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The house in the photo above is not mine. I took the photo from the bus on my way in to work this morning. I don’t have cabin fever, but I have had enough of driving to work in it.
But . . . When I got onto the bus and started looking out the window, I was still able to enjoy how pretty is really was.
Okay. Enough pretty already. I want to plant my herbs outside and the only thing ‘growing’ in the garden is the pile of snow I’ve been throwing from my patio.
Sigh. . .
Seems I’ve turned into rather a blogging bore lately . . . and perhaps not only a bore in the blogosphere.
The Goodnight Gram family has been busy worrying about two family members in very dire health conditions. Both family members had very serious surgeries on the same day. Some things are best not blogged about as they unfold.
I’m okay with that.
The Gram half of Goodnight Gram has been using any free time for genealogy research. It’s a Christmas gift for my family to be able to show and share as much information as I possibly can. That hasn’t left much time for socializing.
I’m okay with that.
The Goodnight half of Goodnight Gram has been busy trying to get ready for high school basketball try-outs. Her goal is to skip the 9th grade team and get onto the Junior Varsity team. Pre-tryout workouts have kept us on the run every night. No TV and no basketball until the Goodnight half finishes her math homework and the Gram half corrects it.
I’m okay with that.
Basketball, genealogy, and health worries of loved ones has allowed for no time to knit.
I’m okay with that.
It seems that due to the above and perhaps several other reasons, the gram has unfriended a couple of people (not talking about the specific ‘unfriending’ social media) because those folks have intentionally disconnected with the gram.
I’m okay with that.
Time, place, circumstance, and energy dictate what I need to be okay with. I listen to those counselors.
I’m okay with that.
Today, one of the side dishes for the featured lunch at work is sweet potato gnocchi. I got the heads up from one of the chefs yesterday. I’m gonna have some.
I’m okay with that!
Today begins the festival of Dia de los Muertos. It is a national holiday in Mexico. You can read about that on your own, but it’s about celebrating the lives of families who have passed on - celebrated in conjunction with the two Catholic feasts of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.
In honor of these to celebrations that show respect to our dearly departed, I wanted to share some cemetery art I found recently while working on my genealogy project. It is headstone art from my own family and I thought it was touching. It’s on the headstone for one of my great-grandfathers. My great-grandmother is buried next to him and if you look at the hands clasped across time, you’ll know to which side she was buried.
My great-grandmother died before my great-grandmother, so she didn’t likely choose my great-grandfather’s gravestone. I think it’s very sweet.
I didn’t know Teddy. I don’t actually know how old he was, but I knew where he lived. I most often saw him sitting near his big picture window.
He had a large brood of children. Teddy loved to play with all of them and they all loved to play with Teddy. His generous lap was welcoming to some who just wanted to sit quietly and snuggle. Teddy didn’t mind.
I didn’t know Teddy had been hurt, but when I saw him, it was apparent that he had been mortally wounded . . . so to speak. He was laid to rest two days ago. I shouldn’t really say ‘laid to rest’. When I saw him, he was sitting up. Teddy was well-loved.
The sad irony is that Teddy was ‘set to rest’ near the trash can that was close to where the children from the day care center where he lived would go out to play. I ran across his remains early in the morning and worried that the children would be terrified to see their friend in that condition: cold, wet, insides still oozing out from several deep gashes, and ever so slowly slumping toward a full repose on the pavement.
I swept Teddy into my arms and carried him to my car, so the last wee memory of their friend could be more pleasant than the sad state of affairs I had encountered. That kind of image can stick with a child for a long time. I know from experience.
Teddy has been interred in what shall remain an undisclosed location. RIP big guy.
Okay, shopping is definitely not my thing. GN and I are taking a coffee break for a little quiet time in the middle of our day out. I really needed a break from the scented soaps, perfumed body washes, and smelly candles.
While GN walked around trying on every sample in the store,
then washing it off for the next sample, I found the following item. It’s not yellow, but . . .
it has a light inside and it changes colors. First the pink, as in the photo above, and then the blue as in the photo below.
Not a wearable item for a Ducky Derby, but happy nonetheless.
It’s time for me to wind down the genealogy research for a while. By the looks of my calendar, I won’t have the time it takes. Goodnight’s high school activities begin tomorrow even though school doesn’t begin until after Labor Day. Besides, the clock is ticking down on my summer break as well.
As I tuck away all the papers I gathered on my Heritage Hop, Skip, and Jump Vay-cay and save all my digital family notes, I think of how much I enjoyed this summer and how much more ‘rooted’ it makes me feel. I doubt that I could recite the names, birth orders, spouses, children and get many of them correct, but that wasn’t the point anyway. I can look back at my notes anytime I want to for that information. For me, the point of my summer research was to go back as far as I could with ancestors in the United States and get a name of a village/town of origin from the ‘old country’.
When I began my research, I thought there was only one ‘old country’. It turns out there were three. That paradigm shift was easy for me.
I found some humor in my ancestry. One of the females married twice. She wasn’t widowed at the time of her second marriage. While hiking through one of the cemeteries, I found her tombstone and BOTH of her husbands were buried with her.
I found stunning sadness as I noted one death after another within the summer and fall of 1904. There was an epidemic that swept the area where those ancestors were living at the time and took the lives of five family members, three in the same household within three weeks of each other.
I found honor and integrity on my family tree. There’s very little to go on, of course, when one looks back so far, but I ran across an article that labeled one of my ancestors ‘successful and upstanding, interesting to visit with as one of the oldest remaining founders’ of the town he and other first settlers at the same time helped establish. I found honor in the work that my ancestors did just by virtue of doing what they needed to do to support the families they brought across the sea. I loved reading the censuses to see what was listed for their work. There was nothing haughty there. Each one had to put in a good day’s work.
I’m a bookish and nerdy grandmother and when I began my research I knew it would give me something to do to keep my mind active this summer. It turns out that my heart was kept active as well. I wear my heart on my sleeve as obviously as any of the purple clothing I own, so I found myself moved to tears with each new discovery: the names of ships on which my ancestors sailed, the numbers of babies who died, the son of one ancestor who has no descendents because he died on the voyage, unmarked graves in cemeteries where I have trod before without knowing someone else was there, reading death certificates, and the lovely, lovely photo of my paternal grandmother holding a baby – my dad! The photo makes looking back in time so much more tangible.
I learned that record-keeping is not perfect. I learned that censuses are not perfect. The perfections or imperfections varied with the education of the enumerators as well as the throngs being counted. I learned that spelling is not perfect. I learned that one can abbreviate surnames on tombstones! I learned the devastating historical loss it was when the 1890 US Census Population Schedules were destroyed by fire and water damage in the 1921 Commerce Building basement fire in Washington, D.C. I learned that marriages are not perfect. I learned that family histories are not perfect. I learned that gravestones can sink to a frustratingly sad level for someone four generations beyond the one interred who hikes the cemetery to read a stone. I learned that, while anecdotal histories don’t always give enough details, they are endearingly accurate enough as points where one can begin research. For what mysteries that remain, I have learned patience and acceptance that I will never know it all. I learned about cholera, typhoid fever, typhus, tuberculosis, and mental fragility in the aftermath of emigration from a terribly unkind ‘old country’. I learned that, for the most part, we take tender care of our loved ones either by how we speak of them, or how we hold our tongues when their stories would paint a less than dignified image of what was really beyond their human control. I learned that impatience can turn quickly to generous kindness and curiosity when one knocks on the door of a parish house, bothers the pastor at a quiet time in the afternoon, and asks to see the inside of the church where the great-grandparents of the old lady making the request were married. I learned about many groups of people dedicated to providing information that makes genealogical research much easier that it has ever been. I learned about ‘souls’. Reports of epidemics or accounts of devastating fires did not describe “victims” of the maladies. The linguistic choice was to mention ”souls lost to cholera” or “souls lost in fires” or “the number of souls who inhabited a village.” Is it formal? Yes. Could it be off-putting to one who attributes the word to a formal religious connotation? Certainly, but I liked the archaic use of the word. I learned about the histories of a handful of towns and unincorporated villages that I will surely visit again.
Speaking of kindnesses, I have been sitting in a coffee shop on this rainy afternoon while Goodnight went to a movie in a theater a block away. The coffee shop is closing for an early evening and the manager asked me if I would like to take a pastry. “I don’t like to throw them out,” he said. I offered to take one. He meant the entire box he had sitting on the counter! He closed the box and handed it to me before I had time to protest.
I go back to work tomorrow, my time-travels complete for now. I’ll take the box of pastries with me and share with my co-workers. They should go well with all the stories we share about our summers away from the campus.
I was sitting at my table this morning, having a cup of coffee and looking out the patio door beyond the fence. I like the early morning hours of the day. I have time to watch the pine branches sway with a breeze . . . or spot an unusual bump on one of the branches. Huh? ” What the heck is that bump?”
It was a dark color bump, barely imperceptible from where I was sitting. I knew the topography of that branch because I have some experience with setting’ a spell and staring out the same patio door. ” What the heck is that bump?”
The tip of the branch was bent to nearly breaking, but it was dried and probably needed pruning. I’d already raked up the pine cones that fell and the little blip on what was a thin branch didn’t look like a pine cone anyway. “That the heck is that bump?”
The bump didn’t move. I wondered if there was some pine plague that had suddenly befallen my tree, so I looked around for other bumps. There were no others. “What the heck is that bump?”
I stood up from my viewing post and walked closer to the patio door to see if I could detect any details on the bump. For goodness sake, it wasn’t an inanimate bump at all. It was a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird!
I have never seen any kind of hummingbird be so still for so long. What a fun thing to see! I stood at the patio door and just watched it as it remained a ‘bump’ on the branch of my pine tree. Then suddenly, the resting time was over and it took off. It didn’t go very far. It only flew to the ash tree a few yards away, but the foliage hid it from my view.
Huh! How about that? It was a hummingbird sitting as still as I had been in the early hours of the morning. Thanks for having coffee with me this morning, Madam Hummingbird. I enjoyed your company very much.
Sorry, no photos. It would look just like a little bump.
I have had a long-standing policy about pens. I decided that I didn’t ever need to buy any. Because I work in education, I have attended enough conferences where exhibitors passed out pens. I also have also received a fair number of promotional pens from years of attending state or county fairs. Pens get handed out at parades and they get handed out at my work. I save whatever I receive and I use them. Hence, no need to buy pens.
My long-standing policy didn’t just bend a little, it totally caved in yesterday when I bought more than one pen I spotted while picking up some school supplies for Goodnight.
They are all the same, making the sign for ‘I Love You.’ Because I am fluent in American Sign Language, I bought all of them from that store. They are a bit thick for grasping, but . . . I don’t care. Lotsa love in my pen holder on my desk at home now!
My sign language ’I Love You’ pens reminded me of the photo my blog buddy Carol posted in May. Scroll to the bottom of her post. I wish I had a crossing light that did that!
I LOVE TECHNOLOGY!
Today, while sitting at my computer, I found out that I have been working for free so far this summer. Nice of me isn’t it? I won’t name names; I’ve been holding down two part-time jobs along with my full-time employment as long as I can remember. I discovered the interesting financial detail while viewing my electronic bank statements while cross-referencing them with my electronic time sheets and my electronic pay stubs.
That it took me so long to discover the problem doesn’t mean I can afford it to continue, it just means I’ve been too busy and the pay period is longer than the other pay cycles.
While sitting at my computer, with all the electronic records open, I sent an email to the Proper People (PP) to explain my discovery. within moments, I received emails from over half of the PP. I responded to the PP’s emails and poured myself a cup of coffee. The same PP responded with the Appropriate Questions (AQs). I responded to the PP’s AQs immediately via email. Each PP then asked me further AQs to which I replied.
In less than five minutes, I had gone three rounds with each of the responding PP. Impressive! One of the PP asked me to call ASAP, so I flipped open my cell phone and did just that. While it rang, I sipped my coffee.
Through phone conversation with the PP who asked me to call, it was determined that my electronic pay record was terminated as of the end of May. Not really a pink slip, but a little pink slip-up involving some PP who I have yet to hear from. I suspect I won’t hear from them. They will have to answer to the other PP who got on it right away.
Before I hung up the phone from my conversation with the PP who asked me to call, I was assured that it would be taken care of immediately. I’m sure it will, but I will have to wait for several weeks . . . again because of the longer pay cycle for that particular place of employment.
It’s all good. I will get paid. I haven’t been terminated. (Just severed temporarily . . . accidentally . . . electronically.)
Even so . . . I was thinking of making one of these pink slips: ;-)
I’m back to work today and a little bit busy, so it will take some time to get in the swing of putting on work clothes and making my commute.
It’s a good thing I left early. Here’s where I used to park . . .
It’s not a sinkhole; there is a fair amount of construction going on as a parking ramp slowly replaces other former parking spots as well.
I prefer my old spot . . .
