Sandi Chats

Good Monday morning. It's a new week full of potential and great possibilities. Hope everyone has a wonderful week planned. For me this week has been planned for several months now. This is the week we are cleaning out Mom and Dad's house. I've both looked forward to and dreaded this week since it was planned. It is a time to experience memories, which in our case are overwhelmingly good memories, and also can be a bit emotional at times. But I was braced for that part of it so I'm good. They spent 60+ years living in the same house, moving there when I was only 6 years old. It was a house built to raise a family in, plenty of room for their growing family, which eventually became a shrinking family as we all left home to lead our adult lives. But it was always like coming home to go there. Even late last year during Mom's last months, after not living there for nearly 50 years, it was still so familiar and comforting and just felt like home. So wandering through th

We chatted last week about time, mostly not having enough of it. This week we are also going to chat about time, specifically the passage of time. Each of us is getting older one day at a time. It's been said that getting older is better than the alternative, which I have always taken to mean that the only way you don't get older is to die. So I have to agree, getting older is a good thing. So why doesn't it really feel like a good thing? The reminders of aging are all around us, in the way we snap, crackle and pop as we move. In the fact that bedtime seems to be getting earlier each year. And a glance in the mirror confirms that it's happening...gray hair, wrinkles, flabby muscles!  This past weekend we had the occasion to see all of our great grandsons. Our Maverick, who is five, made sure I had a reality check. We hadn't seen him since Christmas and I asked him if he remembered playing the piano with me at Christmas. He nodded and said, "But you're older

  Good Monday morning! It's a new week and a new day full of opportunities and possibilities! What will you do with your week? I have been pondering this same question this morning. There will be the usual chores, laundry (every Monday!), dishes, floors and general pick up and either put away or pitch. And I will go to my part-time job a couple of days. But I also have a list of to-do's that is apart from the regular daily/weekly chores. This week it includes hauling out the cardboard accumulated in the garage, cleaning off the bed in the guest bedroom, cleaning up the pile of brush laying in the backyard so we can quit mowing around it, plus a bunch of household once-in-a-while chores. All I lack for the projects is time! Time is a precious commodity. Each of us has 24 hours in any given day, and seven days in any given week. However, there is a big difference in time and available time. Available time is the time we haven't allocated to other chores, or in my case, waste!

We have been back from our winter travels to Arizona for 3 weeks now...and what a whirlwind of activity that has been! In these three weeks I have gone back to work, we have traveled to northwestern South Dakota for a graduation, went camping over Memorial Day, and I celebrated my 50th class reunion. That doesn't sound so busy except that all of mundane life had to happen around those activities. I always say our Arizona friends wouldn't know us in Nebraska, and our Nebraska friends wouldn't recognize us in Arizona. Our lives in each place are polar opposites. In Nebraska we are constantly busy and on the go. In Arizona we spend a lot of time just relaxing, soaking up sun and doing nothing. It might be more fun to mix a little of both in a week, but we have to do it in blocks of time. So for 3-4 months we sit in the sun, reading, knitting, crocheting, visiting. And the remainder of the year is a bunch of crazy running and work. Which life is better? I think they both have t