{"id":8938,"date":"2016-08-17T20:48:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T00:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8938"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:55:15","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:55:15","slug":"big-booties-to-fill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8938","title":{"rendered":"Big booties to fill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Been thinking about Grandma Alma<\/a> again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alma had a husband who made her promise to keep the family together and then died leaving her with eight small children, no money and a mortgage she couldn’t pay, and then people bought her farm stuff for pennies at auction and some of them never paid her.<\/p>\n

I have Alma’s\u00a0baby shoes, thanks to dear cousin Dort who gave them to me. They are little leather booties. Very big shoes to fill.<\/p>\n

They give me perspective on my current travails.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have a husband with a stroke<\/a>\u00a0but he’s alive and has great health insurance and the protections of ADA. A tree fell on our house but it\u00a0will be getting<\/a> a new roof, new decks and refinished floors courtesy of excellent insurance while we live in another beautiful home.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s chaotic and stressful and really hard to manage, but it’s not going to destroy me. Alma is my grandmother and I am made of sterner stuff.<\/p>\n

I keep her\u00a0booties\u00a0on the mantle overlooking Tom’s chair, along with Gregory, George and Mogadishu<\/a>, and my Dad’s watch.<\/p>\n

They remind me to just put one foot in front of the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I wake up too early, I remember that Alma got up before dawn every day and started the wood stove to bake bread for the day. <\/span><\/p>\n

My brain concentrates on my\u00a0to-do lists, and while in this mode\u00a0of taking care of the essentials I have\u00a0succeeded in burying any interest in art or learning. Alma didn’t have time for those luxuries either.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the focus on essentials, today I failed to get Tom’s glucose levels three of the four times that I should have, and I failed to get any exercise. Too many essentials. Surely\u00a0Alma had lot of days when she didn’t get everything done.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I got Tom\u00a0fed and made sure he got his pills and I got him to therapy on time, just like Alma got those kids fed and off to school. I talked to my friend Kimberly and I talked to the community volunteers who are going to help us out with rides to the gym for Tom, and I know Alma got a little help from neighbors and friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

I talked to the restoration company<\/a> about leaving trash around our house. Managed the pack-out of the house<\/a> and the transfer of our things to the rental house by phone and text message. Alma had to move four times after she lost the mortgage.<\/span><\/p>\n

I took a nap for more than an hour after lunch. I bet Alma didn’t get a nap until she was in her 80s.<\/span><\/p>\n

I answered emails and did some work on the revised grant proposal and budget. I finished and published\u00a0three blog posts. Alma sent her kids out to work on other people’s farms and in other people’s houses.<\/span><\/p>\n

I made fried pork chops for dinner that turned out well. Simple food with good ingredients is what Alma did best.<\/span><\/p>\n

I talked to my sister Ann, and sorted medical paperwork while we talked. With eight kids, Alma knew how to multi-task – and those kids took care of each other, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

One foot in front of the other. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the course of the day\u00a0I took 5,000 steps, according to my Fitbit<\/a>. Alma would have had a party on her wrist every damn day if she’d had a Fitbit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a\u00a02013, the year I inherited Alma’s booties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Been thinking about Grandma Alma again. Alma had a husband who made her promise to keep the family together and then died leaving her with eight small children, no money and a mortgage she couldn’t pay, and then people bought her farm stuff for pennies at auction and some of them never paid her. I … read more Big booties to fill<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319],"tags":[94,97,1174,622,86,1175,20],"class_list":["post-8938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inheritance","tag-94","tag-alma","tag-day","tag-exercise","tag-family","tag-hardship","tag-tom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8938"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8949,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8938\/revisions\/8949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}