Family Time

Don't forget to check out my quilting and other needle work projects at Webs of Threads.  And while there, go ahead and follow me on that blog too.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Above is the only existing photo of the five of us siblings in existence that was not taken when we were still teenagers and younger and living at home.  You might say we haven't been a very close family.  This was taken in my Mom's hospital room after she'd been placed on hospice comfort care and before she was transported to the house.  She used to say "None of you kids can get along long enough to be under the same roof for more than five minutes."  Well, on one hand, that was pretty much accurate.  This 'all under the same roof' lasted only about long enough to get this photo!  And she was still aware enough to know we were all there at the same time.  I would have had us gather around her to include her, but had promised I wouldn't take any photos of her in the hospital, and I kept that promise.   It isn't that we don't get along, we just have different life styles and three of us live in different states.  The two in the same state live an hour and half apart. The brother with the beard was only 12 when I left home at 18.  The one with the red head band has a job that takes him to job sites all over the country under contracted durations, but he has also spent time in Antarctica and St. Croix.

Here, we have L-R, my daughter, my sister, my dad, my sister's son and his two children.

Taken during my week at home in mid-March, my daughter (Victoria), Marty, and Nick.  I would have really enjoyed having my daughter stay with us longer than just the couple of days she was able to be there.  I really miss her and she's about 1200 miles away in a different direction. 

My dad, his youngest daughter from his first marriage and her two daughters.  I had not seen her since we were teenagers or younger.  Stuff like that happens when you live 900 miles apart and didn't have a close relationship.  I was, during my teenage years, close to her oldest sister, in part because we were close to the same age and she and I had stayed in touch in my early years away from home but as life goes, we eventually drifted apart.  I've spoken with her a couple times though while I was there, and hope to take my dad over to visit with his daughters, he has three, when I get back up there.  I enjoyed meeting this step-sister's daughters.  One expressed an interest in learning about her family's genealogy and I can certainly fill her in on that as I've done quite a lot of research on my dad's ancestry.

He's On The Road

Today is Nick's first day of student driving.  Wednesday's are a late start day for school so they have become the perfect day for his driving lessons.  

Our state requires students to have 2 hours with a professional instructor before they can be taught by their own parents, and the instructor must give them a total of six hours of instruction, so he will have two additional early Wednesday mornings with her. 

The nice thing is that she picks him up right at the house and drops him off as well and he will still have about 15 minutes to finish getting ready for school by preparing his lunch - yeah, that's now his responsibility :).

Spring Blooms From the Wet Land

I'll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves.  I sure enjoyed seeing all of these blooms, and even more of which I didn't take photos of.  All are from my parents yards.

Crocus 02/09/2014

Strawberry blossoms, and uh, weeds too.

These are commonly known as Wild Flags (a wild iris).  I understand my mom dug up some bulbs from the ranch where I grew up.  I remember finding them as a child and being amazed by them. They only reach about 6"- 8" high and they didn't open up well with the cold overcast days before wilting completely.

Violets

Crocus

Hyacinth

These blooms photos are not in chronological order, the tulips came in way after all the rest, and the crocus were back in the early part of February.

DMV Adventures

As I mentioned in my last post, Nick and I had some adventures at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) in order for him to try for his drivers learning permit.

While I was away up north, he took an online course which gave him the wisdom, and a certificate-of-sorts to go to DMV to take the test to get his permit.  Might I add at this point that this is handled so much differently than when I was his age.  Way back in the near-dinosaur era, I got a rule book from the DMV, studied it, took a test and got my permit, then took driver's training in school, then wasn't allowed to get my driver's license until after I turned 18 (and that was because my parents wouldn't let me!).  

Marty bowed out of this activity of acquiring the permit by saying he didn't have time.  Attempt #1 came the day after I returned from up north and I picked Nick up at school at 2:30 - they were on a testing schedule so was a half hour earlier than normal - and proceeded to the DMV which is only about 5 minutes from the school.  It's a very old DMV.  It has not kept up with the population growth in our valley in some ways, one of which is parking space - it is very limited.  I gave up after circling the parking lot for 10 minutes and told Nick we'd try the next day.  

The next day came.  DMV opens at 8:00.  I told this to Nick.  He was still sleeping at 8:45.  We did not get there until after 9:00.  It is also only about a 10-minute drive from home.  We discovered we did not have his birth certificate with us on attempt #2.  Why did I not know this was needed?  Maybe because I was still trying to decompress from my time away?  We went home, got the birth certificate, went back to DMV for attempt #3.  We did not have to wait too long to get a parking space...and it was in the shade.  We went in, stood in long line, get to counter and find out their computers are down!!! Why not have someone at the door stating such before we go in and wait?  We went home.  I later took Nick to school and did not intend to make attempt #4 that day, but by the time he was out of school at 3:00 I'd decided to go ahead and see if the computers were again working.  They were.  But the line was OUT THE DOOR!  We STOOD in that line, only to receive a number and be told to sit and wait.  

And WAIT we did!  Until nearly 4:30, which is the cut off time for taking tests, but we were called to window 8 and finished some paperwork details and paid by credit card oh wait, what? you don't TAKE CREDIT CARDS?  Are you kidding me? No way, you take cash, debit card or CHECKS?  Why would you take checks and not credit cards.  Where was my check book you ask?  Why, it was home on the desk because I had been updating our financial program.  You need $33 you say?  Hmmm, how many ones do I have...oh, wait,  light bulb in the brain...I had a $50 bill stashed (yeah, that was my QUILTING mad money!).  Whew, well at least we didn't have to start thinking about attempt #5!  So Nick gets sent off in one direction to take his test and you guessed it, I got to go sit and wait some more.

After what seemed an incredibly long time, but was really only about 30 minutes - and now it's time for closing - I got up and walked in the direction Nick had gone to see him standing in another line to get his test graded.  I went and stood with him.  The clerk starts checking his test, red mark there, another here, and another, and oh please, after all this DO NOT FAIL this test.  Oh praise God! He only missed 7 and could miss as many as 8 and still pass.  The clerk works through the rest of the paperwork and puts a 1/2-sheet of paper in front of Nick to review for errors and what do you mean he's female?  He is NOT!  And I ought to know, I was right there when he was born!  And of course the first clerk at window 8 is gone, they can't find the original form that was filled out but could start to re-do all the paperwork to fix his gender, but it took three clerks working on it to do it and another 1/2 hour of our time.  I was never so glad to get away from that DMV, and yes, we were the last customers out, but thankfully do not need to repeat the process.  I am so very happy Nick passed the test on his first go round.

Now, the next step is to have him do "professional" driver's training, 6 hours total, but after the first 2 hours, his permit will be 'official' and the instructor signs it and it is valid then for him to drive with us in the car.  His first behind the wheel lesson will be at 6:45 a.m. on Wednesday. 

Stay off the streets on Wednesday, Nick's coming through, hehe.

Home Again

I arrived home again on Tuesday evening after a 14 hour 5 minute drive from the wet land, which was indeed wet as I left.  In fact, I even hit some snow flurries along my drive as I hit the summit of the Siskiyou range.  It was an uneventful drive otherwise, thankfully, and reaching home was a relief from the tedium of a long boring drive south beyond the central part of the state.

Since Tuesday, I've been unpacking, doing laundry, re-acclimating myself to my own home, updating our own financial records, and cleaning house.  Yes indeed, house cleaning!  It has largely waited for me for the five weeks I was gone on this last trip.  Of course, not much was done during the first five weeks I was gone nor the one week I'd been home in between either, so you can imagine how much there is to do.

During the past five weeks up in the wet land, I have enjoyed the continuing spring blooms and greening up of trees that displayed beautiful arrays of flowers and of course the rains, funny how I forgot how hard it rained up there, but then I really don't remember it ever raining that hard there.  My dad assured me it did, but then his memory isn't superb these days.  I was also able to get his financials in order along with getting him to take care of addressing his need to assign someone to be his power of attorney in general, as well as update his advanced directive and his will - all done!  He, and I, can now relax for the most part. 

One brother stepped up to the plate and took over paying Dad's water & light bill...of course, it was largely because said brother needed a utility bill with his own name on it in order to get per diem payments when he's on far away job sites which, I understand, can be as much as a couple thousand dollars per month, so it's clearly to his benefit and a small cost to him to take over the payment.  And it obviously will help my dad.  My sister stepped in and added a cell phone to her plan so that he can have a phone on him when he goes out for his early morning two-mile walks.  Hopefully he'll truly be able to use it, he's not very tech-savvy.

I'm looking to be at home for at least four to six weeks.  After being largely absent from the blogosphere for three months, getting back to it may be a slow and intermittent process.  My dad's health and abilities is not ideal so the future is a day-by-day thing where I can't make any long-term plans or goal-setting other than in what will likely be 4-6 week increments for the time being and going back and forth on that 890 mile each way drive.

In other news, Marty had taken a temp job for low pay after completing his month-long training in February.  The job began two days after I went back up north.  While I was still up north again, and while still working at the low-paying job,  he'd been having some interviews with a company only a couple of blocks from where he used to work prior to his August lay-off.  They have given him an offer and he is in the processes with having given his sample for drug-testing and filling out an additional application for the parent company and getting a back-ground check.  There should be no issues on any count there, so could be starting a new job within the next few weeks.  This is good news from a financial standpoint, but I'd been trying my best to encourage Marty and Nick about a move to the northern wet land.

And Nick?  Well, his best news is that he now has his driver's permit.  Of course, technically, it isn't valid until he's had his first two hours of "professional" driver's training, which will be on Wednesday, and then he can drive with us.  He will also still need a total of six hours of "pro" instruction.
I will explain in another post about our adventures in his acquiring his permit...I will only say, our local DMV is not on my happy list!

Rainy Day Visit

I feel like I'm just stopping in for a visit at my own blog.  With all the happenings surrounding my Mom's hospitalization and subsequent death, working with my Dad to get him squared away - a slow process, a one-week necessary trip home and returning back to the northern wet land, I haven't felt much like blogging or even reading my favorite blogs (apologies there!).  When I DO, and I WILL, get back to that, I will have two or three months to catch up on.

Here in the wet land, it is in fact, w-e-t.  Does that surprise you?  I can honestly say, I am enjoying every bit of it.  I haven't spent Spring here in probably more than 30 years, and then it was but a two week vacation, so being here from mid-winter and into Spring, is just a delight.  My parents' front and back yards have a lot of flowers, some I don't even know what they are, but the many varieties of daffodils, the rhododendron bushes, hyacinths in several colors, primroses, have all been in glorious bloom for the last week or two, and now the tulips are close to opening.  And, venturing out through town the other day, after having not been out of the house for several days, I was astonished to see how many trees were blooming along the streets.  I can't even venture a guess as to what they are, though I recognized one as maybe a tulip tree and it may have a different name.  I think some could be cherry blossoms, maybe even apple blossoms and other fruits or fruit-less varieties of them.  Paying attention to them all, was quite a distraction while I was driving.  I apologize for the lack of photos at this time.

It was (still is?) very tempting to send in my resume for a local business seeking office help.  In fact, I sent the ad to my hubby and my son saying I might apply but they didn't think I was very funny, especially since Marty did finally get a job, though it's not in his former field but in the one he just received a month's training in and the pay is only about 1/4, or less, of his former income.  I'm missing my guys, but at the same time, I'm really enjoying my extended time here and getting to spend time with other family members.

Winding Down

Round One of my time here in the wet land of the north is winding down.  It is of course, bittersweet.  

I still find it hard to believe that my Mom is gone from this world, but her memory - good and bad - will live on.  

It's been nearly a week since she left and in that time, I've been coming alongside my dad in getting him, at least for now, familiar with his financial picture.  He has little to work with, but as long as he controls his spending and can remember to set aside the monies for those things that only bill once or twice a year, he should be ok.  Operative word is 'should'.  

At 80, he has some memory issues, and some minor (?) health issues, so while I'll be heading home this coming Monday morning, I'll only be gone for a week to take care of my own personal business, and then come right back for another month, or two, or indefinitely. 

It would be easier if I had great confidence in even one of my four siblings' abilities, but they have jobs and such and can't be here.  I'm not sure yet just how well my dad will do entirely alone even if I can get him on board with processing his own paperwork/bills/checks, and he has no confidence in the other sibs to do the things that need to be done.  Definitely a difficulty of living nearly 900 miles away, but I can be here for now, though it's hard on Marty and Nick.

My daughter will fly in on Sunday afternoon, and drive back with me; I am so looking forward to seeing her, and we're keeping her very brief time with us as a secret surprise to Nick.  We haven't seen her in over three years!