Showdown of the Oregon Ice Creams

Eating rich ice cream and drinking whole-fat milk, and using heavy cream for coffee, may help reward women shooting for pregnancy, researchers here reported.

I'm not going to question this research too intensely. It sounds good to me, and so I have been eating ice cream every night. I never thought I liked ice cream. That is until I moved to Oregon.

There are two major contenders in the Battle of the Oregon Ice Creams: Tillamook and Umpqua. The Umpqua Dairy is a family-owned business that has been in Roseburg since 1931. Tillamook is a 98-year-old farmer cooperative located on the coast of Oregon. Both make damn fine ice cream.

I had the fortune of having both ice creams at my disposal this weekend, and two similar flavors of the finest sort: Tillamook's Mudslide and Umpqua's Chocolate Brownie Thunder.

So, here goes...Tillamook vs. Umpqua:

Round 1:

Tillamook's Mud Slide is chocolate with a fudge ripple.

Umpqua's Chocolate Brownie Thunder is chocolate with a thicker fudge ripple. (Ka-pow!)

Round 2:

Tillamook's Mud Slide has fudge pieces sprinkled throughout.

Umpqua's Chocolate Brownie Thunder has fudge chunks that melt on contact with the tongue. (Bam!)

Round 3:

Mud Slide is milky and very sweet.

Brownie Thunder is creamy and has a slight coffee aftertaste. (Ding!)

Round 4:

The Umpqua packaging reminds me a school supplies. (Huh?)

The Tillamook cow is much less threatening. (Weak jab.)

So, the winner is...Brownie Thunder. But don't go wasting your Tillamook if that's all you've got. Eat it up, and then go make some babies!

Time Off to Procreate

September 12th is Russia's "Day of Conception" decreed by Ulyanovsk Gov. Sergei Morozov. Couples who participate in this annual contest will be given a half-day to stay home and make a baby in hopes of increasing birth rates in this dwindling region in central Russia. Those who are successful--meaning the women who give birth on June 12th, Russia's national day--will win prizes. Money. Perhaps a car. A brand-new Frigidaire.

Sign me up.

Where is my mind?

Song of the Decade: The Twenties

Since turning 30, I've felt the need to come up with a theme song for the past decade, one that would well up as the credits roll and, one by one, the years brush the popcorn off their lap and leave the theater.

My research has consisted of careful contemplation and compulsive listening to my iPod until I have located the song that most accurately describes the fears, angst, frustration, joys, and dilemmas of being twenty-something.

Here it is: Dreams by The Cranberries. One of my first CDs ever.

Actually, the "twenties" decade starts at about 17 and goes until 27.

I still have a ways to go on the next decade, but if I had to choose now, I'd pick Feist's Mushaboom.

My choices are more optimistic than I would have expected.

"In the Light, Stella remembers, there was music."

In today's newspaper, I learned of a 2005 Gallup poll that reports that people had started (but did not finish) reading five books on average during the year. This is added to a more recent survey that reports that one in four Americans read no books at all in the past year. I have to admit that my own reading life has been suffering a bit of a slump lately. Blame it on work, hormones, and the large tome beside my bed that promises that if I just read enough I can "take charge of my fertility." It can be easy to lose sight of the reasons I read in the first place.

I was at risk of becoming one of these statistics when I first picked up Kim Addonizio's book Little Beauties. I was about twenty pages into it, sleepy, distracted, and ready to add it to the growing pile beside my bed of books started but never finished. Here are the reasons I kept reading.

I picked up the book because I recognized the author, a poet I like who is edgy and funny. I'm interested in cross-over writers, and I wanted to see how a poet handles the demands of narrative, character, plot, etc.

The book is an interwoven narrative of three separate characters: an obsessive compulsive hand-washer, a pregnant teenager, and her unborn/newborn daughter Stella. I've seen this structure before in many books, most notably by poet-novelist Julianna Baggott. And it's risky. When you lay out three voices side by side, you encourage people to play favorites, and if you don't give them enough of what they want, you could lose them.

Diana, the washer, opens the book and is the controlling voice so far. I'm not so interested in her in part because I feel like her compulsions are a bit of a gimmick to give her character depth. During the first chapter, I couldn't place her voice. How old is she? Why is she at Teddy's World? Why is she telling this story? Who is she talking to?

I was more receptive to the story of the teenager Jamie. Her crisis was more commonplace, even if slightly sensational because of her age. Jamie's story is told in third person, and I think that gives me some distance from the character and room in my imagination to create her voice. Perhaps I feel more engaged in this story because it requires more participation.

I have to admit when I read the back of the book and saw that part of the story was told from the perspective of a fetus, I thought, "Ok...let's see if you can pull this off." These sections tend to be shorter, and I doubt that the entire book could have been written in this voice. However, this is the part that keeps me from putting the book down. It's what has kept me up past my bedtime, long after my husband has switched off his reading lamp.

A sample: "In the Light, Stella remembers, there was music. Or a feeling like music. Or was it that in the Before, she had the memory of something like music? She knows this song. When she was inside of Jamie already, soon to come out, Jamie had played it. She tries to remember more. Rock rock rock. It's hard to stay awake, hard to remember what the Light was really like."

I'm on page 194 and I'm now invested. I have the day off, and finishing the book is on my list, along with exercising, making dinner, and scheduling a haircut. I feel sorry for the almost 27 percent of the population that has forgotten the joy of reading and finishing a book, of losing themselves in other stories and characters. You snooze, you lose. Suckers.

The Golden Chalise: Is it half full or half empty?

Thanks to wedding guests, I have cabinets full of matching glasses: champagne, wine, martini, beer, water. But how does one go about choosing the cup into which one will urinate? And furthermore, can the cup ever be clean again?

I say no. Resoundly, no.

So, in choosing my pee cup, I had to carefully consider my options. I didn't want to break up a set. That ruled out wine and martini. Margarita was too shallow and champagne too narrow. My water glasses are too common, and unless I'm willing to shatter it after use, I'm afraid it will find its way back into rotation.

It had to be glass -- mugs are out of the picture. That left me with one contender: a promotional glass I got free with a bottle of Bailey's. Short, with a wide opening, perfect for a pregnancy test, or in my case, ovulation predictor sticks.

Anxiety Dream: Baby in the Closet

Last night I had my first anxiety dream about pregnancy and motherhood. I've had other dreams that were more metaphorical in nature about my fears of bringing life into the world (in such dreams I give birth to kittens that fly out of me like furry pin balls and scatter around the room). But this one actually involved a BABY.

In this dream, I’ve given birth and my house is filled with guests. The baby is passed from hand to hand, and I can’t keep track of her. Plus, I’m very tired. So, I go lay down, and I wake up the next morning. For a moment, I forget that I’m a mother, and I stumble downstairs to get coffee started. My houseguests look at me like I’m insane. Where’s the baby? they ask. I run upstairs and run into the closet/storage space that we use for all the things we don’t need. The Christmas tree stand, a stack of books for my husband’s thesis, our old CDs. The floor is littered with pillows and wrapping paper, and in the corner I see a toy crib. It's empty.

The crib is one my sister and I played with when we were kids. I paw through the tissue paper, and beneath it I find the newborn, who looks like Suri Cruise. She's alive, and I pick her up and carry her downstairs like nothing happened.

Psychoanlayze that, baby.