Bulking Up

Hunger is an incredibly complex issue. This is at the forefront of my thinking as we are currently in the annual SNAP challenge. My family and I are not participating this year as we have in the past. With the intense adolescent caloric intake happening in my home, I do not have the capacity for planning the appropriate protein density on $22.50 a day. Doesn’t that statement on it’s own speak to the complexity of hunger?

flickr.com/photos/lacatholique/cc2.0

flickr.com/photos/lacatholique/cc2.0

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Sandbagging

At many workplaces it’s the time of year when the budget for the next year is cast. Targets are set. Charters are drawn for new initiatives. Conference rooms are full of debate over where to set the mark.

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There is a Season

Every now and then when I look at my boys, I have one of those moments. My heart aches, my eyes gather pools and there is a thick sadness in my throat. They are growing fast. The oldest only has two more years at home and that thought panics me. I feel like I want them to live with me forever.

Back in Season

Back in Season

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Cleaning with Silk

Inside the case that holds my eyeglasses is a small cloth designed specifically for buffing the lenses clean. I am notorious for wearing specs full of thumbprints and other smudges and frankly, once I’ve been wearing them, I don’t even notice it.

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Decorating the Day

As a child, we always went to the cemetery on Memorial Day. I grew up in a community where my parents had also grown up so we had a history there. None of the neighbors or relatives who’d passed were lost in battle and few were in the military but we went, regardless. We cleaned up the grave sites and placed peonies grown in my grandmother’s yard.

Photo courtesy of Photographer, Poet and Teacher MagicalMysteryTeacher.wordpress.com

Photo courtesy of Photographer, Poet and Teacher MagicalMysteryTeacher.wordpress.com

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Asparagus Aspersions

Don’t be casting aspersions on my asparagus! Or said another way, please refrain from tarnishing the reputation of my flowering perennial vegetables.

Aspersion Seeker

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She’s Quite the Tart

Is it any wonder that the English language is difficult to acquire? When I say “tart”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it a pastry or a woman?

Let’s go with this: A pastry shell with shallow sides, no top crust, and any of various fillings. She may be a bit shallow and lacking upper crust but put on the lipstick and heels as this promiscuous girlfriend is worth the trouble.

Quite the Tart

Quite the Tart

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D-Day

At a recent leadership class, I was asked to take the Gallup organization’s Strengths Finder. I like their practice of focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses as it truly a way of achieving breakthrough performance in both work and non-work activities. The feedback was plentiful with adjectives to describe me; adaptable, independent, connector, maximizer. Unfortunately, in the days that followed, I received another label.

Making up for Deficiency

Making up for Deficiency

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The Vinegar Girl

A Poem about Ending Hunger and Creating Happiness

In the wee morning hours, I saw a peculiar site,
A sour frowning girl coming out of the night.
She pulled her belongings on a blue vinyl sled
while a vinegar scowl covered her face and her head.

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Staking Out the Steak Out

“I say,
those people will always be thirsty on those hot stakeouts
without a water fountain in sight.”

Coordinated surveillance of a location is referred to as a stakeout. It’s generally performed covertly in order to collect data about a criminal, a celebrity, or their activity. I could wax on about my own quiet neighborhood erupting with suspicion when tight-lipped Ray-ban-clad drivers were parked on our corner for days.

Dillinger Stake Out Plan at the Biograph Theater - FBI file

Dillinger Stake Out Plan at the Biograph Theater – FBI file

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