It’s February 29, a leap year. Significant, this comes about every four years. This means that those who are born on February 29th have a birthday every four years. This should mean that they live four times as long as the rest of us. Us mere mortals living to be 100 would be bested by those living to be 400 years old.

What would someone who lives to be 400 years of age look and act like? Undoubtedly, they’d be very wise. The drawback would be that they’d have to wait every four years for a birthday. How do you explain this to a 4, 8, 12, or even 16 year old?

Cleaning books at the meeting house

Some are born on Christmas. I once heard on the radio about a child who was told he could not have a birthday cake because the celebration was for the Baby Jesus. People can really be mean.

And yes, the cliché is true; mean people suck.

Today was a good day; again cold, windy, but sunny. The days are beating the winter odds by getting longer and brighter. I did not walk the horses today because it was a volunteer day in the former banquet room of the historic Eagle Hotel. We had quite a few volunteers, and lots got done, but the quality of the conversation was not as high as it is on Tuesday. I am not complaining. I was told when we were housed in the Meeting House, by the then BLBP board to get more volunteers. I said that the space we had on hand did not allow for this. We have the space now, and partially for this reason, we are now getting more volunteers.

I am slowly getting ready for Dogs, Dogs, Dogs – in my mind I have prioritized. First get the books cleaned and then get the place cleaned up. If time, box up books to send to villages. No one else who volunteers prioritizes. They do the assigned task and then take off. This is okay. Many hands are making for less work. I find it hard to believe what once was has come to be. We did get a $25,000 donation from Saltchuk, the freight Mothership, and today a $1,000 donation from the Mat-Su Valley Credit Union, which is going toward bookcases, which will be constructed by the Mat-Su Career and Tech High School students. And we are waiting on a grant from a bank, I was told this morning we’ll hear about whether or not we got this on March 15th. Hurry up and get the applications in and wait. This is what we do.

This morning, I worked on my small potatoes grant for the Palmer Community Foundation, and tonight I workshopped it in Pete’s grant writing class. I got good feedback. What’s important is this – I was in the zone this morning when I was working on this. I need to get my mornings back for writing. For sure, this is a goal.