monkeymom's Diaryland Diary
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Vesterheim, our Home in the West.
I had two days off but didn't do much, except for sleep. My sleep was at odd times, but oh well, I got some.
Ruthann was out of town so I had to go grocery shopping by myself. You'll be glad to know that I managed it alright. I had to make a run to the post office, too, and I did that today after I picked up Kim from early morning cross-country practice. She didn't have school today, but she had to show up at 6 to run. Afterward they went out to breakfast!
So the trip to the P.O. was uneventful, except for the part where I caught the toe of my sandal on the lip of one of the stone steps, the ones with the jagged STONE edges, and FELL, flat on my face, sprawled over the steps! That was embarrassing AND painful! There was a woman coming up the sidewalk at that moment who said, "I did the same thing yesterday!" Yeah. So I have a big bruise across the front of my right thigh now and it hurts!
I soldiered on, however, and mailed a package to Rachel containing her immunization record (she needs it right away), a couple of bills, and the baby sweater I knitted that she is going to give to her friends who have a new baby. Almost 20 bucks to mail it by super-express-fast mail. If she doesn't get it tomorrow, I'm going to be mad.
I sent Scott a small stuffed camel to celebrate his hump day - one year in the mission field - and a cool Megotokyo t-shirt. His one year date won't be until Oct. 23, but I was afraid it would take forever to get there, so I sent it early.
Instead of wasting hours playing Snood when I had nothing to do over the last couple of days, I decided to work on the big geneology project; that is, typing my Mom's handwritten family history records in the Personal Ancestral File program on my PC. She used to tell me that all of her records were on her computer, but no one seemed to know anything about them, and her hard drive on the laptop was erased, so there you go. I have lots of typing to do.
It's interesting, and a nice little time-killer, too, but a productive one, unlike Snood. Today I was typing some Norwegian names, and they were born and/or died in Decorah, Iowa, a name I recognized from an article in a knitting magazine last year (or the year before). Decorah, Iowa is known as Vesterheim, an area where many Norwegians settled after they came to live in America. There is a museum there where you can see examples of Norwegian arts and crafts and they offer classes in lots of them. One of them being knitting, and the magazine article was about the knitting artifacts and some modern patterns inspired by the old sweaters and designs at the Vesterheim museum in Decorah. So that was pretty cool and I wrote an email this morning to a knitting friend who has been to Vesterheim and taken a class there, to tell her that my Norwegian ancestors (that I barely knew about, since my mother used to tell us that we were Danish) had lived in Decorah. She wrote back to say that my Norwegian ancestry showed in my knitting, that you could always tell.
When I started typing all these records, I started with the old wooden book, handmade by my father for mom's records, and have been slowly working my way through that one. It's been more than a year since I started working on it, and I'm almost done! In fact, I have just one last page to do in the book, but I had to leave for work. I'll finish it tomorrow. I don't know what's in the rest of the books, but one of them looks like it's Mom's side of the family, and Aunt Lynn assures me that she has all that on disks and she has, in fact, emailed her files to me.
I finished two socks (not a pair) and a beret, did a couple of rows on the BS sweater, and started another beret. I have some ideas for new projects, but I have to make craft show items! Ugh!
11:40 p.m. - 2003-09-19
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