Monday Marvels

Well, there were no marvels happening today, but I love that title. So what's the latest? Today was a fairly quiet day. I set up another donation to a Boston homeless shelter for Wednesday- we have donated to this family shelter a few times before. I submitted a revision of the web updates that I sent in last week- our web host did most of the updates that I needed, but asked me to clarify some of the other updates that I wanted.

We got a big donation of stuffed animals in today, so I had to spend some time sorting through them. It is amazing how many people have been donating stuffed animals lately- it is a lot more than usual. There have been a lot of nice items donated- two big boxes of books came in lately. Unfortunately, we also get a ton of stuffed animals donated that need to get thrown away. We only can distribute stuffed animals that are either new or like-new condition, but a lot of the time people donate old stuffed animals and/or ones that are dirty, etc. The guidelines are really clearly on our website, so I'm not sure why people donate items that we need to throw away. I think that maybe they get attached to the stuffed animals and don't see them for what they are. It gets a little frustrating because it is time consuming to sort the donations and then to have so many stuffed animals to get rid of is hard- we are limited in the amount of garbage we can put out every week.

I do have sad news to report. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember the story of Maureen, the mom from Medfield who contacted me a couple of years ago about donating stuffed animals. Her daughter had organized a collection of stuffed animals, but sadly died from cystic fibrosis before she could make the donation. Her mom contacted us to complete her daughter's mission. It turns out that all three of Maureen's children suffered from cystic fibrosis and two had passed away. Maureen was one of the kindest women that I had met- to talk with her, you would have no idea she had dealt with the tragedy of losing two of her children. Her oldest son received a lung transplant and seemed to be doing well. He had been sick lately and sadly he died on Thursday. My heart goes out to Maureen and her family- that is a loss of unimaginable magnitude. I can't even begin to imagine. I cried when I heard the news. It seems that lately there has been so much loss happening- I know there always is, but things seem different. It is a reminder to spend time with our loved ones and enjoy the moments that we have- it is all so fleeting.

Well friends, that's all for tonight. I'm off to eat the other half of my grapefruit and watch one of my favorite shows which is waiting for me on the DVR- The Closer. I also need to write my list for tomorrow. I need to work on my 2012 plan and get more calendars sold- those are two of the top items on my list. Until tomorrow friends...