DadCentric

The Art of Bagging Groceries

 It might not seem like an art.

But it was for me for a few years, and much like anyone who has ever served time in the food service industry, certain job skills you just can never seemed to shake...

I was a teenage bag boy. 

I worked at Snider's Super Market in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. I want to say I worked there for a few months in high school and then returned for a brief spell during my semester stint at the local community college while I transitioned from one college to another, but my personal history's archive can be patchy at best some days (and today is one of them).

I was inspired to think about this after a recent visit to my local grocer this past weekend when the bag boy - even though I asked, "Could you put all but the six'er of beer in one brown bag?" - delivered my $40 in goods in just about a bag-per-item. What the fuck was he thinking? Why would each item require its own bag? I think it is the curse of the plastic bag first and foremost: because they retain no form and provide so little function they beget the need for singularity.

My first hunch was to equate this with my current perception that most employers do little in the way of training anymore; training is almost always done on-the-job (OTJ) now. I remember spending days with the seasoned baggers, who not only told me how to properly bag a brown bag but also told me how to spot the big tippers. If you bagged dry goods from heavy to light and cold foods in the same manner (in a separate bag!), you'd get a better tip than if you just tossed anything and everything into the bag ad hoc.

And maybe that's the rub right there: baggers today have little incentive because few receive tips for their services anymore (correct me if I am wrong folks, but when was the last time you dropped a five spot on your helpful bagger?). Being a city market, Snider's pretty much required help getting to your car, so again maybe my rural lifestyle for the last decade and a half is reason enough as to why I don't encounter the veteran bag boy (nee person!).

Where have all the good baggers gone?

"You're Abe Froman?"

As The Sausage King of Chicago himself might have said if he ever showed up for lunch during that pivotal scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, everyone wants to be a wiener.

At least that's the case for the 200 or so porker wannabes who entered the Hillshire Farm "DadCentric Has Got Your Meat Right Here" giveaway in the past week.

So who is our lucky winner, chosen at random, of a year's supply of tasty Hillshire Farm products?

Find out after the jump ...

DadCentric Has Got Your Meat Right Here

Of all the dad blogs out there, we here at DadCentric have the meatiest posts. That's why we are proud to announce your chance to:

WIN A YEAR'S SUPPLY OF
HILLSHIRE FARM PRODUCT(S)!!

That's right.

Lots of Beef Polska Kielbasa (yummy when stewed with crushed tomatoes and black and red beans)!

A grill full of Beef Smoked Sausage (also awesome in jambalaya)!

All the Lit'l Smokies (my fave -- just add some spicy brown mustard) your arteries can stand!

How To Get A Six-Year Old Boy To Eat His Asparagus (With Apologies To Britain's Greatest Hero)

 Fatherhood inflicts changes, big and small. Along with the alterations in lifestyle (no more getting up to go surfing at 6:00 a.m. on weekdays, no more watching porn on the big-screen at 8:00 a.m. on Saturdays - thanks a lot, NickToons), there are the physical changes. One that I've noticed: a slight tic in the right corner of my right eye. Unlikely the permanent weathering (the streaks of gray hair), the tic occurs intermittently, and under very specific circumstances. It kicks in during dinner time, when I admonish my son for having the eating habits of a 19th century British sailor. The kid manages to survive on bread and water. He rarely eats meat. And the only vegetable he'll eat without the threat of punishment - peas. And yet he manages to do well in kindergarten and at karate. I'm telling you, he'd have kicked some French ass at Trafalgar.

Last night, the tic was back in force. This time it was asparagus. The rest of us - even my two-year old daughter - love it. Steamed, with a bit of crunch - it's become a staple. But Lucas still steadfastly resists eating it. I try the usual tactics, and receive his usual responses:

Flavor: "It tastes good! You know what it tastes like? Green beans mixed with broccoli!" (These are two veggies that he does begrudgingly eat.) His response: "I don't like those." Me: "Yes you do." Him: "Not mixed together. That's gross."

Health Benefits: "Asparagus has lots of vitamins! Vitamins will help you to be really good at martial arts, and skateboarding, and soccer." His response: "Uh, I already AM good at those. Without eating asparagus. Also, you give me Gummy Vitamins, so I don't need any more."  

No Dessert: "No asparagus, no dessert!" Him: "Dessert's not healthy. You want me to eat healthy things like asparagus. So I shouldn't have dessert anyway, right?" Me: "Damn your Vulcan logic!"

I could see failure looming on the horizon, another battle over asparagus lost. Then, a thought. A desperate gambit, one fraught with all sorts of peril. This would be my culinary Inchon. Seize the fire, said the great Admiral Nelson.

"Asparagus makes your pee smell funny." Out of the corner of my twitching eye, I saw Beth glare at me.

Lucas lit up. "It DOES?" He tore into the asparagus. 

EPILOGUE: THE NEXT MORNING

"Dad! My pee STINKS! Asparagus is cool!" Thank God I have done my duty, I thought.

Ba-gok!

It’s true what they say, kids grow up fast. One second they’re little blankie-bundled burritos, you turn around and they’re underfoot demanding that you make them a burrito. "With smashed beans and cheese, Daddy!" Turn around again and they’re making burritos for other people at the local burrito joint, and secretly snot-rocketing into the burritos of rude customers. Except my kids are still in the single digits so I haven’t gotten to that third turn-around yet. But I suspect it goes something like that.

But you know who really grows up fast? Chickens! A few weeks ago, my wife and I became the proud, um owners? Parents? Guardians? of a gang of baby chicks. As I type this, an almost completed chicken coop sits in our backyard, a project which I must finish before they reach full size, which at their current rate of growth will be any minute now. Seriously, I wake up in the morning and they’re bigger than they were when I kissed them good night. For the time being, they live in our garage, contained within the cage that was once our youngest child’s crib. Yes, it’s one of those evil drop-sides, but I don’t think it poses much danger to its current occupants.

The chickens were an instant hit with the boys. “Wanna see the chicks!” is a constant refrain around our house. On the first day we had them, my two year old snatched one up by its fuzzy little head as if he wanted to hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Thankfully, it lived to cheep another day. 

We have fresh eggs in our future, but that’s not all. “After they’re done laying eggs,” my wife said, “we might have some....decisions to make.” It was a dinner time conversation. “I mean, I guess we could just keep them as pets forever, or we could--”

 “No!” I said. I blurted it out without thinking, a total kneejerk reaction to what I knew she was getting at. It’s not that I have some profound bond with the chickens, but the thought of actually killing any of them brought out the squeamish in me.

Were we eating chicken that night? I can’t remember.

But I thought about it a little. From whence comes my reluctance to bring the axe down with my own hand? I eat chicken on a fairly regular basis, so by one means or another I’m contributing to chicken death already. Why not do the deed myself? In a sense, it’s putting my money where my meat-eating mouth is. And perhaps there’s a little lesson for my little dudes in there somewhere, something about how our food actually comes from somewhere and doesn’t just appear out of nowhere and the circle of life and, I don't know, stuff. I looked across the table at my wife.

“We may need a chopping block.”

Baby Unneccesities: Highchair Excess

As a public service to the DadCentric community, we occasionally look at items parents are brainwashed into thinking they and their little ones can't live without when -- trust us -- they really can. This series is called Baby Unnecessities. Our latest installment looks at overly expensive and complex highchairs.

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Since I lived in a galaxy far, far away from my parents back in my children's days of Gerbers and dry Cheerios, we'd hop on a plane a few times a year so the wee ones could have some grandparent time. To make these adventures easier on us, we bought or borrowed a few duplicate pieces of essential baby gear to leave at their place for these visits.

Among these items was a highchair.

Was it some trendy French designed/German engineered model featuring space-age alloy plating and titanium trimmings?

Did it have 64 height settings and 37 reclining options?

Was it turbocharged with solid-state, digitally fuel-injected DroppingsAlert!^TM Seating that automatically sets off warning lights and sounds to notify you when certain items find their way onto the cushions (food -- whole or partially chewed: green light, bike horn; beverage or urine: yellow light, waterfall effect; vomit or poop: brown light, 128-decibel air raid siren)?

Say What?

 It was a quick visit from my parents this weekend but they always seem to leave me with something.

My mom has been a bookkeeper at local parochial high school for over twenty years. She told me over brunch of quiche lorraine and eggs benedict that she was going to retire at the end of the school year.

I asked her what she was going to do with herself after she retired and my father answered, “Bug me.”

She laughed and then said she didn’t know. I told her she might need a hobby. My mom’s Scottish decent does not allow her to sit idle for very long. A busy body who is best satiated when either on the move or in the midst of something.

My dad’s vocation takes him around the world so I’m sure many travels await them. I say vocation because from my understanding my father does not draw a salary for his position, yet most of what he does is expensible. He, for all intents and purposes, is basically retired and has been so for years. He whittles away his free time on crossword puzzles and watching Phillies games during baseball season.

And then sometime goes to places like Korea, Lithuania or Australia.

My mother said maybe she’ll be like my father, who meets with a group once a week at Panera Bread for conversation.

“We’re Romeos,” he informed me.

“Say What?” I said.

“Retired Old Men Who Eat Out,” he said.

And once again the old adage rings true: you learn something new everyday.

Thoughts That Count

They are shades of me. They are living, breathing and bittersweet memories of an innocence past and an ignorance lost.  There is Christmas in their hearts and they keep it always.

Bells - they ring.  Songs - they sing. I watch them in their revelry from a far away place, floating like fog through their treetops.  Their smiles are laced with icing.  Their breath is of candy canes and gingerbread.  Their hair sparkles with glitter beneath lights strung forever.  They know nothing but merry.  They know naught but the now.  They nestle snug in their beds and they breathe in the magic. 

I exhale slowly.

What to Buy Dad For Christmas: DadCentric's 2009 Gift Guide For Dads Who Are Awesome

This year, as we've done in the past, we're offering up some suggestions on what to get for that special dad in your life. Some of the things listed below were sent to us for review, some we purchased ourselves (don't worry, People Who Worry About Disclosure, we'll sort it all out at the end of this post), and some are just things that we dream about (those will be painfully obvious, like last year's Scarlett Johansson Robot Maid). And now, with the wonder of cell phone Internet browsing, you can peruse our suggestions while nursing a tryptophan and Pinot Noir hangover and waiting in the line to get into your local Wal-Mart, a line that's approximately the length of the Great Wall of China. Happy Black Friday!

A Mother's Arms are Made of Tenderness and Children Sleep Soundly in Them

Heat, as an extreme, exists only in a relative sense.  It is the hottest thing they have ever known and therefore it is the hottest thing ever known.  I tell them that it is not, that my coffee is actually hotter, but that doesn't soothe them, it only makes them question my sanity as they slowly dare a second sip of their lukewarm chocolate.

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My back hurts.  I've been carrying too much for too long.  For six weeks I've been living as a single father - a single work-at-home-dad.  It has been incredibly hard and surprisingly easy.  I am better for it and I am tired and I am badly beaten. 

My work has suffered.  My 70 hour work week has been cut to less than forty - compiled from a series of minutes torn apart from hours and tucked between goodnight kisses and the taste of warm whiskey across my lips.  The clock moves always forward.

Chores once shared have become mine alone.  All nights are long and lonely.  All mornings are early and full of songs and frustration.

I do not believe that I have achieved anything worthy of praise or pity, only reflection.  Others face obstacles greater than mine on a daily basis.  They make the most.  They do their best.  They are stronger than I ever thought I was and when I sip from my glass the toast is to them.

But this is not their life, it is mine and while I was prepared and up to the challenge, it was unexpected in both timing and time.  From the frying pan to the fire is not a lateral move.  The heat is extreme and it is all relative.

Tomorrow my wife comes home after six weeks sitting at the bedside of her ailing father.  Six weeks of tears and whispers and shouts in the night.  Six weeks of walking in the shoes of a girl much younger.  Bedside seats are lessons in love and fear and the art of turning fond old memories that weren't. That is a chapter not yet closed.  Those wounds are still open.  He will still have a beside in need of sitting and she will carry her thoughts accordingly.  Her back will hurt.

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They do not expect her.  They have grown accustomed to the missing of their mother.  Six weeks is a long time gone and a father doing the best he can is still just one kiss goodnight no matter how much laughter fills the day or how much work is left to the forgotten.

Tomorrow will seem but another day to them, the routine of living with some parts missing.  They will be safe and loved and slightly lost.  She will be on a plane six weeks delayed and her dreams will be of little boy kisses grown wet with salt and the slightest linger of lukewarm chocolate.

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The title of this post is a quote from Victor Hugo.