People helping People

Can you help someone?

Can someone help you? 

This concept comes in all shapes, forms, and sizes, but in the final analysis it is just people helping people.  

We want to stay in our homes for as long as possible,  and maintaining them can be expensive.  Not everyone is able to just pick up a phone, and pay the money for a professional.  However, the person asking may have a skill that the professional needs doing.

I need help with Plumbing work in my condo, are you a licensed person who can do it for zero dollars?   Kitchen faucet needs replacing, old one leaks.

Now before you say, “my skills are worth $100. per hour, and that’s what I charge”, listen further to WHY someone would ask.  I don’t have that kind of income to afford your services, are you worth it, YES.  Maybe I have a skill you are looking for, and did not know where to go for help.  

Do you want to go out on a date night with your spouse? Leave at dinner time, and not come home till the next morning? How much would a babysitter be?  Would you trade 2 hours of your plumbing skills for that?

You want to go away for a few days, and want your home and or pets looked after, why not trade your skills for that skill?  

Are you working at a worksite, and need a helper for cleanup, or unskilled labor, or need someone to go and get the crew lunch, make a Starbuck or Tim Horton run?  I could help you out in trade.

Do you want to do volunteer work for a charity, but for one reason or another you have not been able to do it.  I would go and donate a days volunteer service for you.  People helping people comes in different ways.  

The next time you hear about someone needing help, don’t just think they want it for free, say you would like to do that but could you help me do this in exchange.

Going away on vacations is expensive, everyone needs a change of scenery, consider house and or pet sitting for a terrific place to stay, a win win situation for everyone. I do this, no hotel to pay, just normal living expenses that you would be paying at home anyways.   

Next time think outside the box on what you need, and what someone else may need.

You may be surprised at the results.

Hugs Always

Karen and Charlie

Is it QUIET somewhere?

Are you going 90 miles an hour, little to no sleep? Closing your eyes, and all you see are flashing lights?  Your brain going strong not ready to slow down, and let you sleep?  Trying to figure out what you did not get done today, or yesterday, and realizing that tomorrow there will be more because you are getting further and further behind?  Is someone or something pulling you in the wrong direction?  

Where do you find the following 

Zen Meditation Peace Quietness  

in this busy non stop world?

WOW that is a lot of questions,  have I got the absolute answers for you, NO, have I a few suggestions for you, YES!!!

When you are feeling overwhelmed, try Deep Breathing 5 times, then look at the situation again, your mind will probably will be in a calmer place.   Don’t be surprised if you try this at night, and it puts you to sleep right away.

If undone chores are your nemesis, make a list, and try to commit to do one a day, or one every 2 days.  Don’t write down a 100 things to do, put down the 5 most important ones.  When you accomplish something, it will calm you down, and you will think all things are possible.  Revisit your list again, and remember baby steps only, as you have to crawl before you can run.  

Don’t fret about things you can’t do, ask for help, someone in your social or family circle probably can help. If you do ask someone, and they promise to come and don’t, move on, don’t get frustrated.  Look at what needs to be done, is it important, save up and call a professional for help.   

A few months ago, I had to go out of town, a dear friend said I could use her corporate suite for 24 hours.  This way I did not have to drive home.  It was night time when I arrived uncertain of exactly where I was, the windows were covered, the place uncluttered, quiet, calm colors, and if I did not know I was in an large apartment complex, I would have thought that if I opened the patio door, or windows I was somewhere remote and without neighbors.  Just to be somewhere to sit, no interruptions, a place to think, feel, it was wonderful.  I slept soundly, without moving from where I lay my head.  In the morning refreshed, calm, and off to a brunch on the way home with friends.  No cost.

If you need to get away and have no money, see if you could housesit while friends are away, different location, different outlook, this can work wonders. Lucky me I get to do this in February, and it costs me only gas money.

Think about what is important, and what isn’t, only worry about what you can do something about.  

A wish of mine would be that when Yoga Studio’s are not holding classes, they are opened up to people to just come, sit, and be silent, an hour in a quiet place with no distractions can do wonders for people.  People coming to be quiet for 1 hour paying $10.00 each, it is a win win for everyone.  Just a thought.

Hugs always

Karen 

Book Review - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

(non fiction)

by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

My book reviews, won’t be like other ones you read, it is my opinion, my description, my review, and that’s that. Yes, there are the main characters, but the one you get to know the most is the one you don’t meet because she has died in a concentration camp, for following her heart during the occupation, and not the rules.  

A friend of mine Dee gave me this book, I thought it was about one thing, and it took me in a different direction quickly, and brought back thoughts I thought were long buried. 

It is about life on Guernsey Island during WW2.

During WW2, so many things had to be kept going, even if there is a war going on.  You can see evidence of that by watching the TV show Foyle’s War on PBS.   

Many people from 1940 to 1945 led a life we who were born after 1945 can only read about in books, and hear in stories from those who lived through it.  When I hear about someone going on a deployment for 6 months, and people are upset,  I know that in WW2 they were gone for 5 years, different times, both tragic that these happened, but I rather someone come home after 6 months, not 5 years, just my opinion.  

Guernsey Island is part of the British Channel Islands, and during the war they were occupied by the Germans.  

The people on there tried as much as possible to keep island life going. Some people tried to get off the island on the last boats to leave with the children who were being evacuated to the mainland.   

Some people took up new identities to improve their fate during the occupation, but for the majority they just wanted to survive the occupation.  If you broke the German rules there were consequences being shipped to St. Malo, France and on to a concentration camp in Germany, for workhouses, starvation, and death.

This book is done in letters starting in 1946,  between the writer Juliet Ashton, and her publisher Sidney Stark, then the divergence starts as increasingly more people decide to enter the fray in writing letters to these two.

They know a something, hoping for a book not just an article to be written about Guernsey Island during WW2, and what happened to the people, the good the bad, and ugly.  Some people thrown into difficult situations rise to the occasion and show strength they never knew they had, and others continue in the negative ways they always had looking out for themselves alone. 

Do the children who were not evacuated understand what is happening, are they scared, why do the rules change from minute to minute, they are not understanding why people are here at times, and then gone.  What are they thinking, did anyone ask them, people are in their lives one day, and could be gone the next with no explanation.

I grew up on Vancouver Island, I admit a larger island than Guernsey, but an island.  We had an air raid siren in our elementary school yard for drills,  the war was long since over.  My thought is where would you go not to be bombed if it happened,  I always thought I’d go to the hills of Duncan, yes an odd place, but my mind thought Victoria would be bombed, and the little places never, the mind of a child.  

This is a wonderful book about island life during WW2 and the occupation, what everyone had to do to survive.  A war some people thought would be over by “christmas” the 1st year, then it went on and on and on.  

I encourage you to read this, and reflect on that time, that we hope will never come again.

Questions to ask yourself

Keep in mind the time, what would you have done?  

Men went to war, gone 5 years, and came home to find their spouse had found someone else?  You come home from being gone to find you have a 3 year old child? Would you talk to the enemy?  Would you tell on your neighbors, pretend to be someone else?  What happened to the cats, and dogs will haunt me, will it haunt you?

Where the authors in Guernsey during the war?? 

Hugs Always

Karen