That picture of your cousin and his wife brought tears to my eyes.
Yeah, the hospital was nice and put their beds together. They were *really *lucky. Their neighbors across the street died that day. :eek:
Update to my previous good deed. The dryer repair is now complete. The final issue was that the vent cover on the wall was installed backwards, so it wouldn’t open properly…this was causing a pretty bad heating issue. We reversed it, and everything works fine now.
I learned a lot about dryers along the way. And my friend can now do her laundry.
-D/a
Mine is a bit old, but I still grin like a fool when I remember it.
Back in my old apartment, I came into the lobby one day to find two young girls (grade-school age) struggling mightily to get a bicycle into the elevator. I was already on my way to help them but one piped up immediately when she saw me: “Mister, can you help us?”
“Sure thing, why don’t you two hold the elevator open? I can lift this bike.”
I got it in the elevator without much trouble. Had to lift and put in vertical - that was their trouble, they were just too small to lift it like it needed to be.
As they left, the shyer of the two girls thanked me: “Thanks, Mister”
The bolder of two looked me dead in the eye, scowled, then grinned, and said “Cooperation. Pass it on.”
I still get a huge kick out of her cheek. What a great pair of kids.
Not quite as exotic as a snake, but I stopped to rescue a frog stuck on a shadeless pavement on a sunny day, and ended up missing my train as a result. Didn’t matter, I’d picked up the froggie with bare hands, and moved it to under a bush in a nice damp spot in someone’s garden.
(I have visions of the frog cursing me after having spent all day crossing the road to get to where I’d found him, and me having moved him back to where he started) 
I also had a job interview for the first job I’d applied for in years, I’ve been out of work since 2009. I honestly don’t care if I’m offered it or not, just being invited for interview was a MASSIVE ego boost 
Today I was parked on the street. Waiting to lunch with The Fem-Bot™, who is a Junior in college. I hear a fellow on the phone.
" Just come over and bring the jumper cables, ok?? I left the lights on. "
Got out, offered a jump, three minutes later guy was on his way.
Whenever I go to the library, I throw away some litter (candy wrappers, usually) in the parking lot.
At the supermarket, I remove shopping carts from parking spaces before I go inside. (There’s usually at least one blocking a parking spot for the disabled.)
I have a new foster dog I adore. she’s just right for me.
She’s sweet and friendly and loving.
She’s young and energetic- wags her whole body.
She’s really smart. And eager to learn. I’m having so much fun teaching her tricks and practicing obedience. She’s great for practicing training because she clearly has none, but she’s willing to pick it up.
And she’s pretty. She’s just my “style”- a gordon setter mix. About 50 lb. Black and tan and sleek. She reminds me of a combination of two of my favorite fosters. I’m considering asking to keep her for a while so that I can really have a chance to work with her and turn her into a stellar dog.
It’s great to get a foster I really adore. I don’t feel that way about all of them. And I’m still sort of pining after the last one I really loved and wish I hadn’t given up. Maybe this sweet girl will help me not miss her anymore.
My friend at work has been going through a rough patch. Her dad died a year or so ago, and her elderly mother has not been coping well. So my friend had to cancel her own wedding and move in with her mother to keep an eye on her, as the mom is developing the first signs of dementia.
I brought my friend in a beautiful potted orchid so she could have something cheerful and bright to see when she came in to work. I know she loves orchids (as do I), and I’m lucky enough to have an orchid greenhouse near where I live. I think she was greatly pleased.
Yesterday at Home Depot I helped a fellow Harry Homeowner load a heavy toilet onto a cart. He was using the bear hug method to get it down from the top of a stack of two. (Of course there was not an employee to be found anywhere.)
I saw a spider in the bathtub Saturday morning, and considered calling my husband in to slay it, because I hate and fear spiders, and this was the kind that gets BIG. However, on this particular morning it was only small, and I decided to just stay away from the tub for a while and then it would be gone.
Saturday afternoon I looked in the tub, and dammit, there it was. Small.
Sunday morning, still there. Okay, now I knew he must be hungry. I guess he just wasn’t able to get out. And any spider inhabiting my bathroom must die. That is the law. However, it would be silly to call in my husband for this one; I would just fetch a shoe and do the job myself. Because the spider was so little. A baby, really.
So I got a cup and a piece of cardboard, captured the spider, and let him go in the yard.
I think it would be a nice reciprocal gesture if he and all his descendants stayed the hell out my bathroom, just sayin’…
One of the elderly neighbors was resting on a bench in the sun this weekend, and admired our dog Sadie as we passed. Sadie took full advantage of the chance to lean against her and bask in the sun and the attention. So we chatted for a bit and the lady mentioned that she had to sell her car recently because she’s unable to get around much nowadays due to her problem (which I take to be congestive heart failure). She’s also on oxygen.
I knew what she was getting at but I didn’t mind; it was a beautiful slow Sunday. So I offered to drive her to the grocery store. Wound up carrying her bags for her too. I bought some snacks for myself as a reward, and as an excuse to turn down her offer of payment (“Oh no, it’s no trouble, I had to go to the store anyway to get this stuff!”)
I find I’m much more inclined to go out of my way for people who are kind to dogs.
Years ago, I was living in an apartment building that had common laundry rooms, and had recently switched to a credit-card-only system for them. It was late at night, and I went to the laundry room to get my laundry, when I met a woman and a little girl. The woman was trying to use a debit card in the machine, and it was not working. She was on her cell phone with somebody, sounding close to the end of her rope. I offered to put money on her laundry card with my credit card (which had worked earlier that day). I said she didn’t have to pay me back, but she wrote me a check for the amount I put on her laundry card.
I was doing that last summer, too - picking up a piece of garbage or two on my normal walk. It was kind of disheartening how quickly the garbage came back after I picked it up, but I’ll probably keep doing it anyway.
Does anyone else think this foster isn’t going anywhere?
I passed my driving test. Now I finally have a licence, but it’s an awful picture.
All right, ok. I’m in.
I took in a stray girl.
I had a pos trailer for sale that we’d wound up only using once before the financial shitstorm got too bad to travel. Some girl called me up and wanted to talk about it, so I met her the next morning and talked about it and everything else. (I have a weird sign on my forehead for every stranger to see that apparently is some version of, “Please tell me your life story.”) She regaled me with the tale of her mother (with whom she and her 2y.o. son were living) who has RA and is on all kinds of drugs that make her nuts, so Stray Girl decided to move out, and what a wonderful coincidence it was that she saw my trailer, and would I take $250 for it?
Sure, sez I, happy that this thing will be out of my driveway, which will go a long way toward helping me clean up Hillbilly Acres. She then says, That’s so great! I don’t know where I’m going to put it, but I’ll pay you for it on Friday.
She did pay me 200 that Friday, but the trailer continued to sit at the top of my driveway…one week…two weeks…I know she’s slept in it at least once or twice during that time, because I could hear the boy scream, or her talking, but I wasn’t in a hurry to do anything about it because it wasn’t hurting anything, and I thought it was a help to cut her some slack. Then one day I came home and it was gone. Hooray!
I texted her to tell her that I was glad she landed somewhere and that I hoped everything was ok. Turned out she landed it on the side of a house two doors down where her sister was living with her husband’s family. All was well, I gave her some ideas for jobs that I thought she could do, and thought that would be the end of our association. I was wrong.
Now the backstory before I go on is this: I’ve spent the last five years in dire financial straits, and by dire, I mean damn near homeless. My husband and I owned a construction business that went tits up and we lost everything. House, cars, piece of mind, you get the idea…
In December, my husband went back to the IBEW and is now working and making good money, but over 200 miles from home at the NV/CA state line. We have this roof over our heads (used to belong to his parents, but was in foreclosure, longer story than this one.) so we’re ok and doing much better, and I seem to have developed a bit of a soft spot for hard time cases.
Two weeks later I get a text from Stray Girl asking if she could rent space in my driveway to drop the trailer because the asshole who’s property it’s on decided he didn’t want it there and told her she had to get out. She didn’t have money to drop it in a trailer park right this second, so please could she put it here for a little bit until she could move it? I sighed because I knew this was going to be trouble somehow, but talked it over with my husband because I knew I didn’t want to do it but couldn’t figure out what exactly my problem with it was. I decided that I was just being selfish, and it wasn’t going to cost me anything really, so ok, fine. Husband went over, moved the trailer here. Decided we didn’t need any money from her, but could she do some yard work in exchange? She was all over that, and readily agreed, and so far has kept up her end of that bargain.
So I have a Stray Girl who is in a safe place. I feel pretty good about being able to help someone. I guess my ensuing issues with her personality encroaching on my space is for another more negative thread.
Dung Beetles are afraid of spiders? Who knew?
I got a job! Occasional work, can set some of my own hours, and can bring my kid any time I need to. Yayyyy!
The squeal I emitted upon seeing that picture was so high-pitched that only dogs could hear it. 
And my good news: I’m learning to drive stick, and I’ve had two practice sessions where I didn’t kill the engine! I still have the tendency to accidentally shift into fourth instead of second, but that’s becoming less common, too.
I’m still terrified of taking it into traffic (because I have the tendency to panic when the slightest thing goes wrong, and I KNOW I’m going to kill it at a red light at some point), but, y’know, baby steps.
I don’t normally talk about the good things I do, only the bad (why is that?), but I’m bored, so I’ll tell. My 13 year-old son has made friends with a homeless guy that lives literally under an overpass near our home, who has been sheltering and feeding a mama cat and her kittens, plus another skinny young cat. I’ve been telling my son not to go there, he’s going to get raped and murdered, but he doesn’t listen. He talked me into buying this guy some non-perishable food and I did it. I’m in a major transition period myself and couldn’t really afford it, but then I thought, “I’m not living under an overpass”, and so I was actually happy to. So, yay.