Granddad - Miss Him

This time of year is when I miss my Granddad Harper the most.  His birthday was on February 19 and because mine is on the 15th we almost always celebrated together.  For the past 7 years it has been hard not to be able to do that.  He passed away within a couple of weeks of Erynn's birth and he never got to see her personally but he saw pictures and he knew how important he and my Grandmother were to me.  Erynn's full name is Erynn Rowan Harper Perry - she carries on for them with her name which he knew also.  I tell her often about where her name came from and how great they were to me when I was growing up.  She has their spirit so I will always have them with me.

44 - New Year, New Me

I tend to over expect.  I expect people to treat me the way I treat them but that does not always happen. I really wanted my 44th birthday yesterday to be a day of less.  Less clean up, less cooking etc.  Well it actually turned out to be more of those things but some of that was my decision so I will let that go. Going forward into the next half of this life, I will work harder to expect less and just continue to give as I would anyway without expecting anything back.  That of course is opposite to what you normally do.  I want the next half to be more about grounding, centering, focusing and helping.  More and less about me.  More about taking time for myself and less about focusing on my own pain.  The 44th year will be a time of change, being brave and helping others.  Looking foward to it!

2014 The Year of Forced Knowledge

So far 2014 has been difficult.  I am calling it the year of Forced Knowledge because I have been required in the first month of the year to learn how to handle things that either I have never dealt with or have not in a quite awhile.  It began with three day lice event that Erynn and I both had to handle.  That was awful and we ended up having to get professional assistance from The Lice Place to finally rid ourselves of it.  We barely got past that and settle before the Snowpocalyse came and we had to learn how to handle sleeping overnight in strange places, stomping through snow and sliding on ice.  Now we are dealing with family colds all at once.  Usually we spread those out.  Anyway, I have enough forced knowledge, I will be glad to stop that and just choose what I want to learn about again!

Snowmaggedon, Snowpacolypse or Whatever...

(parked cars that could not get up the hill at an interstate exit near us)

Last week was a bit crazy!  No one expected to leave their homes in my area on Tuesday morning and not make it back home that night.  However, many of us went through that very thing.  I thought I would share my experience even though it was much better than some.

Our area weather man is excellent and is very rarely wrong but this one he missed by a 100 miles or so.  He completely prepared the area south of us but we were told it would be fine.  Wrong!  Admittedly we have been very cold down here in the South for most of the winter which is strange for us.  This lead to very cold roads already.  Then around 9am the snow began and instead of stopping in the hour it was expected it went on until 2pm.  By 11am if you had not already left it was too late.  Schools had closed but could not get the buses out so they were asking parents to get their even sooner but the roads were already blocked.  Then the worry set in for many parents including myself because if we could not get there what would happen to our children. Inately we knew the school officials would not put them outside but you still wanted to see your baby!  By 2:30pm I was a mess because Scott had tried to get out of his area (only one exit up from me) and had not been able to.

You see you always think that if you are in control then you can get it done and so I just decided that I would try myself.  I managed to get through the hills and and valleys around my office and got close to Scott's office when I called him and he walked over to me.  However, the area around his office was a mess and we had to get help from another gentleman who pushed us up a hill.  I thought my brakes, transmission and traction control were gone but we made it.  Then we made three attempts at different ways just to get to interstates and by 5:30pm we had not gotten more than 5 miles away so we headed back to Scott's office.

I finally got through the Erynn's school and they assured me that she would be taken care of.  She was having hot dogs, watching movies and playing games.  This helped me calm down some and we hooked up with some others at the office and found a place that was serving chicken and burgers that normally only served sushi!  Not that I had a problem with sushi.

The rest of the evening as it went down to 5 degrees, was spent on the phone and computers checking out what was happening, sleeping on the floor, desk or sitting in a chair and/or eating snacks. It was a long long night and not alot of sleeping actually happened!  On Wednesday morning, we had reached our limit and braved the roadway.  It took us a couple of hours to make a trip that normally takes 45 minutes.  However, not bad considering there were friends who spent 12 hours on the road just to get a few miles.  It appears we were headed in the right direction, away from the accidents and problems.  

We got to Erynn around lunch and she was happy to head home too.  We made it into our subdivision but only far enough to park the car after sliding a bit.  We then walked the half mile to a mile to our house and collapsed once we got in.  Showers, food and naps were great!  

Just so you know we do not usually over react like this for 2 inches of snow but it was ice under that snow!  This is the South we do not spend money on things we do not use but every few years so ice closes us up.  

The best part as always is how people helped each other.  There were so many stories of people stopping to help, taking people in even if they did not know them, and just general shows of support.   For these reasons, I am very glad to live where I do!  

I think all of my friends and family have finally made it home since it was 70 degrees yesterday!  How crazy!

Feel free to share your stories, too!