About Me

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Watkinsville, Georgia, United States
We lost my beautiful wife of 20 years on 9/12/07. Lisa was my world she was my everything and now she is gone. We are learning to live without Lisa now. I say we because I am not alone. My children are stuck in this mess with me. These are my notes, my vent, my way of letting you all know that we are doing well (some days). This is for myself, my friends and my family that want to know how we are doing and what we are up to. Along the way I hope this might also help someone else who has been dealt a similar hand.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Shopping That Doesn't Suck

only have so much to give…

I have a full time job and can only take a finite amount of time off from work.  So, I do as I always have and save my vacation time for family time.  Of course, these days that means I save my vacation for when my son is out of school.  With spring break coming up soon I let the kids know that I would be on vacation that week.  I think that Abby had a little trouble understanding the fact that I couldn’t take a week off for her spring break AND take a full week off for Matt’s spring break, which is several weeks later.  How I explained this to her was that she’s basically grown and I’m still raising Matt.  While I think she got that I don’t think that she liked it.  Heck, I wouldn’t have liked it either…  So, I burned a day of my highly valued vacation and surprised her with a day of shopping today.  I must say we had a pretty good time.  We were both in a good mood and anxiety free.  We found some pretty good deals, which made me happy, and we found some really cute stuff, which made her happy.

I think she gets that I only have so much that I can give.  She just wants her share and then some if she can wrangle it.  Again, I don’t blame her, I would too.  After all, she’s been through hell just as much if not more so than me.  So what the heck… A day of shopping and lunch with “Baby Girl” wont be available to me forever.  Not to mention, when you think you only have so much to give, if you will just dig a little deeper or think a little harder you usually find you DO have a little more to give.


I have finally finished turning my detached three-car garage into a shop and storage area.  Two of the bays are now dedicated to woodworking and projects of all kinds.  The third bay is dedicated to storage with one third of it turned into a badly needed “seasonal closet”.  I put the finishing touches on it this past weekend with five big shelves for tub storage and on the other side an area to hang clothes and such (note the handy before and after pictures).  We can finally get all those tubs of off season clothes, boxes of Christmas ornaments, camping and fishing gear and other things out of the barn.  It’s good to have this project being me.  At times I thought that I would never finish it.  This project has been moving at a snails pace for about a year and a half now.  I just gave it what I could when I could.  I would do a little wiring here and spread a little drywall mud there.  Sometimes I could devote days to it and sometimes I could only devote an hour or two to it.  My perseverance has paid off and I have accomplished what I envisioned and set out to do. I guess all I had to do was keep digging to find that I did have enough to get it done. 


BEFORE                                                                       AFTER
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1 comment:

  1. BonnieMarch 14, 2011 at 5:50 PM

    It's bad enough to have parent guilt...worse when it's just you. I deal with it too...and my kids are all grown.

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