Spoonful of Sugah

la la la la la, reading and writing and arithmetic, poor poor Mr. Peanut will never get a chance to be educated….goodbye old friend.  I’ll miss those fantastic legs…

 So today was the 1st day of school….WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It all started well enough.  I got a pretty good night of sleep, showed up on time.  Everyone was all smiles and I was hopeful and energized.………AND THERE IT WAS……that DREADED (please imagine the music from “Jaws” here) teachers’ room filled to the brim with cupcakes, cakes, breads, candy, granola bars, ….and a tiny bit of fruit.  Have you ever heard anyone complain that the PTA was too generous?  I already decided at the end of summer I would SAY NO to snacks in the teachers’ room….soooooo…..I DID!  Wow, that was easy….1 day down, only 179 to go!  I’ll keep ya posted!

Heading on down to the classroom.  Wow, the students look alot shorter than last year’s class.  It’s amazing how much 5th graders grow throughout the course of the year.  A great morning and everyone seemed interested and alert.  It’s so funny how many of the students come to school on the first day with so many supplies that they can barely fit them into their desks.  Yep, we are a “Have to have” society.  I remember being excited about a few new pencils and a new ruler.  A new pencilbox?  Well, THAT was a bonus!

Why are the Fall clothes available in stores always long sleeve and the pants always long?  I loften wonder this.  Our kids go to school all decked out in their stylin’ new outifts and they sweat their butts off throughout the day.  It reminds me of Easter.  Here in New England we’ve even had snow on Easter and yet, the stores are lined w/ pretty little sleeveless dresses and open toed sandals.  So, who won that war anyway??? (snicker, snicker, sorry Soldier, Love of my life! Just playin’)  Oh yeah, and Halloween.  Can’t forget Halloween.  Most of the pretty princess costumes are cute enough to wear to a dance recital.  But our children run around freezing and parents run around trying to find something “to go with” our children’s costumes so that they won’t freeze to death.  Oh, we’re so good to our kids and retail stores just love us!  ( wow, I sound a little cynical tonight, must’ve been a long day)

Sooo… back to today.  We got all the way to snack time and to diagramming a nice poem…and then all of a sudden the principal is there to tell us one of our students was on the way to the hospital due to an allergic reaction to peanuts.  Poor Mr. Peanut, I bet he never even saw it coming.  It seemed that just 15 minutes ago the teacher was just explaining how we all needed to be extra careful and the students were all nodding their heads in understanding.  How did this happen?  I have to say the whole affair stressed ME out, I can’t imagine how those 5th graders must have felt all day.

I’m left to wonder where all of these peanut allergies have come from.  I have friends who have children with lactose intolerance, peanut allergies, yeast allergies, gluten allergies…what ever happened to simple things like seasonal allergies and cat and dog allergies?  Someone once told me that it has something to do with what is used in our kids’ vaccines. I’d like to know the statistics.  How ridiciulous is all of this?  What’s next?  Are we going to become allergic to apples?  Sometimes I feel like we live in that movie about the boy in the bubble, except… there is no bubble.

After the whole peanut incident, I thought to myself, “Ok, let’s begin again, it’s a new day”.  After all, I am an optimist. Off to recess duty.  Well, there I was standing there about 2 minutes into my playground duty when 2 of my “regulars” run up to me to tell me another student punched them in the stomach (these are 2nd graders mind you!)  Of course I call the adorable child over to see what’s going on and what do you think he did????

Yep, he walked off and ignored me.  So, I followed him and explained nicely that he needed to come with me to talk about what happened.  He yelled out, “NO, I DON’T WANT TO!”  So, then I told him that he needed to go in and speak with the principal.  He then proceded to continue to ignore me and ran across the playground.  As I made my way over to where he was, I saw him STANDING in the middle of a see-saw in full action.   Sigh.  Then of course the bell rang.  Saved by the bell?  Do you think he was thinking that?  Well, he ran inside from the opposite end of the playground which I wasn’t in.  Needless to say, we did have our little “pow wow” a few minutes later in the Principal’s office.  It seems he and I both had a crappy first day of school.

Now, you have to understand that I am the “too nice” assistant out there on the playground.  The meanies (no, they’re really nice) were joking today about how I say in a soft voice, “Hey, there, please don’t do that”.  Yes, I’m slowly learning to be more assertive.  Do you think this will help??

I know, probably not.  I just keep thinking there just has to be another way.  So….there’s my first day…day one of another academic year…and I’M STILL BREATHING! (I’d like you to imagine the music from “Star Wars” right here…. NO NO NO, don’t go download a clip!  Remember that thing inside of you….called your imagination?????  Please sit there for 2 minutes and use it!)  Traaaa la la and goodnight!

ps. please check out origami fortune teller picture from below and imagine it at the top of this.  Blog.com kept timing me out and it wouldn’t save them together….

 I am going to cut and paste one more time to see if it will work.  I’ve been here for an hour trying to figure out why my whole article will not save…..grrrrrrr..  My pic below was just the top of my whole day’s worth of writing….HELP!!

This little “spoonful” tonight is dedicated to a former roomie who knew how to keep my deepest secrets embedded in the blue walls. 

Tonight we made “Sausage and Potatoes” for dinner.

 Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:  sweet italian sausage, red potatoes, 1 red pepper, 1 green pepper, 1 onion, italian dressing, italian seasonings…voila!  Soooooooo easy, cut it all up, put it into a casserole dish, drizzle (more like douse!)  it w/ italian dressing and throw it in the oven for an hour and 1/2 or so at about 375.  Serve with some good bread and enjoy.

Tonight while I was cutting up the peppers I was thinking about how many of my recipes hold the memory of a person who at one time opened their heart to me.  I am thankful for these memories. 

The girls decided they would take the seeds from the peppers, put them in a wet papertowel and see if they will grow.  Aren’t children divine?

And if the saying, “you are what you eat” holds any truth, then, Mansuetude, I guess tonight I would reply that I am “sausage and potatoes”. 

Peace and love to a certain soldier tonight whose impact on my world I will never have the adequate words to describe. 

Just for tonight, THIS is my spoonful~!

There are certain people who burst their way into this world, like a shooting star, which never dims, weakens or fades.  From the time they are born they are blessed with this ceaseless store of positive energy which only seems to brighten as the years fade to gray.  In our short time here on earth, we may know of one (maybe two if we’re really lucky) of these vibrant beings.  They may not be pretty, elegant, worldy (oh, definitely not!), or obliging.  Oh, but they sure are vibrant, non-conforming, unconventional, original, full of laughter and sometimes down right exhausting to be around. 

However, if we are lucky enough to cross paths with one of these “shooting stars”, our lives are turned upside down, spun around, and injected by a sense of joy which we never before knew existed.  We often leave their sides with a new sense of strength and realization that, “this is OUR life and we too can live it OUR OWN WAY!”

Now, you may be wondering what the picture above has anything to do with these supernovas I am talking about.  You may look at this picture of these feet and wonder why I would put such an “unpretty” picture on my blog.  You may smugly be thinking to yourself that you are blessed with earth’s most beautiful feet.  Please bear with me, I’m getting to the point here.

When we were born, one of the first things many of our parents did was count all of our fingers and all of our toes.  As children our parents often played, “This Little Piggy Went to the Market” (that lovely little foot tickling rhyme) while we squealed in delight at the “wee wee wee all the way home” ending.  As toddlers, being fit for our first pair of shoes was a wonderful milestone.  Our parents often bronzed them and put them on a shelf somewhere for all the world to admire.

As the years went on and we got older, we learned how to integrate these phrases into our daily use of language (as defined by Webster’s dictionary):

-at one’s feet : under one’s spell or influence
- foot in the door : the initial step toward a goal
- off one’s feet : in a sitting or lying position
- on foot : by walking or running on foot>
- on one’s feet:  in an established position or state

“Feet” clearly held an important place in society and in our every day worlds.  So now, here we are in the year 2007.  The media has defined that what is ”Pretty” (as defined by people that “know”) is acceptable and worthy.  Women spend millions of dollars primping and doting on their appearance and people who feel they don’t measure up spend their days feeling less than adequate.  In order for our feet to feel “pretty”, women must have a freshly pedicured look with the latest nail color.  If our feet aren’t presentable, we hide them in our shoes and try to cram an appointment to the nail salon into our already hectic schedules so that our social walls do not come crashing down.  (ok, I guess I’ll have to save the rest of this for another day)

So, back to the picture above.  These feet are defined by me as beautiful, joyous, well-lived, and honored.  They have walked this earth with a pep in their step for more than 3/4 of a century and they have stories (as well as a few off color jokes) to tell that would knock the socks off your very own blessed feet.  They are unashamed, real, true, and worthy as they house the body of one of the world’s true “Shooting Stars”. 

More Beautiful Joyous feet (kitty feet too!)

Oh….. Hail to Joyous Feet!

So tonight the girls and I did our biweekly volunteering at Petsmart for the local feline rescue organization, Feline Friends, which houses homeless cats through the store.   Ever since we adopted our adorable little kitties (Oreo Cookie and Vanilla Bean) about 2 months ago, our life has never been the same. 

Growing up with dogs, I never got the whole “cat” thing.  It always seemed to me that cats were spooky little animals with a hidden agenda who should only come out on Halloween, and I tried to stay as far away from them as possible.  I’ll never forget my first sleepover, waking up in my friend’s bunk bed with a black cat clawing through my long straggly hair.  Thank goodness my mother (or maybe it was one of my older sisters?) was willing to pick me up in the middle of the night!

 Now now, who was that anyway who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?  6 months ago if you were to tell me that I would ever own a cat (nevermind 2!),  I would have told you,  ”You craaazzzzyyy!”  Although I don’t speak quite exactly like that.

I don’t know what it was about that day that we strolled through Petsmart, looking through the window at all of those homeless kitties.  I had that nurture craving feeling welling up inside of me.  (You know the one you get right about 3 months prior to realizing you’re pregnant?)  I walked up to the window and noticed how tight the space was and there was that little black kitty making eye contact.  (If you look at the girl’s face in this picture I took tonight, you can probably imagine a similar look in my eyes) I looked into those beautiful green eyes and I literally felt like time stopped for a few seconds.  The next day the girls and I showed up bright and early at the start of adoption time and we walked into that tiny 5×10 room that housed atleast 15 cats.  To make a long story short (hopefully ) two beautiful little kitties showed up at our door 2 days later, and life has never been the same since.

There are sooooo many little kittens and cats out there that desperately need to be adopted.  The guy above’s name is Brewster.  He’s such a loving little hambone.  I spent about 1/2 an hour tonight brushing him out and giving him some lovin’.  Can you believe his owners just left him behind at their home when they moved out?  I guess that’s how much of a “throw away” society we’ve become.   I’ll save this subject matter for another day. 

Here are some pics of our little gems…

 

Sharing each day with these adorable little kittens brings the three of us such joy.  My 8 year old wakes at 6 am begging to feed them and my 6 year old kisses them atleast 20 times a day.  To think that these little ones were found barely surviving under a trailer just a few months ago.   And to think that just a few months ago, I NEVER would have imagined owning a cat.  Sometimes God can be found in the most unexpected of places……

Inspired to start my first blog today.  Spent an hour trying to figure out how to maneuver the website and here I find myself posting.  I chose “Spoonful of Sugah”  inspired by the movie Mary Poppins (which I have watched countless times with my 2 little ones).   In this stressful world (the medicine) where our country is experiencing war and we are constantly trying to stay afloat in the fast pace of society embedded by an even faster jet stream of technology, most of us yearn for simpler lives.  I wanted to create a small place on the net where simplicity and small moments of joy are the focus of a life that goes by so very fast.  This is my “Spoonful of Sugah”.   

Today my 6 year old has been carrying around our video camera interviewing everyone in the family, including our 2 new little kitties.  I’ve witnessed her unabandoned freedom of expression as she’s turned the camera around and so close to her face that you can see every freckle on her nose.  She doesn’t make a point to say anything specific yet she sits there with only a portion of her tiny face showing and speaks whatever comes to mind.  She has tested out many new sounds screeching at the top of her vocal chords and has chased her older sister around with the camera, screaming, “Just one small interview!”  It makes me wonder what kind of career she may find herself in 15 - 20 years from now and I sure hope she doesn’t lose this freedom of expression.  For today this is my small joy.

 I’m somewhat apprehensive about posting here as I wonder where my words will find themselves 1, 5, 10, 20 years from now.  Where is this vast closet that houses the infinite amount of blogs out on the internet?  One day when I’ve left this earth, will there be a genealogical file with my name on it which contains my various musings?  I wonder what my ancestors would think of this.  It’s like creating a life and not really knowing where it will end up.  I guess I’ll take my chances.