Twenty for Tuesday

1. I saw a list on a friend’s blog called Friday Five. I like lists, but its not Friday. I might calle mine the Tuesday Ten, but we’ll have to see how many items I end up with.

2. Sweetling’s highest form is looking really good.

3. I am, by the way, at Tae Kwon Do. Just me, the netbook, and a blank word document. This is why the Tuesday “Ten” might not work as a title.

4. I made the mistake of telling Sweetling she was “teaseable.” She was quick to inform me that she was not in a teaseable mood. Since she is now practicing her take down moves, I think I should heed this tip.

5. Went to Frisch’s today. I ordered a Big Boy of course. Toa of Boy asked me if I was going to request enough tartar sauce that it would run down my arms and drip off my elbows when I picked it up. My great-grandma’s favorite sandwich specifications live on.

6. Went to Meijer yesterday. I bought ingredients for Cincinnati style chili, traditional chili, and white chicken chili. I think I was hungry for chili. I hope my family is too.

7. When I went to Meijer yesterday, I picked up a bucket of 10 pieces of chicken for $4.99. When I got to the van, I had no bucket of chicken. We went back in and retrieved our chicken.

8. Also at Meijer, I bought 2 mangoes. When I got home, I had one mango. I have yet to figure out where our other mango went.

9. We spent two to three hours this afternoon on our church’s food pantry….pulling what was on the shelves off, wiping down the cans and the shelves, checking the expiration dates, putting the newer cans in the back and the cans that will expire in 2011 in the front. While we were there, someone came to the church office asking for help with groceries. (Our church doesn’t have set hours for our pantry. We tend to give food to one or two families every week or so on a drop-in basis.) I went up front to talk to the woman who had come in, and Toa of Boy helped me carry her bags to the car. It was neat to meet and chat with a person, since the work we do is usually all behind the scenes.

10. Speaking of the food pantry, I’d really like to revise what we put in bags. I have been working on getting away from processed foods with my own family, and now I feel like I should do the same with the pantry bags. Sadly, we don’t have the capacity to give out perishable foods….so….I’m not sure what to do about that.

11. The Munchkin card game, in several variations, has become quite popular at our house. We are currently working on our own “Penguins of Madagascar” version. I can’t work out a way to work in a “I like to move it, move it” card….but that song isn’t ever in the Nickelodeon tv series, so I suppose we can live without it.

12. While playing Super Munchkin, Sweetling snatched the victory away from her dear sweet mother. I had just defeated a villain to achieve the game winning level. Everyone else at the table had laid down all their combat altering cards and I had countered them all. “Ha!” I exclaimed, cause I’m humble that way. “I win the battle!” I pumped my fist in the air. Again, the humbleness. “Yes you did,” said Sweetling, very matter-of-factly. “Too bad it wasn’t cannon!” And with that, she laid down a card that totally negated the whole spread. “Too bad it wasn’t cannon,” has been added to our home’s repertoire of oft repeated quotes.

13. Our last day of school is April 22. I’ve got a countdown calendar going on the fridge.

14. We head out on our trip shortly after that. The countdown calendar on the fridge is doing double duty.

15. In our women’s Bible study today, there was a question about even if we could know everything that was going to happen to us in our lives, would we want too? We talked about how overwhelming that might be. We talked about how much more resentful and rebellious we might be. But I mentioned how difficult it would be to focus on what we were doing in the present, if there was something coming up in the future that we were really looking forward too. I think I said it more elegantly in class, but I was thinking about the countdown calendar on the fridge. It’s hard to remain enthused and energized about our schoolwork and the housework and the “everyday” when I’m so excited about the upcoming trip.

16. I shared about my potential involvement this summer…wait, let me back up so that this one makes sense. My sister is working for the Children’s Hunger Alliance. She’s been working in a local 90-90 school teaching an after school program covering nutrition, food choice, and staying active. The community doesn’t have any nearby grocery stores, and many of the residents don’t have any form of private transportation to be able to get to a grocery store. However, the community does have several thriving community gardens. What many of the parents of the children my sister has been working with has requested some classes or some education on how to cook and prepare and store all the produce and beans they can receive from the community gardens. The local elementary school has offered the use of its kitchen and its equipment for my sister and her co-workers to teach cooking and canning classes to the adults of the community. This would happen once a week in the evening. I asked my sister what the children of these parents were going to do during this class time. She said that the school might open the gym. What would the children do in the gym? How cool would it be to have some awesome enrichment stations going in various parts of the gym. Art, music, story time, games, maybe some construction or problem solving, maybe some drama/acting. Long story short, I’m going to the PTCO meeting at the elementary school this coming Monday. I was sharing about this in Bible study today, and I immediately got positive feedback, and offers to help, from some of the women there. I have to confess that I’m not an administrator and not a detail person AT ALL, but I got an offer for help with detail management too….so…..

17. The orange belts are practicing their take downs. The mat area is much more chaotic than it was when the higher belts were in class. I notice Master did not teach the orange belts the choke holds which he showed the higher belts. Master is a truly wise man.

18. Tonight is a mid-week movie night. Tomorrow shall be a sleep-in and delayed start jammied school day. We have the movie Mega-Mind.

19. Most VBS curriculums are set up for 5 nights. The summer evening class at the elementary school will go for 12 weeks. That’s two VBS curriculums plus a kick-off party and an end-of-summer party. If we use VBS curriculums that we already have at church….we already have the curriculum and that’s a lot less planning. Many of the volunteers will have done the curriculum and be very familiar with it ahead of time. It’ll be easier to recruit volunteers if it’s something they are familiar with. I can sub-delegate the stations easily (with a standard curriculum we are all familiar with) and let different teams be in charge of their own stations. Oriental Trading company sometime carries craft kits from discontinued curriculums for an 80 to 90% markdown. Budget is going to be a serious issue.

20. Tae Kwon Do has wrapped up. It looks like this list shall be a Tuesday Twenty list.