PORCH PONDERINGS

We Do the Best We Can

I'm a busy person. OctoPrep is really cooking right now. People are winning, people are dropping off. I keep track the old fashioned way, with a pen and paper. But it works for me. I am having a lot of fun sending little 'love' notes to folks reminding them of time, get back on track, you have a great idea...

We finally got a bit of rain/snow here. And it was a bit. About 1/4 inch of moisture. It's funny, that's what it's called. Not rain, not snow. Moisture. We measure 'moisture'.

A big topic came up today, seems there have been children arriving at school lately without shoes, without clean clothes on, hair unbrushed, dirty, and even with wet pants. Now how does this happen? we wonder. How do you send your child off to school for the day without shoes? In dirty clothes? no coat? And then, they wet their pants on the way there? The poor secretary at the elementary school is a bit troubled by this trend, as she should be.

So a few rallied, we gathered up some shoes, some underwear, some socks, some coats, and made arrangements to get these to the school for folks to give to children in need. No small feat in a town with limited retail. But then there is the talk 'I just hate that some people get to thinking that everything is just given to them'. Yes, but, is it right for a child to suffer, especially in the climate we have here, because a parent cannot or will not, take care in the morning to wake up, get up, for whatever reason, to get that child off to school in decent clothes and shoes? I really worry about some people, I gotta tell you.

There was a time when I was a single mom, and my kids didn't have much, but by golly they never had dirty clothes and they always went to school with shoes and they were clean.

Okay, well, enough of the ugly facts of life. After our little taste of winter, it is now to be in the 60's again in a few days. Go figure. And the barking dogs that were on the corner, the ones that barked 12 hours a day? Well, they up and moved one night. Ha! A blessing for sure.

So life goes on. We do the best we can. Now I'm off to judge the week one OctoPrep entries. Wish me luck.