Teenagers

Babies are great, but I really enjoy my teens, too.

For one thing, they're funny in a naturally dry kind of way.

The baby, the 13-year-old and I were doing some errands the other day. At one place was a young, short-ish, pale man with brown hair and big eyes.

When we left, the teen quipped, "I didn't know Elijah Wood worked at the UPS store."

One of my longtime goals is to be super-nice to young people in service jobs. Yesterday, I gave the Starbucks cashier a big smile when I ordered the teen's hot cocoa. He was a little surprised -- I could see him almost startle. He says, "Ma'am, you have really nice teeth."

So, "nice teeth" was our joke for the day. I'm guessing that will be added to the lexicon of Things Said to Make Fun of Mom, joining mentions of my "big hair."

The Soda Stream

Since the big diet, I had become a bit addicted to carbonated water or, as one of Tiffany's boys named it when he was a tot, "fuzzy water." The kids also like it, so it was possible for me to go through at least a bottle a day, which was adding up to a fair amount of dollars in addition to way too many recyclable bottles cluttering up the place.

So, I broke down and got the SodaStream, home soda maker, recently.

It's about 50 cents worth of plastic and a dollar's worth of metal that attaches to a CO2 can and adds carbonation to the water. I thought it would be a money-saver, but it turns out to be much more of a toy. It is undoubtedly better for the planet than my buying bottles of Pellegrino, though. 

I haven't purchased fuzzy water since I bought the machine, but I have spent $70 on the machine, $10 on a refill CO2 can and $20 on flavorings (there's fruit essence flavors that I can have in addition to all the heavily sweetened soda flavorings). 

I think it's going to take a few months to recoup my costs.