Acts of kindness

Over the past few months I havent been doing a great deal of manual ABR instead I've been doing lots of little things that have been put on the back burner since I started doing ABR with Corbin exactly 4 years ago this month.

So far I have done some much needed gardening, I've actually got our glasshouse in order - for the first time ever it actually looks half decent and is full with plants - tomatoes, peas, brocolli, cucumber, fancy lettuce and some little shrubs I'm trying to grow and we've got heaps of potatoes planted in the garden as well.

We've also redecorated Miss Livees bedroom recently and I've done some "spring cleaning" in various parts of the house too. Spring cleaning is not normally something I do - I normally have a clean out when we shift houses instead (At one stage we had lived in 11 different houses in 11 years, but now that has stretched out to 11 houses in almost 15 years because we have almost been in the same house for 4 years now, a massive record).

Most recently I've been redecorating at my grandmothers house. I had told Nannie that I would redecorate her hallway just after she moved into her house 8 years ago. Well that kind of got thrown out the window after Corbin came along not long after that and life took a u-turn for us. So anyway, 8 years later I've finally painted and wall papered the hallway and it just looks wonderful and she is over the moon. She is so grateful that you would think that I had given her a million dollars. To say thank you she made me yummy pikelets and the best apple crumble I have ever tasted. I really appreciated her gratitude and it makes me feel good to do something to help her out and make her happy (but I might have to stop doing things to help because her yummy food is making me fat!!!)

Recently our church did a community day, getting out and digging in to help out in the community. The place where I helped out was a bit of an eye opener. The lady and her children were about to be evicted because there was so much rubbish lying around the property. It appeared that they just opened the windows and doors and dropped their rubbish. It took about 12 people about 4 hours, and 3 skip bins full of rubbish to clean up the property.

These very different acts of kindness got me thinking. There are those people, like my grandmother, that you want to help out and do things for because she is so appreciative of any small act of kindness that you just want to keep doing everything you can to help. Then there are the people who sit back expecting others to do everything for them without even so much as a thankyou. They are the ones who probably need the most help but no one around them wants to help out because they are so ungrateful and lack basic curtosy and manners.

If only we could teach adults what most(?) children already know and that is that you get better results in life if you just use some manners!!!