Life detours

Life detours are similar to road detours. They take you through shortcuts, around obstacles, through obstacles and are supposed to keep you safe from the rough patches and dangers that lie on your normal, daily travels. They aren't always the shortest or preferred route to your perceived goal either. Some people say that you should always leave it in the hands of your higher power. But it's up to you how you decipher the detour. Has it been put there to make you change your way of doing things? Is it just an obstacle to teach you a lesson? Is it protecting you from yourself and some misguided thought process? Or maybe it's just a practical joke, sprung on you from some bet the higher beings (whomever they are) thought up during a poker game one night. No one knows and you can spend valuable time trying to figure it out. The best course of action in my mind aside from just handing it over, is to learn from the detours. Take the gift and use it to your advantage. Just like taking a road detour, apply some critical thinking on how you'll make the best of the re-routing.
We moved our shop because we had come to a fork in the road. One way was continuing on the the same path we had always gone, full of unknowns, rough patches and dangerous road blocks to be sure, and we have chosen the fork in the road that seems still to be full of unknowns and as in anything in life, will have rough patches, but I think we have avoided the dangerous road blocks. For awhile.
Life detours also come when you least expect them. For us, it was an accident my Mother suffered a week ago. She fell and broke her hip. This was traumatic for her and my dad. My dad has the onset of dementia so it has been a struggle for him to always understand why we are taking the place of my mother with his care-giving while she is being cared for at the rehab. For her, it is a struggle to relinquish his care to us as well as the worry of how much things will change in their lives when she gets home, or if it will at all.  It is a new journey for all of us, that's for sure, but it just shows how strong and close our family really is. We take turns with the care giving and it's working well. Takes a village as my Mother always says. It's true. Helps to have a morbid or warped sense of humor as well.

"Don't forget that you are human.

 It's okay to have a melt down. Just don't unpack and live there.

 Cry it out and then refocus on where you are headed."

Early in October 2019 we had an opportunity to change the location of our shop. It was a big leap of faith for us because as many of you know, we had been in the same location for almost 13 years. I had grown accustomed to being right down the road from my house, easily able to run errands, come in late, run out to grab lunch or call in sick because I knew that someone would always be there to check on my shop when I wasn't available. But the other part of having that convenience is also a certain kind of dependence on others. We were looking for a change and this cottage just kind of fell in our laps (unlike the Wizard of Oz, no ruby slippers were involved). It was serendipity, fate maybe that Mom met the owner of the building in the Walmart return line. Mom and I both believe that if you are given a gift like that, especially when you are struggling to figure out what you want to do when you grow up so to speak, you should just accept the gift and make it work. When we drove out and saw the cottage and the other little shops nearby, we just knew it was right. We were in our new location, set up to sell by November 1, 2019, 15 days later. I don't recommend a move like that!
The funny thing about being in the cottage is that suddenly my creativity started emerging from wherever it had been hiding for the last couple of years. There are so many ideas just pinging around in my head now. Our shop has the perfect setting for events of all kinds. There is no end to the things we can do here. We are hoping to have a few select vendors that will join our little cottage family so that we can bring you most unique merchandise around. We still carry all of the fabulous clothing brands that you know and love and a couple of new ones as well.  I hope you will come to see us in person and see for yourselves how adorable our Tin Star Cottage really is.