I Had the Urge to Kiss Her

For you regular readers, my exercising I’ve been writing about has come to a screeching halt this last week. My walking had evolved into jogging on a treadmill. I was pushing myself everyday to improve my 3 mile time. I was feeling great.

Then all of a sudden I got up one morning and my knee was hurting. I went on to the gym that morning but when I got there I knew I couldn’t do it. So I decided to rest that knee. After almost a week of resting the knee, the other knee started hurting.

The second knee is worse than the first knee.

I drove about three hours tonight in pouring down rain to get home. I limped in the house and told my wife I think she needs to start thinking about putting me in a nursing home.

I have felt so good for the past four months with all the exercising I’ve been doing. Now I feel like I’m 85. I’m typing this with a heating pad on my knee.

On top of that my wife has been sick with the virus. One of those “hugging the pot” viruses that nobody likes to talk about but everybody has experienced.

We are in bad shape at our house.


But thank God for our neighbors.

Debbie Krafft walked in the house earlier tonight with a great supper. She had cooked "Skillet Lasagna” which is a hybrid dish of spaghetti-lasagna. That stuff is so good it will make you slap your grandma. She even made a salad to go with it. On top of that, she proceeded to whip up a banana pudding in our kitchen while I was gulping down her delicious dish.

Kathy has the stomach virus and can’t eat. I have a hurt leg. Hurt legs make it difficult to walk but they do not make it difficult to eat.

I had the urge to kiss her.

Debbie is not only a great cook and great neighbor but she is also a fitness trainer. So I got her to check out my bad knees while she was here.

I grew up with neighbors on both sides of our house and across the street who always looked after each other. After I grew up and got married and moved on the outskirts of Reynolds, we had great neighbors there too. Our neighbors were forever bringing us a cake or pie or something else to eat. And we did the same for them. In Reynolds, not only were our neighbors friendly but the friendships had been passed down for generations.

We really did look out for each other.

We thought that would be over when we moved to Warner Robins almost four years ago. We moved to a much bigger town to a neighborhood where we knew absolutely nobody. Something I was not used to for sure.

Tonight when Debbie walked in the house with all the food I was reminded of days gone by and her act of kindness brought back some warm memories for me.

Maybe I’m not ready for the nursing home after all. At least I won’t be as long as we have neighbors like Col. and Mrs. Greg Krafft.

With the holiday season fast approaching maybe all of us should take Debbie’s lead and get in the spirit of giving early and figure out a way to pass on a little cheer to the people who live next to us.

Taking the time for simple acts of kindness will go a long way to make this the best Christmas season yet.

It started early at our house this year.