yum yum

I asked Alex yesterday what he'd had for lunch. He said he made a sandwich with "the meat that looked sort of like bacon". It took me a little bit to figure out what he'd done, then asked if he meant the package of turkey bacon. He supposed so. I asked if he'd cooked it first, and was rewarded with a look of stupefaction. "Maybe that's why my tummy hasn't been feeling so great this afternoon."

Yeah, I bet that would do it. Raw bacon probably doesn't sit that well on the tummy, even if it is made from turkey instead of pig. Can you tell we don't have bacon in our house very often?

What $700 of school supplies looks like

Last week, PATCares held its 6th annual Italian Café lunch to raise money for school supplies. In case you don't remember, we do a school supply drive every year for the Tallahassee Foster Parent Association. The FPA sets up all the supplies in a room and lets the kids "go shopping" to pick out what they like and need for school. We had about $100 worth of supplies donated to us at work (and from some of my friends - thanks!), and we bought the rest. PATLive matches all the money we collect, so Alex and I went shopping last night to purchase $600 of supplies. It took us almost 3 hours!

It's an ordeal, since we have to try to think of what kids from 5K all the way through high school might need, and pick things in colors and designs for both boys and girls. We know they have a real need for backpacks, so we usually start with those. Understandably, a foster parent finds it easier to buy the $0.25 pack of crayons and the $1 pack of pens than the $30 backpack. I've noticed that some backpacks might be cute, but they don't even last until Christmas at our house, and I'm sure these kids have the same problem. The association chairwoman confirmed they would rather have a fewer number of good quality backpacks than a plethora of the cheap junk ones. So, we bought 12 bags that ended up almost $400. That left $200 for everything else. As you can see, we ended up with quite a number of things! We have notebooks, dividers, paper, duotangs, spiral notebooks, pencils, pens, erasable pens, highlighters, protractors, scientific calculators, erasers, crayons, report covers, glue, pencil pouches, and other assorted goodies.

Exhausting? Yes. Worth every moment of it? Absolutely.

It was a little scary

I did something this weekend that I've never done before. I put a political bumper sticker on my car. Crazy, I know. I think I've only ever put one sticker on my car in my life, and it was my "Class of '90" sticker in high school (on the car that ended up a little crunched). I know I've never put on a political sticker. I don't even put the my-kid-is-on-the-honor-roll thing on my car.*

Life continues to change, and "tomorrow is the next day" as my dad likes to quote. (quick, 5 points, what movie does that come from?) My friend's husband is running for the Florida House. As he played football at FSU and then in the pros for several years, he's quite good at running. and winning. The political arena is a little different, however. He's not even in my voting district, so I can't support him with my vote. I did decide to advertise for him, though, by putting a sticker on my car. I investigated quite thoroughly, and have been assured it should not be a problem to get the thing back off the car after the election. I hope so, since I don't want this on my car for the rest of my life. Just in case, though, I hedged my bets a little: I put it on the plastic tire cover on the back of the car, rather than on the car itself. We'll see in a few months if it really does come off or if they lied to me. Scraping it off the tire cover doesn't bother so much as scraping it off a painted car.

* I have taped it up in the window for a 9-week period. I told him he had to continue to earn it each grading period in order for it to stay up. It did stay up as long as he was in that school; subsequent schools haven't had the stickers for me to have to worry about. I didn't actually peel the backing off and stick it onto the car, though, I just taped it from the inside of the window. Peter's sticker is truly applied as it was intended to be stuck.