so i posted about the protest action we were involved in with regards to the outdoors sharing of food with homeless people on my ‘the simple weigh’ blog but i know a lot of people susbscribe to this one so thort i would stick the links here as well.
click here for part I dealing with what i was pertaining to.
it is 29 minutes til my birthday…
well, for me anyways, my south african family and friends have been celebrating it for hours already, as have the few contacts i know in Australia and different friends across Europe… have not heard from so many UK friends yet, but they’ll be waking up soon and joining in… and then when i sleep and wake up, americaland will have caught on and i will finally be able to celebrate along with everyone else.
my wife, tbV, is busy flying towards south africa to celebrate the coming wedding of her sister Shana to Carl and it would be so nice to have her closer here with me, cos an empty bed beckons, which is less fun, but we did get to celebrate while she was here and it was good and apart from that i think i pretty much have everything i need.
what do you give to the guy who has everything? cos i really do. well pretty much… i mean i could enjoy trips to hawaii and a skiing trip for my wife and a free-to-use close proximity jacuzzi and a never-ending supply of bacon and an iphone and an ipad and a kindle and a spindle… or something… and 101 other things… you can always have more stuff, but i really don’t feel like i need or particularly want anything. i am truly loved by God and i know Who i am in Him and that is more than enough. i have passion and vision and life and energy and hunger-for-lifefullnessity and much, much more.
so what is the answer then? what do you give to the guy who has everything? you give him love. and hugs if you happen to be close. and it is pouring in already via facebook even before my birthday officially begins and i’m sure through other networks and means as the day progresses.
so much love, so many incredible people in my life, so much strong friendship, so many passionate, hungry-for-real-rich-fulfilling life people, so so much.
how could i possible want anything else? i already have everything.
so my irresistibly fish blog has been a little bit quiet since we left south africa because i have not had a lot of inet time and when i have i have been blogging my experiences on my new thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com blog so if you are wanting to follow our adventures at the simple way community i suggest you subscribe to that blog where most of my writing will likely happen while we’re over here…
if you have not been following then here are three of the blogs i’ve written to help you get some idea of what we’re up to – absolutely loving it but it is a completely different experience to anything i’ve ever done before and so still getting used to it and settling in here…
http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/the-way-of-the-simple-way
http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/day-1-pretty-in-tents-carpet-burns-and-street-buzz
http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/being-part-of-the-blind-side
i have started a separate blog for posting ‘the simple way’ adventure related stuff so that people who are wanting to follow our journeys and have an idea of what’s going on can simply sign up there and read whatever i get to write about things that are part of our philly trip – if that’s you, you may want to bookmark this link where i have written a basic idea of what it’s all about for those of you who don’t know but more will be written as we arrive there and start to live on the other side… http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com
in the bigger scheme of things today was a bit of a crappy day – i mean i am generally quite an easy-going guy and it takes quite a lot to piss me off or really ruin a day and as i sit here typing just before i go to bed, it’s not like i feel this huge ‘burden of the day’ or anything – i still feel like it was a great day with a lot of good happening, but there were a couple of crappy things that happened along the way that made it harder i guess…
the one was finding out that after working really hard for the last month, thru a lot of weekends and public holidays and giving up a bunch of better stuff we could really have been doing, the money we were promised for the work failed to be delivered – why? someone forgot to send in a form – sorry, but we can only pay you at the end of this month now [that with rent already a few days overdue which incurred a fine because we were assuming it was the mass of public holidays delaying the money] and i won’t say much more on this [hopefully] because there were different ways this could have happened and still been kindof okay but it was just really not that cool [fortunately we have friends and family who we could call upon and so we have the equivalent of that money available to us until it [hopefully] comes in at the end of the month and we can give it back so we are completely sorted on the money side of things…
so that, plus i’ve been semi-sick the last day or so and trying to beat that and the R12 live below the line challenge and just a bunch of stuff related to us being able to head to americaland being all up in the air still contributes to what could have been a bit of a less-than-exciting day…
i wanted to cheer up tbVal so i took her to see Thor which she’d been wanting to see [go figure, i'm the superhero movie guy and she's the one wanting Thor] and it was Tuesday so half price cheap tickets at the E mall near us and we went to watch it and it was a popcorn entertaining movie [but without the popcorn this week of course] and just a lot of silly fun.
at the end of the movie i wanted to stay and watch the credits to check out some of the actors names but i also wanted to stay til the end of the credits cos often movies, and especially Marvel Superhero movies, have an extra little snippet on the end [like the end of Iron Man when he meets with Nick Fury or the end of Hulk when Tony Stark makes an appearance or the end of Iron Man II when you see the appearance of Mjolnir, Thor's hammer] to tease introduce the next one [i normally know about these things before but i had no clue if there was or not]
so we waited and watched credits and the lights came on and the cleaners came in and started cleaning and we watched credits and the cleaners cleaned some more and we went and stood at the back of the theatre so that they could clean where we were and watched credits and flip-the-credits-go-on-forever and then the one cleaner guy [middle-aged rasta looking guy, very not cleaner-of-cinema-looking-guy] whispered something to Val and ran off down the tunnel and turned the lights off. She leans across to me and tells me he said “there’s a bit at the end” so we think that’s pretty cool and the credits go on some more and his friend who is cleaning with him tells him to turn the lights on and the credits go on and then they end and a line comes up “That was a marvel superhero movie” or something like that and i turn to Val and say, “Flip, i hope that wasn’t the extra bit at the end” and she agrees… and then a second later there is a whole extra scene which leads straight towards the Avengers movie which is next up [well after Captain America]…
it was such a simple act and yet so profound and it touched me and Val a lot. and i really wish, thinking back now, that i had asked him his name so i could thank him properly. on a day where we got bummed cos the people that were supposed to do something didn’t – and didn’t largely seem to care all that much – the person who could have kicked us out and had no reason to do anything – went above and beyond and lifted our spirits and gave us such a shiny little gem of a gift.
and so it ends a great day. with me left hoping that i have that attitude towards and for other people in the smallest of things. random acts of kindness seldom are.
my wife, whom i love, both because i can and because she is well worth it has written another blog in her series on how to love your man better and if you click this piece of writing here it will mystically transport you there so you might be reading of it…
i made my beautiful wife val a cup of coffee in bed this morning as i do most mornings… she thanked me for it and i said it was a pleasure, and completely meant it… in fact as i was walking down the stairs i was thinking that it is a pleasure every single time… and how that should be normal – i really dig making my wife coffee or tea or a glass of ice cold water – but i would imagine it is not…
i imagine in some marriages the coffee and tea making still happens but with a hint of a sense of obligation and in other cases probably doesn’t happen at all (“get your own damn tea!”) and as simple and random and arbitrary as a cup of tea or coffee is in the big scheme of things, i would imagine that can be a telling sign.
cos i really believe it starts in the ‘small’ things – the simple tasks done in service of each other, the quick looks, glances, the opening of car doors and carrying of stuff, the offering of the bigger piece of dessert…
you want to love your wife better? make her a drink. and enjoy it. and enjoy her. every day every day.
part two in my beautiful wife Valerie’s series on how to love your man better…
http://valanderson.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/how-to-love-your-man-better-respond-to-his-character
there are lots and lots of reasons but i’ve decided every now and then to celebrate by highlighting one of them…
so today my beautiful wife [aka valerie slash tbV] decided she needed to go thru cupboards and stuff and get rid of crap.
my response, “yes, let’s get rid of crap, yay.”
her response was “hey, can we offer this stuff to Churien, the lady who comes and helps us clean our house once a fortnightday, who might have a use for a bunch of it?”
and Churien took most of the stuff, and i know that if she doesn’t use it she will pass it on to someone who will…
small thing in one sense, but where i saw getting rid of stuff we didn’t need or use [a lot of it easn't really crap - some duvets and sleeping bag and clothes and kitchen stuff that we just don't use or we have too much of] she saw an opportunity to meet a need in someone else’s life…
and she is like that a lot – she looks into situations and at people with tremendous vision… i hope i am learning this from her…
thank you lady, i love you…
so recently i ran a series of repeat blog posts about how to love your woman better and someone made a request for how to do the loving of your man better and so the beautiful val has taken the challenge and here is the first one – please check it out and respond…
http://valanderson.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/how-to-love-your-man-better-just-love-him
