20. Real People Make Real Mistakes - It Happens

People make mistakes. It's called being human. How we respond to our own mistakes, and to the mistakes of others, can make a huge difference on the outcome. Sometimes we make our own mistakes when we respond to mistakes! Oh, and then we say sorry, again, and again!  Yup, the cycle of mistakes. Today I share some recent events that got me thinking about mistakes, my own, mistakes from others, and just a general reminder that sometimes a little forgiveness goes a long way.  In keeping with my podcast, a little update on the backyard chickens at the end of the episode.  Thanks for listening!   

Thanks for listening!  This is a hobby podcast, with a positive vibe. No legal or medical advice is provided in this podcast, it's recorded for entertainment purposes only.  No cooking advice either - some things are best left for the professionals.  Have a great day! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Welcome back to the podcast. Ah, it's always good to be here. And I always say, you know, when I start my podcast, oh, I'm so happy to be back in the podcast chair. And the fact is, yeah, I am happy when I'm here. It's my happy place. Okay, I say that about a lot of things. When I get on my bike and I ride by the ocean, when I'm down at the acting classes that I've been taking at night, and when I'm seated at the table across from my partner and it's the end of the day, and we're just enjoying a nice meal together and catching up on what's been happening in our day. When I go outside in the yard in the morning and I help my partner feed the chickens, that's also my happy place. So yeah, I guess I'm kind of a happy person, so that's a pretty good thing. And I always said with this podcast, you know, I really want to keep it as positive, lighthearted, refreshing. I don't want to be doing too much complaining about things going on in the world because there's lots of places that are doing that. I'm just trying to keep this to be a little bit more on the uplifting side. I'm not sure where I'm gonna get started here today. Uh I do have some notes in front of me, making notes as to things I want to talk about, but for the most part, this is speaking from the heart. And I find usually when I do a podcast, if I'm speaking from the heart, not totally scripted, seems to work out better. And I don't know, maybe life's like that. Maybe sometimes when things just happen with some spontaneity to it, sometimes it just works out a little bit better. I don't know. Anyway, I have been having a really good week, and I have to say my week started out really good. I had some errands to do, things I had to do around town, and I just found when I was out and about this week I was running into really polite people. Imagine that. It still happens. There are still polite people out there in this world, and oh my gosh, it's so refreshing when that happens. Uh it's just so nice when people are friendly, they have good manners, and it just makes interactions in a public place that much easier. Had a situation this week where I was in a store and a lady bumped into me with her cart. And it's just one of those things, you know, I'm standing there in the aisle, got my cart, and I'm doing my thing, getting my groceries, and all of a sudden I get this little bop in the side of me. But this lady apologized right away, and it didn't hurt me. Yeah, it was just an accident. Stuff happens, the aisles were full. You know, sometimes that happens in a store and you're trying to navigate a narrow aisle with a cart. Well, she didn't do it on purpose. I just smiled and I said, Hey, no worries, it's all good, you know, and she looked so relieved that I didn't make a big deal about it. Well, why would I? It was just an accident. It was a mistake. Several years ago I remember this time when I was in a parking lot and the parking spots were really small, and some of the parking lots around here are like that. I think good grief if you don't have a tiny car. And you drive a truck or SUV, some of them are really hard to get in and out of because they are so tight. And I was in a parking lot that had kind of tight spaces, and I had parked beside somebody with a small car. And uh when I was backing up, I accidentally clipped the back side of her fender. And I didn't really do much damage at all. It was just a small, small scrape, and I probably could have driven away, nobody would have noticed, but I noticed. See, it was the right thing to do was to actually say something and to go and let the owner know that I had done that. So I ended up going into a restaurant nearby at that time, and I remember going in the restaurant, and I kind of went to a couple of tables, said, Hey, do you own that car out there? Do you own that car? Do you know who owns that car? And one lady's like, Well, why are you asking me that? And I said, Oh, geez, when I was pulling out, I accidentally put a small scrape near her bumper, and I just want to let her know I did that. I just want to make sure she knows it was me. And at the time, this lady was really surprised by it. And she goes, My goodness, I wish more people were like that. You just don't get that in this world anymore. And I'm like, Yeah, no, there's still people like me out here. And I ended up leaving a note on the car that day. I put my phone number on the windshield and just said, Hey, there's a small scratch on the back near your bumper, and that was me. Here's my phone number. And later that day I received a call and it was an elderly lady who was on the phone. It was her car. And she saw my note and she said she would have never noticed a scratch if I hadn't said anything. Uh but to make a long story short, she was really grateful I called. It was a brand new car for her. And it was a dark color, so that scratch did show up. And I made arrangements at a local auto shop to have it repaired for her. And it it ended up that I ended up giving her a ride while her car was in the shop. And uh I also gave her a gift certificate for lunch out with a friend when it was done. She was kind of surprised by the gift certificate. And I told her, you know what, I recognize it. It take up your time to have to drive the car to the auto body shop, leave it there for a couple hours, and then to have to go back and pick it up again. And I felt really bad about causing her that inconvenience. And she was so nice. And I know that she genuinely appreciated that I did the right thing. I made sure it was looked after, and I did a little bit more. And you know, mistakes happen to everybody. Mistakes happen all the time. We all make them, and sometimes it's what we do after we've made the mistake that can really make a difference. I was listening to the news today, and they were talking about food items that had been mislabeled in some grocery stores. And, you know, apparently some of the places were including packaging in the weight. Okay, so yeah, like if you're paying for, I don't know, I'm just throwing this out there. If you're paying for 500 grams of food, well, you should get 500 grams of food. The packaging should not be included in that. You're not paying for the styrofoam pack, you're paying for the food. People automatically assume that it was intentional. And in the back of my mind, I'm wondering, well, I wonder if it's possible. Maybe there was a new staff member who didn't understand how to properly weigh and price the food. Maybe it was a mistake. And you know, that's me. I'm the kind of person I'm always trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. You know, maybe it was a mistake, maybe they didn't intend to do it. And then, you know, I kind of remind myself, okay, well, it really is up to a seller to make sure that everybody handling and pricing product is aware how to do it correctly. But you know, I can't comment on what happened at any particular place. First of all, I don't do that on this podcast. And second of all, I wasn't there and I was not involved, so I really can't comment on it. But it just got me thinking about this whole thing about mistakes. And sometimes real people make real mistakes. Cashback is something that's kind of weird for me now, okay? So uh we have this thing now here in Canada where uh you don't have pennies anymore. So it used to be if something was, you know,$1.97, you would give back um three pennies to make it two dollars, count your change out, that sort of thing. Well, we don't have that anymore because we don't use pennies. So we round up or down to the nearest five cents. And it's kind of weird because you're my age. I'm turning 60 this year. When you've been handling cash in different jobs your entire life, to suddenly change how you do that is weird. It's hard for me to get used to. And I I used to work in areas where I had to balance cash sheets. Of course, that was many years ago, little trip down memory lane here. But I remember working in areas where we'd have to do those cash sheets, and uh we'd always have to match everything right to the penny. If I was two cents out on one column compared to another column, I had to go back and find that two cents until everything equally matched. And I seem to be that way even when I do stuff at home. If I'm recording something in a spreadsheet because I'm tracking spending, if I'm a couple cents out, I gotta know where it is because I don't like those digits to be different. And I know that's kind of redundant now, but it's still kind of weird for me that we were rounding things up to the five cents. And I've been in stores before where people give me back too much money. Mistakes happen. I actually know a lady who eventually became a bank manager. This is many, many, many years ago, just somebody that I knew of. And she had actually given out way too much money in a bank that she worked in. And she was quite young at the time when she was working there, and they were forgiving of her mistake. It was an honest mistake, and she eventually went on to train, become a bank manager with that bank. And I think they got many, many years of that lady working in the bank, probably not making mistakes. She was young, she learned from her mistake, but they gave her another chance, and I think that's pretty cool. But I go back to this whole counting out change thing, you know, going back to if you're in a store and somebody's given you the wrong change. It happens. And I watch now, it's it's different in the stores. Like people punch stuff into the till or the cash register and it tells you how much change you have to give back. And uh, we didn't have that in my day. No, it didn't do that. We had to count it back. And I find now sometimes people don't count back the change when they give it to you. They'll pull it out of the till and then they just hand it to you, and here's your change. Well, there's been a few times when that's happened. I'm going, I don't think it's right. So I will actually take two seconds and count it back myself before I put it in my wallet. And I'll say, bear with me, it's not that I don't trust you. I just like to double check. And the odd time I have caught where something hasn't been right. And one time somebody gave me$10 too much. And I just handed it back and said, Hey, I think you gave me an extra$10. And it's easy enough for something like that to happen, right? And you know what? If you catch it and they've given you too much money and you give it back, well, A, it shows you're honest, and B, you might save their bacon too, because maybe they're gonna get in crap at the end of the day if their cash is out on their till. And I just think of it this way, you know, I mean, this is probably gonna sound kind of boring, but let's just say that you had a purchase worth$23 and uh I give you a$50 bill. So when you're counting it back, well,$23, okay, add$2, that makes$25. Add$5, that's$30, add$20, that's$50. So that's how we used to count it back when I was younger. Okay,$23 and 2 is$25,$5 is$30,$20 is$50. People don't do that anymore, but I'm still always gonna do that. And yeah, I just I think if it happens and you discover somebody shorted you on cash, don't always assume they're trying to pull a fast one on you. No, not necessarily. It could just be that that person is human and they made a simple mistake. And I do remember that time getting the ten dollars too much, and it was just a ten had stuck to the back of someone's twenty, and sometimes it does that. Yeah, honest mistakes. I was at a service station here, this was probably about a year ago, and I bought some product in the store, and then I went through in a couple auto tickets and traded in a couple auto tickets, and then I asked the guy for a receipt. Oh my gosh, like the guy got so snarky with me. He pointed to the security cameras on the wall and he's like, I got cameras everywhere. You think I cheat you, but I don't. He was so rude to me. And I just kind of looked after him and said, Hey, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just saying if I win that lotto, I want my receipt to show I paid for the ticket. And I just want my receipt. Oh my gosh, but the guy made such a big deal over me asking for a receipt. And it wasn't that I was accusing him of anything, I wasn't trying to find a mistake, I just wanted a receipt. I don't go to that service station anymore simply because that guy was so rude to me. And I also wondered sometimes, well, why did he get so defensive over that? Did somebody pick on him needlessly? Was he being bullied? I don't know what it was, but whatever it was, I didn't deserve his actions that day, so yeah, I just didn't go back. And sometimes mistakes are unintentional, just like that, you know, scenario of counting back too much cash. And if you go to a restaurant and maybe the server accidentally punches in large fries instead of small fries, hey, it could be an honest mistake. You never know how many orders that person's processed for fries that day, and maybe a slip of the finger could have triggered the wrong size on their little ordering pad. Yeah. In my day we hand wrote out the orders. Nowadays everybody's kind of pressing, you know, a little menu on a on a little notepad or iPad or something, and yeah, maybe they just hit the wrong button. It's not a big deal, but you get overcharged. I guess they should fix it, because you really didn't order something that size. If it was me, okay, now this is just me, and I'm the kind of person I don't even like to ask for a glass of water in a restaurant. I hate asking for stuff. So if it's a minor difference, I'm probably not gonna hold up the line in the drive-thru or fast food place. I'm not gonna make a big deal about it. I'm not gonna ask them to credit me that 30 cents. I'm probably just gonna let it slide because that's me. That's who I am. But if I go back to that place it happens again, I probably will bring it up. And if it keeps on happening after that, then I'm gonna start to wonder if there's some monkey business going on and it's no longer just a mistake. So yeah. I think you sometimes have to put it all in perspective, and from my own perspective, it's like if it's not a big deal and it's not really affecting me, sometimes I just let it slide. That's me. That's how I do things. Everybody's different. Mistakes happen in workplaces, and guess why it happens? Because there's humans working in there. And putting it bluntly, uh oh, this is gonna put me in the time out in the chicken coop. I'm gonna say it. Yes, shit happens. Of course, depending on what you do for a living, some mistakes are more crucial than others. A simple mistake, putting the wrong size fries in an order, isn't the same mistake as a mistake that could cost someone their life. So yeah, try to be a little bit forgiving and um try to be really understanding. That's what I always say. I try to be understanding of people uh in different roles, especially when they've got a huge amount of responsibility on their shoulders. Um, some people love to be the one to point out a mistake in the workplace. They just want to look like they're more competent. They can't wait to elevate the volume on their voice as they point out your error. Ah, I've been in places where people do that and it really sucks. Because yeah, we all make mistakes. I remember I was in a position when I was in my younger years where I had to audit the daily cash sheets in a business. Okay, this is my age showing because we all know that there's computers now and things that add everything up. Uh, but when I was younger, I had to go over these cash sheets where people were manually adding sales for the day. And uh, that's how I learned a really good lesson about how people take it to heart when they get corrected. And I remember back then I had a person in the office who was constantly making mistakes, and really it was almost daily. And I was told by my boss, if there are mistakes, mark the corrections down on the sheets and give them back to that person for correction. Well, after multiple corrections, a staff member making the mistakes blew up at me one day and said, You're just always criticizing me. Well, I wasn't trying to criticize, I was trying to get the cash sheets right because that's what I was hired to do, and that's what that person was hired to do. But I was super young at the time and I was lacking the skill set that I needed to deal with it. Forty years later, yeah, I would have handled it differently. Um, but I just did what I was hired to do, and that memory, that person getting really upset with me really stayed with me. And again, you know, that's really hardly an issue now because most computer programs and software will do it for you as long as the data is entered correctly. But yeah, mistakes are gonna happen where there are people, and how we respond to it, how we correct it with others, how we correct it for ourselves can make a big difference in um just how we resolve the whole issue of mistakes. Even at home. Okay, I'm gonna take cooking at home. All right. Oh, hell yeah, I've had some issues over time. There's things that I have done, and I'm not a bad cook, really. I'm not. I'm just not real super creative. I'm creative in other ways, but not in the kitchen. No, no, I'm kind of like a meat and potatoes pasta kind of cook. I love to bake, but cooking, nah. It's just it's a matter of eating healthy, and I'll cook whatever I cook and we're eating what we're eating. And if your spouse really tries to make homemade buns and they turn out like hockey pucks, you don't need to tell the whole neighborhood about it. How about just like, good for you for trying? Uh, I'm sure you can heat up a bowl of soup and dip the hockey puck buns in the liquids. Get over it. Um, for the record, I haven't had any hockey puck buns for a long time. I actually make really good buns. That's just one of those things. So I just think about if you have somebody in the house who's trying to do something, they mess it up. You don't need to tell the whole block about it. It's kind of like fixing things or building things. Some people are really handy with repairs, other people not so much. And I'm really lucky because I live with somebody who's really good at doing repairs and things because that's what he did for a living. And so yeah, I'm I'm lucky for that. But I know lots of people whose spouses just aren't real handy with tools. Even when they try, it just doesn't work out. If the person in your house is trying to cook something, bake something, fix something, build something, whatever it is, if they're messing it up, just yeah, try to be gracious about it. Mistakes happen and you don't need to tell the whole world because we still love those people that we live with and we want to build their self-esteem, not knock it down. There's mistakes and then there's intentional. Okay, so somebody litters on your property and they say, Oh, it was a mistake. Well, maybe it was a mistake, but did they allow it to continue? Okay, so let's take for an example you got a garbage can, you filled it up with a bunch of waste, and then you forgot to put the lid on it. You put it outside, it's out in the wind, it knocks over, blows all over your neighbor's yard. Well, maybe that was a mistake. But if you get out there and you help pick it up and clean it up, well, you've tried to rectify the mistake. But it's pretty hard to say it was a mistake if you keep putting your garbage out, no lid on the can, even when you know it's made a mess on your neighbor's side. See, the mistake could possibly be seen as a mistake if it happened just once and you didn't realize that garbage was going to blow around. But if you see your neighbors out there constantly picking up your garbage and they've asked you to stop doing it because it's causing work, hey, it's no longer a mistake. That's intentional. Okay. Anyway, I've uh often heard that Canadians say sorry a lot. I'm Canadian. I'm Canadian, eh? Yeah, I'm Canadian. I say sorry a lot, and I'm actually learning to say sorry less often. Oh, it's not that I don't screw up, but if you say it too much, yeah, it can actually irritate people around you to the point while you hear somebody say, Would you stop saying sorry? Okay, yeah, I've heard that a few times. And then if you reply, Oh, sorry about that, I'll stop saying sorry as often, that's definitely not gonna help. But yeah, seriously, sorry if you say sorry too much to the point where it doesn't even sound like you're serious about your sorry. It may not help when you really need to say sorry for a mistake. And going back to the lady in the store who bumped me with a cart, my goodness, I'm glad she said sorry. Yeah, she startled me, but it made a difference in my day when I knew it wasn't intentional, and she cared about her actions. She had really good manners, and smiles went both ways in that case. Over the years, I've seen people get flowers because someone's sending an apology. I got flowers in a workplace this one time, and it was a big bundle of apology flowers, yeah. When I was working in a law firm back in the Yukon, and when I was first hired, I think I was 19 years old when I got this job and I was working on the reception desk, and I had a man call up, and he was really mad because nobody was fixing his copier. Okay, so I'm the receptionist, I'm on the phone and trying to help him. And and you know, I understand that many people are unhappy. By the time they call a lawyer, sometimes they're really not in a good mood. But he kept going on and on and on about how often he'd called and nobody was returning his call. He's going on and on, like, I got a service contract, and the service contract's not being honored, and this isn't right, I'm supposed to have this service, and blah, blah, blah. And he wouldn't let me speak. And he kept going on and on about his service contract, nobody's calling him back. And finally, when I could get a word in, I said, Would you like me to put you through to one of our lawyers? Well, he yelled at me and he's like, I don't want a lawyer, I want my damn copier fixed. And I said, But sir, you've called a law firm. And he paused and he's like, Who did I call? And I've said, Uh, sir, you've called a law firm. Oh my gosh. He was so apologetic. He had made a mistake, he dialed the wrong number, he yelled at me. Now he realized he had made a mistake. And yeah, he had yelled at the wrong person. Later that day. A big bundle of flowers arrived from that guy. He felt so bad. There's a big sorry on it. And in a moment of anger he lost his ability to listen, and he had made that mistake by calling the wrong number. So yeah, the flowers made for a good chuckle in the office. After the fact. But sorry flowers, yeah, they can help mend a fence, sure. Sometimes the apology's genuine and the intent to not repeat an action is there. Yeah, then sorry flowers can be a good thing. Hmm, sorry flowers from a spousal argument only works if it's a genuine sorry. And no number of flowers is gonna make good on intentional or repeated poor behavior. Yeah. Anyway, I don't get flowers often, so I guess that means we get along good at home. Anyway, forgiveness goes a long way. Sometimes when we look at all angles, we find room for compassion and empathy. Whether the mistake was done by a parent, a sibling, spouse, coworker, any other person, sometimes a genuine sorry, followed by genuine actions, deserves a genuine second chance. I can't speak to every situation because not all actions are the same. I just know that when I'm more forgiving of genuine mistakes, it really lightens the load on my shoulders. Are you hard on yourself sometimes when you make a mistake? Going back to cooking, like if you cook something and screw it up, do you automatically decide, oh boy, I can't do this, I can't cook. I don't know, maybe you just need to try a different recipe or find something that's more suitable for your skill level. We can't all be perfect at everything we do. Are you trying to learn an instrument and you keep making mistakes? Of course you're gonna make mistakes. It's part of learning. You just keep practicing. If you can't overcome what you're trying to learn, well, maybe there's another way to learn. Maybe there's a more simple process. program. If the mistakes are taking the fun out of the hobby, it might be time to rethink what you're doing, or maybe your approach to it. When I first started taking acting classes this past year, I was so worried. I'd be the only one who would forget my lines. Yeah, and I've forgotten my lines a time or two, or three, or more. And it happens to all of us. Hey, not just me. I don't get an exclusive on that one. And now that I've become more forgiving of my own mistakes and I put less pressure on myself, I'm actually retaining my lines better. Funny how that goes. Well, life is a big learning experience. Mistakes happen. Most people are forgiving if you own up to an oopsie and you try to make it right. I mean yeah we're all human. So anyway, that's it, I don't know what got me on this whole thing about mistakes this week. Maybe it all started with that lady in the store who accidentally bumped me with a cart and said sorry and I smiled and said it's okay and everything was all fine. Everybody was happy. Just made me think about the fact that yeah, everybody's human. We all make mistakes. Oh and speaking of humans, um this human is gonna have to start winding things down here, but oh I guess I should touch base on one more little thing though before I end the podcast here. A little update on our chickens. Yeah. From time to time in the podcast I like to throw a little update on our backyard chickens. I know some people are following the story of them. And I've had a few people ask me lately how little Sinee is doing. Okay, so uh Sinee's doing great. Just to backtrack we've had these chickens for just over an over a year now. We were newbie chicken owners when they arrived and Chinee was a little Polish chicken and when she arrived she had a head that was totally bald like all her feathers were missing from the top of her head because other chickens have been pecking at her. And it got quite nasty actually this poor little chicken. She actually had blood spots on her head when they start pecking at her and she's the one who ended up with a little bumblefoot. Bumblefoot's like a little staff type infection that gets in their feet and it took us almost five months of persistently working with her to get that foot healed. Yeah multiple trips to a veterinarian we got meds for her soaked her foot bandaged her foot we just did so much work trying to help that little chicken get better. And yeah now she's great. She's got a full head of feathers yeah she's got this beautiful head of feathers and she no longer gets picked on and that was so huge for me. I don't want to see anyone or any critter or any creature any person get picked on. It's not cool. And that was a lot of work and dedication on our part and we did find out eventually which chicken was bullying her and we did some timeouts with that chicken when the behavior is happening and so far it seems to work. They're all getting along pretty good. And it's really cool because I have some critter cams and sometimes I go out and I pull the little cards. I have cards on them for recording it and I can see recordings of when they go out in the run in the morning. So what happens is the little door to their coop is on an automatic timer and it opens up in the morning and automatically closes at night. And quite often in the morning they're in their yard before we get there to put food out. They're not out for very long and I I brought in those little critter cam cards yesterday and I'm watching them I'm going wow it's so cool. They come out the door they're all hanging out together. The one that picked on the other one doesn't pick on that little one. They're all just hanging together and everybody's calm. And it's just so neat to see that. Yeah I don't know it's just really neat to see that because we've seen a change and then we've seen a transition we've seen how they're just so calm and so blended together. And chickens are chickens you're still always going to have a chicken that wants to prove they're in charge of the pecking order but for the most part they're getting along pretty good. Something that we learn about things that we're doing is that by having multiple options for them to feed at one time really makes a difference in how they get along. I know they are kind of spoiled chickens a little bit but we do go out there in the morning all the time with a special breakfast for them and so then they've got one bucket that's got one type of feed in it another bucket with another kind of feed in it and these are all like those little hanging chicken buckets. You can hang them up and they've got little feeder spots all around them. So they got a couple of those and then they have a couple of big uh plastic circles we put down on the ground with the dishes on top we don't want all the food getting into the ground and attracting critters so we have a way that we have it all set up and we go out there with an extra breakfast in the morning and oh they just love it. They get out there they're lapping it up and for the most part they're getting along and it's really neat because uh they've they've just started producing more eggs again and we're seeing the cycle of it now. So in the winter the egg production goes down now we're getting more eggs every day and oh I'm enjoying those farm eggs. My gosh they are so good. And it's really neat because the little Polish hens have become top producers lately. They have these little white eggs and that's really cool. One of them Natalie she has like a little pointed egg that's always pointed on the end. It's small but it's cute. And those eggs too they have really hard shells so when I'm cooking eggs in the pan in the morning I gotta hit them pretty hard on the side because they're good shells. They're hard shells. Chickens can be like kids too. So Randy had this big round barrel out in the pen area and he'd put some straw inside it was just to give them another place to sit. And we had a big huge dog kennel that we had put beside it as well too and the doors off of it and a place to go in and out of and yes I was mentioning it's been just over a year since we got these chickens and they didn't really have a big interest in going in and out of there. When he first put those things out there yeah they went in and out a few times and they just ignored it. Well here we are a year later and Natalie one of the little Polish hens decided she wanted to lay her egg in the barrel now. So one day I hear this big ruckus and it seems that Natalie has started a trend. Now Chinee's going in and out and digging in there. Then Leonard gets in there he's got to inspect it and he goes in looks around makes sure everything's good walks back out fluffs his feathers and now every day we keep finding an egg in the barrel with the straw in there. So Randy went and put a nesting box with straw in it in the kennel next to the barrel there's a little box in there with with straw now and now he's finding an egg in there also and all the others are still laying their eggs in their nesting boxes which are in the coop but it's kind of funny you know how chickens can be kind of like kids sometimes you have a kid with a toy and nobody wants to play the toy till one kid's playing with it now they all want to do it. Well that's what happened with the chickens nobody wanted in there and then all of a sudden one goes in there and kaboom they all want to go in there now. Funny how it goes. Anyway some small things bring me happiness we don't have a huge flock though you know and and it's just enough to keep us with eggs and provide little chicken therapy. And honestly they bring my partner so much happiness. He loves those birds and it really shows. And we've learned so much in the past year and it's really neat to see how they've grown and if you ever decide you want to get chickens for backyard pets there's a lot to learn and I think it's really important that you have a good connection with a good poultry vet. It is helpful. Especially if you need to get some guidance along the way you're still learning like us um we've really relied on the information we could get from other experienced chicken owners and from our veterinarian clinic. So yeah so much to learn and you just have to think about it right if you got a dog your chances are you're gonna have a vet. If you have a cat you're gonna have a vet. Well yeah chickens matter too and we're so grateful for the guidance that we've um had so far to date along this journey and we're still learning. Yeah I say those aren't cheap eggs. They come with a lot of love. Anyway uh I just want to share something else that happened in my week before I go and it really really really made my week. Okay so I received two voicemail messages this week um from people who'd been listening to my audio stories. One person said that my story Little Brown Coat had brought tears to his eyes. And that doesn't surprise me because I even cried when I wrote the story but it was just so neat for me to hear that that it had uh really touched someone someone else's heart. And another person said my story Tough Girl had really touched her heart. And when she first contacted me she just said I am speechless like wow this is such a good story. And they were just such complimentary messages. I mean I wrote the stories and I self-published the book in 2024 but I haven't even taken it to a store seriously and some people go silly why did you do all that and then just let it sit but it was a hobby for me. And after I wrote the book I recorded it as an audiobook and I was ready to submit it to online audiobook platforms and then I just didn't do it. I don't know it was probably a bit of imposter syndrome and a little bit of lack of confidence and doing it all on my own it was a hobby. But you know a couple of my friends had been so supportive when I first shared my book and it's been over a year and I just let it sit there. I'd put it out online but I didn't promote it. It wasn't on any big major platforms and to suddenly get these messages uh that my book was really really really touching the hearts of people who were were listening to the audio version just made my day. So I just want to say thank you for sending me those messages. It really meant a lot to me and I just can't describe how motivating it was to get those messages especially because they were not solicited. I hadn't asked for feedback they just felt compelled to reach out and let me know how much they were enjoying my stories. And and I'm not sharing this in my podcast to promote my book. I'm just sharing it to tell you how much it meant to me. It gave me confidence and yeah I think it's even actually got me going now I want to go in another direction and I'm definitely going to take it one step further but that's something I'm gonna share at a later date not today. I really do need to get going. But I guess on that note that kind of leads me into this if you do want to share feedback on this podcast there is a spot at the beginning of the show uh in the show notes it says share your comments and if the link is working in your podcast app it it will take you to a page where you can send me an email or a voicemail message. Now some of the podcast apps block the links and if that happens you can always visit my webpage at www dot greyrootsandchickenboots dot buzzsprout dot com and if you click on the episode you should find at the beginning of the description that's where you'll have that link that says share your comments and I really would love to hear from you. I'd love to know where are you listening from? Like whereabouts are you what brings you to the podcast um is there something that you enjoy about listening to the podcast I I would love to hear from you. It'd really make my day. Um all right I really better run now it's time to get moving and groovin' and I gotta go out my partner with Brecky for those chickens. We do take them that special breakfast every morning it's our routine and for this chicken mama yeah I take it serious. Anyway before I go here no matter where you are in the world I wish you happiness and peace. If you have a few moments to spare and can do an unexpected act of kindness for someone that would be just so awesome. The world is so much a better place when we're all kind and it doesn't need to be anything grand, just something small, you know something to make someone smile. Whether it's doing a chore for someone else in the house, you know something that someone else always does maybe helping a senior in your neighborhood with some spring yard tasks maybe inviting a single parent with kids to come for dinner. You know the list goes on. But there are so many actions that may seem small but they're really not small at all. They might make a big difference in someone else's world and yeah this world can always do with more acts of kindness we need it. Anyway have a great week everyone and before I head out just a quick reminder smiles come in all languages and in all colors. Take care everyone have a great week