Silk Soymilk: I am not amused

It took Marion Nestle to alert me, though I've been buying Silk Soymilk by the gallon for years and years. You'd think I would have noticed from the packaging change. Except, whoops! There was no packaging change. Just the very subtle substitution of the word "NATURAL" for the word "ORGANIC" on a package that otherwise looks exactly the same, and -- more to the point -- costs exactly the same.

This, my friends, is Not Cool. I would take it under advisement if I were presented with a choice between the organic soymilk I am accustomed to buying, and a cheaper non-organic version of the same product. I would even take it -- somewhat more grumpily -- if I were presented with a non-organic product at the price I had been paying, but clearly marked as different from the organic soymilk I expected. But switching an organic product with a non-organic one with no change in price and virtually no change in packaging? Does no one at Dean Foods understand that consumers do not like being played for fools? Let me enlighten them.



Dear Dean Foods/White Wave,

I have been a consumer of your refrigerated soymilk since it was introduced to the market, lo, all these many years ago, back when White Wave was an independent company. I like the taste of it better than dairy, and I appreciate how easily your soymilk allows me to add more soy to my diet. My son, who is an extremely picky eater with a very limited diet, also prefers the taste of your product to dairy. We go through close to two gallons of soymilk per week in this house. In fact, I had asked my husband to pick up some more on his way home from work today.

I am going to call him back and tell him not to bother. There is simply no reason for us to spend organic-level money on a non-organic product, and there's certainly no reason to spend money with a company that can't be bothered to show a very minimal level of openness with its customers. Either we'll learn to love dairy again (and NOT Horizon "Natural," either), or we'll find another brand of soymilk for our cereal and coffee.

Sincerely,
A Formerly Happy Customer

Well-schooled in the comedy classics

LG: “Mama, we are supposed to use compound words to fill in the blanks in this Spring poem.”

PS: “Uh, okay. You can show it to me when you’re done.”

LG: “Spring… time. Blue… birds. Butter… flies. May… flowers. Sun… Mama, is ‘sunbe’ a word?”

PS: “Sunbeam?”

LG: “No, not sunbeam. SunBE.”

PS: “Er, sunbe? No. That’s not a word.”

LG: “Oh, wait! It’s sun-flowers and may-be. Is 'maybe' a compound word?”

PS: “Yeah, I guess it is.”

LG: “Okay, I finished. Here, look.”

PS: [Reading it over] “Looks great, buddy. Except this here. You’re missing a letter. ‘Sprintime,’ see? The 'g' is missing.”

LG: “Oh, sprint-time, ha! ‘Yes, sprint-time days are filled with fun.’”

PS: [Laughing] “Sprint-time days are filled with fun. We sprint because we have to run. We sprint because we’re being chased. But soon this word will be erased.”

LG: [Laughing] “Mama, that’s great! We sprint because we’re being chased, and now this word is erased!”

BB: “Sprinting is running! You know what this is?"

PS: "What?"

BB: "A running gag.”

Change of plans

BB: "I am not going to have kids. Because they might bother me."

PS: "Mmmm, I can see that."

BB: "Yeah. Kids might bother me. How do you not have kids?"

PS: "Uh. I promise that I will explain that to you in embarrassing detail when you are a little older."

BB: "Okay."

LG: "Why embarrassing?"

PS: "Well, a lot of kids get embarrassed when their parents talk about that stuff. But it doesn't have to be embarrassing."

LG: "Oh. Okay."

BB: "Anyway. Kids might bother me, and I don't want to be bothered."

PS: "Okay."

BB: "Plus, I don't even LIKE kids."

Future plans

BB: [climbing up on the arm of my chair] “You are my mama.”

PS: “That’s true. And you are my BB.”

BB: “Well, I am not going to have a kid.”

PS: “No? You’re not going to have a kid? Okay. How come?”

BB: “Because I’m going to be an engineer.”

PS: “Oh. Okay. But, you know, you can be an engineer AND have a kid. If you want.”

BB: “You can?”

PS: “Sure.”

BB: “But, then I have to marry a boy.”

PS: “To have a baby you have to marry a boy? Well. You can do it that way, yeah. But there are other ways.”

BB: “I think I would try to find a boy who was already a grown-up.”

PS: “Good idea.”

BB: “But, how would I know if he was already married?”

PS: “Um, you can ask him if he’s married. Or you can check his hand. If he’s wearing a wedding ring on his left hand, he’s probably married.”

BB: “So if he’s wearing a ring, he’s married?”

PS: “Well, if he’s wearing a wedding ring. See? On the fourth finger of his left hand.”

BB: “But… what if I can’t tell which hand is right and which hand is left?”

PS: “Oh, honey. You have a long time before you have to worry about this. Because you’re a long way from being a grown-up. So. Trust me, by the time you’re ready to worry about this, you won’t have any trouble telling the right hand from the left.”

BB: “Can two girls get married?”

PS: “Yeah. You know you have friends who have two moms.”

BB: “Uh, yeah. But I can’t marry you, right? Because you’re already married?”

PS: “Yeah. You’re not allowed to marry your mama. That’s one of the rules.”

BB: “But you can have a baby and be an engineer.”

PS: “Yeah.”

BB: “But… well, maybe I could just build things in the yard, so that I can stay home and watch the baby.”

PS: “Or, if you marry a boy, he could stay home and take care of the baby.”

BB: “If you marry a girl?”

PS: “She could stay home and take care of the baby. Or you both could go to work and you could pay someone to take care of the baby. Or you can ask Mama to come over, and I’ll take care of the baby while you go to work.”

BB: “Okay, Mama. That sounds good. I love you.”

PS: “I love you, too.”

Technical difficulties. Please stand by.

• You guys. Blogrolling isn't coming back, is it? I'm going to have to recreate my blogroll by hand, aren't I? Bah, humbug.



• Typepade is doing some kind of funky upgrade, huh? Jody, Lisa, Elizabeth, I can't comment on your blogs anymore. Dunno why. So no commenting for me. I guess that's why God invented email. And Facebook.



• Self-revelatory memes are making the Facebook rounds. Given that a good 20% of my friends list is comprised of family members, I am SO not writing any confessional memes there. Maybe I'll do it here.



• I'm tired of ice and snow. Right, I know, the rest of you just love it. I'm so special. But I am very, very, very tired of it.



• We had the plumbers out here for two days in a row and made the happy, pleasant discovery that we are eventually (later rather than sooner, I hope) going to have to do Massive Plumbing Work. Like, the kind you have to tear up the street for.



• I am feeling pissy about this. I am feeling pissy about a lot of things. I am feeling pissy that we were such good, model citizens, lived within our means, didn't take on excess levels of debt, made do with less, etc., etc. And what was our reward? Most of the money we saved has vanished -- poof! -- and what remains will go towards fun things like fixing the plumbing. Awesome.



• Honestly? I know the current zeitgeist is to beat one's breast and bemoan all the ways one spent instead of saved during the good times. But I wish we'd spent more and saved less. I wish we'd used that now-vanished money for... something. Anything. Like to fix up something about this gazillion-year-old house besides the freaking plumbing. There is nothing whatsoever satisfying or joyful about fixing the damn plumbing.



• This is a continuing theme in my life, being a good girl and then wishing, afterwards, that I'd acted up more. After college, I wished I had done less homework and more drugs.



• So what have we learned, class? I know: being perpetually prepared for the bad times does not ACTUALLY give you any sense of comforting self-righteousness when the bad times finally arrive. It just makes you pissy and resentful that you didn't have a better time back while everyone else was.



• On that note. If my feed suddenly updates a billion times, just ignore it and assume I'm working on the freaking blogroll, okay?

Edited to add: MOM! Jody is blaming me for everything that's wrong with the world, and I can't even defend myself! [Shaking fist] Damn you, Typepad!

Choose hope over fear

In our house, we sang along. And then we cried.