Pansy

Planted at the same time and receiving the same level of care, I suddenly understand where calling someone a PANSY has come from. Wimps!

And my petunias....

Guess what we won't be planting next year.

School lunches

As most of you know, I've been back at work for the last 7 weeks. I am fully enjoying being back at it, but on the home side of things, I need to be a bit more creative in my family's care.

My house shows the lack of love (which I'm cool with at the moment, I'm too tired to entertain anyway) and the care and forethought that once went into packing creative, nutritional lunches for my children has also gone down the tubes. Sigh.

My boys LOVE their veggies. Sending carrots & celery for lunch was always well received. Not the pre-peeled baby carrots either - they wanted the biggest, fattest one in the 5 lb bag in the fridge. The bigger, the better. And they WILL measure with each other and this IS a source of taunting. "My carrot's bigger - neener, neener, neener".

Lunches as of late look pretty much the same, and pretty boring. A jam sandwich (although peanut butter is not banned at their school, I am still in MB mode where pb is not allowed in any school or childcare facility - I think that is a good rule of thumb and I'm so thankful my children are not afflicted with a life threatening allergy as such). They also get a granola bar or cookies and a plant form that usually consists of fruit leather or fruit gummies. (The Mott's REAL fruit gummies - not just the candy - b/c I'm sure there's a difference!)

Part of my teaching job involves supervision (I'm teaching elementary now! Never done that before!!) Lunches have gotten VERY interesting. I supervise grade 4 students eating in their class. I am beyond intrigued at what some of them will bring in those fancy little licensed lunch kits.

Some go quite healthy and some are way off in the other direction. Either or, I felt a bit sorry for my own kids with their plain jam sandwich. These kids bring hot dishes of all manner and many with a bag of popcorn to pop & take outside for lunch recess with them!!

One day I looked around and saw in one class, no less than 11 (yes, I counted) kids with a little fruit shaped plastic container full of sugar. I kid you not. I know my own lunch prep skills are lacking, but even gummy fruit badness beats out a container of 2 tablespoons worth of straight up sugar. Wow!!! I have no further comment on that.

What do your kids take for lunch? A little help here!

Gert's Tea

My memory was jogged a few days ago. I'm not even sure what jogged it really, but I started thinking about Gert's Tea. Of course this will have been nothing you would have ever heard of. It was just a fancy of a friend and I maybe.... 20 years ago??

We were still in highschool and this memory places us in her living room, sitting on red shag carpet, in front of the cassette deck stereo, fantasizing about the group Pearl Jam. Remember them? I think we were mostly talking about the brilliance of the group and wouldn't it be sweet if WE could come up with something nearly as witty (we would have had to find some musical talent as well I suppose, but that's beside the point).

For what it's worth, I have similar fantasies in my modern life, but moreso those reflect the genius and plain out right stupidity of the current crazes and WHY could I not have thought of them first. Zhu zhu pets? Really?? It's a hamster! And those Go Go Bones? A hunk of plastic!! Marketing genius - like a pet rock or Chia pet! I digress.

My friend said she heard that the brilliance of the name Pearl Jam was that the lead singer had a grandmother named Pearl who liked to make jam. I'm sure you follow the connection here.

SO! MY Grandma ALSO had the name Pearl. But, we didn't want Pearl Jam to feel we had copied, so we felt we should consider other options. I'm not sure why we didn't consider either of my friend's grandma's names, but my other Grandma (we called her Gran) had the name Gertrude. I recall her serving coffee when my family would visit, but we figured every grandma must like tea - at least deep down.

Thus was born "Gert's Tea". Obviously we never made it big. Pearl Jam stole the market for granny named rock groups, but I'm sure we stood a chance if PJ hadn't gotten there first.