Randomly Tonia

After searching high and low for months for “pink camo” seat covers, my mom had all but given up.

She searched at all of the Big Box stores; she hunted at the name-brand outdoor store, she even had me search online at every outlet imaginable.

In the (almost) end, it became clear that unless she wanted to spend $300+ for custom made seat covers, she was just not going to find what she wanted.

Mom has never been one to give up easily (she is as stubborn as the day is long), and I could tell many stories of her determination (read stubborn).

In the real end, this “determination” coupled with her can-do attitude netted her the seat covers she desired and a sense of accomplishment that comes only with a hard-fought win.

She bought sheets in the pink tree camouflage design she liked best. One recent Sunday morning she announced, over cups of coffee, that she was going to make her own seat covers and wrestled her trusty old sewing machine out of the closet.

Mom is a self-taught knitter and the same can be said of her sewing, though through the years she had a few people teach her this and that.

For the most part she learned to sew by hours (many, many late night hours) of trial and error with a seam ripper in her hand.

She went home after our Sunday morning coffee and got started. It wasn’t more than two hours later that she called and asked me to come help her fit the first piece over the first seat.

To my misplaced surprise, it was amazing! This thing fit nearly perfectly and even when I tried to wriggle enough to make it slip off the seat, it clung to the seat with the same fierce determination (stubbornness) of its maker!

I congratulated her with a high-five and off she went, grinning, to make a second one. I promised to come help her get the next one on and left with the thought that maybe my eldest daughter gets more from her grandma than I first thought.

These two women, one generation on each side of me, will learn how to knit, sew and cook in the same way they learn how to change oil, tires and spark plugs – by shear stubbornness, er...determination and with a can-do attitude.

Attitude is the determining factor in most successes and most failures.

If: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z =1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26, then

H+A+R+D+W+O+R+K =8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 =98% and K+N+O+W+L+E+D+G+E= 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5= 96%, but, A+T+T+I+T+U+D+E = 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100.