Everyday I get an email from Daily Candy which is a site geared for larger cities (Boston NYC, Seattle, San Francisco...etc) which features new restaurants to try, sales to visit for updating your closet, weekend things to do. Mostly fun girly fluff.

Today however I got an email with several links to charity organizations that are doing their part to better the world. I loved it because it puts this thought of spending your dollars wisely in front of my eyes - which of course is the best way to promote your message.

One site they featured was GoodShop by GoodSearch. The idea behind it is an easy 1-2-3 process. It allows you to search for your charity or school. If it shows up you can then shop through more than 500 stores and then 30% of your purchase will go to your cause.

So if you're already doing some online retail therapy, why not make it work for you *and* for someone else!

I hope you are enjoying post-Memorial day holiday. It's always a hard time for me to loop back into the swing of things at work.

This Memorial Day weekend, a good friend of mine came to visit from college. She's going through some relationship woes and I think it helped to get out of town, see friends, talk through some of the "drama" and just be comforted with a new place.

Kindness to me doesn't necessarily mean items/things/material goods but can mean just lending an ear, a shoulder, a warm body. Physically grounding yourself and being there fro someone. I am notoriously bad at calling friends back on the phone - I'm not exactly where this against-my-phone attitude has crept in. But if you truly need me and need to talk, I'm there.

I do believe friendship to be a gem of kindness and the idea of acting friendly just adds itself to act kindly.

Last Friday Lilah lost her "Sheepy" at the zoo.  Sheepy was primarily her sleep buddy, but he got to go outside with her once in a while too.  She adore(d) Sheepy!  If you dig out a magnifying glass, you can see from the photo, Sheepy, who started out adorable and ivory-colored, became grey and matted and hard to even identify as a sheep.  People would say to Lilah as she was holding Sheepy tightly by the neck, "You really love that_____, that____" and they'd wait for me to pipe in "sheep.  It's a sheep."

Anyway, all of this reminds me of two kindness-thoughts.

1) When I got the news that Sheepy was lost, I said to the care-giver "Shoot, well that's a bummer.   But don't feel bad, any one of us could have been with Lilah when she dropped or misplaced Sheepy.  She'll get over it."  Meanwhile, my husband was in his home-office in the room next to my home-office.  He must have heard the whole conversation because the next thing I knew he was asking me "should I order one or two?"  Carter was already in the process of replacing Sheepy.  I thought that was really thoughtful & it didn't even cross my mind to get Lilah a new Sheepy.

Honestly, it never occurred to me that Sheepy was replaceable.  I was of the mind-set that you couldn't replace the well-loved-worn feel of Sheepy or Sheepy's smell (yes sorry to say the little guy smelled, too).  But maybe a new Sheepy will help; we'll know in a few days when new Sheepy arrives.

2) The second kindness-thought is that Sheepy is like older folks in our society.  He didn't look spiffy and new.  In fact, he looked kind of battered.  Whoever finds him at the zoo may think "Yuck, no one will miss this ratty old toy."  When in fact, that toy is very very missed, and he's not ratty, he's loved.  It makes me very aware of how we view older people.  Are we an anti-wrinkle society?  I love the book Tuesdays With Morrie because it reminds me of the gifts that older people have to share with the rest of society, and it reminds me how human it is to age.  Philosophically, I wonder if an older woman would want to be complimented on her beautiful wrinkles, just like Sheepy could be complimented on his matted fleece. 

You're looking at the winner of the Doodle 4 Google contest. You can go and look at the regional winners and be inspired by how artistic kids are. Way more artistic than I am!

I love the winner's description almost as much as I love her doodle. Wouldn't it be nice to treat and be treated as family? I think that's the overall mission of Mission Kindness. kindness is taking over the world!

I have to be honest. I didn't start out ordering flowers out of joy and love. It first came out of frustration and annoyance. See I placed an order for a family friend's birthday. On the day they were to be delivered I got an email saying they were going to be delayed. Argh!

Birthday gifts are often best given on the birthday or that's how I wanted to the flowers to be sent. This particular family friend has had an especially difficult year and I thought flowers would do a great deal of cheering. In my back and forth with the online florist's customer service, they offered a replacement bouquet.

I mentally ran down my list of friends and family to figure out who would be the best receiver of flowers. Really everyone would be but I had to pick one. Normally I'd say mom but we had just celebrated mother's day.

And then it came to me. Like a glittery silver lining - Emma! I'll send flowers to Emma! If you know Emma personally, you'll know how amazing she is. And Emma has been so good to me over the years and is essentially my girl-crush and inspiration and someone I look up to.

She's totally right - thoughtfulness touches people. Anyway that you show it for others, you touch them even if they don't acknowledge it.

So flowers of course were deserving.