Hang in There

Our word of the month for September is PERSEVERANCE and all three sisters have vivid examples of their perseverance in the face of extreme challenges. Well, perhaps not extreme, but challenges nonetheless. What follows is a detailed and graphic account of each sister’s very real struggle to overcome adversity.

How Does My Garden Grow?

By Big Sis

Disclaimer: Please be advised that although it was tempting , no animals were harmed during the following brutally harrowing experience.

My first attempt at a vegetable garden was overwhelmingly successful. I was convinced that I was practically the “second coming of gardeners” and guaranteed eternal success. My second attempt was less successful but fruitful nonetheless. I soldiered on for a few more years, each year bringing more challenges and accompanying depleted harvests.

This past summer proved exceptionally difficult. Although I was faced with numerous natural enemies on almost all fronts, I dug deep (no pun intended) and persevered. In no particular order, those natural enemies are:

• Blight: My tomatoes showed signs of blight early on. Only concerted pruning efforts and a lot of cursing on my part saved my crop.
• Bugs: For some reason slugs in particular seem particularly enamoured with my garden. It took me a long time to figure out what was dining on my plants. Finally , a nighttime vigil revealed the enemy and I successfully lured them to their death with beer.
• Deer: Early on, my apple crop was looking fantastic and I was pumped! Then I noticed that leaves were disappearing and my husband pointed out deer tracks in the surrounding soil. Yes, those little **&#$* were dining on my apple trees. Apparently , deer are notoriously difficult to deter in their quest for destroying vegetation, and my regular visitors proved no different. In spite of a creative effort at surrounding the trees with stakes, tennis balls, mesh and streamers they showed no fear and brazenly devoured the leaves as I simultaneously yelled at them and watched helplessly…from a safe distance of course. My apple crop was minimal.
• Germination Failure: For an unknown reason, several of my seeds failed to germinate. I planted as usual, but got only 4 carrots and a few cucumbers….did I mention powdery mildew?

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At this point, the obvious question is “did I have any successes?” and the answer is yes. My bean crop was bountiful and delicious, but that was my only consolation. Altogether a depressing and sad year in my gardening saga, but I soldier on with perhaps unwarranted optimism. I am determined to persevere. I will take time during the winter to reassess my strategies and prepare for another season of challenges. I will not give up and that my friends, is the true definition of perseverance…..or stupidity, as the case may be!

A Stitch in Time

by Middle Sis

Our mom Betty was a wonderful knitter. I remember being in awe of her needles clicking and clacking while she watched TV or carried on a conversation with nary a look at what she was knitting. I still have a beautiful sweater she knit for me when I was a teenager and she continued her knitting well into her 80s making prayer shawls for a local church.

As a child I always admired her skill and asked her to teach me to knit. Unfortunately, it became clear early on that I had not inherited the knitting gene and so I put the needles aside and moved on to other pursuits.

Enter retirement and free time enough to start some new hobbies. I remembered mom’s knitting and also admired Big Sis’ knitting skill. She clearly had inherited the knitting gene from mom and produced many beautiful items. I thought maybe I should give knitting another try. Perhaps if I persevered things would turn out differently. Despite coaching from big Sis and her intervention when a project went bad (which it regularly did), the best I could do was dishcloths with a few too many holes in them to be useful. Sigh… I guess knitting was not to be “my thing.”

Not to be deterred, I thought perhaps crochet might be a better choice – only one hook to manage and it seemed there were a lot more holes in crochet pieces, so it might suit my natural propensity for producing projects with lots of holes… After purchasing copious amounts of yarn and hooks, I decided it would be best to start small and try dishcloths again. Crochet was not going to beat me! To my surprise I was able to produce a reasonably presentable product with minimal frogging (rip it rip it – get it??) involved. It looked like my perseverance was finally paying off! After providing every family member with enough dishcloths to last for a lifetime, I decided it was time to move on to bigger and better things.

Heady with my dishcloth success, I decided to try making blankets. After all, weren’t blankets just really big dishcloths? After success with making blankets for newborn babies in the family and then for grandkids, I was on a roll. I decided to make a blanket for mom after finding some beautiful red wool which I thought would fit well with her decor.

With confidence overflowing, I embarked on this project using a new stitch I’d never tried before. After a few false starts and some thoughts of being in over my head, I am happy to report that I finished the blanket in time to give to mom for Christmas that year and she proudly displayed it on her couch. After mom’s passing a few years later, I kept the blanket and little did I know how many happy memories it would bring back for me.

And who knew that persevering after mom tried to teach me to knit all those years ago would come full circle to where a blanket I crocheted for her would mean so much to me.

Sleeping Beauty

By Little Sis

Do you want to know the worst shift to work in the entire universe? It is 11:00 PM – 7:00 AM, commonly known as the Graveyard Shift. How do I know this to be true? Read on and you will find out.

At one point in my life I was unemployed, and needed to find a new job in the field that I had been working in for the past 20 years. One day I came across an ad for a position at a large company wanting to hire someone for the exact type of work I was looking for. It turns out, they were looking for someone to work the Graveyard Shift, Monday to Friday. How hard could that be? So, in my boundless enthusiasm I applied and about a week later I had an interview and was hired.

On the Sunday night before my first shift, I stayed up as long as I possibly could. My thinking was, if I stay up late I will sleep later and get up later. I went to sleep around Midnight (that was late for me), and I got up around 8:00 AM. I tried off and on during the day to go back to sleep but it was impossible. I just couldn’t do it, so I went to my first day, or should I say night at my new job, in a kind of sleepy/excited state.

I arrived at work and was introduced to the two other people who were crazy enough to work this shift. They were both very nice, and we got along well. These two had been on the Graveyard Shift for quite sometime, and were very generous with their advice on how to stay awake. They offered up 5 Hour Energy, Red Bull, and lots and lots of coffee. In my complete naivety, I was certain that surely it wouldn’t come to that. I could do this without any artificial stimulants!

And before I knew it the sun was coming up, and it was time to go home. I was so proud of myself for staying awake my first night, but I think it was just the excitement of a new job that got me through it. Little did I know what was to come.

As the days turned into weeks, the reality of a shift that challenged my natural body clock hit me hard. I have to admit I took my co-workers advice and started to use 5 Hour Energy often. I think I bought so much 5 Hour, that I should have had stocks in the company, but I knew that it was an unhealthy habit and I eventually went “cold turkey” to stop. That was itself a challenge within a challenge but as usual, I persevered. 🙂 Gradually I became adjusted to my “backwards” schedule without any caffeine.

Staying up was not so much the problem now, as much as it was going to sleep when I got home. How does one get to sleep when the entire world is up, including my neighbor who was sanding their deck at 11:00 AM on a weekday, and the gardeners with their annoying leaf blowers that seemed to go on endlessly? How dare they I say!

I went back to my co workers seeking more knowledge. They both suggested Melatonin as a sleep aid. I gave that a whirl, and all I got was nightmares, which by the way is a common side effect according my local Pharmacist. Needless to say, I stopped taking the Melatonin, but I was still searching for answers and the only other possibility that kept coming up was custom ear plugs.

After more and more frustrating attempts to sleep during the day, I finally gave in and got the ear plugs. I had been avoiding that option because of the expense, but I realized that I am worth it. As it turns out I am a very light sleeper, and the ear plugs and a sleeping mask were a godsend. I was finally able to sleep about 6 hours, and I was happy with that.

I persevered for five years, when finally an opportunity came up to work during the day. I jumped at the chance, got the day shift, and thought all my prayers had been answered. For the most part they have been, but it was hard going from a night person to a day person. My body clock over the course of those five years was turned completely upside down, and I had to readjust again. Now I often found myself unable to go to sleep at night and even if I was successful, I would wake up at 3:00AM, ready to start my day. Fortunately I have finally returned to a regular sleep schedule and life is good!

By this point you might be asking yourself what if any, was the best part of working this shift? Other than the fact that there was no traffic going to work or coming home, and my personal pride in rising to an extremely difficult challenge, absolutely nothing comes to mind.

Aside from the extreme drama of the above situations, the Sisterhood remained calm and focused in their pursuit of solutions to real life dilemmas. We’re very proud that we persevered and came out the other side, stronger, smarter and just a teeny bit smug. Yes, we are living proof that there truly can be happy endings. And, as is usually the case,

Betty Would Love That!

We plan on publishing a new post every Monday so stay tuned for our next one entitled “On Our Way To Randy’s House…Maybe?”