"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Hairstyles

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations.

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

The prompt for the week is:    

Hairstyles

The Brief:

• Go on share your hairstyles over the years!
• Do you have regular hairdresser habits?
• Colour?
• Do you dye it? (your secret is safe with us!)

Boy have I had hairstyles over the years... But they aren't too bad I have to admit, but as you will see they haven't changed much either.

I don't colour my hair but it is turning a nice white grey like my paternal grandmother, Jean. However, I know one of my sister's and brother all have my mother's salt and pepper and like wire grey hair. I love my hair colour.

Here are some of my hair styles over the years.

Aged about 1 1/2 - 2

Aged about 4

Aged about 5

Aged 6

Aged about 8 (with sister Jean)

Aged about 10

Aged about 13 

Aged about 15

Aged 18 High School Sr Prom

Aged 18 High School Sr Picture

Aged 22 Graduation from college

Aged 22 before graduation

Aged 24 with soon to be husband, Brett

Aged 24 with soon to be husband, Brett

Aged 25 on wedding day

Aged 25 with soon to be husband, Brett

Aged 27

Aged 28

Aged 30

Aged 33

Aged 35

Aged 37

Aged 40

Aged 42

I did warn you I haven't changed much over the years!


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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Childhood reading

The prompt for the week is:    

Childhood reading

The Brief:

• Did you read as a child?
• Did you experience the wonder of bedtime stories?
• Favourite books
• Did your childhood reading influence you?
• Special moments and memories

I cannot remember being read to as a child. I can remember going to the library in Kindergarten and having them read to us. In the next grade we still did that but we could get some books to take home to read or have read to us. I always took them home to read or even just sit there looking at the pretty pictures.

I still remember the years one of my teachers would read to us from the series "Little House on the Prairie" and loved how it took you through another person's life. I couldn't believe all that information was in this tiny book.

The Library in Walden, NY

By the time I was in about the 2-3 grade, I found libraries. I found I could go there and read a book and be taken anywhere in my imagination. I started to read anything I could get my hands on, so I could read or try to. I say try to because they found when I was in grade 1, I had a learning disability where I had a hard time comprehending what I was reading. Was I reading? Yes, but understanding what you are reading and reading are two different things. Because of this, I was kept back in the first grade and then after this grade kept in the lower graded bracket of classes because of the problem. However, by the time I reached grade 8, I found young adult romance books.

Over the years, I did try and get my nieces and nephews interested in reading. With my nieces, they seemed to get into it a little bit but I put it down to still trying to find the genre they liked. They now love reading and have passed that along to their children. My nephews, they never took to the reading thing as far as I know. I know their mother, Jean, wasn't big into reading and thought it was a waste of time. I have lost contact with those nephews, so I have no idea if they ever took up reading at all.

The you adult books were great because they almost always had a happy ending and I was taken from my not so happy home to places where people did have other problems but they didn't seem as bad as mine and most of the time by the end of the book, they had happy endings. It really took the focus off of my own life and put it some place more optimistic.

By the time I was in high school, I had moved on to reading adult romance novels. I started reading Harlequin Romances and found they were interesting. However, after this some of the other lines from the same company came out and they were more expressive on the sex part and less on the romance and relationship part. Even today, I bounce between different lines. I do both electronic books (iTunes, ibooks, harlequin app, and amazon) and paperbacks but in the last 8 or so years mainly stick with the electronic books due to paperbacks taking up most of the house. In fact today, I still find them in suitcases, closets and nightstands I haven't looked into for awhile.

One thing I am sure of is I'm glad I can read in any language as my grandmother and great grandmother's could not for either most or part of their lives. They missed out on taking adventures or catching up with news because they could not read.


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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Aunts and Uncles

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations.

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

The prompt for the week is:    

Aunts and Uncles

The Brief:

• Did you have Aunts and Uncles?
• Did you know any of your Great Aunts and Uncles?
• Did you have people that you called Aunt and Uncle, yet there was no blood connection at all?
• In fact, does that even matter?
• So this week, tell us those about those people whose names appear within our family history and perhaps you even had a favourite or two?

Paternal Aunts & Uncles
My father was one of two children my grandparents had. His brother, my Uncle John, I grew up knowing and loving. Myself and my siblings all loved and looked up to our Uncle John and loved our Aunt Jenny.  We knew they loved us unconditionally. Unfortunately, once my grandmother passed in late 1980s, I never knew how to get into contact with them. No one ever gave me their address or phone number, so I knew about them, and my cousins, but never knew how to get in contact with them.

My uncle in his classroom during his teaching years.

Thankfully in the early 2000's, I was talking to one of my siblings and they mentioned them. I then asked them how to contact my Uncle and Aunt and they gave me their information. I wrote the information down and talked to my husband about contacting them. I did not know how they'd view me because I hadn't contacted them in so long, but decided to call them anyway to see what type of reception I got. Like always, the reception was loving and unconditional and we sat and talked for over an hour. Unfortunately, I had made time to see one of my nieces, so we had to leave. We were all very glad I had finally made contact and we all vowed we'd never loose contact again.

Sadly, my uncle passed away only 8 months later, in 2002. I always cherish the last visit I had with him and that we had reconnected after so many years.  We did make it back to the US for my uncle's funeral ceremonies, and for that my aunt and cousins were so very thankful for.

2002 Small family reunion - 1st cousin to my father (from Germany), My aunt and cousins, my father, and some of my siblings.

In fact, the one time I was pregnant, my aunt was going to come and help me with the new baby, but we "lost" the baby before it was due. It meant so very much to me, my aunt was willing to come from the US to Australia to help me.

Since then, I have always maintained contact with my Aunt and cousins, although we haven't had a chance to visit in person, we've always kept up with each other via email, Facebook and Christmas cards.

Each time we go to the US, we stop by my grandmother's grave to "visit" and then make a "visit" to my Uncle John.

Maternal Aunts & Uncles
My mother was one of 3 children to my grandparents. However, I never knew any of the family, at all, from that side. The sad part about it, is my mother won't talk about any of her family whatsoever, and I'm now wondering why. The last time I did try and get some information from her, she wouldn't talk to me for almost 2 months, so I know I won't be getting any information out of her unfortunately.

Great Aunts and Uncles
As for any great's within the family, there have not been many.

Aunt Honey

On my mother's side, there was a person we called Aunt Honey, which my mother mentioned every now and then when I was very young but then stopped talking about her altogether. There was never a mention of anyone else on that side of the family - ever.

On my father's side, I only know of my grandmother's brothers. One was never talked about very much, but the other I was told was a bad gambler and always called when he needed money. Also, he was wanted by the mob in NYC, and if I ever heard from him I was to hang up and not to listen to him. Recently (2014) I found one of the brothers was buried with his parents in NJ and the other one died of a heart attack in the south. Its sad that I never knew of either of these people.

Non Relational Favourites

There hasn't been many non relational people either. I do have a person we call Aunt Connie and I do go and visit her sometimes when are in NY. I know she was one of many people my mother used to visit and talk to when I was younger.

Another person, which I loved, was relational, but was my eldest sister mother in law - we always called her Ma though. She was great and was full of life. She loved her court room TV, the news, playing her "numbers" in the lottery. Unfortunately, she developed emphysema and later died of complications of it due to smoking cigarettes. I used to go over to visit, play cards, and talk to her. We all still miss her when she passed away in 2009.

Ma holding "court" at her bench.

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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - When I grow up I want to be........

The prompt for the week is:    

When I grow up I want to be........

The Brief:

• What did you want to be?
• What inspired you?
• Did you become what you wanted to be or did you do something different?
• - was that deliberate or simply the way things worked out?
• Did you follow your childhood dream and it not be at all what you though?

When I first read this topic, it took me back to primary or elementary school. I think it was in grade 1, we had to draw and cut out us dressed in what we wanted to become. Problem wasn't that I didn't know, but how on Earth did you draw an astronaut? I asked the teacher and she didn't know, so I had to pick something else and didn't know what. I sat there almost the entire time thinking...what can I become. The only thing else was a cowgirl because I liked the thought of riding on a horse all day long. It was done quickly as most of the time everyone else had I sat there thinking of what I could do, so had very little time left to actually do the work. These were to be used for Parent/Teacher conferences so you can take your parents over to where you sit and talk about what you want to become. The thing is we never went because my mother had to work, so the whole thing was work gone to waste. As if that wasn't enough of a disappointment, but my desk was the only desk that wasn't touched - everyone had basically nothing left on the desk, but mine was still sitting there as I left it the day before. Talk about not being like everyone else.




Then as I was growing up, I loved the library so I had thought of going to work in one of those. However, I'm a loud person when I get going, so a quiet library and me just didn't work well together.




As time went on, I found typewriters, which lead to talk about business and banking and then eventually computers. I thought about becoming a bank teller but that seemed boring. Then I thought about being a business person, but thought it wasn't varied enough for me. I didn't mind the financial side of things, so I decided to see if I could do something with computers, financials and business. This lead me to grade 11 and I wanted to go to the Vocational Center, also called BOCES to us.I already had a few classes of business taken, so I figured a computer class with business was pretty good and that lead me to Business Computer Technology which I completed by the time I finished year 12. I found I was good at it and even went to a conference where we competed against each other and tied for 5th in all of the state of New York for Financial Information Processing.

By the time I attended Orange County Community College in Middletown, NY, I was feeling pretty confident only to have that dashed the first few terms as the requirements had doubled from what I was used to, so I was feeling a bit like a fish out of water. However, within 3 years, I was actually tutoring other students, helping in the labs and doing pretty good in my courses. In 1994 I completed my Associates degree in Computer Information Systems.

I did start at SUNY of Technology at Utica/Rome in Rome, NY, but found I just didn't have enough financial help to actually continue. Topped with that, I had met my husband and had planned on getting married.

Since then, I have strived to be apart of different aspects of the IT world - however, we have a love/hate relationship - I love the stuff but companies hate or don't like my qualifications enough to let me keep or give me a job in that field.

In 2013, I decided to take another hobby I was doing - our personal website - and get a Certificate 4 in Web Based Technologies which includes creating websites. I finished the course in 2014, with a High Distinction based grade. I am currently waiting for my certificate to arrive in the mail. I'm now gearing up to go out and see if I can get a position in the business world doing this type of work.

So to answer the overall question, I guess I'm still trying to grow up and figure out what I want to be...

I cannot believe how hard it is to get into this field. I chose this field because I figured with the changing in technologies, it would be easier to get a position but I'm finding that its almost impossible.  It is a real let down, but I feel if I can get a start with a business who isn't going to sell half of its business or there's another financial crisis I will be fine in this type of employment.

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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Feeding the Ducks (Animals)

The prompt for the week is:    

Feeding the Ducks (Animals)

The Brief:

• Think back to your childhood. Did you feed the ducks? 
• Do you remember the excitement of the event?
• Were you scared of the ducks?
• Who were you with?
• Do you perhaps still feed the ducks?

Of course you substitute the ducks for farm animals or pets

Growing up I did have a range of pets. At first these were kittens, but then once my mother found she was allergic to them, we switched to dogs. I have to admit I love dogs and cats are ok but I would like a rabbit over a cat.

When I was very tiny, I can remember my brother and father having a boxer and it having pups in my brothers closet of all places. I can also slightly remember a chihuahua named Midgie. Then there was a few years when my parents divorced and we didn't have any pets. 

Once we got an apartment and settled a tiny bit, we had a few barn cats that came and went. They usually came because people dropped them off, but they went because they did things - an example was one cat that jumped up on the counters and ate an entire frozen turkey my mother took out for us to have for dinner. 

After we found out about my mother's allergies, we switched to dogs and puppies. We had this one very young puppy and one of my mother's friends that came over decided to give it a beer. Well that poor puppy was so full and so drunk and passed out in its food dish. Funny at the time but no so funny now that I think about it. 

In addition to the puppies, in the teens I also had a rabbit and guinea pigs. However, I found these died pretty quickly and regularly, so they got old pretty fast. 

I did get to go to places like Catskill Game Farm, which has now closed. There would be all types of animals and we got to feed the babies they had there. 

People feeding the babies at Catskill Game Farm when it was open.

There was also a barn on the outside of Walden, NY which my mother always got us milk from. Once there, I was always able to help the farmer feed the cats he had on hand. I know the last time we went by this place, a grandchild was living there but there were no live stock and things looked horrible and it certainly wasn't used as a farm any longer.

Then there were the trips to places like Space Farms Zoo and Museum which had just opened up when we went. 

There was also another tiny feeding place for goats and such on one of the back roads on the way to Goshen, NY from Walden. Its now or was called Knolliewood Skatepark and has no animals any longer.I think my mother may still have pictures of these.


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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Comics and Annuals

The prompt for the week is:    

Comics and Annuals

The Brief:

• Like many children I whiled away hours reading comics and looking forward to the Christmas annuals that "Santa" bought with a degree of regularity.
• So this week a trip down memory lane. 
• Share the names of the comics and annuals - your favourites, special characters, memories
• Pop along to a popular on-line auction site and see what the annuals and comics of yesteryear sell for!

This might be another short but sweet article as I didn't have any of these growing up. When I was in my teens, I used to buy the magazines which talked about stars and their life outside of the TV and movies. This was fine until Princess Diana was so hounded by them that they basically ended up killing her to make money off of her.

After that, I stopped buying those types of magazines and stayed away from them. I didn't even watch the TV shows about the stars like Entertainment Tonight. I figured anyone who didn't have enough guts to treat them with respect didn't need my money - they had their attitude to get them by.

I was collecting stamps at this point, but it was very difficult to keep track of all the different things and keep them straight, so I stopped collecting in the late 1980s. Baseball cards were in the same field and I stopped collecting them as well. 

Next, I subscribed to romance novels. It was something which didn't exploit anyone and most, if not all, had a happy ending. Who didn't need some happiness in their life and what a better way to get it. I used to have 3 month subscriptions sent to me - Silhouette Desire, Silhouette Special Edition, and Silhouette Romance. Sometimes I did change the subscription or pick up another type by the book in the store. 

However, these got to be too expensive, so I had to stop them, but I found the local library had romances as well, so I went in and took them out there, so I still got my fix.

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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Do you have a safe place?

The prompt for the week is:    

Do you have a safe place?

The Brief:

• This can be somewhere that you gravitate to, to make decisions or reflect
• Somewhere you go to think
• Somewhere you go to take time out
• Somewhere you keep things you must not loose
• Do you have more than one safe place?

This topic made me stop and think - do I have one? I know growing up I didn't feel very safe and I was constantly going from one place to the next.However, since marrying, I think I do have a few safe places.

Us in front of our house in 2012.

Our Home
 
The first one would probably be our home. Since I was born, I've never lived in a place more than 4 years in a row. However, since we married and bought our home, we've been here nearly 15 years and I think I'm starting to realize I don't have to worry about having to pack up all my belongings and moving them. I can put "roots" down and not have to worry about needing to pack up everything.

This is a video my husband took of the day we have bush fires close to us and he went to help.

 

Locked Briefcase

 

We keep all of our most important papers in this locked briefcase. The reasons behind this are pretty easy to understand - they are in one area and locked and during the summer months, if we need to evacuate the house because of bush fires, all of our important documents are already together. This takes the worry about needing time to put everything together. That being said, I do have all the really important paperwork scanned in and uploaded to an internet drive just in case something happens to the house while were not here. In fact, one year we had bush fires up the road from us and I had to get everything together in case we needed to evacuate and it was very easy to do because I had already thought of this.

Because of this, I always tell my IT classes, when we talk about internet drives, about how I had my paperwork together but was still worried about the actual documents because I hadn't scanned them in. However, now I have scanned them in and I don't have to worry about them because I can get to them anywhere if there is a fire and we loose the actual documents. That really sinks home as bush fires around us have been getting worse over the years.

I'd have to say, these are my top 2 safe places. Do you have one or more?


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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Where do you think?

The prompt for the week is:    

Where do you think?

The Brief:

• How do you record those thoughts?
• Or don't you?
• Does thinking happen when you are in the bath, on the settee?
• Where do you go or what to you do when you need to seriously think of something?

2013 sitting at my desk thinking about the next blog topic

Where do I think... I actually have a bit of a scatter brain. Usually there's so much going on in my life that random thoughts pop into my head all of the time. Some examples are:

I've been walking to bring down my weight and sugar levels, and sometimes when I am out there, I think about various things:

• review some family history stuff and try and put facts together and try and figure out why my ancestors have done what they did
• review classes or information sessions I've attended notes and think about how I can use them or figure out problems to do with activities associated with them
• think of how I can get most of what I have to get done for the rest of the day and how I can get most of it done (example would be how to start dinner, bake dessert and do things around the house and I figure if I start dinner, then make the dessert then they can cook/bake while I do the other things around the house, so I'm able to get them all or most done)
• think about things done in the past and how we can learn from them
• think about how the classes I teach are going and how to better do things
• think of how we design the extension onto the house and how we can decorate it so it takes advantage of all the room we can

I've also been known to think about these things when I'm out getting stuff done for the house, banking, taking a bath, reading, watching a TV program, meeting up with friends, and the list goes on and on.


As you can see these are very random and all over. It gets scary if I'm either by myself or others and I figure something out and start to mutter to myself and quickly write it down on my to do list to amend, add, or how to fix a problem.

In fact, when I was studying for my Associates in Applied Science degree, I used to sleep and in my sleep I was writing computer code that was for homework. Many times, I got up, wrote the code, and with little changing it worked!

I have tried to record thoughts in a book but getting them from the head into the computer or on paper sometimes frustrates me as I have a problem doing that. I know in school teachers did have us have a diary and we were to write in it nightly, weekly or some other time. I wrote in it but it didn't have much of a forethought about what to write. In fact, when I first started to blog, I did this same exact thing - I did dishes, laundry, cleaned, watched this program but gave no details!

That being said, now I understand how people want others to blog and have started to pick a topic and write on that one topic alone. I have 2 blogs because one is what I call an everyday blog, which is this blog, and I write about anything happening around me and about family history. That being said, I'm thinking about starting up a blog which would hold all of my ancestors information. This is still something I'm thinking about and not actually happening.

My other blog, is my IT blog and I talk about anything and everything happening with anything to do with computers and social media. In fact, I haven't really had a good topic for the blog in awhile, so I have written an article but I have to go searching for another topic.

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"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Handwriting

The prompt for the week is:    

Handwriting

The Brief:

• Add to your Book of Me an example of your handwriting.
• Share some examples of your ancestors - parents, Grandparents, etc
• Has your handwriting changed over time?
• Perhaps include some samples of younger generations?
• In this digital age our descendants will marvel at our handwriting for very different reasons when compared to us marvelling at our ancestors handwriting. We take for granted that we can probably write. That in the past was not a given right.

Handwriting is something I find interesting. Upon starting to look into the family's history, I found many of my ancestors beyond my great grandparents did not actually know how to read or write. However, the later generations do know how to do this but most of the time our handwriting is really hard to read but this could because of our history - if someone cannot read or write how are they to teach the next generation?

On my mother's side, at the moment, I do not have any handwriting samples except for my mother's. However, I am looking into getting some paperwork (declaration of intention and deeds) which I am hoping that will have some handwriting after my great grandparents started to live in the US. This is because before this, my family, on both sides, was trying to survive rather than being killed because of the wars and having their countries be overrun by other countries. Education and writing was not high on their list of things to do. 

This being said, so far I do have a copy of my Great Grandfather, Apolonius Jagodzinski, WW2 Registration card which he had to sign.

Sample of my mother, Jo Ann Gauquie Schmitz, handwriting:

My mother wrote this in 1989 on Jo Ann's schedule for school.

On my father's side, I was able to so far obtain my great grandfather, Adam Wojtkowski, WW2 registration which has his signature on it.

My grandmother, Jean Wojtkowska Schmitz, actually signed one of the Christmas cards a few years before her death.

My father, Matthew Gerald Schmitz, signature on a recent Christmas card.

My handwriting has changed over time. Please see the different years as examples.

1982 or 1983 - Report on Space and Space Travel

Mid 1980s - Report on immigration old and new

 

1994 - Instructions during college for a presentation. Even today in 2014, my handwriting still looks the same.

As you can see, I've had slight variations on my writing. When I was in 3rd grade, I had much neater handwriting, but the teacher told me I had to make my handwriting bigger and I had to be quicker. In doing that I ended up getting more sloppy and harder to read.

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