I was branded a Mochilato thief, and less than a person

On the way home from Laguna Beach, we stopped by Cafe Mochilato in Irvine to pick up 7 mochilatos; 3 for me, 3 for Helena and 1 strawberry for Elin, her favorite.  Mochilato is a delicious gelato inside of mochi, a Japanese soft dough-like substance.  Cafe Mochilato describes it as "provides a fusion of both dynamic flavors of Asian (Mochi) and European (Gelato) delicacy just for your satisfying taste".  Mochi ice creams are sold at Trader Joe's, but the ones at Cafe Mochilato come with gelato inside.

On the way home and after, Elin was acting defiantly, and she continued in that state after I deprived her of eating her strawberry mochilato.  So I decided the next level of punishment, since nothing was sinking in, was to eat her strawberry mochilato in front of her, which I did.  She immediately went into a frenzied state, and hurled a bunch of insults at me in Swedish, which I was later told was the following:

• I'm gonna put pappa in a long loooong time out.
• Mamma, you can't just take someone else's strawberry mochilato and eat it.  Then you're just a thief and not a real person.

Later, after she calmed down and ate her mac and cheese, and a substitute vanilla Mochilato, she made the following comments:

• I wanna watch Mochilato on T.V.
• Mochilato is gonna go on a time out in my stomach.  And you can't play around in there until your time out is over.

So I ate Elin's strawberry mochilato, was branded a thief and less than a person, and strawberry is not even one of my favorite flavors.  This goes to show there are no clear winners in a war.  All sides lose something, some more than others.  My loss was a vanilla mochilato.... I failed to resolve the issue diplomatically.

2-20-2011 update (Monday):  Helena told Elin she would get her something special today because of her good behavior.  She asked, "is it a strawberry mochilato?"  So off they went in the afternoon to Cafe Mochilato, and on the way there, Elin told Helena, "I think we need to eat it right away so pappa doesn't eat it."

Elin and Johanna each got one strawberry mochilato, but Johanna didn't like hers, so Elin ate both.  After what transpired today, it appears Elin may have lost the battle yesterday, but she won the war today.

Elin w/ a vanilla mochilato in her stomach

I'm not retarded! How the mind of a male interprets the grocery list

If your wife were to include "Dijon Mustard" on your grocery list, and that's EXACTLY what you came home with, should you be faulted for not having picked up a "Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard"?  Well I was, because we had a Grey Poupon Dijon mustard in the fridge, and I'm supposed to maintain a mental inventory of all items in the fridge and pantry.  I mention pantry because I almost failed to pick up the correct potatoes, which is a pantry item, but more on that later.

How about if she wrote "2-3 leaks"?  How would you interpret that?  Maybe she meant if the leaks are thin or small, pick up 3, otherwise 2 will do.  Okay, but what size constitutes "thin or small"?  The male mind will respond with, "just pick up 3 and err on the overstocking/wasteful side than have to deal with getting sent back to the store to finish the job and having your mental prowess called into question.

What led to this blog entry was when my wife said the following to me one day after a subpar performance of picking up the items she'd listed for me at Albertsons:  "Brian, I wonder how you handle things at work when you have so many issues with a simple grocery list.  I'm not gonna write a paragraph on every item.  You should figure it out."  So this is my attempt at making myself feel better about my ineptitude in following directions and filling in the blanks.  Whether or not my points are valid is irrelevant.  I'm guilty and will remain as such.

Let's examine how a typical male mind handles a shopping list written by a female.  As always, if the number of items exceeds a threshold of say 4-5, then I'll have a pre-shopping meeting with my wife to decode some parts:

• 2-3 leaks:  Should I pick up 2 leaks and break a 3rd one in half (2 + 3 = 5, 5 / 2 = 2.5)?
• 1 bag of potatoes (Russet):  Russ what?!  Is that a potato brand, or a kind of potato?  No worries, I'll just search for the word.  During my decode meeting with Helena, she instructed me to avoid a 10 lb. bag of potatoes.  More like 5 lb. would do.  At Albertsons, I found nothing but a buncha 10 lb. bags.  Luckily, a produce employee was stocking items next to me, so I asked him if he could show me a 5 lb. bag of Russet potatoes.  He pointed to the far end of the potato/onion cart.  I searched another couple of minutes and managed to find the word "Russet" on a tag where the bag is sealed (not written on the bag itself).
• 1 bake it yourself baguette:  The last time I asked for this, I was given a frozen baguette, and wifey said this was not a bake it yourself.  This time around, when I asked for this item, the employee took me to where the baguettes are and gave me one called "Take and Bake".  It turned out this is "a different one, but still okay".  Still not sure what the correct "bake it yourself baguette" is, but who cares, if two Albertsons employees can't figure it out, then surely I'm exempt.
• Carne asada for 5:  This time, I decided not to blurt out "carne asada for 5" to the butcher.  Carne asada for 5 fat cows is different than for 4 adults, 2 of whom are lean Swedes, and a couple of kids.  So I asked for 5 average size appetite adults.  I may have bought more than we need, but oh well.
• 1 flour for baking:  I cleared the flour size in the decode meeting (large), but I didn't realize there is "bleached" and "unbleached" version.  I picked up "unbleached" 'cause I figured anything that is bleached can't be good for you.  I got a pass on this one as Helena doesn't know which she prefers either.
• 2 whipping creams (not visible in the picture above):  There is "heavy whipping cream" and "whipping cream".  I can't explain why, but I picked up the heavy one (more manly?).  I passed this test as well, as Helena doesn't know the difference, and either is fine.
• Land & Lakes spread with Olive or Canola oil:  This is an evolved version of the description.  "With Olive" is the preferred item, but during my previous trip no alternative was listed.  I couldn't find one with olive oil, so I had to make the dreaded phone call to inquire whether "with Canola oil" would suffice.  It did.

26 items in total, I was at the self service checkout counter.  What a mistake that turned out to be.  With items such as Cilantro, 2-3 leaks, white and yellow onions - these are items with no bar code - it would've been much quicker to have a cashier ring them out.  Halfway through scanning these items, I read the following alert on the screen:  "An unexpected item found in bagging area".  When I removed what I thought may have caused the alert, I got this alert:  "Item has been removed from bagging area.  Please return item to bagging area".  It took a couple of minutes to get the self service attendant to remove the alert so I could proceed.  I had too many items on the bagging area, and I had to put them in my shopping cart.  So the attendant showed me the proper way to do this:  Remove a bag, wait for a few seconds to get prompted for permission on the screen, then put the item in the cart.  If you do anything in between, you'll need an attendant's assistance.  An attendant call is about half as bad as calling your wife; a shameful admission of inadequacy, but not one you'd have to live with 'til death do us part.

So my performance today was top notch.  26 items and no phone calls to the wife for clarification, and no complaints about any items.  To get a perfect score, however, I would have to do all of this without the decode pre-shopping meeting.  I'm getting there.... but at least I'm not retarded.

Why French Parents Are Superior - WSJ Article

According to the Wall Street Journal article below by Pamela Druckerman (she has written a book on this), "While Americans fret over modern parenthood, the French are raising happy, well behaved children without all the anxiety."

Here are some highlights from this article.  The article is lengthy and goes beyond the excerpts below (entire Feb. 4th, 2012 article can be read here:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read):

• Middle-class French parents are zealous about talking to their kids, showing them nature and reading them lots of books. They take them to tennis lessons, painting classes and interactive science museums.  Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time." French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves.

• One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat. (French kids consistently have three meals a day and one snack around 4 p.m.)

• Delphine said that she never set out specifically to teach her kids patience. But her family's daily rituals are an ongoing apprenticeship in how to delay gratification. Delphine said that she sometimes bought Pauline candy. (Bonbons are on display in most bakeries.) But Pauline wasn't allowed to eat the candy until that day's snack, even if it meant waiting many hours.

• It's a skill that French mothers explicitly try to cultivate in their kids more than American mothers do. In a 2004 study on the parenting beliefs of college-educated mothers in the U.S. and France, the American moms said that encouraging one's child to play alone was of average importance. But the French moms said it was very important.

• Could it be that teaching children how to delay gratification—as middle-class French parents do—actually makes them calmer and more resilient? Might this partly explain why middle-class American kids, who are in general more used to getting what they want right away, so often fall apart under stress?