Feed the Bellringer's Bucket

The bell rang for lunch and my 5 pre-teaching students and I headed for the AG pickup. We were delivering our plarn* sleeping mats to the Salvation Army.

*Plarn is a word made by combining plastic and yarn. It is made by cutting WalMart bags (any store bags will do) into strips and looping then them together. Voila: plarn.

On most Fridays we work on our sleeping mats: flattening bags, folding, cutting, looping the pieces together and crocheting. We often enlist the help of 6th graders. They love to help us. It's wonderful working at a preK-12th grades school.

I take the remaining plarn home and crochet over the weekend and in the evenings until it is Friday again. It's a slow process. We finally got two 6 feet long mats made so we planned a field trip to Lawton to give our mats to the Salvation Army.

We spent more time deciding where to have lunch than we did on anything having to do with the mats. It came down to Olive Garden or Golden Corral. We had to draw for the winner: Golden Corral.

Golden Corral is a buffet, all you can eat, super yummy bread restaurant. Great for hungry teenage boys. Not so much for a senior citizen who no longer burns very many calories. I did OK though. A tossed salad with EVERYTHING on it including a broccoli salad that I used as the dressing. I had grilled chicken that was really good and cooked broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. And for dessert...a dinner roll.

Captain Hall was delighted to receive the mats. He told us about the Salvation Army and what they do to help the homeless. We felt good about making and donating our mats.




On the ride home, the boys kept yelling, to no one in particular, "I just helped the Salvation Army!"

I've already started our third mat using the plarn we made last Friday.