We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties...Please Stay Tuned

My laptop has officially given up the ghost, gone to a better place, entered the eternal reboot.....died.

I do have an app on my phone that allows me to post to the blog, but it is extremely tedious and annoying to do so.
That means that at least for the next few weeks, I will probably only be able to post on Saturdays :(.  The negotiation for access to my husband's computer should be interesting....

I will have a new post this Saturday...see you then!

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining OR How You Can Overthrow the Supermarket in the name of Community!

Cloud:  Anyone who had lived in any part of New York City that has been called "transitional", or the 'hood understands that there is a definite lack of good food options.  In fact, Bedford Stuyvesant has been labeled a "food desert" by the United Stated Department of Agriculture.  But now it seems lack of options is not the only problem.  People who can least afford it may be being overcharged for the food they can get.
According to an article in the New York Post, grocery stores in Brooklyn have been fined for "a slew of consumer violations, including overcharging, faulty scales and failing to properly mark merchandise".  Unfortunately for the residents of Bedford Stuyvesant, the Fulton Super Foodtown in Restoration Plaza is one of the most fined grocery stores in New York City.  The supermarket ranked twelve on the list of the 25 most fined supermarkets for consumer violations, with $3,850 in fines for the period between June 2009 and June 2010.

Bedford Stuyvesant residents literally cannot afford supermarkets that have such a disregard for their community.  Based on my own experiences with supermarkets in the Bronx and now in Brooklyn, I believe that supermarkets in poor or working class neighborhoods sell customers produce that spoils quicker.  My husband and I decided while living in the Bronx that we would only buy dry goods that were on sale in the local supermarket, and we traveled outside the neighborhood for meat and produce.  But now it seems that these supermarkets are taking advantage of people who cannot travel outside the neighborhood and comparison shop, like senior citizens or people on fixed incomes.  Disgusting.

Silver Lining:  The supermarket chains may not care, but our residents do!  One of the most exciting parts about living in Brooklyn is the current vibe centered on local food source development.  We have options beyond the supermarkets that are healthier and less expensive:

• Bed Stuy Farm Share  From their website: "The Bed-Stuy Farm Share delivers fresh vegetables, fruit, and eggs from local farmers straight to Bed-Stuy once a week for 22 weeks out of the year, starting in June".
• Greene Hill Food Coop  From their website: "We are a food co-operative based in the vicinity of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bed Stuy and Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Our mission is to provide fresh, nutritious food at affordable prices. We are a 100% working co-op – all members contribute several hours of work each month. In return, we build a strong sense of community, and enjoy prices which are significantly lower than for-profit grocery stores".
• Hattie Carthan Community Market  From their website:  "The Hattie Carthan Community Farmers Market is a volunteer based and led community revitalization project in Central Brooklyn NYC . Within the last six years alone, our garden has expanded its food security/environmental justice programming in order to advance community resilience to the issues of food insecurity and health disparities evident in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood by adding nutrition awareness and food security workshops, wellbeing workshops, intergenerational community councils, an international food and film festival which attracted well over three hundred community residents last year and cooking demonstrations with youth and senior populations". 

I am really excited about these options!  The husband and I are going to save our gas money and get involved with these wonderful organizations.  The best part is, I will feel confident that I am paying the right price for great food.

Do you have any great neighborhood food resources?  Leave a comment, and we can build a list.

Park Your Car 15 feet from the hydrant OR pay $300 to the City of New York!

I plan to post again today, but in the interest of providing a community service:  Make sure that you park your car 15 feet away from the hydrant!

This is damn near impossible to do in our neighborhood, but you need to make the effort.  My husband and I have been routinely parking between 7 and 15 feet away from the hydrant on our block for the six months, with no issues.  Yesterday, we woke up and no car.....it had been towed!  Four hours and $300 later, we have our car back.

Obviously, rules are rules....I am not posting this to argue whether 15 feet is necessary.  Fire trucks need access, end of story.  I just want to make sure no one gets caught like us.

Things that keep me up at night: The Slippery Slopes of Parenting

Can't sleep?  It could be as a result of the double espresso you downed at 5pm to get energy for playing with the little one after a long day at work.   OR it could be that as an aware Brooklyn parent, there are a lot of things on your mind.  About once a week, I am going to write about things that keep me up at night as a working parent in Bedford Stuyvesant.  Why not share the insomnia?  Here is my first post in the "Things that Keep Me up at Night" series.

The Slippery Slopes of Parenting

The list of things to worry about as a parent is ever-expanding.  For example, take the issue of preschool.  How can you make sure your tot is getting socialized in time for preschool?  How can you make sure that you choose the best preschool?  How are you going to afford the high cost of preschool? How can you make sure that your little one even has a space in any preschool, since you poo-pooed the idea of starting the process before she was even born? 

Welcome to a Slippery Slope of parenting.  No one told me about the Slippery Slope phenomena when they were giving me new parent advice.  The term "slippery slope" is most commonly used to refer to things like losses in personal freedom, or an increase in military size.  The idea being that once you give a little on either of these things, you will have in fact started your fast descent into Really Bad Stuff. 

There are two types of Slippery Slopes in parenthood.  The first type refers to the seemingly harmless thought that pops into your head regarding some future plan that you have for your little one...that suddenly puts you into a tailspin (see preschool example above) downward towards Stressville.  We'll call this the "Slippery Slope to Parent Paranoia".  The second type refers to an action that you take with your little one, a mostly unconscious decision to allow a certain behavior- and six months later, you are pulling out your hair trying to break a bad habit in your child that you created.  We'll call this the "It's Your Fault that Sweet Baby is Becoming Demon Spawn Slippery Slope".

Probably the worst part of either of these two types of parenting "slopes" is the fact that they require constant vigilance on the part of the parent...and this is very tiresome.  As you may have guessed, I have tangoed with both types of slope this week, and I am not sure where I stand on either at the moment.  On the "Slippery Slope to Parent Paranoia", I have the benefit of real fatigue and lack of time.  It's hard to obsess endlessly when you can't keep your eyes open past 9pm.  And really, who has the time to have a nervous breakdown?  The constant vigilance comes in making sure that I remind myself what really matters.  I know that at the end of the day all my daughter cares about is whether we had fun today, and whether her mommy and daddy give her equal numbers of hugs and kisses.  95% of the time, I can talk myself down from the ledge.  And even the other 5% of the time, I never jump.

The real biatch is the "It's Your Fault that Sweet Baby is Becoming Demon Spawn" Slippery Slope.  This one is the gift that keeps on giving.  Equal parts fatigue, guilt, contradictory parenting advice, and just plain confusion mix to create a lethal cocktail that has you drawing lines in the sand one moment, and throwing rules out the window the next.  And it's about a 50/50 chance that your parenting decisions will either have no consequence, or consequences that are far reaching.  Right now, my sweet baby is a Terrible Two.  Like clockwork, about 20 minutes after I enter the door from work, she throws an enormous temper tantrum- never ever about the same thing.  I have searched the Internet high and low for solutions and talked to my parents and in-laws.  But two facts remain: 1) I don't want her to think this behavior is acceptable, and 2) I am really, really tired after work, and I don't feel like fighting her.  This is where the constant vigilance comes in.  I have to be ready to enforce the ground rules when I come home from work.  95% of the time, I can rise to the occasion.  But the other 5%? 

Hopefully a 95% quality investment yields OK results with both of these slippery slopes.  But as you may have figured out, it is the other 5% that keeps me up at night.