It's all in the journey

It's been just a month since I started commuting to work in Moose Jaw. I will be commuting for just over one more month - then, Lord willing, I will have another job somewhere.

I've never really commuted before - not unless you count a 10-15 minute journey commuting.  For the past four years, the furthest I've lived from work has been less than 100 yards.  Before that, when I lived in Yellowknife, I was usually within walking distance to work as well - although it was generally more like a 30 minute walk.

How do I like the journey?  I'm surprised how much I enjoy it.  It actually hasn't taken any more out of my day than I was working when I worked at the library because at Moose Jaw my work day is finished at 3 pm, and even though it's an hour's drive home - when I worked at the public library, my work day finished at 5 pm.  In addition, I get two hours of visiting in with my son.  I really appreciate that.  I'm getting to know him better all the time.

It is also fascinating to see the daily changes in the landscape.  When I started, the leaves were just changing colour, and we could see the combines out working the fields.  Now the combines are all done, and the leaves are gone.  The fields are fallow for the winter.  The sun is rising a little later each day - but I get to see the most wonderful sunrises in my rear view mirror.  I took this photo while I was filling up with gas one morning.

I have to say, I don't enjoy spending as much upon gas - however, I'm making enough more that it tempers the pain a little.  I'm grateful that I'm able to be thankful regardless of the circumstances I find myself in.

Happy Thanksgiving

Our family celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday in Saskatoon.  Now, in order to have a small family gathering, one must first have a small family.  We don't.  However, it was a fairly small gathering - I think there was between 50 and 55 people there.  For the first time in 17 years, all of my siblings were together.  That's something to be very thankful for.

We arranged to use the fellowship room at the church building - and we all sat around, ate too much, and visited and shared together.  Robert had set up his camera and took photos.  After we ate, we sang together as we cleaned up.  It was very nice.

New Bed

I splurged and bought myself a new bed a few weeks ago.  I ordered it from the Sears catalogue and it arrived Friday in five big boxes.  Bram and I finished assembling it last night - Dad had started putting the headboard together for us Friday morning.  It's exciting - I don't know when I've ever had a brand new - I'm the only one to sleep in it - bed before.  (And to be honest - the mattress isn't new, just the rest of the bed).  It's like a grown-up captain's bed - it has four drawers on each of the three sides. I haven't managed to fill up all of the drawers yet, but I know that it will just be a matter of time - things expand to fill the space available for them. I ordered a bookcase headboard to go with it, because you can never have too many bookcases.  I discovered last night that the floor register in my room comes out underneath the headboard and the heat is then sent underneath the bed and comes up through the mattress.  It gives me a heated bed - very nice.

I spent four hours this morning cleaning up my room in honour of the new bed.  I know I've never had my room this tidy before.  I can hear my mom's voice in my head now saying, "If you just put your clothes away when you take them off, it will stay this way."  It's a nice theory anyway.  I filled one humongous garbage bag with garbage, three boxes of books to sell at the used book store, and one box of clothing to drop off at the Sally Ann.  I still have a very small basket of paperwork to sort through - but that's all.  I think I may need to splurge a little more and get closet doors for my closet.

Monday night at The Party

Monday nights I help coordinate The Party - an outreach program of our church for inner-city children.  We  run two programs at the same time; The Party is for children aged 5 through Grade 5 while the teen program is for Grade 6 and up.  This is our fourth year for the program, I think - maybe it's the fifth year?

It started in the Steiner's home on Wednesday nights because they had kids just showing up at their house all the time and they were trying to keep it down to just one night a week.  It quickly outgrew their house and we then moved to the elementary school that's just across the road from my home and changed to Tuesday nights.  By the end of the second year we were up to 25 children and preteens and feeling a little overwhelmed at times. I think we were two years at the elementary school before we got bumped. Last year we moved to the Rainbow Youth Centre, changed to Monday night and split into two groups.  Before that, we tried to run the older group in the same place but we just weren't meeting their needs.

We only run during the school year and we don't have a program whenever there's a holiday.  We have had a VBS for one week in the summer for the past three years though.  There will be no program next Monday night - because it's Thanksgiving.  I think we'll have a training session for helpers instead.  We have to do a "Plan to Protect" each year to ensure that our helpers and our kids are safe and so that we are protected from both abuse and allegations of abuse.

We continue to grow.  This is a challenge - but the Lord continues to bless us with more helpers as we need it.  Last night we had 47 children and about 25 teens.  That's a lot of kids!  As always, we have a pretty wild and crazy time - but it's an organized wild and crazy time.  We had been having only about 33 children each week this year, so to have 47 last night was a big jump.  It also meant that we didn't have enough snack - so Lisa (bless her) ran home and got us some more food to supplement what I had brought.  (We take turns bringing snack.)

What is our program?  We run from 6 pm to 8 pm.  From 6 to 6:35 or 6:40 - we run them ragged.  We play games in the gym - usually games like Sharks Across the River (a sort of group tag), or games involving a lot of running.  Then from 6:40 to 7 pm we have "Circle Time".  I run that.  We review what the rules are (where's the out of bounds areas, throw out your dixie cups after use, sign in with me when you arrive, check out with Bram when you leave - that kind of thing) and we sing songs and have a Bible story (Ruth tells the Bible story).  Then we split into three groups:  one group goes to story - where they retell the story, usually by dressing up in costumes, but we try to vary what happens there.  Sometimes we'll have a Jeopardy night, or sometimes we'll do some other activity.  We try to have prizes (bribes) for the listeners there - things go much better with prizes.  One group goes to games - where they play a smaller group game.  Last night we gave them two options - they could either play a game or they could do a quieter activity (we had play dough and board games and colouring).  That worked really well and I think we'll continue doing it that way.  Our groups are getting just too big otherwise.  The last group goes for snack.  We try to have a healthy snack.  Last night we had pigs in blankets (hot dogs, cut in thirds, baked in dough) and grapes.  However Lisa ran home and brought back a big bowl of macaroni salad and carrot sticks to supplement because we just didn't have enough food otherwise.  We rotate through the groups after about 15 minutes per station.  Then we just sort kids to take them home.  Many of the children are picked up and dropped off, however parents also pick up some kids (thankfully).  We have Bram on the door to let people in and out - so that security is maintained and that we (hopefully) know where kids are at all times.

What can you do?  Pray for us.  Pray for us.  Pray for us.  The parents are continually telling us how much their children enjoy the program; that they really look forward to Monday nights.  We can tell that we're making a difference in lives because we can see the difference in the children that come regularly and the ones that don't.  We can also see a change in the children from year to year, as they mature.  It's a real blessing and a real challenge to work with them and grow with them.

One more recipe

I didn't post the recipe for the meatloaf yet - and I like to post all of the recipes I use so that I can find them again.  This recipe is adapted from a Company's Coming Cookbook.

Meatless Meatloaf

1 cup creamed cottage cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp dried basil (actually, I purchase my basil in a tube, and squeeze out about the same amount as I would use on my toothbrush)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix together and then add:
1 cup ground nuts (this time we used a mixture of sunflower seeds and almonds)
3/4 cup bread crumbs (if I was going gluten-free I'd probably use either puffed rice or left-over brown rice)
1/2 a large onion, chopped fine

Mix everything together, place in a greased loaf pan and cover with ketchup.  Bake at 350 until done - about 40 minutes.

Cooking up a Storm

We really got busy this morning.  My mother, my sister, my niece (Sonia) and I all were cooking at various times, although never more than three of us at a time.  We made a new salad because I had these beautiful carrots bought at the farmer's market, and wanted to do a salad to showcase them. Some are purple on the outside and orange on the inside, others are bright yellow.  I also have the traditional orange carrots.


Three C’s Salad

4 medium carrots, grated (we used some purple carrots, some yellow carrots and some orange ones)
½ cup currents

½ cup chopped celery

Vinaigrette
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup rice wine vinegar
2 TLB raspberry cordial
1 tsp chopped garlic
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper


Ruth and I are on for bringing the snack for The Party Monday night, so we needed to make something for that.  We also were doing our weekly meal cooking and planning.  So we made:

Meatless Meatloaf - we made two of them and will freeze one.
Meat balls (these contain hamburger meat) - we made 8 dozen
Pigs in blankets (otherwise known as hot dogs wrapped in bun dough and baked.  This was for The Party, so we cut the hot dogs into thirds and ended up making 12 dozen of them.  That should be enough.
Vegetable Pecan Salad
Peas and Corn Salad
Turkey Casserole (two of them)
We're planning on cooking a pork roast for Sunday dinner tomorrow, so I purchased a pork loin roast and it was so large we cut it into three, froze two portions and put the third portion to marinade until tomorrow.

We had to run out to get groceries twice - once before we started and just when we thought we were finished another sister phoned to ask if I could bring them over lunch, so I ran out and purchased luncheon meat and buns and a few more groceries.

Here's the recipe for the pea salad.  We looked and looked for a recipe for a pea salad that had a vinaigrette instead of a mayonnaise dressing.  Here's what we came up with:

Peas and Corn Salad
1 cup frozen corn
1 cup frozen peas
1/3 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped red pepper
1/2 cup chopped green onions
2 TLB chopped parsley
1 TLB chopped mint

Vinaigrette:
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Finally, here's the recipe for the turkey casserole.  It's great because it uses up all of your leftovers after Thanksgiving.  In fact, you may want to keep some of the main course back, just so you'll have enough for this.

Turkey Casserole
4 cups of diced leftover turkey
4 cups diced bread cubes (or 1 box stuffing mix)
1 white onion, chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 TSP poultry seasoning
1 cup turkey broth
2 cups leftover turkey gravy

Combine bread cubes, onion, celery and poultry seasoning with the broth to make stuffing.

Layer the turkey, stuffing, and gravy, starting and ending with turkey.  If it looks to be really dry, add either more gravy or broth on the top.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.  This recipe freezes well, so if you freeze it, you'll need to bake it longer or thaw it first.

Working Out

I started going to Curves with my sister Ruth back in February.  Really enjoyed it too.  I find that when I work out regularly, I feel better, sleep better, and seem to have much more energy.  All good things.  However, I'm now commuting to Moose Jaw everyday - and while I have lots of time most days (as I'm done work at 3 pm and Bram's done school at 4:20 pm), the time I have is in Moose Jaw, where there is no Curves.  However, there is a fitness centre right here at SIAST, and a year's membership for staff is only $30 - that's less than a month's membership at Curves.  (I've also asked Curves if they'll put my membership on hold for two months.)  So, I signed up.

Took me awhile to get everything done - have to pay for the pass in one location, and pick up the swipe card so you can get in at another location, which is only open over the noon hour.  Have to find the fitness centre (which is not near the gym at all - although that's where the change rooms and showers are).  Have to remember to bring my workout clothes and shoes from home.

However, I managed to get everything done today and so went and worked out for the first time here at SIAST.  This also means that it's been nearly two weeks since I have worked out.  Did my body notice?  Yeah.  Also, the machines are all totally different from the ones at Curves, and I couldn't find a staff member to ask for help - so was reduced to reading the instructions on the side of each machine. 

Anyway.  I walked on the treadmill for half an hour.  That was easy.  Enjoyed it too.  I don't think the pulse monitor part works correctly though, because the highest it had my pulse going up to was 101 - and I'm pretty sure that after a half an hour of brisk walking, I should have a higher pulse rate than that.

Then I went to try the weight machines.  Whew!  That's a workout!  Set the weight for somewhere near the top (they've obviously all been used by some macho guy trying to set a point, because they're all set right near the bottom); read how to use the machine, try a few reps.  Move on to another machine.  I think I only tried five machines - there's way more than that, but that's all I could easily figure out and besides that, I was feeling that I'd really done something by that time.

I had thought I'd work out for an hour.  Managed about 45 min. or so.  Try again another day.  Maybe some day I'll find someone who can actually show me what I should be doing.