Since the board has been getting so negative lately (snark), I thought it might behoove us to encourage random acts of kindness.
I sent a $150 gift card to a ten year old whose father has to be on the road through Christmas, trying to save the family home from foreclosure.
We’ve been helping various people at church who are having difficulties. Most recently our pastor’s wife just had a baby so we’ve been bringing them precooked meals and frozen casseroles ready to cook.
Not exactly feeding the poor, but making people’s lives much easier when they are having issues.
When we clean out our pantry at the old house we’ll be donating a lot of food to the food pantry. Some of it just isn’t worth moving, and I have no idea what we bought some of it for.
Doing somebody a good turn doesn’t require them to be in abject poverty. Everybody can use a little more kindness or consideration.
Yeah, there have been plenty of times I have found something in the refrigerator or the cupboard and asked, “Where the fuck did this come from?”
And that’s not even counting when I cleaned out the refrigerator of my ex-roommate the hoarder. Even he couldn’t identify some of the things I pulled out of there.
I found a can of spicy mushrooms. WTF is that?
Ewwww, yuck
Truth.
We got a bit of snow yesterday/overnight, plows came through and as a result I hadgot to pull out Ye Olde Snowblower dark & early this morning. When I was done with my driveway, I went across the street, cleared the end of her driveway, rolled up the sidewalk to the next house, helped him with the end of his driveway (he had shoveled 90% of it already), then caught my next door neighbor’s on the way back to my house. It wasn’t just snow in what the plow had thrown at us - some ice chunks too, with slush at the bottom.
When I got back inside, I told Dakwife the tale of my travels, who gave a bit of an eyeroll and said “I was wondering why you were out there so long.”
Checked Facebook a bit ago and saw this message from neighbor #3
You saved me this morning, THANK YOU!!! I got up late and needed to get to $othercity, we owe you!
And that, kids, is why we take an extra couple minutes and help out our neighbors. Even the young, able-bodied ones.
My hunky neighbor was kind of freaking out last night because a bunch of weird crap that had happened to him. I handed him a bottle of cider, and he’s much calmer this morning.
The three hugs I got from him are purely coincidental.
Sent a heartfelt compliment to the grocery delivery service. Nice to know the people who help keep me sane(-ish) will be recognized.
I finagled a decent diagnostic and treatment plan for a very bulldog within the confines of a client’s budget. Which can be very difficult, but in the spirit of the season we made it work. Thank goodness I have a boss who lets us make our own decisions on certain things…
We are $140 away from fully funding the emergency surgery for a very sick little kitty, Baron.
Which means I get to pony up a couple cans of his favorite cat food, because we are making the challenge.
Forty-nine people in less than 24 hours raised the entire amount. I’m… humbled.
I’ll update you all when there is more news.
Here’s an opportunity for those who know how to knit.
Sorry, guys, but this guy has my vote for Most Awesome Dad.
How can you possibly top that?
Holy shit. What a horrible woman.
The classification of babies with Downs as less than human is really disturbing to me. Right this minute is the best time to be an adult with Downs Syndrome, anyone growing up with it now is disadvantaged because so many of them are being aborted.
I’m sitting in a hotel lobby while a bunch of acquaintances are out at dinner (I’m in town for a one-day conference, I’m not speaking those guys are, it’s a dinner for speakers) so I ordered food from a local place. I ordered an italian sausage sub and a piece of cheesecake. It got turned into a cheese steak.
So now the young lady working the second shift at the desk is having a cheesesteak for dinner.
Edit: She just gave me a Toblerone bar
Just an update, on Leo and his Dad.
The GoFundMe is now over $450K (US). Pretty good, when he was only looking for $60K - money to get Leo back to New Zealand and to support the two of them for a year, so he could devote that time to Leo.
Sam, Leo’s dad, has tried to reason with Leo’s mom. Instead, her family keeps trying to talk him into leaving Leo at an orphanage. Sam is asking people to understand that this is the culture his wife and family grew up in, and he is going to be working to use part of the money to inform and educate people in Armenia about children with special needs. He’s already been discussing it with some experts, he says.
Hopefully Sam and Leo will be on their way home soon. I hope New Zealand will be more welcoming of Leo than Armenia was.
I’m not going to pretend that things are all sweetness and light over here, he will likely still face huge difficulties, but he will certainly be a lot better off than he is now.
If my kids’ school is anything to go by special needs children are far more accepted here. There is at least one downs syndrome kid there and he is just treated as one of the children. I know my daughter looked after him and helped him quite a bit and there were others who did the same too.
As Sam was brought up in New Zealand I’m not surprised he chose to keep his baby - it’s just what you do - I’m more surprised he is still defending his wife after she divorced him for it.
I’m not, this has been something very sudden for him. He hasn’t had time to come to grips with that.
She’s released a statement. She claims that she was hurt that he didn’t give her a chance, he wasn’t by her side when she had such a big decision to make, etc. She’s not addressing anything else - the immediate divorce, not allowing the baby into the room within hours pf the birth, not the way he was immediately thrown out of the house by his in-laws… I guess she’s upset that this all looks bad on her.
Devil’s advocate here. If they were both living at her parent’s place, and he doesn’t really have a job, why were they having a baby anyway?
I think one of the other articles I saw mentioned that he lost his job due to his in-laws shunning him.
Edited to add: He’s a freelance business contractor. He’s not working right now because he has to spend time with Leo. He’s stated that he’s afraid something will happen to Leo if he’s not there.