2019 – Year of Socks!!

Its 2:06 pm
warmish

I got woken up by Paladin this morning. Thinking he wanted treats at this early hour,I got up and headed down stairs. Except he didn’t follow me down. When I turned to see what was the hold up,he had dragged a calendar,a sock and a wash cloth to the top of the stairs and just stared at me.  I knew then I was a day late in publishing this post about our biggest Pink Hat mission yet and this was not making the cheetah happy.
As some of you may know,I had organized a couple of sock drives and gathered socks from all over the world and donated them to two churches,Our Lady of Victory in Northville where Lori and I got married and St. Thomas ‘a Becket in Canton where we attended and they held Lori’s funeral service.

It was also at St. Thomas that we also did the Giving Tree,a tree that held names of folks who were too poor to get a Christmas. You selected a paper tree with specific needs of that person and then got them what they asked for. For 5 years we selected anywhere between 1 to 5 trees and then went shopping. I volunteered one year in packaging and sorting out the gifts as St. Thomas services many different ministries across the metro Detroit area.
After Lori passed in May of 2013,I decided to do a sock drive and for three years,thanks to many wonderful and sweet giving people,we gathered over 1,000 pairs of warm socks.  The past two years,well,Christmas has been very hard for me to face and I didn’t have the energy to do it.

I tried to raise interest in helping raise money for a cat rescue in Ohio but folks didn’t seem to really want to do that and it was a complete bust. I admit,that did discourage me quite a bit and so I thought maybe people are tired of me asking and so I did altogether.
But I decided to try again and so here we are,asking for your help on two different fronts. We are going to attempt both a sock drive AND also help a animal rescue and this is how we’re doing it.
In the past sock drives,I started asking in October and raised as many socks as we could by Elf Day,which is 8 Dec. We then deliver the socks to the church in time for they can be sorted and wrapped in time for gift delivery by the church. The one major issue I ran across was people wanted to donate but during the holiday season,they often felt the crush of time (and money). The cheetah and I talked this over and this is why we have decided to make the whole damn year one long sock drive. We will collect socks all through 2019 and on 8 December,will deliver what we hope will be a ton o’socks!
But I did mention this is a twofold drive,didn’t I? Let turn the mic over to the cheetah…..

The second part is we are going to collect hand towels for the Huron Valley Animal Shelter in Dixboro. This is the shelter that took in Paladin (despite his being a cheetah) and took great care of him.
Last year,the cheetah was gifted a cat tree by Chewy but he was much too big for it and so I decided to donate it to Huron Valley. While we’re dropping off the tree,I asked them what was one they thing they needed but they rarely got and the staff said “hand towels” They use them a LOT to help clean up both dogs and cats but since its not a glamour item like food or money,they don’t get them donated very often. Paladin and I aim to change that with your help and kindness.

Which is rather fitting since socks are also the one critical item most shelters say are not donated enough,people don’t think about socks as they donate jackets,pants and other items.
So how is this going to work? On two levels…..for socks,we are going to collect them all year long and make one big splash in December. For the hand towels,we would like to make a delivery once a month if we can gather over 100 towels per month. Since this is extremely doable,we hope we can make 12 visits.
While we’ll only be collecting NEW socks as per the churches request,we will accept any and all used hand towels just as long as they are not stained,heavily soiled or torn. In other words,if you wouldn’t use them on your child,we won’t use them on a puppy or a kitten,right?
So where do you send your packages? Glad you asked because that means you are considering helping us.  You can send your socks and towels by clicking on this page
which has mailing info.  We also could use a LOT of help with promoting the drive so the cheetah and I are appealing to our fellow bloggers and twitter pals to help share the love for this Pink Hat mission. At the first of each month,we’ll post a update of how well we are doing…while we have goals of 1,200 pairs of socks and 2,000 hand towels,we’ll be overjoyed as will the people and animals who will benefit from your giving hearts.

From my heart,I thank you for reading and donating!