December 1

So the kids woke up to their first Advent surprise: stickers. Soon after remembering it was December 1, Jake realized it was the day General Snowball usually arrives so at 6:45 we had a fast hunt through the house for the General. He was perched on the mantle, in between the Christmas carollers, grinning his creepy grin.

Regarding my random acts of kindness ... A couple of thoughts. It is slightly hard to be random and kind when, like me, you don't interact with people. Today made me aware of how few people I actually talk to in a day, outside of my family. Second thought ... I debated whether to keep track of my random acts here. I'm not doing it for an audience, but an audience just might keep my honest.

So here goes ... Today I gave two bags of gently used girls' clothes to one of the teachers at Abby's school. I have to admit, this is not a random act in that I put the bags together earlier in the week; I only had to deliver them. But all was not lost. Later in the day, when I picked Abby up from school, the parking lot was unusually crowded, so much so that I had to park at a meter on the street. I noticed the car in front of me had an expired meter, so random act of kindness ... I added 50 cents to the meter. It wasn't much, but it would've got them past 6 p.m. and maybe out of a ticket.

All in all, a successful day one.