Did you get up and have breakfast this morning? Plan your meals for the week? Stop at the grocery store and mindlessly pick up some food? Fall into a turkey coma? Then consider yourself lucky.
900,000 Canadians regularly rely on Food Banks to get the nutrition they and their families need. Chew on that for a minute.
We're leading up to World Food Day on October 16th and I wanted to share this with all of you so that we don't fall into apathy along with that turkey coma. This is what you need to know:
Last week I wrote about an 11 year old boy who killed himself because of bullying. The news hit me hard and I’m still not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was his age, or the fact that there is just way too much of this going on. But you should know, that blog was written with tears and a snotty nose. Maybe that’s why it touched a nerve. Whatever the reason, it resonated with people because ultimately, we’re all sick of this.
Every day I read the news with a mixed bag of emotions; disgust, anger, sadness, empathy, heartbreak but it’s always tempered with a “Oh well, that’s what the world is like” kind of feeling. I move on, we all move on. We forget and we wait for the next big headline. The next tragic event. This morning I was stopped cold by a headline and I simply can’t move on. The headline read: Bullied Boy Took his Own Life
It is typical for my daughters to come in the house after school and dump their belongings smack dab in the middle of the front entrance and then scatter with shouts of “I’m hungry” or “I need to use the washroom”. Despite the fact that I flat out refuse to pick their things up anymore, the idea of doing it immediately when they come is toxic to them. In fact, today I saw exactly what lengths my one daughter will go to, to avoid putting an item where it belongs.
Ten years ago, after I was married and before I was pregnant with my first child, I sat in an office at the bank I worked at receiving my performance appraisal. These appraisals, as many know, are similar to the report cards of today. They are cookie cutter, fill in the blank appraisals, where the writer is given a list of politically correct words to choose from to describe the employee. So I sat and listened to three things I do really well, and three things I need to improve on. I answered as best I could how I was going to improve, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Oh summer, our time together was far too short again. This summer was especially sweet as my family and I got to know our hometown a little better with the help of Ottawa Tourism. As luck would have it our last tour was at Saunders Farm and we couldn’t have been happier to end our summer exploring there.
