Friday, October 10, 2008

Random Acts of Kindness

Well...I am still positive (most of me anyway) today unfortunately J didn't get the memo. Tantrums ALL. DAY. LONG. 10 minutes before bedtime she just stopped. Hmmm....

The good news is I didn't lose my cool, I won the lottery and she'll probably sleep really well. Tomorrow she'll wake up in a better mood.
Play group therapy tomorrow. Woo hoo!

Now I'm taking a different direction. Random Act of Kindness....
Just because we don't go to church right now we still do tithes. J puts so much of her chore money in her little Ziploc tithe bag and I have a percentage taken out of my check and direct deposited into a savings account labeled tithes. That direct deposit business is wonderful because I never miss it. If I got my grubby little hands on it the chances are it would be spent. Probably for therapy. ;-) I love to secretly help people that need help or have a dream they're trying to reach. It's really wonderful to do it secretly because then you have absolutely no expectations. You can't worry about them spending it on what you want them to spend it on (which is none of my business) or be expecting a thanks (which isn't necessary). Preferably I take the cash out of the account, put it in a really pretty card and just sign it "Love". No name. Nothing. It gives me the warm fuzzies all over because it was a random act of kindness.

Another random act of kindness that I used to do is send birthday cards. I'd pick an office and send anonymous birthday cards to every employee for an entire year. One office was pretty large. 100 or so employees.... I would go the Hallmark once a month and pick out birthday cards for all the people that were having birthdays for the next month. I would have a grand time picking out those cards and the process could amuse me for an hour or more if I had the time. Then I'd go write sign all the cards and have them ready to mail a few days before the person's birthday. I wouldn't sign them with my name silly! I'd put nonsensical stuff like, hoping all your dreams come true, you deserve them, etc., then I'd turn the card upside down and sign "L". My penmanship is REALLY bad so it looked nothing like an "L" once upside down. So anywho the whole year passed and I had sent everyone in the office a card. I started hearing rumors about people talking about their birthday cards and wondering who was sending them. At the end of the year a group of people at the office thought they had figured out who was sending the cards. They thought it was a guy that had retired from management about 6 months before. They threw him a huge birthday party. Isn't that cool!!!!! Random acts of kindness can make some really cool things happen.

Sometimes it's hard to be all sneaky about it but I still keep trying.... I like being sneaky.

Tomorrow I'm going to be sneaky. It'll make me feel better and some unsuspecting stranger will feel better too.

What are you going to do for your random act of kindess today?

6 comments:

Kristina P. said...

Those are awesome ideas! The birthday card one is amazing.

I once sent flowers to one of my cyber friends who was going through a really tough time. I makes you feel good because you know they feel good.

Kristina P. said...

It IS Reader! I'm sitting here at work, doing nothing, with my Reader open, and your post popped up.

I've noticed that too. Sometimes there is a big delay for me, but then I will post my post, and see on my tracker that someone came to my blog a minute later, from Reader.

And you read my somewhat negative review of Twilight and STILL read the book? Look at you go. I hope you like it better than I did. I only read the first two. :)

~Dinah said...

Sometimes, in line at the grocery store, when I'm buying my family stuff and a lone person is behind me waiting for me to put all the groceries up there and finally pay, and they only have a couple things, I'll just have the grocer add their amount to my bill. Maybe not so "anonymous" but it will make the little old lady's day! :D

It's fun!

Lauri said...

That is so cool... as that recipient of some random kindness, I can tell you that it makes a difference and can brighten ones day.


Good for you.. hoping you are kind to yourself as well

Holly said...

You are great! What a thoughtful thing to do.

Alyssa's Mom said...

I try to do little things all day long. Let someone go in front of me, give another car my "turn" at a 4-way stop, etc.

I try to teach this to Alyssa also.

Thanks for reminding me that we need to get better at this.