Sunday night thoughts

I love how I go weeks without coming up with anything to say, and then write every day for a while.  I guess my writing bug is a feast-or-famine type situation.

So Thomas gets to go to scout day camp this year.  He will be hiking to Timpanogas Cave and also spending an afternoon at Wheeler Farm.  I had to pay for the camps and I was already past due tonight when I decided to walk the check over to his scout leader's house.  I grabbed the boys and my new flip flops (thanks, Vonnay!) and walked over.

I also got a ward list today. You wouldn't think that taking a check over to a leaders house and having a ward list would be connected, but they are.  You see, I've walked these streets for a long time, but like I've said before, they were always a means to an end, and not the end.  As I headed out, I finally knew that the streets behind and in front of me are in my ward, thanks to my handy ward list.  I knew that if I so desired, I could go home and identify the houses along the route. It was comforting.

I found the scout leader (who is also married to our new bishop) on the corner talking with a bunch of other neighbors. One I recognized (and subsequently called the wrong name, but at least I tried, right?) and another I didn't, but we chatted all the same.  After some blah-blah-blah (because that's really all it is, right?) my kids and I turned around and came back home.  It was a feeling I can identify; the meeting of neighbors on a street corner, kids scurrying to pet dogs and talk with friends and grown ups clamboring to talk to each other and say all the right things.  I did this before, just up a few streets.  We walked home and I saw the neighbors who sold us our rocks for our rock wall.  Even though I don't know them well, I walked over and chatted.  It's what I would have done on my old street, and if I want to have a friendly street, I have to be myself.

On another note, I made a friend today.  A nice retired couple moved in a few houses away yesterday and I met the wife today on her way to church.  When I found out she wouldn't have anyone joining her, I invited her to sit with us.  It was incredibly comfortable, sitting with a complete stranger.  But we got each other. She has been going to church by herself for years and years.  She is on the opposite spectrum of me.  But she has not become bitter. She is open.  She loves her husband for who he is (as do I).  She does what she needs to do and goes home.  We had so much in common.  It made my Sunday to make a friend.  It was exactly what I needed.

So, between feeling understood at church and friendly with the neighborhood, I had a great Sunday.  How about you?