an act of kindness

Last night I was unloading my little girl from our truck and her "I never travel light" crapload of gear and managed to inadvertently drop my wallet on the city street outside my friend's apartment building downtown. I didn't notice that my wallet was missing until I got into my friend's apartment. Searching the diaper bag, which seemed to take half an hour (are they designed to be bottomless?) - I came up empty. I started to panic a bit and after checking the truck, realized that my wallet was indeed missing. When my hubby got home there was a message on our machine (yes, we still have an actual answering machine) saying someone had called regarding our Mastercard. The really strange thing was that I also had an email (in my hotmail account) from someone who had found my wallet. I was completely dumbfounded as to how this person could have discovered my email address because it isn't something I carry around in my wallet. I called him right away. Luckily, he lived downtown and was a short drive away. One of my friends came with me to pick up the wallet (just to be on the safe side), and to see if he was cute (he was). We gave him what cash we had as a thank you. He said he had searched my name, came across my blog (which has my email address) and sent me an email. He had called my credit card company to let them know in case I call, my credit card was safe and sound with him. Isn't that remarkable? I was so amazed by his resourcefulness. His name is Sammy and I am so thankful and inspired by his act of kindness. I've even adopted his name as an expression when things go right. Late last night when I had to catch the Canada Line and make my connection with the bus, I made it within one minute to spare and thought, it's a Sammy kind of day.

Happy Movember!

Happy Movember! This year at our office, a wonderful collection of men are putting their money where their upper lips are. They are growing some sweet staches to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer. A prostate exam, which takes a mere couple of minutes, is of those check ups that so many men put off for fear of their own discomfort. But if detected early, prostate cancer can have a highly curable rate. I repeat, IF IT IS CAUGHT EARLY. So while women endure invasive annual physicals year after year, let's encourage and support our men to make Movember the month they get screened.
This is a photo that I keep on our fridge. My dad (sitting next to me on the left) is rocking his 70's moustache. (Worth noting, he still balks at any current trends and sports the same moustache today). The Mo-sisters at work raised hundreds of dollars for prostate cancer to nominate specific co-workers to enter the contest. I can't wait to see how their lip foliage grows.

The Girl Effect

I can't watch the video above without tearing up. It's the image of all of these hands, grabbing at a little girl, removing all control from her life that does me in. Not only does the video remind me of how truly lucky I am to be born in Canada, but it puts a fire in me to make a difference.

Let's do something.

We all are holding these lottery tickets. We were born into countries where we are privileged to receive education. We have opportunities. We have choices. We have freedoms. We have rights.
We go about our daily lives, caught up in our own stories, but don't often think about the other side of the world.
Think of the 600 million girls living in developing countries right now. If they don't have education to back them up, chances are high that they'll be married off before they are 18.  Then there's the staggering statistic that medical complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death for girls between 15-19. 70% of the world's school dropouts are girls. But this cycle can be broken.  Research shows that when girls receive an education, they marry later, they stay healthy and HIV negative, they have fewer children and have them later in life, they earn wages, put money back into their family and their children have higher survival rates.....

Let's do something.


Click here to find out how you can easily donate to help break the cycle.

For more information, please check out this website: The Girl Effect

This is just one girl's story, but I think it speaks for millions......

the kindness of strangers

I have to come up with a great random act of kindness. This week, while I was in Portland on business, I was really blown away by the generosity of strangers. Let me set the scene for you. My conference started at 8. So naturally, I did something wrong to my alarm clock and woke up at 8. You know those kinds of days - when you have to basically hop out of bed at 60 mph. I thought, oh well, I guess I just missed the introductions - which aren't the worst things to sleep through. But of course as soon as I got into the conference, they said, oh, we forgot the introductions! Let's pass around the microphone so everyone can say who they are!
Awesome.
The day was full of energy biz presentations, some were great and some were so painfully boring that I seriously considered jabbing my pen into my throat to end it all. You know, save the world a few megawatts. After a busy day of listening, we all went to a social mixer at a local restaurant. It was pretty funny to see just how quickly the men jockeyed for position around a pretty young blonde from the conference. Suddenly a sea of waiters came out, singing happy birthday to her. They placed a crown on her head with balloons attached to it. You know, just in case you didn't see her before. But I digress.
After the mixer, where happily, the bourbon flowed like wine, my co-worker Patricia told me that she had never been downtown in Portland before and was hell-bent on seeing the city.  We caught the amazing Max Line  into town. On the train we chatted to a nice university worker named Connie. She pointed out places we were passing and gave us directions on how to get around the city. She even got off the train and walked with us for four blocks, pointing out where we needed to go. Amazing.
Patricia and I found a great little fondue spot for dinner. We gabbed for hours over wine and cheese about life.
When we were heading out, the waiter said, "there's a good chance our paths will never cross again in this life - have a wonderful life and try to leave the world a better place than how you found it." Love that.
We waited for our train, trying to ignore the fact that some young drunkards were busy fighting a rather innocent newspaper stand. We hopped on the first train that came into our sights, knowing that it connected up with our train further along. We just felt like it was in our best interest to get out of that area.
While on the train we met a nice lady named Terry. I think we started chatting to her because we were all in awe of the young 20ish year old man, drinking beer, and shouting loudly that he was a retired entrepreneur. Now I'm not saying he wasn't....but I'm pretty sure that young rich retired entrepreneurs these days are not hoisting Pilsner on the Max Line screaming about how rich they are. But I digress.
Terry asked where we were going, and we told her we were just going to transfer at Gateway for the Airport. She informed us that the airport train stops running after 10. It was going on 11. Da Da DUH!
She said that she was also getting off at Gateway and would call us a cab (ie Russian Mafia). But after being on hold on the phone forever, she told us that she would give us a lift to our hotel. She said she refused to leave us at the station, it was in a dodgy area. I tried to give her money for her efforts, but she refused. She said she did what any good person would do. She just wanted me to pay it forward one day.