A few weeks ago, It Is What It Is wrote about a very different way of eating an apple from the bottom up rather than eating around the side.  The result is a lot less waste.  I decided to try it yesterday.  I cut out the tiny flower at the bottom of the apple but kept on the stem.  When I cut out the flower (a chunk about the size of my pinky nail that I removed with a paring knife), it opened a hole in the core where I could see the seeds above.  I don’t know why I thought the core was somewhat solid.

So I started chomping at it from the bottom.

Do you see that hole?  This apple is halfway gone, and I’m getting close to the seeds.  Everyone in the waiting room looked at me either because (1) I was eating an apple in an unusual and cool way, (2) I was taking excessively large bites, almost choking on each one, or (3) I was screaming between every bite to the Wolvog that he needed to photograph this because it was so damn cool.

So he did.

You can sort of tell how small it is by looking at my thumb.  I probably could have eaten more, but I had to stop to have a long conversation with the Wolvog about why he couldn’t have my apple seeds.  (Him: “Why?”  Me: “Because, they’re garbage.”  Him: “They’re only garbage to you.”  Me: “I’m not going to give you my seeds because all that will happen is that they’ll end up in the wash.”  Him: “No, they won’t.  I really like them.  I’ll take care of them.  I’ll plant them.”  Me: “No.”  Him: “Why?”…)

It Is What It Is has changed my life.

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Josh sent me an article about comfort pets on planes, an option that I didn’t know existed until that moment.  I immediately said that I wanted to bring Truman to calm me on our next trip since I am a horrible flyer.  Josh told me that isn’t going to happen.

But for curiosity sake, how would you feel if you sat down on a plane, and the woman next to you (let’s say, someone who is diminutive in size with long brown hair and writes a blog — NOT ME) was holding a guinea pig on her lap?

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The 2013 Creme de la Creme is trucking along.  There are currently 68 on the list and under a month to go until the hard deadline (December 15!).  So, are you on the list yet?  Extra love to people who submit early!

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Courageous” (Genuine Greavu)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I loved Lavender Luz’s post comparing the state of adoption to the concept of glasnost from the former Soviet Union.  She writes: “So today, during National Adoption Awareness Month, I make a bold prediction: the walls that still exist in adoption will fall not gradually and softly but in a rush. A shocking, thunderous rush, just like we saw nearly 25 years ago in Europe.”  To continue reading, the rest of the post is on Huffington Post.

Plan Y has a post about friends who came to dinner and the baby they brought with them.  She admits, “Sometimes I’m able to hold back and not engage with babies and toddlers, and other times I just can’t help myself.”  It’s a bittersweet post about a fun evening that ends with a bib left behind on the table.  She made me feel as if I was there.

Lastly, Taboo Baby Talk has a very honest post about why she’s not crying after her miscarriage.  She writes: “I still haven’t cried since the miscarriage was confirmed on Tuesday.  I google everything and was avoiding my recent google search of ‘what if you don’t cry after a miscarriage’.  A little nervous of what the search results would reveal.  But I did it.  I literally googled that.”  I think it’s important to read a wide range of reactions to loss, and I’m really glad she wrote this post.

The roundup to the Roundup: A different way to eat an apple.  How would you feel if you had to sit next to a guinea pig?  The 2013 Creme de la Creme opened: is your post on the list?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 15th and November 22nd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I was fairly nervous to post what I wrote about GoldieBlox.  I had no problem with people disagreeing with me — believe me, if we didn’t already own toys that were similar and much more versatile than GoldieBlox, I could have seen myself considering it.  I knew I would be annoyed if people didn’t give it a close read and skipped down to the comment section to start stating their own thoughts before they finished the post.  But mostly, I wondered if not supporting another woman made me a traitor.

It’s an idea that came up a lot with the 2008 election: were you a traitor to women if you chose Barack Obama as the nominee over Hillary Clinton?  It’s something that Josh and I discuss every so often: are you a traitor towards other Jews if you speak critically about other Jews?  There are enough outsiders speaking ill of both groups — women and Jews.  (The list is much bigger in terms of groups that are shat upon.  I’m just listing these two because they’re my example.)  Isn’t it worse if it comes from the inside, from someone who is part of the group?

I know there are some women who will say yes, to not support the work of another woman is to be a traitor towards women.  But by that definition, I should support the work of Michelle Bachmann.  Anyone who has spent any time on this blog is probably snorting over the idea of me lending my support to Michelle Bachmann.  But that is what it means to blindly give your support to another in the group.  It means to ignore the message itself and to only consider the messenger.

And while I can do that when it comes to close friends and family — to stand by them in support regardless of how I feel about what they are saying or doing — I can’t say that it’s healthy to extend the same to strangers.  It would mean extending support to 50% of the world’s population.  I understand the sentiment that there are enough men holding back women that we don’t need women holding back women too.  But I’m uncomfortable with the idea of giving someone support simply due to their sexual organs.

And yet, at the end of the day there is the other side of the truth: all things being equal, I tend to support those within my group over those outside my group.  If there were two toys, both equally good, and one was made by a woman and one was made by a man, I’d probably lean towards buying the toy by the woman.  Just because.  If all things were equal and there were two candidates, one a Christian man and one a Jewish man, I’d probably choose the Jewish man.  Just because.  Why are we so keen to support complete strangers who happen to share one defining quality?  It’s a natural instinct to want something good for a member of your group, especially if we believe that good begets good.  If I have your back, you’ll have mine.

Hopefully it was understood that I was critical not of Debbie Sterling nor GoldieBlox itself but of the idea of blindly saying, “this rocks!” without actually knowing anything about the toy.  Because I still haven’t actually found anyone in the mainstream media discussing the toy, only how awesome the kids were in the video or the fun song or the amazing Rube Goldberg machine or the message behind the product.  I keep waiting to find someone writing about the toy itself.  But none of the mainstream coverage contained a review of the GoldieBlox.  Whether it’s a well-made toy.  Whether it has value.  For instance, why should I spend $29 on GoldieBlox when I can spend $49 on Lego and get 50 set activities and limitless creative ones?  There could be a very good reason for why I should buy GoldieBlox over Legos, but I’ve yet to hear it.

I’ve only been told that I should support it because we need to be supportive of smart women who step forward with good ideas.

And that’s my problem with the coverage; and I understand that this is partially because things move so quickly on the Internet that we need to react quickly because the next viral video or bit of news is coming down the conveyor belt like chocolates in an I Love Lucy episode.  We need to watch, post to Facebook, and move on. And maybe this product is worth supporting, or maybe it’s not.  But I don’t want to support a project just because it was created by a woman.  I want to support a project because it’s a sound product that fills a niche missing in the toy industry that also happens to be made by a woman.

And maybe that makes me a traitor.

This may be one of the most unpopular posts I write, but I’m going to say it anyway because… well… this is how I feel on the topic.

A lot of people sent me this Beastie Boys-inspired, GoldieBlox YouTube video yesterday, and it’s super cute.  Three girls, bored by the pink-drenched toys they’ve been sold by the toy industry, set up an epic Rube Goldberg machine through their house that shoots them outside and toward a toy they really want: GoldieBlox.

I have every reason to be interested in GoldieBlox.  It’s a toy created by a smart woman whose sole aim (beyond selling toys) is to introduce girls to STEM early in life based on realizing her own limitations in adulthood due to the toys she was given as a child.  Rather than using those formative years playing out narratives while they wait for their prince to come, she wants girls understanding concepts in engineering because it will build life skills that will carry them well into adulthood.  Sounds good.

I’m not getting my daughter GoldieBlox.

I’m not saying that if someone else gets my daughter GoldieBlox that we’ll return them or throw a fit, but I’m not going to spend my money on more toys that are gender-labeled.  If the ChickieNob wants an engineering toy, she can play with the Quadrilla marble run we already own.  She can engineer a marble monstrosity that will shoot marbles around the room that we won’t find for years to come.  Or play with our Lego Mechanics set.  It’s a non-motorized, non-programmable version of Lego WeDo.  One box, dozens of projects with gears and pulleys and levers.

What I can’t do — and perhaps this is more a reality when you have boy-girl twins with similar interests, a small toy budget, and limited space  — is buy gender-specific toys simply because a marketing team told my kids that something is for their sex.  I feel that way about all toy companies, not GoldieBlox specifically.  But I don’t want the ChickieNob (or myself) to get sucked into clever marketing.  I don’t want her to have a knee-jerk, girl power reaction.  I don’t want her to buy something just because the company is telling her that girls can do anything!  They can, by the way.  But the point is that it’s too easy to get sucked into the message and miss whether or not it’s actually a good toy.  I have no clue if it’s a good toy, and I suspect that a lot of people who were drawn into the video also have no clue if it’s a good toy insofar as quality and value.  But until I know that, I really don’t want to buy my kid something just because they have made a catchy, viral YouTube video.

Of course I want to punch the air and say, “hells yeah!” to those cool kids in the video, but I don’t believe for a second they actually set up that course on their own. I think it illustrates the point: that this is still a bunch of adults telling kids what they should like.  Sure, it’s educational and reinforces ideas I’d like my daughter to hear (that it’s not only a good idea for her to strongly consider the STEM fields, but that STEM can be fun).  But it’s still a product.  They’re still being sold something.  They’re still telling my kid what to think.  What she should like.  What she shouldn’t like.  How she should spend her time.

They spend two straight minutes crapping on girls who like princesses and pink in order to make their point.  There are girls out there who like princesses and pink.  And that’s okay.  It’s also okay if a girl completely rejects that toy narrative and writes her own story.  And it’s also okay if she wants to be a princess scientist.  If she wants to mix all of her interests into one non-gender-specific salad.

I want the ChickieNob to choose her own interests, and I want the rest of the world to respect her interests, whatever they may be.  She will always be swayed by marketing — we all are.  But just as my first instinct was “ooooh, me want” (I can’t even use correct grammar when I covet) when I saw the GoldieBlox video, I’m glad I have a second instinct that kicks in and says, “hey, we have toys that not only accomplish the same thing, but both my kids are welcome to play them.”

Because sometimes my daughter plays with other girls.  And sometimes my daughter plays with boys.  And I just want her to feel as if all the toys can be dumped in front of all people with the message “let’s play!”

I’m glad Debbie Sterling made her toy and got it out there on the market.  I wish her a lot of luck in getting this toy into the right hands.  Based on the reaction on Facebook, it seems very popular.  I would encourage those excited parents to really look at the quality of the toy: how many hours of play will your child get from this set?  Is there another toy on the market that accomplishes the same thing that costs less or contains more value per dollar?  As I said, I know nothing about this product except what I saw in the YouTube video and her original TED talk. (Remember, I’m on a tight toy budget.  Our motto is repurpose, repurpose, repurpose.  Or, “everything old is new again!” Or, “you’re not getting another toy.  Play with what you own.”)

Sterling’s heart is in the right place.  I’m just a cranky woman who is tired of people marketing to my daughter.  The ChickieNob is asked by toy manufacturers to navigate a gender minefield, to make enormous statements with her toy choice, and to align herself with either the Princess-embracers or the Princess-rejectors.  And she’s a little too complicated for that.  She contains interest multitudes.

Plus that is too much pressure to put on a damn kid.

Please don’t miss my point: I want girls to use engineering toys.  If GoldieBlox is what makes that happen, then I’ll be stepping up and cheering on GoldieBlox.  But until I know more about this product, I can only comment on the presentation.  And that YouTube video was a piece of really slick marketing.  I almost forgot I was being sold something as I watched the obstacle course unfold.

I am the type of person who needs her email inbox mostly empty to focus on work.  I can’t sit down and write when there are unanswered emails piling up.  If we go on a trip, I have a digital folder where I place all messages I need to answer when I return just so my inbox can continue to look nice and neat while we’re away.  For me, a cluttered inbox = a cluttered mind.

Keeping that inbox neat steals from my work time, by which I mean my writing time.  I not only lose an hour in the morning writing people back, but my finger automatically flicks to my email while I’m working, and when I see new messages, I need to open them and read them and sometimes respond to them.  In turn, my writing brain feels jumbled, rushed.  Chopped up into tiny fragments of concentration.

Opinionator in the New York Times addressed this as I was debating whether or not to log off email and hide all electronic devices.  Wait, scratch that.  I know I should log off email and hide the electronic devices.  I know that I need to remove the capability of checking email because the temptation is always there.  I guess what I was debating is… can I?  Do I have the willpower to not check email for hours at a time?

The truthful answer is usually no.

My hopeful answer is, “of course!”

Opinionator said it perfectly:

It is this constant background awareness of email that can cause real problems. Unlike traditional mail, email is always active. You can’t fire off an email and then put it completely out of mind; there is at least some slight awareness of the message’s continuing life, the possibility of a reply, the need to keep refreshing the stream of digital correspondence. And that’s the best-case scenario — more often, it is the nagging collection of unanswered emails that weighs on one’s mind.

And they made me gulp with the final point that we pay for every word.  I mean, no, not literally.  But if I’m answering emails, I’m not writing.  And if I’m not writing, I’m not getting paid.  So getting a handle on the email situation is a financial concern.

I affixed a post-it note to the top of my desk which reads:

Minimize email while writing.  Set timer to check if need be.

It’s a little sad that I need to write such a duh reminder to myself; will I really forget to not check email and get down to the business of writing?  Yes.  Yes, I’ll purposefully forget since checking email is easy and writing is hard.

So if it takes me some time to return your email, I apologize.  I’m trying to get a better system in place; one that allows me to be prompt but not feel overwhelmed or that I’m detracting from work time.  I’m sure I’ll reach a balance, right?  Like around the time when they implant that computer chip under the skin so I can just think answers and my brain will automatically send out emails on my behalf.

I know people believe that the main reason why I seem to get nothing done is because I’m ruining my concentration playing Candy Crush.  And yes, that is true.  But the email situation isn’t helping.

How do you feel about your inbox?  Does a messy inbox stress you out and keep you from concentrating on whatever else you need to do?

This past weekend was our anniversary, and we went to the beach to celebrate our marriage by running on the sand as if we were in a Vagisil commercial.  Actually we stood on the sand and stuffed our mouths with Thrashers.  But it’s mostly the same thing.

We also went to a famous Rehoboth pizza place that shall not be named because I’m cranky beyond words at this moment.  We had this brilliant idea to purchase sauce and bring it home so we could recreate the restaurant experience in our own kitchen.  Their pizza sauce is vegan.  Their tomato sauce is not.  Josh went up to the counter and bought the tomato sauce, not realizing that.  I didn’t look at it until we got home.  So we now have jars of unusable meat sauce on our hands.

So.

I need a great tomato sauce recipe for tonight.  Here are the parameters:

(1) I’d like it to cook for an hour or so.  I have a lot of quick tomato sauces, which are fine.  But I’m looking for a sauce that feels as if a lot of love has been put into it.  Time = love.  So I’d like it to cook for at least an hour.

(2) I’ve always preferred recipes that use canned tomatoes over fresh tomatoes.

(3) I am not a fan of oregano in sauce.  Basil is fine.  Parsley is fine.  A bay leaf is fine.  But oregano is not.

(4) It has to be vegetarian — no meat.  Cheese is okay, but no beef, pork, chicken, etc.

If you have a recipe that fits this description, or you know that your recipe can be tweaked to fit this description, leave it in the comment section below or email it to me.  If you’re okay with me posting your recipe at the bottom of this post so others can use it too, please let me know.  If you don’t say so, I won’t post it.

Thank you for saving our dinner.