Still on my PT-exercises-every-day streak. I did extra today because the patient after me canceled, so my therapist had a lot of time to spend with me. That meant I got an extra-long pain-massage, where she finds all the weird little muscles that are all tensed up from walking funny on my post-op foot, and hurts them until they cry uncle. :-P (Me crying uncle doesn't count. The first session, she told me to let her know if the pain was too much to bear, and when I finally said it was, she said "OK! I'm going to do that three more times.")
My one-week daily-charity mini-challenge continues successfully. On day three I donated some Spanish-language and Spanish/English bilingual children's books to a local organization that helps mothers in poverty from pregnancy until the kid is old enough for kindergarten. 25% of people in this city speak Spanish as their first language, and I am guessing Spanish-language books are harder to find/less-often donated. They had a wishlist of books they would love to get, so I picked some of those. (Still trying hard to get what is needed most according to experts and not what I think people ought to need in some kind of fantasy-land where giving a kid a cute teddy bear makes everything OK.) On day four (today) I donated some tuna-fish-and-crackers meal kits, a huge box of granola bars, and a big box of band-aids to a local organization that drives a bus around to hand out food, toiletries, etc. to homeless people. All of those things were on their list of recommended items to donate, and I tried to choose the most practical-yet-nutritious-yet-enjoyable food items for a homeless person to take with them.
I did really disappoint myself this week, though. An acquaintance of mine has been going through some terrible times - her husband was in a very serious car accident while they were out of town about 800 miles from home. He has been in ICU/hospital for weeks and may not ever be able to work again. In the meantime she had to take unpaid leave from work to stay with him and neither of them is getting a paycheck. She had to finally go home and leave him there because they were running out of money and she needed to go back to her job and he is not well enough to travel :-( Heartbreaking. So she posted a gofundme this week, and I thought: I'll donate next week. This week is my "stuff, not money" donations mini-challenge. This can be my generosity-thing next week!
Maybe 12 hours later I saw it come up on Facebook again and I said to myself, yup, next week for sure, I'll donate. And I was trying to decide how much to send and all that. And then it hit me. I am using a fucking generosity/charity challenge to justify DELAYING A CHARITABLE DONATION when someone I care about is in dire need. I'm just going to let this money sit in my checking account, to fit in with my stupid arbitrary rules. What the actual fuck is wrong with me? Seriously!? Ugh. This isn't a game! Anyway, I donated to that, and it doesn't count toward any kind of challenge, because this sort of thing is why I need to do this challenge in the first place. And I still feel like an asshole.