Friday 5.5

It was a pretty quiet week-let's see if I can eck out a few events/happenings without boring anyone to tears. 

1. We tested two days this week at school and my were those lovely days! I mean, I gave out detentions on both days so they were far from perfect. But, they were better than most days due to much short classes. In addition, I couldn't administer the tests so I didn't have the stress of that. I did some admin type work for the teachers near me and I was available to give teachers breaks during testing if they requested breaks. 

2. Monday night into Tuesday, I slept ZERO hours and ZERO minutes. And I had been awake since 4:00 am on Monday and hadn't consumed any more caffeine than normal. I went to bed early thinking that slumber would be imminent due to being up since 4:00. Instead, I didn't fall asleep all night. UGH! A night of no sleep happens periodically to me. I remember the last time it happened was in late January. When it happened in January, I also had a sub job the following day. I remember feeling almost completely fine the day after a night of no sleep. I'll give credit where credit is due: I operate fairly well on very little sleep! So the same thing with my episode of insomnia this week: I had to sub the next day which added a layer of stress upon an already pretty stressful long term sub job. The good news is that I didn't feel terribly tired at school or have a headache for which I'm thankful. Backing up in the day on Tuesday, when I realized that I wasn't going to sleep, I decided to get up and exercise so I went out at 4:00 am for a run. It was nice to have that under my belt. Once I got to school, I ran (not literally, I walked) all over the place helping teachers and administers prepare for testing. Just before 8:00 am, I glanced at my watch and saw that I had many steps and miles in already:

This was 7:49 AM...

My rate per hour of activity decreased- this was twelve hours later...

3.Alyssa will be home for the summer soon 😀 I can't wait to see my lil' partner in crime (figuratively not literally!) every day and do fun things with her. However, Alyssa is definitely a bit opinionated about a number of things including but not limited to the items she'd like to eat for dinner. Or rather, what she'd NOT like to eat for dinner. The items on the latter list are  extensive. Ham is one of them. So I decided I needed to use up the ham that I had in the refrigerator. I'd purchased it after Easter- all the sodium rendered it edible for several months post purchase. Bonus is that ham is super easy to prepare and I am in my easy dinner prep era as I have found myself temporarily in the time consuming and sometimes gut wrenching task of educating the next generation. I only mention the latter because the gut wrenching aspect of it makes me want to come home from school and burrow under a blanket with a book and a beverage and feel immensely sorry for myself. In this state of lassitude/despair, cooking and the ensuing clean up sounds unappealing. So easy meals are the very best kind and preparing a ham and then having lots of leftovers was a really nice thing to have! Monday, we had ham slices, Tuesday we had ham and cheese sandwiches, and Wednesday, I cooked some sausage, eggs, cheese, hashbrowns and threw in some pieces of ham for a breakfast mash.

4. When we had our friends to our place for dinner over the weekend, we made several dishes to go along with the burgers. In addition, I placed some potato chips in a bowl because who doesn't like chips with a burger? One of our friends fawned over everything I made the potato chips. In his defense (LOL), the potato chips were unique.  I had him guess the flavor after he asked what they were. He correctly guessed two of the flavors. Then I showed him the bag: All Dressed flavor. Those who've spent time with our northern neighbors (Canada) will be familiar with this flavor as they are popular in Canada. They are slowly making their way down to the States. I read that Lays didn't introduce this flavor to the US until 2025. These are the Clancy brand (Aldi) and I wouldn't be surprised if they are a temporary flavor as Aldi seems to have some cyclical varieties of chips. These are really good!

5. The highlight of the week wasn't super exciting but when you've given out a detention every school day, the bar for what constitutes good is really low. Thursday after school, Jacob asked if I wanted to walk to the ice cream shop with him. Aww, I can rarely cajole him to go on a walk with me; a walk at his suggestion is a noteworthy event. The weather was perfect- it was just shy of 60 degrees with sunny skies. I was worried I'd be cold but forgot how much exercise- even something as low intensity as a leisurely walk- warms you up. 

5.5 I was reading the transcript of a podcast this week (reading the transcript of a podcast takes a lot less time than listening to a podcast and since time is something of which I don't have an overabundance right now, I've been reading podcasts transcripts a lot more than listening to podcasts) when I came across information about pollution and the United States.

The subject was immigration and some statistics and information the podcaster relayed stood out to me. The podcaster mentioned the "great plastic straw panic" where many restaurants switched to paper straws that tended to disintegrate into your drink. But did that accomplish much of anything environmentally? The podcaster noted that 95% of the plastic pollution in the ocean comes from two continents, Africa and Asia. That leaves 5% of the ocean's plastic debris split between Europe, North American, South America and Australia. American with its population of 330 million people is dwarfed on the plastic pollutant list by countries like Sri Lanka which as a population of about 20 million people. 

As the podcaster noted, "...we could collect all of the straws in North America, bundle them together, and shoot them into the sun, and the state of the ocean would hardly be improved at all. Indeed, we could stop using plastic altogether. It would barely make a dent in the problems. That's because... we don't dump our trash into our rivers (and the rivers flow to the ocean taking the trash there). That's exactly what they do all across Asia and Aftrica." 

His broader point was regarding the cultural differences between the West and most of the rest of the world. He didn't focus anymore on pollution/plastic/environmental issues. But I kind of remained there in my mind. It seems like if you question any environmentally "sound"suggestion or law, you're a terrible person who doesn't care about the environment. But I think a healthy skepticism of any proposed change to policy due to what "experts" say is not a terrible thing to have. Al Gore, author of the doomsday environmental book, An Inconvenient Truth didn't add skylights to his 10,000 square feet mansion until he received criticism for living in such a large home (while decrying mankind's impact on the environment) with a huge carbon footprint. And then there's the billionaires flying in their private jets lecturing the little people on their carbon footprint. 

Speaking of healthy skepticism, I try to not state something as fact that I've read somewhere without doing my own research. I looked at two websites regarding plastic pollution and they both backed up what the podcaster (Matt Walsh) said regarding countries' plastic pollution. 

I took a screenshot from this website that contained a lot of information including backing up the claim that America is a low plastic pollution country. 

I reuse (some), I recycle, I compost and I'm not going to feel guilty about using plastic straws in my new mega Big Gulp cup! 

I created a "car seat" of sorts for my Big Gulp so that the contents won't spill when I'm on my way home from the gas station where I will fill it.