What I learned in September

I have been a bad blogger, but I make no apologies. After the month and a half that my family and I have gone through I’m just happy to be back at the keyboard.

It all started out so well. August was busy, but I had it under control. We had bus tours at the winery, I had a catering job in town, the kids started dance class and taekwondo.

And then the proverbial “it” hit the fan.

The last bus rolled into the winery and I geared up for my last cheese and wine pairing presentation in front of 50 people when something crawled up my pants leg and bit me. No. Really. Something wiggled it’s way up my jeans ( which I was lucky to get into that morning anyway) and bit my inner thigh. What I discovered the next morning when I got out of bed was a red welt with a black spot in the middle that hurt like crazy. A trip to the doctor awarded me with antibiotics and pain meds. Tuesday awarded me with a late night trip to the ER because I had an allergic reaction to those meds. Luckily, we finally got the right combo of medication down so that my leg infection, which ended up spreading to my entire thigh, got better within a couple of weeks.

During all of this, everything else in my life got really busy. September at a winery means harvest and crush. And with 5 1/2 acres of vineyards, thats a lot of grapes. 10 tons to be exact and we had to pick everyone of them by hand.( Side note: 9 hours of picking, hauling and crushing grapes burns about 6000 calories. I looked it up before I had a really big bowl of ice cream that day) There were also festivals, music events, and private parties. Not to mention my monthly catering jobs and then suddenly web work and menu redesigns that started coming my way! And photo jobs! And a cooking class! And it wasn’t just me that was busy. My husband and brother won a place in the semi-finals of the Sam’s Club Invitational BBQ Competition ( and got to the finals yesterday too!). My daughter’s dance class was to be performing at the National Banana Pudding festival and my son was practicing his patterns for Taekwondo. And then… ( dun, dun, duunnn)

The kids got sick. Not just a little sick, but sick with Strepp throat. And then the hubby got sick with it too. The cooking class had to be canceled, the web work had to be put on hold, the winery had to live without me for several days. It became very evident that I had over stretched myself. My house was in shambles, my eye brows were hairy, I missed my husband, and I was tired. And then…

I was sick. And I’m still sick. I have been recovering from a wicked case of Bronchitis that is hanging on for dear life.

But I learned a very good lesson from one very wild and crazy month. While it is great to be busy with all kinds of opportunities, sometimes you just have to say “no”. When those opportunities start to erode your quality of life so that your personal relationships suffer, your health is put in jeopardy, your kids and husband miss you, and the little things that make you happy get pushed in the corner and begin to gather dust, you know it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate whats important.