Charity

I'm a big fan of charitable giving. My bank account doesn't always let me be as magnanimous as I'd like, but I give when I can and volunteer when I'm able. One thing I like to do is donate blood every 54 days (when I'm not pregnant or nursing), as that's as often as you can donate. It doesn't cost me anything and it saves lives (I'm O+ so I'm almost a universal donor).

Today I saw a featured video on YouTube.com. The guy was pretty annoying, but I thought, in contrast to the billions of "hey, lookit me!" videos out there, using youtube for good instead of evil appealed to me.

Then, today, I walked 1.6 miles to pick Vin up from school with Nico in the stroller and wearing Joseph in a wrap. I forgot that I'd transferred all of my purse stuff into the baby bag, and so when I went to get a soda out of the machine at the grocery store, I found I had exactly $.22 to my name, and the sodas were $.25. I said, oh well, and went to walk away when a lady said, "Excuse me," and handed me two quarters. "For your son," she said in stilted English. I thanked her, put in the two quarters and heard one hit the change return. She thought the soda's were $.50 (as they are at a minimum anywhere else, but this was Shasta soda). The change return was full of the extra quarters her daughter had pumped into the machine. I handed them back to her, thanking her again, and thought to myself, I guess there are people out there who still do nice things for one another. It'd been a long time since I'd witnessed it first hand, and in a "shout-it-to-the-universe" kind of way, I'd like to publicly thank her again for showing a fellow person the kindness of a cold soda on a hot day. Thank you!