One of the benefits of Catholic school is that my kids and their classmates do a lot to serve the community and those less fortunate. I am NOT saying that public school kids don’t serve their community, so don’t start hatin’ on me.

I am, however, speaking from my own public school experience and we didn’t do diddly squat.

It wasn’t until I was in high school that I even knew what a service project was and it usually involved picking up trash down by the river. Last year, my daughter’s class spearheaded a project that raised $8000 to build a well and clean lavatories for a school in Afghanistan. Hmm…picking up gum wrappers vs. clean water for third-world schoolchildren? It’s a toss up.

There are collections for toys, clothing, toiletries and once a month, every child brings in canned goods. It teaches the kids early, and often, to give of themselves.

Yesterday, my daughter and some of her friends visited a local soup kitchen to serve lunch. Before they went, they had to write a “pre-reflection” on what they were about to do. Here is what my kid wrote:

I’m really excited to go to the soup kitchen. I really want to learn and experience the act of giving to others. My goal is to really, truly understand what it means to help out the community and be able to come back, and not just say, “I liked helping because it made me feel good”…but, maybe something along the lines of, “I really enjoyed helping out at the soup kitchen because I could see the joy and thanks on their faces.”

See that? It wasn’t about her…it was about them.

And, that makes the tuition bill a lot less hard to pay.

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My husband was working in the yard last weekend when he saw me through a window and asked me to come outside. I went out of the front door to find him waving me over to a flower bed. When I joined him, he pointed at the ground and said, “What is that?”

Photo courtesy of The Hiker's Notebook

We both crouched down to get a closer look at the patch of things growing from the mulch. Then we got a whiff of it.

The green, sticky substance on the end smelled like dog poop. My husband pulled one from the ground and tried to put it near my face, you know, for a closer smell. As I ran away, he chased me.

Herein lies the question: Did the house next door take so long to sell because our flower beds smell like poop, because my husband acts like a 12 year old or because it looks like we’re growing male body parts?

Any way you slice it, our new neighbors are going to love it here.

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Roughly 11 years ago, my friend Bean and I found each other. The details of our early friendship are long and sordid and involve way more than anyone, other than the two of us, would find amusing. Just know that we had known each other for years, yet barely acknowledged one another, then one night, in the light of a full moon, we bonded over a single Zeppelin tune.

Okay, I don’t know if that moon thing is true, but the way we connected…my mind sees it that way And, the Zeppelin thing? Totally happened.

I was at a point in my life, with a young daughter, where I was looking for friends whom I truly respected and I felt like that about her. So, a few months later, I sat down to discuss being friends with her. I ASKED her to be my best friend like it was a business transaction. Weird, right? Only, it wasn’t. Nothing has ever been weird with us.

We used to talk. A lot. Every day, actually. We were pregnant for our sons at the same time…due just three weeks apart. And, when mine was born seven weeks early, she listened as I cried over what was happening to him. She heard me as I wept over not knowing what the future would bring. She comforted me, and when she couldn’t comfort me, she would just quietly BE THERE.

Her son was born nine weeks later with two collapsed lungs. Was I there for her? Not like she was for me. I had a nine week old, very sick baby. Did she understand? Of course she did. She has always understood.

She is always there for me. I love her a lot. Through every bit of the ups and downs of having a special-needs, medically-fragile child, she has been a rock.

Almost three weeks ago, her son came down with…something. Fever, vomiting, cramps and other symptoms that made it seem, at first, to be a run-of-the-mill virus. But, it didn’t go away. He kept getting worse.

A few nights ago, he was admitted to the hospital and we have come to find out that it’s not just a virus. This boy who was a typical, active, healthy nine year old just a few weeks ago, is now fighting a battle that no one saw coming. Just like that, my best friend has joined me in the ranks of being the parent of a child with medical problems.

And, now it’s my turn to be what she has always been. It’s my turn to hold her hand, and listen, and comfort her and quietly BE THERE.

I kind of hate her for giving me such big shoes to fill.

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A friend and I recently got into a pseudo-heated debate about what five albums (yes, I said albums…I used to have albums so I’m allowed) we would choose if we could only listen to those five albums for the rest of our lives.

His first choice was The White Album. Or, maybe it was Abbey Road. Wait, no. It was Sgt. Pepper’s. So, yeah…you get the idea.

Here’s the deal. I love The Beatles, really I do. I acknowledge their place as numero uno and that none of the amazing artists that I love today would exist without them. Well they would exist, but their music wouldn’t.

But, hello? I need to be able to sing these songs if I’m going to listen to them forever and there is only so much “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” that a girl can hear without her head popping off. Though, it’s possible that I could listen to Blackbird for a really, really long time.

I said that my first pick would be Joni Mitchell’s, Blue and my friend laughed at me. What he doesn’t know is that when there is a full moon, I turn into a long-haired hippie who plays a mean dulcimer and sings falsetto. My friend also, apparently, doesn’t realize that Rolling Stone named Blue as #30 on the list of 500 greatest albums of all time. Holla!

Sure, those three Beatles albums I mentioned were in the top 15 and Sgt. Pepper’s was #1. What. Ever. I want to sing.

That’s why my #2 album would be Aretha’s Gold. Because if I’m not a long-haired, Caucasian, Canadian in my dreams, then I’m an African-American soul singer. Actually, I’m pretty much the Queen of Soul. Just ask me.

From there, things get fuzzy. I blame the fact that this conversation took place at an Irish Pub, but honestly I don’t know where I would turn past those first two albums.  Probably Zeppelin, or Michael Jackson, or Pearl Jam, or Justin Timberlake.

I’m proud of the fact that my musical tastes are all over the place, because it shows I don’t lack diversity. Take that, Beatles. Ho-hum. I want to hear what people would pick OTHER than The Beatles.

So, I’ll stop my list right there and ask you, boys and girls. What would be the first two albums on your list?

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