Saturday, June 6, 2009

Timing is Everything !!


Massey has started up her color guard again, so I am HOT on the trail of the fund raisers. The first one is for ten visits to a new gym in Newnan for ten dollars. A DOLLAR a visit!!

Lucky for me the people I work with are having a "Biggest Loser" contest, where everyone put in ten dollars and whoever loses the most weight by July 1st wins the pot of almost $300.00.

Boy have I used THAT one to my advantage! What is great about this fund raiser is that 100% of what I sell goes to her account. Usually it is only 50%.

I started with the cutest girls at work , then moved on the guys, telling them who all had already bought passes! Am I a THINKER or WHAT?

I have already sold ten passes and will get ten more on Monday when I turn in this first round of money.

Also the band has a concession stand at the Hi FI Amphitheatre here in Atlanta and if I work there, the proceeds and the tips that I make go directly to defray her dues.

You know...with my marketing skills and my PHD in BS , I may be able to pay for this color guard thing without ever having to kite another check!

Some people at work that already belong to another gym just bought a pass because they know and love Massey and know what a tough time we are having on the home front. One guy just gave me $10.00 and said to sell his pass to someone else, just to help my girl!

It's like stress causes your brain to shut down sometimes. I just haven't been thinking clearly or sometimes just not thinking at all. Even if I pay her entire dues with fund raisers, I still have to buy her shoes, wind suit and under garments. But now that I have been inspired by these loyal friends, I feel empowered.

I can do this! I can work my butt off and knock this bill down from $680.00 to maybe a hundred bucks...I already sent in a check for $200.00.

It's funny the things that you do for your kids...and it doesn't even seem like a sacrifice.

More than anything, I do not want my kids to feel the stress of their Dad not being employed. They seem thrilled that they get to see him so much and that is the thing that I want them to feel.

Life will be smacking them in the face before they know it... and I want them to enjoy their childhood carefree just as I did.

After I was grown, I realized exactly how many sacrifices and concessions both of my parents made for us three kids to have such an excellent and unworried childhood.

That is what I want for my own kids.

My parents didn't drink or go out on dates. We ate at home every night...except Friday when we would go to "The Varsity" for dinner. My father stopped smoking when my oldest sister was born. He told my mother that kids were too expensive for him to have vices.

My mother, who's father was an alcoholic never touched a bottle her entire life. Her vice was "Kool Milds". I remember one time when my father came home from work late, my mother told him he would have to make a sandwich for dinner because there were no left overs.

He went to make a sandwich and commented that there was no loaf bread left. My mother said that he would have to run up to the "Majik Market" to pick up some bread because she had run out.

My father commented "How come we never run out of KOOL MILDS"?

My mother calmly said, "Well, if I smoked bread...we wouldn't be out of bread ."

These are priceless and precious memories to me. My mom sewed our almost every outfit. She was the PTA president, she was the room MOM, she cooked dinners at the church on Wednesdays and cooked for our youth retreats on weekends. She made all the majorette and cheer leader outfits, she sewed ball gowns for my sister who was constantly being voted onto a Homecoming or Valentine court. She even sewed my sister's boyfriend's boxing trunks and robe when he was a Golden Gloves Champion at the age of seventeen.

I say she DESERVED those Kool Milds!

I need to look back at the sacrifices and the commitment level my parents had. This was a time when my father was raising a family of five on a paycheck that doesn't even SCRATCH the surface of what I alone make in a "BAD" week.

We had every thing that we needed or sometimes wanted. We never felt poor, in fact we were popular because my parents were loved by every one they ever came into contact with and ALWAYS had people at our house...just to be able to sit at the kitchen table to talk to my mother while she either cooked or sewed was a pleasure for the "Egg" man that brought us fresh eggs, or the Charles Chip guy who left us a can of fresh chips or the old man that owned the Gulf Station in downtown East Point. He "LOVED" my mom, his wife was an ole biddy that didn't like him hanging around my mom, but he used to bring her extra dishes that they used to give away with fill ups. I still have them. White octagon dishes.

My kids will be as happy as I was...they already are.

I am no match for my mother...she was one in a million, but having never thought of it before, I now realize that she lives in me. She taught me what I needed to know. You do for your kids before you even THINK of doing for yourself.

It makes their childhood stress free and fabulous...and one day thirty years down the road, they will remember it and in turn pass it own to their own kids.

Call it a legacy, call it karma or call it "Having good parents"...I know that they left me with memories that have lingered into my mid life. Memories that come back now and show me how to be the parent that I need to be.

I hope that one day my kids will look back and be as proud of me as I am of my own parents.

There is no higher honor in my book than that.

This is a picture of my Mother taken the day before she died. She was a woman revered by many and loved by hundreds. I love her more today than I have ever loved her before.

She is the woman I aspire to be, the woman that I envy every day of my life.

She is the person that I miss on a daily basis. I love my Dad just as much, but it is HER that made it all happen on a shoe string, a woman that knew how to make a home, make her husband proud and happy and make her kids feel like they didn't have a care in the world.

Isn't that what we all want for our kids?

Til next time...COTTON

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