Week 2

There are VERY few things that my parents have EVER agreed on that I can remember. But, one of them is that this (see below) is both of their favorite baby pictures of me. Rightly so! To this day, chicken off the bone is still one of my favorite foods. Check out chub on my arms too, must have been all that BBQ sauce!

Also added this week to my blog is one of my favorite childhood poems. One other things my parents can agree on is that taking out the garbage (or lack of doing so) was the source of many an arguement growing up! So, Shel Silverstein's Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out was a piece that I could identify with:

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out by Shel Silverstein (1974)

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout

Would not take the garbage out!

She’d scour the pots and scrape the pans,

Candy the yams and spice the hams,

And though her daddy would scream and shout,

She simply would not take the garbage out.

And so it piled up to the ceilings:

Coffee grounds, potato peelings,

Brown bananas, rotten peas,

Chunks of sour cottage cheese.

It filled the can, it covered the floor,

It cracked the window and blocked the door

With bacon rinds and chicken bones,

Drippy ends of ice cream cones,

Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,

Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,

Pizza crusts and withered greens,

Soggy beans and tangerines,

Crusts of black burned buttered toast,

Gristly bits of beefy roasts…

The garbage rolled on down the hall,

It raised the roof it broke the wall…

Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,

Globes of gooey bubble gum.

Cellophane from green baloney,

Rubbery blubbery macaroni,

Peanut butter caked and dry,

Curdled milk and crust of pie,

Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,

Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,

Cold french fried and rancid meat,

Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.

At last the garbage reached so high

That finally it touched the sky.

And all the neighbors moved away,

And none of her friends would come to play.

And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,

“OK, I’ll take the garbage out!”

But then, of course, it was too late…

The garbage reached across the state,

From New York to the Golden Gate.

And there, in the garbage she did hate,

Poor Sarah met an awful fate,

That I cannot right now relate

Because the hour is much too late.

But children, remember Sarah Stout

And always take the garbage out!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Still makes me smile and laugh. The biggest difference between being a kid and being a grown up in my opinion is learning to "not sweat the small stuff." The best thing about working with kids is that they are so unbelieveably honest, even when it comes to things like the stress that taking out the garbage brings. I am so fortunate to work with kids, have no two days ever be alike and to remember that I am making a difference!