family

I don't know if there are people on this earth that I love more than Mike's extended (and now mine too) family. I just went to the 80th birthday celebration of his great aunt, affectionately called "Dunay," and it just feels great to be in a room surrounded by sassy, fiesty Italians. They may call each other fat asses, curse you up and down in a rapid string of Italian words I shudder to tranlsate, and inform you rather forcefully that you need to finish all of the food on your plate or else, but the bond between all of them is like something I've seen in a movie ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding" comes to mind), but never actually experienced. I love being a part of them (and I think Mike's grandpa, who is also kind of "other" since he's Polish, has a soft spot for me :) With them, food, high volume, and laughs are always in abundance, and I love it.

Speaking of food in abundance, last week Jennifer, Mike, and I visited to the Open Door Community in Atlanta to help serve in their soup kitchen. I didn't realize that you could have so much fun handing out bowls of soup, baskets of bread, and pitchers of ice tea and water. The best thing about the experience was being able to give people as many bowls of soup or sandwiches, or pieces of bread that they wanted. Everyone left full (and the food was really good too!).

What strikes me about both experiences are the similarities that can be found between them. You might not expect a birthday lunch at Maggiano's to be anything like lunch with the homeless, but at the Open Door, there is that same sense of a familial, loving bond.

There will probably be more on this to come...but right now there is work piling up, and cleaning to do, and a host of other things calling me away from the computer...

(Oh yeah, since I needed yet another online distraction, I was finally persuaded to start a Myspace profile)