well met
Monday is generally the one day of the week when I go in to the "office" at the church where I work, so it tends to be a day full of sitting (well, aside from the bike ride there and back). This past Monday saw more sitting then ever: after supper I went to a meeting for our homeschool coop, then dashed directly from there to Bedford's Annual Town Meeting. So three meetings on the day, all pretty different—but all positive and rewarding.
I started off with a department meeting at church. I love working with the kids there, and I get to collaborate with great people, so that meeting was entirely fun and relaxing. I was a little nervous going into the coop gathering, since we're kicking off a new semester and I wasn't sure if we were even going to have anyone in the group this spring. I'm a little more in charge than last year too, so I was paying attention. I needen't have worried: we had a fine crowd, and all of us were excited to share our ideas for the things we can do together over the next couple months. The calendar's already filling up—in fact, we have our first outing together tomorrow morning.
Town Meeting is a completely different feel. Where the coop group is looking to work together and came into the meeting ready to find common ground, there's lots more dissension in the high school auditorium when the politically active members of Bedford's citizenry gather to deliberate. It can be stressful sometimes, hearing people's strong views (especially when said views are completely wrong!). But again, I came out of the meeting feeling really positive. All the people there were passionate about wanting the best for our town, even if they disagreed about what that was, and while their arguments were occasionally passionate (or even sarcastic) there was also a sense of shared responsibility and camaraderie that was fun to be a part of. And I'm really glad that there are these folks going to every town meeting and holding the Selectmen to account; I'm the least fiscally conservative person you'll ever meet, so I'm there to vote for all the spending, so it's good that there are some grumpy old folks ready to make sure we really need a handicap ramp to the front of Old Town Hall (I hope we don't; that one didn't pass).
Still, as interesting as it all was it may have been a little much for one day. Today we went hiking. That's more my speed.