Different but the same.

I didn’t particularly want the blog posts to be all about the renovation of our lake home, but, I have to admit that is taking over a huge hunk of our lives right now so it is what it is! In between the nailing, the decision making, the sawing, the sweeping is the little bit of other stuff that we are managing to squeak out.

 

I feel like it’s been weeks since I’ve seen the grandkids for example, and this construction site is really not a good place for hosting them, so it may be a few more days.  It’ll be fine in a couple weeks but right now, it is controlled chaos at best.  Meal preparation around here is almost non-existent but the local restaurants are loving us.  The bad news is the amount of fast food we are ingesting, not good for these old arteries.

We have been enjoying the evenings, with mild August temperatures and gentle breezes keeping the bugs at bay.  We have a new neighbor, who is renting the small house next door to us.  He’s here from Arizona working on a big construction project in the adjoining town and thinks he will be here about a year.  He wanted to be on water, he is hoping to try ice fishing for the first time in his life, and he’s a hoot. He’s lonely at times, being away from his family, so he walks through the fence line and comes over in the evening to sit a while and check our progress on our renovation.  He is both curious and knowledgeable so there is always some lively conversation.

His wife is in town this week.  They have it scheduled for her to be here about once a month for a few days.  She holds down the fort in Arizona and works as well.  Last evening, after hubs put in way too many hours on the roof and carrying lumber, they invited us over for dinner.  It was perfect.  The evening was great, although the bugs did kick up a bit, and we ate inside.  Now, I have been in this little rental house a few times over the years and I have to say, it is a cute little place.  Our neighbor made his special country ribs, which were perfectly prepared on the grill, and a nice baked potato, some great bread.  Lovely, really.  Here’s where it gets good…they don’t use sour cream but a spoonful of a nice mix of diced avocado, tomatoes and red pepper after the butter.  It was so good, so different and how I will be eating my baked potatoes from now on.

 

Dinner conversation was filled with stories from our childhoods with their background of being raised in the Texas panhandle sprinkled with regional phrases, their easy drawl.   We laughed and learned.  Of all the traveling I did as a child, Texas is not a state we landed in during those years, so I very much enjoyed the stories.

 

I love learning something new, especially at this point in life.  Something we’ve not experienced, or ever really even thought about.  Sure, in Indiana we have corn fields, but, to think of acres and acres and acres of planted fields, as far as the eye can see, and how different their view is from our own, their experiences yielding different but yet similar results.

Sit down with someone new this week, if you can, and learn something new from your neighbor here on this earth.  Take the time to ask some questions and be delighted with your differences, and your similarities.