Sweet, Dark and Crazy

Monday, October 18, 2010

Is THIS What You Want Your Kids Singing??? Really?

Okay, this is really bothering me. There is a commercial for Kellogg’s cereals that I hear every morning while getting ready for work. It features a bunch of kids and they are singing this old song that goes, “Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy! And I feel like lovin' you!

Well, obviously, the Kellogg’s people failed to do their research. This is definitely not a song you want your kids to sing … especially grade school age kids.

How do I say this, the love in the tummy got there from someone who chose to swallow and not spit. Get it? Exactly, now do you want your second grader singing about that? I didn’t think so.

Labels: Music

posted by SDC @ 6:20 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

I Can Make You Thin (if the dog doesn't mind)

So, we're comfortably into October and I'm still collecting birthday gifts. Just this weekend, I went shopping with my friend Kara and she treated me to two sweaters from Ross (I love that store!). The weekend before, one of my friends back home sent me a gift card to Barnes and Noble. I do love a good gift card!

When it comes to gift cards, I try to purchase something that I might not have normally bought. So weekend before last, with that gift card burning a hole in my purse, I went to Barnes and Noble. "What do I get?" I thought as I moved through the aisles of books, CDs and DVDs. Then I came upon a big display of two books: I Can Make You Sleep and I Can Make You Confident. I'm pretty confident but I've struggled with insomnia all my life, so I picked that book up, but before I could open it, I saw something that really intrigued me on the front cover, "From the author of I Can Make You Thin." I immediately put the sleep book down and went in search of the book that could help me get back into my cute jeans.

When I found it, I read the inside flap and found out that Paul McKenna, the author, is "TheDr. Phil of Great Britain." Since I actually like Dr. Phil, that didn't put me off. The book promised that I could lose weight without giving up any of the foods I love. This is critical for me because as soon as I'm told I can't have it, I want it more than I've ever wanted it before and nothing short of the Second Coming will stop me from eating it. The three days I spent on Atkins were terrible. I was so irritable and evil that I made The Exorcist look like Freaky Friday. I don't even like bread that much but damn if I wouldn't have killed for a dinner roll!

But, back to the subject...

The I Can Make You Thin plan is made up of four rules.

Eat only when you are hungry
Eat until you begin to fill full
Eat slowly and savor every bite
Eat what you want and not what you think you should eat.

He spends the book letting you know how to follow your body's hunger cues, how to tell when you are full and so on. BUT in addition to being Britain's Dr. Phil, McKenna is also a world-renown hypnotist and the book includes a guided hypnosis CD. I love stuff like this so when I realized I got the book and the CD, I was sold.

I finished the book on Sunday and as soon as I woke up Monday, I went upstairs and popped in the CD. It asks you to lay down on the floor and relax. I was fine until Joey decided to come upstairs and see what I was doing.

Whenever I'm laying down, the damn dog thinks it's playtime. If I never get a flat stomach, I'll blame Joey because I can't get through a series of sit-ups without him jumping on me, licking me and trying to get me to pet him.

Now I'm worried, since I was in the middle of hypnosis, did the dog make it into my subconscious. Will I associate eating better with the sound of him licking himself? That worries me.

I'll keep you posted...

Labels: Joey, Random Shit

posted by SDC @ 2:04 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 11, 2010

And Still I Rise (and Talk)

So, it was brought to my attention in an impromptu meeting with my boss, that several people (and I have a good idea who) were complaining that I was spending too much time talking to one of the contractors. These people were ‘concerned’ that I might not be paying enough attention to my work.

Of course, my job is different from theirs and I’m pretty sure they don’t even know what it is that I’ve been tasked to do – as my job is slightly different than my predecessor’s. They also don’t know that I’m on top of all of my projects and am on schedule, if not ahead of schedule, on all of them. Besides, the overwhelming majority of the time I’m talking with my contractor friend, we are talking about work. It doesn’t hurt though that she’s funny as hell and we just get along really well.

Anyway, it got me thinking and I realized that pretty much since I’ve been able to talk, I’ve gotten in trouble for talking – which is kind of odd because I know a lot of people who talk a lot more than I do. I guess I’m just too social. Like I can help it that I’m naturally popular!

As far back as grade school, I was called a ‘busy body’ and a ‘Chatty Cathy’ by my teachers. Yet, it took my meeting with the boss to recall the very first time I got in trouble for being too chatty. It happened while I was in Head Start. I was about four. And even though I was very young, these are my actual memories and not based on stories someone told me later on.

I have never taken naps. Never. To this day, if my dad calls during daylight hours and I’m napping, he knows I must be sick. I’ve always been this way. As a toddler when my mom would put me down for a nap, I’d play with my toys or if he was out, I’d try to get the attention of the boy next door … a cutie named Eric. He was a teenager and I would try to impress him with my ability to recite my ABC’s or count to 10. I mean what boy wouldn’t be impressed with that? Of course, I know now that men really aren’t impressed with intelligence. It didn’t work when I was two and it doesn’t work now, forty damn years later.

Anyway, at Head Start, they’d put me down for a nap and wide-awake I’d talk quietly to the little boy who laid next to me. He wasn’t as cute as Eric but he was okay. I would whisper to him about whatever I was thinking about. Were Big Bird and Snufalupagus really friends? How I really liked Ernie but didn’t care much for Bert (who always seemed kind of mean to me). And of course, the harrowing story of how I drowned my Mrs. Beasley doll in a puddle in the backyard because all the sudden, I got a really weird (evil) vibe from her.

Anyway, my teacher would yell at me and swat me a couple times with a ruler. Corporal punishment at the tender age of four! It’s a wonder I ever liked school!

This is the same teacher who later pulled me up in front of the class when I scribbled all over a picture of a rooster we were supposed to color. She told me my picture was “wrong” and “bad” and then she put a big red 'F' on it. I didn’t know what that meant but I knew it wasn’t good.

You see, I knew how to color within the lines, but on that particular day at that particular time, I didn’t feel like it. At the end of the day, in tears, I showed the source of my shame to my mom who marched right into the classroom and had a few choice words for the teacher who was trying so hard to stifle my creativity and squelch my bubbly effervescence.

And, in my boss’s office, four decades later, it continues. People continue to want to kill my joy. But guess what? They can’t. You can try to pop the bubbles that naturally emanate me but there are more bubbles where they came from. I’m bubbly damn it and I can't be stopped!

To paraphrase the great Maya Angelou,

You can tattle to the boss on me
With your petty, nosy cries
You may try to dim my sunshine
But still, like bubbles I’ll rise!

Labels: Memories, Work

posted by SDC @ 6:56 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 4, 2010

Where the Boys AREN'T

Things are tough all over. I was listening to the radio this afternoon and they were discussing affirmative action for men when it comes to college admissions. Women now make up 60% of the college population and have higher graduation rates to boost.

Kind of changes the whole college experience doesn’t it? The article in the NY Times interviewed college co-eds who talked about a perpetual ‘girls-night out’ experience just because there just aren’t a lot of guys around.

As you go higher, to Masters and PhDs, it gets even worse. Where are the men?

I guess going to college to get your M.R.S. isn’t going to work. Of course, if you are a guy in college, especially a single, straight guy, I doubt you’re complaining much as the odds are in your favor.

Back in the day, the trend was to skew education towards the girls to ‘level the playing field.’ Is it possible that we went too far in that direction? Could it be that boys aren’t as disciplined? Maybe girls are just smarter!

So do you think that there should be affirmative action for men (not just minority men) but all men? Better yet, why do you think that boys aren’t doing as well as girls in grade school and in college?

Labels: Men, Sex

posted by SDC @ 5:49 PM 0 comments

About Me

Name: SDC
Home: United States
About Me: I'm a youthful 44-year old, who is infectiously funny, dangerously smart, wildly creative, hopelessly math-phobic, tactfully honest, occasionally politically incorrect, and cute to boot!
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