Julia Roberts was on Oprah last night talking about how hard it is to be a “working mom with kids.” Yeah, let’s hear it, Julia. You know, I admit it, I like Oprah, usually, but there are times when her whole “woman of the people” mask falls off and it did last night when she was talking to Julia about doing something ridiculous during the summer and her thoughts drifting off every day to Julia doing some play night after night. She made some pitiful comment like “It’s got to be so hard working every day on the play and then having to come home to feed the twins.” Yeah, it’s pretty rough, doing those two hours of acting. How about you get up at 5:30 am every damned day, sit in traffic for over an hour, then sit at a boring desk in a dreary-ass cubicle* for 8 hours, then sit in traffic another hour, hour on the way home, make your own dinner, find some time to play with your kid, get her ready for sleep, and then have an hour or two of actual free-time? Every day. Do that and then tell me which life is harder. And I know my life is cake compared to lots of people’s. I only have one job. And I make a lot of money compared to many. I could have it so much harder. So I’m not really complaining here, not about my life. I’m just saying, I don’t want to hear any more celebrities tell me how hard it is to be a celebrity. Because I feel no pity for them. None.

*I have to admit that I do have a very spiffy window through which I gaze repeatedly throughout the day. The other two walls of the cubicle, however, remain dreary-ass.

Here’s our little one rocking out on a toy guitar and dancing to the results. Check out the killer Hendrix teeth-picking action she takes out on the guitar, too. It’s a good thing we didn’t have a lighter and some fluid around:

• Amanda dances (549KB, 28 seconds)

I’m only going to indulge in one . . . “This gives ‘Dora the Explorer’ a whole new meaning.”

I am thoroughly of the belief that time is slowing down as I approach my week off. I’ve taken the three days off before Thanksgiving so as to make a full week away from work, but in doing so it seems that the work-related time-space continuum has expanded to fill in the empty space that will be next week. In its place have been meeting after meeting and projects that wind up going nowhere because my fellow coworkers are also trickling out of the office for similar full-weeks (or longer) off of work for the Thanksgiving holiday, leaving me with little to do that would make the time go by faster - and yet, somehow, I still manage to have actual work to do. Just not the kind of work that makes the day speed by.

I continue to be amazed that freeways, those non-stop segments of pavement and concrete that are supposed to shuttle us to and fro without the hassle of stopping, manage to befuddle drivers so regularly that I can now count on having to apply my brakes to the point of coming to a complete stop, and sitting that way, multiple times on my daily commute. That these roads only go one direction seems to make things even more difficult, somehow - it’s as if people get confused at some point and just decide, “Well, this isn’t taking me where I want to go, so I’m going to randomly make a right turn . . . NOW!” and plow their car into the one next to them. The system is relatively simple - parallel lines don’t converge - so if you want to merge, you check your mirrors and make your move when you get an opening. It’s that “checking” thing that people don’t seem to have down. I’m not sure why, other than laziness - not that I’m entirely free of laziness, either. But you’d think when we’re only asked a few things on a freeway that we could at least accomplish those without fail. People die because of this laziness.

And a final note: when you’re molding a 1/2″ thick layer of cream cheese onto your bagel, don’t frown at the guy putting butter on his. It’s not like cream cheese is the healthy choice, and certainly not a 1/2 pound hamburger patty’s worth of it.

Table tops make excellent storage places for bored, tired children:

There is only one time in your life when you can get away with this look, so Amanda has made sure to take advantage of it:

Spaghetti-face is so becoming.

(Hopefully.)

Arizona’s elections went surprisingly well. The things I really cared about actually went the way I hoped they would. Arizona voters were actually paying attention! Proposition 201, the ban on public smoking, passed, amazingly, and the two I hoped would fail, proposition 206, the fake-ban on smoking with no enforcement, and proposition 107, the gay-marriage ban, both failed.

I’m also happy to see that RJ Reynolds spent all that money on 206 for absolutely nothing. Not that it means much to them, the few millions they spent were just a pittance to them, but at least it was a waste. I can think of few other industries that are so disgusting and corrupt that they have absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever that I will wish any ill-will I can upon them.

And now it looks like Democrats are most likely going to gain control of both houses of Congress so maybe that means a whole lot less whining. Please? Jesus, please less whining.

Maybe now that the elections are over we can get back to not talking about politics all the time? Am I the only one that’s sick of politics everywhere, all the time? The most boring topic in the world and it’s all everyone talks about. There is so much more interesting stuff to talk about and all everyone does is talk - no, argue - about politics. And that’s all politics does, cause people to argue. Let’s move past politics and just talk about interesting things again.

Oh, okay, I realize for a couple days there’s going to be some whining about the outcome of elections that people didn’t like. I’m already hearing whining from smokers who didn’t like the way 201 and 206 went. Get over it - public smoking bans were bound to happen. Non-smokers are the majority, and finally the majority rules.

It’s alive: http://www.lookoutforhope.com/

This weekend Alissa and I finally took The Test . . . the supertaster test because we were curious after a flurry of activity lately in the world of picky eaters due to a prominent article in most major newspapers on the subject.

“The test” is pretty simple: blue food coloring, those reinforcement rings for three-ring paper whose holes have broken, and your tongue. Put the food coloring on your tongue, put a ring on, and count the large taste buds that should be easily visible - if they’re big and pink, they’re taste buds (because they won’t turn blue.) (This should help.)

We couldn’t find any of the rings so Alissa just punched holes out of paper with a hole-punch, but we didn’t even really need it - the answer was obvious before we even got to that stage. As soon as she got the dye on her tongue she was wincing from the taste. It was when I put the dye on my tongue that I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t taste much of anything. Looking at Alissa’s tongue and my tongue, the difference was obvious - her taste buds were huge and the surface of her tongue was pretty much covered in them. Mine was not. I put the paper on my tongue anyway, but I didn’t need to do any counting, nor did she - it was plain as daylight that was of us had been right all along about being a supertaster and one of us was wrong. And that person was me.

I’m not a supertaster after all. After years of thinking it, believing it, living it, I’m somehow not. Despite being one of the two pickiest eaters I’ve ever known (Alissa, obviously, being the other,) I’m not a supertaster, and despite sharing nearly every trait with supertasters, I’m missing one that should have tipped me off immediately: I can drink diet soda without problem. And I enjoy dark chocolate (in the days before I swore off chocolate due to migraines, that is - I’m still not brave enough to give it a shot again.) But I’m just as unable to eat “normally” as any supertaster and it has absolutely nothing to do with me simply being stubborn, lazy, or childish. Let me put it another way: does it make a whole lot of sense that I would purposely live my life in such a difficult manner? Going out to eat is a chore - few meals are simple and there is very little food out there that I actually want to eat. I encourage you to read some of the experiences related at Picky Eating Adults - they’re not unique, and none of these people want to be like this, and I feel very similarly, if maybe not as shameful as many of them do.

In that I feel good - it’s just food and I don’t care as much as many others do about how uncomfortable it seems to make many other people feel how I eat. It’s a meal, and I have to figure out how to get it past my tongue so I can get on with my day. That’s about all it is to me. Some people have been truly traumatized by picky eating and I’m glad to say that it’s never been like that for me. A hassle, yes. Trauma, no. Believe me, it is not easy to live this way and if I could change, I would. Regardless, it’s the way I am, and I can’t change it - I’ve tried and failed many times. I’m “just” a picky-eater, apparently, and I don’t have any explainable excuse. Maybe that didn’t make it more sensible to others, but it made it seem like it did to me.

Forgive me for delving into politics once more, but it’s been bothering me since the other day and the anti-smoking post. I feel like if I don’t say something I’ll be lumped in with the unfortunate most-likely majority who will vote-in this other proposition that I am extremely embarassed about and just want to distance myself from: proposition 107, the “marriage protection” act. Basically, it prevents marriage between anyone but a man and a woman. That’s all. And I don’t see why this is anything that needs any protecting. As far as I can tell, marriage between men and women can continue whether homosexual people marry or whether heterosexual people choose not to marry but wish to share the benefits that married couples do. They want to say that this is about keeping things like medical benefits from being extended to people other than the marriage partner, but everyone knows what it’s really all about: fear of legitimizing homosexuality. They can talk all they want about “unfair sharing of medical benefits” and such, but even the proposition’s own ad campaign heavily features a strong anti-gay message first and foremost (and I’ve seen nothing but that - I had to look up any other issues the proposition hopes to cover because no one is actually talking about it.) I honestly don’t have much else to say - there really isn’t much to say on the subject because it’s just a vicious, ridiculous proposition. And come Tuesday, I’ll likely be embarassed and sad to say that this state voted this vindictive proposition into law.

Recently, we’ve been working on getting Amanda to identify things by name. I think the first thing she “found” was her own bellybutton, and shortly after that she connected the word with the location and we could ask her where it was and she would proudly show it to us by pointing, a big wide grin spreading on her face. Soon after that she found me when “Where’s daddy?” was asked, and she’d lean over and poke me with her tiny little finger.

Alissa, however, was a little perplexed when the question “Where’s mommy?” would come up, because Amanda would gesture to the refrigerator, if it was in sight, or just not respond at all. I had to admit the other night that, in trying to be helpful, I may have taught our daughter that the refrigerator was “mommy.”

Amanda likes to be held up to the refrigerator doors because on the door, held by magnets, is a picture of Alissa and I with her family from a couple of years ago, and Amanda always likes to look at it and she often points to Alissa on the picture, so I usually said “Mommy” in hopes that Alissa’s likeness would stick as “mommy.” I was trying to be helpful. Unfortunately, I inadvertently put mommy’s permanent location as the giant white box in the kitchen. So we’re working on dissociating her from the fridge.

I just hope we don’t have to ask Amanda where Hawaiians are anytime soon. She’s rather fond of a postcard of native Hawaiians that I’ve been showing her, too . . .