Last year, when I was the lunch lady goddess, ruler of all I surveyed, a particularly favorite form of kid torture I implemented was "Sing-Along Thursdays", where I had the kids sing their lunch numbers to me instead of simply saying them. The biggest of Sing-Along Thursdays was the very last day of school. I'd kind of forgotten about them over the summer until a couple days ago, when one of the 5th graders asked if we could have another Sing Along Thursday. I guess the kids were actually enjoying the torture I was meting out. My evilness was foiled again! So, today was the first Sing Along Thursday of the school year. I'll probably unofficially schedule them about once a month, just to keep the hungry little critters on their toes. But not all the kids sang. Some refuse to participate, so, of course I give them a hard time. I even initiate a little competition, telling the 4th graders that the 5th graders do a much better job or that the boys sing better than the girls. Some kids, instead of singing, just sort of used weird voices and I said, this is Sing Along Thursday, not Funny Voice Friday....which gave me an idea and a new and improved method of torture. Next week Friday is our first official Funny Voice Friday! I warned the kids and told them they'd better start practicing now.
Today was our only home cross country meet of the year, so of course, I had to go. To get the most out of a XC meet, the bystanders have to do a bit of running around themselves. We cheer at one spot, then cut across to another spot so we can cheer the kids on some more, Then we boogie on down toward the finish line to do a final bit of encouragement to help the kids get over the line. One of our freshman girls is an exceptional runner and she broke the school girls XC record while a 2nd freshman girl managed to get on the record board at #7. They were both pretty darn excited. The boys team is doing well also, though not as good as the girls. As WE ran by, I shouted to him that he had to run hard or run home...I think he wasted precious running energy to roll his eyes at me. He ran good...not great, but good. No PR's (personal record) for him this week, but he'd just PR'd last week, so I guess I'll have to cut him a little slack.
On a more sobering note, I'm having a stinking hard time keeping chickens alive lately. My layer chickens (aka, The Ladies) are doing fine, but the meat birds (aka The Kids) are dropping like flies. The meat birds are a pain in the butt to raise and they're pretty touchy, health-wise, and I've decided next year to raise a slower growing, but less fragile breed of chicken. As it is, I've been losing a bird just about every other day for the last week or so. It's gotten so bad I've got a designated 'dead chicken bucket' in the barn that I use to keep the corpses until I have a chance to get rid of them. I feel like a Haitian voodoo priestess, dumping dead chickens all over the place like I'm putting some kind of curse on somebody. We started out with 40 chicks on Aug 6 and at the moment, we've got only 28 left. At this rate, I don't know if we'll have any chickens survive long enough for us to kill them. It's a hard knock life for chickens.
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