The Start of the Season

This year, Thanksgiving came early and there's an extra weekend before Christmas, and so the season seems to be stretched out a little bit.  Usually I can hardly wait to pull out the Christmas CDs and start decorating, but this year I seem to be in a little more of a lazy mood.  I think my inner procrastinator is hard at work, encouraging me to put off the preparations.  Lest you think I'm a total Scrooge, we did break out the Christmas CDs and decorate the basement over the weekend.  Then today, we received the first Christmas card of the season, from my childhood friend, Fonda:

RB&B&B Circus

Sometimes, it's all about connections.

Erin not only babysits for humans, she looks after several people's pets while they are traveling.  One of Erin's regular cat-sitting gigs has a friend who writes the music for the circus.  "The Cat Lady" offered Erin circus tickets in exchange for Brookfield Zoo tickets, and Erin took her up on the offer.  We were told to go to the will-call window at the United Center, and the tickets would be waiting.
As often happens with will-call, the tickets weren't quite there when we arrived.  Erin called the Cat Lady, who called her friend, who said, "Gimme a minute."  Cat Lady let Erin know her phone would be ringing shortly with a strange phone number, and that Erin should be sure to pick up the call and  verify the necessary details.  Sure enough, Erin's phone rings a few minutes later, and it's the number of the circus's corporate headquarters in Florida, verifying the number of tickets needed.  A moment or two later, the phone rings at will-call, tickets start spewing out of the computer, and the agent hands us our complimentary tickets, which just happen to be front and center - some of the best seats in the house.  It was all a little magical, and certainly added an extra element of fun to the enchanted evening for all of us, especially Erin and one of her besties.

Thanksgiving Day 2012

H A P P Y   T H A N K S G I V I N G !

The Night Before Thanksgiving 2012

This is the second Thanksgiving that I've worked at Whole Foods Market, prepping other people's Thanksgiving dinners before making my own from-scratch dinner for my friends and family.  Whole Foods is open on Thanksgiving Day, and it's my goal to never have to work on that day.  Since the week of Thanksgiving is typically the busiest grocery shopping week of the year (even bigger than Christmas), this is no small feat.  Each year, we're told that Thanksgiving week is "all hands on deck, no exceptions."  I continue to argue that they are required to give me at least one day off, and may I please have that day be Thanksgiving Thursday?  Last year, when I gave the "I'll do whatever it takes to get Thanksgiving Day off" speech, I wound up working the overnight shifts, assembling all the holiday catering orders, and leaving the store at 6:30am on Thanksgiving Day.

This year I've managed to get the entire day off tomorrow, but I have been working extra-long hours this week as a trade-off.  I'm exhausted, but I'm ready to go:  the shopping's done; the cranberries are cooked, the turkey's swimming in brine.  The timeline's in place, and I'm pretty sure I know where all the serving dishes are that I plan on using tomorrow.  Mom and Dad have arrived safely from Iowa.  My favorite cooking holiday is almost here!

He's 12!

My baby's a dozen years old today!

H A P P Y   B I R T H D A Y   D R E W ! ! !

 

Colliding Worlds

Several of my worlds collided today in a good way.  There was the thread of my working world, there was the thread of my SEOPCO board member world, and there was the thread of my Irving School world.  All three of those threads were woven together into something pretty special.  I spent most of the day at the Whole Foods Market - River Forest Barrie Fest booth, plugging the upcoming 5% Day for the Irving Schoolyard Project.

While we spoke to the parents about shopping at our store on November 1st, when 5% of the day's proceeds will go for grass for the Irving playground, the kids worked on a craft project.  They traced their hands on old posters from the store.  The cutouts of the hands will become a new mural that will be displayed in the store's cafeteria later this fall.

As a SEOPCO board, we always try to have a "green" element to Barrie Fest.  This year's green project was pretty cool, and it came together because of my colliding worlds.
Earlier this year, Whole Foods in River Forest began a composting program in its store.  It's been part of my job to make sure my department is properly sorting its garbage and composting appropriate material (that's fancy-talk for part of my job is sorting garbage).  Anyway, as part of this project, I was able to go on a field trip to Land and Lakes' composting facility on the south side of Chicago to see where the compost goes once it leaves our store.  While touring that facility, I discovered that the compost from southwest Oak Park's pilot composting program also winds up there.  That's when the wheels in my brain started turning.
SEOPCO has had several "green" forums over the past few years, and we'd been thinking it was time to move our green activities out of the talking stages and into something more practical.  We thought it would be really great if we could give away some of the finished compost material that starts out as food and yard waste in southwest Oak Park.  Land and Lakes, in conjunction with Waste Management, graciously offered to donate quite literally a ton of the organic compost material for us to give away at Barrie Fest today.  Our Irvin Girl Scout troops helped shovel the dirt into bags so people could haul it away.

Honestly, I had no idea how much a ton really was, or how many bags it would take to dispense with all that organic soil supplement.  Would we run out in an hour, or would we have half-a-ton of leftovers?  Oh, the thoughts and concerns that go into a project like this when it's executed for the first time!
I learned that a ton of dirt fits nicely into the bed of a U-Haul pick-up truck, but the truck sits pretty low once the dirt's dropped in.  I found out that one case of eco-friendly garbage bags (donated by Whole Foods) wasn't nearly enough to bag a ton, especially since we had to double-bag because the bags were ripping under weight of two shovel's worth of material.  The girls filled about 70 bags and the truck was not even half empty.  I panicked a little (How in the world am I going to get all the rest of this out of the back of this truck?), but I shouldn't have worried.
People in Oak Park (at least in the southeast quadrant) really love to garden, and they were downright giddy to get free compost.  This group is also resourceful, and many brought their own bags or wagons to haul away the compost.
When it was all said and done, the truck was about three-fourths empty.  My friend and fellow SEOPCO board member, Michelle C-R, had the brilliant idea of giving any remaining compost to Irving School for its garden project.

The Irving Garden Ladies were thrilled to get a pile of high-quality, organic compost, and we dumped all that was left at the edge of the garden, where it will rest comfortably until the harvest is complete.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my community?

The State of the Corn

Those of us who live in the Midwest can all agree that the weather here is crazy.  This year seems to have been crazier than most.  We had an entire week of 80+ degrees in March, then nasty, seriously-below-freezing cold in April, then a summer that was so hot and dry it rivaled that notorious summer of '36 that I remember my grandparents talking about.  Reports have been trickling in that the Midwest's corn crop has been decimated this year due to the excessive heat and drought conditions.  After spending some time at Mom & Dad's, I can confirm how bad it really is:

The corn is quite literally dying in the fields.  It's not supposed to be brown and bent over at this time of year.  The ears of corn on the stalks are small and shriveled.

There are a lot of "gloom and doom" people out there who are predicting food prices will soar because of this drought.  I actually see a potential silver lining in this.  "Field corn," as Iowans refer to it, gets harvested, processed, and put into processed food:  everything from cereal to bread to veggie burgers (xantham gum is the "glue of choice" that holds all those veggies together in burger form, and one of the key ingredients in xantham gum is a corn derivative).  I think if the price of processed food skyrockets because of this drought, it may be just the thing to turn people back to cooking fresh, unprocessed food.  That would be a good thing.