What does it all mean?

When a granddaughter comes to visit, anyone would think that one child would be easy.
What isn't obvious to an outsider though, is that with my 87, almost 88, year old mother living here, that gives me TWO children. and she is the most difficult.
She swears.
She talks constantly.
She talks over anyone else who is trying to talk.
She is demanding.
If you ask her NOT to do something, she gives you that LOOK, and then in so many words she tells you that she will do what she wants.
She is a bad influence on OTHER kids.
She eats sugar, and carbs, and crap, every chance she gets, and she offers it up to other 8 year olds. In fact, she insists!
She is VERY much 8.

It is extremely hard to be a responsible grandparent to one, without being a shrew to the other.
The title of that movie occurs to me.
"It's Complicated."

Fast forward, did I mention, she is also depressed.  Gets upset with imagined slights.   Crying on the telephone, she pulls my heart nearly out of my chest, yet again, as she will up to and including her last day on this  earth.
I come home, grand in tow.  We make her lunch.  We help her tidy up.  We try to fill up her day, imagining that we can.
She loves to watch me work..........so I clean the refrigerator, she talks.  I start baking muffins, she talks.
The recipe calls for sour cream, I put in ricotta.  She talks.
God grant me the serenity...................


And I wonder why weaving soothes my soul.........
The answer is because it is so predictable.
Warp.  Weft.

Getting ready for a weaving weekend bootcamp on Friday.  That requires some general cleaning up, and some shopping for groceries. My father used to tell me that there was no rest for the wicked.  What he neglected to say was that the gene pool that he gave me would ensure that I would be most generally on a dead run throughout my life.
Thanks, Dad.
But I am secretly grateful.  REALLY grateful, since my mother spends at least 12 hours a day in front of the television, a fate I want to avoid at all cost.  Just the theme songs from "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Waltons" make me shiver with dread.


Sock monkeys make more sense to me.

I never imagined being as old as I've become, but I know I would not have expected it to be quite like this.
I have a gift for my children.
They don't know it yet.
When I am REALLY old, they will get my gift, even if they don't exactly get why it is one.
Maybe when they are driving home after visiting me and my looms, and they sigh and relax into their ride, they will look forward to returning to their lives, and they will have realized their separateness. 
And even if they don't recognize it for what it is, I will know.
And isn't that the point of a gift, anyway.