Propaganda for NSIM

The issue I'm going to rant about today is straight from M's agenda. He gets so worked up about this issue! He asked me to blog about this and I was happy to oblige. It amazes me that this isn't more of a hot button issue. Forget SCHIP. Forget Blackwater.

What our nation really needs is universal milk cap color coding.

I mean, how do they pick? Do they just throw darts? To become a distributor of dairy products, do you have to sign an agreement that you will ensure that your milk cap colors are completely different than everyone else's? It sure seems that way. How can something so important be left to the color choosing whim of the various dairy companies?

Perhaps y'all (I've decided that I've lived in Texas long enough that I claim the right to this superbly useful plural second person pronoun) don't appreciate the gravity of the milk cap color situation. Let me enlighten you to our plight.

First of all, I hate having to actually read the label of the milk every time I reach into the fridge. See, at our house, it is totally within the realm of possibility to have all 4 "grades" of milk in our fridge at one time. You see, Scott is still under two and is a little bean pole (unlike the thunder-thighs that Claire was as a toddler) so he drinks whole milk. Claire drinks 2% most of the time because that's what her pediatrician suggests. M would probably prefer the whole, but for the cost as much as for his health, he usually drinks 2% too. Then I prefer the "unleaded" variety. Skim is so much better for quenching thirst and for cutting through sweets. When you put away the sweets like I do, you really need something that will dilute the the richness and let you plow ahead with your indulgence. But given the fact that we're all milkaholics, we're always looking for ways to cut down on the number of milk jugs in our fridge. So sometimes, milk supply optimization requires that M, Claire, and I drink 1%. So not only do we have all 4 types of milk, but we have to buy milk pretty much every time we find ourselves at a store that sells it. (Is that a sign of addiction? Never mind...) I mean, it is totally normal for us to go through more than three gallons of milk in a week. And when milk is cheap, we try to stock up as much as possible given expiration dates. So at any given time, we could have 6 gallons of milk in the fridge, each with a different color cap. Total chaos. Every time, I have to read the label to find which milk I'm looking for. And when the jugs are stacked three deep, can you figure out what that one in the back is from the cap you can see? No, of course not! You have to pull the other jugs in front of it out, balancing some precariously on shelf edges and juggling others in your free hand, just to see if that one in the back is a red Costco whole milk or a red HEB 2%.

The second problem is that as conscientious as I am, my husband is well, as loathe as I am to say it, absentminded. So everyone in the house ends up being served the wrong type of milk when he's the milktender. Not that this is the end of the world or anything. I mean, a little more or less milk fat never killed anyone. (Well, not as an immediate result...) But I just have to point out the milk cap color inconsistency is more than his sometimes distracted mind can keep track of. He can't help but automatically reach for certain colors based on our usual purchasing patterns.

I did a little searching and determined that there is at least one other person out there who thinks this is an important issue. Credit to them for the following:

This may not be the exact color scheme I would choose, but goodness, who cares as long as it's standardized!