The meeting of similar souls

    I remember it like it was yesterday. Myspace was my blogging home. It really started before MySpace, but no one really seemed to like my opinions on things and I would randomly get banned ..accounts banned, IP address bans.

*Stomping my foot*

It was not fair that I could not say what I thought without being *SHUTUP*

Then I found MySpace blogs. In no time I realized that this was my own little humble blog and no one could shut me up. I went rather crazy with this. I created a pen name "WearBitch". In no time I had numerous followers and started gaining friends in the writing world. It was never boring with me. I made people laugh, I made them cry, I made them "HOT."

My writing was not limited and/or censored and I loved it.

Then there was the ever present MySpace drama. Finally one day, I noticed an ad on the side of the page. A writers website. Just for writers, perfect. I went to the site, signed up and bam, I was in.

On the main page of the site was a chat room. I sat there waiting...waiting...then someone named Rain popped in and back out. I waited...I waited..a few names popped in and back out. No one noticed me. *?*

Finally I typed in hi. I waited....... "Rain" appeared again...He said hi back! HELLO! I was excited..Someone was REALLY there. I can tell you something..when you don't see a person, you cannot judge them by their looks, their life, etc. We were mutual interested individuals. We were both there for the same reason. To write and advance ourselves. So there was no pretense in this like most chats and reasons for being in them.

Soon, Ralph popped in. We chatted..Then Doc...then Moon....Mari....Shay...the list was endless. There were so many that I am almost afraid to name them all because I may miss one. What was once a dead chat room was alive with writers. We became friends and it was amazing.

Finally I met the creator of the site. We all looked at him like he was the boss. We were not censored in our chats and we chatted about life, writing, it was endless. We were friends.

One evening I rushed online to my favorite home away from home and my chat box was gone. I froze. My heart pummeled. What the hell happened?

Finally I found it..buried deep into the site..a small tab.."Chat room"

I get to my chat room and there everyone was..laughing and carrying on. They greeted me and David, the site owner explained that because of me, they had to move the chat to a more descreet location on the site. I was to crazy to be on the front page. :O

I earned the nickname Tink from my friends there. All to soon a group of us broke away and built another website that opened up a larger audience for all kinds of creative arts. It was our own home and it was huge.
Over time though life caught up with each one of us in some way or another and One of our main creators, Ralph, passed.

Sadly I know I could never run a website of that magnitude right not, but I needed a home, a place where as I could get that part of me back.

Life Vest Ambassador

Hello there potential Kindness Ambassador!

Thank you so much for your tremendous support of Life Vest Inside and our mission to EMPOWER the world with KINDNESS! If you’re here, it means you want to learn more about our Kindness Ambassador program!

We have some huge plans to share with you! During the month of June/July, Life Vest Inside will launch our first ever crowdfunding campaign to bring Life Vest Inside to PHASE 2 and Take Kindness GLOBAL!

Don’t know about Life Vest Inside?

Life Vest Inside is an AMAZING non-profit organization dedicated to spreading kindness, empowering people and building self-esteem and self-value. Our motto is simple: help people recognize the AMAZING potential they have to effect real and positive change in the world through simple yet powerful acts of kindness! You may be familiar with our viral video, Kindness Boomerang! Bottom line, we are committed to changing the world in a big way.

We are reaching out to our fans to come on board as a Kindness Ambassador and help us promote the campaign like crazy! And I would LOVE for YOU to join us!

What does it entail?

For now, all you have to do is complete this quick form so we have your contact info when we launch the campaign.

Before the campaign begins you will receive a document that has a premade post for each day of the 30 day campaign period.

All you need to do, is copy and paste the post and send it to your Facebook page! That’s it! Some of the other tasks may include posting, tweeting, uploading a pic - but you will only have ONE task a day that shouldn’t take you longer than 1-2 minutes to do.

Something so simple, but with your help, we can reach the goal of raising the funds we need to advance the cause of kindness! If people can join together to war against others, why not show the world that we can just easily and more POWERFULLY join together to UNITE, EMPOWER, and CREATE a KINDER WORLD!

If you can reach out to friends in your network and share with them what we’re doing, that would be amazing!!! We already have 400 Kindness Ambassadors - let’s get it to 500!

Thank you for your willingness to be a part of what it turning into a KINDNESS REVOLUTION! This is history in the making PEOPLE, who’s up for the journey!?

So to recap:

1. Complete the form

2. Refer some friends (there are prizes for those who do)

3. 'Like' Life Vest Inside on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Subscribe to their YouTube Channel

4. Chill out and wait for the word!

With kindness and gratitude,

Orly Wahba

Founder, but most importantly Believer in the good of people

If you want to know specifically what the crowd funder is for, see below:

Some of the exciting things we are working on at Life Vest Inside.  

1. Educational Curriculum

Over the past year we have developed an Educational Kindness Curriculum that aligns with the Common Core State Standards and Blooms Taxonomy. The curriculum brings kindness, compassion and empathy into the classroom. The curriculum is made up of one unit of study (6 lessons) in the Language Arts Department. It has been developed, as of now, for grades K-5. We have already piloted the curriculum in 20 schools and it has been in the hands of 200 educational stakeholders. The results have been amazing!

Over the next year we are looking to develop further units for Literacy and extend the units to grades 6-12. In addition we are developing the curriculum to align with Core State Standards for Social Studies, Math and Science!

1. Film

With the viral success of Kindness Boomerang, the demand is high for additional original Life Vest Inside films. We are working in conjunction with reggae artist, DeScribe, and creating the next film, Dreamer, a new music video all about the potential every person has to accomplish even their greatest dreams. You guys are going to LOVE this one! I just finished writing the script and it rocks!

1. Mobile App

This is one of the coolest thing we are working on! We are developing a social network for kindness that invites users to inspire and be inspired by acts of kindness being committed across the globe, showing that one act of kindness creates a ripple effect of goodness in its wake. One of the cool aspects of the app is that it’s going to work with our Acts of Kindness cards and will allow people to track their cards as they pass from one person to the next!

Join Here

Family Medical Leave Act

    I had heard about FMLA here and there, sort of knew what its purpose was, but really did not need it. Honestly who wants to need something like this? 

   Then it happened. 

     Ok, it may not have been that dramatic, but try telling a mother that.

     My life is far from simple, but whose life is really. I just have my own crazy twists and turns. 

     This past May my son, who has high functioning autism, got removed from school, pending out of district placement. Not even a week after this, my daughter almost overdosed on Tylenol. It was at this moment I felt I needed to take a Family Medical Leave from my work and come home to help get my children back on track and stabilized.

I did not plan to be away from work long..I did not plan for it to take until July to get a school that could handle my son. I did not plan for all that occurred.

      Yes, it was bullshit and I realized that I need to take a few additional steps since I really did not know how long it would take to get things back in order.

       So I went to the website for the application for Family Medical Leave.

FMLA

         I downloaded the necessary forms which did not take me long. Then I contacted my daughter's doctor. She went from ICU to a Inpatient treatment program, then to partial inpatient, then intensive outpatient, etc.Getting in touch with a specialist and getting them to do the paperwork is almost impossible if you have to go through the receptionist. 

          Finally I got it back and sent it to my place of employment.

          There are three primary things about FMLA to protect you and your job by the law that was established in such situations.

(1) Has been employed by the employer for at least 12 months, and

(2) Has been employed for at least 1,250 hours of service during the 12-month period immediately preceding the commencement of the leave ( see § 825.801 for special hours of service requirements for airline flight crew employees), and

(3) Is employed at a work-site where 50 or more employees are employed by the employer within 75 miles of that work-site. See § 825.105(b) regarding employees who work outside the U.S.

     I met the requirements of Step 1, being employed with the company for almost 3 years. Step 2, I met as I was working 40 or more hours each week prior to my leave. Then I reached Step 3, and the company did not meet the qualifications. They did not have the 50 employee base needed to qualify me for the FMLA.

   When I found out, I actually set down on my back steps and for some reason, I really needed to cry. I did not cry though. I found myself falling into this black hole of thinking. How many places of employment could met this requirement? I am sure that if I had a degree, and worked at a larger corporation, the government would protect myself and my lively hood. I would be making more money, but would a larger company be as family friendly as the one I spent three years of my life at. I don't think so, I remember well working at a large company that would have met this requirement. I remember all to well have an emergency at the school with my son that I had to leave work and after that, every time I turned around, I was getting wrote up for little things. When I was needed for my kids, I went to them. A larger corporation found me dispensable. The job would have been gone long before there was ever an opportunity to file for such.

  I was not angry, concerned that the company I worked for would deliberately do me wrong, I felt that my own government did though. It feels that the government protects big business and overlooks the smaller businesses and those they employee. 

Can McDonald's, Burger King, WaWa, Debs, PepBoys, Staples, can any of these stores meet the 50 employee minimum needed for an employee to be protected? I honestly don't know, I guess it depends on numerous things. I did learn one lesson though. If you have children with disabilities, you should really inquire if the company meets that one tiny little FMLA guideline because you never know what may happen in life and you need the government to protect and serve you as your family protected and served it.

Family Medical Leave Act

To Educate yourself................

   

Typically it takes most of us to hit rock bottom, then fall into cracks between those rocks, before that proverbial  fire lights up our asses and gets us thinking. What do we know, what should we know, and what we really did not want to know?

   I have had a taste of everything over the past few months and I realized that sometimes, people need a little more educating for themselves so that they are not blindsided by life. I kept running into situations where I would stop and say to myself, "Why did someone not tell me this?"
   Then I thought, maybe they knew, but never considered sharing the information, because they forgot. It is what it is!
  So as I go through these little Educating episodes I will share them here just so someone else does not scratch their head and wonder why someone did not tell them!

There is HOPE for me yet.

I have to applaud the women below. They got what it takes with just a little , or a lot of make-up. Does this mean there is hope for me yet????

You ever hear the saying, "I went to bed drunk with a 10 and woke up sober with a 1." 

Some of these ladies don't even need an enhancement, they have the natural beauty. What do you do though when the man wakes up in the morning and he was not drunk the night before when you were a 10, but turned into a 1 when the makeup wore off?

I suppose that could be shocking for the shallow ones in the world. I think I may need to try a before and after photo of myself and see what transpires? Can I go from a down home, backwoods, barefoot redneck girl to some beauty queen?? Even those scarecrow types pulled it off rather well. Hmmmm..This gives me an idea, an experiment to invest in. Wish me and my camera a lot of luck and batteries. Hahaha