books first, and talked about the different feelings - happy, joyful, angry, surprised, excited, etc. Mr. B was fascinated with both books, but Duck & Goose was the one he sat down and "re-read" on his own. Today I Feel Silly: And Other Moods That Make My Day Duck & Goose, How Are You Feeling? The photos below show the Lapbook. The first photo shows the outside cover.

This photo shows what's inside the lapbook. (I believe I found the downloadable set at the 1+1+1=1 blog.) In the upper left hand is different smiley faces to color. Center top is lots of smiley faces showing different feelings. Top right hand is a "match game" with sets of cards showing feelings to match up. Bottom left envelope has more smiley faces, which also has a list of questions you ask the child about how he would feel if xxx happened, and he puts the appropriate "feeling" face on the body. Bottom right is a little book on how boys and girls are feeling.

It was really fun to do this, and important for me to have Mr. B understand that ALL feelings are OK. It's OK to be mad, OK to be scared, OK to be whatever he is feeling. I think that's an important lesson for small children.

Another thing we've done in the past week is to go on a picnic. We have some great parks with playgrounds in our area, so we pack up a picnic lunch (including a "fancy" tablecloth for the table, which Mr. B thinks is the Bomb), and have Umpa meet us for lunch. Mr. B and I arrive around 11am so he can get some playground time, then Umpa arrives around 11:45 and we have our lunch. By the time Umpa has to go back to work, it's time to head home for nap time. A great way to spend a day for both of us!

Mr. B always brings his bike to my house. I live on a cul-de-sac, and it's perfect for bike riding. After a good rain, we have a nice puddle at the end of our driveway, and I'm not sure there's anything Mr. B would rather do than ride his bike back and forth through that puddle. For the past several times he's brought his bike, I've had to spend at least an hour of our precious outside time putting the chain back on his bike. It was a WallyWorld special - and definitely a case of "you get what you pay for". It was fine for Mr. B to learn on, but at less than one year old it was falling apart and we spent more time fixing it than he did riding it. After I spent an hour getting the chain back on yesterday morning, I found out the training wheels (plastic) had bent and couldn't be re-aligned. I had enough. I packed Mr. B in the car, took him to a reputable local bicycle shop, and bought him a new bike. Pricey, yes. But it is well made, all steel and no plastic, and sized so he can use it for at least the next five years, if not longer. Here's Mr. B on his new bike. This is one happy, happy child! And this is Mr. B after riding his bike back and forth through the puddle. See how wet his shirt is? He went through four outfits yesterday!