Lilly Sway

                                         It has been a long while since I have had the time to write, but I am getting the hang of it again, today I wrote this post in my vehicle during car rider line. I was sitting there waiting for the bell,  that oh so awful 20 minutes early so I can make it kind of close to the middle school bell. well that’s’ another story I had wanted to write but all of the turmoil of trying to just make it through these tough times has left us well not to happy and some of us are just plain rude and judgmental .  I say that not meaning everyone I know, but a lot of the people I’ve had to deal with are just taken over with a sort of  gloomy opinion of others with out so much as a by your leave.

I had a great time cooking for the holidays as usual,  most all of my family members work and I have been unofficially deemed the one that stays home and doesn’t have to work, so I cook for the Holidays. 30 plus years and I enjoy cooking, I get the chance to try out a new recipe here and there. and when a large family gets together for food and fun that’s the icing on the cake, for me anyway.  I did not feel that way this year I kept getting sort of picked on this year, it started with my sister-in- law pointing out the layoffs at her work and how tough it is out there, and well darling you just don’t know and well you are at home all of the time so how could you know?, and then that my  father- in-law asked to take left overs home for the weekend to heat up ,so while I was doing so I heard him say to an other family member that it was too bad I had never done my share to help support my husband.

I felt my face steam, but I kept my self under control. And then the clincher, another family member asked if I knew that not having health care insurance can drain the pocket severely, just as much or more than if I had made the obvious choice of acquiring some long before now. He also went on to say that my detached state of being a stay at home mother had made it easy to not have quite all of the information I would need,  to make the best plan for my family throughout the years.  he then told me that I was the topic of their conversation at the last get together. My family  had the flu and since October was a very wet month, getting over it was not so easy and to make matters worse we could not get the flu shot this year on our budget.

My husband does construction work and we have feast or famine around our home, so when work is good we save and plan out our strategies for the months of slow work, or no work. I have never been on a vacation, had my nails done I color my own gray hair, and when there is a shortage of man power at  a job site,  not only do I go, but all of my children go too.  I take my job seriously I am raising my children to work smarter not harder, if they go to work in construction and don’t like it so be it, because all of my children are making straight A’s, and I let them know that there are two side to every coin, in our house we have every meal together and when the occasion arises for them to interact with their peers I have all the faith in that my children have enough knowledge instilled in them to make the right choice,  there is no question as to what challenges come to them they will prevail.  I have had the misfortune of picking up a family member drunk from work, and another divorced twice only to see them repeat the mistake again, The family is  helping my husband when and where I can with his work, and I do everyone Else’s running around while they ” work”. Yes the favors of leaving or picking up dry cleaning, picking up their children when sick, or working later than expected, waiting for their repairman at their home two to four hours, returning the movies they forgot were due, picking up some groceries that didn’t make it on their list, taking out the trash because they had a meeting and forgot it was trash day. I could just go on and on but I am sure you get the picture.  I am not a door mat!  I know that the kind of work that most people have is very important to their very livelihood, and that in many cases the regular functionality of the day time hours are spent at the office. and that the window for an extra thing to do  is usually very small.

I am not  complaining and I  am glad to help, but I was sad to know that the reason they were discussing us was that because the last five years my husband has gotten very ill with diabetes, and well we work hard at staying healthy, but if you know anything about the disease, is that it wins more often than it’s victims. The part that makes me sad is that is that the family discussion was the burden we will become to them if he passes away, because we have four children and only one of them is college age. I am not sure how to take that. I can no more undo my so called mistakes than I can undo my triumphs and good deeds. I see trouble and yes things are hard, but to see only impending doom and forcasting the future so bleekly leaves me wondering just who is out of touch with reality. Yes I would like to have made good solid plans with 401k”s, and thrift plans that doubled, but we were never in that bracket working hard and doing it right was the only way we knew.  My mother always said to us when you do a job do it right and finish it, bacause a job half way done is as good as a job not done at all. So to those of you that are faithless and can’t see the beautiful day you have in front of you, because your to busy trying to block out the sun, well I say to you, just let it shine for the rest of us.

Food For The Mind

Lilly’s Way