Called Out

My daughter called me out on my sub-par diet yesterday. DH and I were talking about the value of veganism in lowering cholesterol (I keep meeting people who zapped their high cholesterol when they took up a vegan diet.) After hearing me explain my cholesterol statistics to my husband, Little Miss Six-Year-Old asked me straight out, what should I be eating? I told her I should eat lots and lots and LOTS of vegetables and some whole grains, and very very little fat and refined sugar. Answering her innocent concern made everything seem so simple. And imperative -- I want to be around to hold my grandbabies some day!

I'm taking baby steps now. The latest goal is for every meal and snack to feature a vegetable or fruit. I want my meals to be based on veggies, rather than grains (e.g. pasta) or protein. I'm not ready to go vegan yet, since some of my healthy hunger-stoppers are animal based (yogurt, skim milk, chicken, fish), but I can imagine giving up cheese. Maybe. Thanks for the wake-up call, Daughter, you're very motivating.

Tub Tunes

I am inordinately proud of the new song my daughter and I came up with during tonight's bath. It is sung to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."

Scrub, scrub, scrub your butt
Every single day --
Make your hiney extra shiny
Scrub that stink away!

Gramps

My grandfather, John Sennhauser, was an artist, and he was pretty well recognized by the art world. He's got paintings in the Smithsonian and the Whitney among others. However, he's not on Wikipedia -- Quelle horreur! One of my current projects is to rectify this situation.

Has anyone ever posted on Wikipedia before? It's an adventure. I've got a big learning curve. On the other hand, I get to do scholarly research on Gramps, which is pretty cool.

The only problem is Wikipedia doesn't want any of the juicy stories of his life --- stories I would know but the art world wouldn't. They just want information that can be verified by reliable published sources -- damned professionalism! So maybe I'll just tell you the stories. In the meantime I'll give you this picture of him. He's holding my baby sister, Heather.