four days of kindness

 ok, well it's actually three days because i wasnt intentionally kind today and now, at 5pm and with no intention to go anywhere i probably wont be (except to my family, who get the benefit of my kindness everyday)
yesterday i babysat my nieces (i do most wednesdays) and i made a point of having marshmallows to put in their bedtime milk.
instead of sending them to bed with their milk in a plastic sippy cup i put it in pretty coloured cups with matching saucers, three soft and fluffy marshmallows on the side to be dipped, dunked, spooned out and plopped back in. i sat with them and tried to chat. more to the point i tried not to get exasperated when they slurped up the marshmallows and didnt want the milk.

it wasnt a big kindness, just a small value add. on the kindness website i ticked the box:

 "Go the extra mile with someone - add sprinkles to a child's dessert, shout your close friend a coffee or a drink. An unexpected gesture is always welcomed."

in other news, i am quite pleased to have had a blog post published by "Nurture" magazine, it wasnt paid, they didnt even tell me they were going to publish but its out there and thats gotta be a good thing.

one million acts of kindness

a few times now i have seen "one million acts of kindness" advertised and yesterday in a moment of procrastination i decided to have a look at the website. i have to say that the site didnt explain very well, i still dont know whether it's just a mindfulness movement or some kind of charity effort but i had a look at the suggestions for kind acts, browsed the pledges made by australians and signed up.
after i signed up i found out that the challenge closed in july so thats a bit weird but the site still took my pledge of five kind acts a week for eight weeks and it will still count them for me, so i still get to do the challenge.
it was interesting that NSW, our most populous state,  is not proportionately very kind, we are way behind other states and i would have thought that we would be trying to beat queensland, at the very least! kindness is more important even than football and we have more chance of winning!
these eight weeks of kindness cant be random, the calendar is written up with a different focus each day: yesterday was kindness to women in my life, today's theme is family and there are  days for animals, the planet, kindness to self, awareness of diversity etc etc
the universe decided to test my intentions today (and it rudely departed from the family theme) when i found a prescription left in a local cafe. as i had my coffee i waited for the owner to come looking for the package but they never did and mindful of my pledge i actually delivered it to the address on the label. any other day i probably would have handed it to the waitress and forgotten about it.
as i drove there i wondered who i might meet, whether this kindness lurk was going to add to my "story store".....it didnt because nobody was home but i left the bag and went on my way, happy to note that the property was very run down and my kindness target might be well in need of the $5 a replacement script would have cost them.

this kindness thing is kind of exciting and scary all at once, i wonder where it will lead?