Hodge Podge on Wednesday

Welcome to another edition of the Wednesday Hodgepodge! Add your link at the end of Joyce's post by clicking here and then hop around and chat with your neighbors. Here are my answers to this week's questions-

1. When it comes to good manners, what two top your list of most important?
My number one times two would have to be saying please when you ask for something and thank you when you're given something.  I teach high school and don't hear either very often.  

2. Let's open a proverbial can of worms...Common Core. Are you familiar with the term (talking education reform in the USA)? If so, care to share your thoughts? In your opinion, what is one of the biggest issues schools (in your home country) face today?

I'm familiar with the term and trust me you do not want to get me started.  I am seriously considering retiring soon because of it. Children are not all cut from the same mold.  When we throw them all together...or expect them all to be Advanced Diploma recipients were doing nothing more than watering down the educational system.  We jump on whatever California or Texas are implementing and before we get it up and going they drop it.  The problem is....people who make up all these routines are not educators or have not been in the classroom for eons. I agree fully with Joyce,  why can't we have a period of time where the standards are tried and tested by fire-in the actual classroom by lots of different teachers with lots of different teaching styles and student populations-before we insist everyone adopt them. 

3. Name a celebrity whose fashion sense you admire and share why.
Sandra Bullock.  She is so clean and wholesome looking.  Her dressing style is classic.

4. How are you affected by the changing seasons?
I love the season changes.  Fall and Winter tend to bring on a bit of melancholy, expecially if I am homebound.  I love the first snow...if we get one. I love the budding of sping and it makes me want to get outside and play.  I love summer and having a sense of freedom. 

5. Scariest book you've ever read?
Cujo by Stephen King.  When I read it I was attending night classes at college and was reading with a reading lamp in the car.  The school security guard and his German Shephard were patroling and the dog jumped up on the side of my car.  I don't know who was more afraid.  The dog, the guard, or me.  I had to finish the book in a well-lit room and did not sleep for two days.  I also had some issues with Christine.  My grandfather owned a car just like it and when I spent the night there....the car was in the shed right off my room.  Fiction became reality for me on both of those.
6. What time of day are you most hungry? What's your go-to snack?
Late afternoon. I would love to eat dinner at that time, because that's really when I'm hungry, but duie to our schedules that does not always happen.  I try and eat healthy - pretzels, fruit, sugar free something, a cup of coffee or tea.  If there is anything else in the house....it is game on.

7. Do you lean more towards being too needy or too independent? Which do you find harder to deal with in others?
I am by nature an independent person, but I also like depending on my husband.  I don't think I am needy, yet I know how to be "needy" if Frank needs to feel like Mr. Machismo.

8. Insert your own random thought here.
I have thought all week about my random thought for today and decided to do mine on Operation Christmas Child.....when I read Joyce's random thought I laughed out loud.  Obviously like minds.   This is something that I too love to do every year is pack a shoebox or two for Operation Christmas Child. My church did 50 last year and have set a goal of 60 for this year.  We are lining the railing to the choir loft right now.  It is fun to watch the amount grow.  I too am fully aware that it is still 62 days until Christmas (not that I'm counting), but the National Shoebox Collection Week is November 18th-25th, and that really is just around the corner.  You do not have to be part of an organization or a church....my kids at school have done them before and you can find everything you need to know about what to pack, how to pack it, what to pack it in, and where to drop or send your shoebox on the Samaritan's Purse website (click here for details).   I truly believe that this is such a wonderful ministry to children all over the world, and it's easy and fun to fill a shoebox. Humbling too, to realize how excited a little child somewhere will be to get a brand new toothbrush or their very own bar of soap.  You select the age range and gender for your box, and I almost always buy for girls because that's what I know best. I buy a few essentials, but also some fun things like a pink purse or glittery crayons and stickers. You can even track your box now by printing a label at home, and then once it's delivered you'll get an email letting you know where your box was sent. I have included my mailing address a few times and have been delighted with letters from the child.  Talk about a blessing.  I sat and read and cried.  You know we all have more than we could possibly need and it is special to do a child's Christmas you have never met. I encourage you to visit the website and see what it's all about. You can bless a child with a shoebox, and in the filling of that shoebox I think you'll find you're blessed right back.  Personally....I would rather give to someone who needs something....than have someone give me something.