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Friday

"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Task Reflections

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

The prompt for the week is:

Task Reflections

The Brief:

Write a list of each task you undertake for any given day.
Include the fine details of the tasks - taking milk out of the fridge to add to a drink - what was the milk in? a jug, quart container?
Compare those tasks to an ancestor - someone born in the late 19th Century or early 20th Century and preferably someone that you knew or remember.
Record and discuss the differences
What of those discoveries has impacted on you?

At the moment I cannot really do the tasks as each day these tasks are different especially as I'm still trying to complete things from over the holiday time period and catch up with the posts here.

My daily routine

Normally, I'd get up, make breakfast and get dressed to start the day. I usually go on my walk (lately I haven't been doing this until the afternoon or late evening), and then I was sitting down to work on my certificate I finished up midyear. After I finished my certificate up, I used the time to write up
presentations and resources for my classes for the rest of the year and then I sat doing genealogy research. Then went for a walk with the dog, Buddy follows me around the house, and back home and made dinner.

My ancestor's routines
I can imagine people like my great grandmother Annie and greats back before her all got up and made the household breakfast before they went out to either work (baker, farmer, factory workers) and the women cleaned the house, did the dishes, did the laundry, looked after the gardens, looked

Woodhull's Dairy in 1870-1920? - Taken from website http://www.hrvh.org/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=chs&CISOPTR=290&action=2&DMSCALE=90&DMWIDTH=512&DMHEIGHT=479&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMROTATE=0

after the vegetable patches and made everything from scratch. Then there were the children. All dogs were probably kept outside.

Comparing the two routines
I can see my ancestor's milking the cows (as some owned dairy farms) and the kids or wife bringing in the milk to use with the breakfast. I know when I was a child, we would go to a farm which gave away some milk to people so all we would have to do is bring in the glass and then plastic jugs and then take them home with us.

Me walking at Sam's Point in 2011.

I know on the weekends and when I'm home, like I have been, I make things from scratch. When I was working such long hours I was just too tired to do it. However, with me being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, I've went back to basics and have brought the Diabetes back under control. Today the foods are not pure - instead companies fill them with sugars, salts and any other thing that will make them taste good. This is one of the major problems with people today and why people are cannot get over the mother in the US that the authorities want to bring up on child neglect charges because they were walking back from the park. What has the world turned into? Its crazy...
gaining so much weight! The other is no exercise - or very little. I still

Equipment that is used compared

My husband's coffee machine and grinder

I know I use a computer and back in the 1800's they would have had books to read and paper and pen to use instead of the computer. As for the kitchen, we have a kettle that is electric but its not that much of a stretch to boil water in a pot. My husband and his 'machine' I can only imagine what the look would have been on my ancestor's faces if they wanted coffee and my husband used the machine for them. In fact, its probably the same type of face my sister gave him the time she visited and saw what he went through in order to get one cup of coffee - she told him point blank that was too hard.

Early 1800 Teapot from husband's Moyode Castle connection

I can only imagine what they would have thought of the TV and the way we can get movies over the internet. I know my paternal grandmother Jean, would have told us if we wanted that then we should have watched when it was on and not save it. She thought an answering machine was a waste of money and space because if they wanted you badly enough then they would call you back. Oh she was such a character!

The one thing I think they would have fought against would be how fast everything moves today and how its all got to be done NOW! Also, how religion has fallen down and not been practiced very much. Up until my mother's generation I can tell everyone thought highly and made time for religion. However, since that generation church seems like something the rest of us think about, but are usually too busy to go. I know that's one of my problems - the services are held at a time when I'm just too busy (working or doing things that need to get done) or on days when I can be doing other things that need to be done. Another reason could be that growing up, the way my mother said church it was like a bad word. Only when I really pushed and I had to go with one of my friends in order to go. It was like world war 3 to do it. Overall, it was just too hard and so I never really went consistently.

Where I am trying to attend services

I do know my husband and I talked about it and if we ever had kids then they would go, as it would be another type of support system and I would encourage it. However, that seems very unlikely it would happen to us, so I guess its a mute point.

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

Thursday

"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.

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

Sunday

"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Cars and Transport

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.

The prompt for the week is:

Cars and Transport

The Brief:

Did you have a car in your family whilst you were growing up?
What methods of transport were there? And what did you & your family typically use?
Your Driving Test
Where Did you learn? - Can you drive?
Your first car?
Your Favourite Car?
Do you name your cars?
Can you remember the registration details? And perhaps explain what the registration means.

The Family's Cars
This is an interesting topic as most of the time we've had cars in my family. My mother finally got her drivers license just before she left my father when I was under 4 years old. My father had the drivers license up until then. I can imagine it was very difficult for my mother up until she got her license as my siblings are all older than I am and we all know just how many accidents and cold children have.

After my mother left my father, we didn't have a car for years. Instead we walked from where we lived, outside of the main part of town, into town for school and work. I can still remember the winter when my mother and I got up and left to go to work and school and it was snowing like crazy out. There was that much snow, we had to walk in the road because people hadn't shoveled yet and it was half way up to my mother's chest and she stood about 5 foot 4 inches tall, so that goes to show you just how much snow there was. Anyhow, we stopped once to warm up in a small restaurant and get something warm to drink, and then continued on to school and work - only for both of them to be cancelled because of the snow. It wasn't long after we bought a car when I was about 8 years old.

On the other hand, my father had a car when I was that age (below is a visitation day when I was about 6 or 7). My father has always had a range of car. Currently, he's had his PT Cruiser which he loves.

Jo with her father's car in Newburgh, NY

My License & Cars
I received my first permit when I was 16 - as is common in the US. Because of my good grades, my mother's boyfriend, Lyle, bought me my first car - a used Chevy Citation(below) he got a great deal on - only cost him $500 US back in 1990.

My Chevy Citation in front of our apartment (middle 3 windows)

Upon being taught, I was driving down a very narrow and dirt road during either the summer or spring. I was going very slowly past parked cars on the road (they were on the right and there was just enough room on the left to pass them) and all of a sudden some idiot came down the driveway at a good speed and I saw it and stopped. Thankfully I did that or else I would have gotten T boned. The idiot stopped, looked up and his jaw dropped because he didn't even see me until then. Then he just continued on like there was nothing wrong with what he just did. However, with me being a beginner driver, I started to shake. I got us back home, went up to our apartment, opened the window and proceeded to rip up my permit and throw it out the window.

However, within a year, I knew I had to get my license in order to get a job and some freedom. Ever since then, I'm very careful with how I drive because of that. In 1990, I finally got my license.

I haven't had that many cars in my driving time. Like I mentioned above, my first car was a Chevy Citation. I was going to take my drivers test in that one; however, on the day I was to go take it, it started to rain and my wipers wouldn't work, so I ended up having to take my mother's Isuzu Pup truck instead. I never drove this car/truck at all, so I was really nervous because of the parking involved, not being used to the car/truck and the rain. I drove the the testing site to get used to the truck before the test - a 20 minute drive is all I had. Then I went through the test, and passed. Shocked both myself and my mother that's for sure!

Jo's Drivers License results

Since then, I've had a Nissan Sentra which we got while I was at college in the early 1990's. However, once I left and moved to Australia, my mother's boyfriend was driving it about 3 years later and the tie rod broke and made the car undriveable.

I drove my husband's Holden Commodore when I first moved to Australia and then later his 2 Ford station wagons, before I had enough saved to get myself a my first car. I was driving on my international drivers license and by 1998 or 1999 I got my Australia license, and I bought a
Daihatsu Charade II (below). I bought it from a used car yard. It did fairly well and lasted about 4 years. When pump's, and other major stuff started to go wrong, we decided to go and get either new cars or almost new cars as it seemed as we were always fixing them.

Jo's Diahatsu Charade II on the car lot where she bought it

In 2007, I bought my Toyota Yaris. I paid for it brand new and drove it off of the car yard.

Picture after Jo drove it home for the first time

I still have this one even after it was vandalized later in 2007 at a train station (below).

The back of the car after it was vandalized

Then in 2012, when I was on my way to an appointment, a young girl wasn't paying attention and decided to hit my car with the front of her car (and I did my best to avoid it by pulling out of the way but wasn't completely successful - if I hadn't done that my car would have been wiped out).

Moments after the accident - a picture I used for the insurance claim

Anyhow, my car was fixed and I'm back on the road since then.

Keep Safe & Happy Traveling!

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