Counting Down the Days

 That buzzing you hear in the air around you is the collective tension of parents everywhere. Only eleven days left in Small Child's summer vacation, and I'm counting every one. It might not be so bad if we weren't in the August misery.

August misery, you ask?

Day after day of 100+ heat. Every afternoon the sky (east or west, depending on the whims of the universe) looms with the promise of relief, and every night I close my eyes to ominous silence instead of thunder and rain.

It makes me so crazy that, tomorrow, I'm going to "light the oven" (as my late Aunt Belle used to say) and bake a peach cobbler.

Even crazier? The Man will grill the seven pounds of carne asada I just put in to marinate. 

Yes, friends, it's a certifiable "These People Are Crazy Summer Cookout."

Small Child's best friend and her extended family are here to visit her grandparents. The moms have been trading children back and forth and it's my turn to feed the crew.  So, I thought, why not be as miserable as possible?  That's what the heat does to you.

But there's the requisite bucket of pre-made margaritas congealing in the freezer (high fructose corn syrup be damned just this once) and three bottles of sparkling wine chilling so the grownups shouldn't notice the heat or mosquitoes too much. The Gang of Five (as I refer to the children) will be in and out, inspiring the classic Southern anthem, "Close the Door! You're Letting the Air Conditioning Out!" 

And about 11:30, when the kids are collapsed on a big bed somewhere in the house and the adults are sitting out on the patio, having accustomed ourselves to the humidity after all, I'll look around at these faces I've known for so many years and think, "You know, it's not that bad around here in the summer after all."

Two or more birds with one small stone

Most of my entries concern domestic issues.  I am, of course, interested in world events but I try not to write about things I don't fully understand and don't have time to research responsibly.

Last week, however, while driving around town on a domestic issue of my own I heard a BBC story about rice shortages in Haiti. Apparently, food prices are skyrocketing worldwide. Many farmers have converted to corn to profit from record crop prices for biofuels and high fructose corn syrup and such. One U.N. worker reported that the price of rice has tripled over  - I think she said - the last year and is now at $950 a ton. The headmaster of a Catholic elementary school, in a heartrending example of good news/bad news, told of families desperate to enroll their children - not for education but for the assurance of lunch. He is able, alas, to feed only about 1800 of the 2100 or so student in his care.

Rice.  We buy it for next to nothing in our megamarkets every day. And just across the Gulf of Mexico children are hungry for it.

Yes, I know that the rice shortage in Haiti is only one symptom of a troubled political regime.  But that does not change children's realities.

On the sidebar to the lower left, you will notice a link to freerice.com.  Through sponsorships, this organization provides rice to United Nations hunger efforts when people play a vocabulary-building game online.  

Small Child (who is eight years old) adores it, and I'm happy when she uses her screen time on words instead of Webkinz.    I set it on level one when she begins, but she always zips ahead. She beams as her difficulty level increases and the grains of rice build up in the wooden bowl. Reading! Vocab! Rice! What's not to love?

The game also provides vocabulary building skills for English learners. If you have a college-bound type around your house you should check it out. And a word nerd like me? Just try to stump me Freerice People....just try.

P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, I should report that, after this post went up, the freerice.com people did stump me, up around level 46, with natant. I am chagrined.