My Food Chain Gang

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been lately (or even if you haven’t) - Grandma has helped us get one last little vacation before baby arrives.  We were going to head to New York, but decided not to do that, thank goodness.  Admittedly, the gas prices were the original deterrent, so then we explored taking a Greyhound bus there, but in my huge condition, I didn’t see any opportunity for good rest on a long bus trip.  I am really glad we declined the big trip, though, because my feet have been killing me, just from everyday tasks, like cleaning or shopping.  I would have had to cut short all of our sight-seeing in New York or rent a wheelchair for the week.  And staying home had afforded us time to do much needed catch-up work around the house.  We’ve been making landscaping plans, and I will be very excited to see how that turns out in a few weeks when it’s finished.  We cleaned out the famous closet o’ games, and we didn’t even need to knock down the wall to expand the closet as I was talking about in another post.  We found enough room for all of our games by sending all the kids’ games upstairs to their room.  Our house has lots of built-in shelving and drawers, and the kids had a huge cabinet in their closet that wasn’t even being used.  So, up went all the kids’ games.  I am a little concerned that they will tear apart their game collection and scatter pieces and whatnot, but they will have to be taught somehow that this is not going to be tolerated.  Most importantly on our vacation without the kids, we acheived the cleaning of their room.  It is a huge bedroom, and we have all 3 of our girls sharing it, but until we cleaned it, they could barely fit in there because they had so many toys.  Whenever we’d make them clean it, we noticed that they would play in there for such a long time afterward because they actually liked having all the open space.  So we donated about 90% of their toys to charity while they were visiting with Grandma.  It might sound mean, but we kept the important stuff, and like I said, they actually enjoy their room and the things in it much more when everything is picked up and they have fewer thins to appreciate.  I will keep you posted on how well (or not) this is received when they get home.  They will probably forget exactly what toys they once had, and by donating everything, more kids can enjoy them.

Even though it took an entire day of cleaning to reach the bottom of the toy pile in their room, we have managed to fit in lots of fun for just hubby and me.  We’ve gone shopping several times, and yesterday we were in Toledo all day getting good food, seeing a movie, and taking in a Toledo MudHens game.  If you’re not familiar, the MudHens are minor league baseball.  I’ve been wanting to get to a Chicago Cubs game last year or this year, but with the baby coming, I’ve ruled it out until at least next year.  So, minor league baseball it was, and we had a blast - I got my live baseball game fix for awhile…  there’s just something about hearing the crack of the bat, the slap of the ball in the glove and the other sounds of a baseball game in the beautiful summer night air.  And it was a great game.  Seems a player from the Detroit Tigers was rehabbing with the MudHens, so we got to see a major-leaguer pitch for a few innings.  The Hens were up 3-0 early in the game, then they let Indianapolis tie it up, only to hit a walk-off homer in the 9th with 2 outs to win the game - awesome!  And if you’re not from the area and want to experience food that is uniquely Toledo, I recommend a restaurant called Tony Packo’s to you.  Their menu is somewhat limited; there aren’t very many choices, so pass on it if you’re a picky eater.  But if you’re like me and you like to try all different kinds of ethnic food, give it a whirl.  They serve Hungarian food, namely sausage, cabbage rolls, and chili mac over dumplings.  It’s really good and a unique dining experience.  It’s also really interesting how we heard of the restaurant in the first place.  We were in a thrift store and I saw this stuffed baby in a diaper with a tomato head.  I thought it was really cute, even though it creeped my husband out, but it was only 5¢ so I bought it.  Turns out, it’s a character from Tony Packo’s as labeled on the rear end of the baby tomato.  I googled Tony Packo’s, found out it was a restaurant an hour away from us in Toledo, looked at the menu, and we decided to give it a try.  The guy who works their marketing in the gift shop really liked that story.  What’s weird though, is that while gutting my kids’ room this week, the baby tomato never surfaced.  Hmmm, I wonder what happened to it?

Sometimes you get more of what you want from a vacation by staying home.  In this age of the horribly high gas prices, the media has even coined a new word for the ‘vacation taken at home’, but I can’t recall what it is.  If you know, post it in my comments - it’s bugging me that I can’t think of it.  Anyway, by staying home, we saved a ton of money on gas alone, and we got some things done around the house that we will appreciate for months or even years to come, all while having a great time with just each other, no kids!  Thank you, Grandma!

Our poor little 8-year-old daughter, Taylor, was born on the short side of the genetic crapshoot when it comes to teeth.  The poor kid has cavities, teeth that are fused together, and other dental problems.  They wanted to do so much dental work on her that our small town dentist referred us to the big city of Toledo to get it taken care of.  So, yesterday saw an all day excursion to Toledo so the poor kid could undergo some major dental work.  It actually went quite well; she handled everything like a trooper.  I’m sure the laughing gas and novacaine somewhat helped the pain, but when it was all said and done, she did freak out a little about all the blood.  After that whole ordeal, we wanted to make the day special for her, so we made a quick stop at the zoo between dental appointments.  We only had about an hour, so we didn’t get to see our favorite animals, but we did have time to check out the reptile house, which, crazily enough after all of our visits to the Toledo Zoo, we had never been in.  It was a typical reptile house, full of snakes, lizards, and frogs (even though they’re not reptiles, zoos always put them in the reptile house I’ve noticed), but what I really enjoyed was the crocodile.  I can’t tell you the last time I saw one of those, especially indoors.  It was huge, and unlike their cousins the alligators, crocodiles are not friendly nor docile.  They are very agressive animals, and you can almost see it on their faces.  The Toledo Zoo also has a Chinese alligator, and I was wondering if Chinese alligators are similair to American alligators in temperment.  I know the Chinese alligator is smaller and much more rare, but I wonder if that is where the differences end…  I’ll have to do some research.

After the second dental appointment, we made a stop at Chuck E. Cheese, gauze packed mouth and all.  The kids had a blast, although it wasn’t very crowded, so Chuck E. didn’t venture off the stage for a visit, much to my 3-year-old’s disappointment.  But I came to a realization that it was our youngest-for-now’s first visit to a Chuck E. Cheese, at least her first one where she was old enough to enjoy it.  Since we live in the boondocks, we just don’t find ourselves at Chuck E. Cheese nearly as often as when we lived in the Chicago suburbs like when our oldest was a toddler.  But that’s quite alright, the place is expensive, and going infrequently really teaches the kids to appreciate the times we do make it there.  Over the years, not much has changed there…  when I was a kid, they called it Show Biz Pizza, and I was able to find pics of the old characters for others my age who like nostalgia.

The main character for the chain, a bear named Billy Bob (top right picture), really scared me as a kid…  for some reason, he had long claws, which can be really scary for a kid.  In Kindergarten, we got to go on a field trip to Show Biz; they took us behind the scenes and “undressed” one of the robots and took us back into the room where they have all the control panels for everything.  Why they wanted to show a bunch of 6-year-olds that the characters were actually robots is still beyond me, but it was a very cool field trip and something I still remember.

My fellow Northwest Ohioans, this is a call to action!

Have you noticed that we are being taken advantage of?  Yesterday, the national gas price average was $3.22 / gallon for unleaded.  Yet here in NW Ohio, every station in this town had gas for $3.39 / gallon.  The price of gas in the Northern suburbs of Chicago has reached $3.27.  We (especially in our family since we have loved ones in that area who we have to watch pay through the nose for EVERYTHING) have always prided ourselves on having lower prices than they have, MUCH lower actually.  We used to have gas prices about $.25 / gallon lower than Chicagoland.  This is no longer the case!  Their gas is now $.12 cheaper than ours!  What will follow?  Will we no longer have cheaper food than they have?  Will we soon be paying $10 for a hamburger, have an average restaurant bill of $30 for lunch for two, movie theater tickets at $10 each?  Where does it end?  I can’t help but feel the gas stations have called our bluff.  We can’t boycott them, because let’s face it, we’re an island.  We get to enjoy our relatively crime and pollution free extistences because we are so far from the nearest large cities.  However, the local gas stations are starting to take advantage of this, because they know it will cost way too much for us to get out of town to get some gas somewhere else.  The average price in Toledo yesterday was $3.22 / gallon , but to get to Toledo, it would cost about $5-$10 in gas, depending on your car!  And who has time to run to Toledo for gas, anyway?  But why is it that Toledo has cheaper gas prices than we do?  Everything was always cheaper here…  at least it used to be.

I’m just worried about how they will gouge us next.  I looked into filing a complaint with the attorney general of Ohio, and their website said to contact the stores first.  So I guess it’s only fair that we first let the gas stations know that we’re terribly unhappy.  I would write to the newspaper here in town also, but they’ve never printed my letters.  Maybe I complain too much?  Actually, one letter was very nice thanking the person who turned in my lost wallet with all the money still in it, but they still didn’t print it.  Anyway, if someone else wants to write to the paper, that’d be great.  The more the merrier on this, I say, what could it hurt?  Complain to the local gas stations and ask them questions, write to the newspaper, write to the attorney general, anything and everything anyone can do will help.  Remember, driving season hasn’t even officially started yet, and when it does, the price gouging at the pump will only worsen!  Here is a link to the complaint section of the Ohio attorney general’s website - it tells you how to fill out a complaint online, and also gives phone numbers and email addresses:  http://www.ag.state.oh.us/citizen/consumer/complaints.asp

Please help me - let’s do SOMETHING!