Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.
I’m the worst when it comes to doing this for my husband. It always starts with the famous last words, “Oh honey I’ll take care of it!” In this case, it is photos I scanned to send to a friend.
3 weeks later… “No, I haven’t printed them yet. but I will.”
5 weeks later… “Oh! They came out really weird on the printer, so I sent them to Snapfish and I’ll pick them up at Walgreens”
7 weeks later… Picking them up at Walgreens. “Sorry not here! Do you have the email? Uh, this says CVS”. Oh crap .
9 weeks later… “I picked them up! I’ll send them out!”
12 weeks later… “uh, no I haven’t sent them out. In fact, I can’t remember where I put the ones I picked up.”
He says today, “I should have done it myself.” “Yes, maybe you should have”, I replied.
I could have shown him how to select, how to order, either pickup or have Snapfish send them directly to his house and moved on to something else on my To-Do List that never gets done!
I moved into this house in May of 1961, the month after I turned one year old. Before that, my family rented a home a few blocks from my mother’s family home.
I imagine my parents’ eyes lit up when they saw the four bedrooms and the 1/2 acre yard. The bonus was the covered porch on the side of the house and a double bonus was a next door neighbor with four children!
The porch was where we watched thunderstorms lighting up the woods across the street, where we hung out with friends, where we slept on hot summer nights only to be woken up by the sun, well past sunrise beating down on us!
One of my Sunday mornings watching the world go by6:30 am on a September morning
I left for seven years to California and looked we looked high and low for a house just like the one I grew up in. We found one that had it’s own charm but then we had the chance to buy this one from my dad and we took it. We moved back to Connecticut 28 years ago and are still so thankful it worked out.
August 2021 and the start of the family room addition. The back deck wrapped around the the porch
The side porch is still a special part of the house. It was given a facelift a few years ago, had a deck attached for the back of the house for 10 years or so, and is now a little bit larger to go with the family room added 2 years ago. During warmer weather, I sit out there with my morning coffee and newspaper. It’s the same location that my dad sat for 40 years, reading his newspaper in warm weather.
The sunrise from my side porch November 4 at 7:30
I love that this house keeps so many memories alive.
We were in Fort Collins, Colorado in early September for a family wedding. Because it was on Sunday evening, we decided to stay an extra day and fly home on Tuesday.
At one of the events for the wedding, someone mentioned they drove up to Laramie Wyoming to visit the Wyoming Territorial Prison! It was an hour away and all we had was time.
Easy shot up the highway!
Once we said goodbye to everyone at the air bnb we shared with family, we headed out. When we got to Laramie we looked online for a restaurant for breakfast.
The remains of Sausage & Biscuits and our pretty inexpensive bill
Accomplice Beer Company in downtown Laramie is a bar / restaurant / brewery. No beers for us but we cozied up to the bar and had a delicious breakfast.
The Wyoming Territorial Prison was surprisingly close to town. In its prime it was probably a long way from town!
The welcome center to the prison
They have a welcome center to buy tickets and of course a variety of gifts to purchase! We knew we’d be back after our self-guided tour.
The first building was the wardens house and it was decorated for the era it was used.
Love the way pictures were hung!The warden’s residence
Around the grounds were carriages that were used during the time of the prison
I’m sure some prisoners reminisced about robbing one of these! And I’m sure they didn’t like seeing this around!This must have been a very uncomfortable ride!
Inside the prison, we walked through the two floors and throughout there was information about the rooms and the prisoners who were held there. The most famous prisoner was Butch Cassidy. His story is a little different than the movie!
In a cellWash roomGeorge Reeb, prisonerInformation on prisonersSharing a cell
After going through the prison, we walked through the prison yard and over to a building their used to make brooms for sale. We had a lot of these brooms in our home growing up and of course, we had to buy one to bring home! We had to get creative to get in in the suitcase but it survived!
Inside the prison yardOne of the watch towersThe broom building
On our way home we were just amazed at the wide open land and the clouds! The clouds were so huge and they looked close enough to touch. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them!
Big, beautiful, fluffy clouds!
We didn’t really notice on the way up to Laramie, but on the way back we were also amazed by the changing landscape between Wyoming and Colorado. It’s fun to watch it unfold through the miles.
We were excited to add Wyoming to our list of states visited but we’d like to explore more! Someday…!
Christmas with Grammy 1966 (me in the red/gray sweater, my twin in yellow, my older sister in the back with the scrunched up grin)
When someone says “Holidays”, I automatically think of Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. The Big Three!
Ever since I was born, Christmas and Easter were primarily celebrated with my mother’s side of the family. There was a rotation of where it would be held. I think up until 1967, it was held at the family home where my grandmother and oldest aunt lived. This picture was from our last Christmas with her and it includes me, my 2 sisters, and my second wave of cousins.
Thanksgiving was a low key holiday for us because there was usually a high school football game to go to! My relatives would be off with their “other side of the family” for the holiday.
My mother died when I was 27 and not yet married and my sisters were both married but no kids yet. Our first holiday without her was Easter of 1987, and my cousin hosted everyone. By Thanksgiving I had moved to California but I know without a doubt, my family back home continued the tradition of gathering, having a great meal, and exchanging presents. The following Christmas there were three babies so of course everyone gathered together. When we moved back to Connecticut in 1995, I was able to show my husband and son how my family celebrated growing up!
My house is our old family home and so it seems natural for us to host my mother’s side of the family. We do that every year in early December. My sister who lives in the same town always hosts Easter.
Thanksgiving has become the holiday that rotates between 3 different households!
Something that happened to my niece recently who lives two time zones away, brought up some emotions in me that have been long buried.
I moved from Connecticut to California in 1987 when I was 27 and five months after my mother died from brain cancer.
In November of 1989, on a Saturday afternoon, I had intense pain in my side and my husband rushed me to the local hospital. It was discovered I was pregnant but bleeding internally somewhere. After an inconclusive ultrasound, I had exploratory surgery and they found it was a ruptured cyst. They stopped the bleeding, said hello to my little fetus, and closed me back up.
All of this was long before the days of cell phones, zoom, FaceTime, social media. And three hours time difference from my family.
I remember my husband calling my father to tell him. I remember asking him to call my boss to tell her I wouldn’t be at work on Monday. I remember talking to my sisters from the hospital.
I don’t know if I wished for my mother at the time but resurrecting these memories, I wish I had her then, even from a distance like my niece has my sister now.
I have a twin sister and our dad always joked that he wanted to name us Gretchen and Gwendolyn but our mother refused because they were the names of two dogs in the neighborhood!?! We would argue over who might have received which name. Since I’m older and Gretchen was always said first, i claimed that would have been mine. I’m hindsight, Gwendolyn could have been shortened to Gwen and “Gretch”=nope.
So we became Nancy (me) and Gail. It was 1960 and I think mine was a popular name because of Nancy Sinatra. I don’t know where Gail’s name was plucked from. My older sister is Janice. I don’t know where that came from either.
It’s funny because of all our generation of cousins, we are the only three who don’t have a “family name”. No Julia, Elizabeth, etc. and certainly no “catholic/saint names”!
Also, none of us were given middle names. One name was enough we were told. What the heck?
Nancy is ok but for some reason people call me Cathy by mistake. I tell them, “call me whatever you want, just don’t call me late for dinner”. Hahaha
What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?
When I read this question, I knew exactly what my answer was. Perhaps it’s not a “tradition” such as holiday celebrations (still going on!), but something that was done and passed down from grandparents to parents….
Church. I don’t go to church.
I grew up in a strong Catholic family and went to a catholic school from first to eighth grade. We went to church every Sunday for 9:15 mass. Mom, Dad, my 2 sisters and me. It was never a consideration that my sisters or I would go to a catholic high school but I went to a catholic college for my 2 year degree. More so, because the campus in the countryside was so beautiful, not because of the religion!
This is not to say there is no God in my life. I just don’t need to look for him in church. That was a tradition or structure that was passed down from hundreds of years. But so much as changed.
My wise grandmother said something to my aunt back in the 1930s when my aunt a Polak (actually German) was going to marry an Italian. Someone questioned their different churches. My family went to a Polish Catholic Church and he went to a Roman Catholic Church. Gram shut that right down! She said, “that’s a lot of nonsense. God is in every church, not just in our church!”
I’d like to think she’d feel the same way about God being found all around us and not just found in a building. We can experience and talk to Him wherever we are.
I can look out my family room window and almost remember this sight with the blanket on the lawn for us, the chicken coop foundation in the background, and the mother of all maple trees.
There was a kiddie pool in front of us where we had car tire-sized inner tubes (remember those black ones with the stem that would scratch you if you weren’t careful?!)
Clothes hanging on the line to the left, extending from the house to a dead tree. I’m not sure how the tree withstood the loads of laundry for so many years!
The driveway was gravel and every summer we toughened our feet up walking down it “ouch” -ing and “ooo” -ing all the way.
There was an apple tree with a swing where I received my first bee sting as I was swinging and swatting at the bothersome bee. THAT hurt!
The old chicken coop foundation was ground level and the sides gradually got higher as the ground dropped away. We would run around until we got to the back and walked very carefully around.
Against the back wall was Rhubarb that grew wild (as did asparagus in another part of the yard!). When it was ripe, we’d get a baggie of sugar, tear off a stalk, and scoop up the sugar. I guess that’s where I got hooked on sugar!
All of it’s gone now – the foundation replaced by a 2 story garage, the mother of a maple tree removed because of disease, the clothesline, and the pool.
The gravel became asphalt but is once again gravel as my husband has turned the space out the back door into his garden sanctuary and we’re spending more time in the space I spent growing up.
Garage that replaced the chicken coop; maple tree that has now become the mother of maple trees
From the age of 2 until 5, my son wore these yellow boots nearly every day rain or shine, summer or winter.
They were bought to wear with his Batman Halloween costume which he wore every weekend from 2 to 3 years old. But even after the costume no longer fit, the boots lived on.
I even bought a second pair when he started to grow out of the first. I guess I was as much to blame for the constant use!
I lent them to a family friend and when they were done, they sent them back and they’ve stayed in the cedar chest with a few other treasures of his childhood.
I’m always amazed at the way the spirits show themselves to me. Whether through a medium or expressing their presence directly to me.
717 is my special number because it’s the month and day our son was born. Whenever I see these numbers – especially on the oven clock! – I say “I see you my family!”, knowing that the spirits are with me.
Yesterday we were in the attic moving a heavy cedar chest away from the top of the stairs so the HVAC people could get up there and put their unit upstairs.
It’s bittersweet because we’re getting central air for our 2nd floor which gets incredibly HOT in the New England summers we have, but the money comes from the sale of my father-in-law’s home in California. He passed away in October and this was something we knew we needed in our home and in our son’s and daughter-in-law’s home.
After we moved the chest away, I saw a piece of paper on the floor where the chest had been. I picked it up, turned it over, and saw THIS and got chills. It’s my handwriting but that chest has been in that spot for about 5 years after the attic was cleaned out and insulation was put down on the floor!
There’s only one explanation – my father-in-law is acknowledging the 110+ temperatures we endured with him when we were there last August and he’s saying “I got you – you’re welcome”.
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 