Wife is good at networking and getting stuff for her needy kids. When she was in Bastrop, she participated with the Coats For Kids, which is a program here in Austin that recycles jackets in the name of preventing kids from suffering the cold season. I used to tease Wife that Bastrop fell out of the Austin City Limits and she was "cheating" and taking jackets, mostly because I didn't want to get involved in picking them up.
She got the call from them this past month and she explained that now she was working three hours away in a very small school district and they were still willing to let her participate. They just want to spread those coats to cover as many kids as possible. Our pick-up time was for 9:30am Sunday morning. I hated the idea of getting up that early, but she didn't really have a crew she could get involved. She volunteered Chubs and myself and we were there maybe ten minutes late. We went to the Parmer Events Center and it seemed like we were going to be in line as the parking lot was full of vans and big box trucks. Wife told me to drive her to the front instead of parking like all the other cars were. She walked in the building and I was told to back up the Excursion in one of the 8 back up lanes leading to the huge warehouse building. It is a huge building, I peeked in one side and it was just an empty football field, and then a security guard told me they were probably in the other side. By the time I spotted Wife, she had two rolling bins as tall as me loaded with four hundred jackets. Luckily, there was a smattering of volunteer girls and they helped bring the bins out to the truck. I loaded one of the bins in by myself and the girls managed to load the other bin. The Excursion was filled to the roof, even with taking the 3rd row of seats out. Although it seems Wife took a lot of jackets, the lady in charge told Wife that over the weekend, they had given away 45,000 jackets to the area schools. Here is where you say WOW!
Our reward for helping was breakfast at Garcia's Mexican Restaurant. It was weird in that every time we go it is filled with people out the door, but I think we just beat the churchgoers in. We arrived before 10:00am and were sat down instantly. I had some barbacoa tacos and some egg and bacon and chorizo tacos, Chubs had a large burrito plate as he usually does, and Wife had a big plate with eggs and meat in a chili sauce of some kind. They do have good coffee, I enjoyed two cups and some water. We were home around noon. We did stop at HEB to get some meat to BBQ and other stuff to get through the week.
Wife wanted to leave early since she was taking the Excursion instead of her new car. I checked the tire pressure on all four tires, and oil quantity before she left. I could not help myself, I went to bed as soon as she headed west. I woke up scared, not knowing if Chubs was at school, or I had failed to pick him up. As it turned out it was still Sunday, I was not late anywhere, it was just a dream.
I got up around 6:15pm then made the meat on the grill. Chubs and I ate a couple of hamburgers off the grill and a sausage dog for good measure. I threw in some steak strips which are great on a tortilla, hopefully for afterschool or dinner tomorrow and spent the rest of the evening washing clothes and ironing.
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