Day 4 on $3 a Day

Dave is very strong willed and has been faithfully sticking to his $3 a day. He did admit to me yesterday that he cheated by chewing gum. I don't really see that as cheating.

I cheated by having a kolache from the Czech Bakery in West, Texas. My boss had stopped there on her way back from Austin and brought them to us Monday. How could I say no? (It is an obligatory stop in West for kolaches. Everyone traveling between Austin and Dallas does so.) I cheated again Monday night at Bible study by eating some veggies and dip and angel food cake with strawberries. Dave politely refused.

Sunday we dined on pinto beans, rice, and cornbread. Monday night we had veggie soup. Tuesday night--the rest of the beans and macaroni & cheese. Tonight--a scrambled egg sandwich.

Dave has lost 3 pounds so far. Me, nothing.

And, we have learned that you can't refrigerate bananas to make them keep longer. They look terrible. So terrible, I don't know if we'll dare try to taste one. Oh well, 3 days to go. However, not for me. I'll be traveling to Abilene Friday with our boys basketball team, as the team plays in the regional semifinals. A win Friday night means a second game in Abilene Saturday night at 7pm. I just don't have the will power to pack my meals as Dave suggested.

Culinary Delights on $3 a Day

This is our haul from the grocery store in preparation for our $3 a day meals for Lent. We shopped for the best deals, and only splurged on an additional 40 cents for strawberry preserves instead of grape jelly, and a frozen pizza for $2.50. Thinking ahead, we have also saved about $6 for additional supplies for later in the week. I can already see that we will need more bread and nilla wafers.

It isn't exactly appetizing, or filling, but it is food. Here is our lunch from today. It's a PB&J sandwich with 10 for $1 oranges on the side.


For dinner, we had rice, pinto beans with sausage, and some cornbread. It wasn't too bad. Thankfully we found a deal on sausage at the store to give it some flavoring. Other dishes planned for the week include: spaghetti, veggie soup, and maybe a breakfast meal for dinner.

Lent

Yes, I know Lent started on February 6th. Remember, I'm a bit behind on my blogging.

Our church has established a relationship with a church in Kenya. Our minister, Ken, has been to Kenya twice in the last year. Last fall the Bishop Muruiki and his wife came to Texas, visiting the congregations of six ministers who had gone to Kenya in September. The Bishop and his wife, a high school principal, stayed for about a month with Ken and his family. Ken was touched by the sense of awe held by the Bishop and his wife at all of the things we have and take for granted. So, this year, Ken challenged our congregation to fast during Lent. (This is not typical of any of the Methodist congregations I've been a part of in the past. Instead, we are usually challenged to do something to grow spiritually during Lent.)

Ken is fasting a different item each week: cell phone, email, television, car, running water. (He'll bring in all the water he needs to use in a bucket from his outdoor spigot. The Muruikis were amazed that every house has running water.) The first item on Ken's agenda was to eat on $3 a day, the average amount of food stamps a person needing assistance receives.

Dave has embraced Lent. He's fasted television and his cell phone. I tried fasting sleep to do yoga, but have not been as committed as Dave. I've even tried to lure myself out of bed by reminding myself that I've made a commitment to God, but the flesh is weak--especially at 5am.

This week, Dave and I are eating on $3 a day. We'll keep you all posted.

No Skunks Allowed

I figured that I hadn't had my limit of winter fishing abuse yet, so I decided to take another cold weather trip. A friend of mine invited me to go fishing at Cedar Creek Lake last night. Needless to say it was a very cold trip. Just a helpful hint - when starting a fishing trip in the cold, it isn't a good idea to dunk your foot in the water as you push the boat away from the dock. Thankfully I had on wool socks. They still kept my foot warm even though it was wet the rest of the night.

The 40 degree temperatures didn't prove to be too bad till we started fishing a windy point. Then it got cold really quickly. The fish were pretty uncooperative most of the night. I did manage to land one 6-1/2lb hybrid bass, one big white bass, and a dinky largemouth bass. Lost another BIG fish to a broken 15lb leader. All in all, a slow night for what we had to endure with the weather.

Sometimes fishing seems more like work than an enjoyable diversion. Last night was one of those times. It was cold, and the fish weren't very active, and you had to work hard for a few bites. Thankfully I caught a few fish so that we didn't get skunked. Here's the one nice fish from the trip. Looks a little cold - doesn't it....

A Touching Story

In 1986, Dan Harrison (see picture above) was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University . On a hike through the bush,he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Dan approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Dan worked the wood out with his hunting knife,after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face,stared at him for several tense moments. Dan stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned , and walked away. Dan never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Dan was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teen aged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Dan and his son Dan Jr. were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Dan, lifted its front foot off the ground, and then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man. Remembering the encounter in 1986, Dan couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Dan summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Dan's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly. Probably wasn't the same elephant.

Just This Week at Work

I've been remiss in updating the blog. I feel like there's nothing "blog-worthy." Then I stop and reflect on the crazy week I've had. Teenagers do make life interesting.

Thursday morning a student got sent to the office for being disruptive in class. His assistant principal was at home with a sick six year-old son. I've dealt with the disruptive student before, neither of the other assistant principals was around at the moment, so I took the boy into my office. I tried being civil to him and reasoning with him. I went down to the classroom and got work for him to do and was just going to let him sit in my office for the rest of the period. About 3 minutes before the bell rang, I tried to have a "how are you going to avoid this situation in the future" conversation with the student. I then got to see the disrespectful, uncooperative student that I saw a few weeks ago. Because of his actions, I decided that he could sit in ISS the rest of the day. As I walked him out, he said, "This school is so queer." I turned him back around and we went back into my office. I radioed the SRO (school resource officer) to come to my office. I continued to try to have a conversation with him, but he wanted to look everywhere except at me and always wanted to have the last say with some smart remark. (BTW: queer means strange, the school is so strange . . . ) By this time another AP has joined me since he had also had a conversation with the young monster earlier. (All of this is happening about 9:45 am). The student kept looking out my door at passersby, so I got up and slammed it. In fact, I slammed it so hard that the ceiling tiles shook dust and debris all over my office; I'll think really hard before doing that again. It was a great attention getter. At this point, we radioed the SRO again. He came to my office. Guess what? He had told the little darling earlier in the week that if he disrupted a classroom again he'd get a ticket. So, I had the SRO write him a ticket, I called his grandfather to come get him, and suspended him for the rest of the day. Don't mess with me.

Friday morning, we received a tip that two girls were acting strangely (should I say queerly?) and one was overheard saying to the other, "You can't use all of them." I questioned girl #2. My co-worker got girl #1. When I talked to my student: "We received a report from someone who's concerned about you. Are you in possession of anything that you shouldn't have?" Imagine my surprise when she responded that she had a razor blade in her wallet. She had taken the blade from a friend contemplating suicide last week. After insuring that the friend was no longer in danger, I asked the girl if she minded showing me the contents of her large purse. I cleared off the end of my desk for her to deposit her items on. From this bottomless pit came a bag of multi-colored Sharpies ( I opened each one to verify that it was in fact a Sharpie), various pins, lip gloss, loose coins, loose beads (she makes necklaces), a smashed PB&J sandwich, a cheese stick, some peanut butter Ritz bits, and five multicolored condoms. I used to be surprised when girls pulled these from their purses; this is no longer the case since most purses that I search have at least one condom. My co-worker talked with girl #1. "We received a report that you were trying to get something from a friend in class this morning." The girl readily admitted that it was not drugs she was trying to get, but . . . wait for it . . . condoms. Well thank goodness, no drug-use, just protected sex.

Two freshmen had a bit of a food fight yesterday during lunch. Evidently boy A and friends have been picking on boy B. Boy B has taken all he can stand, so he retaliates by pouring ketchup all over boy A. (We have big dispensers of ketchup that you can dispense smaller amounts into small cups. I don't know how many cups were used.) Boy B begged me not to suspend them and not to call home. There was no way I was ever going to suspend them. Instead, they have to clean up the cafeteria after lunch for three days. Boy B is doing a good job. I've got to talk to boy A next week and give him a couple of extra days.

What else?

Oh, Tuesday night in our school's final regular season basketball game one player left early in the game with a compound fracture to a finger--allegedly the bone was sticking out of the finger; I'm sure it was, but I was not anywhere around the injury. Near the end of the game, a second player got an elbow to the temple. He ended up leaving on a stretcher. Parents and fans were a bit rude and disrespectful following the game. We were all at the school about 45 minutes after the game clearing things up and getting people to go home.

I finished my work week with supervision of the boys' soccer game. It was brisk out tonight, so I took the golf cart with a cover on it down to the field. Keeping the wind out was a help, but it continued to get cooler.

Now I'm looking forward to a low-key weekend. I have two jobs for Saturday: drop off some donations at the church thrift store and dinner with Dave for Valentine's. No plans for Sunday after church, and no school Monday!!!

Things Are Picking Up

A group of flyfishers that I chat with online organized a shore clean up on the Red River last Saturday. I love doing this type of event for several reasons. If you can get enough help, it only takes a couple hours to finish the job. The work really isn't very hard, just maybe a bit messy at times. The best part of course, is that you drastically improve the look of whatever you are cleaning up.

The Corp. of Engineers provided the bags, and we went to work. There were twelve of us total starting out. Eventually a few people who were fishing joined in and helped out too. In a little over two hours we collected 40+ bags of trash, a charcoal grill and a huge piece of rebar, and other various nasty things. The appearance of the shore was drastically improved, and everyone seemed very happy with the results.

Miranda (in the red) joined the effort and helped.I did battle with broken fishing lines most of the morning. I must have filled at least one whole bag with just fishing line.The crew and some of the results from the clean up. This trash was only about a third of what we ended up hauling off.