Swim school makes headlines for letting kids compete
Aug 7, 2009 News
I should be in bed right now. But I forgot to do laundry earlier in the day. I had plenty of chances. I knew that The Ass was out of undershirts. The laundry was already sorted and it would have taken only a minute to start the load. But I never got around to it. Until 1am. And so, here I am, reading Fark at 2 in the morning, waiting to put the laundry in the drier so that I don’t get woken up in five hours when The Ass can’t find it in the washing machine.
But I didn’t post to bitch about laundry. I’m posting to bitch about stupid grown-ups. A swim school in Australia has made headlines because they’re going to hold an event where kids swim against each other. Where there will be winners and losers. The fact that this is at all notable is just sad.
I remember winning a bronze medal when I was on the swim team in 7th grade. I won a silver in 8th grade. I was a good swimmer. I pretty much sucked at every other sport. I was only played in vollyball when we were ahead by so much that we couldn’t lose or behind by so much that we couldn’t win. I’m not sure if my softball team, the Buccaneers, ever won a game.
Winning felt great. Losing didn’t. I needed to experience both, so that I could learn how to handle both.
Know what sucks more than losing? Not losing until you’re an adult and have no fucking idea how to handle it.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Australia, Kids, self esteem, swimming
No shoes, no service for 6-month-old at BK
Aug 6, 2009 News
I have way too much to do today to be posting about this. To tell you the truth I have too much to do to even be reading the news online. But I needed to take a break from catching up on emails and work. Not so much of a break that I stepped away from the computer though. 
According to Momlogic, a mom and her baby were told to leave a St. Louis Burger King recently by a manager because the baby wasn’t wearing shoes. Baby. Six months old. No shoes. I’m guessing (hoping?) the baby wasn’t even eating anything (although trust me, I’ve seen it happen – I waited until a respectable year or so to feed my kids fast food fries, so anything less is irresponsible). But the manager insisted they leave.
I’ve worked in two fast food restaurants, a McDonald’s and an Arby’s. The managers were a mixed bag. The GM at Arby’s spent most of the time in the bathroom. We couldn’t tell if he had an intestinal problem or a coke problem, but either way he was MIA most of the time. It was a really small restaurant so he was pretty much it as far as bosses went. Working there was fun. There were practically no customers and I spent a lot of time eating curly fries right out of the bin. That particular Arby’s doesn’t exist anymore, to nobody’s surprise.
McDonald’s was a lot bigger, and a lot less fun to work at. They took that “Time to lean, time to clean” saying seriously. They even had us in once, sans pay, for a cleaning party. I was 18 or 19 and didn’t know any better. I felt like I was pitching in. Yes, pitching in to help the international multi-billion dollar corporation for free for eight hours. No, I don’t know what I was thinking either. I was supposed to work there for an entire summer, but only lasted six or seven weeks. The last straw was when I almost passed out working the grill because it was against corporate policy to let us have drinks in the kitchen. God, I hope things have changed.
The managers there ranged from the young blond go-getter assistant manager who I’m sure is running McDonald’s University right now, to middle-aged guys who weren’t smart enough after 20 years to have moved past assistant manager, to “Dry Biscuit.” He was the regional manager, in charge of half a dozen restaurants. Old people would come in occasionally and ask for a dry biscuit, one that hadn’t been slathered with butter-like topping right out of the oven. We would have to cook an entire pan of new biscuits in order to serve one dry biscuit. It was a huge pain in the ass. Hence, the nickname.
The store’s manager was a really nice guy, who seemed very smart. But he was too worried about his job to make waves with corporate over silly things like keeping the employees hydrated in the 100-degree kitchen. He knew it was a stupid rule, but he had a family to feed. If he had been a little less smart, he could have been the type of rule-following manager to kick out a baby for a health-code violation. That’s all it takes for dumb shit to happen: combine a person with power (and yes, in the world of fast food, the manager has power) with someone who isn’t smart enough to make judgment calls, combined with someone who’s scared of getting fired, and you’ve got a baby kicked out of a Burger King.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: baby, Burger King, shoes
Mind-blowing bravery
Jul 22, 2009 News
I just happened upon this video on CNN.com. Even though I read the article first and knew how it ended (that everyone was saved from the flaming car and the little boy – while badly burned and in critical condition – is expected to recover), I still watched it with my heart in my throat, tears running down my cheeks. A few seconds’ difference, it could have turned out much worse. People burned and cut themselves and risked their lives to save three people they didn’t know. You hear stories like that, but to actually see the chaos and despair and incredible bravery and disregard for personal safety is a rare glimpse into what happens when ordinary people are called upon to do extraordinary things.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
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Tags: burning car rescue, CNN
High-schooler diagnoses herself in science class
Jun 11, 2009 News
I just read a pretty amazing story on CNN.com, about a high-schooler who diagnosed herself as suffering from Crohn’s Disease. She had been having stomach pain, diarrhea, and other symptoms for eight years, and doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. She was looking at slides of her own intestines under a microscope in science class, and she saw something irregular. Her teacher took a picture and confirmed the find, and while this very smart young lady is relieved to finally know what’s wrong with her, I’m sure she’s wondering the same thing I’d be wondering: why didn’t all of the doctors and pathologists miss this for eight years? What if it has been something fatal, and she had found out too late? There’s no cure, but at least she could have been treating it all that time.
I can really sympathize, because I got dizzy spells all through my childhood and into my early twenties. I would tell my teachers and my parents, but they weren’t really happening frequently enough to fall into a discernible pattern, and nothing was ever done about it until I was living in North Carolina (The Ass was in law school, and I was working in a hotel) and they were getting worse and more frequent. They were happening a couple times a month, and some lasted a few hours. Everything would spin, I would sweat this horrid smelly sweat, and I would feel really nauseous. I went to a couple of doctors who didn’t help me at all. One told me that it was because I was a vegetarian, that I wasn’t getting the proper nutrition. That didn’t sound right to me. The next doctor said that I could be hypoglycemic. I didn’t know what that was and did some research, and it sounded totally plausible. But then my blood tests came back fine. Dammit! The only thing worse than being sick is being sick and not knowing why.
But wait, I told him, you did the blood tests while I was feeling OK. Wouldn’t you have to do the tests while I was dizzy? He said that was nonsense. I found another doctor. She took me seriously, and couldn’t believe that the last doctor hadn’t taken the timing of the blood test into account. She gave me strict orders that the next time I got dizzy, I would have to drop everything and get a ride to her office ASAP. It didn’t take long until that happened, at work as luck would have it, and I headed straight for her office. She took some blood, and the results told her that I could be hypoglycemic. This is kind of, but not exactly, the opposite of being diabetic (and much much easier to deal with). I have only the most basic understanding of what’s going on (I only cared so far as knowing what I had to do to change it), but in a nutshell (and possibly wrong): if you’re diabetic you don’t produce enough insulin and can’t process sugar, so you have too much sugar in your system. But if you’re hypoglycemic, and you eat too much sugar, you produce too much insulin, and your sugar level plummets. So both are caused by too much sugar, but the body’s reaction is totally different.
The solution? I had to give up sugar for six long months. At that time, I was eating sugary cereal every day, and drinking a lot of regular Coke, and eating whatever desserts I wanted. And I was rapidly becoming a fat ass, a precursor to my post-pregnancy fat-assness. All of that had to go. I was so sick of being sick, I did it. I did not cheat even once in six months. It sucked, but the dizzy spells stopped right away. After six months (long enough to know without a doubt that that was the problem, since there’s no difinitive test for hypoglycemia) I was able to start adding sugar back slowly, to see where my threshold was. I never went back to regular pop and have been a Diet Dr. Pepper addict ever since. I rarely have sugary kids cereal now, and save the sugar for dessert (I’m eating some chocolate ice cream as I write this).
So, I’m not sure if I could have done more when I was younger to figure it out. Maybe if the internet had been around back then.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
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Tags: Crohn's Disease, diabetes, Diet Dr. Pepper, hypoglycemia
Did Bret Michaels just get smacked in the head?
Jun 7, 2009 News
I’m watching the Tony Awards on a bit of a time delay, and in the opening number, Brett Michaels didn’t make his exit in time. But flying set pieces wait for no man, and he got smacked down pretty good.
Here it is in close up.
A few minutes later, host Neil Patrick Harris said that Brett Michael’s was OK, thank goodness. That would be a terrible way to go. Imagine having to explain that in the afterlife. “Oh, really? Cancer? That’s too bad. I got decapitated at the Tonys because I was so busy basking in the glow of a live audience that I forgot my choreography.”
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Bret Michaels, Brett Michaels, Tony Awards
