We went to visit my mother last weekend. While we were packing up quarts of my homemade beef stew and coconut carrot ginger soup for her, our dog alerted us to some strange activity outside. I looked out a window to the driveway, but didn’t see anything. My other half took the dog outside to investigate. There was a strange car parked at the end of our driveway, with no sign of a driver. That was odd.
Then, my other half got a text message from our neighbor saying that after the snow storm, his M-I-L didn’t want to drive down his icy driveway to join the womenfolk baking Christmas cookies, so he suggested she park at the end of ours, and walk across the lawn between our places, because we’d plowed our driveway. No problem. We don’t care, as long as we know to whom the car belongs. It would have been uncool to have called the cops on a neighbor’s relative who was just there to help with some holiday preparations.
In the end, we got a nice large container of cookies from them as a “thank you,” for letting her park there.
This neighbor is great. Over the past year we’ve traded lots of favors: we got free range eggs in exchange for chicken sitting while they were away; we typically trade as many herbs as they want to pick from our herb garden for some rhubarb; we’ve loaned him one of our trailers more than once when his was out of commission in exchange for nothing; we’ve traded my homemade hot pepper jelly for his homemade pesto sauce; a few other things that are just nice neighborly.
We have other nice neighbors, too. The ones who usually hold a big Christmas party can’t this year, because of shutdown rules. But, if they want a trailer load of firewood, we will tractor it up their driveway for them, and help unload and stack it, for free. We have plenty to spare. The others who bring us a batch of Christmas cookies every year sent us a card this year, instead, because I’m sure they’re afraid that nobody would want to eat cookies they hadn’t baked themselves. We would, but god bless ’em. Usually, we give them a box of gourmet chocolates in exchange for the cookies. Every time they send us, or deliver something, it comes with an overtly Christian religious message. I don’t really mind, as long as they don’t try to convert us to whatever form of Christianity they follow. We’re secular.
It’s a few days early, but:
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