The Generosity of People

The generosity of people inspires and amazes me.

This holiday season I organized a gift drive for the homeless teens at the StandUp for Kids center in San Diego. I wanted to actually DO something out in the world instead of just talking about it, so I contacted the director of the San Diego StandUp for Kids center and arranged for her to get a needs/wants list from all the kids that were expecting to be around the center on Christmas. My goal was to make sure that each and every kid on that list (23 of them) had gifts to open on Christmas Day.

Once I had that list from her, I sent an e-mail out to almost everyone that I know, requesting their participation in my holiday project. I offered many ways to participate, from spreading the word to making a holiday card to donating money to buying a gift for a homeless teen to buying all the gifts for one specific homeless teen to buying gifts for the center. I also created a Facebook event and invited most of my Facebook friends, and we sent an e-mail out at Donovan's work, too.

I had my qualms about sending the e-mail out to some people on my list, either because they are Jewish and my letter talked about Christmas gifts for the kids, or because I didn't want them to feel obligated to spend money when they don't really have much to spare. I've struggled with this same thing in the past when doing fundraising, and I've always been surprised by who my largest supporters were.

At first the responses were slow to trickle in, and I had my doubts about whether we'd be able to fill all the requests on the wishlists, but Donovan encouraged me to have faith that it would all work out. More and more people started to respond, some sending in checks so that we could do the shopping for them, and some buying gifts themselves. My parents, supportive as always, made a very generous donation that allowed me to buy many things off the center's wishlist.

By this point I started to see things all coming together, with the enormous generosity of the people in my community. Then the wife of one of Donovan's work friends volunteered to post our project on her Facebook page and within an hour of her doing so, four of her friends contacted me and wanted to donate gifts. One woman involved her mother and mother-in-law, and another involved one of her friends from work. They more than filled up the back of my car with all the gifts they bought for homeless teens, and I was completely awed and inspired by the generosity of these total strangers!!

We delivered the gifts to the StandUp for Kids center in San Diego on Christmas Eve, and the kids were thrilled. Some of them even put on some of their new clothes and shoes immediately! Thanks to all the people that participated in this project, these homeless teens got to experience the generosity of strangers firsthand, an experience that will hopefully impact them in positive ways that we may never know.

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Benedict Ankle

My right ankle has turned on me, quite literally.

Yesterday during my tennis lesson, as we did the same drill we've done twice a week now for I don't know how many weeks, my right ankle bent under me and I felt something snap. Down I went, onto my ass, in an extreme amount of pain. Doug, my amazing tennis instructor, watched in horror as we replayed an eerily similar event from three years ago when my left ankle did the same thing. Last time, I got up and kept playing. Three years older and perhaps a little bit wiser, I decided that staying on my ass was a good idea, and I sat there while Doug went and got me some ice.

my swollen ankle (and pretty Christmas toes!)

I put on a brave face for Doug, since I could tell that he was feeling really guilty for my injury (which was totally not his fault!). We talked and laughed while I iced the ankle, and then I hobbled to the car using my tennis racquet as a cane. On the way home I called Donovan, and that's when the tears came. Mostly, I was just really pissed off at my body for betraying me this way, again. I work so hard to keep myself in good fitness, and my body is usually so willing to do just about anything I ask it to. The idea of not being able to walk, let alone play tennis, made me very very sad and angry.

We decided to go to urgent care to rule out any kind of break. It took a few hours, some x-rays and some time in a wheel chair (which Donovan got a huge kick out of) before we found out that I had a "second-degree sprain," meaning that I had torn many of the ligaments in my ankle, but not all of them. They put a removable splint on me, prescribed ice, elevation, Advil as necessary and staying off my foot as much as possible. They also gave me crutches, which I am thus far not particularly fond of.

in the waiting room at urgent care

So far my preferred method of transporting myself to and from the bathroom, bed or couch is crawling. It's just easier than using the crutches, plus we have stairs. I'm realizing what a good thing it is that I'm as strong as I am as I do one-legged squats and pull up my entire body weight with my upper body. I'm not sure how long the whole "staying off it as much as possible" thing is going to last. I'm really not good at just sitting still and not being able to do anything!!

And God bless my amazing, patient, loving husband. Not only is he taking awesome care of me by making sure that I ice my ankle and have everything I need at all times, but he's also taking on wrapping all the presents for the homeless kids that we're going to be delivering tomorrow. And it's no small job!! He also gets to chauffeur me around and he'll get to do all the loading and unloading of the van when we go to StandUp for Kids tomorrow. The man is a saint!!!

All told, I'm not a huge fan of this injury, and I'm doing my best to take good care of it so that I can heal all the way and get back on my feet and back on the tennis court! Hopefully we'll still have a great holiday vacation, bum ankle and all!

The Host

We recently went to the movies, and one of the previews we saw was for "The Host". I knew that Stephenie Meyer (she of Twilight fame) had another book, but I hadn't really had any interest in reading it. The movie preview brought the book back into my consciousness, and after my mom told me she got the audio book this week, I decided to give reading it a try.

I started it on the plane home on Wednesday night, and right away I wondered how they were going to make a movie out of it when the whole book was told from inside the head of the alien who takes over a human body. That aside, it was initially pretty readable and made the flight go by quickly. With only an hour of flight, I didn't make it that far into the book that night.

Last night Donovan had a dealing gig with Casino Magic, and he left the house about 5:15pm and wasn't going to be back till around midnight. I sat down with the book (on my new Kindle Paperwhite!) and read for about four hours straight. This morning I couldn't wait to pick up where I left off and I read for most of the day until I finished the book just a little while ago.

Just like with the Twilight books (say what you will about them), I got completely and totally sucked into this universe that Stephenie Meyer created and the lives of the characters who inhabit it. I lost count of how many times I teared up and cried, and I know that I laughed out loud at least once.

It's interesting to me how wrapped up I get in certain books. The Twilight books were that way for me, as were the Fifty Shades books (yes, I'm admitting this publicly), the Hunger Games books, and many more that I can't think of at the moment. I finish these books and I just want to go back and read them again so that I can stay in their world. They may not be literary masterpieces, but they keep my butt glued to my chair, my eyes on my Kindle, and they transport me to their magical worlds to the point that I have a hard time coming back to reality. That, to me, is the sign of a good book.


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