Thanksgiving Memories

I already shared our family's biggest Thanksgiving memory - my parent's wedding on Thanksgiving morning 1955. 

One of my favorite memories (no photos) I can share now that my mom has passed would be in 1974. My boyfriend and I had already been guests at two Thanksgiving dinners and my mom (not really a cook) had scheduled hers for 6 pm.  We waddled in the house, I helped with last minute table setting and she pulled out the turkey. Which was raw because she never turned the oven on. By the next Thanksgiving I was married and Thanksgiving became my problem. Since I invited both families, it also meant only one dinner. 

Thanksgiving 1993. My brothers and there families came from out of state for Thanksgiving. My mother hired a photographer to take family pictures on Thanksgiving day. It was below freezing with high winds. There is one photo with our hair straight up in the air. 

This thanksgiving was maybe around 1997. We have a tiny house. In order to seat everyone, including extended family who all have larger houses than ours, we would move all our furniture into the garage and set up in the living room. To get to the kitchen you went out the front door (above) walked around the house and went in the kitchen door. Basically I stood in the kitchen doorway and handed things to someone at a table. 

2019, the cutest little turkey granddaughter. 

Zoom Thanksgiving 2020. The guy in the photo with the fanta bottle is our governor spying on us. We all agreed it was the best Thanksgiving because no one had to clean their house or drive. But did we learn? No.

2001.  I couldn't bake one pie or two pies or three pies. I made individual pies for everyone to enjoy. 

It's not just Thanksgiving, it is the day my teenage tech support comes to visit. 

My youngest daughter and her husband purchased a large home with an open floor plan a few years ago. She has three rooms full of tables that all flow into her huge island for serving. She has been crowned Queen of Thanksgiving. This year I am showing up with a ham, oyster dressing and ice cream pies. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

*Update - this was the seating set up at my daughter's house for the football game. I hope they are joking, lol. 

How I am Assisting in the Bathroom Remodel

(written on Monday) I hope you don't mind that this post is out of chronological order.  We are living in chaos over here, you know! 

Today they need to get into my closet where they removed pieces of the drywall in the back of the closet to add additional pieces of wood as support for the shower grab bars and other items we needed to screw into walls.  This meant I had to take every single item in my closet and pile it on the bed. 

Yes, I know I am a clothes hoarder. Time is meaningless to me and I find it shocking that clothing that I paid good money for in 1985 is now FORTY years old. That is impossible.  I worked in offices when people in offices wore professional clothing. I took good care of my clothes . . . Forty years? Of course my 90's clothes are only, gulp 30 years old, and my millenial wardrobe . . .  

But it was hidden in the closet! Out of sight, out of mind. In addition to too many clothes, I carry several size ranges of clothes.  Someday I might be able to wear a smaller size. And I guess instead of buying new clothes I will choose to wear ancient clothing in out of date styles? 

I did sort an entire garbage bag of dresses (dresses, lol) that I will never wear again.  I found the plastic shoe boxes with my high heels - like I could balance in heels - like new, barely worn. 

All of that is going to the clothing bank tomorrow. I barely made a dent.  AND to make it more fun, they just re-drywalled the back of the closet and I can't put any clothes back until tomorrow. So I had to carry this mess to another room to sleep tonight. 

The first day of demolition I went out of town to a craft store.  Halloween was 70-80% off on clearance and I guess I felt the need for another doll house.  

I am slowly painting the house and have decided it will stay as is for now as I move to another dollhouse.  

I bought this one last year and was thinking of doing it as a second Christmas doll house. Please ignore the wrong furniture in the wrong house.

The problem is that this material just drinks paint.  I am running out of paint after two coats and I am not sure if it will be safe to enter another craft store. 

And, one of the dishes I am taking to our families Thanksgiving is my grandmother's and my mother's oyster dressing.  The best part of this recipe is that a woman I never heard of published my grandmother's recipe in this cookbook in 1999. This way I can find my recipe every year.  My guess is that her grandmother and my grandmother found the recipe in the same magazine or newspaper. 

Thank you Alice King of Nevada, Ohio. 

I got my shelf stable whipping cream on my field trip to Trader Joe's along with six boxes of the Trader Joe's Chocolate Peppermint bread mix.  I need to make a return trip, we already had one loaf this morning with the grandkids. 

And I found petit fours! I did not check the date and they expire tomorrow so we ate one box as after school snack today and I guess we will have another tea party after school tomorrow.  That was not my original plan, lol. 

Memory Monday 3

If you were here last Monday, I introduced you to myself Mary, my Aunt Mary, my Great Grandmother Mary, plus an Anne and two Sarahs. This week we are looking back at my paternal grandmothers. 

My dad's paternal family came here from Germany in 1870, his maternal family came here from Germany in the 1850's.  Both sides settled in the county to the west of us. More "stayers".  

My grandfather's family has kept up with the relatives in this country and in Germany to this day and actually has organized the family as a 501c3. Under that they have incorporated the family home, which is now a bed and breakfast, and the little church across the street which is used for family weddings. There is a reunion every summer, a quarterly newsletter, every other year there is a trip to Germany, the off year German relatives come here.  The family history has been published as a two volume set.  I am not joking.  

However my grandfather's father died when he was an infant and he was raised by his maternal grandmother. He never had any family photos of his dad's side of the family and was not active with the cousins, etc.  

My grandmother was part of a big farm family on the far side of the other county. When I joined ancestry I found that the big extended family all took DNA tests and there are very detailed family trees for everyone.  

Here are the photos, lol. 

This is my grandmother Mary (yes, another Mary) posing with my father. He was over a decade younger than his brothers who were in business with his dad. He was very close to his mother.  She passed away the year I was born. 

Here is another photo of my grandmother which was unmarked. 

This is great grandfather's mother who came here from Germany and her name is Johannette Katrina Christiana but was sometimes called . . . Mary! 

My grandfather's mother was widowed when he was 18 months old.  She and her father both died in the influenza epidemic and he was raised by his maternal grandmother Isabell.  Here is a family photo after his father's death, my great-great grandparents Isabell, and Jacob, my grandfather and my great grandmother Maud. Isabell's Mennonite family came to Ohio from Pennsylvania. 

And here is the only photo I have of my great grandmother Mary, mother of my paternal grandmother Mary.  I texted a member of the family who had done all the DNA testing to see if anyone had a photo (because photos are my favorite) and this was the only one they shared. 

This Mary's mother was Amelia Mary and her husband's mother was Maria, which counts as another Mary to me, lol. 

I don't have many photos from my dad's side of the family, but I will end with a funny one that I have shared before. It's my paternal grandfather with his two wives. 

His brother in-law Charles is on the left, my grandfather, my grandmother Mary and Charles's wife Helen on the right.  Charles died of cancer about two years before Mary died of a heart condition and about two years after that my widowed grandfather married his widowed sister in-law Helen. 

Skip this - it's sad.

 

It was a normal weeknight. I opened my computer to Facebook and saw the posts "pray for these babies", "oh, sweet jesus pray".  I knew it was bad. I had no idea how bad.

A young lady was in an abusive situation. Her husband told her he was working out of town. She made arrangements with the father of her seven year old to help move her new baby, the little boy and herself out of the house. 

He did not go out of town. He came to the house where he shot and killed her first husband, shot his own baby three times in the head, shot the seven year old three times, and despite the pleas of the mother to just shot her, shot himself in the head.  The little boy was rushed to the hospital where he died. 

The community is devastated. Everyone has a connection to the family. My youngest daughter used to teach with the little boy's grandmother. She told me she is a mimi like me; was always planning activities with all her grandchildren. 

The young man that was killed was her son. He was lauded by all former classmates and co-workers. He was always willing to help anyone and coached all the teams that his little boy belonged to.  

And the baby. How could someone shoot their baby? 

Then last night was the Christmas parade in a nearby village. The parade started and the last few participants were getting ready to go. A truck went to pull forward and the brakes went out. He was able to steer away from hitting a float of children head-on but did hit the corner, then careened into another vehicle also pulling a float. A woman was caught in between vehicles and was life-flighted. One woman was transported with an arm injury. At least 15 children were evaluated at the scene, but were just "shaken up". The driver of the original truck is devastated; the state patrol have stated that preliminary investigation is showing a malfunction of the truck. 

The parade was cancelled, they did still have Santa available for children and lit the village tree. And said a prayer for everyone affected in this accident.  

It's been a rough week in these parts. 

Meanwhile

I promise I will stop posting just memories soon. I am still overwhelmed by the bathroom project. We started ordering and purchasing a year ago and I had such a vision. And, as with most home improvement projects, there have been challenges. I also have an OCD/ADHD brain so the distribution of the project to every room in my house, the boxes and tools and stuff, the proliferation of people all over the place, and a problem at every turn is making my brain hurt.

The bathroom is fine. I am obsessing on details. It is not going to be exactly as I pictured. There are going to be things I wanted to be slightly different. It is a bathroom. It is not a palace. It is a bathroom. I just need to take a deep breath.

Yesterday I was supposed to go to a luncheon at the Board of Elections. I didn't.

Today, to get my mind off the project, I was joining a group of senior resistors in holding up banners from a bridge over a highway near my house. I do have a shower but I can't use it because they are working on a sink cabinet. It's cold, I get dizzy with heights (is that enough excuses?). I texted I couldn't make it and they told me that they had to move the location due to some rules or law or something. Whew.

Tomorrow I AM leaving the house. My former glass class members are doing the road trip to Trader Joe's and I AM going.

Meanwhile.

Wishing my parents an early Happy 70th Wedding Anniversary in heaven. They were married on November 24, 1955 (which was Thanksgiving morning) at St Paul Catholic Church and a breakfast reception at the country club followed. Thanksgiving was a compromise because my grandfather did not want to close his jewelry store on a Saturday so close to Christmas. Forever my dad thought his anniversary was Thanksgiving day regardless of the date.

I Might Have a Problem

It's been very disorganized and chaotic around here with the bathroom reconstruction project.  I have been trying to stay out of the way.

Last week I took a friend I met in fifth grade out for a monumental birthday lunch. She picked Red Lobster. 

They have special Christmas cocktails and we chose the Snowball Sangria. Delicious!

I shared this photo of the cocktail on Facebook. 

Then I was planning a lunch date with two friends from junior high. They voted to go to Red Lobster. 

And of course we ordered the Sangria Snowglobe. 

One of my friends was sorting paperwork and came across this old clipping of me! That was several decades ago. 

How many more Sangria Snowglobes might it take until this bathroom is finished? 

Memory Monday 2

Before I start with new memory photo, I want to share how I know so many details about my veterans. And the rest of my family.

I come from a family of "stayers". Other than my Revolutionary War sixth great grandfather, everyone lived in my county and was buried here, either by immigration or migration.  It makes researching your family history so much easier when all the records are 1.5 miles away at the county courthouse. I also have access to a library that has all the newspapers from my county beginning in 1834 available online to search.  I feel like a cheater compared to most family history researchers. 

Now to my second group of memories. Photo memories are my favorite. I think it is because two of my grandparents were orphaned as children and they didn't have any family photos to pass down. 

The second night of my first genealogy class we were learning how to use Ancestry dot com.  I put in the name of my 2nd great grandmother and this photo came up. 

I said, well this is wrong, that is my grandmother. I don't know if you can see the resemblance in the photo below, but my grandmother really resembled her grandmother in real life. 

This is a photo of my mother, my oldest daughter, me holding my youngest daughter and my grandmother who was in her 90's.  The photo would have been taken in the mid 1980's. 

The only photo of my grandmother's mother was this family photo I found on Ancestry. I was not sure which of the six sisters was my great grandmother. She died when my grandmother was about 10 years old. 

Our local Facebook page had people post photos of old houses around town. A local resident posted a photo of a house from about 1930 with a woman she identified by name on the porch as her grandmother. I commented that I think your grandmother was my grandmother's sister! 

This lead to her coming to my house with a rubbermaid tub of family photos. Unfortunately this is the only one we can identify for sure as my great grandmother.  Her copy of this photo had names on the back! 

My great grandmother is the first daughter seated on the left side of the photo. This photo was taken in the year before she died and I think she looks much older than her siblings. I believe she was ill and they wanted a family photo before she died.

And to take a further step backwards, this is the first woman's mother - my 3rd great grandmother! She was born in New York in 1816 and was living in my county with her family by the time her brother was born in 1824. They were one of the "First Families" of my county.

Now you have meet me, Mary, my mom (whose sister was Mary), my grandmother Ann, my great grandmother Mary, my 2nd great grandmother Sarah and my 3rd great grandmother Sarah. 

I come from a family who likes to share names and live in one location.  

AI - Not a Good Thing in Law Enforcement

 A few years ago I received a confidential call from my police detective son. Someone had broken into the home of my elderly widowed neighbor at the end of our street and stolen her wedding rings while she was at church. 

He wanted to know if I knew who had security cameras so the police department could review them. I contacted every neighbor and located two, but footage did not help. 

The end of the story has two parts.  The thief was stopped on a traffic infraction and had jewelry from my neighbor and two other elderly victims in his car. He was the boyfriend of their home health worker. He was tried and convicted of these crimes and a bunch of drug charges.

The second part is that a lot of my neighbors and my husband purchased security cameras.  Ours are used mainly for watching deer eat my lettuce, skunks hang out on my front porch after dark and raccoons being thwarted by my husband's homemade trash can containment system. 

The detective contacted me early Thursday morning. We live off Main St and not far from the local Knights of Columbus which also houses the American Legion Hall. He had a photo from their security footage of a man in a hoodie who had broken in and robbed safes.  He asked me to ask my neighbors (on the down-low) if anyone captured the guy in the hoodie between midnight and 1 am so they could track his trail.  No one did.  The police then released the full video, including a clip of him inside the building breaking a door lock, on facebook. It was fuzzy but they also asked everyone on our side of town to check their videos for a man in a hoodie in that time frame. 

People responded, they were able to track him, they located store videos that had much better clarity. The police got a warrant and found the items he had stolen in his apartment as well as being able to track his vehicle from the tapes from businesses between his apartment and the victims. 

They have released a statement:

On a related note, both Chief D. and Det. Merry cautioned people about using AI programs to enhance photos of suspects.

Someone used AI on an image of "thief" , and the "improved" version looked less like him than the original, according to Det. Merry. An area newspaper then used the AI version in an online story about the burglary, which potentially could have hindered people from identifying him.

Det. Merry did thank all of the area residents who offered the use of video from their doorbell cams for the investigation.

Warming Packs

Last Sunday my political action group had a dinner and service project.

I would like to say I am very active in the group but I'm not. The focus went from group meetings with action (like our postcard writing parties and phone call for candidates) to what they are calling "talk teams" where they meet in small groups in homes to talk. And I am not really interested in talking. Actually I talk nonstop but talking about politics nonstop gives me a headache.

So. Someone decided to have a group meeting of all the talk teams and pair it with a service project.  We all donated items and prepared warming packs for the homeless. A local laundromat allows the homeless to stay in the building all night (no beds, just chairs) and I guess they will be distributed from there? 

I'm still having issues with the group. Someone donated catering so we wouldn't have to have a potluck. But everyone can use their own funds as they wish.  

I donated 50 pairs of warm winter work socks for men.  I found a great deal on Amazon. Then I kept finding more deals at stores and added more socks, some gloves and hats. Everyone donated a lot of supplies. 

I remembered I don't like to drive in the dark. I have a new habit of becoming short of breath when I am out in cold air. After I crossed a parking lot carrying my big box of socks and then going down a steep staircase in a church basement, I was panting pretty heavily. And I was worried I would fall. 

Yes I would like some whine with my pity party.  

But I am slapping myself upside the head. We do have a homeless problem. And as a member of the now inactive county homeless task force, I don't know how we will ever find a solution. And people are cold. 

Meanwhile I have a small bucket and I am going to wash my hair in my kitchen sink and think about how grateful I am to have a warm house and a kitchen sink.  And a warm bed and blankets. And how sad I am for those who do not have these things. 

Bathroom Reconstruction Chapter 1

My husband who is a retired railroad "water service mechanic", my oldest son who is a pipefitter and my middle son who is a laborer who does wiring and is a certified welder are reconstructing my bathroom.  I am using the term reconstruction because I don't think the word remodeling is strong enough. 

The goal is to make the bathroom "accessible" for aging in place. Lots of years ago we widened all the doors and doorways in our house. The goal was to complete the bathroom by 2018. We are slightly behind schedule. 

We started the demolition at 7:30 am on Saturday and almost immediately a squirrel climbed the power pole in our cul de sac circle, electrocuted himself and our neighborhood lost power. 

Luckily they armed themselves with high powered flashlights and soldiered on. And the lights were back on by 9:30 a.m.

Ceiling gone, drywall gone, insulation gone, tub gone, shower walls gone. Lots of mess. 

Do you like the peek hole into my utility room?

A ceiling with newly wired lights including my special request for a light in the shower. My 12 year old grandson who is super tall helped with the ceiling drywall. 

Mostly my photos look like this. A small room filled with three men. 

New insulation. And a photo of a high powered flashlight.  Spoiler alert. The shower floor is just for measurements, not installed. The "ghost" is actually a special trash bag for building materials. 

A new drain and a break for the day to allow concrete to set and dry. 

Plumbing of some kind.

Not installing a new shower wall; this was also for measurement and - squaring a wall that was so far off square. We (I mean them) rebuilt the wall to make it square. We also added additional wall studs as the supervising contractor (Mr Merry) did not feel like there were enough studs. This involved a trip to the lumber store and did put them slightly off schedule. 

At this point it was Monday morning and a kindergartener arriving for breakfast gave a round of applause to the workers, who were also here for breakfast, for a job well done (so far).

Then we discovered how unlevel the floor was under the shower floor. There was discussion of using a self leveler. The building crew took off for the home improvement store where they ran into an old classmate who is a . . . contractor. He recommended they use some foam stuff that hardens which is what he uses in home remodels. It dries in hours and hours instead of days and days.  The foam or whatever it is was purchased and . . foamed? And at some point the shower base was installed but is still drying. This put them one day behind since they did lost time squaring the room and intended to have the floor in the day before and the walls up today. 

They went back to a small plumbing job and tried to turn off the water on the hot water tank. And the knob on the hot water tank was leaking. So they went back to the home improvement store and purchased a new shut-off and other items and repaired the hot water tank. 

And hopefully tomorrow they can do what they had planned for today.  

In real time this is Monday night. I will be gone tomorrow as a dear friend is turning 70. Her husband is out of town and her daughters are . . . not celebrating her. So I will be taking her to the big city for lunch and shopping all day in the vicinity of bathrooms with water.  I have signed up to work all day Wednesday and Thursday in the church office which is in a building with a working bathroom.  I think the project works better when I am not cringing at every sound.  

Veterans Day

 Today I would like to honor my family's veterans. 

In honor of my family's veterans:

My father, Corporal J. H., Army, Korean Conflict (6 Bronze Stars)

My grandfather, Corporal L. O., WW1 830 Aer Squadron, American Expeditionary Forces, France.

My great-great grandfather, H.O., Union Army, Company C 18th Infantry Regiment, Ohio,

My great-great grandfather W,S., Union Army, 2nd Brigade, DeRussys Division, 22nd Army Corps, Fort Richardson.

My great-grandfather Private C. D., Union Army, Company K 47th Infantry Regiment, Ohio (wounded in action/scarred face for life)

My great-great grandfather Private J. T., Union Army, 36th Regiment, New York Infantry

My 3rd great grandfather Private A. E. Union Army, Ohio 6th Regiment, Ohio Calvary Company A

My 3rd great grandfather Private M. H., Union Army, Company D, Ohio 34th Infantry Regiment

My 4th great grandfather, Private S. A. , who served in 1792 with Captain Falkner, Col Clark in the US Riflemen and also with General Anthony Wayne.

My 6th great grandfather, Captain A. O. Jr, Continental Army, who served under Colonel John Abbott in a Vermont Company in the American Revolutionary War.

I would like to thank all of our veterans for their service to our country.