Thoughts on Thursday

Can anyone tell me why red velvet cake is so popular?  Is it the food coloring that makes it so exciting?  I have to say that the idea of artificially coloring cake really puts me off.  I've seen a lot of recipes out there for rainbow cakes and cupcakes: brightly colored swirled cake...completely garish and frightening. 

I have used food coloring in frosting before but I have to admit that even that seems kind of creepy to me. 

I really never used to think about food coloring much at all because I don't eat too many things that have it (except for natural coloring like annatto in cheese) but when Max was a toddler and would eat thickly iced cookies at parties (like Halloween ones with black and blue frostings) or when he ate the hideously blue frozen Yoplait yogurts his poop would come out a very disturbing blue/green color and it then came home to me that this stuff is coursing its way through his little body and having to be processed by his liver and kidneys.

That reminds me how glad I am to be done with diapers.  I haven't had to change one of those in a lot of years and I never stop being happy about it!  (I don't mean to be insensitive to my friends who aren't going to be done with them for a long time.  You all know you'll be happy to be done with them too.)

I am fascinated by all the things people can never admit to without being deeply mistrusted by others. 

For example, it occurred to me as I was writing about being happy to be done with changing diapers that some mom out there might read that and think "What's the big deal?  I don't hate changing diapers."  Right.  I didn't really hate them either.  BUT you can't say "I'll miss changing diapers!" because what kind of freak ENJOYS wiping bottoms and dealing with other people's poop several times a day.  Maybe some people do, but those people usually have to find very special life partners or clubs that let them be themselves because you can't admit to loving or even liking to change diapers. 



Just like you can't admit to not liking being a parent.  You just can't.  Try it.  At the next party you go to just say "You know, having kids is great for populating the planet and all, but being a parent really sucks."  If you make a rash statement like that it is imperative to qualify that statement with a "sometimes" as in: ".....being a parent really sucks sometimes." 

I have always loved the line in "Bridget Jone's Diary" where her mom is talking about all the years she didn't do anything for herself and says "you know, having children isn't all it's cracked up to be..."*  I love it because I think a lot of parents do feel that way but none of them are ever supposed to admit to it.

Alexander McQueen is dead which makes me really sad.  Rumor has it that he may have committed suicide but since the police haven't released any details- who knows?  It makes me sad because so many of the big designers have become stodgy, unimaginative, and really gross.  I have more to say on this but will write a post especially for it.

I have to go turn the soundtrack to "Amelie" up really loud and do some dishes before the kiddo comes home.

I think I may not have mentioned it but the kid has been so sweet lately and he made a really funny comic that I will photograph and share with you another day.  His vocabulary never ceases to surprise me and he's got a more sophisticated sense of humor emerging out of the dregs of gross little boy humor.  Oh, he's still got plenty of that to share, it's just that there's something finer, more subtle, and dry surfacing which I'm really enjoying.  Nine is a great age to parent!