Hello all…
I’m going to jump right in… I’ve been restless with the blog. Not sure how I’ve felt about it for a while now. Do I get rid of it? Keep going? Change platforms? Change the look? Change? Stop? Change? It’s a sort of weird mantra. This annoying question.
I created a page at three other sites hoping to freshen things up, to give it a new feel, a new look, but not lose the content. I failed three times. The sites didn’t work like I wanted, the content wouldn’t transfer easily, or would, but then didn’t work when I followed the procedure. A bunch of glitches. A bunch of minor frustration, because let’s face it blogging isn’t rocket science or something that will change the world in any way.
In the end, I did what I’ve done in the past. I started playing around here at WordPress with themes and style. I trimmed some stuff here and there around the blog. Extraneous crap, to be honest. I mean, is anyone really looking at that stuff anyway? And even deeper, is anyone really even reading this blog? I’ve been blogging for 15 years. Yep, you heard that right, 15. I started at LiveJournal, moved to Blogger, and then came over to WordPress where I’ve been for ages.
Anyway… I wax on. I ended up, once again, staying here because the content is all here. I didn’t want to lose any of it. But, I pruned and simplified.
It’s not for anyone else anyway, it’s for me. And I couldn’t get rid of it. I couldn’t get rid of those long-ago essays about my grandma and life and other deaths in my life, I couldn’t get rid of all the photos and travel posts and reviews, couldn’t get rid of my journey when I was sick, or of the myriad of little posts of poetry and art and the other quirky and strange stuff that sometimes catches my attention.
I’ve been in a social media trimming phase over the last several months. I got rid of a bunch of sites I never used but was a part of. I’m down to the big ones – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I never tweet. I will probably be getting rid of that as well. Who knows. It’s the same process we took with our finances at home – going over everything to see what works, what doesn’t and needs to go. It’s a good process. A spring cleaning of sorts. It’s liberating.
So here I am. Same old blog, same hosting site, but a new look, a new feel, a new “me”. We’ll see how it goes.
I just now finished up posting all of my reviews for the movies we watched at Ebertfest this year. It was a splendid group of films, as per usual. Lots of things I hadn’t seen this time around, which is always fun. I was shocked I hadn’t ever seen Hair or Being There, but I hadn’t. I loved the documentaries as well, particularly Mind/Game about Chamique Holdsclaw’s struggle with mental illness. She was eloquent and brave and open. I also really enjoyed Elle, disturbing and confounding as it was, and The Handmaiden. The storytelling in The Handmaiden was smart and creative. It was, as I said, a fantastic experience once again… except…
We were out and about again today, running more errands, getting ready for some upcoming Christmas festivities. Since we were going out we thought today would be a good day for the candy cane caper. Sounds more adventurous or slightly naughty than it was, but it ended up being pretty nice. We’d purchased a box of big sized candy canes a while back in preparation and today we took them around and passed them out to people, saying Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, giving people a smile as we did. Librarians, people sitting at a cafe, the ladies who work at the coffee roasters we go to, a couple of policemen, and a girl sitting outside waiting for a ride were all recipients. My honey is really good at this. Her smile can light up a room. Every single person who got a candy cane smiled back at us. We gave a few of the people two candy canes telling them one was for them and one was for them to hand out to someone else. A sweet bit of shared kindness.
Today K and I made our yearly Christmas trip into Chicago. We usually go to several places on our Christmas trip day, but this time we ended up just staying at the Lincoln Park Zoo all day. We looked at the animals, had several different talks with zoo staff about various animals, ate some lunch, then strolled around the place a couple more times after the zoo lights came on. We had meant to park at the zoo, take a bus downtown and check out the Bean, the Macy’s windows, some other sites we usually see at Christmas time, then get back to the zoo in the evening to see the zoo lights, but it didn’t happen that way. At one point we just looked at each other and both kind of said we were having a great time, a very relaxing time, just wandering around, no rush, nice and mellow. It was awesome. While we were there we also decided to put our money where our mouths are and donate a bit to the conservation and research programs the zoo participates in. Kindness through conservation.
Everyone loves cookies and it just so happens my honey makes great M&M cookies. Today’s kindness was a simple one. She made cookies and we delivered them to three of our neighbors. Needless to say they were surprised and very happy to get them. Nothing like seeing people with big smiles on their faces. Kindness through sugar overload. That’s what we’re talking about.
We decided to go with a fun act of kindness today. We taped a couple of packages of microwave popcorn to a Redbox outside a local Walgreens. The signs said, “Enjoy some popcorn with your movie”. We hope someone does!
We found a big package of handwarmers at the bottom of our hat/scarf bin in our closet. At some point we bought them in bulk. Each little package is a pack of two handwarmers. It’s very cold out today so our act of kindness was to drive around our towns, both Champaign and Urbana, for a couple of hours handing out packs of handwarmers to people at bus stops and other people just walking around who looked really cold. We would pull up and K would roll down her window or jump out and offer up a package of handwarmers to the person. Some took them, others didn’t. One guy said he didn’t need them because he had socks on his hands. K tried to convince him socks weren’t warm enough. He smiled, laughed a little, and still refused. We gave that pack to the next cold looking person we saw. Even the people who refused them smiled at us. The people that took them were very grateful. Small kindnesses mean something.
We are very corny. Silly even. It’s something both K and I share, a genuine dorkiness. It makes our lives fun, we laugh a lot. Because we love to laugh, we love to make other people laugh. Sharing laughter is a kindness. To yourself, and to the person you shared the laugh with. So today we recorded ourselves doing really corny knock knock jokes and sent them out to some people. We totally cracked ourselves up. I hope we made our people laugh as well.
We go to the library a lot. I’m a huge fan. All sorts of people use the libary, which is one of the things that makes it so awesome. It’s an amazing resource. One of the things we thought we would do as we go forward with this whole kindness adventure was to write out a bunch of positive notes on post-its and randomly place them around for people to find. Since we go to the library a lot, and since there are all sorts of people there, we thought it would be a good place to put the notes. Today was the day. We note-bombed the library. I don’t know how many notes we made up, there were a lot of them. We each took part of the pack of them and snuck around putting them in places like seats, and on the copier, and on a book I was returning, and in the elevators. We put them all over. They all said different things, like “you have a beautiful smile” or “you are braver than you know” or “you are loved”. It was so much fun. Everyone loves hearing something nice. We hope there will be a few extra smiles today at the library.
We decided, really since we started this whole adventure, but today especially, that we would be mindful of being outwardly open, friendly, chatty, interested, and kind toward whoever we came in contact with. In all actuality, we are like this for the most part, in our daily lives, but it puts an extra special twist on it when you do it mindfully. So today, as we ran some errands, we made sure to look people in the eyes, smile at them, be silly, chat, make conversation, shake hands if it was possible. We ended up getting a lot of smiles in return. Again, sometimes it’s the smaller things that make all the difference in life. A smile costs nothing. Interest in other people as humans costs nothing. Being a tad silly, and chatty, costs nothing. And all of those things together show a kindness, an openness, toward other people, which might just make them feel more kind and open as they go through the rest of their day. Maybe it starts a wave of kindness. And if not, smiling at people generally gets them to smile back. It’s worth it.
Sometimes the kind thing is a thing you might do anyway. Something as simple as helping out someone when they’re in need. Kindness doesn’t have to be done in big grand gestures or deliberate acts for someone you don’t know. It can be simple, and right at home. The kid’s water heater went out. They’ve had a couple of days of no hot water, which they’ve managed to deal with pretty well, but the one thing they couldn’t get done at home were baths for the kids. So today they came over and the littles had a bath. Kindness can be about just being there for someone when they need you to be. And in fact, we should be kind like that as much as we can be.
I spent 20 years of my life working with at-risk kids. It was challenging work, but also very rewarding. Initially I worked for several years with kids at a youth correction facility. Later, and for most of my years doing the work, I worked as a Juvenile Probation Officer. That involved a lot of things, one of those being sometimes trying to find a residential placement for a kid who needed treatment, or safety, or both. I know a lot about residential kids, I have a huge place in my heart for them. Which brings us to today’s act of kindness. There is a residential program here in our town, the 
Sometimes acts of kindness are truly random. We had nothing planned for today. No act thought out ahead of time. We were driving to our local Co-op, Common Ground, talking about what to do today when we pulled up and the answer was right there. In the planters in front of the store, where during the rest of the year actual plants live, there were bare branches of trees sticking up, and tied to some of these branches were clear plastic bags with hats and gloves and scarves inside. The sign on the planter said donate if you can, take something if you need it. When we were done with our shopping we headed home, scoured our overflowing winter drawers and baskets for something to donate, found three scarves, neatly rolled them up and placed them all into a plastic bag, then drove back to Common Ground and hung them on a branch. They were scarves we’ve had forever, scarves we don’t need, and the thought that someone may be out there who can use them, who might need them, well… that made us both feel good. The weather has turned very very cold. I hope next time we go by they are gone and that someone has one snuggly wrapped around their neck.