I'm aiming to keep this one pretty brief because it's pre-planning week. I have stayed late at work every day since our return and I STILL spent several hours in my classroom yesterday.
And yesterday was Saturday.
I'm somewhere between "teacher tired" and "I still need groceries".
So let's get to that check list because July has been my favorite month thus far, and I only accomplished two items! These two items are high quality in my heart.
1. donate to Project Safe, a local shelter for abused women
Folks who abuse other folks in any form are real jackweeds who deserve to suffer from ass dandruff for the rest of their lives due to a fungus created by their own festering patheticness. And because such jackweeds exist in this world, shelters for the abused have to be created. No denying that such shelters are great in helping victims with anything ranging from providing a safe place to stay while home insecure to offering legal counsel during an investigation. So while these places can help guide a victim's life from ultra shitty to stellar and thriving, it is unfortunate that we still have to fight battles against humans...wait, "human" is too nice of a word in this case. It's unfortunate we have to fight battles against putrid sacks of carbon decay whose souls are the equivalent of dung-filled meatballs on a shit sandwich.
In 2019, Project Safe answered 3,182 calls to their emergency hotline. I was one of those calls. The details of my case are far more interesting over a salt-rimmed margarita. But I will share that I was under the guidance of Project Safe for over a year while I fought against a stalking bag of dog feces.
Because of the help I received from Project Safe, I no longer have to deal with the annoying what's-this-idiot-going-to-try-to-do-today-to-prove-he-can't-handle-a-break-up behavior. So it made sense that I had to give back to them to show my gratitude.
They have a thrift store, and my daughter and I spent months going through everything in our house that we wanted to donate to them. Books, clothes, toys, suitcases, and shoes piled up in our front room. And whenever a friend mentioned they were about to run their own items to Goodwill, I asked if I could take them to the Project Safe thrift store instead.
Along with a good friend and our combined children, we showed up to the thrift store this month and filled three huge bins with all the items we had. I aim to make this location the place I take all of our future donations to continue to support their mission. And when we don't have items to donate but cash instead, Project Safe will be getting it. I love this organization so much.
31. go kayaking (bonus points if it's in a spring-fed river)
My daughter and I were itching for one last adventure before school started. But my budget struggled with the idea of spending money on hotels or Airbnbs when I was about to drop some serious cash on whatever it was my classroom would need. So when a good friend messaged out of the blue and said he and his wife had just bought a house with a guest room in which we were more than welcome to crash, I asked how soon they would accept us.
And within the hour, the guest room visit morphed into a river kayaking/beach bumming mini road trip!
But let's focus on the kayaking portion since that part was on my birthday bucket list.
Most days, it truly bothers me how much my phone listens to what I'm saying. It hears me talking about having a headache, and I get an Advil ad on Facebook. You damn data-mining aliens. My level of impressed would increase only if you could materialize the bottle in my hand.
But one day some months ago, Instagram threw me an ad about clear kayak tours in Florida, and I was seriously concerned there was a direct wire from my brain to my phone.
Instagram data-mining aliens, you did a stellar job. Get Up and Go Kayaking tours of Rainbow Springs might have been the most fun my daughter and I have ever had together just the two of us.
We got to watch the eel grass and bubbling springs through the bottom of our kayak, walk up a clear creek with our tour guide to learn about the flora and fauna of the region, stand in sand boils that make you sink by a foot into the earth, and then swim where the water's temperature suddenly changes by 10 degrees where the creek meets the river. I'm thinking this kind of fun is going to have to be a regular thing. But next time, we're bringing friends!
Bonus items:
43. I drank GLITTER!
A girlfriend and I met up at a local restaurant because they were advertising their limited-time cocktails that were swirling with edible glitter. It's impossible to tell in the pic below just how sparkly they really were. We secretly hoped we'd fart glitter clouds the next day. Alas, we were disappointed to report that we did not fart like the unicorns we assumed we had become. But the rounds we bought did support an incredible non-profit organization for individuals with disabilities called ESP. So I call it a win.
44. my daughter and I got to pet a penguin
Penguins are her favorite animal of all time. So when the opportunity to meet a penguin in person showed up, we jumped on it. The photo below is her with Taziri, the friendliest penguin at the zoo in Tampa. This little gal walked right up to us, hopped on the rock, and let us touch her feathers. I will forever be in awe of how penguin feathers look and feel and function.
It's been a week since the encounter, and she will just stop mid-thought and say, "I got to pet a PENGUIN!"
You sure did, Kiddo!
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Stats:
12 items down
28 items to go
And 4 bonus items!
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