Blogs nowdays are supposed to be one track. If you blog about food, keep it about food, if you blog about books, it should be about books, or animals, or gardening, etc. I’m not sure the original intent of a web log was to be focused on one topic, but as a personal diary online. However we always aim to please.  My author website, http://www.suzannejenkins.net has a blog which is very one dimensional, unless I’m feeling rebellious. I might go off the deep end and write something really controversial. Off hand, I can’t think of what, but I’m sure there’s something in there I will regret someday.

Anyway, 2sheepinthecity is not about one thing specifically. I started blogging when I was a partner in a yarn shop. When I left there, I wanted to keep writing short pieces that would be of interest to me and my family.  I just reread one of the early posts, and started laughing.  Nothing has changed! Except I moved seven hundred miles away from my daughter, she got married and had a baby. That is the most intense thing that was different.  My wonderful son is going to get married soon and that is thrilling.  My mother left this earth, that is sad.  I wrote and published five books in a year and a half… that is a feat.  I’m currently writing three more.

When we moved, I left friends I had for more than half my life.  We are still friends! We talk on the phone periodically or chat on Facebook. They know I love them and they love me.  My sister and I text every morning. If I miss my mother, I can text Liz and she will commiserate.  She understands.  I made a friend in our new town, and I can’t believe that she and I didn’t grow up together.  Our friendship came from out of nowhere. (we met on the internet!)

First Birthday Cake

So this past week I was here with Jim and the dogs in the lovely Brandywine River Valley, to celebrate my grandson’s first birthday.  My daughter is moving into a lovely, older Cape Cod on wooded acreage in Chadds Ford.  The property is like a scene from a movie; the enchanted forest.  I was able to spend some time helping her prepare her new home. In four weeks we fly to California for our son’s wedding. The family will be together again; the last time it was for the baby’s birth when Andy flew all night to be with his sister.  It’s the love only a family can know. Now, define family.

Andy’s betrothed has children from another marriage. I love them already.  Jen has a step daughter. I love her, too. I feel loyalty to my children’s s/o.  That’s a good thing. You don’t have to be madly in love; just a little bit.  Just enough to want the best for them. If you want the best, and they receive it, it can only benefit your children, correct?

I have friends who have life threatening illnesses, sadness beyond belief.  Some have lost jobs in their fifties and can’t find another, spouses died and left financial messes, houses burned down.

This is a true story. Jim and I have a good friend whose historic house in the Oakland Hills burned down during the fires there in 1989.  Unbelievably, she moved to Bastrop, Texas and her house burned to the ground in the fires there last year!  Talking to her really helps you get your perspective quickly.  She is living a spare life, with no photos or mementos of any kind. In Oakland, she and her dog got out with their life. She found love late in life, the man of her dreams.  Now, however, none of us want her to move close by. Sorry, Joy!

What does it take to be happy? An acquaintance once said to me that God doesn’t call us to be happy, he calls us to be faithful. I disagree with that. If you aren’t happy, you’re the opposite, correct? Is it sad? Who wants to be sad all the time? Aren’t you supposed to find beauty in life somewhere? There is so much to be grateful for, isn’t there? A friend said to me, “Suzie, you are so lucky.” I agree, but I had to say back, “I’ve paid my dues.” We all have. Every single one of us has a story to tell. We make our choices, that is true, but we have so much of life that we experience that is out of our control. The key, I think, is to approach everything with love. Buddha said something about it that I read on Facebook (thank you Facebook), and I Corinthians 13 is loaded with words about love. But it doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, look the other way, non-judgmental love. Once years ago I was having a really rough time, and an older woman friend came up to me and looked me in the eyes and all she said was “That sucks.”  Lol! And I started laughing.  It did suck. But she acknowledged it, and that tiny bit of validation was all I needed.

Let’s be nice to each other.