Being Scanned

I am on a diet.

I know what you're probably thinking, "Oh, little whiney thing...boo hoo...just eat less and exercise, that's all there is to it."

No, it's not that type of diet. I don't even want to do this diet. This one is doctor-ordered.

I go to the doctor the other day and he wants me to get my thyroid checked. In order to get the best results, according to them, I have to be on a diet for three weeks. Three weeks...altho the paper they give me says "TWO". So, I begrudgingly take my sheet of paper and shuffle out the door.

Now I don't know how many of you are on specific diets - I am sure there are Diabetic diets that are no fun...and people without gall bladders and spleens and people without the ability to swallow...and while I don't discount any of these - this diet is pretty darned severe.

First off it states I can't eat iodized salt or sea salt.

I don't typically add much salt to my food, if any, and when I do, it's sea salt. It's tasty and comes in pretty colours like pink, red and black - all the way from far off magical places like France, Australia and Hawaiian volcanoes...which, when added to the food I make, make me think I'm a much better cook than I am. So, no biggie really. I can deal with this.

- No dairy.

Um...okay, you just took away my salt, now you're telling me I can't eat any cereal? How about some lovely oatmeal from Ireland? I make it with water! Nope...contains salt.

Dang.

- No eggs.

So, wait...I can't eat bland horrible Irish oatmeal...now I can't eat an egg? I can make egg salad sandwiches without salt - I can do that! But you've taken away my ability to eat eggs!

Doesn't matter, they also took away my God-given right to eat bread. No bread??? Wait! This is pathetic...but, there's a catch, I can eat WHEAT bread.

Now, I don't know about you - but I recently became very versed in reading the labels on everything in the store. White bread contains salt...wheat bread contains salt. Am I to believe the salt somehow loses its salinity if combined WITH wheat? The ingredients are the same - only the wheat bread also contains WHEAT!

I can't eat seafood, algae or soy. By reading this list so far, it seemed by the process of elimination, the only thing left FOR me to eat was going to be salmon or soymon or a nice dollop of tasteless white rice on a slab of seaweed. But no can do.

Okay...the list goes on and on - let's just cut to the chase and tell me what I CAN eat!

Fresh meat
Poultry
Potatoes or rice
Wheat or rye bread
Fresh or frozen vegetables
Fresh or frozen fruit

Great! I know what I'll do - I'll make a baked potato for dinner. I'm almost as happy as a clam...because I know that I can't be eaten! Ha! Clams ARE seafood. (Yes, starvation apparently effects the brain first.)

Ding! My microwave goes off. I reach for my potato about the same time it dawns on me that: 1) Butter is dairy; 2) Sour cream is dairy; and 3) The only salt I have in my house contains iodine.

Have you ever eaten a baked potato with nothing on it? It's like eating a rice cake...but without the flavour.

Oh...I know all about rice cakes. I bought a package. Then I threw away the rice cakes and ate the package (sorry, old joke - I had to). Seriously, rice cakes rank right up there. Wait, let me rephrase that last sentence: rice cakes are rank.

Can I eat olive oil? I could eat wheat bread if I had it - but would I be able to dip it in some olive oil? What am I going to cook my saltless vegetables in? I can't use butter...can I use oil?? So, I call the doctor's office the next day as it makes no mention whatsoever about oils.

"Hello."
"Uh, I'm on the thyroid diet and there's things that I'd like to eat that aren't on the list, can you tell me if I'm allowed to eat them?"
"Eat the things on the list."
"This isn't ON the list...can I eat it?"
"What does the list say?"
"Uh...it doesn't address it."
"Then I'd stick with what's on the list."

Yes, this is getting nowhere fast. A last ditch effort on my part - I decide to be assertive, I'm starving - the only thing I ate all day (and that was yesterday) was a bland potato...

"Can you possibly let me talk to someone who can tell me if certain things that aren't on the list...are okay to eat?"
"I don't have the list in front of me."
"Can you maybe let me talk to someone who has a list in front of them?"
"Well, call up the people at the thyroid scan place, they'd be able to tell you better than we can."

So, I call them up.

"Hello...um...my thyroid doctor place told me to ask you if I can eat some things for my scan - I don't want to mess my scan up and have to start all over."
"Well, as far as I know, and I've done this for 30 years, the only thing we ask you not to eat are shellfish and iodized salt."
"You mean I can eat an egg?"
"Are you serious, eggs are on that list?"
"And all dairy, and bread...except wheat and rye. And all already prepared food - because they all contain salt."
"I never heard of such a thing."
"Really?"
"We get people all the time from that office and this is the first I heard anyone ask about this stuff."
"Seriously?"
"Yes."

Then I decide to look online.

Depending on which site you go to...I can eat potatoes but I can't eat rice. No mention of rice cakes and I can see why. There's really not much to talk about when it comes to rice cakes...but if you are hungry enough, putting sliced pears and honey on a rice cake...after you take your Ambien...is remotely bearable. Edible? Eh...the verdict is still out on that one.

But, I have to get this test done on the 1st and I want to do everything in my power to not get disqualified; can you imagine starting all over again? So I'm sticking with my bland "sheet of paper" diet...which, I found out, if you are creative enough, you actually can eat tasty things. You just have to use your noodle.

Which, by the way, aren't listed "for" OR "against" on my list...so I'm eating them!

________________

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History - It Is What You Make It: Blogger Idol - Round 4

Damn you, Philip Marder!

Mr. Marder was my eighth grade History teacher...and while I am cursing him right now...he is no way to blame. Let me elucidate...

I loved Mr. Marder. He was this dark-haired guy who always wore a burgundy suit on Friday, and sported mutton-chop sideburns...sideburns invented (or at least made famous) by Ambrose Burnside (don't believe me, look it up)...and thanks to Mr. Marder I remember silly historical trivial tidbits like those. (I'll be doing a lot of "thanking" later on, by the way.)

He'd come up with all sorts of gimmicks which we thought were just plain stupid to get us to remember facts and figures. We'd roll our eyes at such "beauties" as this one...

"Where are we going?"
"Bearing straight."
"Get it 'Bering Strait'?"

Silly perhaps, but I still remember those idiotic mnemonic devices after all these years. And I still remember he had a friend who worked in the Archives and History Department in Washington, DC, who would smuggle out all kinds of films to him in 1974 that any school system nowadays would get sued over watching. They were...in a word...fascinating. Shocking, in your face realism...but it was history and you couldn't deny it...there it was...in black and white archival format...and I sat there mesmerized.

With a flick of the lights and a flip of a film projector switch, he did something no other teacher before him...or after...could manage to do...until The History Channel came along: he made history interesting.

In fact, thanks to him I owe a debt of gratitude...I love documentaries. I eat them up. Give me anything on Egypt, mummies (peat bog or regular), Kennedy conspiracy theories, Tunguska, UFOs, icebergs melting, global warming, the history of distilling (hey, I'm still fond of all things distilled), the Romanovs, Newton, Einstein, Euclid, and Copernicus. The list literally goes on and on.

I am like a deer in headlights. I love them. And for a long time I went without.

Then came things like NOVA and Carl Sagan's Cosmos Series. Oh, how I loved Carl when I was young. Then there was nothing...there was a void...and then came A&E's "Biography"...and I was again hooked. Discovery Channel had pyramids and The History Channel had bi-planes and Hitler. Well, those last two I could do without -- but the first couple years, that's all The History Channel had to offer. Then it graduated to Civil War...which wasn't very civil, by the way...but it somehow it piqued my interest again.

History, I found, could indeed be interesting again.

Mr. Marder you have now met your match!

For years, between episodes of Seinfeld and Frasier, I was enraptured. I could always tune into A&E for a show like "Cold Case Files" (years before CSI, there was Cold Case Files) - and I could watch...until the wee hours of the night...all sorts of things. Jack the Ripper theories abounded. So did Tutankhamen ones. Who killed Kennedy? Who killed Rasputin? Who killed Marilyn?

The field was wide open...and so were my eyes.

Then, just when it started to get really good...

...it ended.

A&E's "Biography" ran out of people it seemed. They started doing biographies about...people I didn't care about. They went from the guy who invented Ford's assembly line...to the guy who invented the straws they put on juice drink packages. What the??

Then it was the Discovery Channel. My channel about diseases and medical things and scientific paraphernalia...was tanking. Slowly I was discovering it was turning into the reality show channel.

"Engineering an Empire"...went more to engineering a gang...when "Gangland" started up...and I still haven't a clue what "The Dog Whisperer" does...nor do I care. And I have no idea how many "Dirty Jobs" they can do...I think they exhausted their supply and are now down to "the guy who picks the straws up off the floor on the juice box assembly line".

"Ice Road Truckers"? Let me guess. Truckers who drive on ice? How many different variations on this theme can we get? Okay...there's a lot of ice...there's a big truck. Episode One: Battery doesn't start. Episode Two: Truck slides off road. Episode Three: Truck falls through ice. Episode Four: Um...truck slides off road AND his battery doesn't start...ad infinitum...ad nauseum.

"Monster Quest"? About as entertaining as when I saw it all before...IN 1979! "Nothing new ever happens here...move along people."

But I had hope. "Mythbusters" still survived...until it went from being the "Jamie and Adam" show to the "Three Other People No One Cares About" show. All I can remember is that one year they went from interesting topics like "Can you really get your tongue stuck on a pole like in "A Christmas Story"? and "Can you get your butt stuck on a toilet at 30,000 feet?" to totally far-fetched, cockamamie ideas like "Can you actually eat just one Lays potato chip?" and "Can thunking a watermelon predict doneness?" Oh yeah...myth busted! I'm sooooo glad I watched Cary Grant and Tory this time around. (Yes, I know it's "Kari, Grant and Tory" - I just always think of Cary Grant when they say that and how livid he would be if he saw one of these episodes.) I'd like to see more episodes where logical myth things are blown up, and less other stupid stuff...oh, wait, I've got something really stupid for them to blow up: Kari, Grant and Tory! Now that's a show I'd watch for sure.

And I don't know if any of you have noticed...but The History Channel now makes up their own history. It's true. That show "Life After People" isn't even ABOUT history. It's just a play-by-play "as we see it" pre-historical fabrication we're hoping no one will be around in 2013 to dispute. Yes...they are obsessed with the 21 December 2012 Mayan Calendar and everyone's eventual death on that day; and you thought Conan had high ratings...tune in on 20 December 2012 for this "final" episode.

You know - it's bad enough I read Nostradamus' quatrains when I was 14 (thank you, Al Stewart)...and (thanks to a library book on paranormal activity) worried unduly about my premature demise by Spontaneous Human Combustion...but to have to be reminded that I'm going to turn into some Pompeiian-ish cinder right before Christmas two years from now...every single day??? That's a bit much...so thank you, Mayan Calendar Apocalyptical shows...I can't wait until the next 24-hour marathon you've got planned. I'll be there with my remote in one hand and a noose in the other.

Sigh...whatever happened to the good old days where the most you'd have to worry about from watching some documentary is some crop circle in your yard and a sore butt from an alien probing the night before?

So, thank you, interesting history and science documentary channels for morphing your line-ups into some asinine reality show pabulum, and, in essence, giving us "Human Death Race 2012".

And thank you, Mr. Marder for getting me interested in all of this in the first place. While most of these channels stink right now...at least they're not extinct; and there's always hope that "History" (and A&E, and Discovery) will repeat itself.


Seriously, I promised when I first started blogging that I would dedicate one to Mr. Philip Marder. This is it. I don't know if he's still around...but he was the 7th/8th grade History teacher at Laurel Hill School in Browns Mills, New Jersey. If you know him...or ARE him...I'd love to thank you personally. You've instilled a love of history in me that I am forever indebted to you for.

If you liked this blog...please vote for it at Knucklehead's Blog site (link in the image above). Please read all the other contenders as well. If you still like mine, great! Thank you for your vote and your time to read it. I hope my blog was, at the very least, entertaining for everyone. Thank you!

A Small Slimmer of Taupe: Blogger Idol - Round 3

This is my parody of a late-nite infomercial my son and I have had the "delightful misfortune" to catch...twice. I could not find the original airing of what I've seen...this is a close proximity of it, although this is the first time I've seen it offered in two colours. My blog does not reflect that (and other things) as I'm making fun of the "original"...and the concept in general. Here is the video clip first in case you are curious (although you do not need to view it in my opinion): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JfgFXEnvhk

How many times has this happened to you?

You are just drunk enough to possibly get horizontal with that hot guy at the bar when you realize you have a Kymaro Body Shaper on. It took you two friggen hours to wiggle your fat ass into that puppy...and if you remember how great your legs always feel after they're finally released from your pantyhose...well, you're in for a good 10 minutes of making orgasmic noises by self-scratching alone.

So...you have to think this one out carefully, girls.

Now, granted...it just "magically" erased 13 inches off your waist and 20 pounds off your body (where the weight goes is anyone's guess - but the infomercial said it - and they should know, right?) - but, even though it is "flesh" coloured, and by "flesh" we mean a pasty "Pillsbury Doughboy" white; it really doesn't blend in with any skin tone known to mankind unless you're sitting by candlelight with someone who recently underwent double cataract surgery.

But, don't let that detract you...some guys can't see either at 3:00 a.m. Perhaps he's one of them.

Does he just want to get into your pants? Probably. It IS 3:00 a.m. after all...but you'll have to get them OFF first.

How will you explain excusing yourself for 15 minutes while you try to break out of your Kymaro-cocoon in the adjacent room? No one can listen to Barry White for that long without expecting something to happen NOW, and if you put on Ravel's "Bolero" -- he'll figure out how old you really are and run like hell.

So you ask yourself "WWBJD"? What Would Bridget Jones Do? She supposedly had a weight issue - and was played by a woman on the big screen who had neither an actual English accent NOR a weight issue...but that didn't matter. And she had two hot guys fighting over her. Okay, in real life, one did have sex with a skank ho and the other was Hugh Grant (shout out to Craig Ferguson for that)...but, seriously...men ARE pigdogs, right?

Right.

So why bother buying one of our shape-altering body slimmers?

There IS no reason. We prey upon people who have just taken Ambien or who have just realized the highpoint of their life this past month was getting a rutabaga to sprout and selling a gallon of milk to the local dairy via their virtual cows on FarmVille.

Will you buy a taupe body stocking at 3:00 in the morning and expect to look like the hot skinny woman in our infomercial who is a size 2 if she's a day.

Yes.

Do we care if your ass is now where your knees are? And do we care if your bustline can now be counted as one of your chins?

No.

We sold a ton of these and we know you aren't going to return them...

...'cause you "can't take them OFF!"

(Taupe, by the way, was never a Crayola crayon colour...and based on that fact alone...I am extremely suspicious of all things "taupe".)

____________________

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Thank you -

Mariann

Two Guys, a Girl and a Tube Tester: Blogger Idol - Round 2

Back when I was a kid, it would've been pretty standard procedure to have had the television repairman on speed dial...had there been speed dial back then.

Like clockwork, and always right before something great was about to come on one of the three channels that were out there, the television would go on the fritz. No amount of aluminum foil on the antennas or adjusting the horizontal hold was going to fix it.

The repairman would come over and he'd always be some guy my family knew, although for the life of me I don't ever remember my parents having friends over and we never went to anyone's house. How we knew these guys on a first name basis is still a mystery to me and always will be.

But he'd come around lugging a giant suitcase rivaling the size of our television cabinet and pull out tube after tube and systematically "trial and error" them until one magically turned our black and white behemoth on again.

There'd be some exchange of money and we'd all converge back around the set, me on the floor right up close enough to get a good megawatt dose of electronic exposure (I was, after all, the family-designated remote control) but back then we were oblivious to the perils of such things...and such things probably made us much stronger anyway. Yes, Nietzsche probably owned a really big television as a kid.

Then one day the television didn't work and to save a buck...as heaven knows how much it cost for a TV house call back then, my father decided he'd try a new angle. A newfangled machine was at the local "Two Guys" department store...and when I say "local" I mean a good 45-minute drive. All stores in Jersey were a good 45-minute drive away. I swear no one ever lived close to anything there...going to the grocery store was pretty much an all-day event...so when we'd pile into the car to go to "Two Guys", well it was akin to an expedition to the Himalayas...we'd be gone for hours. Hours to a kid is like days to a grown-up...and as usual, no drive would be complete without my sister and I asking the never-ending series of "Are we there yet?"'s.

"Are we there yet?" my sister would eventually ask.

"No." my father would grumble back.

Ever the smartass, I'd quip, "How about NOW?" two minutes later.

In another two minutes, I'd do it again. Antics such as these are why my father invented such "awe-inspiring" games such as "For every Volvo you see I'll give you a nickel. For every red Volvo, you'll get a quarter."

Now, I don't know about you, but back in my childhood, a quarter was a big deal. I never got an allowance so the value of a coin, any silver coin...was astronomical to me. It didn't matter much to me that in 1967 they probably sold 11,000 Volvos in the whole country...and probably only 10 were in the state of New Jersey. There was serious money to be had and all questioning of when we were getting there ceased. 'Hell, take the long way around, Dad. Go on the Turnpike!'

But, we'd end up at our destination in no time after that - and I'd be no richer.

And back in those carefree days of my youth, you were given free reign in the stores. Sure, I'd start out with my mother...but I'd go off and always manage to get lost and found again -- and this time was no exception. Only this time I was going with my father.

He had an assortment of tubes he plucked haphazardly from the back of the television set and standing right smack in the middle of the store -- was an amazing thing. A thing I'd never seen before. A tube tester.

It was wonderful. It had lights and I think it made a slight buzzing sound...and a set of needles would go to and fro when you placed a tube on one of two metal discs that shone like...well, like shiny quarters. The buzzing would raise in pitch and I believe some clicking noises were involved somehow. This indeed was something special - I knew it was. My father let me place a tube on one of the discs. Like magic, the needles flicked. I got to do it again. And again. Some tubes made them flick with lightning speed into the green and some just slightly budged as if in a slow-motion sequence on television itself.

Then it, like the "Volvo game", ended all too soon. We packed all the tubes back up and walked away from it; the buzz getting fainter and fainter with each step.

Oh, it was all too much...the allure of the machine beckoned me to come back to it. As soon as I was left to my own devices, I found my way back over...probably through my astute hearing...honing in on the buzz like a bee back to the hive.

I carried out the motions exactly as my father did: Flip the switch on. Check. Needles spiking left to right and back down again. Check. Tubes? Hmmmm...what can I do?? I have no tubes! Fingers. I have fingers! Left index finger on the left shiny disc...right index finger on the right shiny di...

"Oh, what the HELL!"

I swear to God I was zapped with enough wattage to power up two electric chairs. I was thrown back about 10 feet and if there would've been a weight-bearing pillar in back of me I would have been knocked unconscious for sure. In fact I'm not sure that I WASN'T knocked unconscious. All I know is that my fingers, hand, arm and pretty much the whole side of me was numb and tingling.

I got up and ran off.

"Where were you? We were looking all over the place. What were you doing all this time?" my mother half-chidingly inquired.

"Um...nothing."

Well, it wasn't like I could really tell her I was zapped within an inch of my life and was probably unconscious for the last half hour. I envisioned the loudspeaker lady blurting out, "Clean-up in aisle 7!" Nah...best I keep this little incident all to myself.

And it's nothing that a couple orange-flavoured St. Joseph Baby Aspirins couldn't cure when I got home...ah, the good old-fashioned taste treat from my youth.

It's not like they could kill you or anything like the tube tester...

This is my blog entry for Round 2 of the Blogger Idol competition. Please go HERE (or click the image below) to vote. Voting ends Wednesday, 13 Jan 10 at 8:00 p.m CT...so, please, get your vote in. Thank you!

"Chocolate Milk"ing It For All It's Worth: Blogger Idol Round 1

Not since President Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable in 1981 have school lunches caused such an uproar.

But, it's happening again...only this time the culprit is something that can pack on the pounds...or so Ann Cooper (Boulder Valley, Colorado's school district nutritionist) claims.

If visions of "Super Size Me" are swirling around in your head about now you're probably not alone...but it's not greasy fries or double cheeseburgers at work here, it's milk. Chocolate milk - to be precise. And to hear it from Ms Cooper, it really contributes to the childhood obesity crisis.

But wait, just how much more will "little Johnny" weigh if he pushes back a pint of the chocolatey goodness on a daily basis? Are you sitting down for this? Do you have your congressman's number all dialed up and ready??

Ms Cooper's heart-stopping, earth-moving, staggering caloric figure count is the astronomical sum total of THREE pounds a year! Oh, the humanity! NOW I see why all those kids out there look like Ralphie's brother, Randy, in the snowsuit...only they're not wearing any snowsuits. It's all because of chocolate milk! So I guess you shouldn't buy any more Ovaltine for home consumption, either...decoder rings be damned.

Now before we start killing the fatted calf before it can be milked, let's put this in a little "practical" perspective here: My son was stuck in his lousy car booster seat until he managed to reach the magical weight of 40 lbs. He was also stuck at 36 pounds for, I swear, about three years. Oh, he got taller...but never weighed more. Had I known all I had to do was have him throw back a few chocolate milks at school...well, I would have insisted he drink TWO of those with his lunch. But, alas, he had to make due with the healthier "2% regular white" version...and that's why he stayed in that chair until his head nearly touched the inside roof. We ended up tossing the booster seat before he hit 40...we were afraid he'd be dating and STILL in that damn thing. All for the lack of drinking chocolate milk...what were we thinking? Where was Ms Cooper when I needed her??

And don't even get me started on kids not exercising, recess being banished from every single school system I've run across since my kids have been in school...and the fact that getting ANY calcium into ANY child's body USED to be a good thing.

Back in my day...and that's quite a long time ago (certainly pre-ketchup administration days), school lunches were made with only one thing in mind: Getting kids to eat them. Nobody cared how they got you to...and as long as the 350 pound, 7-foot tall lunch lady put one healthy food on that compartmentalized tray a day...no one complained; no one dared to. And we'd get healthy things alright...things like whole apples, green beans straight from those 55-gallon drum-sized dented cans, peach halves floating in juice so sweet you could feel your molars disintegrating...and the dreaded "stewed tomatoes" that only one kid in any cafeteria would eat (and he was probably the same kid who ate paste). No one ever ate any of these things; sure, we impaled the apples with our forks, spoon-plonked the beans at each other...and jiggled the tomatoes to and fro...but that was about it.

What we went after...were on the other squares of our trays...something guaranteed to get our kid "fix" as it were: spaghetti, beefaroni, tacos, pizza, and, if you were really lucky...an overflowing, messy Sloppy Joe. Things our mothers never made us at home as we were too busy eating "healthy" things.

The "salad"-like substance would usually make its debut on our trays in high school. And it was only doled out in a portion to fit the smallest square...and for good reason: 200 small squares take less time to empty out into the trash can when the bell rings. I don't think anyone ever tasted the salad...it was, in essence, the older kid's version of "stewed tomatoes".

While I can see it's very admirable for school systems to jump on the nutrition bandwagon...common sense dictates having to throw out much more than one lousy square's worth of food isn't doing the environment any good...and certainly isn't doing "little Johnny" any good, either.

You can bet those extra three pounds the kids are putting on...aren't coming from their lunches - I've sat in lunchrooms...I see what the kids eat...and I see what they toss. Someone in the school nutrition division is doing the math...but they aren't doing their homework. The pounds are being put on when the kids get home...famished from not eating those mandatory "healthy" things 98% of people would balk at; they ravenously consume anything and everything in the house before dinner. Then for a lot of these kids, dinner comes in buckets and in microwaveable containers. NOT from cows.

I drive past houses and playgrounds and more developments and even more houses...and not one kid is ever outside riding a bike, throwing a ball, running around the block or jumping rope...and even if they were getting some exercise, more than likely, they'd be inside using their Wii to get it. But even more likely than that...is that they're plopped in front of the television or computer with a bag of Doritos or a package of Oreos and a half liter of Pepsi or Mountain Dew.

Yet, innocent little Vitamin D milk gets slammed...just because of its colour...and that's not fair.

It's time kids nowadays learn a lesson from us old people. Let's bring back the swing sets with the one metal leg that was always enclosed in a chunk of cement that "ka-klumps" out of the ground and "flump-thuds" back into the ground with the back-dislocating jolt when you swung on it. And the monkey bars with absolutely no cushion of six-inch mulch beneath...if you fell off...there was always good strong Mercurochrome which served a dual purpose: it cleaned out your cuts AND worked like a skin Sharpie...you'll remember what boneheaded thing you did for a long time afterwards with that tell-tale orange mark. And last, but not least...the rusted-out geo-shaped dome which most kids managed to get on...but not all could figure out how to get back off again. They'd stay up there...frozen in their contorted "Twister"-like state, afraid to move their foot or hand lest they plummet head-first onto the very hard, very compacted dirt...where once grew thick, lovely grass that cows once probably grazed upon.

And now their ancestor cows stand accused of being indirectly responsible for fattening up kids...ironic really, as we fatten them up first.

But these archaic things called "playgrounds" that we once spent a good 30 minutes of our school days on...are the things which slim your kids down. There's nothing that will make you loose weight faster than good old-fashioned running away from kids who are threatening to beat you up (to take away your lunch money) and that "scared to death to move your arm or leg one centimeter" total body shaking and heavy perspiring you do when you're the one stuck up on the geo-dome. These things worked great for our school system back in Jersey when I grew up...and no one ever died from getting a wedgie on the playground (as far as I know) when they finally did get caught.

Obese kids in my class? I can only remember a couple "chubby" kids in the whole entire school...so you can bet if there had been chocolate milk in our lunches...we still would have maintained an "ideal" weight.

As a side note, I say "enough of the chocolate milk ban" clan...let's focus on people who can't get enough of it...or apparently can: Largest cup of cocoa unveiled

This is also my blog entry which is up against nine others at my friend, Chris', blog site...in his "blog off" competition. Click the link I just provided as voting is now taking place (but only until Wednesday); please take the time to read all the blogs in contention...and vote for the ONE (you can only vote for one) you enjoy the most. If it happens to be mine...I won't complain; if I end up last, you'll probably be forced to read about it in an upcoming blog of mine.

Thank you,

Mariann