On Feeding Our Neighbors

 

If there is one thing that astounds me living in America, it’s that people go hungry, and that very few people seem to care. Did you know that 30 percent of all food ($48.3 billion worth) is thrown away each year in the United States?

All the farms, the supermarkets, the corner stores, the farmers’ markets, the restaurants and cafeterias, the dinner tables. One third of all that food is wasted. We are just not very good at getting it into the hands of people who need it.

A month or so ago, I started researching food pantries in my neighborhood to see if I could volunteer. I found only one in our area, an incorporated city of 50,000 people on the north-east outskirts of San Diego. Statistics say that one in six people in San Diego County do not have a stable food supply. By rough estimate, that means our neighborhood has one food pantry distributing groceries once a month, trying to meet the needs of a potential 9,000 people who might need it.

A few days later, I happened to be in my local Starbucks and saw an event poster for a day of service at Feeding America San Diego (FASD). So I signed up.

Quick Facts About Feeding America San Diego:

• They distribute 23 million pounds of food annually in San Diego, serving 73,000 children, families and seniors each week.
• FASD’s Farm2Kids, BackPack and School Pantry programs give kids basic food items plus three to five pounds of fresh produce to take home each week.
• Their mobile pantries reach under-served communities, and FASD partners with food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters across San Diego county.
• Every dollar donated to FASD results in six meals. SIX!

Two Saturdays ago, Tau and I joined around 600 volunteers, mostly Starbucks employees, at FASD’s Mira Mesa warehouse. We worked on a team that sorted green apples, boxing them up for distribution. Our group also stripped the slightly moldy outer leaves off about 300 heads of cabbage and crated those too. Other teams stuffed backpacks, labeled cans and measured out family-sized packets of breakfast cereal from the mega packs that FASD purchases with donated funds.

During the three two-hour shifts organized for that day, volunteers prepared the equivalent of 31,280 meals, which will be delivered to our community. This organization is making a dent in hunger in our city, and I will definitely be volunteering again.

As for my kid, he learned in a very real way that not all children know where their next meal is coming from. He learned that food needs to be tediously hand sorted and distributed for people to eat. And he learned that both green apples (his favorite fruit) and cabbage (which he had successfully avoided up to that point) were key to our neighbors not going hungry.

God’s joke on us? That evening we got home to a meal prepared by Dave — a sumptuous one-pot pork dish with green apples and sauerkraut!

One Community: January!

 

I’m not even going to try to limit myself to four photos for this month’s One Community roundup! We spent Christmas and New Year in Canada with Dave’s extended family, and the pictures are just too rich to not share!

Treasure. The heart of our visits to Victoria, BC, is always the opportunity for our boys to get to know their grandparents and older cousins, and spend time playing with their younger cousins. Tau asks about Kai (9) and Tait (6) often and opportunities to see them are rare. So when they do get together, it makes for rich little-dude photo ops like these:

Cosy pub lunch after watching Kai’s ice-hockey game

Kai adores his baby cousin

Christmas cuzzies

Silver.  We were lucky enough to have two big feasts! One on Christmas day and a second a few days later when our oldest niece Kendra and her fiance Zack flew in from Australia where they live. 

At the first dinner, Dave’s sister Trisha placed a handmade cracker on each plate. Inside? A small gift for that person—holiday perfection.

What this picture doesn’t show is the certifiable CRAZY that defines Walsh get togethers. Twenty-five of us crammed into a home designed for four people, climbing over each other to move from room to room, hunting down your misplaced wine or beer glass, washing and drying dishes in between courses, straining to converse with an aunt or nephew that you haven’t seen in a year over the shouting din. The kids’ table looked like this at the first meal. Not exactly off the pages of Martha Stewart. Right after this, Maceo spilled someone’s juice all over that table.

Just a few of the kids!

Resolution. There is little room for me-time or reflection on our trips North. I did get out for a nice long walk around our old neighborhood of Oak Bay on Old Year’s Eve though.

Dave and I lived in Victoria for 12 years before moving to San Diego. We married there and put each other through college there. It’s the place where we forged our partnership, struggled to make ends meet, and aspired to live somewhere else. So, returning is bittersweet. Around every corner in this town shrouded in winter is a memory, a feeling, a sense—each one particular and loaded with emotion.

So my walk around the bay, up through the golf course, and back past our old apartment was poignant as I closed out 2013 and looked forward to the new year. Surrounded by our old community, I was very aware of the choices we made twelve years ago to go do something different, and the many blessings we have experienced doing so.

These days, as a working, older mom of small boys, I am beyond torturing myself with New Year’s resolutions. Looking into 2014 is more about focusing on gentle intensions. On small actions that I can give priority, that will lead me to be healthier and more capable. That is all.

Garden gate, Victoria, BC

Winter. We were fortunate to have moderate weather during our visit. Four years ago, we were in Victoria for Christmas and the cold was bitter! This year we packed warmer clothes, fleecy PJs and slippers, a hot water bottle and heating pad. And it made all the difference.

We are spoiled by San Diego winters—the sunshine, the balmy temperatures, the outdoor opportunities. Winter in Victoria reminded me that our sunshine and longer days are like gold!

Sunrise, Christmas morning

Mid-morning, overlooking Oak Bay

Happy New Year, friends!

See you next month!

One Community is a monthly photo project in which participants photograph their homes and communities with a theme in mind. The theme varies by month. The goal is to both showcase similarities and differences in our communities worldwide – and bring us all closer together in understanding through art.

Each month, one of the hosts picks four words for us to interpret through photographs of what we see around us in our daily lives. You can see my previous entries for July, August and September. Starting this month, we’re opening this project up to anyone who would like to participate! We would love to have you join us! The link-up will begin on October 5th and stay open for one week.

The Rules: Post one or more photos interpreting the words for the month, and add your blog post to the link-up. Please include a link back to the link-up post on your One Community post, and take a look at some of the other links and comment on them. This link-up is all about building community!

Yarmulke Deja Vu

I turned around the other day in the kitchen to see this:

Hmn … where have I seen Tupperware Yarmulke Baby before?

Oh right! Same kitchen, different baby!

Beef Boerie, Stywe Pap and Hummingbirds, Oh My!

With kids and summer camp and vacation and work travel, it’s easy for the grown-up birthdays in our home to go unmarked.

And so for Dave’s birthday, I invited some close friends round for dinner and decided to do a South-African braai — something we never do.

Our local supplier of all things South African provided the wors and the pap, and the good people of the Internets provided the wisdom:

• Stywe pap with bredie
• Not overcooking the wors
• Hummingbird birthday cake — not at all South African but very much delicious

Rather sad that I’ve been out of South Africa so long that I need directions on cooking mielie meal and making bredie!

We enjoyed Dave’s birthday out under the stars, with a bottle of sparkling wine to toast him, followed by something from our German vino stash. And a good time was had by all. 

Martin Loofah King Jr

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

– Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963.

Last week, we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr day here in the US.

Now that Tau is in first grade, he is doing proper social studies curriculum, and came home with various projects on the theme of Martin “Loofah” King. Yes, we are still not bothering much to say our tee-aches!

I guess I didn’t give Tau enough credit. Didn’t expect him to grasp US history and race relations at such a tender age.

But all we needed to ask was, “Who was Martin Luther King?” And we got a very earnest account of how the people with white skin used to not allow the people with dark skin to eat in the restaurants or ride in the front of the buses. “And they all said, ‘You GO TO THE BACK of the bus!'”

And how Dr. Martin Luther King said that was not right and he made it change, so that everyone could sit anywhere they wanted on the bus.

Dave posed this question. “So, if we lived back then, Tau, and we went to Chicken Pie Diner for dinner with your brother, would they let us in?”

“You and me and Mom could go in … but Maceo would have to stay outside.”

“How do you think that would make him feel?”

“He would just cry and cry in his carseat outside … because he doesn’t like to be left alone.”

Now, it hits home.

In Case He Raises This in Therapy One Day: A Picture As Proof

“Tau, those shoes of yours that are broken?”

“Yup …”

“The ones with the little lights that are poking out the bottoms … I put them in the garbage, OK?”

“Got it …” A few seconds later: “Maybe we can just put tape on them.”

“No, we cannot put tape on them. The electric wires and bulbs are poking out. They are done.”

“Maybe we can just put tape over more tape.”

“No. Trust me, they are DONE.”

Basket Case

All kinds of mischief, captured in a couple seconds on my iPhone!

 

Addendum

 
I meant to add this masterpiece to the last post. It’s tacked up on the Valentine’s “Love Is …” theme board in Tau’s classroom.

This is a picture of me pushing Tau in a shopping cart out of Target after buying him a Zhu Zhu pet.

“Oh wow! That’s a cute little Zhu Zhu …” pointing to the little orange guy, bottom right.
“No Mom, that’s your car in the parking lot!”

Apparently the private Kindergarten dollars are going towards teaching him visual perspective too. Bonus.

Rock-O, Winkie and the Multiples of Three

Hang around Tau a while and you’ll figure out how he goes about learning new things.

He sits back and observes for a good long while; then turns the object over and over and tries it out. He tries it out until he learns all he possibly can hands-on about how it works. The mechanical parts are of course the main focus.

Then he jumps onto the Internet and proceeds to stuff his brain with every tidbit of information available on the subject. Especially when it comes to toys. Product reviews, videos on the company’s website, related products and playsets, all the while telling us who in his Kindergarten class has which version and what that specific model can or can’t do and which one he needs to buy next.

And so it was with the Zhu Zhu toy hamsters, or rather, the Kung Zhu hamsters to begin. Tau saved up his own money and bought Rock-O, a Kung Zhu Battle Hamster. Yes, battle hamster. You can purchase related battle armor, battle arenas, battle weapons, battle vehicles and novice hamster-training dojos. Battle, battle, battle.

We learned how Rock-O scuttled along, turned around and battled inanimate objects like shoes, matchbox cars and Lego — in the absence of other toy hamsters you understand.

And then, after a week or two later, Tau told us that he wanted to “donate” Rock-O to some other kid that needed him. Apparently Rock-O made too much noise in Tau’s bed and freaked him out while he was trying to fall asleep. He finally opted to give Rock-O to his friend Talan.

“Are you SURE you want to give him away? You won’t be able to get him back. Ever.”
“I don’t want him anymore — he BOTHERS me.”

So we gave Rock-O to Talan, who loves him, and returned to our fascination with all things Lego and Hot Wheels.

Then just after Christmas, we visited the family of Tau’s friend Isabella, and Isabella has a whole family of Zhu Zhu Pets. She has a handful of hamsters, various interlocking habitats, hamster outfits, a hamster car, and a stroller in which the mommy hamster can push her babies. Sigh.

And so it started when we got home.

“But Tau, your last hamster ‘bothered’ you with all his noises.”

“Zhu Zhu Pets are not as noisy as Kung Zhu Pets.”

If you’re a parent you know that whether he was right or wrong on that isn’t the point, and that no amount of reason comes in to play when a five-year-old boy has his eye on a toy.

Eventually, Tau bought Winkie, a very sweet boy Zhu Zhu Pet, and I have to admit that he is not nearly as loud as Rock-O.

Tau also had enough money saved up to get a hamstermobile and a garage. Yes, Winkie the hamster drives his own car out of a plastic garage and around our house. The ridiculousness of this is not lost on Dave and I, trust me.

Right now (bliss!) Tau is out of money, so the requests for additional hamsters fall on deaf ears. They cost around $10 each. Not defeated, he tried a new tack the other day:

“Mom, I’m going to give you three Zhu Zhu pets for your birthday!”

“You know I don’t play with Zhu Zhu Pets, right? So why would you give them to me for my birthday?”

“If I bought you three, we could play with them together. If I buy you three, though, I will need …” pauses for a moment, ” … thirty. I will need thirty dollars to buy them.”

Oh joy. The child can multiply. Our private Kindergarten dollars are paying off.

He is an artful persuader, my son. Sitting on the kitchen counter the other day, stroking his hamster, he gently pressed Winkie’s nose, which elicited a soft chortly purr.

“Oh … that’s the noise he makes when he’s lonely, Mom. When he feels like he wants another hamster to play with.”

Shifting to Manual

 
One of my intentions for the year 2010 was to take a couple days to myself and go away somewhere quiet. Where I could think, sleep, read and rest.

Well into November, Dave reminded me that I still hadn’t done so. It wasn’t for lack of trying — I just hadn’t found the right spot. I finally decided on a nearby resort, somewhere secure enough that I could just relax and be.

The agenda included sleeping in, spending time in contemplation, doing some personal planning for the new year, lounging at the pool and reading, eating at least one luscious meal alone (yes, by myself, with no little hands knocking glasses off the table!), using the gym to offset said luscious meal, and getting to know my camera again!

I had a great couple days away. The time to rest and think and feel on my own has carried me lovingly into this year. I feel it under me, like a soft cloud, a gentle support.

And yes, I took my camera off Auto. I set it on Manual everything and I played around for a few hours with aperture and shutter speed and light. Unfortunately, it was a little too late in the morning — I was obliged to sleep in, remember? — so the light in many of the pictures is much harsher than I’d like. But here are a few I thought you’d enjoy!

 

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

 
Before Christmas, Tau decided that Dog needed a pair of pajamas.

Luckily I’d stashed away a pair of Tau’s that were near new but with a broken zipper. I was able to cut them down easily into a pair of PJ pants and a shirt, using the existing arm and leg cuffs, as well as the collar. So. Minimal sewing. Bonus!

Tau helped me sew the velcro squares on instead of buttons and once we were done, insisted that we make a matching pillow out of the leftovers. He stuffed the pillow with batting and helped me sew up the last seam.

Santa delivered the new PJs and pillow on Christmas morning, and a week later in Walmart, we found the perfect dog bed to round out Dog’s comfort. This is one spoiled faux hound I tell you!

The pillow:

Special hole for Dog’s tail!

Ah! This is the life!

All I Want for Christmas OR the Difference Between Five-Year-Old Boys and Girls

 
The kids in Tau’s class recently finished a page that illustrated what they were hoping for this Christmas.

Here is Tau’s little friend Isabella’s:
 

“All I want for Christmas is a mermaid.” Why? “Because she can swim.”

Tau’s wish?

“All I want for Christmas is  Hot Wheels Octo Battle. Because his HEAD BLOWS UP!”

“See Mom, I drawed his brain sticking out. The red part.” Sigh.

He assures me that this toy is useful because when the octopus’s head cracks open, the brain is made of sponge and you can use it to mop up any water you’ve messed on the table.
 

Oh, no, wait. My mistake. That’s Dr. Bones Color Change lab, another toy getting up there on his All I Want for Christmas list.
 

Age Two, Redux

 
I don’t know if you remember but just around the time Tau turned two, he took a flying leap off an armchair and cracked his head open on our media center.

A couple weeks later, he leapt out of his crib and fractured his wrist, ending up in a cast.

Goes without saying that Dave and I are feeling a strong sense of déjà vu these days because this is how he came home from school last night.

We’ve asked this way and that but he has no idea how he did it. Seriously?

None of the afternoon care staff saw him fall and he didn’t come to them crying. His teacher reckons he likely skidded head first on the spongy rubber mat on the play area. It’s rough enough to cause an abrasion but spongy enough that kids might not feel the fall much and just pop up and keep on running … especially if they’re chasing a buddy. Which makes me wonder what he was up to — arm in sling and all — that he didn’t even notice!
 

Lego Party: The Perfect Cupcake Swirl

 

I have two favorite cupcake decorating tools. Hmn. Make that three.

1. My frosting spatula, which makes smoothing a flat layer of icing onto any cake a breeze (also used to to smoothe the Lego Marshmallow Pops)
2. My disposable piping bags (I really should invest in a set of re-usable ones)
3. My new #18 Wilton frosting tip.

Yes, I’ve finally taken a leap into the enchanting world of the swirl. When I knew I was going to make special cupcakes for my friend Andrea’s birthday and for Tau’s birthday, I decided to kick it up a notch in the frosting department.

Where do you go to learn the swirl? Duh. The Internet of course. I was pleased to learn that the swirl is even easier than it looks. Especially with the right tip.

Evidence. Even I can do it!
 

For Tau’s party, I made one batch of red and one batch of blue cupcakes, and then added a simple Lego cupcake topper based on these by Amy Locurto.

Though they were very cute, I’m not sure I’d do red and blue again. The amount of coloring required to get the right red and blue is downright scary.

Not that any health concerns deterred the kids from enjoying them! I love this picture of one brother and sister at the party. His cupcake matching her dress, and hers matching his t-shirt? Total fluke — but super cute nonetheless!

 

Happy Birthday to Dog!

 

 
This beautiful, smart, clear-hearted little boy turned five years old last Friday. We had a wonderful Lego birthday party on Saturday — details and more photos to follow.

But I wanted to share this picture because it captures Tau so well and my heart explodes when I see it. I have no idea how to describe the wonder that is Tau at this age. I really wouldn’t know where to start.

Turns out, Dog turned five on October 2nd, just a few days before his master. And wouldn’t you know it, we were informed that Dog needed a birthday gift. Even more surprisingly, Tau let us in on the big secret that Dog really loves playing with Lego, so that a new Lego set might be a good gift.

We made a cake and sang to to the hound instead.