My husband Fred has been travelling more frequently with work in the last few months so a lot of our communication is via email, text messages, Kakaotalk, and Facetime.
I used to hate texting but now with three kids grown up and all living a distance from us I am well used to it even if my fingers seem to so often hit the buttons beside the ones I mean to hit so that I say things like
"I live yoi" instead of
"I love you".
With our daughter Linda being in South Korea the rest of us were all introduced to Kakaotalk which is free messaging throughout the world provided you have wifi (Just like WhatsApp).
We message in groups of all of us and pairs of us and trios of us so we just decide who needs to be in the conversation and pick that group.
We can also send pictures and cute clipart things that Kakaotalk provide for us.
I love the sound of a message coming in - it actually goes "Kakao" in a little squeaky voice.
Then of course who couldn't like Facetime where I can prop the iPad up and sit and chat and make faces at the person at the other end of the call. It is nice to see their faces when they are far away and we don't meet up for months on end.
So of course when Fred is away I am thankful that we can Facetime to have a proper chat but sometimes our time zones are different or when one of us is free the other one isn't so the Kakaotalk using comes into force then.
Well, being the type of people we are in this family there is usually something "random" that occurs or something we find funny or strange or just something that's different to normal and we have to send a picture or when on Facetime we wander round the house or room to show the other person something, angling the iPad as best we can.
This is exactly what happened the other day.
Fred is in Morocco at the moment (yet again) but this time he was in a different hotel to his previous trips.
This is what he showed me on facetime
Yes His Pyjamas on another bed!
Well you might say
"What do you expect when he's travelling?"
My answer is
"Not him getting interested in some other woman setting his pyjamas out in a fancy way
on the bed!"
He told me this was the second time it had been done and probably would have been the third but the day before he had thrown his pyjamas in his case so they didn't appear neatly presented on the bed that night.
Well we had a nice laugh about it.
And I said
"You should have taken a picture"
So he did then and there with the iPad.
THEN
This is the picture he sent me yesterday when he had moved to another location so another different hotel.
His comment was
"It must be a Moroccan thing"
"Not quite as fancy as Marrakech, but still!!"
Now let's go back to my thoughts from the first time.
I have to be honest and tell you that the woman responsible for that nice act was not the focus of my thoughts then.
The thing I was honing in on was
"He'd better not expect me to be placing his pyjamas on our bed neatly and artistically
each day - or even once a week or once a year!"
We actually thought it was a lovely gesture that the cleaners would take the time to place the pyjamas not just folded on the bed but to arrange them neatly and with some thought put into it and in the first instance not only the pyjamas arranged so nicely but the covers on the bed presented differently too.
Obviously I am not as artistic or patient to take the time to do that.
But then later I thought about it again and
NO! I still did not think I was meant to start doing this for Fred
instead I considered this small act of kindness towards my husband and all the other people staying there on business trips
made by ladies who did not know them
ladies who were already busy
ladies working all day
but ladies who made people smile when they walked back into their rooms and saw that someone had just made that little bit of extra effort for them; and I was thankful for them.
So what kind of small things, that just take a little extra effort from us, can we do to make someone else feel more cared for?
Or what small things have others actually done for us that we can go around not noticing?
I encourage you today to think of some small things you can do each week just to take a little more care in something you normally do but that could just put a smile on someone's face or make them feel more appreciated.
I also encourage you today to notice these types of things when they are done for you and extend a smile and a word of thanks to show that you have appreciated the effort.