Hunger Games

Four hours of class yesterday morning, thirteen hours of driving, eight hours of sleep, and fifteen hours of catching up at home...it's been a busy couple of days.

The kids were all happy with their gifts.  We also made the discovery that dogs do not like the sound of harmonicas.  Poor things howled and howled as it was passed around so everyone could try it out.

When I left home three weeks ago, I was willing to eat my daily serving cold from my cooler.  On the way home, not so much.  I just chose not to eat yesterday.

Today I ate half of my serving with my family as they ate their own lunch.  Tonight I ate the other half and inhaled (deeply!) the aroma of taco meat as everyone else dug into my husband's tacos.  Then two of the kids decided to make peanut butter cookies.  Hmmm...being home is going to take some adjusting.

I weighed this evening and I'm down 28 pounds.  This week I plan to go in and have some blood work done to see how this may be affecting my health.  As this page evolves I'll start tracking these kinds of things and make it available to you.

My family was shocked at my appearance but pleased that I feel good and seem to have plenty of energy.

Tonight we watched "The Hunger Games".  With my kids reading it, I decided that I'd better read it, too.  (I like to know what my kids are feeding into their heads.)  It took all of a week to get through the trilogy at the beginning of the summer.

As I watched tonight, I wished that the director had put more emphasis on the hunger felt by people all over the country.  I felt that the book did a much better job of making this central to the story.  Hunger is very powerful and leads people to do things that they wouldn't ordinarily do.  To think of hunger as a weapon used by a government to control a population is a terrifying concept.

And the fact of the matter is, there is plenty of food in "The Capitol".  Can you imagine a world where there are so many people starving, yet some have more than they can possibly need...or want?  Where some have excesses that the others can't even fathom?

Well, can you?