Can you help?

I want to enter a contest called Canada Writes 2010. It is a lot of spur of the moment writing though. So I need to recruit help.There are 5 categories. Ad, Blog, Movie pitch, Song, and Tweet. So I need my friends and family to email me or call me or text me with little assignments, so I can practice. Pick a topic, then pick one of the categories above, give me a time limit and I will get it done and send it back for practice. 


I think it will be great, to read more about the competition please click here.  Canada Writes 2010 If you want to join let me know and I will help you practice too.

Oh Canada!

For anyone who thought my last post was amusing or funny, I am glad. That was my intention. I wanted to come home after the experience and rant about the Ontario health care system. Instead I got the idea in my head to use it as a writing challenge. I decided to try and make it as witty and fun as possible. What a challenge.

I find most of my experiences with any government agencies or institutions do not end well, or when they do end I have not had an easy time of it.

Today I went off to the passport office to apply for A's. passport. I was there last week but needed different documentation. My experience last week was excellent. I was served quickly. The person who served me was smiling, witty and had a sense of humor. I applied for four of the five passports I needed. He gave me the information I needed to come back with for the fifth one, and wished me a good day. Today's experience was even better. The woman I dealt with today actually thanked me for my behaviour on my last visit. Saying is was nice that someone would just accept that they did not have the required documentation, go get it and then come back. She joked with me and interacted with A. I was in and out in 20 minutes. Hats off to the passport office.

My experience a couple of months ago when I went to replace one of the childrens health cards was not so pleasant. Now I must admit this was not so much to do with the staff although they were certainly not smiling and happy. We got there fairly early in the morning and it was packed. The office itself was filthy, so much so that I was afraid to let A. out of her stroller. I took a number and waited for about an hour before I was called.

During that hour there were drunks almost falling down, this was in the morning!. A. screeched a few times not being in the best of moods that day, and I had people all around me complaining. Give me a break, with the kind of people that my child and I had to be exposed to that day, a few baby shrieks should have been no big deal. At one point an oldish couple sitting behind us said "that baby needs a spank" and then latter remarked that "ear plugs were made because of babies like that little brat". I would like to point out here that A at the time was just a year old. I didn't say anything, I kept my cool. I could tell by the crowd in the office that had I exclaimed on the rudeness, and or the abusive nature of the comments being made, a third of the crowd would have jumped me, a third of the crowd would have sold tickets to watch and started taking bets, and the other third would have set up bleachers for viewing. By the end of that days experience I felt a need to take A. and I through a detox chamber for fear of louse and who knows what else.

There was also that time a few weeks ago when I went to the city to pick up some court documents, and had a long wait. I didn't have a horrible experience although it was not the best spent time of my life. So I guess between the Emergency room, the Ontario Health card office, the Passport office and the Court house, I have gotten a mixed bag of  experience from, Very strongly disagree to Agree totally, if I were filling out a customer service card on my treatment.

The difference must lay in the clients more than the service providers. I also imagine there is a  giant governmental training building for civil servants. There are long line ups of civil servants who go in for training. These Civil servants get their training and knowledge from this huge building, it is all hands on, and they learn by experience. So while the majority of civil servants go through this hamster trail of tunnels, and wickets and dour faced people to get their experience. I believe that the Passport office people, found themselves in a lovely garden with calming fragrance, and gentle music, where all of their efforts were praised with positive reinforcement and they never heard a raised voice.

Oh Canada, I praise all civil servants for their hard work and for having to deal with every corner of society that Canada has to offer, although I still think many an office would benefit from a mop bucket and some dettol.

Indeed!

Last week O. said she wasn't feeling well and complained of an ache in her back. I thought about it the morning she complained of it, and I thought I would give her the day and see if she felt the same way later in the evening. 

I have been known to make light of the kids ailments, once exclaiming to my son that if he was really going to be a baby about his chest cold I would take him to the hospital. Only to find out 12 hours later that he had a bruised liver. Or the time I told him to suck it up and get to school, after a trip and fall had him complaining that his knee was in a lot of pain, only to have my oldest daughter point out to me that the flap of skin hanging from his knee cap may indeed cause a lot of pain. Or the time he called me from school to advise me that his friends thought he had broken his thumb, and I replied "are they doctors? Really I will look at it when I pick you up from school!" Only to arrive and see a huge swollen hand that turned out to be a broken growth plate. 

Yes I am a harsh judge of ailments, but once I see it or feel my super mom instincts kick in I am all over it. With O. I thought it was probably a bruise from an accident at school the week before. So I thought if anything it should get better over the day. She came home from school and was complaining a little bit about it. O. doesn't usually complain about little things, I asked her if it was any better at all and she thought it was. We went on about our evening, horse riding lessons, beavers and piano lessons for C. and O.

When we all converged once again, O. came in the house in quite a bit of pain and looked very uncomfortable and uneasy that she was not feeling a hundred percent. I felt around a bit, I tried to use my super vision to see through her, to what ailment she may have, but super mom vision doesn't work on maple syrup and pancakes, which is what we had for dinner. I had to suspect a kidney infection by what my hands were telling me. My super mom instinct then kicked in. P. and I communicated telepathically and I told O. to get ready we were going to go the clinic. 

While this clinic is not our family doctors office, I do love it. It lives up to many of the super mom's standards. It is clean as a whistle, they register you with the efficiency of an albatross, they treat you with the speed of a cheetah, and explain things to you with the directness of a crows’ flight. The nurses have super human ability to make an unhappy achy sick child smile. I have never been there for more than an hour. 

We got into the mom-mobile and off we went. Alas, I found that the clinics kryptonite is time. They close at 9 and don't take anymore walk in patients after 8:30pm. So back to the mom-mobile we went. By this time little O. was shivering and I got her buckled into the car, and covered her with my coat and headed out for our not so local emergency room. 

Our closest emergency room is dirty, and is littered with some pretty shifty figures, including some of the staff. A split super hero second later we were on our way to the next best, and closest hospital Ontario has to offer. 

By the time we got to the E.R. it was about 9pm, they registered us quickly and gave me a bottle which I was suppose to convince my 9 year old O. to pee in. My O. having already developed some of her own super hero strengths was mortified at the amount of germs this would expose her too, as well as the social humiliation of having others in the waiting room see her prancing around with her perfectly flushable urine in a bottle.

She looked at me and said, "I DON'T HAVE TO GO!"

I explained that as a child of a super mom, there were just some missions in life she could not turn down. 

We turned our attention to the TV. that was airing the Olympic hockey game, and we had some subtle discussions about how cold the rink would be, and how cold it was outside tonight. I mentioned how cold the hand sanitizer we used a number of times that night felt on our hands. I also suggested to her that she may be feeling rather cold herself in the waiting room and continued to explain how they kept it very cold in there and even with her coat and my coat over top of her little body I couldn't imagine how she was not freezing. Then the super mom clincher, I happened to mention how I always had to pee every five minutes when I was cold.

O. got a look on her face, and did a little squirm in her seat, I could see my plan was starting to work.  I changed the subject from cold to wet.

"I wonder what happens if a downhill Olympic skier needs to go to the bathroom after they are dressed and on the hill?" and a couple of suggestive lines like, "I guess the summer Olympics are easier because you get all the free water you want to drink, and you don't have all those winter clothes to take off when you have to go. Although I would guess those female swimmers must have to do the pee pee dance a number of times if they have to go so bad and have a one piece bathing suit on."

It worked! "Mommy, I have to go, how am I suppose to do this?" So off we went to the bathroom. After a brief explanation, a little privacy and a promise to not expose the pee pee bottle as I passed it on to the nurses, I got a sample and we were happily sitting back in the waiting room playing a game of brick ball on my cell phone. 

I had assumed that once they had her urine sample, we would be brought in very shortly. There were only a few other people in the waiting room. It was now 10pm. We waited and O. started to dose, eventually the Olympic hockey was over, and men’s figure skating appeared. This gave us the opportunity to pass some time because we both like figure skating. So we switched seats to give ourselves a better view of the screen. This also distracted us from another patient who had come in and was complaining loudly about their 5 minute wait. 

At some point time stopped it just seemed to stand still, although the hands on the clock were moving, to O. and I it seemed like forever. We watched a number of people come and go, and listened to the bloated patient near us complain about his wait, when finally we were called in. It was now 11:30.

We were led along with our bloated, complaining, and now slightly volatile fellow patient into a room. It was called the day care room, it was a fair sized room with 6 beds all separated by curtains. I quickly realized that being called the day care room, and us being there in the evening meant we would get no care. I helped O. up onto the bed and tucked our coats in around her. She immediately fell asleep. I sat down in the chair and waited for a doctor. I heard footsteps walk towards us, but they turned to the bed next to ours. On the other side of the curtain I heard the conversation of a nurse, and our now belligerent, anxious, ready to run fellow patient. His story began to unfold and I tried to tune out the conversation out of common decency, as I heard his wife speaking for him, I looked up thinking that would distract me from the conversation. I heard words such as drink, alcoholic, drinking binge, and Dt's, and thought I was not doing a very good job of distracting myself. 

I looked down looking for something to distract me so I wouldn't be a party to the unseemly conversation on the other side of the curtain. I got my wish! A distraction so terrible, so disgusting, time once again slowed down as I tried to review the situation. I tried to figure out how my super mom senses didn't detect this breech in my standards as soon as I walked in the room. I was horrified to be staring at a splatter of blood on the floor, just under my sweet, sleeping, delicate O. 

I had allowed myself to become so distracted by the other patient and the super long wait, that I had not done my usual mom scan of the room to ensure that my child would be safe. I didn't make sure that our perimeter had not been compromised by disease, or danger! I felt like I could rip the Giant SM (for Super Mom) off my chest.

I quickly sprang into action. I could beat myself up over the lapse later. I scanned the room for disinfectant, iodine, dettol, bleach, liquid radiation, ANYTHING! I found nothing, not even a sink with running water. I pulled back the curtain a little bit, starting to get frantic, and trying to remind myself that I am super mom, I must remain calm. As I moved the curtain, I notice a hand sanitizer dispenser on the wall just the other side. I once again scanned the room looking for disposable towels, hand towels, nothing, not even those crappy brown paper hand towels. The only thing available was tissue, I flew to the table the tissue was on, moving faster than a spine tailed swift. I took handfuls of tissue, flew over to the dispenser and pumped gobs of the stuff onto the tissues and quickly threw them down on the blood spatter. 

Of course that took care of the stuff I could see. Considering the splatter was of no small size, I decided to do the surrounding areas as well. Thus ensuring there would be no spatter missed, in a few quick swipes I had also wiped down the bed that O. lay sleeping in. I was like a well oiled machine. 

1. Tissue

2. Sanitizer

3. Throw down on the floor

4. Stomp and wipe with foot

5. Repeat

It was while I was completing coverage of the last square foot of the area that a nurse pulled back the curtain, and said, "Oh My! What are you doing?"

I was stunned, what did she think I was doing? I stammered and stuttered. Trying to feebly explain, but I am "Super Mom".  My actions deserved praise not explanation! 

The nurse just shook her head and said, "I hope you are gonna, clean this all up."

I tried to explain, the blood, the horror, the disease. She just shook her head and asked me what   problem had brought us there that evening. It was now 12 am. I was worried about O. and afraid to touch anything and the nurse now thought I was more of a nuisance than the volatile alcoholic next to us. I explained O's situation and she went and got her a blanket from the clean laundry, that I could thankfully see from where I was precariously standing on a mountain of tissue and slimy sanitizer. She took O's temperature, turned on her heal and said casually, as she disappeared behind the curtain, "You should really get that picked up."

I felt thoroughly defeated, here I was saving my child and possibly the hospital staff from viral, bacterial and who knows what other kind of infection and she expected me to pick up the tissue? Did the Mayor of Gotham ever tell Batman to tidy up after his crime fighting victories? Was Spider man ever told that his villain fighting spidey webs were cluttering up Manhattan? 

I think not! I shoved them all into a pile under the bed, I wouldn't dare touch them with my bare hands. The doctor sauntered in, poked around waking O. working his magic, and deciding that O. had a bruised rib and kidney. Telling me that a couple of days should take care of it.

Sigh, so I bundle up little O. half asleep freezing cold, and I take my super mom self and plop O. in front of the nurses’ station because I forgot my bank card in the car. Why? Why do I need my bank card in a Canadian hospital you ask? Because I have to pay for parking, and both the bank machine and the parking ticket payer machine thingy are in the hospital. 

The nice nurse who speedily registered and triaged us when we first got there watched O. I ran to the car and back to the hospital paid for parking and led my very tired and sore little girl to the car, with no real resolution to her problem. Super Mom indeed I thought to myself. I took out the 5 gallon jug of purell and poured it over my hands and the cuffs of my sleeves and rubbed some onto O's. hands and sprayed the inside of the car with Lysol spray disinfectant, hoping to rid us of any surface germs. This was my feeble attempt after the fact, to redeem my super mom status. 

What the heck is this about anyways?

So last week I had two interviews. One with my grandmother and one with my mom. Both of them very enlightening about family and situation. I still have a lot of other family members to interview, if they will allow me too anyways. Personalities were explained through story telling and that was wonderful. So far the interviews have not led me to anything new in the genealogy department, but I do have two books that I have not finished reading that will give me some more information on how to go about my search.

These interviews did lead me to some other answers that I have been seeking. Why? Everyone wants to know why? Why do they have green eyes? Why do they have red hair? Why does Aunt Ethel always drink the cooking sherry? We all want to know why our family's are, the way they are, where does it all come from?

I have received some of the very basic answers. I realize, I am my mother, my mother is her mother, and my grandmother is her mother. I think each and every generation is a little better equipped than the one before it. Each generation doing a little bit better than the one before that. But the women of this family have not completely abolished a nasty little problem that we have had, as far as I know, going back 4 generations.

Realizing this was a little sad, I see that every woman in my family, this is my direct line I am talking about, has learned a lesson including me. I have also realized that those lessons have been learned fairly late in life. My mother didn't learn my grandmothers lesson in time to save herself completely. I did not learn my mothers lesson in time to save myself completely. The saddest realization to come out of all this is that I did not learn my lesson on time for my girls.
I am happy to say that I did learn the lesson. I am thrilled to say that life is beautiful and I am so happy. From one of my favorite songs I could say, "They will see us waving from such great heights." but I stop in my revelry and hang my head with despair. I did learn my lesson, but once again, my children are all here, they have learned my old lessons, not my new ones. I don't know where it will stop, I don't know where the cut off age is for my girls, I taught them the wrong lesson. I remember saying this to one of my children when I went through a dramatic life change. "I have made a mistake." I said, "I have taught you the wrong way to live!"

I now wonder, in sadness, will they take their own road and make their own decisions or is a life I taught them so deeply ingrained that they follow the hardest, bumpiest, longest most painful road to happiness.
I have to trust that it will work out, my girls will all be women, a few already are. I am ok, my mother is ok, and her mother is ok. All of us carry our own problems. Sometimes we let them go and sometimes we try to lay them at someone else's feet or we may even want to hide them.

Something else I learned though, is that the generations before me have passed on some traditions and lifestyles that are not so bad. One of them that I want to focus on is the Faith, our religion, I remember my Grandmother loving her faith, and my mother feeling the same, it was lovely to hear both of them talk about it, and it was lovely to feel very much a part of a line of women who did love their faith. I will take that and remember that it is one thing and as I dig there will be others.
Other fabulous wonderful things that belong to my family.

I had a nice discussion last night, Pancake, Fat or Shrove Tuesday which ever you would like to call it. We talked about it and I explained to the kids what it was all about, also explaining Mardi Gras to them and what this all meant in our religion. Tuesday nights are our family lesson night. Two of the girls take piano lessons and one of our girls takes horse riding lessons, the little guy goes to scouts. So pancakes for dinner goes over really well in my books on such a busy night. It touched something deeper though and made me do a little more research into my faith, which is one of the things on my procrastination list of things to tackle. I can say I know a little more and feel a little richer today.

Two in one day?

Wow, what on earth is going on? I have gone from skipping days to writing twice in one day. Woohoo, is it that I have become a workaholic? Quite the contrary actually. I have a million things to do and I am procrastinating. I have tucked the kiddies into bed, two of the older kiddies are watching t.v. and on a laptop. Hubby is on his computer working. I could be working, cleaning, doing laundry, or even organizing my recipes, these are all things on my to do list. I want to write though. I don't want to stop.

P. and I were talking the other day about being kids and running. We spoke about that great feeling you get when you are kid, running so fast that you think you could fly; or fall on your face. I remember it quite vividly. Running down a hillside, going faster and faster, and thinking that I wouldn't be able to stop if I wanted to, but if I  ran any faster I would fall for sure. I remember the excited shrieks coming from my mouth. I can feel my feet pounding the ground the momentum carrying me so quickly that I thought for sure I would fall head over feet at any moment. I remember falling to the ground at the bottom of the hill, in a crumpled heap of giggling me! Giggling and laughing so hard that it was hard for me to catch my breath, and harder for the people around me to tell if I was laughing or crying.

This is how it has been for me and writing the past three of four weeks. I get an idea, and I start writing, and I run with it. It happens so fast, my fingers start typing. I am thinking so quickly, and my fingers start flying. My heart starts pounding in my chest and I am going faster and faster and I wouldn't be able to stop if I wanted to, but if I type any faster I will trip over my fingers, break the concentration, loose the idea. Once I have poured it all out and taken time to edit (yes I do edit myself, it will get better) I find myself in that same giddy place, that place at the bottom of the hill as a little girl. Laughing sometimes so hard that I can't even tell if I am laughing or crying.

I wonder if this means I am crazy; I have thought about it which, I thinks makes me sane. Just like reading one of my own poems years later can give me a different feeling from when I wrote it. I don't know how reading my own work can invoke such happiness or sadness, sympathy or anything really, if I wrote it? I think what happens is  I must be really detached from the feelings in a lot of my writing. Just like when I was a little girl and detached myself from my feelings of fear, to only include excitement as I ran down a hill. I get so excited about a great thought or idea or part of a book, it all plays out in my head. How to describe it and catch the moment. It's all a part of the idea, so there is no feeling involved aside from the excitement of getting it down on paper.

Procrastination comes in many forms and is used at convenient times. I find now, it is like an old friend, it allows me to rest and build up momentum. I use procrastination to climb to the top of a hill so that I can run down it full steam ahead, laughing giggling and falling into a crumpled heap of me!

Project: Get a move on.

So my genealogy project is well underway and the huge urge I had to complete it is under control. So while I will  still be working on that project I thought I should also start looking at my list of projects and get some other stuff finished. Or at least start some other unfinished stuff. I have a lot of research to do for my novel. That will be next on my list of things to attack. This kinda combines with the genealogy project in a way.

My novel is not about my family but it is a series of different books actually, well that is how it is in my mind currently. The different books take place in different time periods and different places, so the research overlaps from one project to the other. Another project that overlaps is my self improvement. I am really eager to improve, grammar, spelling and composition. I want what I write to be really enjoyable. I want it to be easy to read for everyone.

This also overlaps into other areas of unfinished projects. I have this seminar that has been brewing in my head for years. So I have the general idea, activities and even guest speakers for the seminar. I have a lot of research done for it and most of the material put together. I think at this point the clincher of the deal is to complete my research and put it all together as a deliverable product. I have to take the plunge, git er done, as I have heard it said. I need to rely on myself and only myself to pull everything together to make it a truly productive and helpful seminar for women.

I started this blog thinking it would be funny and lighthearted. I would laugh at myself a lot and possibly make other people laugh and learn a thing or two. It has been so much more, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my ideas and thoughts and realize that my writing is good. Not just from my mothers point of view, but actual people. I realize that what I have to say as important as I think it is, sounds much better and helps a lot more people if I just put a little time into it and research my ideas to back them up.

I flip around a lot from subject to subject and idea to idea. I am a gemini, (I use the word but place no stock in astrology at all). When it comes down to it, I am worth listening to,(I know there is a little vanity in this statement). I am happy with the procrastination blog and it's progress. I am happy with my progress. I am getting a little more organized and not in the, everything must be perfect for everyone else to see way. I am organizing my life, my priorities, my happiness. This means that although the house needs a sweep, I am going to sit with my kids after dinner and enjoy a little time with them. This means that although I would love to make 4 course gourmet meals for my family to show how much I love them, mac n' cheese is ok if it means I can help them with their homework after school.

Most of all I seem to be learning a lesson once again that I have learned many times in my life and forgotten about time and time again. That is that if I am not truly happy I can't expect others around me to be. If I want to give my family the best of me they don't deserve a tired worn out woman just getting by but able to do everything. So lately they have been getting the best of me. I don't spend all my time cleaning, I take time for myself, and I am enjoying it. Guilt is still a prevalent culprit and occasionally creeps up on me, for the most part I can chase it away, and realize I should feel guilty only if I am doing something that is not going to make me and my family happy.

So my blogging and procrastination are walking hand in hand and can coexist, thank goodness or my blog would falter quickly, and my life still goes on no matter what I put off till tomorrow.

"One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow." Vincent T. Foss

Procrastinate? Moi?

Once again I procrastinate. I must say though I have not felt guilty at all. I only have so much time in a day. Things have been very very busy. I am still on the Genealogy project and really have not explored any of my other projects. It is just so addicting. I find name after name and date after date. Eventually I will be able to put it all together. I have spoken with my grandmother and I am going to go back to do the same again. I am also going to interview other members of the family. I am hoping that any bits of information will help in someway.

I am starting from the top and working my way down. You may think it is silly to interview different people within the same family. My grandmother should be enough, any information I got from anyone else, would be the same as my grandmothers since my grandmother would have told them the stories. I am quickly learning though, that different stories are told to different people, depending on the situation and the individual. I think I do it myself with my own children. We are not all together as a family all the time and sometimes a situation comes up, or one of the kids make a face, or does something to remind me of my childhood, and it provokes a story. I may have opportunity to repeat it to another one of the kids or I may not. Even if I did tell the same story to each child individually or apart, they may each interpret it in their own way and with their own meaning. I may vary my story forgetting bits or remembering bits on different occasions. This is the nature of story telling. So in light of that fact, I think the more people I speak to, the more bits and leads I will have to follow and that increases my chances of tracing things as far back as I can go.

I have been doing a lot of recording also, either vocal recordings or written recordings. I  feel a great urge to make records of our lives for our great grandchildren someday. Not every little detail, but I hope there is never anyone so embarrassed by me that they try to cover up who I am. If I do my future family the honor of being presentable as a grandmother and great grandmother then I wish to leave an easy to follow trail to all the answers of the questions I found I have about my great grandparents. Although our generations are so close together that it would probably be my great great great granddaughters time before I am forgotten (I hope).

I have no grand ideas about embellishing, elaborating or excluding details about my life. Or the lives of anyone before me. I hope that one day, of my own experience and standing, I will be interesting enough and possibly have recorded enough of my own personality, character and experience that a future generation will find me a worthwhile pastime to read about on a rainy afternoon. Or maybe even find a commonality in character, flaw or habit. I find it a comfort that I like Tunnocks tea cakes, cabbage, tea, and a whole list of other things, be it food, habits, ideas or style, that may be linked in anyway to my past. Even if those likes and habits were formed out of suggestion, due to ideas of what life may have been like, and what long dead relatives may have been like, as opposed to actual living relatives passing them on.

There are some traits that go deeper than eye color that are passed on though. This is what makes me want to find out more about my ancestry. My oldest daughters signature and that of my great grandfather, are almost identical aside from being different first names. How does this happen? My daughter had never met or viewed any of my great grandfathers writing. Where does the strength that the women in this family come from? Why do the women in this family keep making decisions, that end up causing us to need such superhuman emotional strength? These are the answers I am looking for. Our family is not perfect, has not always done well, has not always come out of whatever troubles we have gotten into, but I want to identify myself and connect to this family that is mine.

Thats it for tonight, my thoughts are yours to read.
Goodnight

Can't wait for Spring!

On Saturday January 30th, 2010. P. A. and I, headed out on a journey a road trip. We were heading to Lucan Ontario. We had traced my G.G.'s burial to St. Peter's Cemetery and this is where it was located. We didn't have an address for the cemetery. Just a lot and concession number. P. being who he is, and doing what he does, was able to find an old map from 1878 of Biddulph/Lucan township. He was able to use the old map as a guide to get us there. When we arrived in Lucan, we found that it was a small very Irish town, the picture below and to the left is the Lucan Canadian flag. It is also where the Black Donnelly's lived and died. This has nothing to do with my own quest, but it is interesting.

We found the cemetery St. Peter's. It is definately a nice spot next to a creek. Of course the church is gone now. The ground was covered with snow. Paul got out of the car and walked all through the cemetery, but G.G. has a plaque and not a headstone, so there was no way to find it. We will have to return in the spring. In the picture below to the right you can see P.'s tracks in the snow.

 I found that while I was sitting in the car watching P. walk around searching, I got quite emotional. I began thinking about my Grandmother. I have never been very close to her, and my children do not know her well. She is alive and well, she is their Great Grandmother and I feel like I am doing them (my children and my grandmother) a great disservice by not encouraging a healthier  relationship. I sat in front of the cemetery thinking to myself. This is where a woman rests, after having left behind 3 children a husband, a sister in law at the very least. Yet I don't think anyone has ever come to pay homage to her. I and a whole family of people are here because of decisions she made. Yet she slipped away without any notice.
I was stunned and shocked and it brought to light a lot of decisions I had made in my own life lately that I am not to proud of anymore. One of my biggest worries is slipping away. Having my life mean nothing, not having done anything of notice to change the world. Being at the cemetery, and realizing that my Great Grandmother was buried under the snow and soil, Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust. I realized that she did not, exist for nothing, her life has been noted three generations after her. Someone wants to know what she did, who she was, and what her life was like. I may not be able to get any of the answers I want, but because of her, I am looking and on a quest to find out.
As for her not contributing to this world, and I don't know of an exact count, but I believe she has 3 children, and 10 grandchildren, and approximately 20 great grand children, and approximately (could be off by as many as 10) 9 great great grand children, and 1 great great great grand child. Wow!

She obviously made her mark on the world, now she just needs some people to recognize that. Which is what I am trying to do. I have gone back and been able to find some evidence although there is not a lot. I have found records going back as far as my Great Grandmothers Great Grandmother and on the paternal side of my Grandmother I have found my Great Great Grandparents but that is as far as I have been able to go. So the journey continues. I have a few hours tucked away for tomorrow to research and if all goes well by the end of the week I hope to be able to go back to the early 1800's right now I am about in the middle of the 1800's. This picture to the left is how St. Peter's looked, this is a page from "Sure An' This is Biddulph" Lewis, Jennie Raycraft-Biddulph Township Council 1964.