"The Book of Me, Written by You" - What do you treasure?

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:    

What do you treasure?

The Brief:

This week I am leaving the prompt wide open.

• You choose on what you treasure, the things, the people, 
• The things that are not seen, 
• The things that are seen yet not obviously treated as a treasure.

Treasure's can be found as long as you are looking. They also change over time.

When I was growing up and into my early 20's, I considered it a treasure if I could find myself in a job and had nice things around me. The higher the position the better. However, what is even better is the truth and respect. If you don't have either of these, then you have nothing.

My husband and I

In my 30's this had changed. It went to have to work to create a better life for my family, meaning my husband and our future children. It would also give us those children as they weren't "arriving" we we thought they would. In fact, we had to pay professionals to help us after loosing two children. These children were not born, but they were confirmed as pregnancies. One aborted by itself and one had to be taken, so my life could go on. I treasure each and every day I spent with each of these.

2003 One of our children who were never born

By my mid-30's, I learned to treasure the memories of people that were once in my life - my paternal grandmother, my paternal uncle, my children I never got to hold. Also, those who accept me as I am - my husband and nieces. Although those said nieces don't realize how much for them I did when they were growing up and am starting to realize they never will know, which is sad. The reactions they have had when they were growing up influenced my life and they don't even realize it. My husband and I discussed and looked at alternatives to having children - fostering? maybe but do we want to, adoption? I don't want to ever be told no because your not MY mother ever again, medical treatment like IVF? Maybe but that requires money we just don't have.

Jackie who we lost in 2012 and Buddy who keeps me company today

Now in my 40's, I'm almost resigned to never having children which makes those two we nearly had even more of a treasure. My husband's a treasure for being here with me and dealing with this. I treasure my dog, Buddy, because he knows when I just need those cuddles and kisses. I recently have found cousins - 1st, 2nd and even more cousins than I knew. I'm starting to cherish what we have in common and forge relationships with each and every one of them.

Lesson in life still pretty much remains the same - if you have the following in your life, you are richer than you'll ever know:

• Truth 
• Respect
• People who love you for who you are
• Love (remember this can range) for people who are in your life and who have given you and you ancestors life
• Pets can give you so much
• Children are more precious than gold

If you can make enough money to survive, and have what's outlined above, then you are your own king of your own castle and you have everything.  Think of the movie The Castle...

  Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.    

"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.


  Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.    

"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Hobbies & Collections

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:   

Childhood Hobbies & Collections

 The Brief:

• Did you share a "passion" with a family member or friend?
• Tell us about it - How, why, where
• Do you still have any old hobbies - the ones that have been with you since childhood?
• Do you still have those childhood collections?

 I had many hobbies and collections growing up. Both of which has stayed with me in some respect throughout my life up until now. Sometimes there was a break from doing them, but I've always gone back to what I like and love to do.

Hobbies
I had many of these growing up. This was always a challenge because we never had any extra money really laying around, so you had to be creative and think a bit out of the box.

TV - I loved my television. From Soaps (Ryan's Hope - how many remember that one!) to the "newest" TV shows (like Buck Rogers, Mork & Mindy) to sports (Got to love the Yankees!) I just loved it. I was always entertained and later intrigued by how they could tell stories from different angles and make them seem soo real and believable. During summer, the Yankees were the one think I looked forward to watching no matter what.

Dogs and Puppies - I've always loved pets. Over the years we've had many different types of dogs, many stray cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, and many gold fish that never seemed to last long. However, it was a common theme to always have some type of pet running around. The only time I hadn't had a pet was when we moved during my senior year of high school until I moved out and got married (about 5-6 years) and that was only due to where we lived wouldn't allow us to have pets. In fact, when we moved into the apartment, we had to give the 2 pekinese dogs we had up which was really sad. Since I married, we had dogs once we moved into our own house.

My library card from elementary school and a reading award

Reading - Reading I've done since I could string sentences together. In fact, I used to help out at the library in elementary school. Most kids wanted to go outside and run around and,I wanted, and usually asked, to go to the library. You know its a sad day when in 5th grade my homeroom was across the hall from the library and I was excited about it because it wasn't very far to the library. Everyone else was complaining because of the stairs. In fact, once I read just about every book at the elementary school, I took up going to the local library and checking books out from there. I went there almost every day after school just to sit and read.

The local public library where I grew up

Throughout the years, I've read many types of stories - from Planet of the Apes (now that's one think and heavy book!) to romances and sci fi. In fact, during the early part of the 2000's, I used to do book
reviews for Harlequin Mills & Boon here in Australia. It was great because I got to read books before the hit the shelves and was able to give great feedback on them. It helped the hip pocket because by this time I was buying my books.

In fact, in the past 10 or so years, I've been tossing up if I should try and write my own book, but for now its just that - a passing thought.

Running - When I was in elementary school, I lived at the edge of town and would walk to school. One day I took up jogging and then followed that up by running. It was great and I loved to do it because it cleaned out the head and actually made me relax. First, I started to help out more with family and then I hurt my back and it hurt to run, so I stopped. However, this brought me to my next hobby - Bike Riding.

One of my results of running growing up

Bike Riding - I took this up more once I realized it didn't hurt my back as much as running did. I did have a bike but if I had to choose I'd choose running over using a bike. However, that was taken from me, so I rode my bike. In fact, it was great because I liked it and I could get over to help out with family (as we now lived in town but they lived out of town - around in farm fields back then) and I could take my bike (a ten speed) and ride it over to help out.

Swimming - I learned how to swim by going to the local pond and watching others and then going to the library and reading about it. Then by the time summer came, I knew how to swim and I wouldn't feel left out of being able to do what the other kids my age did. It worked and it didn't cost anything which was even better.

Collections

Baseball Cards -  When I got to the 4th grade, one of the teachers shared with us baseball cards. I never knew about them and they intrigued me with all the information that was contained on them. Once that happened, I started to save some but as this cost money we just didn't have, I had to be careful on what I could afford to buy. Because of this, my collection never got big but I do still have some of these cards. They are in our our garage some place.

Stamp collection - Stamps didn't cost too much, but I would get books out of the library and read all about them. Because of this I did collect some and I just went around asking people to save the stamps. After awhile I realized those stamps didn't actually contain much money in saving, so I stopped. However, during my teens when I started to work, I did join a stamp collection group at the US Postal Service. I still have these today and my husband complains because they are so odd shaped they are hard to put in the book cases.

Some of my stamp collection

My 14K gold Elvis stamp from my dozen or so 14k stamps

As I grew up, I developed more hobbies like picture taking, baking, cooking and driving - just to name a few! 


Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.