Carlsbad Weekend

Sometimes you just need to get away, don't you?

Sometimes you just need to look at some different walls to appreciate the ones you have.

I suppose it's also true that sometimes you need to stop the relentless-ness of work/chores/work/chores and take a break to get realigned in your heart. I found myself in a soul-place I really didn't want to be.
I was feeling like I had so much grunge in my life, so much wasted time.
I've heard it said that the tears in Heaven won't be from loss or pain, but from wasted opportunities. I think about that alot.

In my business I have found that it's easiest to explain my leaving town and closing shop if I do it when it's 'predictable'. Meaning an obvious, as in, National, holiday. Otherwise I find that I'm forever explaining and even justifying my absence. Or even trying to prepare my clients for my un-foreseen disappearance when they might not get their special pants hemmed right away.
...sigh

I struggled with finding just the right place...there were so many variables. Do you ever come across that?
Trying to decode the pages on AAA.com, or when you're thrown all of the possible amenities, to distill it down, the needs from the wants. Who knew that was possible?
I'm not in the habit of planning to stay at resorts.

It is so confusing, this spending of hard earned money.
The two amenities I found that I must have are; wheelchair access and a private sorta-West-facing balcony. Everything else was nice/extra/immaterial. When it came to price, my policy is always "it costs what it costs".
I'm not going to scrimp or break the bank. However, if you want to spend less that $100.00 a night apparently, you'll get a really nice concrete cube in the middle of a asphalt parking lot.

Not really what I had in mind.


In the end, leaving for a moment for a quiet prayer, I was satisfied with the choice.
In fact we were given a spectacular up-grade.
We stayed at the Tamarack Hotel and Beach Resort. Right on the ocean, right across the street from the beach.
We had breakfast provided. Hot coffee all day. Huge king-sized bed.
Both Mom and I found ourselves out there on the balcony in our P.J.'s morning and night.
It was so pleasant in the early hours before dawn.
Hot cup of coffee, watching the sun just starting to glint on the ocean far out to sea.

And the sunsets...! what is there to say?
It's a local thing, it seems, to stop whatever you are doing and just stand and watch that old sun sink into the waves.
People lined the sidewalk fence, all down the street. Some were even filming the process.
Actually it was kinda spooky, like a pagan rite, this freeze-tag with the sun.


Still, we enjoyed the sight from our own little world.

When we first got to Oceanside we parked at the Pier area and sat at a picnic bench right on the beach. After two hours or so in the sun, we decided to try to find some kind soul to help me push Mom up the incline to the pier itself. We did and we did. We wanderered to about the middle, to where we could look down onto the line of surfers, and tried to figure out just what they thought constituted the 'perfect wave'.

Obviously we were not born to be the judges of waves, because we couldn't tell one from another.
In fact, I thought that some peer-pressure was involved; some surfers wouldn't attempt to surf a wave unless another better surfer thought it was worth a try. hmmm

Both mornings I got up as soon as I was awake and walked down to the ramp to the water.
The sun had not yet broken the hills behind me, so the sand was still damp and cold.
I bundled up with my Knittery hat and a hoodie, and parked myself and Mr. Darby on a small sand dune. Remembering my purpose for coming, I read the first chapters of Nehemiah... especially pondering the lament of Judah in 4:10,
"The strength of the bearers of burdens faileth, and there is so much rubbish; so that we are not able to build at the wall."
Do you ever feel like that? That you're wading through so much extra-curricular junk in your life that the wall of separation might get repaired if you could only get next to it?

It was a marvel to watch the sun kiss the waves far off to the South first, then slowly, brightly, glimmer on the breakers nearer and nearer.

Simply spectacular.



I would then slowly climb the ramp back up to the Hotel, to go get us breakfast at the buffet.
Mom would usually wave to me from the balcony as I got close. Eventually then, we would pack her and her kintting into the wheelchair and we would get her to the view-point above the beach.

Here she's happily knitting a sweater for Suki.

We'd forgotten to bring a visor for her, so I picked this one up at the surf shop.
I then walked down to the beach again, and walked about a mile up & back.
Then I just comfortably sat in the sand and watched the surfers try to pick the perfect wave(?) until it was time for us to go get dressed for our Afternoon Tea at the Hyatt in Carlsbad, where we would meet up with Marie and Wendy Woehl. Altogether a wonderfully relaxing weekend.

I'm thinking this should be an annual event...

Dave and Marge

When we moved to San Leandro from Japan in the Spring of 1969 the Imbeau's were very much in residence there in the Oakland Meeting. Now 41 years later they are still very much in residence in our hearts. Mom and I were invited down to their home(s) in the San Diego area often, and this last time was when Dave and Marge were out West for the Winter, staying at Louise's home in La Mesa.
We had done this before; come for the day. Mom and the Mr.& Mrs. would sit, talk, and catch up/reminisce and Louise and I would drive around on errands, talk, and do the same. It was a wonderful way to spend a day.

There is nothing so sweet as old, good friends. They have been a constant in my life, a certainty, a grounding. Through good times, bad times, ups and downs. They survived with us my parent's divorce, walked with us in the one-by-one gathering to the Lord's name, the moves, the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, losses, gains, growing up, growing old, whatever we did, they did in tandem. I can say with assurance that they feel the same about us. I know, because they've told me.
I thank the Lord Jesus for this un-fathomable blessing.
I thank the Lord for Marge; she has been a second-mother, an unflappable hostess, a generous, kind, and faithful example.
I thank the Lord Jesus for Dave; He has been a father to me and on more than one occasion (often when I needed it the most and was not aware of it myself) the Lord would send him with his ever welcoming arms, his kind eyes, and his monumentally large heart (room for yet another daughter).

About this time, last year

Isn't it amazing how that year goes by so fast? I was trying (frustrating-ly) to up/down load stuff on my old laptop and it's so slow these days. I'd heard that photos take up alot of space and that I should erase them when I've finished with whatever I intended to do with them.
This is one of those intends.
I was hired by First Baptist Church of Hemet to sew their Christmas Pageant Choir's new robes. Mind you, they asked late in November! I was certainly put to the speed test this time!
With the help of sister Janet, who came with me to the meeting room to utilize the large pass-through as a cutting surface, and her handy set of rotary cutters, we were able to cut out the 40+ multiple size robes. We were exhausted and covered head to foot with purple glitter by the time we were done!
As you can see, I documented the empty fabric bolts so I would have a proof of the volume of dark purple, stretchy, glitter infused, one-way nap knit. UGH! I never want to see it again.

At first they wanted specially fitted sizes like 2 and 24. I convinced them that the robes were not so form fitting to warrant such specificity, we'd settle for X-small to XXX large and be done.