January 9

Just returned from the most lovely time among friends on this very cold evening to celebrate the birth of a very dear friend.  If I had to say the most important thing I’ve learned on this life journey about friendship it would be that we just need to be easier on one another- more real.  Tonight a group of people joined each other for dinner at the time that worked for them-no worries, no excuses.  We were coming and going-some working to earn their pay while others enjoyed a good meal-all talking about life and work and play and retirement and babies.  The common coming and going of life becomes so engrained in the everyday and the here and now that we allow ourselves to take one another less seriously while taking everything else more seriously all at once-in the most beautiful way.

The idea of writing letters to those who responded to my previous post is-if I’m honest (and it is the year for truth)-both exciting and scary.  I went out and purchased a notebook just for the occasion.  To give you a glimpse at how complicated decision making can be for me I arrived at Kroger to do some shopping and right before checking out I realized that I didn’t have anything to write notes on (paper with lines is a must for me) or stamps (I ended up forgetting the stamps).  I went down the aisle with pretty note cards and thought to myself-I should buy something really lovely as both a treat for myself and also daily motivation.  Then as I arrived at the notepads I thought to myself.  How selfish and indulgent can I be?  Do I really need to spend more money for a fancy notebook when a simple one would do just fine.  Luckily, they only had simple “old school” notebooks so that is what I got.  Shew, hard decision taken care of for me.  

Now keeping up with the notebook has been an even harder task.  I came home and told everyone within view (I think it may have been two of the kids) that this was a special notebook that I would be using to write letters to people in.  I later found it in the kitchen-upside down-with the names and numbers of the gas company and tax guy written on the back.  So I kindly let Nathan know that when he was finished making his phone calls that I was going to be putting the notebook up so that I’d have clean pages with lines on them to write letters to a few people next week.  Later in the day as our CSA customers arrived we realized that one of the notebooks that they write down their “groceries” in was gone so I asked the kids to see if they could find it.  Instead of the CSA notebook they brought me my letter writing notebook that Adaline was using to draw stick figures on-just for me.  Can I just say that life is beautifully complicated around here?  It is.