A poll... to fold or not to fold...

I would consider myself to be a pretty good aunt--I'm always willing to draw from my wealth of child-rearing knowledge when my sisters and brothers ask for advice on how to teach their kidlets. Who am I kidding... my child-rearing "knowledge" comes from watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 and occasionally playing with my nieces and nephews. Whatever. In any case, I was more than happy to receive (and respond to) the delightful email quoted below.

[Note: if you are easily offended by potty humor or general references to bodily functions, stop reading now for your own safety.]

"Hello family members,

A critical question - to fold or not to fold, that is the question.

Franklin and I have been having an argument over how to teach Kaitlin to wipe her bum (we apologize if you find the topic of this email embarassing) - so the question is - do you fold or wad your toilet paper? Franklin folds and I wad and we are wondering if we were taught this by our mothers and if our siblings are the same. Also, if you have children, what have you taught them to do?

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
The management."

I submitted the following response:

"I say fold. Wadding is for barbarians. Goodbye."

Paige, my fake sister-in-law, replied with the following:

"Well, if Catherine really wants to know how everyone does it, then I say wad. Folding is totally superfluous."

Christina, my sister, responded:

"Sorry Paige, I have to disagree. When you wad, there are always anomalies in the wadding. Some places will be many layers thick while other layers will only be one layer thick. Invariably, your kid will have a single layer between his/her bottom and his/her finger/thumb . . . and the microbiologist in me just shudders to think about the microbes that the kid, who may or may not wash his/her hands after every bathroom visit, now has all over . . . .

Of course, that's just my opinion. :-)"

Amelia, my other fake sister-in-law, disputed with the following:

"I am all about how long it takes. Folding takes so much more time than wadding AND with a more rough surface I find that wadding wipes better. To prove my point I have to say that I never take more than one wad to wipe while I hear Justin pulling toilet paper up to FOUR times, and folding the paper to wipe. And no matter if your child's hand gets a little poo on it while they wipe, that's what washing hands is for. Plus, any mom has gotten pee and poop all over their hands a million times from changing diapers, so it really isn't that horrible to get a little bit of your own poo on your hand and then wash it right off. I actually believe that folding makes you more susceptible to getting wet. A folded piece of toilet paper with no air in-between folds gets saturated through way faster then a wad with air and scrunches and that's a scientific fact that anyone can test.

Basically wadding is the only way."

Lastly, my sister-in-law submitted:

"this is one choice that you give to the child. just tell them to deal
with themselves and then wash their hands.

shelly

ps kent refuses to dignify this poll with a response. there are way
better things to fight about."

I now submit the question to you... do you fold or wad, and if you are willing to respond... why?

Please don't get banged up...

Please make it there in one piece...

Who says parents don't love and protect their children?

My family frequents the Chinese Cultural Center near the Phoenix Airport for random Taiwanese meals, dim sum, and delicious Asian supermarket treats. During one of our recent visits, we were happy to discover that the CCC would be having a celebration for "Zhong Qiu Jie," aka "Mid-Autumn Festival."

After treating ourselves to an appetizer of scallion pancakes and strawberry slushies with boba (anyone who served in Taiwan should now be salivating...), mom, Ron, and I made our way towards the performance area to meet with my brother and his family. I quickly abandoned my plan of sticking with mom and Ron after mom began pushing/elbowing her way through the dense crowd in an effort to get to the coveted/mostly occupied seats in front of the stage. Refusing to associate myself with such pushiness, I cased the perimeter of short Asian people straining their necks to see the stage in a quest to find the rest of my family members. After a joyful reunion, we joined mom and Ron who had somehow cleared almost a whole row of seats.

The ensembles of young girls doing Chinese fan/ribbon dances were cute and entertaining. (Not pictured).

Emcee "Miss Chinese Phoenix" in her formal wear was slightly mockable (and we did mock), but also entertaining.

And then she ("Lady") took the stage. (See picture, above right).

After a short introduction on how Lady missed her mother and her home country, she started her solo. And by solo, I mean a BLARING, operatic version of a self-written Chinese song that represented an ode to Lady's mother and homeland. Three of Kent's children's hands immediately went to cover their ears. [Kent's resulting look of death directed at each individual child communicated the message that the ear covering was inappropriate/rude. They then promptly dropped their hands from their ears; the looks of pain remained on their faces].

At this point, I glanced to my right and caught a glimpse of the picture to the left--the mom, sitting on the ground with her son on her lap, was gripping her son's ears as hard as she could to shield him from Lady's unconscionable decibel level. I determined that I simply needed a picture of that loving gesture... and aimed my CB over at the mom.

Unfortunately, after the first blurry picture... I drew some [embarassing] attention to the fact that I was taking a picture in the middle of Lady's performance. Lucky for both you and me, however, the mom retained her vice grip on her son's ears and despite the girl over her shoulder looking at me like I was a retard for taking the picture, and a moment of desperation where I re-angled the CB to pretend I was taking a picture of my brother sitting to my right, I caught the photo you see above.

Then the lady launched into her second... yes second... song.

Of all the songs in all the world to choose, she decided to translate 'Edelweiss' into Chinese. Uh... that song SUNG WELL is already a little... taxing. As the sound quality bordered on offensive, I glanced to my left and saw mom and Ron in the positions pictured here. I apologize for my inability to capture a non-blurry photo of the moment... but my hand was shaking as I was laughing uncontrollably [but silently].

We decided to leave the performance area to stuff ourselves on Taiwanese food after that performance. I'm thinking that decision was for the best.

New blog address

Due to all the psychopaths/cyber-stalkers out there, I'm changing my blog address in a couple of weeks to catherineconsult dot blogspot dot com. Come join me over there when you get a "blogger doesn't exist" message.

Brown paper--In or Out?

I know, I know... I've turned into a blogging maniac. Unfortunately, I have been presented with great blog fodder through spending some quality time with my mom over the past few days. After all, she HAS recently stepped off the boat from Taiwan and is experiencing the re-acclimation to American culture that can be so painful after living in a foreign country for years. (Officially, my mom returned to the US on a plane, but since I have been assaulted with blasting racial generalizations lately, why not add a few of my own to the mix? Let's say she's fresh off the boat).

Please note that I do in fact have a great relationship with my mom. So, for all you haters out there, please constrain yourself from leaving comments on how I'm a rude/disrespectful child. Pshia.

In any case, we made a stop at In-n-Out Burger today. As I was focusing on my food and eating my fries like a squirrel eats nuts (fast forward to second 18 for the true demonstration), my mom looked at me with a confused look on her face and asked,

"Is this brown wrapper around my burger paper? Because I have been eating it and wondering why my burger is crunchy."

Not even my reaction to the scummy-looking 17 year old with a low-riding backpack slung over his shoulders who said "heeeeeyyy baaa-by!" to me as I passed him on my way to the restroom could compare to the laughter that consumed me after realizing my mom had eaten 1/4 of the paper around the burger. Poor mom. For the record, the brown paper wrapped around those burgers isn't rice paper... or any other form of edible paper. Oopsie.

Wii-tacular!

Thanks to Shiloh (and her never-ending resevoir of patience and kindness), mom and Ron learned to play Wii Tennis yesterday. Here are some of the jewels from the treasure chest of mom's questions last night:

1. "Hey--how come my guy won't throw the ball up" (while trying to throw up a ball for serve with her non-wiimote-bearing hand).

2. "What did I do wrong? No, really. WHAT DID I DO WRONG?!" (after swinging 2 seconds too early/late).

3. "WHAT IS GOING ON? I CAN'T EVEN SEE THE BALL?" (before whacking Shiloh with great force on her backhand swing follow-through.)

4. "Ron, WE NEED THIS GAME. Let's go buy one tomorrow, since I can't exercise unless I'm inside with the air conditioning on!" (Ron then responded... "but if we get this game, will you ever let me play?")

Despite all the confusion and resulting physical injuries, mom had a fabulous time and was quite pleased that we were able to find a pharoah-like hairdo to attach to her mii and call her own.

Haiiiiii-YAH!

Given my total laziness in blogging lately, I feel like I should report on some awesome story to mark my return to the blogging world. Unfortunately, the best commentary I can offer right now is the following [dreadful] experience and its associated moral lesson.

I visited my brother's ward in Arizona for the second week in a row yesterday. Since Shelly's services have been commandeered by the Primary, I was forced to brave Relief Society alone. As I was sitting pleasantly by myself reading my (English) scriptures, an uber-smiley member of the Relief Society Presidency ("RSP") in her late twenties approached me and said "HI! Are you new to the ward or just visiting?!" I explained that I was visiting my brother and his family (who she knew) before heading out East for a new job and was asked...

"So where are you visiting from? [.5 second pause] CHINA?"

Apparently, the English scriptures in my hand, her familiarity with my brother (who is not, in fact, from China), and our conversation (in what I'd like to think is pretty good Engrish) were not enough evidence of my American citizenship. As I tried to stifle the laughs that threatened to exit my mouth that remained agape, the RSP went on to say, "Well, I know your brother's family goes back there often... I just didn't know which members of the family lived back there."

Note: neither I nor my brother have ever been to China. In the four years my brother has lived in Arizona, he has visited Taiwan once with his family. He has made no other trips to Asia.

Moral: So I don't continue to threaten to use this story as the base of a testimony (which I actually considered as a fleeting thought), let me share the following principles with you:

1. If you meet someone with red hair, do not ask if they are from Scotland and/or if they play the bagpipes.

2. If you meet someone with Latin/Hispanic features, do not ask how they eluded the border patrol on their way into AMER-I-CAH.

3. If you meet someone with olive skin, do not ask if they are from China.