I have always known who is in my family tree from my paternal great-grandfather down.  But I didn’t really know my grandfathers siblings.  The family is huge.  And many of the siblings had long since passed away.  Also, many have relocated, including, or maybe especially me.

I got this innocent note on Facebook saying, “You must be Frankie’s daughter.”  And as the conversation progressed it just seemed easier to write down all I knew about the family online, as my contribution to my aunts genealogical research and then share it.  And then I got another note, from a cousin, and another, and another.  And then there were five of us happily working away, building the family tree.

I week later, I found myself administrator to an online, collaborative, family tree with over 300 living relatives.  Chamorros are nothin’ if not team players.  And hospitable, and warm and never once annoyed that nobody’s heard from me for a decade.

And so, for the first time since my grandmother’s passing, I feel connected to my family.  It’s silly.  My dads family didn’t go anywhere.  I did.  I had to go off and learn how to act like a grown up.  But whatever. 3000 miles from where I grew up and I’m back in the flock.

Guam USA

This is good.  467 Eclaveas good.

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On the up side, I have recently resumed the purge of unnecessary household objects. And have delivered several carloads of stuff that was cluttering up the garage and house to Goodwill and The Place. This makes me feel much better, in spite of the fact that the stuff had piled up so high in the first place. At least now we’re going in the right direction.

Cleaning out my grandmother’s apartment really put me behind in my own cleaning. And then… I brought many of her belongings to my house. Trumpet please, announcing way too much stuff. I had given so many of her possessions to charity and friends that I felt that I should keep more things out of respect than I actually needed.

However, I have just given the wool sweaters to Aunt D. I had tried to line them so that I could wear them myself. But it looked ugly. So I gave up on the lining and then just held onto the sweaters waiting to find somebody who could wear them. When I realized Aunt D is the same size and wears wool, I brought the sweaters over. I’m glad they have a new home. I just couldn’t bear to throw them in the donation bin. My grandmother loved those sweaters. I needed be sure to give them to somebody who would really enjoy them.

I have felt so lousy the past several weeks that I have done very little writing. So much so that when I finally tried to log in to my sewing blog, I found the account locked. Fortunately, this was easily fixed with a note to support.

In my absence, the today.com network has changed their revenue policies. I think this will be for the better. But I haven’t fully check it out. Another thing I must see about.

I managed to make money on another venue on royalties from past work, in spite of my current lag monster status. That was nice and cheered me up for a minute.

The knitting is going pretty well, generally. I received my orders from Knitpicks and Elan. And I’ve been experimenting and working on a simple scarf. It seems that I can tolerate alpaca. I’m working with an alpaca/silk/nylon blend yarn. It took a while to get used to it. But now I seem to be able to keep the tension pretty even. Hopefully, when the scarf is finished, I’ll be able to wear it around my neck and not have to give it away.

I got a very brief note from grandmas attorney. As soon as I saw the envelope I had terrible anxiety. Of course they want to know if I’ve closed everything out. And I have not. Every time I do something related to my grandmothers estate it just spirals out into a drama. I feel ill just thinking about it. Still the end is in sight. After months and months, less items that need to be addressed by me are rolling in. The only things really problematic left are family related. Which is where I see doom.

I worked in the ESOL class today. I thought that would cheer me up. But it did not. I only felt more affection for immigrants, and thus missed my family even more. Usually on Tuesdays I feel quite happy, especially after class.

A positive side effect of my grandmothers death, is that it prompted me to have greater appreciation for my cousins, who I know and are still alive. That may sound preposterous. But my dad’s side of the family was exposed to radioactive fall-out. That did not assure a long life for him and many others of his generation.

On the other side of the family, I don’t really know people. It was my father’s family whom we lived near, and spent our time with. And pleasantly, these are the people who have all been appearing on Facebook. I know other families actually use the phone. But we have not. And for the most part, still do not. Though text messaging has become very popular among us.

I miss my cousins too. Argh.

I hate to be blue. I opened all the windows, put on cheerful music, lit a happy smelling candle, cleaned the house.

Still blue.

I felt better for a while after I spoke to a friend on the phone. Then I picked up DD and took her to the grocery. I have rarely taken her shopping with me since school started. But yesterday, we went looking for a gift for DH. And today we went to the grocery together. She was shockingly well behaved in the grocery. She is usually quite pesky about wanting to buy junk food.

Today, I told her she could could pick out a few things before we entered the store. And we agreed on a pastry, pears, spaghetti squash and cheese bread. (Yes, she picked those out.)

I now have an arsenal of ingredients with which to cook. And that should keep me busy all week.

I got a turkey for DH to mess with since they were 89 cents per pound. And now that I see how gargantuan it looks in my refrigerator, wonder if I will have to go out and buy a larger roasting pan or cut it into parts and cook them separately.

I tried to get inspired to sew. But the fabrics all looked boring to me. So I’ll need to ignore them for a while. Or buy something entirely new.

I may be encouraged enough now, by Liz and Marne to try knitting. It still looks incredibly complicated to me. But I think that a handful of cotton or cashmere yarn could be very soothing on an evening like this one, already dark at 5:30 PM. That may be temptation enough to get me past the imagined doom of knitting.

Planting a Tree

It’s difficult to tell from where he is standing. But DH and the tree are about the same height, when we first planted it. This mainly involved me trying to be helpful and him demanding that I just point to the desired tree location and get out of the way. We were the second residents to move into our subdivision. So the houses you see in the picture were at that time still being built.

Red Maple

2009, the tree is taller than our two story house. I asked DH if he would stand next to it for a picture and he surprised me by saying sure, when he was finished with whatever he was doing in the yard. But then we both got busy. So here is the tree, as seen from nearly the same spot of the porch, but about nine and a half years later.

I was trying to use this photo framing technique, where a bit of architecture or a natural element forms an organic frame within the picture. But this didn’t really capture how much larger the tree is. It is a good twenty feet tall and nearly as wide. I love it. It spreads out and makes the yard feel private.

DH is not such a huge fan. He has recently been complaining that my tree roots are invading his lawn. DH is very serious about the lawn.

Today was productive, I spent another hour sorting mail. Which my cousin finds unfathomable. It’s because I count the seriously annoying fact that I had to call a credit card company to remind them that my grandmother is dead, that they have been legally notified, and reminded already. And I would really like them to stop sending me notices to the contrary. It’s the third time; they need to get with it.

I managed to force myself to get this done by exiling myself to the library, where I am unable to procrastinate by doing dishes, laundry or any other household chore that I can justify as imperative to my families health and well being. I always sit near the childrens section, where it is noisy anyway. Because me opening mail and talking quietly on the phone for a moment is not even close to as loud as the noise coming from the children. A woman sitting at a table behind me talked on her cell quietly; and I barely noticed her.

But then a seriously loud, rude woman got on her phone, and paced the whole place, her loud voice going up and down in volume as she got closer to me and further away again. She walked right past the information desk, and nobody said a word. I stared at her. Other people stared at her. She did not shut up, or lower her voice. Seriously, where was the librarian who uses the Principal’s office voice on such people? I know there is one. I totally missed her today.

I gave up after a while, unable to discern the junk mail from the real mail with the rude voice echoing around me. But before I gave up I found an erroneously processed insurance claim, which means that either in the mail pile, or coming soon will be the matching, overly inflated bill. Ugh.

I think I will make the tree my happy place.

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Dammit! by gfpeck

My copy of Quicken has stopped accepting data from any bank. Which DH says hardly seems fair since I did pay for it. Right. Annoying. Investigated and tried Online Quicken, which stinks. Ascendo which is beautiful if you only keep one month of data but otherwise locks up. That defeats the purpose of tracking the data in my opinion. And Mint, which doesn’t keep track of upcoming bills, but is otherwise quite nice. However, since no bill tracking not so useful.

Ack.

Very few responses to DDs birthday invitations. Which I’m told is the norm, that people just show up. So, how am I supposed to know how much cake to get? Or worse, dealing with the aftermath of a small child whose classmates said they were coming – because they have no idea of their family schedules – and then do not appear. This is why I hunted down a parent a few weeks ago, because I lost the invitation, so I could say yes, thank you, DD is attending.

But no such luck on my end. And we’ve paid for the party. I’m so not going to agree to this sort of party next year. Family parties where it doesn’t matter how many people show up are far more manageable.

I forgot my SIL and kids were coming yesterday. Happily she emailed me asking if this was still a good time. So the afternoon was nice, instead of just more drama. I put the drama on hold for a few hours.

I loathe the mail. I know there are a dozen things in there all related to my grandmother’s death. And I just cannot deal with it this week, have been avoiding the inevitable opening of mail and dealing with it.

I have no garment fabric, which hardly seems possible. But I don’t. I have only home decorating fabric, and little remnants of garment fabric. Which is totally bizarre, since a year ago when I began sewing a lot again, it was completely the opposite situation.

I really thought I could make a sweater coat from some fleece I’ve been using as a wrap. But the wrap is one quarter yard too short to repurpose in this capacity. Oh so close and yet, so not going to happen today.

I purchased some gifts for DD for her birthday over the past few months. One of them is lost in the house. I hid it from her too well apparently.

Must run off to the dry cleaners to return alterations. I’m glad to have the work, but displeased with the timing. I am constantly offered some kind of work when I have about a dozen other bits of work to do. So it’s either a drought or a hurricane.

Blah, blah, blah. Must have lunch before I miss the opportunity.

christine eclavea mercer

My standards certainly changed in my thirties.  Before that I imagined success the way children do, that one must be the CEO, the President, the Astronaut, the Prima Ballerina. I was taught to aim high like the Air Force.

Children and family were an idea in my twenties, the thing that kept me from getting to work on time because I was stuck behind the schoolbus, or giving me a headache on the screaming baby flight.  They were the thing my mother nagged about at every phone conversation – the reason I stopped calling.

In 1998 the most backward wonderful thing happened:  I lost my job.  It was a window opening for me.  I left my jackass (now ex) husband.  And moved to Atlanta to be with my grandmother, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer.  By the time I arrived for good it was 1999.

I won’t bore you with the whole of it.  That’s the meat.  That, and the fact that I declared myself a person who liked men who are nice, and have the ability to stay in one location for more than the number of months between deployments by the military, transfers by the FBI, or sudden relocation by more sinister organizations that shall not be named.

Voila, new town, new decade, new me.  Mostly.  My damn driving record and total inability to drive 55 followed me.

My grandmother welcomed me with kisses on both cheeks, a lunch of grapes, cheese and baguette, and a jar of Nivea Daily Nourishing Cream.  She swore by the stuff and had been tucking it into my suitcase for about five years by then.  It was her secret skin recipe that was not at all secret.  My mother had rejected it.  And she was determined to pass it on.

I found it a bit heavy, except in January when the central heat sucks every last drop of moisture from the air.  But I kept it.  I gave away the extra jars to friends when they commented on her fabulous skin.  I always had four or five laying around.  I couldn’t refuse them.  She wouldn’t allow me to.  And anyway, I am not my mother.

Due to her insistence that I take the Nivea, and my very slow progress in using it up, I have donated countless jars of it to battered womens shelters over the years.  All because I could not say no to my grandmother.  And she insisted that her skin was fabulous because of the Nivea and the good genes.

Around the time I turned 35, which is when my body went crazy in general, I started to use the Nivea for more months out of the year, all winter long instead of only January.  And now, at 39, I start using it when the temperature drops below 70 degrees and continue until April or May.  I suppose that when I’m 85, if I live that long and the Nivea is still being made I’ll be using it all year long.

I’ve replaced most commercial beauty products with preservative-free handmade goods.  Even things I thought would be too weirdly hippie smelling and creepy to use in their more natural forms, like shampoo bars and deodorant sans aluminum have appeared among my toiletries.  The Nivea lingers.

I’m not usually sentimental.  But I’m almost 40.  So I allow myself some sentimentality now.  I never imagined living this long.  And it’s these sentimental ideas that bind families together.  I never appreciated them before.

Both of my parents are long since passed.  And my grandmother died this year.  She spent years telling me things followed by the words, because eventually I die.

I’ve started telling DD to pay attention to things about family history, because eventually I die.  I’ve been told this is premature.  But on my mothers timeline I’ve got less than a decade left. (A fluke probably, but still.)

So I’m declaring these things for the record, the Nivea, my stupid ass mistakes, the fact that I no longer give a a shit if I’m ever the CEO or married to one, that being successfully married means being still married, and successful career means employed with a roof over your head.  Because eventually I die.

It isn’t so macabre, just practical.  DD is not even creeped out by it.  I’m passing on the crazy Frog sensibility.  And the Nivea.

An actual street near my home

Do ordinary households have conversations such as these?

Him:  Hi.  How are you?

Me:  Good.  Relatively, unproductive.  No, not really, spent all day trying to stay out of jail.  Not jail actually, but you know, the bureaucratic bullshit that haunts grown-ups who made asses of themselves in their twenties so we would not be asses now.  But now, oh shit, is there a warrant for my arrest in New Jersey!?

You?

Him:  Err, still sick.  Tired.

I’m going to change my clothes now.

Poor guy.  He can’t even blame marrying me on his youth.

DD got an extra stamp for being the best following-instructions ballerina.  She’s delighted.

SS’s girlfriend re-appeared.

I have strong feelings of I relate to that, when watching Californication.  Not the fabulous body, getting laid all the time, and making tons of money part of course.  The somehow I manage to leave a trail of destruction behind to bite me in the ass later part.

In all fairness, I have not really gotten into much trouble for the past ten years. It’s the trouble before that, things like forgotten out of state traffic tickets that crop up and ruin my well mannered days.  And really, it’s not like I did something violent.

The stupid human tricks I usually do are things like dealing with an expired drivers license, and suspension, and trying to plan a trip and buying airfare, and getting a new phone all in the same week. And adding a bunch of plugins to the blog; and agreeing to write two more articles in two different languages. Like any one of those things all by itself would not have my task list struggling for air.

And now, Friday, and have tons of stuff to do.  And DH will be golfing on Sunday.  Ugh.

I was going to declare it a victory, or at least a draw if I could manage to pick up DD on time and cook dinner.  I got her on time, but have ten pounds of half thawed chicken in the sink.  If I had done what I intended and separated it into one pound batches and frozen it separately I would not have this mess.  Such was the start of my week, setting it in the freezer and forgetting.

I didn’t get the mail out in time and am now greeted by legal notices for my grandmothers estate.  More things in there for me to do, I’m sure.

I declare it the weekend and everything ignorable except the article I owe Tryhandmade.  Anyway, I’ve already done the research and like writing that piece.  It’s the optimist in me. I fantasize about saving an eczema sufferer from certain outbreak doom or maybe a tree.

Krysten and the Tree by Amy Loves Yah

Girl Playing by D Sharon Pruitt

I am trying to think positive, and make jokes.  My grandmother would want me to.  Yesterday, when the microwave went berzerk, I told DH, “It’s Grandma.  She wants us to bring her microwave home from her apartment.”

He gasped and said, are you making jokes about your grandmothers death?  Too soon!

This said about a woman who called me regularly to tell me she moved up the waiting list for an apartment because somebody died, until she moved in.  Then she told me who died, and who else had moved up the list, and who she was rooting for on the list for when she would eventually die.  She hoped a nice, clean, catless woman would next occupy the apartment – not a man, a drunk, or a pet owner.  Don’t ask me.  Those were her criteria.

I am talking to one of my long lost French cousins.  We haven’t spoken since her dad died who knows how long ago.  It wasn’t on purpose.  We just lost touch.

I have written to my grandmothers SIL, niece and nephew, and favorite cousin about three dozen times each and have yet to post a letter.  I suck.

On the bright side, one more Frog found, a dozen to go.

I feel less ill today.  I managed to drag myself out of bed without sobbing.  I made a toile tote bag to occupy my mind.

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We celebrated the 80th birthday of DH’s grandmother today. Don’t the men look serious?

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