Taking detours

My week flew by. 

Someone said to me I should blog more and unfortunately I can't figure out a way to let you all have access to my head as I tear around so you can read the posts that are written there but not published in the real world.

Second thought maybe access to my head might not be a good idea. Pretty confused in there with the day-to-day intermingled with grandiose sewing intentions.

OK so back to the week.

This one I took care of the three grandchildren for two days and spent two days cleaning my about-to-move-to-Austin son's place at the beach. He lives upstairs in a spectacular apartment and rents out two units on the main floor. Those are what I cleaned.

Here is one unit and here is the other.

This kid is really enterprising, like all my kids actually. He is my real money saver and bought this place for not much - I had my doubts-  it was run down and decorated in dusty rose with pictures of cats '80s style, and he completely re did it himself.

My best part of that story was my husband and I were out one weekend staying in the RV helping him paint and I woke up to see a strange light moving around the yard.

I looked out the window and there was youngest son with a miner's helmet on dipping each board for the siding one at a time in natural stain and setting them out to dry in the dark.

Lately I have been thinking of my family.

I have friends and neighbours who have kids who all live close by. In a month both of my sons will be in the US, working at good jobs they got from very hard work. I still have my daughter here with the kids, a few minutes away and am extremely blessed about that. My daughter too is a hard worker. She is a children's cancer care coordinator and is about to go back to school to become a nurse practitioner - while working with three kids.

Sometimes I wonder why we all try so hard. I wonder about folks who have all children close, but I know this is how we are and were meant to be.

I become a single mother in my early 40s unexpectedly. I remember my daughter saying "we are watching you and if you are OK we will be OK." 

Well that was that.

I also remember an angry father coming up to me in the line up at parent teacher's (both my boys were school presidents) saying "I don't understand why your children are doing well - they come from a broken home, and my son doesn't."

Things people say.

This week was my 15th anniversary. My husband Leo is, to quote my mother, a gift from God. When he met me, my kids knew his kids, he told me that I, a middle aged mother with three kids, a dog, and a house that needed a lot of work, was someone he knew he had to "snap up before someone else got there first."

You see where my mother is coming from.

I don't usually share much that is personal on this blog but every once in a while I think it doesn't hurt. Part of blog culture for sewers is everyone posts great pictures of their garments and lives look smooth. 

I think the sewing is real and the lives behind the sewers are too. 

We are all just trying to make something.