A Ramblewrite Full Of Optimism And A Plethora Of Interconnected Yet Totally Unrelated Events!
As I am a bit of a manic little MeerKat at the best of times, I made it a personal goal to blog on my Steemit blog at least three times a week. My performance has been solely lacking, but honestly, I haven't come down to hard on myself for my lack of posts over the last couple of weeks. You know why? If I am not posting too frequently, it is due to the fact that my life meter is at max capacity.
In fact, as I was mentally reviewing this past week's activities this morning after my daily French language practice session, it occurred to me that I should share all of the cool mischief I have been into over the past few days, along with some insights and even a mini rant that still makes my ruff get all kerfluffled!
Night Of The Arts
Our high school does a year;y showcase of their student's artwork, everything from fine arts to improv. Night Of The Arts is a fete that takes over the whole school. All of the walls are covered with student's artwork, much of it is for sale. There was pottery, wood working, and paintings galore. There was also a choir and band concert. The event itself was very well planned and executed. Which of course might make you wonder, why in the world was I there?
Well, my daughter is a freshman, and her art teacher has a trip to Paris planned for the art class to see the art of Paris next year. I made a personal sacrifice and offered myself as tribute, er as a chaperone, so next June (2021) I will be in the company of my daughter, her art teacher, and a bunch of artsy high school kids on a trip to Paris. The trip is kinda spendy, so when the art teacher contacted us all a few weeks ago about maybe doing some fundraising for the trip at Night of the Arts I thought it was a good idea. There was a bit of an issue though, our school has a little non profit coffee shop in it, so selling drinks was out, and another group was already selling baked goods, so what exactly would we do to fundraise at the event was a glaring question that was front and center in the email.
It then struck me that I had lots of lavender laying about. France and lavender go together like the US and ranch dressing. I piped up and said I would bring lavender sachets to the event and sell them if that was cool.
The idea was well received.
So, Tuesday night I arrived after unexpectedly having to teach a class of 21 hyper after school elementary kids at the library (THEY OWE ME!) and walked into the high school with wire basket full of lavender sachets on my hip. I was directed to a high wooden table and stool right by the front door and perched on my stool. Every so often I would reach into the basket and give a lavender sachet a squeeze. The scent of lavender along with the hypnotic tones of some very smooth jazz they had playing drew in people like I had some sort of tractor beam. I spent the next 3 hours selling sachets, warding off heathen teenagers who wanted my attention as it was a novelty seeing me out of the library, and even took an order for a bunch of lavender plants. Good times.
Kitteh Invasion
Over the last few months I have had SEVEN female kittens foisted on us. People think that just because I have a farm I must need cats on every square inch of it or something. A couple of days ago we walked outside and there was a little tabby kitten just sitting on our apple press. Someone had dumped her. You could tell she had been someone's indoor pet, as the creature did not have an outdoor level of fur growth and loved dogs. She's also trained to be an indoor and outdoor cat, so LT (Lizard Two as she is pretty much a clone of cat Elizabeth, AKA: The Lizard) gets to hang out with us at the house instead of being assimilated into the barn cat population. Yes, we are suckers.
Speaking of barn cats, yesterday I took a trip to the Humane Society and inquired about their feral/barn cat spaying and neutering program. I was facing a pretty hefty bill to fix all of those girl kittens, as I know how cat math works, and as much as I love kitteh's, I don't really need nor want fifty to seventy of them by the end of summer. I'll be eternally grateful to the Humane Society as the nice ladies there scheduled me into their feral program and will fix and give rabies shots to all seven of the girls at a reduced rate.
Which brings me to the thing that irritated me the most this week.
This is not a safe scene. My husband and I pulled into the gas station that adjoins our local grocery store and my animal radar immediately picked up on this creature. Animals in distress is one of the worst things ever, and this poor soul was in full nervous mode. Now, I love to see people riding their horses into town, it always tickles me, and in fact, I spent several years on my Sister-In-Law's ranch doing guided trail rides through the woods and into town. You know one thing we never did? Tie up a horse, alone, in the middle of a very busy parking lot. That poor creature was exhibiting all signs of horsey distress and with his 4 feet of slack he was spinning around that pole every so often into four separate parking spaces. So many bad things could have occurred and my mouth just hung open in awe at the ludicrousness of the situation. People. Sigh.
Dodge Ball Free For All
A few weeks ago my son walked in the house and wrote "dodgeball" on our whiteboard calendar. He then asked me if I would come to his SOS charity dodge ball tournament that he would be playing in. As my husband and daughter run an entire youth shooting sports program at our local gun range on the night the tournament was to take place, I am used to having my Friday nights free and obviously agreed to go to the event. That and I love carnage. One of my favorite movie lines in history is, "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!!"
SOS stands for Sources Of Strength which is a youth suicide prevention project that seeks to prevent suicide, bullying, and substance abuse through relationships between peers and caring adults, and such. My son is one of the SOS peer leaders in our Jr. High, and the group does a lot of great work on the just giving a care front. Which of course brings us to the 2nd annual tournament.
There were fifteen teams, with the school principal's team, "The Dodgeballers" being the prime target. Along with the match there was also a spaghetti dinner one could partake in and a 50/50 raffle. To be honest, I was there mainly for the dodge ball.
My son's team was named "The Cow Tippers", and one of the girls on his team had lovely t-shirts made. The navy blue shirts had a white, belly up cow on the front of them, and nicknames of the team members on the back. Our last name is Hawaiian and full of vowels. I always tell people it rhymes with "cow pie" but apparently the kids at the school christened my son "Apple Pie" which was emblazoned on the back of the shirt to my delight!
The match began with gusto, teams such as "The Ridiculous Six" and "Snoop Dodgey Dodge" took to the floor. I was really impressed that "The Ridiculous Six" played in full shirt tucker, cowboy attire, but it was "The Cluckers" team shirts that brought me the most mirth. On the front of the shirt was a giant picture of a hen, and above the hen it said "Guess What?" with an arrow pointing to the derriere of the lady bird. Gotta love middle schoolers.
As if the match itself wasn't vastly entertaining, I was sitting next to a group of ninth grade boys who both belonged to and were the cheer section of a team called "The Chads." Now, I normally wouldn't choose to sit next to such a raucous group of seagulls, but they parked themselves next to me and a couple of my pals, and I really didn't want to abandon my court side seats. Am I ever glad I didn't!
"The Chads" were determined to beat the school principal's team. They had a coach, complete with a headset and clipboard. When he started pointing to the clipboard and gave a motivational speech that concluded, "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball" I knew that my time in the gym was going to be even more glorious.
It was double elimination, and when the principal's team beat "The Chads" the first time, you could feel their despair. Rather than be defeated, they sent out scouts on each subsequent match, trying to find a weakness in the other team. There was motivational cheering, pep talks, stalking, and pencil snapping. I was laughing so hard by the time that they got their rematch in the finale that I was pretty sure I needed to borrow my friend's oxygen tank.
I then made a prophecy: "You watch, that clipboard is going to be thrown before the night is over."
Despite a valiant effort, the school principal with his team of twenty something, pink dew rag wearing and shorts clad, side arm throwing, twenty-somethings, steam rolled "The Chads" and sure enough the clipboard was hurled onto the gym floor along with Coach O'Houlihan's headphones. It was a crushing defeat. Did I mention that my abs hurt? So much giggling.
So, to recap, when I am not posting a lot of here, it is usually because I am out living life, a whole lot of it! And that's the thing, I love to share my ramblings with you all, just as much as I love to read about what you all get up too. The day I get tired of experiencing, absorbing, or let's face it eating, is the day I'm probably punching out of this realm. Life really is fantastic, even on the down days:)