Paying It Forward/Random Acts of Kindness

I've been thinking about things all day. I guess it's just one of those days that lends itself to introspection. So pull up a good seat and listen for a few if you happen to have found yourself here reading then I'm sure there's a reason.

At the end of January I had to go to the airport to pick up my brother and his girlfriend. It's about 110 miles round trip or so. I took the guest we had here at the house with me because it seemed too odd to leave him at home alone.

I realized about 30 minutes from home that I'd forgotten to grab my cell phone off the charger before I left. So I had no way for my brother to reach me in the car to tell me where to pick him up at and that he had arrived. The whole way there Ross complained and when we got to the airport we discovered that my brother's flight had been cancelled at the last minute but because we'd already left for the airport we'd missed the call.

So here we are at the airport, low on fuel and no cash between us. I was flat broke. Going into business with someone who tends to spend more than you earn does that to your pocketbook. Anyway, so this guy is really pitching a fit. Yelling, smoking like a chimney, pacing around at the airport. I send him in to ask when the next flight is due because I have no way to phone my mother or my brother's cell since they are long distance and I forgot my phone.

He comes back and tells me they will be there in 4 hours. He doesn't want to wait at the airport that long. Take me home, he says. Now keep in mind this is the same day my bunnies died. I was stressed out big time. (see earlier blog on truthsinger.blogspot.com). I feel like my head is going to explode and my eyes are bugging out from pressure and it's harder and harder to be nice to this fellow.

So I remember that I have a gift card from a local gas station called Valero in my purse. My brother had tossed it to me saying "it has some $$ on it but not much". So I know there's one across the highway and decide I'll go get an aspirin and try to think on what to do.

I get there and the card has $1.77 on it, just enough to pay for one of those little packets of pills and tax. I ask the lady if I can use her restroom but it's in use at the moment so I wait. While I wait she and I start chatting. "Long day, bad day. Bunnies died. Plane cancelled. Hermit the grouch for a passenger. blah blah blah". I proceed to talk to her because she resembles my eldest daughter so much I felt at home with her and she had such a lovely welcoming smile.

I told her I had a migraine and wanted nothing so much as to dump this dude off at home so I could wait in peace but I didn't have enough cash for gas to get there and back the 100 miles. So next thing I know, Jackie offers to pay for not only the headache pills but $10.00 in gas. Just enough to get me home and back. I told her I couldn't pay her back any time soon and she said no need, just pay it forward. I promised I would and with tears in my eyes I finally got into the restroom to wash up.

We filled up and I took him home then turned right around to go back because by then my brother had phoned, they'd made another airlines flight and were waiting on me at the airport which was still over an hour away. So I grabbed the cell and headed back with my head pounding.

About ten miles up the road I had to stop and dig in my purse for more pills because the headache was so bad I couldn't see well. I found some, took them and started to pull back onto the highway when I saw something glare in the headlights from the nearby ground. I got out to investigate and found a ladies wallet and 18 credit cards and personal stuff all over the muddy ground. I picked them up and made sure I got them all and then proceeded back to the airport.

Later that night after returning home I phoned the number for the cell in the wallet but no answer. Turns out the wallet belongs to a lady who'd been in Little Rock on business and was robbed. The next day she phoned me to tell me how relieved she was and ask me to mail it. To my embarrassment I didn't have enough $$ to mail it to her so her husband made arrangements to have UPS come get it.

The funny thing was that for a few days before this I'd kept having random "pictures" in my head of Denver Colorado and the aurora borealis. Didn't make any sense to me until I looked at Denise's return address to tell UPS. She lived in Aurora Colorado. Which I'd never heard of but sounds lovely.

So today, when I ever so happily returned Mr. Grump the guest to the airport, I took the time to stop by the station and tell Jackie the owner about that night and how her generous offer of $10.00 gas meant that I was on that road to see the wallet to return it to the rightful owner in Colorado. I guess that means I paid it forward afterall and I thought she'd like to know.

One other thing that made my afternoon, when I walked into her station, even after knowing me only a few minutes she said hey you, welcome home! I think she's wonderful and I thank heaven that such people still exist!

So I hope this wasn't too lengthy to enjoy and that if you read it now there was a reason, something for you to pass on to another. Random acts of kindness work!

Love to you all! Sinsual aka Vandra

The Trouble with Smart Bucks...

We have this billy goat named Stranger. I’ve talked about him before I think. He was tossed into our yard by someone who apparently thought that we wouldn’t notice the addition. I have taken to calling him BeauCephus because when I go outside he hums to me and sings a little song til I come to him. It’s as if he believes himself to be a siren or something. God’s gift to women of any species!



He has these foot long horns that he likes to play “whack the horn” with. I usually run around with him when I let him out of the pen and play chase for a while then run to the big boulder in the rock field. He’ll hop right up on it and run to the end where I am and we play “whack the horn” for a bit til my hands hurt. Sometimes we play tug a war or king of the mountain too. He’s an amusing outgoing little guy. Only as tall as my thigh if you count the horns but he thinks he’s much bigger.

Well today I’m inside sipping tea and honey for a cold when my housemate yells that the goat is out. I look outside whilst jumping into my shoes and see he’s eating all the strawberry plants in the fenced in front yard garden.

Now this is amazing because he’s opened the gate to his pen which I have thick cotter pins holding closed!! Somehow he whacked the pin out of the hole and opened the door. Then he opened the gate to the front field and let the horses out. Then he opened the gate to the nanny goat’s pen and let the nanny and both babies out. Then he opened the gate to the front garden and proceeded to eat my strawberry plants, onions and rosemary!

He did all of this between when I fed him less than 2 hours ago and now!

This is one smart darn goat! The problem is that I’m going to have to get rid of him if we can’t keep him contained where he’s supposed to be. I see now why so many people build goat pens out of ugly concrete. The boys will simply climb and destroy everything else. He broke a section of chainlink fence in half by using it as a trampoline. The bars folds and broke open making it useless.

On one hand I admire his gumption and ingenuity but on the other I fear for the safety of the other animals and him if he continues to pull a “Pappillion” on me.

Any goat herders out there with good inexpensive ideas for buck goat containment? Lol.

When you know you can't help...

Monday, March 03, 2008

I find myself thinking about something today that I would honestly rather never have to think about at all. Someone I know made a phone call to set up an appointment to visit an abortion clinic. They are taking "the non-mother-to-be" in for a consultation and counseling session.

Now I know that both parties are responsible for taking precautions or abstaining, but I find myself in the uncomfortable [and unearned I assure you] position of feeling morally righteous about the "non-father-to-be" in this case. He frustrates me. Were guys always like this when I was younger and I didn't notice it because I wasn't drinking and sleeping around with them all in high school? This guy, oh let's be generous and say DATES 4 or 5 girls a week, sometimes 3 a day. He's young, good looking, charming when he wants to be (and he definitely does want to be when he's going in for the kill) and a local.

The dates he has are with girls from the ages of 14.5 to 28 so far as I know. I spoke with the young man and his group of friends several times but with zero effect other than getting myself called names I've never been called to my face in my life.

When they got into a fight and I was for some UNKNOWN reason asked by an officer of the law to accompany him to the dispute to help "calm things down" I was shocked. I found this man and his posse of friends, drunk, having driven a car into a field near someone's house and gotten it stuck up to the axels in mud. There was a girl with them who it turned out was sixteen. She was obviously smelling of booze and not walking well. I spoke to the police there and asked if they didn't find that odd and wasn't this a dry county and isn't she a bit underage to be out drinking especially with a group of horny drunken boys? He answered me "Ya, seems like she is at that." and did nothing.

I made a few phone calls after hearing this group of youngsters brag about how they got another sixteen year old girl drunk and drugged, then all took turns at her sometimes three at a time. And if this wasn't enough they peed on her afterwards and left her at someone's house, miles from home in that incapcitated state.

No one seems to care. The girls won't press charges, the boys think it's funny. The police say "as long as they don't drink THEN drive we look the other way". What kind of hell am I IN here? Is this the way it's always been and I just was blind as a bat or what?

Is this NORMAL behavior? These girls (and I do mean GIRLS) should have parents that care about them but instead they marry them off to SOMEONE who will take them at sixteen and they are divorced by eighteen with 2 kids and on welfare. Following in the family business I guess.

I feel really negative about this whole thing. I know it's not my business, it's not my baby they want to abort. I don't know the young woman in question, I know as soon as this is "handled" she will go looking for the "daddy" and want to be in his good graces again and on the floor doing whatever he wants when he wants because she has no sense of personal value.

It's impossible to ignore without substantially altering what I do and where I do it, and my efforts to help are not only unappreciated but unwanted. I guess I'm feeling rather down about the whole thing. I need to get my head right somehow, find a silver lining and pursue that to make a difference and not dwell on those I can't help. It just pains me to know he's had this "talk" now three times in a year, with three different girls, because "condoms are for losers." What a horrible thing to go through at any age. I can't imagine how hopeless it feels at sixteen or fifteen.

What ever happened to decent young men who valued their lady friends and expected them to value themselves? Are they really a forgotten breed?

All I can think is, some days the dragon wins. :(