A wintry weekend in Gilbertsville. With cookies.

This one picture pretty much sums up the entirety of our weekend. It snowed. I worked in the front room downstairs, painting copious amounts of trim. I drank a lot of tea from my Grassroots mug. And the cookies. Oh yes, the cookies.

This is a story about cookies.

The short version goes something like this: We are about to move to a town of less than four hundred people, and we want to make friends. I've written before about how much I love good neighbors, how good they can make life feel. They're important. It's about civic responsibility.

So when I learned, through Facebook of all places, that our across-the-street neighbor recently became a widower, I wrote him a card. This is the same neighbor who walked over and welcomed us during the summer, when we were innocently trespassing on our future home. He offered his hand and his smile, and said things like, "You're going to love it here." I slipped my note under his door and walked away.

The next morning, he knocked on our door and delivered cookies. Chocolate chip. Fresh from the oven. Yes, we are going to love it here.

We already do.

This morning, everything aches. Everything. My legs from constant bending and squatting, my left arm from forever holding the paint tray aloft, the top of my head from where I cracked it on the ceiling when attempting an enthusiastic sprint down the back stairs. (CAUTION: LOW CLEARANCE!) And I just can't wait to do it all again next weekend.

And I promise to take more pictures! Somehow I got swept up in the progress we were making and forgot to document it. For shame.