How to Wrap a Cat for Christmas

He looks like my Luke...and he and Bert are the best presents I ever got.



HT to my friend Beth Stone, who posted it on her Facebook wall. Her website is Beth Stone Studio, well worth a visit.

It's coming...

The imaginary restaurant

Kindergarten kids often have a chance to 'play' at centers. I said 'play' because each station is stocked with academic games and learning things, but they think it is play. Some of the centers are academic in nature and others seem social but are actually teaching skills and imagination. Once per week they get to play in the Kitchen center, which is very enriching in terms of imagination. The kids love the Kitchen Center.

There was one little boy who was having a good time back there. He was banging pots and pans, dressed in a diner type apron, and was taking orders from the other kids sprinkled around the room at their centers and then bringing them the food.

He came over to me. He had his hand ready in a taking orders on a pad pose, and he said "What would you like to eat?"

I made a show of thinking for a moment, and then I said "I'd like a grilled cheese please."

Pause.

"We're out of that."

I burst out laughing. I said "You're out of imaginary grilled cheese?"

"We don't have that. What else would you like?"

"I'd like a hamburger. And a Coke."

"No Coke. We have Dr Pepper today".

I thought to myself, "Is this the Olympia Diner?"

Anyway, the boy was cute as a button and eventually I got my hamburger and Dr Pepper. It 'cost' $4, which I thought was totally reasonable. For imaginary food, that is.



This is a video of the real diner SNL got the idea from, the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago.

Slinky, slinky, it's a wonderful toy!

The children at school are as excited for Christmas as I've ever seen them. They exchanged their stocking stuffers today and they were thrilled over the smallest gifts. Those excited them as much as an X-Box or an iPad. They got mini-Slinkys and it was all the teacher could do to get them to put them back in their box when examining time was over and the next gift was to be passed out. They giggled in delight over a blue candy cane with a ribbon on it. They were totally content with a coloring book and crayons. They were happy kids.

Why do we overload them so in real life?

Today was the second of two staff nibbles days, where we bring something to eat and set up a nibbles buffet in the teacher's lounge. Today I tried the veggie dip (great), spinach dip (great) and a variety of other sweet and savory things. It was all pretty rich though, and by the afternoon my stomach cried uncle and begged for a cantaloupe. I had brought some cut up chilled cantaloupe for a snack and it hit the spot. Ahhh, something fresh and healthy.

Wednesday is a half day and the kids go home at noon. That's good, because today they were NUTS. Teachers from K-to-3rd grade let their classes out in the afternoon for an extra recess. Thank goodness it was 60 degrees and sunny.

Tomorrow after the kids leave we have a staff lunch. The only other obligation I have after that is picking up my Bountiful Basket on Saturday morning, and Sunday church. Otherwise I am IN like a groundhog through the winter!

Birthday

It's my birthday today. Another year on planet earth!

I have a wonderful set of friends and colleagues. They gave me happy birthday wishes, cute gifts, and just overall made me feel warm and included. That is a special feeling. It is not something to be taken for granted. It's not often you can say that your work colleagues are your friends also, but these people are. They really are.

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.” ~ Linda Grayson.

And educators know about chocolate!

We had our Christmas play today. The people who put it together try to include as many children as possible, from all ages. It's always cute. The people who donate their art talent always make the sets look gorgeous. We have many teachers who are extremely talented singers and we're always blessed to hear them sing. I really enjoyed it, and the sentiment as usual was high this year. It centered around a soldier receiving letters from home. He was in camouflage on his bedroll, and at another part of the stage in a Christmas decorated booth were the people reading the letter as the soldier pantomimed reading it. The soldier's mom, dad, younger sister and brother, grandma, and wife read letters. In between letters a narrator explained things, and then there were songs, some fun, some traditional hymns.

In the end we all sing Silent Night.What a wonderful thing: 500 children and adults softly singing Silent Night.

As we filed out, one of the boisterous boys I know in kindergarten said: "I liked that. I almost cried!" I told him I almost did too.

Tomorrow we will have our morning as usual and then in the afternoon the kids in Kindergarten will have their Christmas party in their rooms. They pass out stocking stuffers to each other in bags they've decorated and prepared, and they then eat Christmas cookies and drink punch. I love these kids and I'm looking forward to spending a little time with each of them as I visit room to room.

Then Wednesday is a half day, and after the kids leave at noon, we have the staff Christmas luncheon. After we're dismissed Wednesday, I'm off for Christmas vacation until January 6. Woo hoo! Will I make it? I don't know. I'm an old lady now. I just had a birthday!

Rainy day black bean soup

This is Saturday in December in Georgia,

Cold, rainy, dark. That's OK. It's a lot better than Saturday in December in Maine, where I used to live. Where the sun is deceptive,

And the snow never ends,

Nevertheless, it is a dreary morning so I decided to make soup. That always cheers me up! This time it will be black bean soup with roasted chilies, green peppers, and rainbow carrots. I think black beans are pretty. So I took a picture of them.

I know, I'm weird. Call me weird, geek, strange ... just don't call me late for soup.

Broccoli casserole for supper

I had a wonderful day. You know the kind when everything goes just right? And nothing bad happens? It was one of those.

I came home and cleaned up the kitchen so I could make brownies. Every year at school the staff brings their favorite nibbles for a staff Christmas buffet. It is in the Teacher's Lounge and we can go in and out all day as we have time and grab some cheese & crackers, a brownie, a chicken wing...grazing all day over whatever people have brought. It's fun. My contribution will be brownies.

I also made a broccoli casserole for dinner. I got luscious looking broccoli at the last week's Bountiful Baskets. There was a LOT of it though. Looking for a way to use a great quantity at once I looked up a recipe for broccoli casserole.

The casserole called for broccoli of course, a condensed soup, mayo, eggs, and a box of stuffing. Grated cheese would go on top.

As part of my frugal living, I've committed to no-shopping between weekly grocery shopping trips, and no making special dishes that I have to get one or two ingredients for. This saves time, energy and money. It makes me settle down and be satisfied with what I have. And...it also forces me to be creative.

I had most of the ingredients on hand for the broccoli casserole, except for boxed stuffing mix. However, I'd bought a wagon wheel of rolls from BB last time. Half were wheat and half were pumpkin. Bountiful Baskets breads don't have any preservatives in them so you have to eat them within 3 days or freeze it. Not able to eat them in time before going over, I froze them. Hmmm, what if I used the pumpkin rolls as the dry stuffing substitute? It was a way to use the rolls up and to fix the problem of the one missing ingredient.

I defrosted the rolls, chunked them, and put them in the microwave. When they were soft I put them into the blender and ground them. It worked fine. We'll see how the substitutions work out when I taste the casserole.

I received a lovely, lovely Christmas card from one of the readers at the other blog. She put in a nice note. I am always blown away when people do that. It is so thoughtful and it means so much! There was a herb teabag inside, which tickled me. I made a cup of tea and thanked the Lord for good people.

I have a warm, inviting, comfortable home, food to cook, a job, friends at the job, and brethren out there who love the Lord. It's all good.

Five year old strikes again

I was feeling pretty good about my intellect. Then I had a conversation with a five-year old.

You see, I'd heard a joke and I liked it. I was tickled by the punchline, which eluded me until the joke was finished.

A kindergartener and I were sitting at a table, counting Christmas ornaments for math centers. She finished, so I said to her, 

"Hey, what do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?"

"A stick."

I said, "How did you know my punchline? How did you know that?"

"Cuz ... its easy."

The tone was "duh."

 

She #nailedit

Merry Christmas decorations

The Day I Saw Nelson Mandela

His Excellency Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Nelson Mandela died today. He was 95.

Wikipedia recounts the high points of his life thus:

"Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative, multiracial election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation."

Of the lowlights, Wikipedia writes,

"Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the South African Communist Party he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961, leading a bombing campaign against government targets. In 1962 he was arrested, convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. Mandela served 27 years in prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife."

In 1990 as Mandela was released a global frenzy erupted over his emergence back into public life. Considered a humanitarian, a statesman and a very symbol of dignity under apartheid and beyond, he embarked on a speaking tour. Just a few years later, he earned the Nobel Peace Prize (1993).

Very soon after his release from the South African prison, in 1990 he came to Boston Massachusetts. It was one of his first stops. My husband and I were living in Maine. My sister was attending college in Boston at the time and had an apartment. We made arrangements to stop at her place and then go to the Mandela talk together, with a group of her friends.

Little did we know the throngs that had also made plans to attend. A quarter of a million of them, in fact.

We missed my sister in all the hubbub, so my husband and I headed out to the esplanade, which is a long park alongside the Charles River with a clamshell at the top of it.

We tried walking over to the Park, but he crowds were thronging in a way that felt too dangerous to us. People were elbow to elbow and still piling in. We knew we'd never find my sister, and neither of us felt comfortable in the crowd. So we turned around and went the other way. We potted around in Boston city for a while, amazed at the ghost-town like quality of the place. Storrow Drive, a major thoroughfare, was empty. We walked up it, the wrong way, just to say we did. Whole blocks were deserted. Like tumbleweeds up a forgotten mining town, litter drifted down the streets that not one car or one foot moved on.

We finally made our way back to the car and decided just to head back to Maine. My husband asked me if I was sorry that I had not gotten to hear him speak. I said no, I could catch up with the news, or read a transcript later, but the crowds were too excessive for me.

He cranked up the car and down one of the deserted streets we moseyed, stopping slowly at each block's stop sign. Up ahead, I saw a clutch of very well-dressed men walking briskly on the sidewalk. It seemed that a bunch of them were circled around another man. I said to my husband as we slowed for another stop sign, "Look, something unusual about those men."

We drifted to a stop and looked right. The men stopped walking too, as they waited for us to pass and they could cross the street. The men were about ten feet from us, and all was whisper quiet, as if the entire city had been in an apocalypse and we were the only ones left. In the middle of the circle of walking men, was Nelson Mandela.

Me and my husband, him and five men. That's it. No throng of 250,000 people, no reverberating sound system, just a quiet Sunday walk. He was so close I saw his polka dotted tie and even his tie clip. His hands were gnarled and popped with veins. But what struck me was his smile. I said "Hello Mr Mandela" and he nodded his head and smiled a very bright smile that seemed to emanate from his depths and flow outward. He nodded and then the men hustled him on.

The scene was surely only a few seconds but it seemed longer even at the time. We read later that he liked to walk, having been imprisoned for many years, and despite the security risk, he insisted on a daily constitutional.

It truly seemed like a slow motion moment, one of those otherworldly things that happen to other people, but never to you.

But it did.

The moment doesn't mean a lot, he was just a man after all. But he endured every indignity, was the object of violence, was apart from his family for years, and yet he still smiled a smile of joy. I remember Nelson Mandela, not of his peace prize or stirring speech or world-changing efforts on behalf of all races. I just remember a man who persevered, walked along the street of Boston, and smiled.