What I did for Summer Vacation…

Well, heck.  Regular readers will have noticed that Jinksto hasn’t been doing a lot in Blog-land for a while now. Most of the summer in fact.  I’ve been trying to keep things posted but, honestly, they’ve mostly been just filler to post something… anything… to the blog. So, here’s why I’ve been so busy.

Back on May 13th my Sister in Law, her Husband and the two bestest nieces in the world came to stay with us.  They were living in Arizona where they’ve all lived (essentially) for their entire lives and were looking to make a clean break and a new start. 

I’m not really sure how it happened, exactly.  One day we were exchanging emails about “wouldn’t it be great if…” and a month later we had four new people living in our house.  As it turns out, it actually was great but, wow, what an adjustment.   Nothing big, really, just lots of little things that take some getting used to… like wearing clothes all of the time.  People do that?

Tigerlilly maintains her own blog.  Here’s her story about the three day drive across the country.  Her blog is mostly about her struggles (and successes!) with weight loss but there are lots of good stories there as well.  Weight loss?  Again, people do that?

I have to admit that I’m not entirely sympathetic to her “problem” and have endeavored, on occasion, to torpedo her work.  The more I hear the treadmill running the more I think, “hmm, it’d be a nice day for a cookout” or banana pudding, or cookies, or muffins or…  And, let’s let her tell you herself about that evil southern vice that is Sweet Tea.

Tigerlilly’s husband is a good guy.  Because of the distances involved with them living in Arizona, I had never actually met him before they moved here.   While the rest of the country is in a depression (… or was it a recession?) this guy found jobs.  Note the plural.

I recently listened to someone in construction lament that he had been out of work for more than a year and a half (and that his free benefits from Uncle Sam were unfairly running out… but that’s another story).  When the construction job market got too tough in Arizona, Tigerlilly’s husband moved his family across the country to a place where there was more work.  On the first day after arriving in NC he was looking for a job and then wanted to spend the first weekend looking.  Since arriving I think he’s found four jobs, two one-off/temporary things and two full time jobs.  He turned one of them down after a week because it would have required that he move again (to Charleston SC) and then found a job locally.  It’s not been easy but he’s done it.  The current job isn’t really what he wants but he’s still looking and will eventually find what he’s searching for, he’s just that kind of guy.   While he was looking for a job his wife took a job waitressing to help bring in money.  Once they were back on their feet she quit that so that she could focus on homeschooling the girls. 

Seriously? People “can’t find a job in this market”?  Bullshit.  I have proof that you can if you make the time to look.  It hasn’t been easy for them, not for a minute, but they never gave up and were successful.  I have a great deal of respect for these folks and I’m happy to have had the experience of living with them for a short while.

This week things are going so well for them that they’re moving into their own townhouse here in town.  We’ve told them over and over that they can stay with us as long as they need but I can certainly understand their need to get moving.  To get back on their feet and get back to a “normal” life.  People that work that hard to find jobs and feed families aren’t really interested in living in someone else’s house no matter how comfortable you try to make it.   Still, I’m not happy about them moving out.  Our life will be quiet again, for a while, and I won’t have to put on clothes just to go down the hall to the bathroom but somehow that benefit seems somewhat less important than it once did. 

We’ll miss seeing the girls every morning and having the extra help with cooking.  We’ll miss the family meals every night where we all sit at the table to eat and talk about the day. We’ll miss listening to the homeschooling in the dining room every morning and will miss watching the girls learn to add and subtract and to count butterflies in the yard.

They’ll be just down the road and we will, of course, visit regularly but we’ll still miss them a great deal.

Life is easy, life is hard.