Archive for In My Humble Opinion

Saving the Oregon Spotted Frog

March 22, 2012 · Filed under Frogs and Snails and Puppy-dog Tails, In My Humble Opinion · Tagged , , , ,

“We are going to save The Frogs!” Teddy announced yesterday as he arrived home from school. What I heard was, “Mom, I need 20 bucks!” He proudly presented a round, pink paper-maché pig, which, in his little mind, made perfect sense in connection with saving The Frogs. Although the details were sparse, the connection in my mind was clear: Teddy’s school needs more money.

Let’s just say I wasn’t too enthusiastic about throwing money at frogs. The kids’ pizza order forms are still lying around on my desk, waiting to be filled. Our friends are going to Thailand and are asking for our support. The Kidney Foundation wants our money, as does the Humane Society. Our el Cheapo BBQ needs to be replaced, Caleb has no summer shoes, and some months our grocery bills are dangerously close to the four-figure mark. I don’t need another thing to throw money at. (Did anyone notice that I stifled the urge to include rising gas prices in my list?)

At supper, Teddy finally filled us in on the details, which were surprising to say the least. Apparently the Northern Leopard Frog and the Oregon Spotted Frog are both endangered in North America. The fact that the kids are learning about endangered species is not surprising to me. What is surprising, is that the kids are supposed to fill that pig with money raised by the sweat of their brow. In other words, they’re supposed to work for mom and dad’s support! I have decided that his teacher is a genius.

What makes her even more of a genius is that she’s asking every child to raise – get this – one dollar. Not $20. One dollar. I had to read that several times to be sure I hadn’t misplaced the decimal in my mind. Given that Teddy and his classmates have been primed to seek work vacuuming, clearing the table and drying the dishes, I can get a lot of mileage out of this buck. He received a quarter for clearing the table after supper yesterday. This morning he helped Sam clean out the dishwasher (Sam’s morning chore) in hopes that it would garner him a dime. All of this from a kid who, together with his brother, earned almost $10 picking up sticks from the lawn during March Break. To be specific, Teddy and Sammy picked up 960 sticks, which, at a penny per stick, added up to a handsome $9.60. Teddy was already earning $1.00 picking up sticks when he was five or six years old, so this assignment seems almost too easy.

I suppose his teacher has to consider the lowest common denominator though. Our children learn to work almost from the time they can walk upright, whereas some of the 7 and 8-year-olds in his class have probably never made the acquaintance of a kitchen towel. Kudos to the grade 2 teachers at Teddy’s school for reintroducing the long-forgotten idea that kids can do real useful work to raise money for a cause they believe in.

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C’est L’amour – the Fall-Out of Valentines Day

February 15, 2012 · Filed under Frogs and Snails and Puppy-dog Tails, In My Humble Opinion · Tagged , , ,

Buster Brown Valentine postcard by Richard Fel...

Image via Wikipedia

The only thing more frustrating than wasting err… spending precious time on February 13 making your child’s Valentines for his classmates, is finding every single Valentine still in his backpack when he comes home from school on February 14.

I didn’t realize how much pent-up frustration I still held from the previous night’s mad dash to finish something I do not believe in to begin with, but let’s just say Valentines Day at our house became a little less sweet beginning at 3:30 in the afternoon when everyone arrived home. “Sammy, what’s this?!?!?” I asked, both surprised and annoyed.

“Oh, I forgot.” He answered.

Nice try, my boy. There is no way he could have forgotten when I spent the night before urging him on toward the goal of at least writing his name on all of the cards, by painting a mental picture of how he would get to be the mailman the next day and distribute all his little letters in the kids’ mailboxes.

On the morning of February 14 I led him to his backpack, showed him the bag full of Valentines, and again enthused about how today was going to be a great day where he would get to hand out all of his Valentines just like the other kids.

You may ask why all this enthusiasm is necessary. I’ve already learned that our Sammy’s middle name is Apathy when it comes to things like this. The canned goods I sent in all came back home in his backpack. “I forgot.” His library book collected about 25,000,000 Air Miles riding back and forth in his backpack before he finally returned it. And now, we have over 60 Valentines in the house: Teddy’s received Valentines, Sammy’s received Valentines, and Sammy’s undistributed ones. I know you’re all laughing at the poetic justice of it all.

I should have known something was amiss when he was unwilling to go into school yesterday. He quietly confided in me that he didn’t want to hand out his Valentines. A shy boy, he probably feared having to go out on a limb and personally wish everyone a happy Valentines Day along with his little offering. I explained that he only needed to put them in the kids’ mailboxes when everyone else was doing the same thing.

Knowing that he is sometimes blissfully unaware of what’s going on around him because he has his head stuck in a fantasy world involving paper fish and possibly fire-breathing dragons, I figured he probably doesn’t really get what’s supposed to happen with those Valentines. So we went in together and I talked to his teacher, explaining that he was nervous for some reason and might need a bit of help handing out his Valentines. His teacher, an exuberant woman who does not have an introverted bone in her body, simply exclaimed, “Oh, he’ll be fine. It’s you who looks nervous.” Little did she know that I had a vested interest in those blasted things, am fully aware of my son’s track record in these types of things, and had just picked up our two-year-old off the ground after he had gone down a wet slide wearing only cotton pants.

My guess is, that while all the other children were happily putting their mothers’ carefully prepared Valentines into all their friends’ mailboxes, our son was either eating a cupcake (blissfully unaware) or playing with the dinosaurs in a corner (also blissfully unaware).

Maybe we should have just used the undistributed Valentines as fire-starters this morning and saved ourselves the hassle. Although, living with the guilt of having transgressed the 11th commandment would be too much for me to bear.

 

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C’est L’amour

February 13, 2012 · Filed under Frogs and Snails and Puppy-dog Tails, In My Humble Opinion · Tagged , , ,

I just finished the single-most futile yet somehow obligatory task in all of motherhood: my children’s Valentines cards. Combined, we completed over 40 this year. And yes, the kids did help. A little.

This afternoon (Feb. 13) at 5:00pm I found myself browsing through Shoppers Drug Marts’ assorted Valentine offerings along with all the Dads who had left the task to the last minute. The funny part is that I am not a Dad, but a Mom who is supposed to love Valentines Day and all it stands for. I’m supposed to be the torchbearer of all things sappy and pink in a household where my gender is outnumbered 4:1, but I just cannot do it. In my mind, Valentines Day and this ridiculous tradition of handing out a Valentine to every child in the class could be done away with, beginning immediately.

Being the saintly mother that I am, however, there I was standing in the drug store trying to decide on whether to throw my money away on Dinosaur Valentines or (official) NHL Valentines. The Dad next to me was on his cell phone with his 6-year-old: “How about Hello Kitty? No? Tinkerbell?… Ummmm, pink, it looks like… The Tinkerbell ones are Pop-Ups. No? So Hello Kitty then? Ok, I’ll keep looking.”

I wasn’t about to let my kids make the choice between dumb and dumber, and so I went with the non-licensed character Picture Search Valentines for Teddy, who would love that type of thing, and the Dolphin Pop-Up Valentines for Sammy, who would also love that type of thing. Had I realized that the pop-ups aren’t actually built-in, I would have dropped that box like a hot potato.

While Teddy went about preparing his Valentines like a seasoned pro in a chicken processing plant, Sammy needed more guidance (this being his first Valentines Day, after all). He was so taken with those dolphins that all he wanted to do was play with them. I repeatedly reminded him that his only task was to sign his name, which he did to the best of his ability. My tasks in preparing those Valentines included:

  •  punching the 20 dolphins out of the cardboard
  • matching the correct dolphin to the correct card background (which took some figuring out, seeing as there were 8 different card designs and 8 different dolphin types – Yay!)
  • bending the little tabs to fit into the little slots of the cards
  • carefully finagling them through the little slots
  • ensuring that each dolphin would actually pop up
  • securing the card tops into the little tabs to keep it closed
  • addressing it to the lucky classmate who would receive this token of Sam’s affections.

The hilarious thing is that Sammy has no interest in actually giving Valentines to girls. Just this morning he was telling me that girls only gave to girls and boys only gave to boys.

If only this were so, my Boy.

The truth is that there is this unspoken 11th commandment that says “thou shalt prepare a Valentine for each child in the class of thy progeny with a view to each child’s fragile self-esteem and the other parents’ esteem of thee. Shouldst thou disregard this immovable law, thou and thy child shalt be smitten with the knowledge that thou wast the only family to not participate in this most sacred Elementary sacrament.”

So every year I put it off until the very last minute, finally haul my reticent rear-end to Shoppers Drug Mart on February 13, and spend the evening helping my children complete a task that they really cannot be expected to do by themselves at the age of 4.

I asked one last-minute Dad whose children are in grades 5 and 2 whether there was any end in sight to this madness. He didn’t offer me much hope, saying that the tradition was still alive and well in his daughters’ grade 5 class. I’ve done the math, people. If this blight lasts until grade 6, I will have spent 12 years buying and preparing Valentines that will only end up in the recycling the next day (at least if the other homes are anything like ours). For 7 of those years I will be responsible for more than 60 Valentines.

I think it’s time to start a revolution.

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Mrs. Trefz Steps Out

November 10, 2011 · Filed under In My Humble Opinion · Tagged , ,

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

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It’s not often that I, a mild-mannered housewife, get to defend my citizenship to a gun-toting US Customs and Border Protection officer. “What are you doing en’ering the Uuunited States at 7:21 in the evenin’ M’am?” What I wanted to say was, “Actually we were planning to enter the Uuuunited States at 6:30pm, but your search of our veHicle changed all that.” What I said was, “We’re going to Walmart in the States because it’s cheaper than the one  in Canada.” Cringe.

This is a faith-based response, of course, since my knowledge of Walmart in the States is limited to www.PoWM.com and what friends have said about their prices. My esteem of Walmart the company is shaky at best, based on some of the company’s dubious business practices, so this venture constituted a leap of faith and a bending of principle. Sigh.

Still, with out-of-country family here, a trip “over the river” is in order. It’s not often that I get to go shopping with my two German Sisters-in-law. My feelings about the value of shopping are well-known by those close to me, but my love of my husband’s sisters is equally strong, so I said yes. Besides, Christmas is just around the corner and I would love to check some things off my list.

The problem with cross-border shopping is two-fold for me. The first problem is the “cross-border” part. My dislike of the border is largely based on one experience Oliver and I had there where he was interrogated and almost arrested for reasons that were actually quite straight-forward and benign, but in line with US CBP protocol, were made very complicated and menacing. It was probably not the first time a newly-wed young couple, as innocent as the dawn, sat in the friendly waiting area of US Customs, wondering what they’d tell their Small Group Bible Study that night about their reasons for not attending. “Umm…Oliver was arrested at the Border this afternoon so we won’t be able to make it. Yeah, something about him being suspected of transporting a kitchen countertop in the trunk of his car. We’ll explain later.”

The second reason cross-border shopping is problematic for me is the “shopping” part. I shop like a man: I know what I want, I look for that thing, and I get out. If I’m looking for a pair of boots, I’ll figure out what I want and how much I want to spend before I go, walk into the store, and begin the search. If the first few pairs I see cost $80 or more, I will turn around and walk back out because the chances of me finding my $25 pair are exactly zero. Why would I continue looking? I don’t care if there is a cute ankle bootie with fur trim, because I wasn’t looking for that, so it is irrelevant. Actually, I am the subject of a ground-breaking study that explores a rare defect on the X chromosome which causes this type of odd behaviour is some women. They’re not sure though whether this behaviour is chromosomally linked or a learned behaviour based on a lifetime of not having extra money to spend on things that are not actually necessary.

Given the above reservations then, on November 7, 2011, Mrs. Trefz decided to step out to do some cross-border shopping with “the girls.” I had been told by cross-border shopping friends that “all you need is your license” to cross, so I dutifully left my expired passport at home. Having renewed my license not so long ago, I assumed it was equipped with the advanced technology necessary to meet the new border regulations of the US government. It has some silver key-like graphic on the front. It looks high-tech enough to me.

Alas, it isn’t, and the friendly US Customs Agent explained that my license is missing “the carrots” on the front (no joke), which would indicate that it has advanced features. So basically he’s telling me that my futuristic silver key on the front doesn’t cut it, but that I need carrots. Seems backwards to me, but whatever. “We’ll just do a quick search of your car, ladies, if you’ll just pull into that bay right over there,” he informed us.

“Any sharp things we need to be concerned about?” the next CBP officer asked. Thankfully my metal nail file had been seized at the airport a few years back, so we assured them they’d be fine. While sitting in the well-appointed waiting area my nervous sister-in-law (the car’s owner) wracked her brain, trying to come up with anything that might be considered contraband. Short of a dirty diaper and stale Cheerios she came up with nothing. Neither did the Customs agents, although we did get a bit of a scare when the inspecting agent came walking in with a large unmarked brown paper bag. As it turns out he’d bought subs for the night shift gang.

Three separate times I was called to speak to an agent to explain where I was born and what proof of citizenship I could come up with and whether I was trying to facilitate anyone else’s entry into Canada. The only time I got nervous was when they wanted to know my husband’s name (see above for reason why). Perhaps they were concerned that I had come to finish the installation of the countertop that he had allegedly tried to smuggle into the country 10 years before.

The question I was asked most frequently was, “have you ever traveled into the US with your passport, M’am?” My answer was always the same: “The last time I traveled into the US was before your new passport laws came into effect, therefore I have not had occasion to carry my passport with me when traveling into the States.” During my third interview I mercifully remembered that yes, we had flown out of Buffalo to visit Germany once back in 2006, and I would have had my passport with me then. As it turns out, the people at US Customs keep good records, and proof of my citizenship was found. This despite the fact that Canadian officials had assured them that Debbie Trefz is not a citizen of Canada. This after I have sponsored a spouse, voted in every conceivable election, and taken in a fireworks display on July 1st.

With the issue of my citizenship cleared up we were released from custody and allowed to proceed to the promised land of great deals. As became evident to me last night, however, a “good deal” is relative. When one is used to buying clothes at a typical Canadian mall, then the offerings of an American Outlet Mall seem like a good deal. For the person used to spending no more than $6.00 on a pair of pants at a thrift store, however, even a clearance rack won’t yield anything competitive. I’ll leave it up to my readers to decide whether Mrs. Trefz is the former or the latter.

Needless to say, the Outlet Mall yielded no deals that measured up to my high standards (pun intended), and so we proceeded to Walmart, the apparent Mecca of cheap Lego. We kept our eyes pealed for any PoWM sightings while scanning the Lego section for possible Christmas gifts. I am here to tell you today that an exhausting err… exhaustive one-night survey of  Walmart’s Lego section revealed that a Lego set costing $39.95 at Walmart in Canada costs about $39.95 at Walmart in the States.

Hoping that I might yet snag a deal on Playdough (another Christmas gift on my list) I stood in front of the Playdough section for far too long, trying to actually like any of their three sets.

By 9:45 we were all tired and ready to go home. In total, my selection of “hot deals” included a $5 set of Hot Wheels for a Samaritan’s Purse Shoe box, and two kids DVDs for $5 each.

Back at the border we declared our total purchases to the Canadian official: about $40 between the three of us. “Have a nice night,” he said, and waved us through. And so it was that on November 7, 2011, Mrs. Trefz stepped out.

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Teaching Conservation at the Bottom End

July 13, 2011 · Filed under In My Humble Opinion · Tagged , , , , ,

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I blurted out as I saw the pile of toilet paper on the bathroom floor. “Please don’t tell me you use this much every time you wipe!”

I know, I know. Not exactly a good way to start an open and honest conversation about conservation with my son. Let’s just say I was surprised since I’m pretty sure we’d had the conversation about how many squares will do for a poo. Apparently I was mistaken, in which case the teachable moment had arrived.

Perhaps some background is in order before I continue. I grew up with a father who puts the conservation efforts of most of us to shame. He still keeps the sleeping quarters a chilly 17 C in the winter, since “we’re not up there during the day. Why should we heat it?” (They live in their rec room where there is a wood-burning stove.) So when I was a child growing up, I remember mom explaining to me that 2 squares are all you needed for a pee and 4 for most poo’s.

This probably sounds ridiculous to most readers. I remember thinking that we were the only family to ration toilet paper. (I’d love to hear from others who did the same!) Now that I am grown up and buying my own toilet paper, I understand why it made sense for a family of six with four children in private school.

I realize that for most people, toilet paper does not constitute a big slice of the family budget, but consider the environmental cost of toilet paper production:

  • Each day, 27,000 trees are razed to keep up with the global demand for clean bums. This number is increasing as sanitation improves in developing countries.
  • The global average per capita use of toilet paper is 3.8 kg per year. That’s about 76 2-ply rolls per person. The American average (as if you didn’t see this one coming) is 23 kg per person per year.[1]

Translation: the average American bum (let’s include our own rear ends here) requires 460 rolls of toilet paper each year to feel clean, while Mr. Joe Global can get by with 76 rolls. Either we are just “letting it roll” like I witnessed my 6-year-old doing the other day, or we’re very busy making toilet-paper flowers for wedding cars.

As with many things in life, our attitudes are shaped while we are young. Gone are the days when we can just do (and let our kids do) whatever comes naturally and pretend that our actions have no consequences. Yes, kids will waste water when they wash their hands because it’s just so fun to play with running water. Yes, our kids will thoughtlessly unravel yards of toilet paper and flush it down the toilet. Kids are not responsible adults, and that’s OK. It’s our job though to train them up to be responsible adults, and that always starts by being that responsible adult ourselves. Once we are leading by example we can set the bar higher and expect a little bit more from our children as well.

Just in case this still isn’t making any sense, allow me to explain it like I did to my son the other day. Imagine the world and its resources are like a bowl of Jell-o. You know how much you love Jell-o and how much your brothers love Jell-o. How would you feel if Sammy ate most of the Jell-o and only left a little bit for you and Caleb? If everyone takes their fair share of the Jell-o, then there will be enough to go around.

Let’s think twice before we stuff our collective faces with Jell-o today.

[1] Source: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6403 AccessedJuly 13, 2011

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Go Paperless?

July 7, 2011 · Filed under In My Humble Opinion · Tagged , , ,

The message reaches our ears almost daily: Go paperless! Sign up for e-billing, save the environment , and blah blah blah… Honestly, while I love the idea of going paperless, I just know I’d be forgetting to pay 75% of my bills on time. The only reason I remember is because there they are, cluttering up my kitchen counter. I look at them every day until one day I snap, and in a mad cleaning frenzy, pay all the bills. Discreetly send me my bills via e-mail and they won’t get paid. Marking messages as “unread” doesn’t clutter up my kitchen counter.

 There are many cases, though, where I would wholeheartedly support going paperless:

“   CanadaPost-delivered high-gloss junk mail: Go paperless.

“    Offers to bundle my phone, internet and cable: Definitely go paperless.

“    Rate change notifications from my insurance company: Please go paperless.

I realize that by going paperless these companies will not get my attention. That’s the point.

 The last one in my list sounds like a perilous notice to ignore, but I disagree. To be accurate, it’s not really the notice I’m opposed to – it’s the ridiculously small amounts they change my rates by that irks me. Some clock-watcher at head office charges me a $0.75 service charge to raise my rates by $0.79, and then mails an 8.5 x 14 sheet of paper at a cost of $0.59 explaining everything in painful detail. Really?

 With all the cash this company is forcibly seizing from their cliens’ collective bank accounts, they cannot afford to absorb a $0.79 rate hike until December 31? It’s no wonder the company’s costs (and my premiums) are going up when it costs more for them to prepare and mail out a piece of correspondence than they stand to recover in premiums.

 As it is, it seems my insurance company is still stuck in the stone-age when it comes to effective use of resources – paper being one of them. For crying out loud, I’m kept busy trying to wade through the deluge of papers the school sends home; I don’t need this nonsense.

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Teachable Moments on Two Wheels

July 1, 2011 · Filed under In My Humble Opinion · Tagged , , ,

Does anyone else out there wish they could use their car less? I have a feeling that given the choice, many of us wouldn’t mind parking the car and saving some cash. For those of us living in suburban North America, however, that is easier said than done. According to a 2005 Statistics Canada report, the average Canadian spends 63 minutes (roundtrip) commuting to work every day. Few of us live within walking distance of a grocery store, and quite frankly, our kids’ activities keep us on the go as we shuttle them to and from swimming/music/dance lessons.

Contrary to what we might think, however, we do have a measure of control over our use of the car, especially in the summer months. During these precious snow-free months, I want to put out the challenge to get creative about how we chose to get around with our families. Walking is an obvious choice (at least for our family…), but how about that ca. 1984 Supercycle in the garage? ‘Tis the season to park the minivan and get the family saddled up on bikes! With a few accessories and a bit of creative planning we can promote the bike from simply being a leisure activity to a feasible mode of transportation from point A to point B for the whole family. All it takes is a bit of thinking outside the car-shaped box.

Our three children range in age from 2 to 6, and only the 6-year-old can ride a bike. A few years ago we invested in a two-kid bike trailer which cost about $120 and has more than paid for itself in gas savings as we have biked hither and yon with our younger children inside. The great thing about the trailer is that it continues to be useful even as the children grow out of it, because it can haul a load of groceries!

As the children grew old enough to sit on a two-wheeler (but not yet accomplished enough to keep up), we attached their little bikes to one of our adult bikes via a bar called the “Trail-Gator” (handed down to us, but available at Walmart for around $85). The great thing about this bar is that it attaches the child’s regular bike to an adult bike quickly and easily, and can just as easily be removed again.

The final accessory I find useful as I do errands on muscle-power is a good-quality bike lock, available for $20 – $30. This past week I have locked up my bike at Shopper’s Drug Mart to buy toilet paper, the Medical Lab to take care of blood work, and Happy Rolph’s Bird Sanctuary on a picnic with the family.

The total price tag of about $225 for all of the above may seem a like a lot, but consider how much it costs to fill up the gas tank on most minivans ($60 at least). By the end of the summer you will have easily spent $225 on gas alone. Compare this to the number of years you will be using your bike and your accessories, and you may find it worth your while. My bike, for instance, is over 15 years old and hasn’t needed a single repair or drop of gas. I’d like to hear anybody say that about their car.

When it comes down to it, choosing the bike over the car, for most of us, is a matter of convenience. We would rather drive to the gym and work out than hop on our bikes to go buy milk at the Avondale. If we are serious about calling on big industry and government to cut emissions, then we must be willing to change our own attitudes about the things that are in our power to change.

I’m not sure how much money I saved on gas this week, nor how many emissions were not emitted from our van’s muffler. I don’t know how many calories I burned riding my bike to places I would normally drive to. What I do know is that our kids are learning something as they see our family choosing the bike over the car whenever possible.  As we sat on the picnic blanket at Happy Rolph’s we couldn’t help but notice the canopy of beautiful trees overhead. We began explaining to the children how God made trees, animals, and humans to co-exist in a beautiful balance – how we are dependent on one another in so many ways. We found ourselves explaining to them how the destruction of global forests is affecting our climate, which caused some obvious distress. The teachable moment was right; our kids are beginning to understand the significance of small choices like walking to school or riding their bikes. Let us be intentional about instilling these common sense attitudes in our little ones while they are still under our influence.

*Note: To read a related article I published in the St. Catharines Standard on September 9, 2008, please follow this link.

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