Today was not my favorite. But then –

Today was eh.  Office work and some work that I kinda feel shouldn’t be within the realm of pastoral duties.  Work like climbing into a parked semi trailer to take photos of auction items.  [Did I miss that on my job description?]  And this weird work – there’s lots of it.  With the school year beginning [wait.  summer is over?  how did that happen?], church work doubles as it is.  Rally Sunday, confirmation kick-off retreat, annual meeting [ours in in September.  it’s best not to even ask.], schedules, plans, pull-out-my-hair.

So today in the office was not my favorite.  I told Marilyn and Bob-the-treasurer that I was going to cry.  But then –

For confirmation this year, instead of one big informational meeting that half the families can’t make anyways, I’m visiting with each family one-on-one.  Tonight I headed just down the road a mile and a half to visit with my ninja friend, Elly, and her family.  Coming to confirmation this year will also be her younger sister.  They’re just a super warm family and even though I promised them that my visit would only be 15 minutes, I was there for an hour.  We talked about confirmation and then the kids went away while their parents and I talked about all things vintage.  Pyrex, Nancy Drew classics, mason jars.  For a living, they go to auctions, snap up stuff, and then sell it on etsy and ebay.  They showed me their goods and talked about their business.  Super interesting!

They also told me a neighborhood secret.  About three-quarters of a mile from the church is a road.  A secret road.  Okay.  It’s not secret at all but I always just assumed it was private property and only used by farm equipment.  Turns out this access road is fair game.  It’s gravel and dirt but so much more relaxing than walking Mabel on the road.  We found our new walking route and explored it tonight.

On our way back from the [not] secret road, all of a sudden, one of the neighbor kids is sprinting towards me.  He was running just to, you know, chat.  And show me his new wallet.  The neighbor family had been gone for two weeks on a road trip and things were really kinda lonely without them around.  It was weird to walk past their house and not see them outside playing, or see lights on in their house.  So Alex ran to say hi and tell me that the favorite part of his trip was seeing the beach where The Goonies was filmed.  Then his older sister, Rachel, rode her bike down to join us.  Soon the younger brother was there, along with the mom and the dog, and we stood in their driveway for a good 45 minutes catching up on summer.

Now I’m home.  I ate farm-fresh eggs for dinner [thanks to administrative assistant and chicken farmer extraordinaire, Marilyn] and the day will end on a high note by watching Netflix and basting hexagons.  Today was not my favorite … but then it turned out to be quite okay.

I’ll be adding to this pile – the weekend’s productivity.