What are you known for?
Every town’s got to be known for something, I guess. I was born and raised in The Rocket City — Huntsville, Alabama — and worked for a newspaper in The Limestone Capital of the World — Bedford, Indiana. But how would you like to be from a town known for having the world’s largest catsup bottle? That claim-to-fame belongs to the folks of Collinsville, Illinois.
Collinsville was home to a catsup (more commonly spelled ketchup) factory back in the early 1900s, and in 1949, the makers of Brooks Catsup built a 100,000 gallon water tower in the shape of a catsup bottle. The company no longer makes catsup in Collinsville, but the bottle is still there. It was at risk of being torn down in the mid-90s but the Brooks Catsup Bottle Preservation Group formed and raised more than $75,000 to restore the bottle-shaped water tower, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
So just how do you top having the world’s largest catsup bottle? Make the world’s largest catsup packet! And the town of Collinsville did just that last weekend.
Collinsville is also the self-proclaimed Horseradish Capital of the World. Like I said, every town’s got to be known for something.
Children Left in Hot Cars
I read this CNN article today: “Devices exist to keep kids from dying in cars, but few are sold.” I wasn’t aware that such devices – able to alert parents if they leave their child in their car – were on the market or that auto-makers were researching built-in devices. I also wasn’t aware that NASA (who I work for, now) was doing research for this too:
“NASA is on the verge of licensing its Child Presence Sensor, which replaces the clip with a weight-sensitive pad that fits under the car seat cushion,” the article states. ”An alarm sounds 10 warning beeps if the driver moves too far away from the vehicle, and beeps continuously if the driver doesn’t return within one minute. Engineers at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Virginia developed the device after a colleague left his 9-month-old son in a hot car in May 2000.”
This happens way too much, whether intentionally or accidental. Some parents leave their kids in the car “for just a minute” while they run an errand, while others are busy or pre-occupied and forget to drop-off their child at daycare or the babysitter’s.
About two years ago, a friend-of-a-friend’s child died when the dad left the twin babies in the car. He was taking the twins and an older child to two different schools and took the older child and returned home, where he worked out of a home-office. He thought he took the twins to the daycare but didn’t, and they were buckled in their car seats in the hot car all day while he worked inside the house. One of the babies survived, but one did not.
Here’s another heart-wrenching story about another baby who died when a parent forgot and left them in the car. This one is on the web site of the makers of The Child Minder System referenced in the CNN article.
I was left in the car, once, when I was about 3. We had gone to church, and my mom thought my dad had me, and my dad thought my mom had me. As they approached the church the greeter said, “Where’s your little one today?” to which mom and dad had to look at each other say, “We don’t know. We guess she’s in the car.” I was only alone in the car for a few minutes, but it could have been longer if the church greeter hadn’t asked. A device like The Child Minder System or the one being researched by NASA could have prevented me from being left in the car too long and saved the lives the 340 babies and toddlers who have died of heat exhaustion after being trapped in hot cars in just the last decade.
I recommend the CNN interactive feature that goes along with this, too. It has interesting information about how fast a car can heat up and safety tips for preventing this from happening to you. If nothing else, let this post be a reminder to always look in the backseat and make sure the children have not been left in the car before going about your day.
Slave to Target is Back!
The Slave to Target blog is back, and I’m so happy! Check it out.
Soccer moms
I’m not a soccer mom … well, not yet. Soccer sign-ups for the rec league in our area are this weekend, and we plan to sign-up our oldest. But the soccer mom reference doesn’t just apply to mothers of children who play soccer. It’s more a mom who has young children involved in activities and the “soccer mom” is busy taking kids here and there. I definitely qualify for that, and it’s sure to only get worse as they get older.
So soccer moms need help, right, running their busy soccer-mom life? Lots of dinner products advertise “quick and easy” and include “quick and easy” recipes. The Ragu spaghetti sauce jar I used with supper the other night had a special removable label that read “Soccer Mom Shortcuts: Game Day Dinners Made Easy.” Inside was a recipe for cacciatore cooked in the crock pot and a referral to the Ragu web site where moms can request a Soccer Mom Shortcuts Book: “32 colorful pages packed with simple ways to feed your family right.” To get the book you have to answer a short survey about what you look for when buying a pasta sauce, did you know that Ragu is nutritious, etc. It’s only while supplies last. So go, soccer moms, go, to the Ragu web site for a free recipe book!
Why do zoo animals just lie around?
We took a weekend vacation to Atlanta and took the boys to the Atlanta Zoo while we were there. My oldest seem pretty excited before we got there, asking “Are we going to the zoo now?” every 5 minutes. But then once we’re there, we’re telling him “See the elephants eating the grass?” And he says, “Yeah, let’s go on to something else.”
“See the zebra, isn’t that neat?”
“Yeah, let’s go see the alligators.”
I can’t blame him. Elephants eating grass is not that exciting. But I thought that for a 4-year-old seeing a real, live elephant for the first time, he’d be more impressed. Too, the animals were mostly lying around doing nothing, which seems to be the case at most zoos I’ve visited. I don’t know if it’s too hot for them, if the fake trees and rocks are just too boring or if that’s just how animals are, in the zoo or in their natural environment.
One theory is that animals don’t like being caged up in the zoo; they’d rather be in the wild. One gorilla put on a show that could be used to that point. Several gorillas were just standing around, doing nothing, when one runs up to the top of a rock, stands up tall and mighty, and then turns around and basically moons us all, to which everyone laughed. I don’t know if the gorilla was saying “You came to the zoo to see a show, I’ll give you a show,” or “This is what I think of being caged up in a zoo” or if he’d figured out (through conditioning) that if he ran up on the rock and turned around, the people would laugh?
Maybe all of the above.
Happy Birthday
My first-born turned 4 this weekend. Friday to be exact. We spent the weekend partying with a cookie cake at his preschool and dinner out on Friday, a party for family and friends at a local waterpark on Saturday, and playing with all his new toys on Sunday.
I got out the album of pictures from the day he was born and looked through them with him one night last week. First thing he asked is why was he naked. “You can see my bottom,” he said. I just said yeah, and flipped the page to a picture where he had a diaper on. We flipped page after page and I told him “There’s Nana holding you,” “There’s Papaw holding you,” “There’s your cousin Alex holding you,” “ There’s Nanny holding you.” Of course, “There’s mommy and daddy holding you,” too.
In one picture my eyes were kind of closing and he wanted to know why I made that face. I told him I was probably tired. In another he was asleep in the hospital bassinet and in the corner of the bed was a small yellow bunny that he still plays with/sleeps with today. He was excited to recognize the bunny. “Hey, there’s my bunny,” he said. A few pictures later he got bored, which is fine. We probably took 100 pictures that first week and you can’t expect a 4-year-old to be too excited about pictures of a baby that his mommy says is him, but a him he doesn’t remember? Must be kind of confusing. But it’s fun for me.
Happy Birthday, little buddy!
Do the write thing
Ever wonder if you chose the right career? Not because you don’t like what you’re doing but because you see another job and think “That would be fun,” or “Wonder if I could’ve done that.”
I’m a reporter/journalist/writer but I didn’t really choose it as much as I eliminated everything else and writing is what was left. More than writing, really, but creative communication via words, photos, graphics, publications, etc.
My earliest writing recollection is the summer after third grade. I was bored and mom bought me one of those creative writing workbooks. I remember sitting in my room doing the writing exercises and it was so much fun! Sometime in high school I started reading the newspaper and collecting newspaper articles that interested me. In 10th grade I joined the high school yearbook staff and thoroughly enjoyed the photography and page layout (the writing was so-so.)
As college neared, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but had in mind something with communication (my high school dream was to move to New York City and work for Seventeen magazine), teaching or accounting. (My mom worked for an accountant so I thought I could a job where she worked.)
Through a series of interventions, including marrying an engineer and following his career to an area with a university that had a real journalism program, I got a degree in journalism and started writing for newspapers. More serendipitous events led to writing/communication jobs with Target and now NASA.
But I sometimes wonder, is it too late to do anything different? I’ve often thought it would be fun to be a waitress. Sure it’s hard work, on your feet all day, and dealing with customers for a low hourly rate and relying on tips. But I’m a people person, so working with customers wouldn’t be that bad? Or how about being a lawyer. I’m pretty argumentative and love watching lawyers do their thing on court shows. (I grew up watching Andy Griffith on Matlock and watch all versions of Law & Order today.)
It’d be neat if you could do like that guy on the early ’90s show “Quantum Leap” where he leaped from person to person, a waitress one day, a lawyer the next. At least being a writer you can kind of live vicariously through the people you write about it. Write about a waitress and get a taste for that life. Write about a lawyer and see what that’s all about. Or, as I do now, right about a scientist or an astronaut and get roped in to the excitment of what they do. Writing about what other people do is probably pretty close to “quantum leaping” with the luxury of being able to go back to where you started and do it all over again.
To Ride or Not to Ride?
Ever since the little girl lost her feet on the theme park ride a few weeks ago the safety of roller coasters and thrill rides has been in the news and in conversations. Maybe it’s because I’m a mom now or I’m just getting older (you know perspective changes with age) but I can much better understand why my mom was hesitant to let me get on such rides when I was a kid.
My almost-4-year-old wanted to ride a little kiddie roller coaster at a local amusement park last weekend and I wouldn’t let him. Partly because I was afraid he’d be scared and start screaming or crying and there would be nothing I could do to stop the ride or get him off. But, too, because I rode this same roller coaster as a kid more than 20 years ago and it’s showing it’s age worse than me.
I’m not a big roller coaster fan but my husband is. He can’t wait for the day when the boys are old enough to ride with him.
Three roller coaster rides stand out in my mind: GhostRider at Knott’s Berry Farm in California, The Beast at King’s Island in Cincinnati, and one other that scared me so bad I can’t remember the name of the ride or the park it was at. NOTE: I rode these only after being coaxed by my husband.
GhostRider is a wooden roller coaster with an initial 108-foot drop, a total of 14 hills and a max speed of 56 mph. It wasn’t too bad. It was enjoyable enough that I proudly bought the t-shirt.
The Beast holds the record as the world’s longest wooden rollercoaster. Unlike GhostRider, which lasted only two minutes, The Beast runs nearly five minutes and starts with a 135-foot drop. It also has three tunnels. I can still remember the uphill climb. It seemed like it was never going to reach the peak. It just kept ticking slowly, slowly upward and I’m thinking “Certainly we’re at the top by now. How much higher can we go?” But we went higher still. The anticipation was maddening!
The coaster that I can’t remember the name was inside a large water-tower like building and very popular. We waited more than an hour in one of those weaving lines. As I came around the corner and saw the ride for the first time I said ‘Oh no, what have I done.’ The cars had shoulder harnesses which means only one thing in the land of roller coasters: it’s going upside down. I DO NOT RIDE ROLLER COASTERS THAT GO UPSIDE DOWN. But I did this day because there was no way to get out of that building without riding the roller coaster out of there.
I haven’t rode a coaster in more than four years, sometimes because I was pregnant and more recently because theme parks don’t have a lot to offer a family with two kids under 48 (inches that is). I’m sure as the boys get older this will become more of an issue that I will have to decide for both me and them. To ride or not to ride? That is the question.
