King & I

House Sitting: A New Adventure

In 30 days, we will probably be back in Michigan, or close to it. But as always, we are up for a new adventure. For the rest of this month and through the first week of April, we will be house sitting for a friend… maybe. She, like us, is retired but was offered a temp job in her field that was really too good to pass up.

Embracing Flexibility

And we all know how those “too good to be true” jobs are… sometimes they are more of a pain in the backside than they are worth it. So, we’ve gone into the house-sitting gig the same way she is approaching the temp job … taking a “wait and see” attitude. It’s nice to be able to be flexible.

Mobility and Freedom: Living in a House on Wheels

For the next week or two at least, we are living in a stick and mortar home. Right now, I have my laptop set up at her desk and am happily connected to her Wi-Fi. It was rather nice to not have to walk around looking for a spot where the hotspot on my phone had a strong enough signal to connect the laptop to the internet. And oh, the books I can now download with ease onto my Kindle.

Simplifying Life

There is something to be said for living in a house. In the trailer, at least three times a day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) I bemoan the fact that I have to drop to my knees to find a particular pot or plastic food container, that my kitchen workspace is 16 inches wide, my refrigerator is always in need of defrosting, and even when connected to city water, I still ration how much water I use because sooner or later I’ll have to empty the grey water tank.

All that whining aside, I don’t think I could go back to living in a house. I am actually quite content to live in a house on wheels that we tow from campground to campground. I (mostly) know where everything is, and when something goes missing, it’s impossible for it to take more than a few minutes to find it. King and I have everything we need all within the confines of 208 feet of living space. It’s just us, Petra and our few possessions. In fact, I’m looking at ways to declutter more.

That said, most of our possessions are my craft things. His are his golf clubs.

Reviving Family Traditions through Hand Embroidery

I spend a lot of time looking at a variety of web sites at the things people create. I’m starting to move on from tumbling glass (I have one last batch that was given to me to complete when we get back to Michigan) and once I’ve made my last glass “creation” (whatever that may be), I’ll move on to something else.

I’ve actually started messing around with hand embroidery – the kind my aunts and mother used to do whenever they got together for a “sister’s day.” I admit my creations are not as professional looking like my aunts’ and mothers were, but practice makes perfect, right?

Cherished Memories of Family Gatherings

On “sisters’ day,” the aunties would meet at a designated sister’s home, generally mid-morning. There would be visiting over tea, then lunch would be served where there would be catching up on the latest family matters over finger sandwiches, Jello salad and applesauce (I think it’s a Dutch law that luncheons must include Jello salad and applesauce) and then they would all retire to the living room and break out their embroidery – usually pillowcases for whatever niece was getting married. There were occasions when an aunt had finished a quilt, and they would gather to tie off the backing. On those occasions they would enlist my younger sister, our cousin and me to help with the tying off of the quilt. The quilt and the backing would be spread across dining room chairs, with we kids crawling underneath to poke threaded needles back through the quilt to be tied off.

Whatever the project, once completed for the day, coffee and cookies or cake would be served (another Dutch law, I believe) before they would head home. Sometimes in the week or two before the pending get-together, my mom would get her most recent pillowcase out, finish it and then head to the local variety store to buy a new kit so her sisters wouldn’t know she hadn’t worked on it since the last visit.

Finding Joy in the Journey

For me, it’s a little simpler, I find designs I like on my laptop, back a piece of material with a full-sheet mailing label, print it off onto the material and peel the label backing off. Works like a charm.

My mother was a pretty traditional Dutch woman, but not quite as traditional as her sisters. In fact, when I was younger when it was Mom’s turn to be the hostess, she would drive from our home in Hamilton to Grand Rapids to pick up her sisters and chauffeur them back and forth as she was the only one with a license. When my uncles retired, they would drive the sisters to Hamilton and eventually a few of my aunts got their own licenses. Mom was the progressive sister.

I’m not certain how our families view King and I – progressive, hippies, really strange or just plain nuts. It’s something I never thought about it until writing about Mom.

Oh well, play nice. Don’t kick sand in the sandbox. Don’t forget to vote in November.