Cleocin: Orange flavored dog turd

Greg had strep for the fourth time in two months and we were weary. We’d gone from the bubble gum amoxicillin to some antibiotic with twice as many l’s and i’s. None of them could kick the strep. We were weary.

The day after Greg’s birthday party, he had the now familiar red throat, belly ache and splotchy face. (Oh, that reminds me. If your kid was at Greg’s birthday party, you might want to be on the look out for strep symptoms.) We took him back to the doctors and they prescribed Cleocin.

I’m 40 years old and as a kid the only good tasting medicine we had was the orangey tasting baby aspirin. Cough syrup had a mild cherry flavor with an undesirable, bitter after taste. I think most cillins came in a needle back then. Kids these days have it easy on the taste buds. All of Greg’s medicines taste good. Orange flavored Motrin. Grape flavored Tylenol. I think I saw a crème brûlée bottle of aspirin in the back of the medicine cabinet.

But not Cleocin. Cleocin tastes like poop. Really. I’m being completely honest when I say it smells like a two week old cat box. It’s got an acidic taste that burns the tongue and leaves an awful taste in your mouth almost as bad as the 06' & '07 Ohio State National Championship losses. Almost.

The pharmacist tried to help by flavoring it. I’m not sure if you’ve ever eaten a dog turd, but I can guess that sprinkling orange flavoring on it does not really change the taste. She said it was nasty stuff and she was right.

That first night, Greg was in for a big surprise. Normally, kids’ medicines are dosed at 3/4 tsp or maybe 1 tsp once or twice a day. The Cleocin was two teaspoons every six hours. We loaded up a plastic dosing syringe and called for the boy. “Yummy! Medicine!” Sucker. I got it all in and he swallowed it before the tongue could talk to the brain. He looked up at me with a face of betrayal. “That was yucky.”

At the next dosage, he knew what was up and would not take the medicine. I will leave out the heart wrenching details of restraining him and forcing this medicinal vitriol down his throat.

The pharmacist suggested we mix the medicine in with other foods to mask the taste. Here is the list of recipes we tried along with the (taste factor) and outcomes:

Straight medicine

(yucky)

DO NOT WANT

Mixed with chocolate syrup

(wretched)

syrup acted like napalm sticking to mouth, extending the contact time with tongue

Mixed into chocolate milk

(still wretched)

bitter taste and could not drink the whole thing

Popsicle, chocolate square, then medicine

(cold chocolate turd taste)

popsicle was to numb mouth, chocolate to coat mouth and shield tongue from taste – failed

Mixed with chocolate pudding

(DNF)

he took one taste and knew the medicine was in there

Mixed with chocolate frosting

(pukey)

sticky frosting stayed in mouth, exponential wretchedness

My sister Amy's husband Joe called to give us some medical advice. He mentioned that there are Compound Pharmacists who will mix the medicine with other stuff to make yucky medicine palatable. For instance taking medicine and turning it into a lollipop. That gave me an idea.

I took two orange pez candies and crushed them, mixed in ½ tsp Orange Flavored Motrin, and a teaspoon of sugar substitute with the medicine. Mix well. It turned a pale orange so you know it had to taste good! Suck up in syringe. I had Greg chew up two pez and then with a lot of coaching and tears, gave him the medicine. IT WORKED!

We refined the recipe. It’s now four Smarties (they crush easy), 1/4 tsp of dry Tang power and the medicine with a few drops of water. Ta da! Take two Smarties, hit the syringe and chase it with a few other Smarties.

I think most of it is mental. You don’t want to tell your kid you are sneaking them medicine, but once they figure it out, they remember and make everything else that much harder. When you are up front and do tell them it is medicine, they fight you.

In the end, I think it was the orange color from the Pez and the Motrin that made him try the final concoction. Sucker!

Twins

Sometimes you accidentally end up dressing similarly to someone at work.

Sometimes it gets downright creepy.


Right down to the shoes.

The Insert Key Returns

Many of you may know that I do not like the INSERT key. When I get to a new job, I remove it. When I get ready to leave that job, I replace it.

So here is my keyboard now:


I am leaving my current job and taking on another.

I want you to all be aware that this may affect the frequency of "Erik Eats" segments. Right now I average about 23 Erik Eats segments a week (most go unpublished) and I will try to keep that number around 15 per week. This means that my son Greg will not be able to play any winter sports, but my readers are far more important than my children.

I did find one positive thing about cleaning off my desk. It makes for a very nice napping spot.



I'll let you know how things turn out. Wish me luck!

Meat Eaters and Vegetarians Agree

No one wants to see these on a plate together.

Gunnullostra

Gunnullostra (n) - The national sport of Chile. Usually played with two, 17 person teams.

Smallest car in the lot...

...can't seem to get between the lines.


I'll miss you, Smarter Doug.

Swedish Fish Dis

Two days ago I got a comment on my story about how 100 calorie packs of Swedish Fish are not as good as the full sized ones.

In the story I suggest that people DO NOT buy the smaller Swedish Fish and instead eat about 5 of the regular sized fish as they equal about 100 calories.

The comment was by someone named "Anonymous" and it said:
Your calorie count is way off. According to their website, 100 calories is about 14 fish (19 pieces are 140 calories) - http://www.swedishfish.com/products.html#red

So I said:
Hello Anon! You have issued me a challenge. I hope you understand what you have done.

I am going to go out, buy a bag of the regular sized fish and then I am going to math. I'm gonna math hard.

I'll post the results.

The winner gets a bag of Swedish fish.

Deal?

So I went out and purchased an 8oz bag of the regular sized fish and here is a photo of the Nutrition Facts:


Serving size is 7 pieces and a serving has 150 calories. Divide 7 into 150 and you get about... crap. let me get a calculator.

21.42 calories per fish

100 divided by 21.42 is 4.6 or about 5.

You owe me a bag of fish Anonymous! You can e-mail the fish to me at holyjuan@gmail.com.

condrariam

condrariam -n A word that Sarah Palin actually thinks is a real word and then when she finds out it isn't, makes up some excuse as to why it should be a word.

The “?!” and “!?” Matched Pairs Conundrum

I’m sure you know the uses of the question mark and exclamation point:

“Fuck me?”
“Fuck you!”

But what happens when you pair them? When should you pair them?

What happens when you pair “!” with “?”
The first thing that happens when you pair these two punctuation marks together is that your reader assumes your vocabulary is too limited to correctly transverbulate your feelings and that you need to fall back on punctuation to express your true thoughts.

The second thing that happens is that the reader will think that perhaps they are the idiot, that they missed something in the sentence, and they will go back and re-read your poorly written sentence only to find they were correct about the writer’s lack of transverbulation in the first place.

Lastly, your reader will attempt to figure out why your sentence ends with “?!” or “!?” and why you decided to use the combination you did. Which is why we’ll move on to the next bit…

When should you pair them?
When deciding between either “?!” and “!?” the first step is to not get mixed up with the chess playing punctuation definitions. Believe it or not, chess players utilize punctuation marks to express how devious or stupid moves are in a game. Wipe this shit out of your head because anyone who has time to punctuate chess moves obviously doesn’t have the time to read this kind of article. We don’t want to get mixed up with that element. Here are the definitions you should be concerned with:

“?!” – Loud question
Otherwise known as the ‘WTF?!”, this punctuation is necessary to harshly question someone else’s actions or previous statement with the expectation of an answer back. Some good examples are:
“Is that a herpes sore?!”
“When were you going to tell me you were married?!”
“How did you manage to spend $4,300 on your trip to Washington, DC?!”

“!?” – No Fucking Way
This is a strong disbelief in someone’s action or statement without the expectation of an answer:
“Madonna was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!?”
“You call that a penis!?”
“Gas is at $4.00 a gallon!?”

See how a statement changes now that you know the definitions:
“You are gay?!”
“You are gay!?”

Or:
“You are a sophomore in high school?!”
“You are a sophomore in high school!?”

All punctuation should be like the dollar .sign

The dollar sign comes before the number even though you say “twenty dollars” when it looks like this .$20 No one says dollars .twenty At first it seemed very .awkward

But then I realized that the percent sign comes after the number (20%) and so you don’t know what the number represents until you are finished saying it and then you’ve got to add the right .inflection That could lead to !embarrassment

Why not do the same as the dollar sign for all ?punctuation

As you can see, it works for punctuation at the end of the .sentence It gives you a second to finish up your sentence momentum and then come to an agreeable halt with the proper hint of .emotion

In *Spanish, they put the punctuation marks at the beginning and at the end of the sentence to give you a head start on your .inflection I think this leads to over enunciation and unneeded .inflection That’s why the Spanish speaking peoples always seem so dramatic when they .talk Our new rule for English will be one punctuation mark, but right before the last word of a .sentence I wonder if this will work for …?ellipses It !does

So here is a list of suggestions for new end of sentence :punctuation

%percentages
*asterisks
: colon
!!double exclamation
?! questioning exclamation
!? exclaiming a question

Please let me know if you need any assistance with any specific .punctuation

.P.S And all emoticons should be .banned !!Forever

*Both Mexican and Spanish as well as .Castilian