Sometimes I miss physical contact....

I come from what my great-aunt Irene has called "the huggingest family." When I was growing up, I could count on (and take for granted) having a plethora of hugs a day. And I know what it means to have a plethora. College, not so many hugs. But I'm a female, so we do a lot of the casual hand-on-arm stuff in conversations. And I was a theatre major, which ramps up physical contact by a factor of eleventy (that's an approximation).

Now, living on my own after college, I pretty much depend on church functions and hang-out times with select people for hugs. This is usually enough to keep me from feeling contact-starved.

This past month, though...wow. I haven't felt like I needed this many hugs in a long time. A lot of it is connected to the stress at work, I'm sure.

Anyway, it's nice to have Sundays. Because Sundays are when I get most of my physical contact for the whole week. I can usually count on the following: 

• A hug from Rosemary
• A hug from Lisa or Abby or Trudy or Janessa or all of the above
• Several pokes on the head from Brenna and Braelynn
• A couple of hugs from Braelynn
• The female-conversation-style arm touching thing I mentioned

Also maybe a few high fives in there from some of my guy friends. That sort of thing.

Today I got a chance to hold a baby for a while, and one of the pre-K girls was playing with my hair when I got down to help her with her project, and tonight I get to see my little buddy Lucas, who is always good for a few hugs.

So it'll be a good day for getting hugs. Which is good because I had kind of a rough week. Which was just capped off by a phone call from my dad to tell me that my brother's bird died. 

Now I'm extra glad I got to go to Pennsylvania last weekend, so I could see Claude, too. We liked each other a lot. I'm going to miss him...but not as much as Jeremiah will miss him.

Now I'm sad about Claude and sad for Jeremiah and sad for Dorothy, who also liked Claude a lot....

Yeah. This is definitely the sort of day when I miss being a daily part of the huggingest family.