The Authentic Life: Nablopomo day eight

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Nablopomo day eight

My daughter had a playdate with her little friend today and she wanted to bring my tablet with her. I broke down and told her she could but she was supposed to make sure she brought it back.
We had our sleepover last night and my girls and I ended up staying up until eleven. I think it was at almost eleven last night where I did my most recent blog post here and then I got tired and had to call it quits for the night.
I ended up waking up this morning at ten am. It seems like I sleep later when I am at their house. Usually my girls are playing quietly for a little while. Then finally one of them decides to come jump on me and poke her elbows into me. I keep trying to have her stop that as her elbows hurt.

Today, that girl who wants her refund for a perfectly fine doll, told me she couldn't send me the doll back. I responded back stressing that if she couldn't send the doll back I can't refund her money. She can't keep the doll and also get a refund. It doesn't work that way. It's different if you get someone telling you their product broke in pieces when she got it. For that kind of thing, you have to trust that it really did break and go ahead and refund their money.

But seeing as this girl has been nit picking about a supposed speck of dust. She can't expect to get her money back if she can't be nice and return the doll. I gave her an example of my similiar situation with another seller that I bought a product from. I told her I had to return his item first and then I get my refund. I told her I expect her to respect my wishes and do the same for me. I haven't heard back from her. She was threatening to go to paypal or ebay if I didn't refund her immediately. Yet, I'm thinking as a seller, I should be able to have my product back so i can inspect it before she gets her money back.

I wasn't careful and called her crazy. I didn't realize I could get in trouble for that. I have to be careful from now on, as I can't afford to get kicked off ebay. It's making me some good money.

Tuesday should be busy as far as getting things in packages and mailing them. But right now I am on vacation at my boyfriends. So I am also going to spend some time writing on my sites. I really need to get into the swing of things. I sometimes wish I was writing more each day. Sometimes it just isn't possible and other days I feel as if I have out done myself.

Yesterday was one of those days. I was able to copy a bunch of my poems from Triond and get them on Wikinut too. So today, I was in Wikinut getting urls and checking comments people had made. One guy said he will look at it in a little bit as he was busy writing and promoting his articles. Many of us get so wrapped up in writing our own stuff and promoting it, that we don't stop and read other people's articles and give comments and well needed feedback. We should always take a little time to do that too. You can always learn from other people's writings.

You also never know when someone else has just inspired you. We get inspired all the time. We look at art and photography and feel emotions from what we see. Sometimes we save pictures we like in case we ever want to use them with something. Add some to an article. Or maybe we might like to try to draw on one of the images for fun.

My chip addiction got the best of me tonight. I was craving some and had to get myself some more bags of kettle chips. And I needed some scissors so treated myself to a pink pair and bought some potato sticks. I am going to save the cover for that one for a template for those yo yo quilts. I saw a package of yo yo patterns in walmart over a week ago. The potato stick cover is about the same size. A pringles cover is a little too small.

Not that I am going to sew right away, but I might have a little fun cutting out some fabrics for the yo yo's.

My mother attempted to make a yo yo quilt when we were growing up. I think she got about two rows sewn together and there were a few extras that she had never attached some of the others. I always thought they were kind of cute, so I tried sewing a few many years ago before my children were born. I did end up finally getting rid of her stuff at one point.

She had several different projects that she never completed. she had five to seven strips finished to an afhagan that she was making. Browns, orange rust, and a puky green. It never got finished.

She and my nana were into macrame. They used to make the macrame plant holders. Remember those? I never learned how to macrame, but they did. My mother used to have us do lots of projects. I remember burning the edges of greeting cards over a flame and then we learned how to modge podge them onto a piece of wood. She used to be my Blue Bird Leader in my early grades. She took our group every where.

Camp Ketcha in Maine used to be one of my favorite places. My cousin Michelle was in Blue Birds too, and sometimes we would get to sleep at Camp Ketcha on a weekend. We all got to sleep in wooden bunk beds at night. We had a blast making shadows with our flashlights. There was a grand room where we could all run around and play games. There also was a black piano there that I remember playing at. There was a nice playground and then we would do lots of outdoor routines.

We learned to cook potatoes, carrots and beans in tin foil on the makeshift fire. We trecked through the woods and climbed up on obstacle courses.

My mother also took us to a fire station, police station, maybe behind the scenes at either MacDonald's or Burger King.

Although maybe I am getting some of it mixed up with an enrichment program I also participated in after school when I was a little older. They took us to a lot of places too. My mom always had us do lots of crafts with Blue Birds. The kitchen table was often a mess of papers, glitter, little glitter gems and other little odds and ends. The other girls probably didn't want to go home.

My mother was very active in our lives. She was always taking us everywhere, the beach, to relatives houses and all kinds of places. We went to the beach a lot. We only lived one or two towns away from the ocean. We were always piling into the car to go play at the beach. Search for seashells, swim all day, climb on the rocks. We had a blast.

Do you sometimes miss your childhood days? I do, but I also would never want to go back to repeat it. I think I wouldn't want to repeat anything. There is no special era I would like to go back to. Except for the era when my mom, grammy, nana, grampy, and some of my aunts and uncles were still alive. What I wouldn't give to get that back would be absolutely priceless. Alas, we all know that once someone is gone, they are gone forever and that time you had with them never comes back to relive itself.

You have to accept that it now remains a memory. You can't get anything like that back. It was their time to go and we just have to grieve, go on and accept that it was then, and this is now.

Life sometimes throws us obstacles and we just have to face them and deal with them. I was also given a down syndrome child. I wasn't expecting it, yet it happened and we are so much better because of him. He is such a loveable child. When I was in the hospital with him, I always remember a nurse saying, "You deal with the cards you get dealt with." It really rang true and everyone should learn to accept this fact. Somethings are just not in your cards and you have to be happy with what you have.

And for anyone who faces having a child with special needs, you learn to experience all kinds of things. And yes, at first you thought you were taking a trip to Italy, but instead you discovered that wonderful road to Holland. And some of your best friends end up coming from there.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted January 8, 2012