Chasing After the Recycling Truck in the Rain

This post is more light-hearted than most.  I hope it makes you smile.

Yesterday was garbage and recycling day on my street.  I am grateful for curbside pick up because during my childhood people had to take things to the landfill site themselves.  I am a fanatic about minimizing the amount of the waste from my house goes to the landfill, and I hate seeing litter along paths and green spaces.

   Earlier this week I spent some time cleaning up some of cans, bottles and cups I found in my neighbourhood, so I ended up with more recyclable items than my blue box could hold.  After the recycling truck had collected on the opposite side of the street I conscripted one of those empty bins to put my extra bottles and cans into, with every intention of returning it to the owners before they would even notice it was missing.

   It took a while for the recycling truck to make its way back, and it started to rain harder.  Then a black pick up truck parked in front of the curb and apparently obscured my recycling bins from the view of the recycling truck driver.  In dismay, I saw the truck drive past, leaving not only my bins but also those of my next-door neighbour.  I ran outside and told the driver that he missed something and that I would bring them to him.  Four trips back and forth and a flattened hairdo were a small price to pay for the empty recycling bin that I promptly returned across the street.

   

Minivan Not For Sale

Until about a year ago I was eager to get rid of what I called our “clunky van.”  I felt bad about driving something so big (having three more seats than passengers) and so costly on gasoline.  We have driven it almost 10 years, and it was already 5 years old when we purchased it.  The power windows no longer work, and the seat belt buckle is flopped down on the floor instead of at hip level. 

   Nothing about my 1997 GMC Safari has changed since then except its age, but now I am satisfied with it in a new way.  I started to see all the positives of our only vehicle and it came to be quite a list:

• It is paid for
• It has allowed us to offer rides to our children’s friends and be helpful when carpooling for church events
• It has very little rust
• It has less than 200,000 kilometres on it
• It has adequate cargo space for camping (no trailer or roof carrier required)
• It is reliable and has always passed emissions tests
• Because of its age, it has reduced insurance costs
• It took our family all the way to Alberta and back last summer with no break downs

   It’s amazing how attitude makes such a difference in how we view something!

Tangles and Clutter

   In Jerry Spinelli’s novel for young people entitled Maniac Magee, the main character is able to undo the legendary Cobble’s Knot.  The size of a volleyball, it is as complicated as the brain of Einstein.  This knot symbolizes the problem of racism in the book.

   A couple of weekends ago, I was working away at a larger, more colourful knot of yarn my mother-in-law purchased at a yard sale for two dollars. (I did not finish!)  Patience and effort were needed to extract its usable components, which would eventually become knitted into toques. Every fall, dozens of care packages for men and women working on ships are assembled in my mother-in-law’s living room, and each of them contains a knitted hat. 

   I pondered that the knot of yarn is also a symbol of a cluttered life.  I have a counter that continually gathers “stuff,” and it takes patience and effort to reclaim the counter space for its intended use—food preparation.  The same thing can happen with garages, closets and junk drawers.  This is a good reminder for me to do a bit of decluttering every day instead of waiting until it grows as unmanageable as this tangle of yarn.

Food Bank Diet, Part 3: The Menus

The food hamper provided at my husband’s workplace is meant to feed a family for 3-5 days.  We managed to stretch it almost 5 days:

	Breakfast	Lunch	Supper	Dessert/Snacks
	1 Ready to serve oatmeal pack per person with hot water; Greek yogurt	Buns with thin slice of ham, cheese and lettuce; buns with peanut butter	Packaged pasta salad served on a leaf of lettuce; cold sliced ham; 2 raw zucchinis sliced with dip	½ angel food cake; home made peanut butter cookies (1 cup peanut butter, ½ cup sugar, 1 egg); Greek yogurt
	Toast with peanut butter or margarine or sliced cheese; juice box	2 cans chicken noodle soup with Ritz crackers	Noodle casserole containing 7 cut up hotdogs, ½ package of noodles, 1 can tomato paste, 1 can cream of mushroom soup, 1 stirfried zucchini & onion; packed coleslaw	Greek yogurt; Chocolate chip cookies
	Cranberry muffins (margarine, Greek yogurt, sugar, flour, 3 eggs, 2-1/2 cups cranberries) and glass of milk	Leftover noodle casserole; toast with cheese (choice of one or both)	Package potato salad; plain hot dog on bread (2 scrambled eggs for picky eater); mixed frozen vegetables; 2 cucumbers*	½ angel food cake with strawberry Greek yogurt; cookies
	1 Ready to serve oatmeal pack per person with hot water; toast and margarine; raspberries*	Cooked rice with corn; hotdog on bread	Mashed potatoes (with plain Greek yogurt): stir in finely chopped and fried chicken bacon & onion; canned beans; Lettuce/cheese/carrot* salad with dip as dressing	Cranberry pudding cake; crackers with cheese or peanut butter
	Homemade hash brown potatoes with onions and bacon	Rest of ham, chopped and mixed with noodles and mixed vegetables; sauteed onion and zucchini.		Chocolate chip cookies; juice box; cranberry smoothie (with yogurt and sugar)
Leftover food to carry forward: 900 gram pack pasta; ¼ jar peanut butter; 2 cans tomato paste; 600grams frozen corn; 5 lbs potatoes; 1/2 cup frozen cranberries; 7 buns; ½ loaf of bread; 6 hot dogs; 1 tub yogurt (gave away three); 2 onions; 1 clove garlic; 300g. cheese
*Additional food: raspberries from our backyard patch; carrots and cucumbers from a neighbour’s garden.

The Food Bank Diet, Part 2: Challenges/Learning

   Some of the challenges of restricting our eating to the equivalent of a food hamper (for a photo and list of its contents, go back one post) included the following:

• One child who is rather picky in what she eats.
• We are used to eating only whole grains, but some of the bread and all of the pasta in the hamper are made of enriched wheat.
• The need to find alternative uses for certain items.  For example, besides cranberry sauce, what else can you do with cranberries?  Can you use Greek yogurt as a leavening agent in muffins (instead of baking powder/baking soda)?
• Doing without regular combinations: peanut butter but no jam; lettuce but no salad dressing; and no glass of milk with supper.

   Some of the things we are learning from this exercise are that

• While all the food in a hamper is donated and comes to both the food bank and the client for “free”, the retail value of the equivalent items was well over $150.
• I am able to have a good attitude about how to use the food because it was my choice to do this.  Yet for someone who has come to the level of need where the food bank has become a short-term necessity, there would be all kinds of extra stresses on that person and family.  Hence, having an attitude of resourcefulness would be much more difficult.  Such a person might understandably complain about what’s missing from the hamper or wonder why there are so many grain products and barely any fruit. 
• If I were in financial need, I would have 20 different places I could turn before I would need to go to a food bank.  I have a network of family, friends and a church that would help me.  So many people in poverty do not have these networks.  They may be estranged from family, have difficulty for whatever the reason to form friendships and may not have experienced the loving fellowship of a church.
• 10 tubs of Greek yogurt is a huge amount for a family of 5 to eat, so I gave some away.  For a food bank recipient to have enough of something to share with another (a neighbour, friend or relative who is also in need) is not necessarily a bad thing; it can boost self-esteem.

Next post: The Menus

Food Bank Diet, Part 1

   My husband works full-time at a food bank.  As a part of his job he receives and assesses donations of fresh and non-perishable food, sets quotas so that the food is distributed as fairly as possible and coordinates volunteers in the warehouse.  Eighty to 150 families per day come to his workplace to ask for “emergency food,” which is called a hamper held in one or more boxes.  As an awareness exercise for our family of five, I will be purchasing my groceries next week according to the items that were given to a family of the same size on Friday, July 13^th.  (We will also use three other items we have in stock: margarine, flour and brown sugar.)

   My next posts will tell you how we managed on the food bank diet.

  

  Here is the shopping list I will be using:

2.5 kilograms (5 pounds) of meat, including 2 packages of hotdogs and a small ham

1 box (10 packages) of Quaker ready- to-serve oatmeal

500 gram (1 pound) jar of peanut butter

1 clove garlic; 5 onions

3 cans of soup

2 kg frozen vegetables

2 small cans of vegetables

2 L of juice (combination of canned apple juice and juice boxes)

1 large bag frozen cranberries

3 loaves bread; 2 packages of buns

10-500 gram tubs of Greek yogurt, 5 plain with honey & 5 strawberry

3 small tins of tomato paste

2- 900 gram packages of enriched pasta

3-500 gram salads: coleslaw, potato salad, macaroni salad

1 L milk

6 eggs

2-400 gram blocks of cheese

1 small tub of dip

2 boxes Ritz crackers

1 Angel food cake & 1 package chocolate chip cookies

10 pounds potatoes

4 zucchinis
small bag of rice
one head of lettuce

Wedding Words

   While the most memorable wedding words are “I do,” there are other words spoken at a marriage service that equally important.  In my circles they are known as the “wedding text,” a verse or two from the Bible that the pastor uses to craft a short talk for the benefit of the bride and groom as well as the guests in attendance.

   The wedding text of my paternal grandparents was prominently displayed in their home, and my grandmother always said it was her favourite.  Psalm 119:105 states

 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  These were not just pious words for one day in May of 1935.  My grandparents looked to God’s word daily for direction, reading a portion of Scripture to accompany their meals.

   The text my parents chose for their wedding was often quoted in my growing up years.  But even if it hadn’t been, I would have seen it modeled consistently.  Proverbs 3:6 says, “In all your ways acknowledge him [the Lord] and he shall direct your paths.”  Their path of life has not always been easy, but through it all they sensed his guidance because they were aware of his importance in everything.

   My husband and I chose as our wedding verse 1 John 1:7: “If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have peace with God and fellowship with one another.”  Walking with God brings peace and fellowship, and this is what we want more than anything else in the world.  A wedding text can become a “vision statement” for a husband and wife, something to always aim for and come back to when priorities have become distorted.

   If you never had a church wedding or the words the preacher spoke have faded from memory, it is not too late for you to seek out a passage that expresses how you want to live out your marriage from this point on.  Don’t miss out on the richness of God’s Word to infuse your life with new purpose and direction.