New Van

Two years ago I asked the Food Bank Director for a new food bank building for my birthday, and it arrived - a few weeks late, but better late than never.


The food bank received a grant to purchase a new pick-up/delivery van, so this year I asked for a new van for Christmas. I got one! The Jedi Master went online, looked all over the state, and quickly found one not too far away - a new 2008 Dodge Sprinter that had been sitting on the lot since the economy fell apart 15 months ago and no one has been buying new equipment. Facing Jedi mind tricks, the salesman agreed to sell the van at a used price.


I got to drive it yesterday. I have driven a few large vehicles at my various jobs, mostly passenger vans, and this is the biggest thing I've driven. I did drive a 14-passenger van for a couple days about 15 years ago, which is as big as you can go without a commercial or bus driver's license. Anyway, the Sprinter is easy to drive - heavy, but easy. And with electric mirror adjusters, easier to see out of than the old van is (though still not visibility in the back, of course).


The FBD is very excited that even he, at six feet tall, can stand up in the back. I am too!

Attittude of Gratitude

This past Tuesday marked my third year of involvement with the Alameda Food Bank. My first volunteering gig was helping to hand out turkeys on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in the old trailer. Shortly after I arrived a Board member arrived with his son to assist - and it turned out that I knew this Board member from my previous life in financial aid!


So it is three years later and the food bank has been booming. We're serving half again as many clients as we were three years ago. Now a supervisor, I have recruited and trained (or, frankly, had other train) hundreds of volunteers, some of whom have come and gone, some of whom have come and are still working with me. I have managed the food bank through my colleague's parental leave; I have "shopped" at the Alameda County Community Food Bank; and picked up gleanings from the farmers' market, Trader Joe's, and Safeway. I have helped redesign the way we give out turkeys. I have attended Board meetings, and I have driven the forklift. I have counseled completed many, many intakes, and counseled families on local services. I've done a little college financial aid counseling. I have become good friends with my colleague and his family, and so has Zirpu.


I've been thinking about what was going on for me when I started at the food bank. I was really, really depressed, and didn't consciously know it. I had thought I was on the career track for life, figuring out what my next steps would be in the state association. When I left my last financial aid job, though it was my choice, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I had lost my identity as a professional, work I was proud of. Suddenly I was not doing it anymore, and was unable to pick up where I left off and look for a new gig immediately.


When people ask me how I got involved in the Alameda Food Bank, when I tell the story I always include that the AFB saved my life. Thinking about how miserable I was when I started, I especially realize how happy I am now. I recognize the sadness and the happiness in other people who have become volunteers. We do a lot more than give away food; we are all recipients of something at the food bank.




** If you're interested, please assist your local food bank by going to Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest, to find out how to help people in your community.

Food Bank Bailout

To see this editorial cartoon by Signe Wilkinson, go here. This is what it looks like at my food bank.


If you want to find a food bank in your community, do an internet search for "food bank" and the name of your city, county, state, or region. If you're in the US, you can go to the website for Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest.

It's the weekend

It's a nice long one too and that's great because I'm really tired.


Yesterday was a great day, but very long: I arrived at work at 9am and left at 730pm. In the meantime I was involved with our big turkey giveaway, at which we gave turkeys to 378 families. The line was a block long, but we got everyone a turkey, stuffing, and gravy in just over two hours with help from the Alameda Fire Department and staff at Wind River Software.


Did I take a break then? No, I went back to the trailer and signed up or recertified a bunch of families. I walked over to the coffeehouse and got the most spectacular drink I've gotten in years: I ordered a regular hot chocolate but because I'm well-known in the neighborhood as a food bank do-gooder, the folks in the store gave me an enormous HC with caramel sauce and a big fluff of whipped cream with chocolate shavings and more caramel sauce on it. It was so rich it carried me through for the rest of the day.


... Which included serving 50 people at the regular pantry program in the evening. We normally serve 25, but all of the volunteers, without saying anything to me, were determined to stay until everyone who walked in by 630pm got served. No, KT, and KT's folks showed up, doubling my staff, and we couldn't have done it without them. They packed bags, helped clients make selections, accepted and logged donations, and generally freed me up to do new client intakes and general taking-care-of-people. We were serving an hour after we closed.


This time of year is stressful and busy and all of that. I've been getting paid in hugs and smiles, which is a great bonus.

Turkey Says Eat Beef

Or Gardenburgers

Turkey Says Eat Pork

Temper, Temper

We served 62 people at the food bank today. Being the week before Thanksgiving, and the last Friday of the month (we're closed next Friday) I wasn't surprised. I resisted closing the sign-in list until well after 3pm, but when I realized that the list went to 70, 45 of them had been checked in and 30 of them had been served by 3:30, I decided I had to go with the commitment made to the volunteers. They didn't even start leaving until 4:30. It was a long day; I didn't even take a lunch.


There seems to be a direct correlation between how much English a new client speaks and how many people come into the food bank to drop off donations, get something signed, interview to be a volunteer, and how many times the phone rings. If that person doesn't speak English or Spanish, add 5% (it occurs to me that none of the non-English speakers today spoke Spanish, either). On top of that, two little girls got in a fight - the littler one threw a plastic stool, which broke apart - and a baby was crying most of a solid hour and a half.


All the volunteers, including a brand-new one (who fortunately has worked at another food bank), were very pleasant to all of these clients today. It was hot and loud inside the trailer, and all of us kept our tempers. I'm especially interested to note that I kept my temper today, since circumstances pointed to other times when I've lost it: The food bank director was at the food bank less than an hour today; I didn't get a break; I didn't eat very well; the phone was off the hook for an hour so there were 12 messages to take and return; there were a lot of things going on all day that I had to manage.


This evening I was talking with Miz Jinkins about none of us losing our tempers today, and she said that she thought that "losing your temper" should mean that it went away, and "keeping your temper" means staying mad. I think the words "control of" are implied in the phrase to the extent that we leave them out altogether: "I'm keeping [control of] my temper" or "I'm losing [control of] my temper." Still, I like the visuals of "loosing" rather than "losing" - "I'm loosing my frustration." That is what it feels like to me - I loose my temper, it's out and bounces away.


Fortunately today I didn't lose or loose my temper. I think I may be mellowing out, because I know that a lot of the same conditions that have really tested me in the past don't get to me the same way that they used to. I do not consider myself a mellow person by any means. But I may be mellowing. How does that happen?

BE HEARD

Thursday morning I needed to stall for time at the beginning of service. We were running a little behind inside and weren't totally prepared to have the clients come in yet. I went outside, saying I would make some announcements... slowly... and faced the eighty or so people waiting to come in to get some fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products, and bread. I made the usual announcement about our next Saturday program and then launched into a political speech.


I reminded everyone that this Tuesday is Election Day and if they're registered to vote they need to go and vote. There was a smattering of cheers - and now I know what "a smattering of cheers" sounds like. I told people how and where they could find out where to vote, and how to sign up to work at polling places. I cried, "Tuesday is the day to make your voice heard! This is when the nation listens to you!"


Sure, I ramped up the hysteria, and I was hoarse afterward. But I didn't say anything I don't believe: There are responsibilities that come with being a citizen, and I believe that voting is one of them. I never mentioned any of the ballot measures or candidates for any office. I want everyone to turn out and participate in our imperfect democracy... the more participants, I like to think, the more perfect democracy.

Ten Kitchen Essentials

The San Francisco Chronicle's Food Section has a story this week titled Ten Kitchen Essentials. This list "goes beyond [the] basics like kosher salt and panko breadcrumbs" listed here and includes the following:

Mirin (Japanese rice wine);
Dark chocolate (at least 62% cocoa);
Fish sauce (the Southeast Asian clear sauce);
Quinoa;
Salted capers;
Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce;
Garbanzo beans (I prefer to call them chickpeas);
High quality honey;
Whole grain mustard;
Fancy tuna in olive oil


It happens that quinoa and chickpeas are a standard item in my pantry, piled on shelves in the garage, as well. I personally prefer rice to quinoa, but Zirpu likes quinoa's higher protein and lower glycemic index better, so we have both. It's also important to be able to whip up a batch of hummus anytime, and I have been known to use them as part of a whole non-chickpea-focused recipe as well. We like mustards here, and the kinds of mustards we buy - garlic mustard, jalapeno mustard, Jim Beam mustard - tend to be made with whole grain mustard. But we also keep the usual yellow on hand. I use fish sauce so slowly that it becomes part of the pantry after I buy a bottle for the few tablespoons I need for a Chinese recipe from my wok book.


The rest of this intrigues me. These are pantry items? I think of pantry items as the things you could make a meal of, not with. It strikes me that perhaps this list was mistitled as "essentials' and should have been called something like "Ten Versatile Pantry Items" and even then not including cream of mushroom soup is pretty questionable). Kitchen Essentials in my kitchen, in no particular order:

Olive oil
Quinoa
Mustard of some type
Chickpeas
Onions
Garlic
Tuna (not packed in oil)
Pasta (low carb, soy or whole wheat)
Barbecue sauce (because I have several slow cookers)
Flour

The top ten things we pack the boxes with at the food bank are:
Canned fruit;
Canned vegetables;
Canned corn;
Canned soup;
Canned tomatoes;
Canned chili, stew, or ravioli;
Tuna;
Pasta;
Rice;
Cereal


These are what I consider the "essential" essentials, the best guess for feeding folks from nonperishable goods for the best price (several commenters in the original article mentioned the cost of the Chron's list).


Now, please excuse me while I make biscuits out of flour and bacon grease to go with the slow-cooked ribs with barbecue sauce.

We have pets!

350 of them.

Their sheer numbers should tell you what they are,
but if not, here's a hint:











Alameda County runs a program called Stop Waste, to encourage residential and commercial trash customers (that is, all of us) to reduce and recycle. We got a letter asking us to consider buying a yard composter or a Wriggly Wranch, or ideally, both. I read it and gave it to Zirpu, remarking that the county is greatly subsidizing the price of these items. I didn't expect him to do anything with the brochure but recycle it, but Zirpu got online and ordered the set. The day after Zirpu's birthday, two big boxes arrived via UPS. I stuck a leftover gift ribbon on one of them and when he came in I said, "I got your birthday present!"


Yesterday Zirpu and I went to the liquor store/bait shop down the road. As we walked in we passed under a stuffed deer's head that seemed to define "moth eaten" and by the kind of freezer that usually holds ice cream sandwiches filled with sardines in bags with "for bait ONLY" printed on them. Zirpu marched up to the counter and tried to determine whether jumbo or regular sized worms would be better for the worm bin. The instructions that came with the bin said to add about a pound of worms, but the lady was only selling them by number. In the end, he selected 50 jumbos and 300 regular size (which are much smaller than the jumbos, actually). The instructions that came with the worm bin say that if you feed them and keep them healthy, eventually the bin should be able to support 1500 worms.


I am not sure what we will do with the compost and castings the worms produce. Perhaps Zirpu's garden experiment will expand, though most of our backyard is covered by the deck.

Birthday Weekend

A success! I had a great time this past weekend, but I was wrong about having a birthday party every month helping me relate to being 40: I'm used to saying I'm 40, but I'm not used to the idea yet... Just celebrating the thirteenth anniversary of my 27th birthday...


I'm still much younger than most of the people I work with, and I doubt there are many 40 year olds who can say that. Go food bank volunteers!


The birthday party was big fun! I managed, somehow, to invite just enough people from all the circles of my life for everyone to see someone they knew. The chatter was loud! The food was good - if I say so myself, since I made most of it and Shobi-wan made the rest.







We had yummy beverages made from Stirrings brand martini and margarita mixes (with which I wound up due to circumstances beyond my control). I told everyone that since the mixers don't include high fructose corn syrup, and lemons and limes are high in Vit C, the drinks were healthy!

Plus, Rouzi has agreed to be my personal bartender. Every forty-year old should have one.










As requested, my friends also brought 107 pounds of canned goods and a generous cash donation to the party for the food bank, which rocked. I got the idea from a young Alamedan who did it for her birthday party two months ago.



The next afternoon Shobi-wan and I went kayaking at Half Moon Bay. I had never been before and just as I was thinking, "Hm, kayaks!" Shobi-wan asked, "Wanna go kayaking?" We got outfitted and paddled around the outer walls of the harbor, looking at pelicans, jellies, and sea stars.


Monday Mom, Shobi-wan, and I went to a preview of the new California Academy of Sciences, which was amazing. I am really excited to go there when the whole place is open. There were a few familar things: the pendulum, which a docent told us hadn't originally been planned as an exhibit in the new building, but the docents petitioned and persuaded the curators to add it back in; the T. Rex skeleton; the original Hall of Man with dioramas of African animals (which now includes an African penguin tank, and had a human in it playing with the birds); and the original seahorse railing around the alligator swamp.


In the evening we met Zirpu, KT, and No at Destino for dinner and alfajores for dessert. A great birthday weekend!


The best thing for me - and excuse me if you think I'm getting soft in my old age; I've always been sappy - is that I got to spend it with people I like who like me.


Now, what to do for my October Unbirthday...? I'm celebrating the whole year, you know!

Eggplant Dolphin

This eggplant came from the farmers' market. I was immediately reminded of the Play With Your Food books, only it didn't need any alteration to look just like what it looks like.

!Gratitud!

I studied Spanish for five years when I was in school.  When I started at CSH in fourth grade, everyone had to take French; it had been founded by an American French order, after all.  I hated French and often "got a stomach ache" during the 45 minutes that happened to coincide with French class.  When seventh grade started, a teacher who could teach both French and Spanish had been hired, and I figured that Spanish had to be easier than French, so I left the latter for the former.  Then the high school I attended required three years of a foreign language and again the choice was between French or Spanish, so I enrolled in Spanish 2 as a sophomore.

Never let it be said I was a good Spanish student.  Social studies/civics and English were my strongest subjects; Spanish and algebra/geometry/trigonometry were my weakest.  Many a report-card bawling out was due to the Cs I got in Spanish.   This was because I really didn't care about studying and found memorization boring, so my vocabulary was pretty poor though my grammar was all right.  In fact, the year my Spanish was the best was the year during which I was kind of dating a boy from Mexico - we, like a lot of teenagers, spoke Spanglish, a language of Spanish grammar and Spanish-ized vocabulary.

In tenth grade my teacher was Sra. Baumgartner and that year was full of conjugations in all tenses.  I actually got a B on the final because I made myself memorize all the tenses the night before the exam.  That was the highest grade ever I got on a Spanish test.   For eleventh and twelfth grade my Spanish teacher was Sr. Crossley, who was famous for being both the meanest teacher and the hardest grader in school.  He was a hard teacher, but a good one:  When I was in Spanish 4 as a junior he was also teaching Spanish 5 and 6 in the same classroom. There were a lot of students in the class who spoke Spanish at home, and while my assignment might be to write a paragraph about the reading (my introduction to Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges!) they had to write two pages.  He only spoke in Spanish during class and insisted everyone else did too.  I graduated with a C- in Spanish and haven't studied it since.

Now I speak Spanish at work at least once a week.  There aren't very many volunteers who are fluent in Spanish but we have a lot of clients who are fluent in Spanish and not in English.  Because my Spanish, poor as it is, is better than the Food Bank Director's, I usually volunteer to counsel new clients.   I wonder what my Spanish actually sounds like to a fluent speaker; I always start off with "I speak Spanish, but my Spanish isn't very good."  The other day I spent thirty minutes completing a client's intake and describing all of our programs to her.

I'm always proud of myself for being able to communicate with these clients, because of all those Cs I got in school.  But I'm more thankful to Sr. Crossley for being such a tough teacher when I had him in high school; I think it's because of him that I remember as much as I do.

The Six Word Memoir

Have you heard about The Six Word Memoir? Mrs. P., the most voracious reader I know, mentioned it, probably because she's noticed how many memoirs have been turning up on my list of read books. She is a high school English and drama teacher, so she asked her students to write their six word memoirs. Then she asked her sixth grade son. And her parents. For all I know, she's asked the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker to do it too.


Of course I made my own attempts. This exercise reminded me a lot of the assignments in fourth grade to write haikus, counting out syllables on my fingers. It reminded me so much of that, in fact, that I had to remind myself not to count a words like "accidents" or "doesn't" by their syllables.


What I found hard about it were things that were true about me and my experiences, but that I didn't want that to be the whole story I tell of my life. The first thing that came to mind was "I learned: Love doesn't conquer all." Well, that's true, but my life hasn't mainly been about disappointment in love (if I were 20, or 26, maybe). So what has it been about?

All my turning points were accidents.

To elaborate (in six-words):

College decision made in grocery line.

Fell in love with best friend.

Harry's Mother downstairs, Yellow Brick Road upstairs (I know that's seven, but I can't call it "YBR" here).

Too many men, joined bi group.

Zirpu was Craigslist Bachelor Number Eight.

Started financial aid when college desperate.

Took up dancing on a whim.

Car accident in Fresno literally accident.

Googled food bank, selected wrong one.

Auto-Tagged

I ran across a post with this list meme. She says at the end, "I'd like to "tag" everyone or anyone who reads my blog and would like to participate" so I'm picking up the thread until I think of some blog subjects on my own.


Five things I was doing ten years ago:
1. I returned to Vernonia after two months in California (during part of which I was helping Shmeen get ready to marry Shman) and finalized plans to come back permanently. In the midst of this planning, Denver D came through on his way to Santa Fe and asked if he could move to CA with me instead. YaYaWOT's husband's advice was since I was going anyway and it would be cheaper to move back with someone, I should say yes, even if it didn't work out.

2. Looking for social service work in the bay area. It took me some time to realize that with all the schools of psych around here no one would pay me more than $6/hour to do what I knew how to do. One executive director called me (after her assistant advised me to fax my resume) to ask, "If you don't have a master's degree, why are you bothering?"

3. Eating a lot of Ben and Jerry's ice cream (favorite flavors: Cherry Garcia and Phish Food).

4. Being 29 and becoming 30.

5. Doing tremendous amounts of yard work.


Five things on my list of things to do today:
1. Go to the gym. This will involve designing a new routine since it's a new month. [Done and done]

2. Maybe get a haircut. Definitely recolor whether I get a haircut or not. [Not done, either one]

3. Return Knitty's phone call. [Yep]

4. Drop off Zirpu at the movie theatre and buy a bathing suit at the nearby Sports Authority. The elastic has blown out of my current suit to the point where I can't feel it on my body. I always wind up checking to make sure it's covering my lower back before walking into the pool area at the gym.

[I did drop him off, but there were very few bathing suits at SA since "they're changing seasons." I was advised to come back in two weeks.]

5. Write at least one more blog post. [Yes]


Five snacks that I enjoy (right now):
1. Dried apricots.

2. Tortillas, toasted on the range, with melty butter. (I'm big into Trader Joe's "real handmade" tortillas right now).

3. Avocados.

4. French fries. Preferably not curly fries, and without ketchup.

5. Cheese and crackers.


Five things I would do if I was a billionaire:
1. Endow a grant fund for middling students at my college. Start 529 plans for every child I know.

2. Buy a new van for the food bank. Give the food bank an endowment for higher salaries for the Food Bank Director and the Program Coordinator (and/or for medical benefits for same).

3. Pay off our house and build a bigger back bedroom. Buy the house No and KT live in from my mom and give it to my brother. Also buy reconstruction for that house.

4. Take the train around the US and Canada, Pullman class, and get off the train to wander wherever I feel like it. This train trip would also include travel in interior Alaska, even if not by train (though preferably not by Vomit Comet).

5. Take Zirpu to every Cirque du Soliel show and to Teatro Zinzanni year-round.

That's more like ten things. Oh well.


Three bad habits I have:
1. Biting my nails.

2. Not reading the mail that comes from my retirement account companies.

3. Not closing drawers. Zirpu pointed this out to me the other day when I mentioned that he doesn't throw away his empty soy milk containers.


Five jobs that I've had:
1. Baking cookies at an Ultimate Cookie retail location on Haight Street.

2. Selling clothes, from t-shirts to vinyl dresses, and intimate wear at Daljeet's on Haight Street. I also worked at the warehouse, doing shipping and receiving.

3. Being a day camp counselor at the Jewish Community Center. A few years later I was asked in an interview, "Why do I get the feeling you're Jewish?" which was such an unbelievably illegal question that I was speechless.

4. Landscaper at the university.

5. Main propagandist - oh, I mean, Newsletter Editor - for a snake oil pyramid scheme company - oh, I mean, a health supplement multi-level marketing firm (now defunct).


Five things you don't know about me:

Hmm, having already responded to the seven weird things about me meme I'm drawing a blank on what to put here. What you don't know about me now, I don't want you to know.


To quote the person I got this from:

I'd like to "tag" everyone or anyone who reads my blog and would like to participate.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

One of my volunteers is from China, and he often acts as both our interpreter and our identifier of unknown Asian vegetables. On Saturday I asked him if he had gone to any New Year's parties and he responded, "No! I don't celebrate Chinese New Year! I am an American!"


At the elementary school I attended, a lion dancing troop came every year to perform in the school yard. All the students sat in a big circle around them while the musicians banged the drums and threw firecrackers, which always startled me. Chinese New Year was a big deal at my school, including making wontons and playing Chinese jump rope where you tried not to get your ankles caught between the bamboo poles when they clacked together. As a neighborhood group we usually went down to Chinatown to watch the parade, too.


As Jon Carroll says in today's column:

As far as I'm concerned, you can't have too many New Year's celebrations.
All the vernal earth-is-not-dead festivals have a similar message, that
everything is renewed and we can start over with untilled soil and unspoiled
memories and make new things grow. We have another chance to get it right, and
there can be no better news.
We used to say, "Today is the first day of the
rest of your life." We could just as well have said, "Tomorrow is New Year's
Day. Clean house! Dress up! Eat special food!" Such a good plan for any day, for
every day. Particularly if yesterday wasn't so good, tomorrow is a very good
time to start a new year. Hell, they have new fiscal years all the time; why not
new personal years?

Field Trip

The Food Bank Director and I went to the Alameda County Community Food Bank last week. I'd never been there and I wanted to see it. It's a huge place, with a walk-in freezer almost the size of our house (part of which you can see in the upper left corner of the photo below), and a small section set up with shelves where we "shop" that is probably 30 x 40 feet, minuscule in relation to the size of the whole warehouse. There's a desk where you sign in and they give you a cart, Then you walk up and down the aisles until you have everything you can get. The weight of your stuff is recorded for billing purposes and you go out and pack your truck or van and leave.


The difference between our food bank and the ACCFB is kind of like the difference between a mom-and-pop grocery store and a grocery distributor. We get our stuff there and then the clients come to us to get their stuff. We got ten cases of tomato sauce, ten of diced tomatoes, ten of cranberry sauce (for next November), and five of pork and beans. We also got 100 pounds of sweet potatoes, 100 pounds of carrot stubs, and 50 pounds of onions. The ACCFB charges by the pound for the canned goods, and the produce is free. Unlike a grocery distributor, the choices are limited, as are the amounts (sometimes). You get what they have when they have it because you don't know when they will have it again. We have a lot of tomato products because that's pretty much all the ACCFB has had for several months, but come September they may not have any so we should get it now - and do.


All cans, jars, and packaged food like crackers and cereal have codes printed on them which mean various things. The date printed on the can is often a "best by" date (sometimes it is a packing date). After the "best by" date has passed, the food inside the can is generally good for up to 24 months (depending on what's inside the can), though the nutritional content may be compromised (particularly in the case of vitamins). When we get cans and packages donated by the community, we look at each one to see if it's worth putting up on the table for packing. We all throw stuff out if it's more than two years old, and sometimes before that if the packaging looks iffy or (obviously) of the can is bulging or leaking. The oldest can we've received since I've been at the food bank had a "best by" date of June 1995. I think it came from someone who brought us the contents of their parent's kitchen when the parent died or moved into supportive housing. We all wondered at the age of the can and then someone pitched it in the trash.


Carrying all these cans around reinforces my weight training - and my need for weight training!

Why?

Boy, am I feeling crabby. Zirpu is, wisely, taking his space.


Work was no more crazy today than it has been for the last six weeks. But that is probably why I'm feeling crabby. I'm glad Christmas is next week, as that means things will be much quieter around the food bank soon.

Two Parties in Three Days

(on top of four in four days last weekend)

We had a volunteer appreciation party at the food bank this afternoon, after service this morning. It was a really nice event, with lots of food donated by local restaurants and live bluegrass music. About fifty people came, but it could have been 100 (and heaven knows where all those people would have stood, because as large as the new building is, it's not that large). We had ordered mugs for everyone as a thank you gift, too.


I get lots of hugs at the food bank, too. So I feel appreciated as well.


I have been so focused on work that I didn't realize until Monday that I had been planning to use Thursday afternoon, when I don't usually work, to hit the party store and get stuff together for the Mother/Baby Shower I'm co-hosting on Saturday for Shanaleh. Then on Monday I realized that I was going to be at the food bank all day and I didn't know anything about what to do about the shower.


Fortunately I was volunteered to get the stuff we needed for today's event at the party store, so while the balloons were being blown up I walked around and thought about the M/B shower. Very quickly I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I'm surprised that so much baby shower stuff is gendered; I thought that showers generally happen before babies arrive, and it still seems to me that a lot of people don't know what sex the baby will be. I could not remember which games Shaneleh had said she thought sounded fun (I have since looked; whew, neither involve a lot of "stuff" to do).


Ultimately I got some little treat bags, and stickers to make them pretty, but I'm not sure what I'm going to put in them (I am considering some kind of candied and/or spiced nuts). I talked to Shaneleh tonight and realized that I could give chocolates as prizes. I know I need to go to Whole Foods for the nuts and probably Smart and Final for candy (as in "Guess how many Skittles are in this [typical baby-related item {omg, what will that be?! Or I'll just use a bottle}) and over to See's for the prizes. None of that sounds bad, but I'll have to do all of it between 7 tomorrow night and 10 Saturday morning. Plus I have to put the treat bags together! Augh!


If I had known six weeks ago what the last two weeks were going to be like, I would have insisted we have this party the second or third week of December. Experience tells me that everything will be fine on Saturday and Shaneleh is a pretty low maintenance person anyway. Still, thank goodness that the other host has her act together. . .

The Birth of The King

About 15 years ago, a friend of mine took a seasonal job with UPS delivering packages between Halloween and mid-January. She was partnered up with a driver and while he delivered to one side of the street, she delivered to the other.


She said that he did not like Christmas (oh, UPS drivers, I'm sorry I ordered some stuff from LL Bean yesterday!). He preferred to celebrate the birth of the king in January.


I must say that I am suddenly very sympathetic to this mystery driver's position.