V is for Very Pleased

For Christmas, my sister-in-law got me a subscription to Storyworth, a service that records people's stories. They send me a question each week to write about some aspect of my life, both past and present. Then after a year of questions, they will publish them in a book. 

I am very pleased that I have been able to keep up with the questions, even though answering them can be time-consuming. I try to be thorough, including as many names, dates, and addresses as I can figure out, and while collecting this data is interesting, it takes time.

It's been a struggle to do a daily A-Z blog post and work on the Storyworth queries. Some people love to write, need to write. That's not me. Writing is something I do to form connections with others and record memories. All that means is that I am very proud of myself for my writing efforts thus far because, given a choice, I would usually choose to do something else (like work in the yard, read a book, watch reruns, etc.).

Below are the questions I've answered so far for Storyworth. There are some interesting ones here that might open conversations with others who you want to learn more about.

What was your Mom like when you were a child?

What Was It Like When You Went from High School to College?

How did you get your first job?

What were your grandparents like?

Where did you go on vacations as a child?

How did you choose your major in college?

How did you learn to ride a bicycle?

What have you changed your mind about over the years?

What stories have you been told about yourself as a baby?

Tell me about an adventure you've been on.

What is the best job you've ever had?

Did you ever move as a child? What was that experience like?

Did you have a car in high school?

Did you have any nicknames as a child? How did you feel about them?

Have you ever had a "supernatural" experience or an experience you couldn't explain?

Next up:

What is one of your favorite trips that you've taken? What made it great?

Instead of...

 Or What I'm doing instead of blogging.

I haven't been showing up here so much recently because I've been doing other things. So let's see if I can remember any of them.

1. Celebrated our wedding anniversary with a trip to a B and B. Elegant surroundings with a delicious 3-course breakfast. 

The sitting room with our bedroom at the B&B.
Can you tell we were in the turret of an old Victorian house?

2. Put up Christmas decorations. And why is it that every year, after we put the lights up outside, half of one of the strands decides to go bad? And maybe LED lightbulbs will last forever, but the wires with them don't. Bah humbug!

3. Cooking more often. Cooking has never been my thing, and it takes a real effort to do it consistently. 

4. Writing our Christmas letter and sending it out. 

5. Buying and making gifts.

6. Coordinating Christmas dinner for Ward's extended family.

7. Working and enjoying the regular storytimes I am doing for the under-5 set.

8. Working on my Storyworth stories. You are probably seeing commercials for this everywhere now as a gift you should give. I got one last year. How it works is they send you a question every week for a year that you write about, and after a year, they publish it into a book. A keepsake kind of thing. I haven't written something every week, but I do have 40-some and hope to do a few more. After the year, you have a little time to edit, and then you're done. So my deadline is coming. Anyway, if I have time to do some writing at the computer, Storyworth is getting priority these days.

9. Helping Miss Landers with some projects.

10. Doing year-end tax planning. Fun stuff. :)

My time's up, so that's what you got off the top of my head in no particular order or importance.

Until next time...

Busy

I'm working on some extra projects right now, so my posting here may be sparse for a few weeks. Although, I'm not sure how you will tell the difference from my regular, irregular schedule. :)

Every couple of days, we are having
snow and ice to contend with. 

First, some of my computer writing time is being taken up each week with a gift I received for Christmas. My sister-in-law got me a subscription to StoryWorth, a service that sends you a question each week to answer, and after a year, your responses are published into a book. It's a means of saving family history and telling a personal story. The questions are open-ended and require effort. For example, the question I'm working on now is, "What were your grandparents like?" I'm finding it challenging to discuss four different grandparents (and a bonus one we discovered a few years ago) in only a few paragraphs. Actually, this answer is more than a few paragraphs, and I'm only discussed 2/5 so far. I have told some of my family stories here on my blog, but with Storyworth, I can add specific names, places, and times that I don't share here. We'll see how it goes. I may get tired of this before the year is done, but I would like to do this for my kids and others.

Also, we have a date for construction to begin on our kitchen. In just two weeks, we have to have several rooms emptied. The kitchen is the main focus, but the domino effect of closing doorways and opening others have spread the job. And then there are things like if the new floor is going to extend into the connecting laundry room and bathroom, do we want to take this opportunity to put in a new toilet and vanity to replace the worn 33-year-old ones? We need to shop for those things if we do. And we're trying to figure out how we will function the 2-3 months the project is supposed to last. We have a small canning kitchen in the basement, so we have options there. However, we are moving cabinets from upstairs to downstairs to replace the small, crude ones there now, so we have to have that area empty, too. However, that's the first thing they will do, so hopefully, we will have a usable space down there before too long. But even before a functioning "kitchen," we have to figure out our workspaces since the office is one of the areas we have to cleanout. Ward works from home every day, so he will need a good space to relocate into. There are options for everything; we just have to figure them out.

So I'll see you when I see you. Actually, that might be more often than I plan because I am talking with you now because it's easier than working on either of the projects I mentioned above. 

Speed Blogging, This and That, and Exercise Update

 I've set my timer, so let's see where my random thoughts check in goes. :)

I've been spending a fair amount of time on the computer recently, reformatting and editing my Storyworth stories. You may remember I worked intensely on it a couple of years ago when I answered questions about my childhood and life. Storyworth (a gift from my SIL) then binds them into a book. While the book was nicely bound, I didn't like the quality of the pictures or the lack of formatting that was allowed. For example, you couldn't use italics or bold anything. Not to mention my typos.

Anyway, one of my retirement goals is to redo the book and print it myself. It is a very tedious job and frustrating at times. I have completed the initial transfer and am now looking for whatever new mistakes I may have introduced. I ended up with 138 pages, including pictures. So, it's long enough that I am really tired of it now. But I will persist because I really want to cross this off my list.

We recently heard the NIH orchestra play Rite of Spring by Stravinsky.

Encouraged by Mandy at Read, Write, Mom, I have installed the Merlin app (bird ID from Cornell) and have become a little obsessed with it. I sit on the porch or yard while it records birds and identifies them. It's really fun to see the variety of birds close by. I see a few of the birds, but many of them are hidden in the trees and bushes, singing away. 

Theo came over for another bulk cooking day, and we made 6 lbs of meat loaf, 2 lbs of green bean almondine, and 5 lbs of mashed potatoes.

There goes my timer (12 minutes this time*), so it's time to stop. But not before I do my weekly exercise update. :)

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  Since retirement, I have focused on getting more exercise. I post weekly updates here to hold myself accountable and see my progress.

I'm getting into a routine of sorts with my exercise activities. There are still many things to explore at the gym and other places, but I have found classes that are a fit for me at this time. 

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Line Dancing: This is a beginning class, and the instructor is good. I stayed for a bit and watched the advanced class afterwards, and they were doing a very complicated dance. That's what I aspire to. In the meantime, I got a decent workout in my beginning class.

Friday, May 16, 2025

Strong and Balanced: This class has two different instructors, and both have been out. Today, we were back to one of our regulars, who brings a fun atmosphere to the class. It wasn't too strenuous, but I got an all-body workout using weights.

Ballroom Dance: We had a practice party for our class tonight. We brought snacks and spent two hours dancing and chatting. It was much more relaxed than the class and was fun. I didn't dance the whole two hours, but I certainly got some good aerobic work in.

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Line Dance: We attended a line dance fundraising event for St. Jude. We were supposed to meet friends there, but the event sold out before they got there. However, the music was so loud that we wouldn't have been able to talk anyway. The local radio station was hosting, and they brought big speakers that they felt compelled to use to full capacity. I got in some good dancing for a decent aerobic workout.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Free Day: We went to a festival during the afternoon and walked about a mile. Most of it was gentle, except at the end when we were walking back to our car. Then I worked up a good sweat, especially on the hills. Back home, I spent time in the yard doing various chores and getting more exercise. 

Monday, May 19, 2025

Strong and Balanced:  This was a standard class that focused on strength training. I went up on weights today, so it was also a little more aerobic than it has been. 

Ballroom Dance: Tonight we did the Quickstep, ChaCha, and Samba. We worked on some complicated routines that the whole class was struggling with. Those are all fast dances, and I definitely had my heart rate up during class, not to mention sweating like a pig. :)

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Line Dancing: This was our standard class, and I did well on most of the dances. However, there was one new one that I just couldn't concentrate on, but I kept moving, even if it wasn't always the right way. As always, the class joked with each other, which made it fun. It was a good hour of aerobic work, but I wasn't as tired at the end as I was the last two times. Afterwards, we did errands and I got a fair amount of walking in as we visited several big box stores.

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Sculpt Express: This was a 30-minute version of Power Sculpt that focused on strengthening legs, arms, back, and abdomen. I thought I needed more ab work than I was getting in my Strong and Balanced class, so I tried this one. It was only 30 minutes, so I thought it was a good place to start. Well, that was an intense 30 minutes, and I got a good workout. I was definitely sore after this class.

Well, that's it for now. After several days of rain, today is supposed to be a dry day, so it's time to do some yard work.

Until next time...

* For full disclosure, I spent another 12 minutes adding links and pictures. I try to update my exercise daily, so that was just a cut and paste.

Making Memories

First, let me say that I am going to complain about something that has no consequence and is not a problem. But it bugs me anyway.

Every time someone says that they are going to make memories by doing something or being somewhere, it sounds wrong to me. It sounds like they are thinking more about the future than the present. Of course, we all plan for a Big Trip, Big Birthday, etc. that we hope will be memorable, but making memories has crept into everywhere and every day. As we all know, memories, especially good ones, can come from the most mundane things. As I have been writing about a different topic every week for StoryWorth, this has become even more evident. For example, when writing about the kitchen from my youth, I remembered fondly soaking the labels off of cans and making puzzles out of them. This all came from my imagination and was not a special setup from my parents. They didn't need to give me a grand kitchen or special toys to make a memory for me.

I think the widespread use of the phrase make memories is a fairly recent phenomenon. I don't know, but I think it has stemmed from the explosion of social media sites to share things. This has changed the way we do things. For example, I remember a trip to Disney World where many people were spending so much time taking pictures that they didn't see or enjoy what they were supposedly experiencing. They spent much of their time ignoring what they had paid a lot of money to see. The mindset of how something will look on social media has crept into everyday life to the point that we need to manipulate every situation as one that will make memories. 

I would like to say that I am totally immune to the social media explosion, but I'm not, as evidenced by this blog. I usually try to take a few pictures when we're on an outing, but I like to think that I am following one of my favorite sayings, "Everything in moderation." This brings me to the point that I have found what is comfortable to me in balancing the present and future (and recording it), and I should let everyone else find their comfort zone and not worry about it. But the phrase, making memories still bugs me.

Throwback Monday, Birthday Memories

 Today is my birthday. No big celebrations planned, but my family has made it special for me all the same. After I get past the number, I don't feel much older than I did years ago. However, perhaps I am a little wiser and more content.

To celebrate on my blog, I'm going to rerun a post I did in June 2022 about birthday memories from when I was a young child. Here it is.

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Memories

One of my recent StoryWorth prompts was, "What Were Birthdays Like When You Were A Child?" For the prompt, I wrote about birthday traditions from my childhood and how they varied as I got older. Then I sent a draft to my sisters, complete with a picture from my 6th birthday party. I often send drafts of the prompts to them to get comments about what they remember and sometimes to clarify things. This usually leads to interesting discussions and reminiscing.

After reviewing what I had sent, my oldest sister commented that the picture was not from my 6th birthday but more like my 4th. She is six years older than I am, so she often has clearer memories of things than I do from the early years. However, I told her that I remember this birthday very clearly because that was when I got a Bible with my name on it, and Mother didn't give us Bibles until we could read. I was not reading at four. Then another sister chimed in and said that four made sense to her. I was starting to get irritated because they didn't agree with me. This was not a fuzzy memory as some things were. It was very clear to me. I responded and said the picture was labeled on the back in Mother's handwriting, and it said, "June's 6th birthday." The oldest sister said that wasn't right if you looked at the clues in the picture's background; it looked like we hadn't lived in this particular house for very long because of the sparseness of furniture. I couldn't believe that she was persisting with her line of thinking after all I said. 

The next thing I did was get the picture out to scan the back of it and send proof that I was right. And you know what I found? I found it was my handwriting on the back of the picture, not my mother's. When I looked at the picture more carefully, and one of my 5th birthday, I had to agree that it was when I turned four that I got the Bible. 

How could I be so sure but be so wrong? I had a clear mental image of my mother's labeling on the back, and I thought I remembered the event so well. This points out that our memories are just memories, not necessarily an accurate depiction of what really happened. In this case, I think what I had done was combine my "memories" with labels from other pictures. And over the years, I reinforced my confusion until I was sure of the "facts."

There have been many studies about the accuracy of memories, and they have concluded that there can be problems. In general, the more sensory clues associated with the memory, the more likely it is to be accurate. However, a person can totally believe what they "remember" is true. Not necessarily that they were lying when facts prove them wrong. What does all of this mean? Well, not much in my case. Whether I was four or six when I got my Bible is of no consequence. But in serious issues such as trials or hearings, the complexity of memories should be considered.

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Until next time...

Memories

 One of my recent StoryWorth prompts was, "What Were Birthdays Like When You Were A Child?" For the prompt, I wrote about birthday traditions from my childhood and how they varied as I got older. Then I sent a draft to my sisters, complete with a picture from my 6th birthday party. I often send drafts of the prompts to them to get comments about what they remember and sometimes to clarify things. This usually leads to interesting discussions and reminiscing.

After reviewing what I had sent, my oldest sister commented that the picture was not from my 6th birthday but more like my 4th. She is six years older than I am, so she often has clearer memories of things than I do from the early years. However, I told her that I remember this birthday very clearly because that was when I got a Bible with my name on it, and Mother didn't give us Bibles until we could read. I was not reading at four. Then another sister chimed in and said that four made sense to her. I was starting to get irritated because they didn't agree with me. This was not a fuzzy memory as some things were. It was very clear to me. I responded and said the picture was labeled on the back in Mother's handwriting, and it said, "June's 6th birthday." The oldest sister said that wasn't right if you looked at the clues in the picture's background; it looked like we hadn't lived in this particular house for very long because of the sparseness of furniture. I couldn't believe that she was persisting with her line of thinking after all I said. 

The next thing I did was get the picture out to scan the back of it and send proof that I was right. And you know what I found? I found it was my handwriting on the back of the picture, not my mother's. When I looked at the picture more carefully, and one of my 5th birthday, I had to agree that it was when I turned four that I got the Bible. 

How could I be so sure but be so wrong? I had a clear mental image of my mother's labeling on the back, and I thought I remembered the event so well. This points out that our memories are just memories, not necessarily an accurate depiction of what really happened. In this case, I think what I had done was combine my "memories" with labels from other pictures. And over the years, I reinforced my confusion until I was sure of the "facts."

There have been many studies about the accuracy of memories, and they have concluded that there can be problems. In general, the more sensory clues associated with the memory, the more likely it is to be accurate. However, a person can totally believe what they "remember" is true. Not necessarily that they were lying when facts prove them wrong. What does all of this mean? Well, not much in my case. Whether I was four or six when I got my Bible is of no consequence. But in serious issues such as trials or hearings, the complexity of memories should be considered.

Look What I Found

 

The daffodils and crocuses are blooming! With spring officially just around the corner, I'd like to say the weather is great. But you know spring - can't make up its mind. Lately, it's been cold, snowy, and rainy, or what I like to call yucky. Anyway, flowers are here, with more coming. Yay!

In other news, I've been absent here for a while for no good reason other than I've been working on other things. I have mentioned several times my year-long project of writing some of my life stories for Storyworth. Well, yesterday, I declared it done and ordered my book. And not a minute too soon. I am ready to move on to something else. However, I'm kind of proud that I stuck with it. I ended up with 59 stories and almost 300 pages. Granted, there's a lot of white space in the book, but still...

Hopefully, I'll be back here more regularly, but now it's off to see if I can do something about this headache before I'm off to work.

Until next time...

Nothing to Say :)

 

Source?

My life is just going along with the ups and downs of everyday life, and I am enjoying every minute of this relatively routine, calm time.

Well, I'm not really enjoying every minute of it because it's not my nature to go without complaining for any extended period of time. Complaint of the minute. My eyes cause me a lot of problems with constant itching and burning. I have worked on this problem for years with various doctors with measured success. Besides the annoyance of it all, it affects my vision, and sometimes it's better than others. This makes it hard to get a prescription for glasses because what I can see one day clearly may be blurry the next. Nevertheless, I have new glasses, and I can see better. Yay! Now I just need to get past the breaking-in period. They're still giving me a bit of a headache, but past experience has shown me that this will pass. Enough complaining for now. That is what I've tried to learn to do over the years - not spend too long in a negative mood. Mixed results on that one, too. But practice makes progress.

We have yet to have any accumulation of snow this Winter. February is our big snow month, but we usually have at least a few snows before now. In place of the really cold weather, we've been having a lot of dreary, rainy weather with temps in the 30s and 40s. Not conducive to much outdoor activity (at least for me), so I've been spending most of my time indoors. 

While indoors, I've been working on my Storyworth stories. I have another month or so before they publish the book with the stories in it. I find the editing and formatting of their program limited and slow to work with. Also, I've been spending time trying to find pictures to add to some of the stories searching among scrapbooks and boxes of pictures that extend back to my grandmothers. I have found a few treasures, but it's taking a long time to find some pictures I was sure I had. It's faster to go through pictures on the computer than through old boxes. But I think I will be happy with my effort and the finished product when it's done. 

Me at 5 mo. I didn't remember seeing this picture before.

And back to the topic of winter and snow, my storytime theme this week at the library is Winter. At the end, we're going to pretend it's snowing with bubbles from a bubble machine while a winter song plays. I think it will be a lot of fun. I also put together a scavenger hunt in the library for Lunar New Year that the kids seem to be enjoying. And I would say that I am enjoying my job, too. If only I had more time. It keeps me hopping.

Computer time is up for now. Next on the list is cleaning the litter boxes.

Until next time...

Busy, but Not Crazy

 The last couple of months have been busy. Now, if I could only remember with what.

This past weekend, we celebrated my father-in-law Leo's 90th birthday. Ward did a lamb roast for his father per his request. Ward had never done one before, so much research was needed. He learned a lot from the experience but probably won't do it again.

My FIL's 1st dog. His mother went on
to raise collies for the next 50 years.

As I have mentioned here before, I put together a "This is Your Life" type book for my FIL. I spent a lot of time on it over the past couple of months, but it turned out well. Leo (and others) are thrilled with it. It was fun to watch him see a picture and launch into a story. He's a good storyteller. So now, all that's left is to organize the hundreds of photographs and papers I didn't use into some kind of order and return them to my FIL. Let me explain a bit about that. When Leo's mother died, he inherited all of her pictures and papers. Somehow, I got roped into going through them, which was not easy since I didn't know many of the people or things I was looking at. And there were very few labels on items. Anyway, I have gone through 3 big tubs of things so far that I returned and had another at our house to sort through. That's where I got some of the material that went into the book. The rest is strewn about in a mess. My goal is to work a little on it each day, so I can return it to Leo sooner rather than later.

And speaking of stories from the past, sometime I will get back to my Storyworth book. I have a hard copy, but it is in sore need of editing for typos before anything else happens with it. But that's not happening anytime soon.

One of the things I kept from my parent's boxes.
My idea is to plant herbs in it for the kitchen.
We shall see if that happens.

But back to recent activities. My nephew got married in May, so we were privileged to attend the happy occasion. My sister from Maine was in town, so it was nice to have all four sisters together again. There was more looking to the past when we spent a couple of days going through boxes in my garage from my parent's house. We put them there several years ago when we cleaned out their house. They were full of things we weren't ready to get rid of but not sure what to do with. Now, most things have been decided on, and I have a few follow-through things to do to complete the job. I have one of those ready for today- a package of mementos to mail to my cousin.

Annie

And as you know, we are down to one cat now because Leo died last month. Now, we're trying to figure out Annie, our only remaining cat. She and Leo were littermates and had never been separated. I wouldn't say that she seems lost without him. However, we are finding places around the house where she is now peeing. Whether that is coming from old age (19 1/2 years) or a reaction to being alone, we don't know. But it's a problem. We've moved litterboxes around to hopefully help. In the meantime, Ward has had to take the Roomba apart twice to try to get the pee out.

And this time of year, there's plenty to do outside. We don't have everything done that needs to be done, but we are making progress. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Until next time...

Comment: Sorry about all of the different font sizes. I am happy to have Google's services, but sometimes you get what you pay for. (Blogger is free.)

2023 in Review, The First Six Months

 As has become my tradition, I will look at what 2023 was like for me, according to my blog. Some day, if I give up on privacy issues, the review will be a more accurate picture of life as I know it. And sometimes, I wonder why I even bother about online privacy. I think Google already knows everything about me, and what they don't know, Amazon probably does. Anyone with a bit of time and inclination could figure out anything they wanted. But I digress. Here it is, 2023, according to my blog.

I didn't do a lot of posting this year, with a total of 73 for the year. Over the 12 years I've been blogging here, that number is just above my lowest year in 2017 when I did 70 posts. My highest year was in 2013, with a total of 278 posts. 

January

This is what I thought for most of my posts this month.
Source?

I did six posts this month, two of which were a review of 2022. Most of the posts were This and That with no central theme. We took a hike on New Year's Day, I worked on my Storyworth Stories (an autobiography of sorts), and I tried speed blogging to stop procrastinating and post something. That worked for that one time. I should try it some more now that I've been reminded of it. The one themed post I did was about being left-handed and directionally challenged.

This was the sign that inspired the post about being directionally challenged.

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February

Snowdrops were the 1st spring flower in our yard.

I did six posts this month, also. I was excited about seeing snowdrops, our first spring flowers, but I lamented that none of our crocuses were blooming like I had seen elsewhere. Ward and I took a trip to West Virginia and Virginia, and we celebrated Valentine's Day by doing couples yoga for something different. We visited our first parks in our quest to visit all of the parks in our town. 

A pocket park we visited in our town.

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March

I did four posts this month, and they mainly featured spring flowers. I was excited that spring had finally sprung.

The crocuses were blooming this month.

So was the ornamental plum.

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April

This month, I did five posts. There were a lot of pictures of the continuation of spring blooming around the yard. We celebrated Wally's birthday with a hike, and I was sprouting beans in baggies on a window in preparation for a STEM program I would do. I also summarized the driving trip that Ward and I took to Georgia and South Carolina to visit family and friends.

Our trip south included hiking to various waterfalls.

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May

Rhododendron were blooming.

I did four posts in May. I continued to feature the blooming flowers and the hazy skies we had from the Canadian wildfires. I did a review of Crumbl Cookies, and there was a tribute to our cat, Leo, who passed away this month. 

Leo

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June

Bee with pollen sac on tomato plant.

I did five posts in June. Along with the flowers, I showed vegetables that were growing. Also, I did a Father's Day tribute to my father and presented my father-in-law with a book I made for him chronicling his life. We took another hike with Wally.

Apples were growing for the first time on a tree we planted a few years before.

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Tune in next time for the next six months.