Toys to grow old with

Toy production and marketing make up a multi-billion dollar part of the economy.
In our house, we're living proof that marketing toys directly (or indirectly) to kids makes the world go round. But the things that actually get played with are a whole other matter.

1. Balloons, they really are all that, apparently.
2. Blank deposit slips and stamps keep even toddlers officious.
3.Skipping ropes.(occasionally skipping comes up, but moving things up and down stairs suspended by these darlings is really what they are for).
4.Crib mattresses, no child should be without a crib mattress to slide down stairs, create walls for blanket forts and make tunnels for cars.
5.Sticks. They may just be compost or less to you, but to a child, they can be a companion.
6. Expired membership, credit and library cards Do not shortchange your child. They are just itching to play with currency why not spare yourself identity theft by giving them a wallet stuffed with fake cards instead?
7.Vinegar, baking soda and spices and containers to swill them together into. Be prepared to deal with very quirky combinations in your coffee mug.
8.Blankets, they are just not for sleeping anymore. They are shelters, invisibility cloaks and wedding veils just waiting to happen.

Comments

I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Fists full of lettuce

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Shake your Bummy

In recent weeks, two things have come to my attention, this article by Mary Beth Williams, T he real key to good health and the viral hit created by Dr. Mike Evans, 23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? Both coincided with when I was turning my attention to new years resolutions and reflecting on the year that was. Thanks to both, a reckoning came to be. Mary Beth Williams' candid advice was to get your heart stronger because you never know when you are going to need it. She herself has been receiving treatment for lung cancer. Dr Mike Evans' way of putting the exact same thing? "Try to limit your sitting time to 23 1/2 hours a day". In my day job, I sit a lot. I occasionally rise to retrieve something from the photocopier or to make a coffee, but an awful lot of the time, I'm on my bum. This is in steep contrast to my night job. At the end of the work day, occasionally in the middle, I h...

Growing Versions

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