Barbara Kingsolver rocks my socks...

"So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right." Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction. A rain dance even more so.

...After a minute he said, "No, it's not like that. It's not making a deal, bad things can still happen, but you want to try not to cause them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance."

"In balance."

"Really, it's like the spirits have made a deal with us."

"And what is the deal?" I asked.

"We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests."

"Like a note you'd send somebody after you stayed in their house?"

"Exactly like that. 'Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn't your favorite one.' "

I laughed because I understood "in balance." I would have called it "keeping the peace," or maybe "remembering your place," but I liked it. "It's a good idea," I said. "Especially since we're still here sleeping on God's couch. We're permanent houseguests."

"Yep, we are. Better remember how to put everything back how we found it."

-From Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

I can dig this idea of prayer. Keeping things in balance seems like a good idea :)

Oh, I forgot the calendar...

Here's all the prizes you could win...cool, eh?

"What is it that makes a complete stranger dive into an icy river to save a solid-gold baby? Maybe we'll never know." -Jack Handy

WARNING: Work related post...but please read on :)


So, as some of you may know, I'm currently keeping busy as a full-time volunteer with City Year. It's an Americorps program and here in New Hampshire, we work with middle school students, providing one-on-one tutoring and mentoring at schools and safe after school programs and school break camps.

Which brings me to this post...we have winter holidays coming up and we are running a camp for 150 middle school students in New Hampshire. We are providing a safe environment for parents to take their students in the morning and know that they won't be making bad choices while mom and dad are at work.

Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to send 150 kids to camp, about $100 per student, which many parents cannot afford. So here's where you come in. As part of our fundraiser to help get them to camp without busting their wallets, some amazing co-workers of mine have put together a calendar raffle. Basically, every day during March, they pull a name and there is a prize associated with that day. A raffle ticket is only $10, but it really goes a long way to helping a student get to go to camp. I know this all probably sounds really cheesy, especially from those of you that I haven't talked to in ages, so I apologize. But if you can spare it, please buy a ticket...

Thanks for reading.

P.S. The link: https://ssl.charityweb.net/cityyear/ make sure that you indicate that the money is for the New Hampshire site.

My kids at camp last year on a trip to the Franklin Park Zoo!

P.P.S. The calendar raffle is for the whole month of March, so for your best chances of winning you should buy a ticket in the next two weeks! But you're welcome to donate to City Year any time :) My team has a goal to raise $3000 by the end of the year...