Better to Drop the Keys Than the Baby

Mrs. Cornucopia and I went to Another Brick in the Wal-Mart yesterday. We exchanged baby for keys, I giving her the baby (now six months old and very adorable, thank you very much), and she handing me the car keys. I struggled with the exchange, making sure that the baby was safely cradled in Mom's arms before I took firm grasp of the keys. The Misses made a comment about that, and I replied, "Better to drop the keys than the baby!"

That really got me thinking -- about how I had parked very close to the line on the driver's side, so that if someone parked too close on their passenger side, there could be denting issues. But that thought only lasted a second. What the baby incident really got me thinking about was do I ever "drop the baby", meaning do I ever ignore or set aside the kids' needs in order to placate my own?

Case in point - (shame alert) - A few weeks ago I was thoroughly engrossed in watching the telly broadcast of my favorite baseball team, the Double-A minor league New Britain Rock Cats. Being a rainy, chilly Saturday afternoon I had pulled out the "indoor roast marshmallows over stinky Sterno" kit and cooked up a few. The kit comes with some sharp jabby sticks that aid in the roasting and I had carelessly left them on the floor. At the time, the baby was just learning how to scoot around. So, of course, she scoots her way over to pick up one of these potential eye-gouging devices. My third favorite player, Maxwell Silver "Goat Cheese" Williamston, was up to bat. He hit a towering drive, Matterhorn-like: high but just not long enough. The center fielder snagged the ball on the run, slammed into the "Good & Plenty" sign, broke his bacteriophage, and had to be carried off the field. Well, since the hit was not a home run, there was no traditional "circling of the bases" ritual to watch, so I unwittingly turned my head to where the baby was lying about ready to poke her eye with my roasting stick. I quickly grabbed it out of her hand and saved the day. (In my haste I stepped barefoot onto the other roasting skewer and got a nice little gash.)

So there you have it. I nearly sacrificed my own child's welfare in order to satiate the need to root, root, root for the home team. It's really a good thing Goat Cheese didn't hit a home run, because my baby might have lost an eye, and because I was actually betting on the other team.

Rage Against The Mush

In my house, we love cold cereal. We love it for breakfast, we love it for snacks, we love to grind it into fine powder and dump it down the gas tanks of random cars. We love it for its sweet crunch. We tolerate it for its high high fructose corn syrup syrup content.

I recently counted the boxes of cereal in our house. Combined tally from the cupboard, the pantry, and the arsenal bunker, we have 18 boxes. Not all of these are full, mind you. Even though we love to eat cold cereal, we really don't like to finish off the box. Only three boxes are mostly full. The rest have just a few flakes, nuggets, combs, or puffs each left inside. You know how it is -- you pour that seemingly last bowl but really there's too much for one bowl but not enough for a second bowl so a "half-bowl" simply languishes in the box for weeks, months, even weeks. I suppose I could just make a "suicide" bowl of Special Lucky Cocoa Trix, but then I wouldn't have 18 boxes anymore.

My favorite is Christmas Crunch. I was introduced to Christmas Crunch on Columbus Day 1988. I don't know what it is about Red #40 and Green #7, but they sure taste good. Much better than that Agent Orange stuff they used to put in Very Scary Halloween Crunch. I'm also partial to Kroger brand fake Honey Smacks. (Not so much for the taste or the 78% sugar content, but for the fact that I can buy them on sale for only $1.79). (That is a good price, but mind you, it isn't easy to come by. That price is only available whenever there is a fifth Wednesday, only between the hours of 11 and 11:20 am, only if I have a coupon for $1 off, and it's limited to the first seven customers.) (As I type this I realize that maybe it's not worth it to take a vacation day just to save $1 on a box of cereal.) (I'll stop using parentheses now.)

So, there you have it. Eighteen boxes. And not a whiff of oatmeal or Cream of Wheat in the house. Because, as my mother used to say, "If it doesn't give you hyperglycemia, Ace, it doesn't belong in your face."