They're After Our Kids!!!

I'm pretty sure there is some secret conspiracy in the fashion world to make our already overly-criticial self-conscious teenagers feel worse about themselves then they do, oh let's say, 95% of the time, as it is! As I sit here and think about writing this, I don't even think it is just teens they are targeting, but maybe women in general. Maybe men too. Provided they have boobs!

I can remember a time in the not to distant future when I was smaller then I currenly am, (weight-wise), and what a pain in the ass it was to try on clothes cause I was pretty sure that everything they sold in the stores was constructed based on the sizes of the 8-year-olds they have sewing them in some far off distant land. It was either an 8-year-old or a card carrying member of the itty-bitty-titty committee. The frustration of having to go get a larger sized clothing item, cause you happen to have breasts, is only one that can be understood by a woman (or man with moobs) who has encountered this. This frustration can quickly turn into depression, cause even though we KNOW in our heads how distorted the views of the fashion industry is on size, we still can easily fall into the trap where we start thinking we are just to damn fat for the clothes. It's like our brains get sucked out by those damn unrealistic sized clothes and we forget how to think. As an adult woman, this was hard enough, but throw in the hormones of a teenage girl, and it seriously makes you want to throw the smackdown on some poor unsuspecting anorexic salesclerk's ass.

Go Big or Go Home!

Can't say my hubby does anything half-assed!! He was in a car accident this morning, which I JUST found out about, everyone is fine. He's fine, his passenger is fine, front bumper's a little dented, the tourists from Massachusetts who ran the red light are fine, the passenger side of their 2008 BMW on the other hand, not so much! I wonder what made them crap themselves more, the Chev Silverado coming at them, or the fact the nice Canadian said don't worry about I'm not gonna sue you for your first born, and sent them on their way!

Blood - A Free Pass?

This one isn't about Edward or Bella. It's not about Bill and Sookie. It's not about giving the "gift of life" by donating blood. This one is about relationships. Family ones. It isn't one written directly about relationships within my own personal family, but rather about general observations about those that have their troubles.

Quite often lately, it seems, I seem to be reading, seeing, hearing things regarding fighting/arguments/misunderstandings within families and how people need to "mend fences" or "bury the hatchet" and sort it all out cause "after all, in the end, family is all you got". If that is true, some people REALLY got screwed. Granted, sometimes things happen within a family that are silly little disagreements that could be "fixed" with a simple I'm sorry, but not everything is fixable or forgivable in a relationship, even when it comes to family relationships.

While I do think family is very important in our lives, I do not think that just cause we share the bond of blood that that should give someone permission to use and abuse another person. If we would not tolerate that behavior from Joe Blow down the street or from someone who has been our friend for twenty years, why does that behavior or treatment suddenly get a "free pass" simply cause the person may be your parent/child/aunt/uncle/brother/sister/cousin/grandparent? Does the fact you may have the same parents or grandparents mean you are required to bend over and let someone else shove their foot up your ass?

Usually when there are issues within a family they can spill over to affect others within our families. Sure it can make family get-togethers a bit awkward if you have two people together in a room who are not on speaking terms, but it is certainly more awkward when you have those two people in the room, plus the twenty others who make it more awkward by sticking their noses in and telling one or both parties how they should handle their private business, thereby causing their OWN family fights/disagreements/arguments within the family. Unless the initial issue was yours, you never really know what brought about the fight in the first place and how many things or how long it has been going on that has brought it to this point so is it not best to just love both of your fighting family members and try to remain neutral?

I imagine everyone has heard the line about forgiveness not being about the other person, it's about you and no longer holding onto your pain or anger but sometimes the only way to remove the pain and anger is to remove the source of that pain and anger from our lives. And I personally do not feel that someone who has cut ties with someone they share some genetic material with should have to apologize for doing what is right for their life. It is THEIR life. Not yours/mine. Don't they have the right to live it?

What moron thought up this?

Like most people (unless you are one of those weird ones) I hate paying bills. They always get paid, I just hate paying them. I actually dread having to open up the online banking somedays and seeing the balance and thinking okay, what needs paid this week. Why, I'm not sure, cause there is money to pay it, but I am always worried about what "could" go wrong that we need money for. I think alot of it has to do with growing up in a single parent home with an extremely private proud mom who would never ask for help even if she desperately needed it, cause she was the sole source of monies coming in. We weren't dirt poor, don't get me wrong, but the cup definitely didn't overfloweth, know what I mean? That, coupled with some of our own issues we had a couple years ago, has made me pretty tight with the financial reins. My husband likes to tease me that I am so cheap I squeek, which he, of course, follows up with sqqqqqeeeeeeekkkkkk sound effects. Even my kids know this (and make sounds, rotten brats). So as someone who does concern themselves with "what ifs" (unlike my beloved husband who is of the mindset just *&^%ing spend it) imagine how exciting it was to open our Visa bill today and see the delightful new addition to their billing "notices". They have now added a notice heading at the bottom of the bills that is entitled "Time To Pay" where they so kindly let you know that if you continue to make only your minimum payment each month that it will take till THE DAY YOU DIE to pay off your bill.

And my kids thought I wasn't leaving them anything.

Washington Research

Thought I would pass along this little gem to any that may have research that takes them to Washington state.

http://www.sos.wa.gov/library/Obituaries.aspx


The Washington State Library has a FREE lookup service for obituaries that appear within their collection. Read the instructions included on the link posted above. If you are unsure of when the person you are searching for died look up the genealogy blog I did back in June, "Where the Heck Did They go? Part 2" for the link for the Washington Digital Archives or check for them on the pilot project of familysearch. I've used this service before, so it IS 100% free!

Happy researching!

Not Exactly How I Pictured It

Although misleading, since I have never actually pictured sharing my bed with two men, if it ever DID happen it would be with hubby and Gerard Butler (oh how I love that man), definitely not hubby and my 11-year-old-son. Last night, for the first time EVER in his life, my baby boy crawled into bed with us and didn't just fidget and fart around, but actually slept! Found him curled in the fetal position at the top of his bed bawling his eyes out last night at 10:30. Was determined he was "hurting so bad" cause something kept biting his feet and neck. Of course this was all a dream (the tell-tale bad dream face he gets when he has one) but he was so convinced it was all real that I absolutely could not get him to settle down so brought him in with us HOPING he would conk out and not be to hard to get up for school this morning. When he conked out, have no clue, cause I did first haha, but when I woke at 1 he was awake, talking to me, then again at 2......ugh.......needless to say I kept my "Sleeping Beauty" home cause there is no way he could have functioned at school. Nightmares suck!!

And so it begins......

Well, just walked in the door from dropping "The Boy" off to his first day as a Middle School student and "mini-me" off for her first day of Grade 10 and already I feel sad. Am I insane? Do I need a rubber room? Padded walls? A straight jacket? Surely I can not be the ONLY mom who hates seeing her kids go BACK to school? Most parents seem to start counting down the days till school goes back in ohhhhh JUNE, but me, nope. I enjoy having those little rugrats around. Like I said, JUST walked in the door and already I miss them.

Sighhhhh

Kids...what would I do without ya

As most parents would tell you, I'm sure, being a mom/dad is a job like no other. Sure, it' a wonderous feeling the first time your little darling grabs your finger after they are born, or when they get old enough to hug you tightly and whisper "I love you" in your ear. And while these moments are an amazing thing, I personally think one of the greatest things about having kids is some of the absolutely hilarious stuff they say, you know what they say, "out of the mouths of babes".

As most know, I have two kids, a 14-going-on-25-year-old daughter (mini-me) and a ten-let's-see-how-far-I-can-push-mom's-buttons-today-year-old son (The Boy). Mini-me got up this morning and headed down to the dungeon to do what all 14 year old kids do.....use the computer before their baby brother can. After awhile, The Boy comes alive and heads down too. He's doing his thing, she's doing hers, when she stands up and says "Hey, I'm dressed all in brown (she wore brown leggings and a brown tank to bed last night)! What do I look like?" His reply? YOU LOOK LIKE A GIANT PIECE OF POO!

I'll never ever be able to hear someone say "ya little shit" without a flashback to this moment!

Judging A Book By Its Cover

So last night hubby and I are sitting down watching some TV and it happens to be a one of those "job" reality shows. The person is talking about why they are in the profession they are in, one which is not liked by people that have to deal with with those in this profession, and how they have all these other qualifications that SHOULD enable them to get something in a different field, but that absolutely no one will hire them.

Now, don't get me wrong, I realize alot of people are out of work in the States (and Canada too) due to the current state of the economy, but do some of these people moaning about not being able to get a job ever walk by a mirror? Now, don't get me wrong, as a "person" I don't think it is right to stereotype a person, but in the working world EVERYONE has got to realize that as an employee YOU are putting a face to a company, YOU represent them. Depending on the job, the "customer" might never see the "Big Boss" but have to stare at you for eight to ten hours a day, so is it crazy that they may have a certain set of standards they want you to have to: A) Get the job and B) Keep it. Remember, the way things are right now, there could very well by hundreds of people who would just LOVE to have your job to feed their familes.

Just as an example, would you want someone with full facial tattoos sitting at your reception desk if you ran a law office? On the opposite end, would you want people with absolutely NO tattoos being all your artists in a tattoo shop? If you were overweight (which I am) would you want to go to a weight support group that had a leader that was some skinny anorexic chick that has never been overweight in their life leading the meeting? If you have to board a plane and the guy making you walk through the metal detector has every square inch of his face covered in body piercings, tell me you aren't scared he would set off the damn alarm, not you, but you have to get hauled aside for a strip/body cavity search (I've been searched - no not strip/cavity-when I boarded a plane in 2000). Sure, the above examples could all be highly qualified and could potentially be the best workers ever had, but companies, in order to MAKE MONEY TO PAY YOU, have to be able to have someone available to the clients they are serving that will make those clients want to use their service.

I'm all for expressing your individuality, I wished I had have had the courage to express that when I was younger and in school (there was a girl in my highschool that dyed her hair pink and I sooooo wanted to do that, but I was a pussy), but you need to realize that your choice of expression could impose limitations on you outside of your social setting. And really, those nipples rings you thought were cool when you were 18, aren't gonna be so cool when you are 85, your boobs are dragging on the ground making the metal studs spark and setting fire to your oxygen machine!

Computer, cats and muscles...OH MY!

First off, I want to make it perfectly clear that everyone made it through the weekend alive! How, I'm not sure, but they did.

So as some can probably guess after last week's lesbian cavegirl facebook status message, I was having some computer issues last week. My husband, bless his heart, sometimes forgets he is a carpenter and not a computer technician, something he apparently FINALLY realized when on Friday, he did something that took my barely functioning PC that could still connect to the internet and made it a non-functioning internet computer. Thankfully, despite the fact I am a blonde, I had the presence of mind to get my genealogy stuff off it and on to my flashdrive before I let him sit down at the computer after I got home from the library Friday night. So after refraining from murdering him for two days (I am so proud of myself) I made him go out and talk to the guys where we got our computer and ask them how to use our backup discs to get it back to the way it was when we first got it (he forgot how to do it and I have no interest in knowing, cause if I screw it up, I wouldn't be able to bitch at him hehe). So we are all fixed up, woohooo!

As if severing my lifeline above wasn't enough, last night my beloved "I'm a carpenter but think I'm a comp tech" hubby lost two of my cats. In our kitchen, we have a patio door which my husband has an aversion to locking after he comes in from BBQing. All three of our cats are housecats, but our middle one hubby would bring outdoors with him so she has now gotten the "outdoor itch" and over the past two months has gotten out a few times, only shortly, when he forgets to lock the door. Well last night, it's about 9:50, I'm watching some TV, he is on the phone with our internet provider, and I get up to go to the kitchen, and lo and behold, screen door is open about 5inches. Even though I would be nervous about leaving the middle one out, she has never ventured far on her Houdini escapes so I wasn't overly worried HOWEVER also in on the escape is our antisocial youngest cat who there is NO DAMN WAY IS GONNA LET US TOUCH HER TO CATCH HER cause she doesn't let us touch her now LMAO. She's the one I am most worried about, cause I consider her my baby (shhhhh, don't tell my other cats). She's the cat version of me, an anti-social bitch, 'cept I don't have multiple personality disorder, which I am pretty sure she does. On the rare occasion she lets you pet her, she will purr, then growl at you, then purr. I'm telling ya, this cat is Sybil! Oh what the neighbors must have thought seeing me and my two kids out at ten o'clock at night with flashlights, which REALLY is pointless since both cats ARE BLACK! Catching a cat when they don't wanna be caught isn't easy at the best of times, but catching a cat that is completely black in the dead of night......well, you'd probably have a better chance at findihg a needle in a haystack. We found the cat from hell but she gave me the slip when she ran back around the house where I lost sight of her. Thankfully she was so traumatized by the "OMG HUMANS ARE TRYING TO TOUCH ME experience, that when she ran out back past the opened patio door, she bolted back in the house. Our middle one, my daughter's cat, came back sometime after 11 either when she heard my kid calling her or when she (the cat!!!) was done whoring around. Needless to say, after the fixing of the computer and thr return of the felines, my husband felt MUCH more comfortable (and safer) closing his eyes last night when he crawled into bed beside me!

My cats aren't the only thing that was found yesterday either! I found out I do indeed have muscles in my legs too!! Yesterday we took a drive back up to the Fundy Trail to see how much further they have gotten with. After stopping along the side of the road so "The Boy" could puke (damn kid KNOWS he can not read in a vehicle) we get there, check it out and decide to head back to Fuller Falls. Now, I'm a big girl, and I KNEW better then to try and make it down those damn ladder stairs cause I know the workout it was on me when I was actually small and in shape, but not one to deny my kids something (well, except a bite of my cheesecake) I went down with them. All things considered, I think I did pretty damn good getting down for a girl my size, and the getting up wouldn't have been THAT big of a deal if my husband hadn't have been behind me making jokes which made me laugh. Skinny people, let me tell ya something, having a fatchick climb up a rickety damn stair-ladder up a hill that is likely a twenty or thrity foot drop, makes them winded enough. We do NOT need you behind us doing crap that is gonna make us lose the already short amount of breath we got! But I MADE IT!! Of course now, the day after, when I have discovered muscles in my legs I forgot I had, I am kinda wishing I hadda died!

Things that make you go hmmm

So it's that time of year again!

The dreaded "Vehicle Inspection"!!

That time of year where you start getting antsy, worrying about what might possibly be wrong with your vehicle that could potentially cause you to have to list a kidney on ebay before you get it inspected and legally drive it.

Since our regular mechanic closed up his shop last fall, it has been a pain in the ass when we needed stuff done. He was good!! If something still had some life left in it, he told you. He didn't replace it for the sake of upping his cash intake (and lowering ours). He was just an all around good guy! Since he closed, hubby has been doing the stuff he can do on his own cause he hadn't been able to find one he felt he could rely on the same way he felt he could with Danny. Unfortunately, the police would probably frown on him doing his own motor vehicle inspection and sticking a pretty glittered "The car passes" sticker on our window, so it was time to bite the bullet and take it in somewhere.

Our neighbor told us about how well he felt treated at Wonder after taking his girlfriend's car in, so that's where we decided to take my van. Couple weeks ago we took the old girl in, let it for the day, and hubby picked it up on his way home from work. The verdict: needed some body work, shocks, brakes. Since they don't do body work, hubby knew it would have to be done elsewhere, the guy at the shop though was trying to get hubby let him do it "on the side but just don't tell my boss". Shocks and brakes though, now that is something hubby can do on his own, and given that they quoted him almost $690.00 for the repair of just those TWO things, it was something he was GONNA do on his own. (NOW, it should be noted, that before hubby took it down to the garage, he checked the brakes himself and thought, even though he is not a mechanic, that there will still fine.) What it was, I don't know, but hubby said he didn't get a good feeling from one of the guys, and was STILL convinced the van did not need new brakes, but went and picked the parts up himself. Cost: Just over a hundred bucks for two new shocks and front brakes. He changed the shocks (which took him maybe twenty minutes per side? and when he went to replace the brakes, there was no difference between the ones he was about to take off and the new ones in the box. Extremely unhappy at this point at what he was told at the garage, I convinced him to take the van into a DIFFERENT place. If the brakes were crap, and it failed, big deal. We already had the new brakes still boxed at home and you don't pay for an MVI if it fails so it wasn't like we were gonna be out any extra cash for having it checked over twice. So yesterday we take it into a different garage, Lansdowne, and hubby brought it home last night with a "Yeah your van is great" sticker on the windshield!

Makes you wonder...........

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm

As most cat owners know, there are many joys to owning a furry friend. The occassional dead mouse/bird left as a gift on your doorstep, hairball in your shoe, turd on your rug, but none can compare to the sharing of kitty critters. I'm talking about fleas!! Hubby has been whining about him being their dinner buffet so he stopped the other day at the Vet's and got a package of Advantage on his way home from work. Fifty-three dollars and a damn kidney later he comes home with this stuff DETERMINED to eradicate what he calls an infestation! (Since he is the only one that ever sees them and gets biten, I hardly call it an infestation, but sometimes I'll humor him and say "Okay Honey").

So he opens up the package to get ready to apply it to our three cats. I happen to grab the instructions to check em out. NOW, I notice it says:

USE GLOVES WHILE APPLYING

DO NOT GET ON SKIN

But in order to put it on the cats, you have to sepeate their fur at the base of the neck/ between the shoulder blades till you see the skin, apply the open tube DIRECTLY to the skin/area and squeeze contents directly onto skin.

Does anyone else see something wrong here????

It ain't just Sex and Drugs

As you hold your beautiful newborn child in your arms I think all parents dread that day in the future when you know you are going to have to sit them down and talk to them about sex andor drugs. The thing I think alot of us forgot about is that we also should take the time to talk to them about teen suicide.

This past weekend a friend of our neighbor's daughter killed himself. He was just 13.

As a mother, I can not even begin to imagine the anguish this mother and father must be going through. In their shoes, I can not even begin to comprehend the feelings of guilt that go along with this, wondering what you may have missed, what you didn't see, what could you have done differently, even if there were no signs. These are all feelings I had after my mom died, so I would imagine they are even worse for a parent who now has to bury their beloved child.

Did you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death for teens in Canada and the third in the United States?

Did you know that teen/youth suicide rates have TRIPLED since 1970?

Did you know that for every completed suicide there are an estimated THIRTY -FIFTY attempts? And don't forget, due to the stigma attached to suicide available statistics may well underestimate this!

Please take a moment to read these statistics taken from http://www.thekeltyfoundation.org/depression-facts.htm

It might not be the most cheerful topic of discussion you have to have with your child, but it is one that could save their life.

Keep the Change, Please

So this past weekend hubby, "The Boy" and I all loaded into my van and headed up to the Peninsula to drop some stuff off for his boss at the store. We decided to stop at Rotten Ron's for breakfast on the way (mmmmm sausage mcmuffins). Pull in, place our order and get to the pay/pickup window. Our order came to something like $13.31 so I pulled a twenty outta my wallet and dug out the 31 cents, handed them to hubby and we waited to pay. Hubby passes her the money, she rings it in and says your change is $7.00, as she passes my husband TWO five dollars bills and a toonie (for all you Americans, a toonie is our two dollar coin). People, let this be a lesson to you, please don't confuse the people at McDonald's by giving them coins AS WELL AS bills!

Grrrr

Why is it that when one of my cats has an upset tummy they like to bypass the easily wiped up ceramic tile and laminate wood flooring in the entire main floor of our house to take a dump on the only two mats (at the front and back doors) in our damn home???!!!! It wouldn't be so bad if they were flat mats but NOOOOOOOOOOOOO they have to be the kind of mats with the grooves in em. And no Daphne, I didn't feed them smackeroni and cheese!!!

Sasquatch in my Shower!

Call it Sasquatch, Big Foot, Yeti, the Abominable Snowman, I don't care, all I do know is that I am pretty sure one has been sneaking into my house and taking showers on a regular basis. That's about the only thing that can possibly explain the amount of hair that we pull out of our drain. EWWWWW! I know. I'm also pretty sure that said sasquatch must suffer from that disorder where you are not able to pain the sensation of pain cause I SWEAR that every damn time I get in the shower in the morning certain parts of my body that one NEVER wants scalded get burned from how hot the water is. Now one would think I would be wise to the wicked ways of this little beast, but nope, not me. I just never learn!

Now, my husband has the crazy notion that the hair is not from a sneaky sasquatch but that it comes from me and my daughter. Personally, I ain't buying it since we both have full heads of hair. ----->

Now I know it's hard to tell how much I have cause it's up, but you will have to take my word for it. There's alot!! The more my hubby argues that the hair belongs to me and my daughter the guiltier he seems to appear. I'm thinking he just might know for sure where this hair has come from.

PETA Protest

So I'm driving home after dropping my son off at school and the news comes on the radio. The announcer is talking about a protest today in my fair city, put on by PETA, that is to take place today at 12:00 noon where they are going to have two young ladies showering at the head of King street to protest the excessive amount of water used during the cleaning of beef in plants. A banner is going to be used to cover their "unmentionables" as my ten-year-old would call them, but in the words of the oh-so-intelligent sounding girl that was interviewed "Let's just say we plan on being as naked as we are legally allowed" Their goal is to bring awareness and discussion. Now really PETA, is this really the best thing you guys could think up to bring awareness to your cause? Do you honestly believe those watching are gonna think Hmmmm......maybe vegan is the way to go or they gonna be thinking HEY HUNNY LET'S SEE SOME T&A. Did someone slip something into your salads to make you think that this was a great idea to bolster support for your cause? I wonder if the person who came up with this brilliant campaign was also the same dumbass who came up with the billboard campaign posted in two Canadian cities in 2004 that featured a photo of a woman and a pig head side by side, with the slogan "Neither of us is meat" made in reference to the Picton trial in BC where he killed many women and then fed their remains to his pigs.

While this blog may be part of your goal of "opening up discussion", it boggles my mind that your organization fails to see that campaigns such as this do not bring attention to you that brings more into your way of thinking but rather it pushes people away cause your way of bringing attention makes the cause itself a big joke.

Where the heck did they go? Part 2 - United States

So your ancestors have upped and moved away from their homes, their family and everything they knew to try and start a better life. While possibly a great move for them, sometimes for those of us left scrounging to find them, it can be a pain in the butt! Unless you have family stories they tell you where to look, most times you just pray you get lucky and find them in a census return. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Since they were normally only done every ten years (some states also did their own midway between the American census), sometimes you will just have ancestors that you can't find cause they moved around or died somewhere in amongst that ten year gap. Oh how I wish mine hadda stayed here, where I KNOW where to look. If you prefer to have all the census returns at the tip of your fingers in one place and are willing to fork over the cash, then ancestry is probably the way to go. If you are cheap like me (my hubby says I'm so cheap I squeak), then you probably want to find as many census returns as you can for FREE (ahhhh my favorite F word). You can find the 1850, 1870 and 1900 indexes and images on the familysearch pilot site listed below. Completely FREE! There are other ones there as well, but not all have the images available so you can be sure what was transcribed is actually the information that was recorded. The Washington site below has their 1910 images available on their site. You can also sometimes find information on some county/state rootsweb sites. Check them out.

Here are some of the American sites I have stumbled across. Again, some are indexes only so just be cautious. Just cause you find a name that matches someone you are searching, doesn't mean that IS who you are looking for. Investigate further to prove.

Illinois (Cook County) - www.cookcountygenealogy.com/Default.aspx

Maine Marriages - http://portal.maine.gov/marriage/archdev.marriage_archive.search_form

Maine Deaths - http://portal.maine.gov/death/archdev.death_archive.search_form

Massachusetts - http://www.sec.state.ma.us/vitalrecordssearch/

Massachusetts (Early Records) - http://www.ma-vitalrecords.org/Towns.shtml

Minnesota Births - http://people.mnhs.org/bci/

Minnesota Deaths - http://people.mnhs.org/dci/Search.cfm

Minnesota Marriages - http://www.mncounty.com/Modules/Certificates/Marriage/Default.aspx

New York - http://www.italiangen.org/VRECLIST.stm

Ohio (Cleveland Necrology File) - http://dxsrv4.cpl.org/WebZ/Authorize?sessionid=0&next=/html/obit_start.html&dbchoice=1:dbname=necr&bad=html/authofail.html&style=noframe

Oregon - http://genealogy.state.or.us/

Washington - http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/

Wisconsin - http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/vitalrecords/

And of course don't forget my favorite - http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start This site has tons of American records! Check it out!!

Happy hunting!

Moms Know Best

Did your mother ever say to you, "No, you can't have a snack before bed. It will give you nightmares."

Well, I think she may have been right!

No idea how long I had been sleeping last night but all of a suddenly I am rudely awakened by screams of absolute terror!

GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!!!

RUNNNNNNNNNN! I SAID RUN!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so tired, I figure that IIIIII am the one dreaming so am still laying there, half asleep, half awake, then I hear it again.

GET OUTTTTTTTT! RUNNNNNNNNN!! Ummmm, I don't see you running???!!!

It was at this point I realized it wasn't me, it was the hubby.

Shhhhhhhh, you're having a dream, go back to sleep.

At this point, he sits straight up in bed, swings his legs over the side, and turns off the window fan and just sits there, with his hand still on it, still yelling, with the occasional (okay, more than occasional) FBomb thrown in for good measure.

At this point (before the neighbor's dial 911), I match see his Fbomb and match him a couple, tell him to lay down, shut the hell up and go back to sleep. (I'm not very pleasant when my sleep has been disturbed). He lays down, muttering, then silence. Unsure if it is safe for ME to go back to sleep incase he is gonna start screeching again, I ask what was chasing him. A couple of curse words come out in amongst him saying nothing was chasing him, he was chasing something. I ask what (I love having conversations with this man while he sleeps, it's hilarious) he was chasing. After much coaxing and prodding about what terrifying thing he was after (we watched something with vampires last night) He yells A CHAIR!!

A what???????!!!

I SAID A THIRTY FOOT HIGH CHAIR!!!

People, THIS is why ice cream before bed is NEVER a good idea!

Glutes of Steel!

No, not mine (mine would be more like Glutes of Costco-honking-big-chocolate-muffins) my ten year old son's glutes. Unlike myself who wakes up in the morning and is instantly up, both of my kids have inherited their father's sunny morning disposition in that they need to be woken up so they can fall back asleep to be woken up again and have this repeated about five times (don't even ask what I have threatened to do with hubby'a alarm clock). Since having to wake the dead is a pain in my glutes, I started making up silly songs to sing beside my kid's bedside in the morning to wake them up laughing. Instead of "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands" I've changed the word world to moon, at which point I grab their toushie, or Bum Bongos where I play the drums on their bums or Skinnamarinkie-dink (don't even dare THINK anything) where morning is a tickle at the neck, afternoon is the ribs, evening is waist and underneath the moon is self-explanatory. This morning's sing-song was skinnamarinkie-dink, as I got to underneath the moon, I zigged, the boy zagged and as a result I shoved my thumb into one of his little cheeks bending my damn thumbnail back and breaking it off below the skin? Or whatever you wanna call it where it attaches. ARGHHHHHHHH. Forget bouncing a quarter off that thing, I think you could bounce the whole damn mint off it. OUCH!

In other news, meet our new neighbors. Well they were, not sure if they still are. A couple months ago we noticed the hole in the attic vent of our neighbor's house. I commented to hubby how I didn't think it likely that the elements had done that over the winter, that maybe she had some unknown tennants, it wasn't till a couple weeks ago we met them.

It's not really a good picture, I know, but short of climbing up a ladder and asking him to come out and "Say Cheese" it's the best I could get. Up till last week, we thought it was just the one until the second little head popped out and said peek-a-boo!! It's Squirrel Times Two! So neighborlady had to call in PCO to give them their eviction notice before they start breeding like my guppies! He came yesterday to set the traps and was back today to check them, but not sure if they got them or they outsmarted PCO man. Pain in the glutes big gray squirrels may be, I still say they are damn cute.

It's true what they say!!

So last night hubby and I are out in the backyard, him being domestic, me pretending to be, making a new garden where he can grow even MORE freakin beans then he is already growing in one of our five (now six) gardens. I'm on the deck doing the "pretending to be domestic" and he is over at his truck shovelling off the load of dirt he got.

Man - "Nanc, stay out back"

Domestic Goddess (that's me!!) - "Huh?"

Man - "I said stay out back"

Me - "What? Why?" (I'm a woman of few words, except when I blog curiously)

Man - "Just stay out back"

Now, anyone that is a parent (except apparently the man who is a parent to our children) knows that if you tell someone NOT to do something, they are gonna walk right over top of you to do whatever it is they were told not to do. It isn't just kids that do this, who knew!!?? In my own defense, my first guess was that there was a rottie on our street and he didn't want me to see it so he could avoid the ahhhhhh I want a rottie so bad conversation (and I promise you, it has nothing to do with the fact my monster-in-law is terrified of them and has already proclaimed she will never step foot in our home again if we ever got one)

You guessed it, I start heading out front!

Man - "Nanc, I said stay out back, you don't need to see this."

Me - "See what"

Man - "For Fbomb sakes, a dog got hit by a car and is lying in the street"

Which of course sends me even faster out front cause my ten year old is three doors down playing with the neighbor's kids who happen to have a dog, so I automatically think OH GOD IT'S THEIR DOG AND WERE THE KIDS WITH HIM WHEN IT GOT HIT!!!!!????? Well, it wasn't their dog, who could have survived a car hit cause he is an average sized dog, but was the neighbor's two doors down who has a little yorkie. Anyone who has ever seen the size of a yorkie knows that any contact with a car ain't gonna end good for that doggie. Poor little Molly!!! :(

In other dog news, once hubby got the garden built, before filling it, we FINALLY buried my doggie Max who has been patiently waiting in his his little cardboard box (he was cremated) in my basement for about 12 years. Yeah yeah, 12 years - we "misplaced" him during renovations. (Thank god I never kept my mom's ashes when she died cause who knows where we woulda lost her.) As I open the baggie containing the remains of my very own first doggie Max and pour his ashes into the bottom of our garden I hear my hubby say "DAMNNNN he was a big dog." Men....

Where the heck did they go? Part 1 - Canada

So the bug has bit you and you are seeking out your great-grandparents. If they were born in Canada before 1911 you might be in luck! A great place to check for them are in census returns. In most provinces, these were done every ten years. Some you can find on-line, others you may have to actually go into a library to see if they have these on microfilm. Personally, I always try and track down the census returns for "my people" cause alot of times you might find "missing" people from other parts of your tree listed in a family member's home or children you did not know existed cause they died young in between census years. A word of caution, knowing how to SPELL usually was not a requirement to getting the job of being the census taker so you may need to "be creative" when thinking of ways the recorder (and sometimes the transcriber of the original record) MAY have spelled your family members name.

Here are some Canadian sites that may help you track down that illusive Uncle George:

Alberta: http://www.afhs.ab.ca/data/cemeteries/search.php This site contains about 165,000 cemetery records for the province of Alberta. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any sites for this province that have vital stats.

British Columbia: http://bcarchives.bc.ca/ Click collections under the photo then Vital Event Records on the left. On the right you will find a list of the different vital records you can search. The best thing about the BC records is it lets you see deaths that are as current as 1989. Something not many do, the whole "privacy" thing. This site is basically an index.

Manitoba: http://vitalstats.gov.mb.ca//Query.php Again, more of an index (by that I mean no images with indepth information allowing you to be sure the John Smith you are looking for is the John Smith whose record shows up). This has births, marriages and deaths.

New Brunswick: http://archives.gnb.ca/Archives/Default.aspx?culture=en-CA If you hold your cursor on the word "Search" at the top left a drop down menu will appear with your options of records to search. You'll notice some of these options have arrows. That's cause there are more records available within those. Some of the records you can find here are births, marriages, deaths, Brenan's Funeral Home records and land grants. You can also find the link to the Newspaper Vital Statistics done by Danny Johnson under that search tab too! Here you will find information that was published in New Brunswick area newspapers between 1784 and 1896.

Nova Scotia: https://novascotiagenealogy.com A vital statistic site. Not to knock my own province's website, but this is one of my most favorite Canadian sites cause you can actually view the images of these documents right online, not just the indexed version. Anything that saves me money (not having to pay to order something) and time (not having to wait 3 plus weeks for a microfilm to come from the Provincial Archives) is always a bonus!!

Ontario: http://islandnet.com/ocfa/ This is more cemetery records. While great in directing you to where someone may be buried, it unfortunately contains no information about birth or death dates, just that someone with that name is there.

Prince Edward Island: http://islandregister.com Not like the majority of sites I have posted with Vital stats

Saskatchewan: http://www.isc.ca/VitalStatistics/Genealogy/vsgs_srch.aspx Again, more vital stats, however only birth and deaths at the moment. This is one of my newer finds

Other sites you can use to find cemetery records are www.findagrave.com and www.interment.net - both of these work for the States as well.

www.rootsweb.com is good and so is www.ancestry.com and ancestry.ca BUT the ancestry sites are only fully accessible if you purchase a subscription or your local library has.

But my all time favorite and most used site has got to be http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start This particular one is global. Some of it is just indexed records but some have actual images you can view which is fantastic if you are like me and like to see that stuff to make sure what the index states it is is true (don't forget, alot of these records that are index only have been transcribed by a person who may have read incorrectly or noted it incorrectly and just has been staring at the microfilms for so long they are damn near big-eyed-blind!) When you go to the above link if you click "Search or Browse or Record Collection" you can search specifically by area record instead of the whole database.


******Now I'm not sure about provinces other than NS and NB, but if you know what county your relatives lived in within these provinces you might want to bring up your search engine and type in whatever County NB Genweb. This will usually get you the hit for the individual county's website which could have a great amount of information, and more importantly, a search bar on their site which will allow you to check for your families surname and see if they have any records posted related to them. For the record, I've done this with American counties too.

On-line Canadian Census returns:
www.automatedgenealogy.com Here you will find the 1851 census of NB, 1852 of Ontario and Quebec, 1901 of Canada, 1906 of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and the 1911 of Canada.

www.familysearch.org Here you will find the 1881 Census of Canada (as well as 1880 on the states and other records)

www.collectionscanada.ca/genealogy/index-e.html: Here you will be able to find the digitizedimages of the 1891 Canadian census. Also Attestation papers for your family if they served in WW1.

Other than ancestry which requires a paid subscription, everything else I have posted is 100% FREE!! Ahhhh, my favorite F word, despite some thinking it might be fudge.

Happy researching!

Whoooo are you? Who who who who

Now that I've got you all singing that darn song and thinking of Gill Grissom........

As some of you know, I have been researching my family tree for a few years now. Some people I know have expressed an interest in researching their own, but like me when I started, had absolutely NO CLUE how to begin, so instead of sounding like a broken record (in my own head) and repeating this to multiple people I'll tackle it here.

Start with what you know!!!

For me, that was a death notice for my great-grandmother that my beloved Grampy had kept for his mom that I now had possession of about five years ago. She came from a fairly large family (the second of seven) and thankfully her obit listed all her siblings and her parents, so that part was easy, but what then? Well, I had absolutely no clue where to go AFTER that. I was like Hansel and Gretel, wandering around lost in the woods, with no trail of bread crumbs to lead me where I needed to be, so I put it all to the side and forgot about it. A year or so later I met someone who did Genealogy as a job who threw me a trail of breadcrumbs to lead me down the right path. Now that I think about it though, since the family tree addiction has taken its hold, I think I am more lost in those darn woods then ever!

Talk to people

Go to your grandparents! Once you get past the smell of Chanel #5 and Bengay and talks about their bunions and dentures, the stories you may get are a researcher's dream!! So much of who we are and where we come from is lost cause we don't take the time to get to know those who have come and gone before us. Do be cautious though about assuming what you hear is the God's honest truth. It's not that they try to deliberately mislead you, but alot of times they retell stories that they heard from their parents, who heard it from their parents, who heard it from their parents, etc. It's like a hugh child's game of Telephone or telegram, I think we used to call it, where you get a bunch of kids sitting on the ground in a circle and you whisper something in the ear of the kid to the right of you and by the time it makes it back to you it has a couple words that you said, but it now contains more fiction that fact. (Of course, sometimes they do mislead you on purpose if it means revealing family skeletons hehe)

Sources

For the love of Pete, make note of them! Every single solitary little tidbit of information you get, keep track of WHERE you got it. This is the one thing the majority of new researchers DON'T do and wish someone hadda told them TO DO! As you research, it isn't a question of "if" you encounter conflicting information, it's a question of WHEN you encounter it. You do not want to be part of the probably 99.9% of researchers pounding your head against the desk yelling where the hell did I get THAT? Especially not if you are at the library. They tend to frown on that.

Do the work

Don't just go to ancestry, rootsweb, tribalpages or any of the other billions of family tree websites and punch in an ancestors name, come up with a tree (or twenty) that contains the name of the person you are looking for and assume, since John Doe has em listed, that what they have is fact. While a great starting point to point you where to go next, do your OWN work. Look at the information they show then go looking for where it came from. Majority of time these trees are NOT sourced and when you try contacting them, IF you are lucky to find someone with a still current email, chances are they have no idea where the hell the information came from cause they got it from someone else's tree on some site who got it from someone else and on and on. See Telephone game thingy above! Nowadays, there is really no excuse NOT to be able to do the work on your own since there are so many records available on the internet (that's another blog all in itself). Check the web for a state/province archives, or type in your search bar (insert states here) marriage/death/ or birth index.

Family Tree Software

If the bug bites ya, get yourself some type of Family Tree Software to keep your information in. You don't want a bunch of scraps of paper here and there that you KNOW are gonna get lost. Some can be expensive and other can be cheap (I got mine for ten bucks at Radioshack), others can even be FREE! Google is a wonderful thing, try using it to locate free ones. A word of advice with these though, create your gedcoms (a family tree file) and email it to yourself at your yahoo/hotmail/whatever account. Last thing you want to do is lose years worth of work if something happens to your computer. Backing it up alone ain't gonna do diddly squat if someone steals your computer or your house catches on fire.

I'm sure there is more I missed but that's all I can think of. If you made it through the whole thing, you are obviously interested in genealogy and just really damn bored, either way thanks for dropping by!

Welcome!

Hello again everyone!

I've decided to start up a brand new blog since most of you know who I am now thanks to Facebook. I'd REALLY like to try and keep this as nice, friendly and CLEAN (yeah I know, doesn't THAT suck) as I can since it will be linked to my facebook account. Please keep in mind I have some family and a 14-going-on-25-teen who may peek in from time to time, so I would appreciate it if you could try and leave your F-bombs and boxing gloves with the coatcheck girl. I promise you will get them all back in tip-top shape on your way out!

So I guess a bit about me for those that don't know me that well, I'm a stay at home mom to two kids, a fourteen year girl and a ten year old boy, and I guess you could say a 37 year old man too since some men can be just as bad as kids. Toss that damn Star Wars cartoon on and the boy and hubby are like open mouthed drooling zombies, I swear! Okay, I'm lying, my son doesn't drool. (Incase you haven't caught on yet, I tend to be a tad sarcastic. For those that like that, FANTASTIC, for those that don't well, I'll leave that part with the coatcheck girl!) I'm not really a people person, they tend to annoy the crap outta me. Not because I am anti-social in general, but because I can only handle so much "oh boohooo poor me" before I wanna go to Home Hardware, buy a shovel and tarp and ask the boohoo'r if they wanna go on "a picnic". Luckily for the boohoo'rs in my life, I'm lazy and HATE breaking a nail, so the chances of me using the shovel to dig a hole are pretty slim. Although I suppose I could club em with it?