I took a breather over the weekend, and carved out some time and some space for a little relaxation and work. I am quickly learning that, as a work at home mom, relaxation and work will often be a part of the same sentence/idea, just as relaxation, motherhood and academics were while I was knocking out my semesters at Cal. Being everything at the same time is no easy task, but it always has its benefits. Instead of wearing many hats, I just wear one hat, with many different names on it!

In a way, I am actually happy to have a place of refuge within this newly found work, because, although I am busy creating, crocheting still gives me that original peace. Its an art, much like sewing, that allows you to lose yourself within your project. You become one with your project. You control the flow and the outcome, thus, if you don't mind a challenge every now and then, for the most part, you remain relatively stress-free.

I have been spending my days, on my grandmother's couch, surrounded by colorful yarns and warmth. My work, has become "our" thing, as my grandmother and I chit chat about patterns and colors and collaborations and needle sizes... and other things crochet. Momentarily, the chit chat provides an escape from the fact that I am still 9-to-5-less and homeless and due to the state being budgetless - I am child care-less, come back to school time. Newly created butterflies hold the smiles that were formed after the laughter from my grandfather, on the other end of the phone, from a hospital bed in Mississippi where he has had a mild stroke. As he proceeds with three weeks of physical therapy down south, and my grandmother wraps her arm in the band of the blood pressure machine, and transfers the product of her freshly pricked finger into the glucose reader here in the north, all I can do is crochet.