A glimpse of pink sky lured me outside. Rain was still steadily falling and I cradled my camera under my tee shirt. The rest of me could get soaked to the bone but I would keep the lens dry. An amused neighbor chided me to be careful with my equipment while I, obsessed, captured the sky. A moment later, it was gone.
Somebody got into the markers again.
AMAZING little windowsill visitor who sat patiently while I opened the window and screen and leaned way out to capture him. Dragonflies have the most expressive faces and beautiful eyes. Simply gorgeous.
The snack stash for day one of the Roadtrip of Insanity was planned with Strangely Orange Snackfood Appreciation Day (SOSAD) in mind. Last year I was focused simply on the color orange and on creating a front-yard picnic - which came complete with a surprise appearance from a unicyclist, which seemed appropriate. This year I pondered what, exactly, makes an item's orange color strange. Is it how naturally-derived the source of dye is? The relative expectedness or unexpectedness of its color? So much orangeness to consider.
We started out our journey with single-serve packs of Goldfish Crackers all around. Orange, but not really strangely orange, since one does often expect cheddar to be that color, and it's not exactly fluorescent or anything. Examination of the ingredients list reveals the source of color to be annatto, a red dye derived from tropical achiote trees. It's the only natural dye believed to cause as many allergic reactions as artificial dyes do. In some Central and South American countries, achiote seeds are used to make body paint. I'd say that makes these achiote-tinted crackers interestingly orange.
Strangeness quotient (SQ): 6.5
Our next orange snacks were consumed following an oh-so-healthy lunch at a conveniently-located Cracker Barrel in Fayetteville, NC. I had packed treat bags of orange candies, leaving one behind for Dan with a little bow on it and taking the other 4 along in the cooler. No, I did not give them the whole bag to eat at once. Do you think I'm crazy? I mean, ok, we know I'm crazy, but I'm not STUPID crazy.
What was in those bags...
Assorted orange Jelly Belly jellybeans - I love candy stores that allow you to pick your own flavors. Tangerine, orange sherbet, sour orange, plain orange, orange soda, peach, cantaloupe. While I kindof expect a candy product to be brilliantly colored and I also expect those brilliant colors to come from super-artificial dyes, none of these colors are unexpected for their associated flavors, so on that front, orange jelly beans are not strange. BUT if you buy them from candy shop dispensers, you don't get a package with ingredient information, and scouring the internet for longer than I'd like (about 10-15 minutes) has revealed NADA about the dyes used in Jelly Belly beans. Shame on you, JB, for the opacity of your nutrition information! In this day and age, that is very strangely- even if predictably - orange, indeed.
SQ: 9
Trident Tropical Twist gum has the scary-chemical ingredients list you expect from chewing gum, so we'll give it a pass for the plethora of dyes it contains, including Yellow 6 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 5, Red 40, Yellow 6, and Blue 1. I'm not sure how they get all that dye into the gum, and yet a single piece still feels ridiculously tiny in my mouth. Which is ok, because the hideously "twisted" "tropical" fruit flavor would be unbearable in a larger dose. Gross, but not strange; this gum is disgustingly orange.
SQ: 5
I found orange slice hard candies at the shop. No idea what's in 'em. They're orange. And they look like oranges. And they can't possibly have anything weirder in them than the gum. Nearly boringly, if somewhat cutely and probably unnaturally, orange.
SQ: 3
The candy shop also had bright orange chocolate clown fish, which were too fun to pass up and too gross to actually consume by people over the age of 3. I expect that these are made of something similar to Wilton Candy Melts. Wilton doesn't fess up to anything other than "artificial color." Gee, you think? Artificial? While I get that these are clown fish, I don't get why we (and by we I mean you freaky candy people) feel the need to make clown fish from chocolate. And orange-colored chocolate? Just wrong. WRONG. Unadvisably orange.
SQ: 11
We next snacked at kitchy, sketchy roadside attraction South of the Border in Hamer, SC. The overtones of racist sentiment and complete tackiness of this location merit a +1.5 adjustment to the SQ values of all foods consumed here.
Orange slices were first up. Yes, actual slices of an actual orange. I know, I know, eating actual food rather than "snackfood" on SOSAD seems to violate the spirit of the day. When the kids are older and have only themselves to blame for the sugar-and-MSG coma, they can establish their own SOSAD traditions. Until then, we will pay at least lip service to good health. Anyway, the only thing strange about this orange was that it was a navel orange, which always creeps me out a bit. Other than that, it was very expectedly and naturally orange.
SQ: 0.5 / ASQ: 2
I purchased my first-ever bottle of Vitamin Water for this trip, reasoning that it was at least a touch healthier than swilling orange soda or Tang, and I did want my kids to be hydrating on our hot road trip without also topping off their HFCS reserves. This stuff amuses me - it's healthy because it's water! It has vitamins! Ok, but it's sweet, and it's orange. How healthy can it be? Its parent company, Glaceau, claims that it's "for more responsible hydration." Ooooookay. It apparently owes its watered-down fluorescent-orange color to carotene, which comes from carrots, right? Sure, or microalgae in Texas. At best, dubiously healthy and disconcertingly orange.
SQ: 8.5 / ASQ: 10
Cheez-Its are a staple in the strangely orange canon. It's not just that they're orange, it's the intensity of the orangeness. This deep color is evidently intended to imply "lots and lots of cheese" in each cracker, but the ingredients list (kudos to Nabisco for making it easy to find) indicates that the true source of this hue is paprika. So they're orange like cheese and the dye comes from a relatively natural, non-allergenic source, which is also added to chicken feed to make yolks darker. Huh. Three cheers for food science. I think wild extrapolation to "Cheez-Its are health food!" is called for here. Awesomely orange. SQ: 2 / ASQ: 3.5
Easy Cheese on pretzels was a big fan favorite last year and made an encore appearance at this year's celebration. This is another food that uses natural-ish dyes (are you as shocked as I am?), including both annatto and apocarotenal. The food itself is pretty strange - I mean, semi-liquid cheese in a can? Seriously? Who comes up with this stuff? Who eats this stuff? (not me, I leave it to Griff). Kraft claims that its product will "brighten up any day," but we were unable to put this statement to the test, since the day was already disgustingly, glaringly bright and hot. Or maybe the cheese works simply by carrying it with you. Hmmm. Unconcerningly orange, albeit strangely conceived. SQ: 3 / ASQ: 4.5
I think that just about rounds it out for this year's orangefest, with Vitamin Water and orange chocolate clownfish emerging as the clear leaders in strangeness. What orangeosity will next year bring?
wee
- e.e. cummings
I wait for this all year, and in keeping with today's word, I'm gonna make you wait for the actual picture of the day, too. The one above is just a sweet teaser. Can you guess what it is?
:: My first memory of one is from when I was three.
:: They have a texture like nothing else.
:: I won't touch any of the spin-offs available the rest of the year.
The first one of the season entered the house today, and boy did I have fun playing with the way the sun sparkled on it. Give up? Wanna see the official picture of the day?
Griff also got something he was looking forward to today, but he gets to enjoy it on a much more regular basis:
Griff is so moody lately. He's acting like a teenaged girl with PMS; he has a hair-trigger temper, yells at us and his brothers, argues with us frequently, bursts into tears just as frequently.
The arguments are crazy. One evening, he wasn't happy with being asked to bathe, so he kept seeking out the other parent to argue his case to them, back and forth. Just. Freaking. Get. In. The. Shower!!!! He gets really stubborn lately, insisting that HE knows the right information and that WE do not know...even though he's totally wrong. I don't want to get bogged down in debate, but it seems almost impossible to avoid it with him right now. He seems really hell-bent on doing exactly what he wants all the time, and if he's told it's not something we're willing to support (like having ice cream right that minute, no waiting) or if we try to encourage him to compromise for the sake of having harmony (like not running in circles around the basement and getting in the way of his brother, who was already riding his bike there), he either pouts or very defiantly does the thing he wanted to do. He's really not much of a "team player" in the family at the moment, which is frustrating because he's usually not like this.
The tears often take me completely by surprise. One day he found a couple of dead beetles in a corner of the basement and burst into tears. He was heartbroken that these beetles, which appeared to him to be babies, didn't get to live their lives.
At other times he's totally, almost annoyingly helpful or lovey-dovey. The intensity of all of these emotions and the pendulum effect of them is what reminds me of bad PMS. I'm wondering if we're gearing up for a BIG growth spurt. Or is this just part of being seven? Or both?
I'm not sure how to wade through this. He's often a really unpleasant person to be around, in a nagging kind of way. We've gotten more bossy with him because he doesn't seem to respond to nice requests or logical explanations any more - I have to be really firm in a very different way than I am with his younger brothers. It doesn't feel good but I don't know what else to do. I know it's all normal, but that doesn't tell me much about how best to respond. I feel like I keep getting into situations where we're pitting our wills against each other and I'm unwilling to budge on some things, so he sulks and cries and argues, and if he refuses to do something I feel like we have to yell at him and/or threaten something (like an earlier bedtime or taking away screen time) to get results. That kind of rule by demonstration of power over him is not how I want to live, but maybe it's just how things have to be with an older child? I don't know, gentle discipline in the older childhood years is totally foreign to me, and most parenting websites and books are focused on early childhood.
I knew today would be rocky; everybody went to bed late last night, which would mean overtired, moody kids today. Sure enough, a small thing turned into a big meltdown, and Griff glared and sulked and broadcast his anger loud and clear for me to receive. I eventually asked him if he'd like to paint with me, and suggested we paint "mad". What color is mad? He said black, I suggested red, too. We both added purple to our palettes. By the time we dipped brushes in paint, nobody was angry any more, although we did our best to make strokes that looked angry to us.
Griff borrowed my camera, reassuring me that he would wear the strap around his neck, and documented our work. His contribution for the day is his favorite image, cropped and enhanced. He's becoming handy with PhotoShop. Anger has Xs and slashes, muddied blacks and purples and reds mixed together, sharp spots and broken hearts.
Isn't it interesting that we often use the same colors for love?
(Fittingly, Griff himself put this word in the hat on day 1 of our challenge.)
The new yard continues to delight me nearly every day. If I believed in fate, I'd think this place had been waiting for me.
