MISSING NINA...

I honestly can’t believe it is already Friday. January usually goes by slowly for me for some reason, but this one is already hurrying by.


I am not really sure what to post about. I am constantly amazed at the amount of different topics, information, thoughts, dreams, and happenings you can find going on in Blogsville. At any given time I can come on this computer and be carried away to something interesting and different. I am NEVER bored with it. It sure doesn’t seem like the rest of you share my dilemma of lack of topics, haha. I have had a quiet week, and truthfully I have REALLY enjoyed it. No where I HAD to go, nothing much I really HAD to do. I have spent my days organizing a few things around the house, doing my regular household chores (dishes, laundry, etc.) and just generally taking it easy. I have spent some time catching up with some of my kids on the phone. It’s funny…you would think that it would be something I really do a lot of, and yet I really don’t. How I have enjoyed it. I haven’t talked with my middle son since Christmas Day however, and I will correct that this week-end. His business hours and LONG commute, make talking with him a little more challenging. My mom and step dad are STILL not feeling at all well, and I would appreciate a prayer or two for them if you get the chance. They just can’t seem to shake the colds they got shortly before Christmas; in fact my step dad has ended up developing pneumonia. And considering he was diagnosed over two year ago with terminal lung cancer this is especially concerning. It seems almost a miracle that he has done as well as he has. They told us at the time that he had 4 – 6 months at the most; and yet here we are OVER two years later, and he hasn’t had ANY signs at all that he is sick in any way. Never even coughs. He chose not to do the chemo treatments they wanted to do as he was 84 years old and they told him the chemo would NOT cure him, but MIGHT give him more time. Why, it seemed, would he want to make himself desperately sick with chemo treatments when it wouldn’t cure him anyway, and the chemo itself could in fact kill him?? It has turned into being such a good decision as he has led a very active, quality filled life these last two years. How I thank God for this.

On a completely different note….I had to do something today I have never had to do before, and I felt myself practically in a panic as it was about to happen. I felt like Lucy in that old episode where she had to fire her housekeeper, and it got out of control, haha. I will tell you the story. First I guess I have to go back almost 20 years ago when I was a MUCH younger woman and had 4 VERY active kids and a GIANT house, worked part time, and was ALWAYS behind, haha. My hubby had told me that (“for a while” as he said ~ though it lasted over 20 years) I could hire someone to help me clean the house a couple of times a month. I was giddy. Cleaning the house was something I could just never seem to get completely done. When you are cooking, feeding, doing the laundry for, driving them everywhere etc. for 4 kids in completely different stages of life, AND working part time, ALWAYS at someone’s sporting event, it just was almost impossible and really stressing me out. Now truthfully, I have been called a fanatic more than once when it comes to my house. I do like things cleaned, organized and straight. I can’t help it. Just seems to be in my nature. But I was driving myself and everyone else crazy trying to keep up and thus my husband’s offer. I went through a few women who either charged WAY too much or didn’t do half of what I wanted them to do, before I FINALLY stumbled upon Nina. She thoroughly cleaned my house twice a month for the next 20 years! She became like one of the family truly. I have laughed with, cried with, and loved that woman forever it seems. Every one of us got the rough side of her tongue on occasion, but her heart was HUGE! She cleaned things in a fashion that had never even occurred to this fanatic, haha. I was under NO illusions however. I knew she was a one of a kind, and I appreciated her more than you can ever imagine. She would arrive at my house at 9 am and rarely left before 6. Everything fairly glistened. In all the years she worked for me she took one vacation (where she missed one of her days) and was sick bad enough only ONCE where she wasn’t able to work. She could be counted on like the sun comes up every morning. If I needed her for anything special she ALWAYS accommodated me. Now I did much for Nina too. I always remembered her birthdays, her anniversary, and Christmas, with gifts that she would cry over. She was unable to have any children of her own and loved mine to death. She got ALL of my items I might have sold or given to good will, including nice pieces of furniture. She would collect things from many of the women she worked for and I helped her get it together in crates to ship to Portugal where she was from. I made her MANY things to wear over the years, and she wore them with pride. She rejoiced with me when I got new carpet, and as the kids began to leave home she missed them as much as I did. Oh, and I don’t think I mentioned, she did ALL of this for a very reasonable price. Nina and I were employer and employee, but we were friends. She went WAY beyond the call of duty for me. Now Nina was 3 years older than I was and the cleaning was starting to become a problem for her. She had quit some of her regulars and was only doing 4 of us anymore when we decided to move. She told me that she wasn’t going to be able to come to my new house EVEN if I went to pick her up and take her home etc. (she has never liked to drive freeways) It was just getting to be too much for her. I totally understood of course, but it has been an adjustment like you can’t imagine. Now we still regularly talk on the phone. Nina will be a part of my life until the day the good Lord calls one of us home. But in the meantime, with the arthritis in my knees, I NEED some help with my house. A couple times a month is more than adequate, and I could really get along with only once I imagine as well. I do all of the laundry, dishes and daily chores, but getting down on my knees to scrub toilets, or showers or floors, or even really pushing the vacuum around is out of the question for me for right now. My hubby can do this of course (and does quite well I will add when he needs too) but I can’t bear for him to have to do this after he has worked all day long. Sooo, all of this to say I began to look for “someone” to clean my house. NEVER did I think it would be quite the chore or challenge it has been. I had to fire the women who have been coming for the last 3 months this morning. The other women I went through before I found Nina, my hubby got rid of for me, haha. But these women are never here when he is, and rarely answered their phones. Sooo, the job fell to me. I wasn’t even sure when (or if) they would show up again, but knew when (or if ) they did I would have to tell them. They were supposed to be here yesterday and never showed (the third time they have done this) and came knocking on the door at 9:30 this morning. I felt my heart literally start pounding. They are nice ladies but just can’t be counted on. And worse yet, don’t really clean to suit me even with me pointing things out and offering suggestions etc. Nina told me WEEKS ago to get rid of them, haha. Said she come and do it for me if I was too chicken. Well, they really took it very well. I don’t think they were even surprised. I have hired a cleaning service (which I don’t really like the idea of) which will be here on Monday, so we will see. I honestly wished I was just able to do it all myself. I feel guilty sometimes to tell you the truth that I have cleaning people when I don’t work outside of my home, and I don’t have a bunch of kids keeping me busy besides. But Nina told me the other day that she felt the Lord put me in her life as much as I felt He had put her in mine. She had sooo many nice things to say and it blessed me more than you could know. Bottom line of this LONG story? I miss Nina!! Have a wonderful week-end!