Blooming Again

Massey wrote this on the message board in our kitchen the first week we moved to Orlando. It's actually still on there and has been a reminder for me every single day. I was apprehensive to say the very least when we first arrived, then heartbroken when Zach packed up after just three days and moved back to Georgia. Then I found out I was also unemployed and my life felt like it was falling apart. It took me three weeks to find a job but seemed like three months. It took me almost four months to shrug off the depression I sank into...but shrug I did!

And just as suddenly, I began to bloom.

Massey and I discovered the part of Orlando we had moved to was only thirty minutes from the beach and took full advantage of it.

I made a few friends at work...

                   


and Massey quickly became friends with our young next door neighbor.

Then I met a wonderful young girl at work who I knew Massey would also love to have as a friend...          and now they are besties too.

                   
                                                         

And just like that, we were blooming again!

I think I finally knew everything would be okay when I started to find life funny again. I was sitting at a red light today behind a minivan.

             On the back window was a sticker which read "Condoms prevent minivans."


Yes, I owned a minivan when our kids were little. Massey called them 'Loser Cruisers' when she was in high school.

         The best decision I ever made in life was deciding to one day drive a Loser Cruiser for a while.


I'm lucky enough to still have Massey here living with us for a bit longer. TJ is living in Charlotte now and we miss him dearly but are happy for all his success.

 Zach is plugging away at life back in Georgia and making it on his own. He's had to learn the hard way, which often times is the best way.

Tim is doing great at his new job and mine is going pretty well and gets more lucrative every week.

Moving to Orlando meant I had to leave one sib behind but also meant I moved close to the other.

Cindy and I have lived less than thirty minutes apart from each other for the past several decades. The Leach bond is a tight one and has always been my saving salvation. Cindy and I both found the transistion to living in different states very hard to get used at first and tested our bond a few times, but never broke it.

It is what it is. I needed to move to Orlando for the good of my family and she needed to remain in Georgia for the good of hers. We never go more than about three months without visiting each other and have learned to live with the short absences. They even tend to make visits all the sweeter.

Her birthday is this coming Monday, so she is coming down on Friday and staying at my brothers' all weekend. I've been working like a mad woman so I could take the entire weekend off as well.

The weather here has been spectacular and is forecasted to be much of the same all weekend. My brother has healed nicely from his surgery and is in a walking boot now. He is stubborn (another Leach trait) and went back to work four days after having this done...not to mention this picture was taken several weeks after surgery.

He even took his two Dobes for their shots (by his self) while still on crutches and using a knee scooter to get around.

                                The male weighs as much as I do, the female a bit less than me.

                                      They are hands down the two luckiest dogs in the world...
                         and Cindy and I are hands down the two luckiest sisters in the world.


There's never really been a time when we weren't close except when we were little ones but what sibs get along when they are three, six and ten?

      Our parents must have kept these pictures as a form of birth control, that's for sure.

Talk about a gruesome threesome.

We still fought when we were around this age but were all beginning to realize we were pretty lucky kids.

                                            I'd say by this point, the bond was getting tighter.




Then our Mama suddenly died one day in 1977...in less than sixty seconds. It broke all our hearts but bound us together forever.

I know our Diddy never got over it, he just learned to live with it and carried on...for us.

This is the first picture I have of us together after Mama died.

It must have been our first trip to the beach without her.

After our Diddy died almost as suddenly (ten days from healthy to being taken off life support) in 2002 from West Nile Virus, you couldn't have pulled us apart with a pair of vise grips. All we had left was each other.


                                    And almost forty one years later, we still have each other.

As I type this post, it makes me realize no matter whatever happens to me, or in my life, I'm lucky.

So the scene is set for this weekend, and what a scene it is.

All this and both my sibs too? Oh yeah, I'm finally blooming again.

Bloom where you are planted...and I was planted next to the best.

Let the good times roll...and trust me, they will!



Till next time, COTTON