Procrastination or Distraction?

Guess what? I forgot that I had this blog. It started on a whim back in 2011, can you believe it? All the stories that could have been told. Poof, gone with the wind.

I only put out 2 posts before getting distracted.  That's pathetic but such was my reality 6 years ago, and its only going to get more challenging in 2017 so I may backslide.  Back then, my mom started to have a few more health issues and my work and church life got busier. Way too much for telling now.

So let's just fast-forward to August, 2015 when Eva Wooton Hoskins Arvin, my mother, housemate and best friend, decided 96 years was long enough to be in charge of all of us and joined my ancestors in heavenly rest. Six months later, I retired from 30+ years of retail banking with the only for sure goal of cleaning my house thoroughly.

I sorted papers and filed my taxes and donated clothes and shoes which took me into April. Some of that lack of ambition was procrastination but most of that was grief because her essence was in every room, her combs and brushes, her iron skillets, the little indentations on my sofa where she liked to lay while we watched Jeopardy. (I miss that time)

I do not wish this to be depressing, because out of this time a miracle happened. There's a song from my youth by the Boxcars, The Letter, with a line that says " lonely days are gone, I'm coming home, my baby wrote me a letter".  Except it was a text message from my youngest "baby" about a grandbaby and a "suggestion" that I should make a new home where my heart would be happier.

And that, friends, is a wonderful new distraction from sadness and also a motivation to stop procrastinating, clean house, sell out and head North.  One year retired, relocated, babysitting and blogging again.  I will update about Ott, a cat of extraordinary longevity, in a future post. Oh, and Beware the Ides of March!