Monday 11 October 2010

Nowhere

Sophie is not quite sure what I am doing
It's been a bit quiet on the Mara front lately. No new posts and hardly any comments on your posts. So, what happened?

Well, I didn't fall off the face of this earth if you were wondering. Nor did I take a break to go to some fantastically sunny and warm place in the Carribean (ooh). I was home all this time. Well, not the whole time, since I had to visit my Dad last week who was in hospital after a hernia operation (he's home now and doing fine). And I visited a friend one evening, since I had my parents' car to use.

Otherwise I have been spending my time at home. My garden still looks great and the only thing needed was a good brush-up to remove all the fallen leaves. So, what else have I been doing with my time?

Scribble upon scribble: all my maternal ancestors
I have been trying to find my mother's ancestors, which is a horrid and painstaking process. Writing all those names down, finding the right strains and following them up further down the line. Losing family relatively early because I can't find their name anywhere. So far I know there are skippers (both ferry as goods skippers), farmers, a publican and two council men in my family. There might also be a resistance worker from World War II, but that still needs some work to find out. Seeing that my mother's family is a deeply protestant family, I found Roman Catholics and traces of Jews, the latter also needing some work which I hope to do this week. As soon as I have more data, I will write a proper post about it. For now, I have sheet upon sheet upon sheet of names and dates and finding a particular name is like finding a needle in a haystack!

Eehhmmm....
The other thing I have been doing last week is clearing the last room. I am not the tidiest of people, not by a long stretch. So, when I clear my living room for example, I will put everything that is not needed in a big crate, take it upstairs and put it in the biggest room. You can imagine the amount of stuff building up in there! I could hardly move in there, so if I needed anything I was risking my neck. Literally. There was just too much stuff and it needed clearing. Besides that my bookcase was full to overflowing with books, most of them I had only read once and would never read again.

Books, books, books
Well, four crates of English chick-lit books found their way into crates to be taken to the second hand shop. Two Christmas trees, a loom, knick-knacks and more books followed. Six boxes and paper bags filled with paper went to the recycling thingy. As well as an old matress and electrical stuff. The car was full to overflowing, my room was seeing some air for the first time in a very long time!

My tidy book case
I am not done yet, a bit more clearing and a lot more cleaning are needed, I still need to do my laundry, I want to visit an uncle and some archives. So, a busy week ahead again. I might need another week's holiday to recuperate!!!

6 comments:

  1. It all sounds most productive. Well done! I think you and my husband must be related somewhere along the line since his idea of clearing is to stuff everything in a large box - or one of the laundry baskets!! - and then dump it in one of the spare bedrooms where it remains for aeons until the room is required for sleeping . .

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  2. Isn't it great when you get to that ONE room and just start putting things in boxes to haul away? Gives me chills just thinking about it.

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  3. It's hard to blog when you're in a different routine and a busy one at that. You seem to be making progress with your genealogy, which is good.

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  4. I was just about to send you a message. I really was wondering where you were.
    I can understand completely about your problem with an accumulation of "stuff" in the house. Ours is a disaster, and I can't even find the sign I usually put up that says "disaster area"!
    Twice (yes) I've had a professional organizer in here, but boxes of papers continue to pile up, and we're not even researching anything.
    I keep wondering if the ancestor project could be done on the computer instead of bits of paper, but I don't have any idea how, except the obvious, which is ancestry.com which is American, and ancestry.ca which is Canadian.
    But maybe even copying your pieces of paper into a computer file would help? I don't know.
    I've been thinking of you and am so happy to see you arise like a phoenix out of the debris, anyway.
    -- K

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  5. You have been busy! So glad your dad is doing well. Working on the family tree is very time consuming but well worth it in the end. So glad you are clearing out the room.
    Your welcome to visit and help me do that!

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  6. spring cleaning! I got rid of some books this month on amazon so I made a few bucks too.
    I've been on ancestor.com to find my mom's side of the family. Luckily, my birth father did all the rest for hsi side back to the 1700's! He took years. It's work and a hobby, but sure is neat!

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Any weighty (and not so weighty) comments are welcome!