Dental visits: Pain or Gain?

Posted on July 20, 2010 by viviankirkfield

Yesterday I went to the dentist for my routine cleaning and checkup. Fortunately, everything looked fine. It made me think back to when our children were young and we tried to find a way to encourage them to take care of their teeth. My husband and I came up with an interesting plan: If their checkup showed no cavities, they got five dollars. If they had cavities, they had to pay fifty cents from their allowance for each cavity.

Needless to say, all three had very few cavities as they were growing up. I’m not sure if it was the incentive of receiving five dollars, or if it was having to part with fifty cents for each cavity that encouraged them to brush their teeth regularly and refrain from eating too many sweets.

Our children are all in their 30’s now…two of them have children of their own and are probably dealing with that same age-old issue of getting their little ones to properly care for their teeth. When I talk to my grown children on the phone, if they mention in passing that they have been to the dentist and have had a perfect checkup, I still send them a five dollar bill in the mail. Although five dollars can’t purchase the same amount of goods that it could 20 or 30 years ago, it still buys a good dental checkup.

Hey, where’s my five dollars?

I’d love to hear other parent’s ideas for encouraging children to take good care of their teeth.

Andy Rooney: Life is like a gadget drawer

Posted on July 19, 2010 by viviankirkfield

This morning I wrote a post about yesterday’s 60 Minutes segment with Andy Rooney. As the day went on, I began to think about how a kitchen gadget drawer is a lot like life and parenting. We accumulate “stuff” during our life…material things like cars, homes, appliances, clothing, lamps, and books…sometimes doubles and triples of items we don’t even use. We store up memories, both good and bad (the bad ones sometimes haunting us as we try to move forward with our lives). We hold on to feelings, even the negative ones (sometimes especially the negative ones). And, when it comes to parenting, we often repeat behaviors of our own parents we swore we would never do. Have you ever said something to your child and looked around to see if your mother was standing there, because what came out of your mouth was something you had often heard her say.

I think this happens to most of us. Maybe I can take Andy Rooney’s advice and dump out everything in the drawer (of my behavior, reactions to others, feelings, memories), look it over, and make sure I want to keep it before I put it back.

But I doubt it will be as easy as cleaning the kitchen gadget drawer.

Andy Rooney’s in my kitchen

Posted on July 19, 2010 by viviankirkfield

Last night, on 60 Minutes, Andy Rooney did a segment on gadgets one finds in the kitchen drawer. He said that most of the items he found in his kitchen drawer had not been used for 20 or 30 years.

It made me think about my kitchen gadget drawer (don’t we all have one?). So, this morning, I decided to empty it and check out what was in there.

Here is a list of what I found:

Rubber gripper for opening bottles (I use this ALL the time)
Graham Kerr sheet metal thing with ruler marking on one side (maybe for pastry making…have never used it)
Orange cylindrical plastic thing (lemon juice extractor?)..I actually have 2 of these
Wooden honey dipper (not sure what you call it…when I need honey, I use a spoon)
Green plastic grapefruit sectioner (we don’t eat grapefruit)
Orange Tupperware spreader/spatula (never used…will take it out of gadget drawer so I will have it when I need it)
Yellow plastic cylindrical thing labeled Sunkist (maybe for extracting juice from an orange)
Old-fashioned metal garlic press (I usually hit the garlic clove with the flat blade of a big knife)
Wooden double mini rolling-pin (didn’t know I had this…could have used it several times in the past)
3 top-notch wine bottle openers (my husband has a small glass of wine with dinner and I don’t drink)
Old-fashioned metal can opener (just in case the electric can opener doesn’t work, I guess)
Lobster/crab leg cracker and set of picks
Red plastic flour scooper (why isn’t it in the container with the flour)
A dozen assorted wine bottle corks (I keep throwing them away and my husband keeps putting them in the drawer)
Broken tea strainer
Metal melon ball scooper (I can’t remember the last time I scooped melon balls)
Vacuum pump and rubber corks for sealing open wine bottles
Wooden roller thing (not sure what it is for)
My oldest son’s original baby spoon (he turns 38 this month)
Set of cheese spreaders/cutters (use them at Christmas)
Set of 4 multi-colored mini rubber prep bowls (so small I don’t know what I could prep in them)