Houston Day 295 - a little confession, and a little observation

Observation: People say "excuse me" much more here than Aussies do.  I gather you're supposed to say it when...

• you sneeze
• you yawn
• you cough or clear your throat
• you walk between someone and what they're looking at
• you walk close behind someone....even if you don't need them to move!
• you overtake someone on the footpath
• ...pretty much anytime you walk close to a stranger....actually you really can't get away with walking close to a stranger without saying something, otherwise you come across as rude.  Ah, the South.

...it's funny to me.  

And now a little confession.  The friendship circles I had in Melbourne were so excellent, and so close, to me and to each other.  Building up similar friendships after moving here is happening more slowly than I would like (I feel like every other time I've moved I just jumped into a ready-made close-knit community), so that means that the friendships I do have are so precious to me.  I am so grateful for them! Here's the confession part: I know that I need most of my friends more than they need me, and I get so afraid of losing them.  Being so needy & vulnerable is not pleasant, to say the least.

Leslie as Mrs Who

Saturday evening was a very fun & social evening...Houston Family Arts Center's production of Seussical was excellent, and it was so fun to catch up with people afterwards! (Yup, these are some of the times I'm grateful for!)

Nick as Horton

And now, a little afterthought: those of you who know us well will know that we love being social and hospitable, but are pretty rotten at keeping the house clean.  BUT we seem to be blessed with the knack of making friends who are happy to do our housework for us, which means we can have our cake and eat it too.  I was thinking of our Melbourne friends who did this - remembering one of my birthday parties when I walked into the kitchen to find that Caleb and Stu had done all the dishes, remembering the time Amber came over after work and cleaned pretty much the entire house in one evening, remembering Hayley, and Monica, and Jenn, and Janet, who I think cleaned our little white house in Chadstone more than we did.  The reason I was remembering this? Lasagne Day last week, when Shemica came over between shows, marched straight into the kitchen, pulled up a chair in front of the sink, and got to work on the dishes.  Bless her.