...how time flies...
Whew, I just stepped away from the computer for a minute, and here it is months later. And I'll tell you why. GRANDCHILDREN. Plain and simple, and I am thankful that some loyal friends haven't given up on me.
Since my last posting, ("Father forgive me...")...I feel like I'm in a confessional booth, I have done the following: Passed my spring 2007 semester classes (all "As", thank you)...four years of college so far, and still no associate's degree. I have taken most of the classes I need for a "certificate" in early childhood education...along the way I took three additional psychology classes, a class in domestic violence, and one in medical terminology, instead of those last 3 or 4 early childhood classes that I should be concentrating on. For my associate's degree I still need to take two science classes with a lab, two math classes (which I have been and will continue to put off until the last possible moment), one more English, which I'm looking forward to (signed up for this class -- it starts in 3 weeks), and two or three other required somethings (I saw a counselor 4 years ago, and was disappointed in the lack of guidance, so I've been guiding myself). Anyhow, I HOPE to continue on to Old Dominion University (or UVA or Norfolk State, or any other college that I can afford). The good news is that within this past year, the State legislature has passed a bill which ensures community college students who maintain a certain grade point average to transfer to a State 4-year college without having to go through the whole admissions process. (That's why I keep putting off the math classes...I'm hoping that someone may notice all of my "As" and take pity on me and still let me continue with my education.) I don't know of any preschools that teach algebra or geometry to 3 & 4-year-olds. It'll be time to retire by the time I finally receive my teaching degree.
Well, it's hurricane season, and you know what that means: (1) staying glued to the weather channel, (2) buying food items for an emergency kit that I'd never actually want to eat in real life, (3) wishing we'd cut down all the big trees around our house 10 years ago when we could afford it, (4) contemplating buying a generator once again, (5) figuring out what to do to protect all of the things we wouldn't want to lose to wind, rain and flooding damage, and most importantly, (6) trying to keep our summer supply of ice cream we've crammed into the freezer(s) at an edible level. (One needs to be able to polish off about 4 or 5 gallons of triple chocolate or chocolate swirled coffee, or chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the few days it takes from the time we hear that a hurricane MAY be headed our way to the time we know for sure that a hurricane IS going to knock out our power.) And once the hurricane season has passed, figuring out ways to make healthy meals out of Spaghetti-Os, Spam, Beanie-Weenies, Chex Party Mix, and Capri Sun.
Hurricane season in Virginia Beach is less stressful than tornado season in Illinois. You have most of the year to plan your escape, time to take your valuables, double bag them in plastic, and shove them into Rubbermaid storage bins, come up with a list of friends and relatives you can impose on, and bungee everything in your yard to your fence, that you can't wedge into your garage. All you have to do after that is stay up half the night every night from June through the end of November, studying slight movements of tropical waves, map coordinates, barometric pressure, and forecasted tracks, each time a tropical depression forms in the Atlantic. That, and calculating how many meals you can make out of ice cream between a named storm and landfall. For some bizarre reason, I continue the ridiculous practice of putting giant Xs of masking tape over each window, a ritual started by a neighbor the day we moved into our first home in Virginia Beach...even though I know it won't prevent the entire window from blowing in on me.
From now until December 1st, those 80-100 foot tall pine trees that we found so attractive and what made us buy our home, and made us feel like we were living in a little glen in the forest with visions of Bambi and Thumper romping around our front garden, gives us the creeps. We wonder how much rain will be needed to loosen the roots from the ground, how strong the wind would have to blow to knock them over, whether we'd be crushed to death in bed while sleeping, or how fast we'd need to run to get out of the way once they begin leaning toward our house. At least here in Virginia, we can plan...I'm not talking about the Gulf coast, anywhere in Florida, or the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Tornado season, on the other hand is unpredictable. Unless your home is built underground, unless all of your belongings are stored in a root cellar, unless you stay home each time thunderstorms are predicted...and keep everyone you care about locked up in your root cellar with your other valuables, you just can't be too safe. Mohawk Chieftain, my old pal, can attest to this. I thought tornadoes would look like the one on the Wizard of Oz...that you could see it off in the distance, and that it would lift your house up, spin it around, make cows and bicycles with cranky neighbors fly, and put everything down gently in the end. In 1967, we were in a tornado. It was hideous. I'd rather be in a Virginia hurricane. Enough. I'm getting stressed out, and need to change the subject or I'll have nightmares tonight.
Meeghan is continuing with the genealogical research. It's been 3 or 4 years now since she got started, and has now logged in about 11,100 names.
My father passed away a year ago this past April, and now that the probate business has been mostly settled, we were able to finally place the urn containing his ashes in the ground next to my mom's out in Tubac, Arizona. This was a major, major task.
Ancestors from my mom's side of the family have been buried in this cemetery since the mid-1700s. The funeral was small, but really nice; it was a do-it-yourself kind of thing. I arranged for the military honor guard, a bugler, a bagpiper, members of the Masonic Lodge, and the VFW to conduct the funeral. Dad's headstone has been ordered through the Veteran's Administration, and will be shipped to the local fire station, where the fire chief has graciously agreed to have it taken it down to the cemetery and placed on Dad's grave, once it is delivered.
After the memorial service, all of my cousins came down to an old restaurant in the neighboring town of Tumacacori, where we got reacquainted. Some cousins I've seen as recently as 3 years ago, some 14 years ago, and some 43 years ago! I even met one cousin for the first time, who is also doing a genealogical search. Many of my cousins were stunned to find out just how expansive Meeghan's search has been, and the incredible number of famous people who were ancestors of ours, including Ulysses S. Grant (3rd cousin 4 times removed) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It made us all feel like underachievers!
Tubac "Cementary". For years we thought this spelling was a major typo, until recently when we discovered that this word is a combination of the Spanish word cementario and the English word cemetery. This is a good example of "Spanglish", which was/is the native tongue of my mother's family.
The cemetery is so old, most of the graves are covered in stone, as they have been since the early 19th century. But twenty years ago, we hypothesize that someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, came through with a plow in an effort to "tidy up" the cemetery and clear the loose rocks away. Because of this, weather conditions, and foot traffic, it is now impossible to know exactly where the majority of bodies buried there actually lie. Because of this, graves must be dug with caution.
Two years ago, during monsoon season, we came out to visit the graves of my mother, grandmother, and aunt. (Note the overgrown weeds, in the background, hiding the rock-covered graves.)
The Military Elite Honor Guard flag-folding ceremony, part of full military honors at my father's memorial.
The Honor Guard broke from tradition and folded two flags. The first was presented to me, and the second to my sister, Jan.
In the tradition of the "do-it-yourself" Tubac Cemetery, we decorated his grave site the way we thought that Dad would have wanted it. With my parents' wedding photo.
After his beloved wife of 48 years passed, he was devastated. For the last thirteen years of his life, he could think of little else except having his wife by his side again. For now and for all of eternity, he will have his wish.
Since my last posting, ("Father forgive me...")...I feel like I'm in a confessional booth, I have done the following: Passed my spring 2007 semester classes (all "As", thank you)...four years of college so far, and still no associate's degree. I have taken most of the classes I need for a "certificate" in early childhood education...along the way I took three additional psychology classes, a class in domestic violence, and one in medical terminology, instead of those last 3 or 4 early childhood classes that I should be concentrating on. For my associate's degree I still need to take two science classes with a lab, two math classes (which I have been and will continue to put off until the last possible moment), one more English, which I'm looking forward to (signed up for this class -- it starts in 3 weeks), and two or three other required somethings (I saw a counselor 4 years ago, and was disappointed in the lack of guidance, so I've been guiding myself). Anyhow, I HOPE to continue on to Old Dominion University (or UVA or Norfolk State, or any other college that I can afford). The good news is that within this past year, the State legislature has passed a bill which ensures community college students who maintain a certain grade point average to transfer to a State 4-year college without having to go through the whole admissions process. (That's why I keep putting off the math classes...I'm hoping that someone may notice all of my "As" and take pity on me and still let me continue with my education.) I don't know of any preschools that teach algebra or geometry to 3 & 4-year-olds. It'll be time to retire by the time I finally receive my teaching degree.
Well, it's hurricane season, and you know what that means: (1) staying glued to the weather channel, (2) buying food items for an emergency kit that I'd never actually want to eat in real life, (3) wishing we'd cut down all the big trees around our house 10 years ago when we could afford it, (4) contemplating buying a generator once again, (5) figuring out what to do to protect all of the things we wouldn't want to lose to wind, rain and flooding damage, and most importantly, (6) trying to keep our summer supply of ice cream we've crammed into the freezer(s) at an edible level. (One needs to be able to polish off about 4 or 5 gallons of triple chocolate or chocolate swirled coffee, or chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the few days it takes from the time we hear that a hurricane MAY be headed our way to the time we know for sure that a hurricane IS going to knock out our power.) And once the hurricane season has passed, figuring out ways to make healthy meals out of Spaghetti-Os, Spam, Beanie-Weenies, Chex Party Mix, and Capri Sun.
Hurricane season in Virginia Beach is less stressful than tornado season in Illinois. You have most of the year to plan your escape, time to take your valuables, double bag them in plastic, and shove them into Rubbermaid storage bins, come up with a list of friends and relatives you can impose on, and bungee everything in your yard to your fence, that you can't wedge into your garage. All you have to do after that is stay up half the night every night from June through the end of November, studying slight movements of tropical waves, map coordinates, barometric pressure, and forecasted tracks, each time a tropical depression forms in the Atlantic. That, and calculating how many meals you can make out of ice cream between a named storm and landfall. For some bizarre reason, I continue the ridiculous practice of putting giant Xs of masking tape over each window, a ritual started by a neighbor the day we moved into our first home in Virginia Beach...even though I know it won't prevent the entire window from blowing in on me.
From now until December 1st, those 80-100 foot tall pine trees that we found so attractive and what made us buy our home, and made us feel like we were living in a little glen in the forest with visions of Bambi and Thumper romping around our front garden, gives us the creeps. We wonder how much rain will be needed to loosen the roots from the ground, how strong the wind would have to blow to knock them over, whether we'd be crushed to death in bed while sleeping, or how fast we'd need to run to get out of the way once they begin leaning toward our house. At least here in Virginia, we can plan...I'm not talking about the Gulf coast, anywhere in Florida, or the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Tornado season, on the other hand is unpredictable. Unless your home is built underground, unless all of your belongings are stored in a root cellar, unless you stay home each time thunderstorms are predicted...and keep everyone you care about locked up in your root cellar with your other valuables, you just can't be too safe. Mohawk Chieftain, my old pal, can attest to this. I thought tornadoes would look like the one on the Wizard of Oz...that you could see it off in the distance, and that it would lift your house up, spin it around, make cows and bicycles with cranky neighbors fly, and put everything down gently in the end. In 1967, we were in a tornado. It was hideous. I'd rather be in a Virginia hurricane. Enough. I'm getting stressed out, and need to change the subject or I'll have nightmares tonight.
Meeghan is continuing with the genealogical research. It's been 3 or 4 years now since she got started, and has now logged in about 11,100 names.
My father passed away a year ago this past April, and now that the probate business has been mostly settled, we were able to finally place the urn containing his ashes in the ground next to my mom's out in Tubac, Arizona. This was a major, major task.
Ancestors from my mom's side of the family have been buried in this cemetery since the mid-1700s. The funeral was small, but really nice; it was a do-it-yourself kind of thing. I arranged for the military honor guard, a bugler, a bagpiper, members of the Masonic Lodge, and the VFW to conduct the funeral. Dad's headstone has been ordered through the Veteran's Administration, and will be shipped to the local fire station, where the fire chief has graciously agreed to have it taken it down to the cemetery and placed on Dad's grave, once it is delivered.
After the memorial service, all of my cousins came down to an old restaurant in the neighboring town of Tumacacori, where we got reacquainted. Some cousins I've seen as recently as 3 years ago, some 14 years ago, and some 43 years ago! I even met one cousin for the first time, who is also doing a genealogical search. Many of my cousins were stunned to find out just how expansive Meeghan's search has been, and the incredible number of famous people who were ancestors of ours, including Ulysses S. Grant (3rd cousin 4 times removed) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It made us all feel like underachievers!
Tubac "Cementary". For years we thought this spelling was a major typo, until recently when we discovered that this word is a combination of the Spanish word cementario and the English word cemetery. This is a good example of "Spanglish", which was/is the native tongue of my mother's family.
The cemetery is so old, most of the graves are covered in stone, as they have been since the early 19th century. But twenty years ago, we hypothesize that someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, came through with a plow in an effort to "tidy up" the cemetery and clear the loose rocks away. Because of this, weather conditions, and foot traffic, it is now impossible to know exactly where the majority of bodies buried there actually lie. Because of this, graves must be dug with caution.
Two years ago, during monsoon season, we came out to visit the graves of my mother, grandmother, and aunt. (Note the overgrown weeds, in the background, hiding the rock-covered graves.)
The Military Elite Honor Guard flag-folding ceremony, part of full military honors at my father's memorial.
The Honor Guard broke from tradition and folded two flags. The first was presented to me, and the second to my sister, Jan.
In the tradition of the "do-it-yourself" Tubac Cemetery, we decorated his grave site the way we thought that Dad would have wanted it. With my parents' wedding photo.
After his beloved wife of 48 years passed, he was devastated. For the last thirteen years of his life, he could think of little else except having his wife by his side again. For now and for all of eternity, he will have his wish.
posted by Cinnabitch | 6:26 AM
2 Comments:
Good golly, Cinnabitch: you are one busy woman... with sooooo much you should be sharing with the world.
Outstanding Post! The photos really make a difference; I feel like a proud uncle. Now, you need more pictures of your "schmoopies.... ;-)
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