Basil Babies

By the looks of these sprouts, I’ll be eating a basil salad at my desk in no time!  As long as the nursery cats keep off…

Last night, we helped a good friend of ours paint the inside his apartment so he could move out, because he is getting married this Friday.  Which was not what I had in mind for after work.  I thought I would go straight home, cook dinner, clean the kitchen, watch Lost for a few hours, and then go to bed.  But it was an immediate and obvious YES to helping him out.

Painting was a lot of fun and in typical Krista fashion, paint ended up all over me, but I didn’t care, I love being dirty haha.  We ordered pizza, burped, talked about life aka hunting season (it’s almost over!!!)…it really didn’t feel like we were working.  The whole time our friend kept saying “Thank you, thank you.  You have no idea how big of a help this is!”  But to tell you the truth, we did know how big of a help it was.  Painting sucks, especially when you are doing it alone.  Painting takes forever, especially when you are doing it alone.  So providing some entertainment and labor was the least we could do.

He also said that anytime we needed help painting our house, to call him because he owed us.  For some reason, that statement caught me off guard.  Maybe because until it was said, I didn’t even think about him owing us at all!  Nate and I realized last year, we wanted only REAL friends.  Friends that would drop what they are doing on a week night to come help us paint, for nothing in return.  Friends that wouldn’t take convincing to come help us, just being our friend was enough.  Friends that we would do the same for and the thought of “you owe us” would never cross our minds.
 
At the same time, I was thinking, us painting was really no big deal.  It was a simple way to help.

So after we left his house I kept thinking about everything.  This morning I woke up, still thinking about it and wondering, why am I still thinking about it?  What am I supposed to be learning from last night?  Typing this post out has actually helped me sort out the seemingly simple yet profound events of last night, and answer my questions.  Here is what I learned last night:

1.  What a real friend is.
2.  Doing something simple and small for someone else can be huge to them.
3.  To make real friends you can’t just sit at home, cooking dinner, and watching Lost by yourself.
4.  We can add this weird guy to our REAL friends list.

I’m still sorting out what last night meant and I am probably the weirdest person ever to even still be thinking about last night.  And I am probably reading way too much into it.  But you know, I can’t control what is on my mind!  Alright, now, enough of this mushy stuff. 🙂