It's been a week, I can tell you that much.
Independence Day is my favorite holiday, hands-down. This year, a bit of a wash due to the rain and some other circumstances. I think I'm becoming a hermit.
The neighbors are great. Very friendly, all of them. I just don't feel like I relate to them. Being with them all at once is hard, since they all know each other well enough that I'm still a bit of an outsider. I've never really been good at winning people over in groups first, although I think I can hold my own one-on-one. But I've never had the chance to do that with these folks, and I don't know how I would....
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A couple of weeks ago, I headed out of the house for a lunch meeting. It was 12:30 on a Friday, and both kids were at school. Being that it was a just a lunch, I didn't think much of how it would affect the rest of my day.
The lunch ran a bit long. I didn't leave until somewhere around 3:45, and I figured I would pick up a couple of things on the way home, including the weekend fish feeders that we needed for during our upcoming trip. Being that it was just lunch, it never even occurred to me that it was so late in the afternoon that Abby would be done school and waiting for me at home.
While driving home, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. Our neighbor across the street and a few doors down had heard Abby sobbing on our front porch. She took her up the street to stay with another of our neighbors, and that is who called me. How thoroughly mortifying.
It took me until 4:20 to get home, cursing traffic the whole way. I drove straight to my neighbor's house, where I found Abby playing cheerfully. I was very glad that we have great neighbors that would help out like this, but thoroughly shamed that this escaped me. more
