Today’s post comes to us from Christina Ledbetter. She fills us in on how October has been treating her so far. We’ll let you read the good news for yourself, but we’d like to say congratulations to Christina for all of the great things fall has brought in such a short amount of time, and we can’t wait!!!

What my Neighbor Martha is Missing out on in October

October means National Neighbors Night Out here in Houston. That means a take-charge lady named Martha who lives in my neighborhood and wears muumuus calls around the neighborhood until she finds one person on each street to host a block party. Then she pulls up to each party throughout the night and tells us all to call the police if we see anything suspicious. She then passes out stickers to the kids and makes sure we’ve all written our email addresses on the sign-in sheet.

We had our party last week and I was able to sneak away before Martha arrived. I haven’t been on her good side since I called and asked her for the number to our lost pet coordinator last year. “Have you checked your neighborhood newsletter?” she asked.

“No ma’am. I recycled it.”

“Well all the pet coordinators’ numbers were on it!” she scolded.

I chose not to tell her that since other organizations post contact information on the Internet these days I threw the newsletter away thinking, “Surely this stuff’s on the Internet, right?” Turns out, Martha doesn’t do the Internet. Oh, what Martha is missing.

With October also comes my yearly ritual of getting quite sappy and inspired (it happens every fall). Sometimes the inspiration prompts me to buy a new pair of skinny cords, and sometimes it makes me want to change the world. This year, apparently all levels of inspiration hit simultaneously and in one week I bought a house, signed up to go on a mission trip to Rwanda next month, and began my first book.

All three of my new adventures are being made much, much easier by the Internet. My husband found the house we bought on HAR.com, I scheduled all my travel vaccinations through a grocery store’s website, and of course, my first book will be brought to you courtesy of Kbuuk’s awesome publishing services.

So if you see Martha charging about Houston, would you let her know what she’s missing?