Quarantine . . . like being grounded but for a different reason

Goodnight is sick.

She was exposed to an active case of pertussis (whooping cough) while at her summer program with other kids her age.  I just learned about it on Sunday.  She begun sneezing and coughing on Saturday, but it was light and sporadic.  I thought she had a cold.  She is also completely up to date with all six of her vaccinations.

I took her to the clinic for a test anyway.  Her physician started her on an antibiotic while we waited the two days for the test results.  I was supposed to call the clinic, but her physician called me directly as soon as the results came back. 

She tested positive. 

I’m glad we went to the clinic right away and I’m thankful the parents of the sick kid at her summer program reported it to the school.  Goodnight has already been reported to the school as well as the Department of Public Health.  She now has all the classic (and frightening) symptoms. She was the second child in the same clinic the same day who had all their vaccinations and tested positive. 

She is to remain isolated for a while.  It is just like being grounded, but for longer and a different reason.  I’m off work so I can take care of her. 

Catch you later . . .

 

“99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”: Gram’s Knitting Version

I’ve been staring at it for a while, working on it too, but it seems I’ve hardly made a dent.  So I dumped it out on my bed and actually counted what remained.  That’s when the “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” ditty came to mind. 

My version? 

“99 Skeins of Blue and White Wool the the Bed” . . . which actually began at 112 skeins.  They were all donated to me shortly after the Indianapolis Super Bowl.  My goal is to get it all knit within the next two years, turn it into warm winter apparel and then donate it all back to Indy.  I better keep going.

 

 

Christmas in July!

When I was a kid, we celebrated Christmas in July at Smalltownville’s summer recreation program. At that time, I thought it was a novel idea the director of the program thought of  just to make the summer heat a bit more tolerable.  I had no idea that anyone else in the world was doing the same thing. 

As it turns out . . . the World Santa Congress 2012, which has been going on each July since 1957, began today in Denmark.  The Congress is free to attend, but travel and accommodations are the responsibility of the attendees.  For a Gram who loves Christmas, I think that’s a place I would like to go!  Click the link to head to the congress website.  On the gallery page, there is a video that made me smile.  It looks like fun.  There was even a woman dressed in red, sitting in a rocking chair and knitting.

I cannot attend, of course.  I have to work.  I gave it some thought though.  I do have a very large collection of Christmas movies and would happily travel to Denmark and offer to host a Christmas Film Fest in conjunction with the World Santa Congress.  I think the sticking point would be asking for more time off work.  My dean believed me sincerely when I said I was going to the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl, but I’m not confident I could even find the courage or the words to ask for this.  Maybe when I retire . . .

What I can do, however, is carry on the tradition and declare Christmas in July this week at my house. 

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Scrambled Spagh-eggies

Goodnight hasn’t been feeling well, so when she slept in a little later this morning, I wasn’t surprised. 

I had decided to make spaghetti for our Sunday dinner, but the sauce needed a fair amount of preparation and then some time to simmer.  I got to work in the kitchen while my teenage housemate sunggled rested. 

I’m flexible with spaghetti sauce.  I add what I want to add whenever I make a batch, and what I want to add can vary depending on what’s in season.  Today, I had zucchini, onions, a green pepper, mushrooms and some garlic. 

With the peeling, mincing, grating, and dicing completed, I had the sauce simmering and nearly done by the time Goodnight got up and came downstairs to join me.  She was hungry enough to eat breakfast and Sunday morning breakfast is usually an egg, toast, juice, etc . . .  But you know how it goes when there is something wonderful on the stove.  It fills the air and taunts whosoever smells it and thinks they have to wait until the appointed meal. 

Goodnight told me she could smell something from her bed, but she thought she had been dreaming, so didn’t come down right away because she didn’t want the dream to end.  (She dreams about food quite often according to her reports.)  She stood next to me and peered into the pot and asked me what time we would be having dinner.  I knew she just wanted to taste the sauce. 

GN:  What’s for breakfast, Gram?

Gram:  Spagh-eggies, I think.

GN:  Huh?

Gram:  I saw you eyeing my sauce, I think I’ll make Scrambled Spagh-eggies.

I decided to change my breakfast plan a little bit.  Instead of eggs and toast, I scrambled the eggs and spooned some of the sauce over the eggs.  Why not?  It was a lot of veggies with some ground turkey added.  Huevos Rancheros (ranch eggs) is a classic Mexican dish that does something similar, but with a salsa to accompany fried eggs.  Goodnight enjoyed the twist and I got some extra veggies in her.   

I didn’t take a photo of our plated food.  There’s a time to take pictures and a time to just eat while it’s hot!  But I did ask the simmering pot of sauce to pose for a moment.  Dinner is at 6:00 this evening if you prefer you sauce over pasta and care to join us!  I think I made enough for y’all!

The Happiest Face in the Toy Box

Housework isn’t always boring. 

I was going through some things in the house yesterday, when I decided to take a peek in the old toy box – not Goodnight’s toys – but Angel’s.  I made most of her toys when she was little.  As a  knitter, I never seemed to tire of knitting dolls and clothes, and all sorts of animal friends for her.  

One of the old faces smiled at me when I was cleaning yesterday.  It wasn’t my most ambitious knitting undertaking ever, but it certainly was fun.  I knit my daughter a Jack-in-the-Box.  I knit Jack and I knit his box, too.  Oh . . . there was no crank or music inside to go with the box.  That was the ‘play pretend’ part of our fun.  I taught Angel how to hold her hand over the cover and sing “All Around the Mulberry Bush” and then let go of the knit box lid at just the right moment to let ‘Jack’ out. 

To make the Jack-in-the-Box, I began with the spring.  I got the spring custom wound to the height, diameter, and tension that I wanted.  I needed the spring before I could start knitting because I needed to knit a tube to cover the spring.  After that, it was just like making a doll without legs.  Jack’s box was nearly a cubic foot in volume and each of the six sides had clown graphics knit in them:  six different clowns.  Over time, I decided that the box was too large to store.  I detached Jack (and his spring) from the box and kept him.  I still think he has the happiest face in the toy box.

Flowers, Breakfast-to-go, and our Friday Field Trip

Goodnight and I went back to the cemetery we visited a week ago.

When we went to Wisconsin last week, I didn’t have any confirmation of any specific family grave sites.  I only had written family information that stated a long-standing family affiliation with a particular church and I made an assumption that I’d find family there.  We didn’t have the luck that I had hoped for.

During the course of this past week, I was able to complete enough genealogy research to be able to know whose graves we hoped to find.  I took a list and was determined NOT to leave until we saw every last one of them.

Goodnight and I stopped for flowers first.  We needed two bunches for all the family we had in mind.

My first goal was to find the grave of one of my great-grandfathers.  I had an article about him that stated he was buried “near” the town we visited and didn’t think that back when he was buried, his plot would not have been in town.  The town has grown and so the entire cemetery is well within the city limits. 

We found him!  We found my great-grandfather, his wife, and several adult children all in the same large plot.  There was a large stone with the surname and individual flat markers for each family member there.  We missed them last week because they were in a section of the cemetery where the names were not visible from the cemetery roads.  Because I thought my great-grandfather was buried out of town, we didn’t look too hard for his stone there.  We brought tools along to clean up around the flat markers.  Goodnight was very helpful with brushing around the lettering so each name is now legible.  I pulled weeds and cut back some turf that had overgrown the markers.  We got them all spiffed up. 

While we were cleaning up the third family plot we missed last week, a deer scampered through the cemetery.  It was a yearling.  It skipped passed us and headed toward the oldest section of the cemetery where GN and I found the grave of a ten-day-old baby boy relative last week.  The yearling stopped near his marker, turned and looked at us, then continued on its way out of the cemetery.  When we finished cleaning up the fourth family stone and plots, I went to the car to get my notes.  There was another child who died very young.  My online research didn’t give a birth or death date.  I had only found the year of the baby’s death. 

I had a suspicion that we needed to look where the yearling had stood for a moment: not because the yearling paused there and I took it as a sign, but because the year the baby died would put it in the oldest section.  Sure enough!  That little guy was buried right next to the little guy whose grave we saw last week. 

The second little guy died the same day he was born and apparently was never named (at least not on the marker.)  The two baby boys were cousins to each other and grand-children to my great-grandfather.   I lost it!  My eyes turned to running faucets as GN and I cleared off the markers and laid flowers there.  (Dancing: one of the yellow roses was from you.  Thanks so much for your thoughtfulness.) 

 

Goodnight and I found the graves of both baby’s parents.  They were not in the same old section of the cemetery.  Perhaps they couldn’t afford a large family plot when they lost their babies, but bought plots later in life and were at least able to be nearby. 

Before we left the cemetery, we went back to the one family plot we had found last week.  I brought enough flowers for everyone, so that was our last stop.  What do you think we found there?  Because my granddaughter and I were actually cleaning up the plots this week, and setting things down to pull weeds, and then taking notes of dates, etc., we were using more space than when we just stood there last week.  Sure enough . . . I spotted the little grave of another baby boy. 

This little guy was only three months old, but at least this family was able to have the same plot.  In all, we found nineteen family members today . . . everyone on my list plus the third baby boy. 

RIP everyone.~

“Gram? Can you help me with this one?”

Goodnight is still keeping up with her Happy-Photo-a-Day Project that I assigned her.

We were out and about running errands this morning when she announced that she knew exactly what her happy photo of the day would be.  She asked me for her help.  It would have been a little tricky for her to catch this photo by herself.

It was raining buckets today.  She grabbed the umbrella and scoped out the puddle in the photo below.

Sometimes wet is happy.

I feel like I’m in the middle of a Christmas story

Anyone who has stopped by here from time to time may recall how much I enjoy Christmas.  I chose my blog design based on that fact and the blog design isn’t likely to change.  I collect Christmas videos.  I have 195 of them right now.  I can’t say that I watch any given number in a week or even a month, but there are enough there to choose from when I get a mind to do it.  With all the knitting I do, I am in the process of Christmas most of the time, in one way or another.

But . . . I have never felt so in the middle of a Christmas story as I have since I jumped into the deep end of the genealogical research I’ve been doing.

I noticed it yesterday as I started taking down the names of ancestors whose graves GN and I plan to visit soon.

The Gram family tree is dotted with Mary’s and Joseph’s and Nicholas’ in several different languages and generations.  I ran across a few more today.  Some died old, and some died very young.  Every cemetery we need to visit has several of each.

Some of the Joseph’s married Mary’s.  Some of the Mary’s married Nicholas’.  Some of the non-Joseph’s and non-Mary’s and non-Nicholas’ named their children Joseph and/or Mary, and/or Nicholas.  One of the Mary’s died on December 25th . . . a long time ago.

Makes me wonder if I should be taking flowers to the cemeteries, or gold, frankincense, and myrrh . . . or candy canes.

They changed the name of the cemetery . . .

I must admit, I always loved scavenger hunts.  Looking for my ancestors is no different.  I love the hunt.  I love the work.  I love the research.  Despite the twists and turns, the misspellings, the marriages, the moves, the immigrations, the maiden names, etc., I feel a sense of accomplishment when I actually find something that I know with certainty belongs to my history.

I discovered a piece of information that I’m very grateful to have discovered before GN and I got on the road again.  Some of my relatives are buried in a cemetery that has undergone a name change since they were interred.  Good to know . . . or I’d have to be knocking on doors in that little town asking who moved the cemetery and where they put my family.  The cemetery name change means the church underwent the same change as well.  AND that means my mother (Gr8) got married in the same church as some of the great-greats, despite the historical records showing different information.

I like that.

What I like the most, though, is telling stories to my mother that she didn’t know and introducing her to great-greats – even if only in names.  So far, I have traced her family back four generations beyond her mom and dad.

In addition to telling stories to my mother, I can share those stories with Goodnight and show her how deep the roots are.  It may help her get through the rest of her ‘Julys’ a bit more comfortably.

GN and I are planning a longer road trip in the not to distant future.  We can’t do this one in a day because it’s a much longer drive.  There is a there is a heritage festival we’re planning to attend and it’s in the vicinity of some of the places where the family tree has rooted.  I’m busy printing maps of the little towns GN and I need to visit and the locations of their respective cemeteries, (there are four.)  The visits will happen at some point this summer, but I want to do all the work ahead of time that I possibly can.  I just want to take enough flowers . . .

The Whole Famdamily!

Well, dang . . . I gotta go back!

I can see how easy it was to miss what I missed when GN and I were traipsing all over a coupla cemeteries.  I was there and despite the relatively small size of the area, there were still plenty of headstones!  But I’ve been letting my fingers do the e-traipsing today and I found what I couldn’t find on our day trip.

Goodness gracious!  The whole family (from one side of one side, anyway) is there!

I do solemnly swear not to give GN a hard time if they are in the section where I asked her to hunt.  I’m not upset at all.  I’m thrilled that my original hunch was right.  We just need to hone our headstone hunting skills, I guess.

Looks like the little baby is going to get flowers sooner than I expected!  Now I have to count how many flowers I need to take!

I love e-traipsing!  Besides, with today’s search, I found two regions of origin that I didn’t have before . . . and the misspelling of my great-grandmother’s maiden name that’s been passed down.  With the correct spelling, I was able to go back two more generations on her side.

Nuf for today.