There Ain't No Free Lunch

It's summer, and it is therefore the season of free lunch and breakfast. The school district provides free meals to children under the age of 18 at various parks and schools. Adults can buy a lunch for $3. Adults are not permitted to eat off the kids' plates, and until this year, you were not supposed to remove food from the premises. This year, the kids may take one thing, such as their fruit or cookies.

I have tried this a couple of times in the past. I would go to the park, and it would frustrate me to no end to watch my children waste tax money by ignoring their food. I ceased and decided it was not worth it. Besides, I either had to feed myself first, pay $3, or wait till I came home to eat. With only 2 or even 3 kids, it wasn't worth it. This year, though, I have 4 eating kids of my own plus my wonderful neighbor. Going to the school saves me some money.

I totally agree with the motive behind the rules. The food is for the children. I believe in being honest and following the rules. BUT I also believe in being thrifty and not wasting food. Every time I go to the park, I have this major internal battle. I can justify disobeying the rules by arguing that the children will eat it later or that it would just end up in the trash anyway. Why is it worse to feed me than the garbage can? If they're not going to eat it, why shouldn't I? If I buy my own lunch, does that make me less guilty if I snitch unwanted food from my kids' bags? So this is my moral dilemma: Follow the rules or not waste food?

I'm glad that most days we can go to the school where food is served on a tray, and it would be hard to take the food with me even if I wanted. At the park, though, everything is prepackaged in a paper bag. Anything not eaten would be so easy to take home. And if I bring home Sunny's carrots, you can bet she won't eat them any better at home than she did at the park. So in the mean time, I think we'll keep eating at the school, and on Fridays, we will just eat at home to save me the dilemma!

By the way, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole program, but I'd be crazy not to take advantage of it since it's there!

How about you other mothers? Do you take your kids to free lunch? Do you ever snitch or keep stuff? What do you think about all this?

Oil Spill

We live very near the Jordan River, as I have mentioned before. The recent oil spill has hit very close to home, indeed. Yesterday we walked over to the river, and it was disgusting! I forgot the camera, though. The fumes were pretty bad, and there was lots of black slime oozing down the river. I walked over today, and it was much better. Here is some visible oil still floating:

This is the nearest pumping site, which is right below the slime in the picture above.
And this is below the pumping site. You can still see a sheen on the water, but there was no more black stuff!
I am really impressed at Chevron's response to this, especially when contrasted with the behavior of BP in the Gulf spill. They are doing everything they can as quickly as they can, and they are bearing the expense to get it all cleaned up. Last night I feared it would be weeks until we could even think of putting the canoe back on the river, but today I am more hopeful. We will see what they say at the community meeting tonight.

I recommend my niece's blog post on the subject as well.

Funny Labels!

Well, I have started my other blog. You can find it at http://funnylabels.blogspot.com/.

I just have a couple of posts, but one of my friends has graciously provided me with some more funny labels. Now I can keep it up for about a week. If you have any funny labels, please send them my way!

New Definition

Sunny: Mom, Kandy is exquisive. (pause) Do you know what "exquisive" means?
Robin: No.
Sunny: It means so...cheerful!

It's All About Timing

The night before last, I realized I hadn't seen our inside cat, Minou, since the morning. Yesterday afternoon, he still hadn't come home, and I started to get worried. I began looking on the websites of local shelters for information. This morning, I looked more and decided we better go look at the shelter to see if we could find him because there was a description with no picture that sounded promising. I put Abel in his car seat and found shoes and socks for Buster and Sunny. We opened the door to go outside, and, as usual, Tripp (the outside cat) was sitting right by the door. As we stepped over him, Minou came running in the house! He made a beeline for his food. He seems healthy, although he is extremely dirty. I wonder where he has been. We are all very glad he is home safe and sound. It is an answer to prayers! The timing is what really cracks me up, though.