List: Ways to be prepared for anything at your kid's game!

Lacrosse has been a lot of fun, but lately I started reminiscing about the first season she played.  We loved watching her learn the sport and even though they lost all their games back then, they had smiles on their faces and determination.

But for a new parent, things were different.  My memory of me and my husband, proud parents, included pulling up our hoods, zipping up tight, wrapping our arms around ourselves, and praying we didn't freeze to death.

Because some days it is really warm at your house, but the game is at a higher elevation and an open field so the wind whips right through you.  Other times, you feel cool in the shade, but out on the field, the sun is burning your skin.  Then there are the days where you forget it's a double header, plus warm-up time, no trees in sight, and you come home looking like a lobster.

So while we started out by carrying a couple canvas folding chairs and a jacket, we ended up with a nifty little bag that has kept us comfortable.  I've watched other seasoned parents carrying armloads of gear to the field, bringing other kids to help them carry and I think maybe I've figured out the right mixture.

1. I started with this (diaper) bag because, well, I sell Avon so I got it really cheap. I gave away the insides to someone I knew who just had a baby.  It's been perfect (for two)! It's about 17 inches wide, 12 inches tall.  You don't need anything enormous.
2. Buy two 1-yard pieces of polar or cuddle fleece at the fabric store. These make great warm blankets and they're pretty adorable.  Make sure the pattern will embarrass your athlete. In December and January that fabric goes on sale really cheap!  Roll them up.  Two fit perfectly in this bag.
3. Tuck in two umbrellas.  Much like soccer, they only cancel lacrosse if they see lightning strike the field or the snow is deeper than an inch.  Umbrellas protect you from those rainy days, but also help cool you off parasol-style on the relentlessly cloudless, sunny days.
4. Slide a zipper case first aid kit down one side.  I know they have first aid on the field, but it never hurts to have your own, right?  I tucked some allergy pills in the kit.  Sometimes you find yourself at a field near farms and those allergies you think are mild can act up quite a bit!
5. In one pocket we carry tissues and I stick Avon's bug guard / sun screen (two birds, one spray bottle!) into the same pocket.  
6. We can get two water bottles in there, too.
7. Strap a couple baseball caps to the handle if you don't wear one regularly.
8. Throw an old jacket or extra blanket in the trunk of your car just in case.
9. One folding chair per person. Over at Home Depot, they sell these things for less than $10 - I even picked it up on a rare $4.88 sale! - they hold our (not skinny!) weight, they are light to carry, and they happen to come in orange (my daughter's team is orange and blue).
   

Seriously, this is all we have needed for three years (starting the fourth season in the spring).  It's small enough that I carry the bag in my trunk all year (you never know!) and it's convenient to carry out to the field.

What about you?  Do you think there should be more on this list?

Self Published Authors Are Not Always Publishing House Rejects

I've always written.  When I was 12, something I wrote got me in trouble; not because it was controversial, but because it wasn't clean, LDS, happy unicorns eating cotton candy.  The upheaval caused by that story didn't stop me from writing, it stopped me from sharing.  A few intimate friends still knew I wrote.  Now, I am still guarded.

All those years, though, I wanted to be published.  I wanted to share my words with others who needed to hear them.  I entered a few contests where I got lots of compliments, but never won.  I feel I am in the good-writer-but-not-amazing-writer category.  Some where, maybe egotistically, around 8 on a scale of 1-10.  I feel a lot of novelists who get published are around 7-8, too, but they know people who know people.  I know no one.  The ones who get discovered without knowing anyone are 10s and frankly that's only about 1% of published novels.  That's today, though.  Tomorrow I'll believe I'm a 2.

I didn't want to be published for fame and money at first, but people start to fill your head with the idea that legitimacy is the only purpose to publication and as you get older, your idealism and reality try to meet; thinking you could actually pay the bills by doing what you love.

Then you hit 40 and realize you may never pay the bills with what you love and that people hate their jobs so that they have something to write about.

You also might realize that you love writing, but you hate selling your novel or trying to convince some arrogant publisher's assistant to let said publisher read your novel by reducing yourself to a 3 paragraph query letter.  Yeah, I sent out a few.  Of course I got rejected.  It didn't hurt my feelings because this is the thing about writing BOOKS.  You take 300 pages to get your point across FOR A REASON.  Agents and publishers want a hook to sell your book; this makes sense, but they don't really want to hear about the book.

In a self-loathing as well as self-righteous sort of way, I suppose, I think most self-published novels are crap.  I think the majority are not well written or well edited.  Something must be wrong to they would be published by a major publishing house, right?

And yet self-published novels are becoming hits.  Some of them are poorly written; filled with salacious erotica adapted from fanfic (don't knock it until you've tried it.  These are people who aren't afraid of being hackneyed pulp writers, and yet their ideas are new, fresh, beautiful, creative, and all the things that we are told are not what makes good writing.  It can be the MOST ARTISTIC WRITING in the world!) and some are great, but go completely unnoticed.  You are responsible for your own marketing, but if you are struggling to pay your bills, there may not be enough to justify a comprehensive marketing plan so you plug away, hoping you'll get lucky.

Some do. Some don't.

But I remembered the days I wrote and it wasn't about the money.  I just wanted to share my words with people who needed to hear them.

So I turn to self-publishing not because the big houses won't have me, but because they don't even know who I am.

Parenting Tips

All right.  I know I've just got the one kid and was the baby of a large family so I don't know everything, but as is the theme of the internet, I'm going to pretend I know everything about everything anway.  I will follow this up with sweeping generalizations and judging words.  Basically, it's the things lots of people think, but it would make us bad people to say it out loud.  Frankly, it makes me a bad person to make it public on a blog, too, but I know all, therefore, I will say it anyway.

Let's start with the fact that I know everything about parenting.

I went to the store with my sister.  Look, I love her, but she's crazy.  She's got 5 kids and I know she loves them.  I know she believes in certain things regarding the rearing of children that I find insane.  Avoiding the word no is one of them.

Hell to the 'No'
I've heard the parents who believe you should never say the word no.  Instead you should distract the child.  I've also seen the ones who say no, but don't follow through.  The biggest excuse seems to be that they don't want to get into an argument with their kid.

So, you're too exhausted to go head to head with a three year old.  Do you think it's going to get easier when they are 15?  Hellz to the NO!

You have kids and if you want responsible adults, then you are going to have to put on your big kid undies and remind your kids that you run the household, not them.

I get it with my sister, okay?  5 kids!  3 who are not school age, yet.  I got exhausted fighting with my one kid at times, but the best advice I got came from the book The Baby Whisperer

Start as you mean to go on.

THE LESSON: If you mean to give in to your kids' demands for their entire lives, then by all means, give up the fight before it even starts.  The quickest way to your kids running the show instead of the parents is by giving them too much power.  Too much power is what they feel when Mom is too tired to push back on important issues - ones that affect their future and their siblings.

Holding Hands is for Sissies!
My sister needed me to go grocery shopping with her in order to get supplies for a party for one of her kids.  I'm helping prep some food and she wanted some input.  We get out of the car with the 3 younger kids.  She's carrying the baby and completely oblivious to the other two.

THE LESSON: Until a kid is in kindergarten, you hold their hand to cross the street or in parking lots.  This isn't because you worry about the kid running off, it's because it is a little unfair to expect that cars coming through the parking lot can see your little munchkin!  Better to attach them to your body.  Not enough hands?  Teach them to grab a pocket or carry ribbon with you.  You think you've taught your kid not to wonder, but when they see a gumball machine, they will forget the rules.

Whoever Yells the Loudest Wins.
One day, our 13 year old said "Why doesn't [my sister] just say that's the way it is."  My husband said "Who runs that house?" and without missing a beat, our 13 year old astutely responsed "Whoever yells the loudest."

Truth.

We were going to say "the kids", but her answer is even more correct.

S would lean forward.  L leaned forward.  S moved left.  L moved left.  S sat back and folded her arms.  L sat back and folded her arms.  S angrily says "Stop copying me.  You know it makes me mad.  Why would you want to do that?"

I've seen this situation a dozen times at my sister's house.  Someone would move a book.  Another kid yells.  Mom and Dad say "You know that bothers him.  Why would you do that?" Or "Just leave it there because he likes it better there."

So, the kid who moved the book doesn't have the right to like the book better where she put it? No, because it's the kid who throws the biggest fit who gets things his way. They say it's OCD, but OCD in this case is being catered to.  OCD is fast becoming a serious condition and turning into an excuse.  "My crazy trumps your crazy because it's OCD.  You have to do it my way, not your way, because I'm OCD."  NO.  Maybe I really, really like the way I do things.  Why do you get to use "OCD" as a blanket term for people to follow your unreasonable demands?  This is what they are teaching their kids.  They come first as long as they whine about it longer and louder than anyone else.

I've met those adults.  They are no fun to be around and make everyone else miserable.  YAY!

THE LESSON: My body is my body.  Your body is your body.  As long as my body doesn't affect your body physically, I can do whatever the hell I want.  If it bothers you, that's *your* problem and NO ONE ELSE'S.

Racism - Fun Topic, Right?

I've been watching 'The Facts of Life' because it's a show I really liked when I was younger and watching it now, the early years anyway, I realize how many topics they tried to talk about which shows had not, could not, or chose not to discuss.  Some topics are still taboo.

In the episode I watched with my husband and daughter on Wednesday, Blair (The Spoiled One) learned that someone back in her family tree had not only fought against integration, he turned out to be a member of the KKK.

Three letters that make even this whiter that white girl's heart skip a beat with sadness and despair so I cannot imagine what they do to a person of a certain other race.* (see below)

Well, Blair overcompensated to Token Black Girl on the show and then one of the girls confronted her.  Blair said something along the lines of "My grandfather was racist.  What if that means I'm racist, too?"

And the friend said "Blair, you are not racist."

Ah.  Remember that brief time in the 80s where if you treated people with respect and didn't let the color of another person's skin affect your feelings of them, you weren't a racist?  Good times.  Of course there were a lot of bigots and racists.  I'd even argue that the number is still there, but they have become better at hiding in plain sight.

Now there is a no-win situation happening.  If I notice a person is black, it's because I'm segregating them for their skin and therefore a racist.  If I don't notice a person is black, I'm not acknowledging their culture and therefore a racist.  I know that there are groups within groups that are banding together to say these things and one group thinks the former is racist while another thinks the latter is racist, but what is created is an environment where white people are not allowed to be considered "not racist".  Ever.  No matter what is done/not done, said/not said, acknowledged/not acknowledged, it is called out as racist.

Well, I discussed this with a friend yesterday.  Yeah, she's a white girl, too, so of course our opinions are from our point of view.  Keep in mind it is impossible for us to have another point of view.  We cannot choose our ancenstry whether we want to or not.  We will constantly be criticized for that.

Anyway, when someone was saying "Why isn't there a White Pride Day?" (which I think she and I both agree is not needed) she heard a response I rather liked where a commenter responded "Because when you are the first car in Mario Kart, you don't need the blue turtle."  I don't think we need to play Mario Kart to understand that!  (Although, if you do, let's just say that if you are the winner of a race, you don't need a booster pack, do you?  That seems excessive.)

I'd like to take that analogy one step further.  What happens when you are the first car in Mario Kart and everyone behind you is blaming you for being at the front?  They are clamoring for first place and making you feel like shit at every turn whether you fall to the back of the crowd or not.

I don't agree with the term reverse racism, but I'm not sure I disagree with it, either.  The fact is, I could stand before a person who is calling me a racist for this post and ask them what they want from me and give it to them and still be called a racist by someone else.  Because white people aren't even allowed to win the "I don't want to be a racist, I'm not trying to be a racist, I think racism is awful," game.  Because of the color of their skin.


(from above)*Wow.  I struggled with the end of that sentence.  Any words I chose could have been seen as racist by some segment of the population.  Which is kind of my point.

Lemon Cupcakes

A couple of weekends ago, I catered a wedding.  I have had so many compliments, it's going to my head.  One of the favorite items seems to be my lemon cupcakes.  Now, this is adjusted from a recipe I got on the internetz, but I made some changes.

First off, all the recipes I found had a version of either a lemon glaze or a buttercream type frosting.  No, no, no.  Do you know what I believe made mine a winner of dozens upon dozens of comments?  A lovely cream cheese frosting!  It gave them a hint of Lemon Cheesecake!

So, here is the recipe for the cupcakes followed by the specifics of the cream cheese frosting I use (the recipe if adjusted from my sister-in-law and couldn't be simpler!)

Tip before we get started: 

Make your own buttermilk.  Put 1 Tbs lemon juice into cup measurer, then add milk until it reaches 1 cup.  Let sit 5 minutes.

Sour milk works great, too - in fact I usually avoid wasting sour milk by making cakes!

LEMON CUPCAKES (WITH TIPS FOR CAKE)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (always have your butter at room temperature before you start!)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon corn starch
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon flavoring
1 cup low-fat buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, corn starch, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. With mixer on low, beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time. Beat in lemon juice and lemon flavoring. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix just until combined.

Spoon batter into cupcake liners, 2/3 full. Bake 16 minutes. (Go out and buy a 24 gauge ice cream scoop/food scoop. I recently did this and will NEVER go without again! It saves time, mess, and makes the cupcakes come out evenly! Worthwhile investment, I promise!)

Top with cream cheese frosting.

Frosting:

8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
1 tsp lemon flavor
About 3 cups powdered sugar

Mix cream cheese, butter, and flavoring. Add powdered sugar until it is thick enough to form peak; decorator frosting. This is more powdered sugar than a carrot cake frosting.

CAKE ADJUSTMENTS

Alternatively, boil 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 1/4 cup lemon juice. Thinly slice a fresh lemon. Add to boiling mixture and turn to simmer until peel is soft; about 20 minutes. Lay candied lemon around bottom of cake pan or bundt pan. Pour cake batter over top. (Save lemon sugar gel)

Cook 350 until done (15 minutes for cupcakes, 25 for bundt or cake pan).

For bundt, add powdered sugar to candied lemon juice/gel from pan just until you create a glaze. Pour over bundt/cake when cooled and serve.

Baked Beans

Pet peeve # 348
Recipe blog that post 300 pictures with text in between and bury the recipe at the bottom of the page (if they are kind enough to post the recipe that way instead of letting you pick it out of the unneccessary images and blabbering text.)

I've had requests for some recipes.  I like to pin to Pinterest anyway, but there aren't enough character for the recipe so putting them here is literally just to make it easy for me to pin my own things.  There ya go.

I did not have the foresight to get pictures of the baked beans last time I made them so maybe I'll make them again soon and add to this post.

Guys!  To follow my recipes you usually have to have a 6th sense about food.  Some measurements are estimates!

BAKED BEANS
Give yourself 12-18 hours.  Add 18 hours if you plan to soak the beans yourself.
5 cans of beans (or the equivalent should be soaked a minimum of 18 hours)

I start with 
1 can black beans
1 can dark kidney beans
1 can butter beans
From there, pick your favorites or whatever is one sale. I recommend the following (pick 2)
Anasazi
White Northern
Navy

(You can pick your favorite 5 beans, but variety helps. I'm not a fan of pinto or garbanzo, but they are perfectly acceptable!)

Put all the beans, drained and rinsed, into a crock pot (minimum 4 quart)


1/2 bottle BBQ sauce (something with hickory smoke is best)
1/4 cup mustard OR 2 Tbsp fresh ground mustard/dry mustard powder)
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 8 oz cans stewed tomatoes (not drained)
Bacon (if desired.  I've made it vegetarian and been perfectly happy!)
1 small can Green chili (not drained)

The following are "to taste", but I put a guess after it....
Pepper 2 Tbsp
Worcestershire 2 Tbsp
Liquid smoke 1/4 tsp
Lemon juice 1 Tbsp

Add all ingredients to beans in crock pot.  Cook on low 12-18 hours until it starts to thicken.
If you are in a rush, after 10-12 hours you can force thickening:
1/4 cup corn starch
add just enough cold water to mix the corn starch.  Add to baked beans and stir.  Give yourself an hour to 90 minutes before your event for the corn starch to take effect.

God's Not Dead

Because death is something that happens to things that lived.  If God or god never existed, they cannot die.

So, spoiler alert; I'm going to get pretty specific about this movie which popped up on Netflix as a suggestion for me.  I highly recommend you go watch it for yourself first.

And away we go.

Interestingly, (read: NOT AT ALL SURPRISINGLY) the athiests are portrayed as acerbic, damaged, cynical, dolts.  At one point, the Mormon Missionary type character asked his athiest professor "What happened to you?" and the professor answered with a story about his mother.  In typical Christian fashion, someone writing the script believed that those who question God's existence, do so because God "failed" them somehow.

Do you know that the real answer is?  "What happened to you?"  "I started to ask questions."  I sought knowledge and wisdom.  I began to look at other cultures and understand other beliefs and using my brain I realized it just doesn't add up.

The reality of religion is that as long as you don't question it beyond finding answer to specific religious questions, then it works.  If you believe God helped you find that glove or create cochlear imlpants, you will believe it.  If you look at the pair of gloves and say "Is it possible I just found these?" and look at science and say "Is it possible that humans with more knowledge on this subject than me and with more intelligence than I can understand came up with an idea to make this and it worked?" then you will start to see that the answers to your questions make more sense than God is watching a war occur in the Middle East whilst helping you find a pair of gloves.

It's all in how you frame it.  Both religious folk and athiests will answer questions with words meant to support their own theory.  It's just that religious folk always quote God whilst atheists have to find deeper answers that require more thought, intelligence, and reasoning.

Scriptures
While the Bible and other works of God related fiction are simply meant to be supporting statements to attest the fact that there is a god, they cannot really be separated from the idea of God because it is meant to be true stories of God's influence on humanity.

The movie begins with an argument that God must have created the world because you cannot "disprove", but that's a MacGuffin because there are arguments for the world being created by science just as efficient as arguments that it came from God.  The exact point he makes is that science believes it happened this way so if you interpret Genesis differently than every generation for thousands of years interpreted it, then it says science is explaining it the way the Bible does?  No, that's pretty circular by any standard.  You reinterpret the bible to fit science to fit the bible?

His idea of disproving because you cannot prove is equally weak.  If you cannot prove science wrong without proving it right, then you cannot disprove God's existence without proving it at the same time.  The arguments on both sides are there.  The ones proving/disproving God just happen to lack the evidence used in science and technology.  There may be a lot of evidence to support science OR religion.  Neither proves or disproves the existence of God in an of itself.

Do you know how many creation stories there are?  Genesis is a creation story.  Nothing more.  Do you know how many cultures have stories of a "cleansing" flood with only 2 or a few survivors to carry on the legacy of humanity?  In other cultures, it is clearly a parable to understand "cleansing" our souls.  Or perhaps wishing to cleanse the world of hurt, war, misunderstanding, and those who don't believe the same things we do.  Noah wasn't the first of these stories.

Fiction.  The whole thing.  So, you can't quote Matthew 3:14 to me in order to make me believe.  I can whip out some fiction to quote proving you wrong just as quickly.

Perhaps Hawkings ideas are the creation story of this new religion "science".

Near the end, we had an adorable, sweet, innocent little Backstreet Boys meets Christianity band.  Their words of wisdom were portrayed as some final point to prove this whole thing isn't a huge conspiracy to believe in God, but their point was LAME.

They said God has been there from the beginning.  No, scripture says God has been there forever.

Which discounts every other culture that does not believe in God from the beginning of time.  Before God there were other beliefs!  It's so arrogant to believe that God was there when other cultures believed something different.  It basically says you are right and they were all wrong.  It is equally arrogant today to believe that your religion is right and all others are wrong.  Many religions teach that every other culture in this world is unimportant in comparison to you because your religion is right?  It fits in your brain?  That seems acceptable to you?

Prayer
The reason people who believe in God need God is so that they have a "being" to pray to.  They need someone to pray to in order to feel they have some power, some control over what happens.  God is great when he answers a prayer.  He knows what's better for us when a prayer is not answered.

When you begin to look at the world without the prayer glasses, you don't see an almight power who knows what we need and what's better for us.  You see reality.  Things happen because the picture is much bigger than our tiny human brains can understand.  Good jobs come because we worked hard, made the right impression, and got lucky in comparison to someone else with equal qualifications and connections.  We found the gloves because this time we noticed they were there or we thought of the one place we hadn't looked.  Our brains are not perfect computers.  We miss things sometimes and notice them at others because of how the brain processes information; not because of hiding something and then putting it back.

We cry when something touches us because of the parts of the brain that are stimulated, not because "the spirit moved" us.

When good things happen, it's because it happened.  When bad things happen, it's because it happened.  Whether you think that it was because of God or not, it happened and you cannot change it.  Prayer is not control.  It is empty words in empty space.

Agnostic
Religious people have every right to believe in what they believe in.  Those who believe in God, but do not subscribe to a religion have the right to believe in what they believe in.  Those who do not believe in God have the right to believe in coincidence, luck, hard work, and whatever else they believe.

In the movie, he mentions Agnostic as "having doubt".  Well, Gnosis means "knowledge" and enlightment.  For a long time I called myself Agnostic.  In my definition it meant I had doubts therefore I sought knowledge; whether that knowledge fall into the category of science or some greater thing known as God or "The Universe".

Athiests are not...
Athiests are not angry, selfish people.  This is the stereotype I would like to see diminished.  Religious people have anger.  Religious people are sometimes selfish.  Atheists are no different.

I'm not going to own the word atheist here, but my family goes out every Sunday to help For the Love of Paws and when telling others about it, we have -more than once- been met with the response "That's very Christian of you."

What?  No.  It's human of us.  We don't do it for rewards in heaven.  We do it because our fellow man and animals in this world, right now, right in front of you, require companionship, compassion, and assistance.  In a way, is it not worth more because we do not do it for reward?  Let's leave God out of that one.  Compassion is a trait some people possess and others do not.  It is far from Christian exclusive.

Granted, the kid had a point in the movie.  He accused the professor of being anti-theist.  It wasn't enough to hate God, he wanted everyone to hate God.  This again falls into the stereotype that athiests hate God and want everyone else to hate God as well.  In reality, it's just a lack of believing in a higher power or creator.

They created this entire propoganda film and then blamed the athiest character in it for spinning propoganda!  As far as I'm concerned, that moment was to deflect from the fact that this is a propoganda film!

And who is your spokesperson?
Yeah, the guy from Duck Dynasty.  Yeah.  He's the guy you should go to in order to support the legitimacy of your religious, God arguments.  Honestly, this should be my ENTIRE POINT.  You want me to take you seriously?

Let's discuss the spin those Duck Dynasty guys have put upon the world...

So many times, we argue a point based on what we think the other side believes.  This movie "proves" God by creating this cartoon athiest to be the bad guy.  Athiests are not like that, they do not believe those things.

I'm not automatically discounting the arguments to prove/disprove God's existence.  I'm looking at the bigger picture.  The arguments made by Mormon Missionary (type) were only valid to teach other Christians how to believe in Christianity.

It changes nothing about the reality, intelligence, or science to back up the real claims in this world.