Beaver Berries

I used to love raspberries. That ended this morning.

This morning, my world was turned upside down by my “OMG Facts” daily desk calendar.

Yesterday’s fact was amusing and inspired an ironic sense of hope for our world.

Tuesday, August 27 - The Bible is the most shoplifted book.

On the one hand, stealing is wrong. It’s right there in the top ten list in the Bible. But if you didn’t have a Bible, how would you know that? After chuckling awhile about that little factoid, I decided as long as the Bibles were going to be read and the shoplifters take the message to heart, I’m sure they will eventually rectify the petty theft.

This morning’s fact didn’t make me chuckle at all. It made me shiver.

Wednesday, August 28 - Castoreum, aka beaver anal juice, is most commonly found as a flavor enhancer in raspberry products.

You can read that again. I had to.

After I was done throwing out any raspberries and raspberry-flavored products we had in the house, I had a few questions.

For starters, WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL!!??

Also, HOW??? How in the wild, wild west did that unholy marriage even get considered in the first place, let alone put into practice??

“Hey, Bob, glad you’re here. We’re having a heck of a time making this raspberry jam taste like raspberries. We need some kind of flavor enhancer.”

“Have you tried using poop?”

“Of course we did. All kinds. We also tried mold, used motor oil, obviously beef intestines, and that black stuff that collects on the Waffle House kitchen floor under the griddle.”

 “Wow, I can’t believe none of that worked. You know, it just so happens I brought my pet beaver into the lab today. Should we see if he likes it?”

“Sure, let him at it… Oh, hey, wait, BOB! Don’t let him do that to the jam… what the… well now, wait a minute. Hmm…”

Unfortunately, that insane scenario is the most sane scenario I can think of as to how this could have happened.

And let’s back up to the part where it says beaver anal juice, is most commonly found as a flavor enhancer… I would really hope that it was most commonly found inside beavers, but apparently we’re using so much of it in our raspberry flavor enhancement activities that we’re now outpacing the giant tree-gnawing rodents.

Would it be worse or better if the labs were making synthetic beaver anal juice to keep up with demand? I mean, we are big fans of all-natural products these days.

Or did they mean that raspberry flavor enhancement was the main use for it? If that’s the case, then that would imply there are other food and/or drink products being enhanced with rodent butt juice.

I’ve never been more afraid to Google something in my life.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Do Your Job Like Nora

This is a message for all you kids out there. And also all you adults who act like kids. And really, also you adults who act like adults. This is a message for everyone, I guess.

This is a story about having pride in your work. This is a story about “Nora.”

Nora is in quotes there because I’m old and I didn’t write it down, so I’m only about sixty-five percent sure her name was actually Nora, but I’m rolling with it because calling her Hostess X makes this sound like a story about sci-fi or street drugs, which it is not.

You see, all three of our boys were out of the country over spring break last week, and my wife’s school district was holding spring break at the exact same time, so we were forced by parental law and basic common sense to escape by ourselves on vacation. We went to Tennessee and visited Memphis and Nashville. I would highly recommend both.

We have two good friends who have spent time in Memphis, so we got restaurant recommendations galore for the birthplace of rock and roll. We ate at Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. We ate at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken. We ate at Central BBQ. We ate at Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous. We had to unbutton the top of our pants a couple times. Totally worth it.

All of those places were amazing in their own right, but one place shined above all others – because of Nora.

Nora is the hostess at a little place called Itta Bena. It sits above B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street, and if you didn’t know it was there, you would never know, because it doesn’t have any signs. Literally none. We had to ask the bouncer at the door of B.B. King’s how to get there, and he told us to go around the corner to Second Street and go up the stairs with the blue awning.

The stairs looked shady at best, and when we got to the top, we were greeted by a blank door that looked equally shady. Thankfully, everything on the other side of the door was amazing.

Backing up to earlier that day, we were at the National Civil Rights Museum, in between chicken breakfast and rib lunch, when I got a phone call. I answered and a young lady asked, “Is this Mr. Schmatjen?” Now, you have to understand, with a last name like Schmatjen, we have a built-in BS detector when it comes to telemarketing. You automatically know if the person on the other end of the phone knows you or not.

If they try to pronounce it like any normal human would, I say, “What is this regarding?” If they pronounce it how my insane ancestors decided they would, I say, “Yes, it is.”

“Yes it is,” I said.

“Hello, this is Nora calling from Itta Bena. Just confirming your reservation with us tonight.”

“Umm… yes. Uh… we will be there. Thank you.”

I hung up the phone with a puzzled look on my face. I didn’t know Nora, and she didn’t know me, but she pronounced my last name flawlessly. My wife, who had been scowling at me for answering my phone in the National Civil Rights Museum, saw the look on my face and asked what was wrong.

“That was Itta Bena calling about our reservation, and she knew how to pronounce our name.”

“Didn’t you make the reservation online?”

“Yes I did.”

“Wow,” my wife agreed. “That is weird.”

When we navigated the speakeasy-type entrance later that evening and made it to the hostess desk, I had almost forgotten about it. But when I said, “Marc for two,” to the young lady that turned out to be Nora, she said, “Ah, yes. Mr. Schmatjen.”

“All right, time out. How do you know how to pronounce our name?”

Nora almost seemed to get a little embarrassed as she explained, “Well, before I make calls in the morning, I do a little internet research to see if I can figure out the hard names, because… well, it matters to me.”

My wife and I both complimented her on that, and then she showed us to our table. We then proceeded to have a phenomenal dinner in the little upstairs hidden restaurant. Itta Bena comes with my highest recommendation, even if your last name is Smith. The food was insanely good.

A few days later, after thinking about how strangely above and beyond Nora did her job, I called Itta Bena and spoke to her manager. I told him how impressed I was that she would take the time to do something that, most certainly, the world would never expect a restaurant hostess to do.

The norm would be for someone on the other end of the phone to ask for me by my first name and then apologize for not knowing how to pronounce the last name. I would then joke with them about how it’s a sight word, or that we should have bought a few more vowels from Pat and Vanna, and then we’d go on about our business.

No one, including myself, would ever expect you to know how to pronounce it when you see it. But Nora made the effort. It is a seemingly small thing, but when you live your life with a last name like Schmatjen, it turns out it’s a big deal.

It was a big deal to her manager, too, because he didn’t know she did that, and he was thrilled to hear about one of his employees shining at their job.

So, my challenge for you folks out there is to attack your job like Nora does. Don’t just show up and do your job. Show up early, stay late, and do your job exceptionally well.

And I said it before, but I’ll say it again – great job, Nora!

By the way, I never did catch your full name... Probably something like Nora Wegrzynkiewicz.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Financial Fitness?

People like Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman talk about the obvious benefits of “financial fitness” all the time. I’ve noticed, however, that no one ever talks about the literal, physical aspect of that term. The detrimental finances of fitness.

We have three teenage boys, and they are all athletic, so naturally they eat a lot. This didn’t come as a shock to us. We even had a cautionary tale from my mom about my senior year in high school. My two older sisters had left home for college, but my mom reported that year was her highest food bill year ever, with just one of us left in the house.

How can you tell if a teenage boy is sleeping? He’s not eating.

Son Number Two, however, has taken this teenage boy eating thing to another level. To heavily paraphrase a Garfield T-shirt I saw once: He’s into fitness. Fitness whole side of the fridge into his mouth.

Number Two bought himself a gym membership last year, and he pre-paid for an entire year because that was the best deal. It’s a relatively inexpensive gym, but it was still a sizeable chunk of money for a teenager to put down. We talked it over with him, then let him make the decision. I figured at worst it would be a good financial lesson to learn.

It has been a good financial lesson – for the gym. They are learning that if they offer my son a one-year, prepaid membership, he can go to the gym often enough to make it only cost about two cents per visit. Sorry, Crunch Fitness, you blew that one.

It doesn’t seem to matter what his day consisted of, he will end it at the gym. He goes to a two-hour lacrosse conditioning workout, and then heads straight to the gym for at least an hour afterwards. He’s a crazy person.

As you can imagine, he requires quite a bit of food. I did too, at his age, but here’s the difference - I never cared what I ate. I just wanted a lot of it. He’s following weightlifters and fitness instructors on social media and so now I have at least one teenager who wants specific food. Mostly protein.

I’m still lobbying congress for the inclusion of nachos on the healthy eating pyramid, so I tend to kinda zone out when he starts taking about macronutrients and grams of something or other per scoop of protein powder.

Here’s what I do know, though. Protein is expensive!

It was expensive before gas was ten dollars per ounce. Now it’s just insane. Combine that with the sheer amount he’s eating, and not even a 9-1-1 call to Warren Buffett could help us now.

The Costco bag of chocolate protein powder costs more than the set of tires I bought in high school for my Jeep. Add to that the two Costco rotisserie chickens he wanted for “this week,” that will only last him three or four days. And you’ve seen the Costco chickens. They’re the size of adolescent turkeys. They make grocery store rotisserie chickens look like someone oven-roasted a parakeet.

The other night I was cooking dinner on the stove – literally fifteen minutes before dinnertime – and he was standing beside me, frying up six eggs in a pan on the next burner.

“Just a quick pre-dinner snack, Dad.”

Fifteen minutes later, he ate a full dinner, went to the gym, and had a six more eggs and a thirty-seven-dollar protein shake when he got home.

I love my boys and everything, but I’m kinda looking forward to when all three of them are in college at the same time. Even with the skyrocketing cost of tuition, it still has to be cheaper than this.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Thankfulness 2019

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day traditionally filled with long-standing family arguments, overeating, and passing out on the couch in front of the football game.

Along with those essential pastimes, we have the popular tradition around the dinner table of naming the things for which we are thankful. Invariably, people (including myself) go with the big low-hanging fruit – family, friends, church, dark chocolate covered almonds, employment, first responders, good health, etc.

Nothing against all those very important things, but I think it’s a shame that we don’t have time to name everything we’re really thankful for before the turkey dries out and the gravy develops an impenetrable skin.

So, here’s my small list of some of the smaller things, in no particular order:

Cheese

Parking karma

Civil discussions on the internet (just kidding, never seen one)

The hours my kids are in school (always)

The hours my kids are home (mostly)

Dental floss

The beach

The lake

The pool

Swimming

Running

Sitting

Any time they got my order right

Ziploc bags

Phone flashlights

Opposable thumbs

Rolling luggage

Shopping carts that drive straight

Rock and roll

Deodorant

Paying for things with my phone

Bacon

Disney+

Fireworks

In-n-Out Burger

Boats

Good car defrost

Good shoes

Labrador retrievers

Refrigeration

Car backup cameras

The “What is this song?” feature on Google

Dave Barry

Tabasco Green Pepper Jalapeño sauce

Pork ribs

La Croix

Libraries

Getting to be a coach

Garbage disposals

Spellcheck

Tape, in all its forms, but most specifically duct

Elevators

Forever stamps

Toilet paper

The plastic things on the ends of shoelaces

Compound interest

Indoor plumbing

Insulated cups

Zippers

Discount printer ink that actually works

Garbagemen

Fortune cookies

Microwave popcorn

The five-second rule

Hot showers

The Little Caesars Pizza Portal

Tacos

The National League

Nachos

Bill Murray

Caller ID

Books

Amazon Prime

WiFi

Fingernails

Every day it’s not windy

Every day without a school project

It’s the big things in life, but it’s also the little things in life.

Have a great Thanksgiving,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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A Righteous Search?

The internet is an amazing thing. Prior to its invention, it was not possible for me to spend nine consecutive hours watching videos of the greatest plays in major league baseball history from the comfort of my own home office desk, where my legs have fallen hopelessly asleep like the rest of me should be because it’s three in the morning. But the internet makes that possible.

But for all the obvious benefits, I’m getting a little concerned that there may be some unintended consequences associated with having unlimited information at our fingertips. Especially when that information doesn’t seem to be vetted by anyone with an IQ above that of celery, as I discovered on a recent Google search.

For a reason that escapes me, I was Googling the definition of “righteous.”

The first result was an official-looking box labeled “Dictionary,” with the apparently official definition. I say apparently, because I was more than a little skeptical after I read the whole thing.

Being in the second half of my forties, also known as the “My Knees Hurt” half, I grew up with real dictionaries printed on paper and compiled in book form. They were large, cumbersome, comprehensive, and in all my years growing up and into adulthood, no single person I am aware of ever called into question the validity of a word definition found in one of these books. Dictionaries were, by definition, the bible of definitions. No arguments. If it says it in there, that’s how it is.

I even still have one on my desk, an arm’s reach from my computer, but most times it’s just easier and faster to Google a word. I’m re-thinking that laziness now.

The first definition of “righteous” given to me by Google seemed perfectly legitimate:

adjective

1.

(of a person or conduct) morally right or justifiable; virtuous.

"feelings of righteous indignation about pay and conditions"

OK, I’ll accept that. Makes sense.

Do you know what didn’t make any sense? The second definition:

2.

INFORMAL•US

very good; excellent.

"righteous bread pudding"

Um… huh?

I mean, I agree with the initial definition. I grew up using the informal US-based slang term “righteous” to denote anything that was extra cool. That’s not in question. It’s your choice of example sentence, dear Google, that I have issue with.

Bread pudding!? Seriously? You needed to come up with an example of something a hip, informal US slang user would say, and “this is some righteous bread pudding” was the winner?

No informal slang user, US-based or otherwise, has ever uttered the words “righteous” and “bread pudding” in the same sentence. I’m not sure where you’re from, or even what bread pudding really is, but I’m quite sure you’re not from Earth, and bread pudding has never been even remotely righteous.

This utter lack of common sense and culinary decency calls into question every single thing you might tell me ever again. You have lost my trust with your ridiculous example sentence, and driven me back to my trusty, tangible, paper bible of words.

I mean, I expect this kind of thing from Wikipedia, but not you, Google. I thought you were better than this.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to watching the highlights from every world series in history.

Righteous bread pudding! You should be ashamed of yourselves.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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A Vegan-Free Celebration

I just finally figured out the main reason I’m not a vegan. Besides their whole incomprehensible No Bacon policy, I mean.

It hit me this Sunday on St. Patrick’s Day. While 99.9% of Americans were joining me in celebrating our Irish-ish heritage, the vegans were left out again. I think this might be why many of them seem so bitter. Vegans are sadly incapable of properly celebrating anything.

There are two key components to a St. Patrick’s Day party. Green beer and corned beef. Assuming the green beer dye was not animal- or insect-based, the vegans could get half, and arguably, the most important part, Irish-ly speaking, of the celebration. But they can’t have the full-meal-deal, as it were. Corned beef is amazing, and they are missing out on it.

Corned beef is traditionally cooked with potatoes and cabbage. Those are vegan-approved, but not when cooked with the corned beef in the crock pot, as God intended. So, along with their green beer, vegans are forced to eat regular cabbage – probably uncooked and raw, knowing them – and boring potatoes with no butter, sour cream, or even bacon bits. Just dry potatoes with chives. Chives are meant to be held onto your potato bites by sour cream, nature’s delicious adhesive. They probably just fall off onto the plate or into your lap without it. That’s no kind of celebration.

And this self-inflicted holiday exclusion continues year-round. Thanksgiving turkey? Nope. How about some Thanksgiving tofurkey? There’s nothing to be thankful for there.

Christmas Cornish game hens? New Year’s polska kielbasa? Valentine’s Day milk chocolates? Easter ham? Cinco de Mayo carne asada street tacos? Memorial Day burgers? Independence Day hot dogs? Labor Day meat lover’s delight pizza? Columbus Day leg of lamb? Veteran’s day shish kebab, abalone, or meat and cheese fondue (your choice, because freedom)? Nope, nope, nope, and more nope.

And forget holidays for a minute. What do you do when you get the big promotion at work? Or for your anniversary, or birthday? You go out to dinner and you get the steak. Or the lobster. Or the crab. Or salmon. Whatever.

How does a vegan even celebrate good news? “Hey, I just found out we’re getting a huge unexpected tax refund. Let’s go out to dinner tonight. We’ll order the whole eggplant!”

I had never understood why vegans are always trying to persuade other people to join them on their meatless non-thrill ride. I mean, how can you go through life never eating pulled pork nachos? It doesn’t make any sense. In light of this new revelation, I think it might be a “misery loves company” thing.

Now that we know they’re secretly unhappy, I think it’s time we turn the tables on them. We owe it to every vegan we meet (meat?) to extoll the benefits of beef and pork products. If even one or two of them can finally know what it means to truly celebrate, it will all be worth it.

But be smart about it. Offer them some of your omelet or grilled chicken sandwich at first, just to start them off slow. Don’t start with baby back ribs or a T-bone. You learn to drive in a Honda, not a Ferrari.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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The Fourth in the Forty-Ninth

We are currently on vacation up north, spending the Fourth of July in the great state of Alaska, which we are told is actually part of the United States. Go America! We are having a great time and learning all sorts of interesting things in the 49^th state. We started in Fairbanks, where we learned that despite what Santa might have you believe, reindeer are just a slower, dumber version of caribou.

We also learned that Alaska’s state bird is not the eagle or the goose, as you might expect. It’s the mosquito, which sucks.

We then learned all about the Alaska highway system as we drove down to Denali National Park. It turns out, unfortunately, the state has not had an actively working road maintenance crew since 1911. Some of the potholes are pretty bad, but thankfully the larger ones are filled with unlucky cars and pickup trucks, so you just rattle right over the top of them.

Once we made it to Denali we learned about all the majestic animals that live in the park, and what a suckfest it is to be a caribou. The winters are bad enough, with forty-below temperatures and having to dig through snow drifts to chew lichen off rocks, all the while being pursued by wolves, but the summer and spring for the caribou are worse. That’s because in the summer, there is something called a nostril fly, and it does exactly what it sounds like. It flies up the caribou’s nose.

But wait, it gets worse.

They fly up the caribou’s nose to lay their eggs. The fly larvae winter in the caribou’s throat, and then the caribou coughs them out in the spring. There is simply no way around it - it just sucks to be a caribou.

There was nothing we could do for the poor beasts, so we jumped on a train and headed for Anchorage.

We learned that Anchorage has about 300,000 people, which is almost half of the population of the entire state. And all 300,000 residents have fireworks that they shoot off, beginning around 11:59 P.M. on July 3^rd and going well into the morning of the 4^th. I’m not sure why, though. You can’t see them.

That’s because, from a sunlight perspective, there seems to be very little discernable difference between midnight and noon here. Alaska is the weirdest place on earth in the summer. On our first night in Fairbanks, we accidentally let the kids stay up until midnight, because we all thought it was still five or six in the evening. Around 3 A.M., we realized that the sun had no intention of actually going down. It just sort of made a lazy circling pass near the horizon, then headed back up.

Consequently, we learned that Alaska has some of the crankiest, most sleep-deprived young tourists in the world, and also the best summertime vegetable growing conditions in all of America. No one understands this better than a gardening madman from Palmer, Alaska by the name of Scott Robb. (I mean he understands vegetables. I don’t know if he knows how cranky our kids are.)

We learned that Scott is the Alaska State Fair Giant Vegetable Champion in not one, not two, but nine different types of vegetables and melons, seven of which are world records.

Scott has grown (and somehow transported to the fair, presumably with help) a 138-pound cabbage, a 65-pound cantaloupe, a 63-pound celery stalk, a 106-pound kale plant, a 97-pound kohlrabi, an 83-pound rutabaga, and a 39-pound turnip, all of which are world records.

The amazing enormity of these vegetables leads to so many questions, not the least of which is, what the hell is a kohlrabi?

Scott also holds the state fair records for cauliflower (36 pounds) and watermelon (169 pounds), but those are not world records. That means at some point, somewhere in the world, some super gardener’s poor kids were forced to eat over 37 pounds of cauliflower before they could leave the table. The humanity!

We were not able to meet Scott Robb or his family, which is a shame, because I really wanted to be invited to their house for dinner, just to see if, as I suspect, they serve the salad in the bed of a Ford F-150. They probably have dinner rolls the size of couch cushions.

Oh, well. We’ll just continue to eat regular-sized food and dream.

So, anyway, today, as you thank God that you’re an American, you can also take pride in the fact that the pioneering, adventurous, giant vegetable-growing spirit is alive and well in this great country of ours.

You can also be thankful that you got more sleep than I did last night.

And that you’re not a caribou.

Happy Independence Day!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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The All-Cake Diet

I’m developing a new diet with the help of Son Number Two. It’s called the All-Cake Diet, and it’s mind-blowing. I’ll probably write a best-selling book about it someday.

Here’s how it works:

You start with a middle child who is the epitome of growth mindset and creativity. Make sure that child can play two or three instruments, is good at sports, can crochet blankets and sweaters, likes to shop for plywood and 2x4’s to build better-than-third-world-quality forts and structures, enjoys outdoor recreation and whittling, is good at puzzles, can rewire household electronics to make ad hoc surveillance equipment, enjoys blacksmithing and soldering, has a strong entrepreneurial streak, and isn’t afraid to make a working blender out of a water bottle, flattened nails, and a 3000-RPM DC hobby motor.

When you have that child in place, have them somehow develop an interest in baking cookies. Encourage this delicious new hobby as long as possible until the natural escalation occurs to cupcakes, and then finally, to full-scale cake baking.

At this point you will need to have shifted at least half your monthly grocery budget over to the flour/sugar/butter/cake mix line items.

Eat his practice cakes and tell him they are delicious, because they are.

When it’s his birthday, buy him books on cake decorating and a vast assortment of cake decorating tools. (At least enough to start one or two mid-sized commercial bakeries)

Be prepared to watch countless hours of Cake Boss and Next Great Baker, actually enjoying them, but at the same time marveling at how far down the spiraling vortex of entertainment we’ve traveled that these two shows even exist, and trying to imagine, if you had traveled back in time, how you would explain to your then-young grandmother that we now have multiple television shows about baking cakes.

Eat more practice cakes.

Take him to the craft store to buy something called fondant, which is, apparently, flat cake icing that does not need to be refrigerated and comes in a very expensive cardboard box, because there is no way anyone could justify charging that much for flat cake icing.

Eat more practice cakes.

Marvel at the volcano cake he decided to make for his little brother’s birthday, complete with an interior dry ice chamber to create “smoke.”

Take him to the store to buy dry ice. (And, obviously, more cake supplies.)

Eat a volcano cake.

Take a delicious one-day detour into the world of apple muffins, then return to cakes.

Learn, one morning, as he is measuring the driveway, that he plans to make a cake model of your house.

Spend the next few days cleaning up the kitchen non-stop as sheet cake after sheet cake come out of the oven and into the freezer in preparation for the big project.

During the build, hover in the kitchen to collect the cake scraps that get discarded during the house shaping process.

When the project is complete, invite the neighbors over to eat your delectable model home, which comes complete with the garage, backyard, pool, play structure, and even the dog.

The next day, thank the good Lord the house was too big to finish and there are leftovers.

Eat your garage for lunch.

So on, and so forth.

I’ve got to tell you, this new diet is amazing, and I would highly recommend it, especially if you’re as big a fan of cake as I am. I’m loving this, and I’m really seeing the results.

I am, of course, using the term “diet” in the sense of “what you eat,” and not “a way to lose weight.” Cake makes you fat.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat my front yard for dessert.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

My Dog is Full of Crap

A month ago, my entire world was consumed by dog pee when our new Lab puppy had a urinary tract infection. It was really great. She was expelling nine to ten times her body weight in urine every hour, fortunately only inside the house.

We got that cleared up with twelve rolls of paper towels and two cans of carpet cleaner for the house, and for the dog, an evil-smelling remedy of apple cider vinegar and Greek yogurt. Personally, I would have rather eaten the carpet cleaner.

Amazingly, even after ten days of ingesting that demonic concoction with her food, her poop remained normal.

All that has changed now.

Now, my world revolves around her poop. Now, a month after the pee issues cleared up, she is experiencing some issues in the bowel region. To put it in layman’s terms, we’ve got poopy puddles and potty problems, people.

By the grace of God, however, she has not pooped in the house.

{sound of me knocking on every wooden surface in the house}

I will spare you the less than appetizing details. Suffice it to say, her poop has been anything but normal lately. If you decide to visit our backyard in the next few days, I would strongly suggest bringing some hip waders and a military-style gas mask.

She’s also having trouble “going” all at once, and has been gracious enough to wake me up multiple times the last two nights to allow me to experience her GI tract problems with her. She’s so thoughtful for a canine.

I just hope this passes quickly, because I am out of ideas. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what she could have eaten that would be causing such bowel-related stress. She has been religious about sticking to the standard Labrador retriever diet. This past week she has only eaten:

Thirty sticks

Six pounds of leaves

One plastic outer coating off a cheap baseball, and half the stitches

Just under three acres of grass

One wayward hotdog, whole

Thirty gallons of pool water

Seventeen pounds of bark chips

A handful of lamb lung toasters –I am not making that up – Treats that consist of little pieces of dried lamb lung with waffle marks on them!

Three-quarters of a foam squishy ball

One pair of swim goggles

Fifty or so Rice Krispies

More or less half a roll of duct tape

Somewhere between six inches and a foot of polyethylene pool noodle

Thirty-six square inches of dog bed plush top fuzz

One paper towel

One Lego man’s head, with space helmet

Half a tennis ball

One gravity-stricken slice of a quesadilla, with sour cream, whole

Two feet of nylon rope

And approximately six hundred little shriveled red plum things off the ground from our neighbor’s tree.

Oh, and about five pounds of actual dog food. But she doesn’t really seem to eat that, so much as suck it in, the way a jet engine sucks in air.

I mean, who knows what could be causing this, what with such a strict diet? Your guess is as good as mine.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

History Lesson

A letter to Son Number Three’s Third Grade Teacher:

Dear Mrs. You-Must-Have-a-Metric-Ton-of-Patience-to-Put-Up-with-My-Child,

I wanted to send a quick note to explain Son Number Three’s lunch today. Of course, based on how we dressed our son today – in his flannel shirt, blue jeans with the rope belt, and straw hat - we are aware that it is the official third grade Rocklin History Week, and we’re celebrating everything 1800s.

We are super excited to be celebrating our third Rocklin History Week here at the elementary school, what with Sons One and Two already having participated when they were third-graders. Good times. We are not burnt out on this at all.

As you know, Son Number Three was required to dress all old-timey today and bring his authentic 1800s lunch to school in a bandana tied to a stick, instead of in his usual 2000s insulated lunch cozy.

I can assure you that in years' past, with Sons One and Two, their freshly-killed meat was haphazardly slapped between two slices of homemade hand-ground wheat bread, and those condiment-less sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper inside that dangling bandana, along with a Mason jar of creek water.

That’s just how we roll on Rocklin History Week. We’re all about authenticity.

So, I feel like I need to explain Son Number Three’s lunch today.

As you may know, he recently got a very non-1800s jaw-widening dental appliance installed in his mouth that is roughly the size of a minivan. As a result, eating standard foods has become difficult for him. He even has to cut his pizza up into little bites, which is obviously very un-American, and causing some family tension. It’s rough here.

So sandwiches – especially meat-filled sandwiches – are a thing of the past for him. Ever since the space shuttle Orthodonture docked in his mouth, he’s pretty much been eating pasta and apple sauce. As you can imagine, those are kinda hard to wrap in wax paper.

Fortunately, I was able to find an authentic 1800s solution.

Utilizing something called the World Wide Web, I did some research and uncovered the amazing and mysterious historical tale of Phineas Wooster. Based on what we know, and the substantial amount of information we don’t know, it is my estimation that Phineas may have been a time traveler.

Obviously, we’ll never know, but this little-known Rocklin-ite seems to have surfaced very suddenly in the mid to late 1800s right here in our hometown. Almost nothing is known of him, other than his strange propensity for stealing kerosene and whale oil from his unsuspecting neighbors, and his malodorous smelting operation.

(Side note: “Kerosene Thief” and “The Malodorous Smelters” would be good names for rock bands.)

What we do know is that he seemed to have an ahead-of-his-time knowledge of petroleum products and high tech manufacturing. Specifically regarding high-temperature plastics.

It seems crazy that this man isn’t a well-known Rocklin historical figure, but the internet doesn’t lie. He was a plastics innovator, almost one hundred years before plastics really made it on the scene. He made major strides in the areas of food preservation and storage here in Rocklin, and then he vanished as quickly as he arrived. He was rumored to have moved the entire operation to Ohio in the early 1900s, but that can’t be confirmed.

I have no idea why his line of amazing 1800s storage containers took so long to catch on after Mr. Wooster obviously pioneered the light weight, see-through storage container and rubber air-tight sealing lid right here in our proud little town, so many years ago.

But, again, the internet doesn’t lie. That totally happened.

So, anyhow, that’s why my son’s incredibly authentic 1800s Kraft Mac & Cheese and his true-to-the-time-period Treetop Apple Sauce were both in plastic Rubbermaid containers today. Just wanted you to know.

Oh, yeah. Phineas Wooster also invented Nikes and Spiderman socks. Crazy, right?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

WhichKraft

Have you been wondering how to get your aunt to gag over the kitchen sink while you and the rest of your extended family howl with laughter from the dining room? Of course you have, and you’re in luck. Just like at AA, it’s a simple twelve-step process.

Step One: Start a summer tradition of having strawberries at nearly every meal. Make sure that Son Number Two learns the recipe for the best strawberry dip ever, which consists of one 8-oz package of Kraft Philadelphia Original Cream Cheese (Since 1872!), and one 7-oz jar of Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme. (America’s Favorite!).

(This column is in no way sponsored by Kraft Foods, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Don’t be afraid to call me, Kraft Foods executives! Let’s talk.)

Step Two: Tell Son Number Two to make the dip, which for some reason he gets very excited about – maybe because he likes to cook, or maybe because the Kraft Foods fruit and berry dip is simply one of the best things in the whole wide world, thanks to the delicious, wholesome ingredients and quality craftsmanship of the good people at Kraft Foods. Thanks, Kraft Foods!

Step Three: While making a sandwich for lunch, accidentally drop the 30-oz jar of Kraft Real Mayo (with no artificial flavors!) mayonnaise off the top shelf of the fridge. Have it land upside down on the tile kitchen floor and break the lid. Marvel at the quality - not only of the entire Kraft Foods line of delicious products, but also the quality of their packaging - since the jar itself of Kraft Real Mayo did not break.

Step Four: Further marvel at what must be some sort of ingenious witchcraft mayonnaise containment technology developed by the obviously rocket-scientist-grade engineers at Kraft Foods, since none of the all-natural and delicious mayo escaped the jar, requiring absolutely no clean-up. Thanks again, Kraft Foods!

Step Five: Transfer the creamy and pleasantly ever-so-slightly-tangy Kraft Real Mayo to a GladWare Big Bowl 48-oz sealable food storage container and place back into the refrigerator. Rest easy knowing the quality microwave-, freezer-, and dishwasher-safe Glad container will keep your mayonnaise fresh indefinitely, thanks to their innovative and foolproof air-tight sealing technology.

(This column is in no way sponsored by Glad, or its joint parent companies, The Clorox Company and Proctor & Gamble, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Don’t be afraid to call me, Glad, Clorox, and P&G executives! Let’s talk.)

Step Six: Have dinner. After dinner, have your aunt retrieve the strawberries and Kraft Foods fruit and berry dip from the refrigerator.

Step Seven: Make sure your aunt has a life-long and vehement opposition to mayonnaise, but loves Kraft Foods fruit and berry dip, both of which are very similar in color and consistency, thanks to the rigorous quality control measures at America’s favorite food manufacturer, Kraft Foods.

Step Eight: Pay no attention to your aunt as she helps herself to the first dipped strawberry.

Step Nine: Notice the slightly quizzical look on her face at the same time you recognize the high-quality GladWare Big Bowl 48-oz container on the table that you filled with Kraft Real Mayo earlier in the day.  

Step Ten: Break the news to her that she just ate a spoonful of mayonnaise on her strawberry,

Step Eleven: Watch her set a new land-speed record to the sink.

Step Twelve: Let the hilarity ensue.

(Special thanks to the wonderful folks over at Kraft Foods and Glad et al. for making this all possible.)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Mule Svelte

It’s the New Year, so roughly 99.9% of us are currently “trying” to lose weight. I put trying in quotes, because really about 15% of you are actually trying with an actual plan and a measurable amount of willpower, and the rest of us are just talking about how we’re going to lose weight, and then eating fudge-dipped brownies.

At some point here I’m going to have to put the fudge brownie down and actually do it, though, because unlike most of you “I’d like to be skinnier” people out there, I’m the one that has to ride a mule.

In June I am supposed to get on a mule and ride it down a crack in the wall of the Grand Canyon. If I am even an ounce over two hundred pounds fully dressed, with shoes and underwear and everything, presumably the mule’s legs will fail underneath it and we’ll both plummet to our deaths, and naturally, seconds later you’ll all be able to watch the footage on Twitter and Instagram.

I think the mule tour company is trying to avoid that kind of bad viral publicity, so they won’t let me even get on the mule if I’m not under two hundred pounds. I don’t think they’ll even let me talk to the mule.

If I can’t go, then my mother-in-law won’t go. If she won’t go, then my son can’t go. If my son can’t go, I will never hear the end of it from my wife, and if my mother-in-law won’t go, she might make me pay for it – both literally and figuratively.

Basically, I NEED to get below two hundred pounds.

I can’t really start losing weight in January, because I still have Christmas cookies in the freezer that I need to finish off. We had too many around the holidays, so I wisely froze the extras. And they’re next to the tamales from the various youth sports fundraisers that I purchased, so I’ll need to polish those off too. Then there’s the seasonal holiday beers left in the fridge. You can’t serve those in the spring, and they’re not going to drink themselves.

With the chips and seven-layer dip at the Superbowl party, the Valentine’s Day candy, and the tamales I couldn’t get through in January, February is pretty much shot as well.

So it will be March before I can really commit to eating healthy again. At that point I will only have three months to lose the weight, so I’ll have to get back to eating mule salads for lunch. Mule salad is simply a bowl of iceberg lettuce topped with despair. I can’t wait!

I was at a party a few weeks ago - drinking seasonal holiday beer and eating a giant ham sandwich - when one of my friends suggested I join their team for the Tough Mudder race this year. The race is being held in June, the weekend before we leave for the Grand Canyon trip, and I was seriously considering it as a motivational aid to lose the mule weight. I was seriously considering it right up until the next morning when the effects of the seasonal holiday beer wore off. Then I remembered that I had done the Tough Mudder once back in 2011, and I don’t like throwing up. So that’s out.

I have been out running a little bit over the holidays, just trying to offset as much of the cake and pie intake as I can, but after forty years old, running comes with a price. Let’s just say if there are any calories in Advil, then that’s really working against me.

Before Halloween – the official start to the holiday eating season – I was trying to get a jump on the mule weight. I had implemented the mule salad lunch routine and lost about fourteen pounds, along with most of my will to live. Around that time I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in over a year, and he told me I was looking svelte.

That’s when I knew I had more work to do. Svelte is one of those slightly complimentary terms. People use it as a sincere compliment, but no one ever uses the term “svelte” to describe someone in really great shape. Fitness models are not svelte. They are ripped. Svelte means, “Hey, you’re not as fat as you were the last time I saw you.”

Unfortunately, after this holiday eating season, I’d give my left roasted chestnut to still be svelte. I found a vast majority of that fourteen pounds I’d lost, so I’m pretty much back to square one. Or in this case, round one. Svelte has left the building and won’t be back until early May.

Maybe I should call the mule tour company and give them the recipe for mule salad. If they can start working on getting my mule a little more “svelte,” maybe come June we can work out some sort of mule/rider combined weight average deal.

Or maybe I should skip the chips and seven-layer dip this year.

Naw... let’s not start talking crazy!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

It's a Good Day for Breakfast

Yesterday morning was a little strange. There we were, yawning and stretching, getting ready to start our day, just like any other. I was watching Good Day Sacramento, our local morning show, when Mark S. Allen jumped out of a news truck and announced he was on our street. He had a chef with him and they were ready to cook some lucky family breakfast.

I yelled to the kids, “Go, go, go! We have to be the first ones out the door to shout “Breakfast at my place!”

The kids said, “Huh?”

I yelled, “Just go!”

My wife yelled, “What are you yelling about!?”

I yelled back, “Good Day is here and they want to cook us breakfast!”

She yelled, “Huh?”

I screamed, “I don’t know… There’s a news van outside and they want to cook someone breakfast. Mark S. Allen just told us to run out and shout ‘Breakfast at my place!’”

She yelled, “Why are we yelling?”

I said, “I don’t know. I’m just excited. Let me calm down for a minute.”

Meanwhile, the three boys were already out the door and down the street claiming our free breakfast. I love them so much.

When my wife had fully processed the situation and saw Mark and Steve the cameraman coming toward our house, she looked back at me and began yelling again. “You’re bringing a camera into our house!?”

“No,” I said in a soothing voice, pointing at Steve. “That guy is.”

“Are you crazy!?” she yelled, “This house is a mess!”

“Are you crazy?” I responded. “Free food!!”

You see, this is one of the main differences between men and women. Back before cell phones and toilet paper, men and women had distinct roles. Men were in charge of the hunting and gathering, and women were in charge of keeping the cave livable, raising the children, and criticizing what the men brought home. After we all moved out of the caves and wolf attacks became less of a problem, those roles evolved. The man’s position as “hunter/gatherer” changed to become “dejected mid-level corporate manager,” and the woman’s role actually did not change at all.

Nowadays, no matter what modern roles we take on, those primal instincts are still with us. Take me and my wife yesterday morning as an example. We have switched traditional roles. She is now the underappreciated breadwinner and I am in charge of the cave and the three little cave people. Yet, when faced with a very primal situation, our true hardwired nature kicked in:

Situation - There is free food just outside our door.

My reaction – Go tackle it.

My wife’s reaction – “I don’t want all of the greater Sacramento area to see the inside of this house that you are failing to keep spotless! What if they come into the kitchen?”

“I think they’re going to have to come into the kitchen if they’re going to make us breakfast.”

“I really don’t appreciate this.”

See what I mean. True hardwired nature.

It was too late for my wife’s objections to matter, anyway. A storm front of energy in a suit and tie named Mark S. Allen was making his way into our house with our three boys in tow, followed by Steve the cameraman and Jesus “Chewy” Chavez, the owner/executive chef from Chewy’s Restaurant in Sacramento.

Any misgivings my wife may have had soon faded away. Great things began to happen immediately upon the invasion of our home. Chewy unloaded an entire restaurant of food onto our kitchen counters and began using our stove for a previously unknown purpose: making delicious breakfast. Honey Nut Cheerios do not require using the stove, so we had no idea. Chewy is a culinary genius. I love him.

In between hovering over Chewy and getting interviewed in the kitchen, we continued to watch Good Day Sacramento in the living room. It turned out there was another CBS news crew from Sacramento in our sleepy town of Rocklin that same morning. A man on the other side of town had gotten drunk and barricaded himself inside his home, possibly with weapons.

For some reason, my wife felt the need to go outside every once in a while to explain to our neighbors and anyone passing by that the deranged drunk man in Rocklin was not me. We only had a news van in front of our house for breakfast. And also, would any of the ladies like to come in and meet Mark S. Allen. I’m not sure why she felt like she needed to assure people that I wasn’t drunk at seven o’clock in the morning, or why she kept talking about Mark S. Allen and using his full name, but she did.

Speaking of Mark S. Allen, he spun around our kitchen and living room like a tornado of professional entertainment. He radiated pure energy. He sang. He danced. He played the William Tell Overture by flicking his fingers on a Number 2 pencil that he held between his teeth. (I am not making that up.) It was hard to look at him sometimes because he was glowing white-hot with awesomeness. At one point, Chewy ran out of burners on the stove and actually heated up some tortillas on Mark’s head.

I could see my wife visibly falling in love with him. I couldn’t really blame her, though. I was falling in love with him, too, after he managed to accomplish something in five minutes that I have not been able to do for ten years: he figured out how to make our children quiet. It turns out all you have to do is put a camera and a microphone in their face and they shut right up. If I had known that I would have bought a camera and microphone years ago.

Then we ate. And ate. And ate. Steve filmed us while we ate and Mark tried to interview us while we ate, but Chewy’s breakfast was so good we ignored them both. I was actually deep in thought about how to kidnap Chewy and keep him in my kitchen, but the show was live, so I figured it wouldn’t work.

When they had enough footage of us eating in silence, it was time to end the show. Mark had his work cut out for him on the closing segment as Steve filmed us waving goodbye on the driveway. Between the boys’ apparent camera-shyness, and the food coma we were all fighting off after devouring Chewy’s amazing breakfast, it was hard to get anything else out of the boys.

Mark asked Son Number Two how he would describe the morning, and my normally eloquent, well-read middle child responded, “Good.” Ever the tenacious reporter, he did not want to end on that lukewarm note, so he asked Son Number One to elaborate. Number One was able to stir from his impending nap just long enough to respond “Best breakfast we’ve ever had at our house.”

Ouch, man.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I totally agree, but let’s not announce that to the world on television.

Thanks again Mark S. Allen and Chewy. I love you both.

Steve the cameraman, let’s just be friends.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Pro Gluten

I am pro gluten. I just wanted to come out and set the record straight once and for all. I am not ashamed of my love for gluten, although, I must be honest, I don’t really know what it tastes like, or even what it is. Even though I don’t know what gluten is, I know for a fact that I love it. When I was a kid (actually, up until about two years ago) no one had even heard of gluten. That means everything that I ate was probably chock-full of gluten, and I loved everything I ate. Also, I think gluten may come from wheat, and I am definitely pro wheat, since wheat is a very important ingredient in beer. There is probably tons of gluten in beer, so gluten is obviously delicious!

There has been a lot of conflicting “data” over the years on what we should and should not eat. Take eggs for example. (I almost wrote eggs-ample, but I didn’t know if you would find it as humorous as I do. Probably not. Anyway…) Eggs have been alternately bad and good for us at least twenty times over my lifetime. Since I love eggs, I always bet on the come line and kept eating them, hoping they would end up being good for me. We are currently in an “eggs are good for you” cycle, so I’m feeling pretty good about my decision. In fact, I think eggs are now being listed as “superfoods” that you should eat every day.

“Superfood” is a new term, like gluten, designed, I guess, to really hammer home the idea that you are eating all the wrong things. It seems like there is a new superfood or a new thing you should never eat again coming out about once a week now.

Carbohydrates, which I think is another word for gluten, used to be an integral part of the food pyramid that they showed me in grade school. The pyramid has now been replaced by a pie chart, and carbs may or may not be good for you. They were bad for a while, but I think they are moderately back in favor, as long as your pie chart remains gluten-free. I’ll bet gluten-free pie sucks.

Fats are a mystery as well. Trans fats, which are unsaturated fats, are bad. However, saturated fats are even worse. But somehow, omega-3 fish oil fats are the messiah of proper nutrition. If omega-3 is a fat, it has to be either saturated or unsaturated, since those seem to be the two choices, so how can it be good? And how does omega-3, which apparently does everything from curing arthritis to making you smarter, affect my bad LDL cholesterol and my good HDL cholesterol? And if cholesterol in any form is bad in food, how do I have “good” cholesterol in my body. I’m made up of food!

I’m not sure where bacon fat fits in there, but since I am now supposed to be eating eggs every day, I must conclude that bacon fat is super-healthy, since it is impossible to eat eggs without bacon.

Speaking of breakfast, I also want to come out as being pro lactose. Lactose is another one of those things that no one had ever heard of until it was about to kill us all, and again, I don’t really have any idea what it is, but I know it’s found in dairy products, which are delicious. I know I am pro lactose, because I am also pro fresh milk, which makes me anti homogenization. I had milk fresh out of the cow once and it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted, besides beer. (We were having dinner at a friend’s family dairy farm, and he got the milk out of the giant stainless steel holding tank. We did not drink it directly from the cow. That would be weird.)

Breakfast is now supposed to include dark berries and Greek yogurt. I originally thought Greek yogurt was just regular yogurt that couldn’t pay its bills, but it turns out it’s really just yogurt that has been strained three times instead of two. That extra straining apparently really ramps up the probiotics, which are the very best thing you can put in your body. That confuses me, since antibiotics cure diseases, so they must be great for you. How can probiotics and antibiotics both be good for you?

The dark berries provide you with antioxidants, which are also the very best thing you can put in your body, besides probiotics and omega-3 fat. Antioxidants eliminate free radicals, which are obviously bad, even though being free and being radical are widely regarded as good qualities.

Today’s smart breakfast is a healthy balance of the following: Whole-grain bran, acai berries, blueberries, sardines, kale, walnuts, pomegranate juice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, lentils, kefir, Greek yogurt, steel-cut oatmeal, and stone ground whole wheat bread. And, obviously, bacon and eggs. That should take care of de-oxidizing any free radical biotics (pro or anti), and minimize the LDL levels in your non-lactose, de-gluten-ized fiber, both soluble and dietary.

Simple enough, although I do see one problem that is certainly looming in our future. Since gluten comes from wheat, and chickens eat a lot of wheat, our precious superfood eggs may not be entirely gluten-free. Just like the pregnant mother is not supposed to smoke or drink, the chicken surely must be passing some amount of gluten to the egg.

Our chickens may be free-range, but until they are fed a gluten-free diet, eggs may need to get back on the “bad for you” list for a while.

I guess we can all just substitute a few more slices of bacon to make up the difference.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!