Visiting Teaching Adventures: Rollin' With Sista C.

I'm not a bad person but I'm just not such a good person that I seek out opportunities to serve beyond the relentless, thankless mothering I do day in day out with my 3 (wonderful) children or the overhelming, monotonous, demanding work I do with the (darling) youth in our ward. So when I tell the following story understand that it was service which I did gladly but did not offer to do. The visiting teaching coordinator left me a message on my answering machine telling me to do it so I had no choice. If I did have a choice I would probably not have chosen to help another person as I am usually not inclined in that way. So I don't really think I'm bragging or negating my meager reward in Heaven by mentioning it.

So today I got to take the ward semi-shut in, Sister See, to a clinic for a blood test. I'd never seen her before but I had heard about her because she organizes the compassionate service for the relief society from her home. When my friend Mark had some lillies leftover after sacrament meeting on Easter (which he took the liberty of purchasing himself since he was speaking) he asked me who in the ward he could give them to and I suggested Sister See. He left them on her porch. Well, this was a mistake because she had some sort of allergic reaction to said lillies and had to have someone move them to the far corner of her yard. At any rate, throughout this whole exchange Christian thought Mark and I were talking about "Sister C." You know, like what Fonzie would call Richie's mom (if they were Mormon). Like Mark and I were somehow so familiar with this woman (who none of us had seen) that we had started calling her Sista C.

So we stopped at the utilities building to pay her bill and pick up a rather generous roll of heavy-duty leaf bags (free with your bill). This solved the mystery for me of old people paying their bill in person at the utilities building. I have never in my life done that. But you see them coming in and out. Now I know why. Then we were off to the clinic for a quick blood test. She's really pretty mobile and can even drive. She pulls her car right up onto the lawn in front of her door. Isn't that a good idea? But she has an oxygen tank that she can't carry. So we did the test and she was pretty fun. The best part was afterwards when I thought I'd have to drop her off and then go out again to get a treat for the kids because they had been so good. When she got into the car she was all, "I feel like Carl's Jr." I want to hang out with her every day. Then we got to talking and apparently she is a huge Gillmore Girls fan, which I have only recently gotten into. She told me about tapes she makes for friends and family with episodes of shows they like and no commercials. I didn't have the heart to tell her about TIVO. "What are you, some kind of shut in?"

She's a real hoot and I think I have a new buddy. I resisted telling her flat out about my blog but felt her out a little: "So do you have a computer? And do you do e-mail? Oh, well you should really learn all about it. There's so much you can do with it." All of this was under the pretense that she could do some online shopping (maybe PAY SOME BILLS) but really I'm hoping to get her up to speed so she can start reading my blog because I think she'll love it. I bet she's a Paul woman. I'll ask her.