"Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" Carol McCloud

For the fourth year, I'm volunteering to read to Ms. Green's 2nd grade class at Kirkpatrick School, Clarksdale, MS. My hugs, kisses, smiles and kind words fill their buckets and they in turn, fill mine.

Carol McCloud wrote "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?"illustrated by David Messing. Good for any age, it raises awareness by explaining that every person has an invisible bucket, and we are either bucket fillers or bucket dippers. When we do something nice for someone, we fill the other person's bucket and vice versa. Bullies are bucket dippers. They take away the other person's good feelings, and they don't get good feelings put in theirs.

It has been translated into French, Braille, Japanese, Turkish, Korean and Chinese, and won 15 awards from 2007-2013. bucketfillers101.com

Carol collaborated with Caryn Bulzke and illustrator Glenn Zimmer to create "My Very Own Bucket Filling from A to Z Coloring book." It took First Place in the 2015 Dragonfly Book Awards.

Go to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com to buy.

 ©2015 Red Convertible Travel Series

SHORTS, SHOES and SHEEP

Last week my friend, Diane, and I volunteered at the Arlington, NE, three day rummage sale on the fairgrounds. All day she unpacked, sorted and stacked donated plus sized sweaters, while I sorted small, medium and large shorts. I decided it would take seven pairs of Daisy Duke shorts to make one pair of jeans.

I suspect those in the know knew, if the volunteers had to leave the grounds to get something to eat, they wouldn’t come back, even though we were happy to be part of the effort. Volunteers were served a yummy potato and bacon soup, ham or egg salad sandwiches and a choice of cakes for dessert. A local bakery provided an assortment of brownies with nuts, or caramel, or nuts and caramel. Scrumptous! Back to work.

Our building displayed women’s clothes. Long jeans neatly folded and stacked bowed tables. Over 30’ of tables held folded sweaters at least six sweaters high and three or four across. Some blouses never made it to hangers, they ran out. We worked all day organizing, knowing full well a few minutes after opening it would look like a war zone. I could have shopped, but didn’t. It was overwhelming, like too many flavors of ice cream, just give me chocolate.

One building was dedicated to children’s clothes, another to men’s, a third to furniture. Across the road, row after row of shoes and purses were where I expected to find sheep.

Diane said this sale was a third of last year's donations, but they had a spring sale, too. As much as $75,000 has been raised for the hospital from a three day sale. That's a lot of Daisy Duke's.

2009 Red Convertible Travel Series