Small town Easter...

There is such a difference between a large city and a little Hill Country town. I was in town yesterday and stopped in at the local bookstore looking for end-of-term book prizes for the students.  The girl asked me what I was doing in town on a Thursday afternoon. I explained that the school cancelled the tutoring and book club meeting because they are closed on Good Friday and the school bus’s last run on Thursday was at 3:00 instead of 4:00. She seemed relieved that I wasn’t playing hookey from the Book Club. As if....

This morning, I went to the bank in town and found the parking lot to be nearly filled. On mostly any other day, just two or three cars would be parked in that lot. When I got into the bank, I realized why... they had cages and baskets of live baby bunnies. Children of the bank’s patrons were either playing with the bunnies or having pictures taken with them. The bunnies were also up for adoption, for just a few dollars each, to anyone wanting to raise a bunny as either a pet or to enter into the farm stock competition at the local county fair.

Now those little bunnies were awfully cute... white as snow with either brown or gray ears and paws. Within two minutes, I had picked out the one I would take home. However, I came to my senses before giving that blue-eyed bunny a name. He would have been called Angel-Bunny, if inquiring minds want to know.

I don’t think Sweet Pea would have minded a bunny-companion, but I seriously doubt if Savannah would have accepted a bunny-brother to share her blanket. As for my husband, he would have said Get it if you want it... you’re the one taking care of it.  And that’s just it... the care, the feeding, the cleaning, the training, the job of a new pet.

I have enough to do.... the house, the dog, the cat, eBay sales, the Book Club. Do I really want a blue-eyed baby bunny? With snowflake-white fur and gray ears and the cutest little puff of a tail?

Note to self:  Stay out of that bank during Easter week next year!!

Where did February go?

Last month just flew by and here we are in March. Every month seems to just get shorter and shorter. I sound just like all of my Aunts, who kept saying the same thing when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. And now... my cousins and I are ‘the old guard’ in the family. How in the world did that happen?!

I have been busy with The Magic Wand Book Club.... a good busy. Seems like I am always looking for books, buying books, separating them into the grade levels and then searching for bookmarks. It gets me a little nuts when the kids are picking out books based on the bookmarks inside them, but if that’s what it takes to get them reading and keep them reading, so be it.

The fifth and sixth grade girls are reading Anne Frank’s Diary, and I recently re-read my own copy of that book. Still makes me cry, no matter how many times I read and re-read that book. We have had some good discussions about Anne’s diary, and I hope there will be more to come. Next week is Spring Break for the elementary school, so I just about pleaded with the students yesterday to save some time for reading every day during their week away from school. One of the students asked me if I would be reading during the break also, and I told him that I never take a break from reading. He looked at me skeptically, but I think he knew I was serious.

My husband has begun the After-School Baseball Club, based on the Strat-O-Matic Baseball Game. We both go on Tuesday afternoons for that program.... I help to set up and take note of which students show up. So far, that program is a hit (pardon the pun) and the kids seem to enjoy playing coach and picking out their own players for the teams. We give out peanuts or Cracker Jack at the end of the game, plus baseball cards to each student. An eBay seller in Michigan has donated boxes of baseball cards for the students, in addition to the ones we initially purchased for the program. Such great people in this world... you just have to find them.

The book club kids stretch my patience at times, especially the fourth graders who can lose focus in a heartbeat, but they are also stretching my imagination and compassion. In an area where these students have so little to look forward to, when I see them running into the school library to give me hello hugs, my heart just melts. And expands to the point of bursting. I just love those kids.