Day Five......we are at the end of ourselves and our resources!

Looking in our 'pantry' we discovered that we have plenty of 'the same' to be able to eat a bit more of 'the same' today than we have all week.

So Tom and I found our mouths watering at in anticipation of a huge veg curry for tea and Elyse was delighted to discover that she can have 4 slices of pizza toast.

However, we had to get through the rest of the day first.

Fuelled by 2 eggs on toast for me and Tom, and a cheese toasty for Elyse, we set off for our various daily programmes - the kids to school, including PE, and me, dropping the car off for a service and then commencing my volunteering duties at my church.

(Context - I work 4 days a week and always had a mind to volunteer for another organisation to see how they do their family work. I was hopeful of a role with family counselling charity, but we just couldn't get it together to organise when I would do the training, let alone actually be let loose on families, so - actually against my better judgement, but i really think God knows best - today and for the foreseable, my church has the pleasure of my company during the week)

I am supporting the Toddler Leader, and trying to join dots for families in terms of the other Family Programmes we run at the Church, and so setting up, sorting out and being allocated to manage the painting zone and chatting (yeay!) was my lot for this morning. The leader also knows me in my work capacity so she invited me to lead the song time at the end too - so she could see what I did.

I was shattered by the time we had energetically motivated everyone in those classic action songs that pre school kids love - I was actually sweating (eugh) But we still had Grand Old Duke of York, Ringa Roses and Prayer Time to cover. I was mortified to forget the words to the prayer that the group recite - my mum bailing me out from the storage cupboard, which was actually hilarious!

Then the centre manager wanted to see me and all I wanted was my lunch ( rice, veg and pasta sauce)
Anyway, we had a great chat with one of the other employees about mission and inductions for volunteers etc and I had a spectacular brain dump, totally loosing track of what i was going to say. I still don't remember!!

Then came the phone call from the garage about going to collect the car - do you know what, I just couldn't face getting on the bus and going to to collect it, so I put that off til tomorrow.

A trip into the town to buy birthday cards and prezzies for my dad's birthday, which is tomorrow, just about finished me off and then - oh man - I had to WALK home. I had a flashback to when I was a kid 'schlupping' home from school carrying a bag ( not a rucksack, a shopping bag) which I recall weighed as much as me. It was all I could do today to not put the handles of the bag around my head, as I used to back in day!!

I think I will take the musing that I mumbled about during the week, concerning not having enough nutrition to function as me this week, away with me and the actual sadness I feel about some people, some 1.2 billion people currently,having no idea of what they could do and be, if only they could afford a better nutritional diet.

Elyse has realised that being tired, achey and moaney for a week is a small price to pay to raise awareness of the issue.

Thomas has discovered that food poverty sucks and that he's hungry even after massive extra veg curry.

Today has seen a huge jump in our donations and we are very grateful - knowing that people are rooting for us has made this really exciting actually.

Worthwhile? Who knows? I guess if next year, LBTL is still looking to raise awareness of 1.2 billion people, or even worse 1.3 billion people, then we might been to rethink, or people higher up might need to consider a new and better way of eradicating poverty.

It's a tough one!!

Day 4 - Mis-spellings and Misunderstandings

We all woke up and agreed that we feel weak and feeble - I felt like you do when you have got out of swimming pool after being in it for about an hour and the lack of buoyancy makes you feel like you weigh about 10 tonnes!

Tom was keen to show me his ribs which are 'quite promenent' now so I decided he should take emergency biscuits into school with him - alongside his 'delicious' wholemeal bread, sans mould!

I was later than normal into the office today owing to traffic and can normally handle the ( hopefully) good natured teasing that generally goes along with misdemenours , but today I really took it personally - ridiculous, but true. Paranoia is setting in!!

Then the actual work - oh my goodness - and you have to know that this blog is taking ages as I am mistyping and mis-spelling pretty much everything. I don't seem to have the hand/eye/ keyboard coordination required to do this anymore. So I was glad that someone came to see me this morning, and as my speaking hasn't been affected (!!) I did ok apart from loosing my train of thought and forgetting people's names. Fortunately my colleague was wonderfully understanding and we did some good work.

I am not hungry, but clearly the food I am eating is not giving the nutrients that I need to be me.

Getting in from work, I discover that the children have also had a tough day, not fancying doing their homework ( actually unusual) and telling me that frustrations at school led one of them to feeling really angry.

I am glad tomorrow is our final day and I am so glad that people are sponsoring us to make this final struggle really worthwhile.

I guess the point is, some folks live like this and they might never know what they could really be like because for them, their meagre rations are all they will ever have.

Tom is craving weetabix, I am craving digestive biscuits and my mind back, and Elyse is craving a pancakes and bacon.

But tomorrow we have to run the gauntlet of eggs and toast, rice and pasta sauce and rice and curry sauce ,.......with the famous frozen mixed veg.

Keith has promised to purchase the ingredients for a slap up breakfast on saturday morning.I know I will feel guilty to eat it....but not for long!

Thanks for journeying with us!