CRAZYness

The days have been crazy this month.
Hopefully I can get all caught up by next week.
I've been in Arizona for Natalie's baby shower this last week.  I am home for two days and off to UT to take Christine to EFY.  It will be nice to have a bit of quiet, down time.

All this cRaZiNeSs has been fun, exhausting, and all in all a beautiful thing. 

More to come.  Encourage me to take more pictures----I'm lacking there.....

Indexing: North Carolina

Yay!  Hooray!

I finished my Personal Progress goal with the indexing of North Carolina this mornnig.

It was another hard one to read.  Just when you think you know the handwriting, it changes on you.

They have an arbitration site that checks your work when you submit it.  I have been overall 97% accurate.  At this point, the indexing of the 1940 census is 80% completed, and I have been a part of that.

Indexing--South Carolina

I worked on indexing South Carolina this morning.  It was really hard.  I know there will be some mistakes.  The handwriting was very difficult to read.  This neighborhood was a mix of whites and negroes, and all were farming or laborers.  I am one more batch away from my goal for personal progress.

Indexing: Wisconsin

I can cross indexing off my list of goals for today.  It felt good to get back to it.  After I do a batch, I feel like I was part of something really important, even though only me and the computer know it.  The people on this street--West McKinley--represent what I think was a very typical group of neighbors at this point in time.  I am fascinated by my thoughts when I get this snapshot into their lives.  What did they look like?  Did they have accents?  A lot of these people were from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary.  Others were born right here in America.  I can imagine lots of row houses with so many different aromas coming from their kitchens in the evenings from all their respective countries of origin.

Employment:  hotel elevator operator.  Waitress. Laborers.  Machinist for a tractor manufacturing company.  Salesladies for dress shops and glass stores.  A 'choreman' for a private residence.  Road construction.  Hospital orderly.  Stenographer.  Tool and Die operator.  Packer for a lock company.  Punch Press operator.  Foreman.  Pipe fitter.  And an undertaker chauffeur.

Here We Are In July Already!

Well, here we are in July already.  Two weeks have gone by and I haven't posted.  We've had a family baby shower for Adrianne, gone to Utah for lacrosse camp and 4th of July.  Lisa and Craig and Linda and David came up from Arizona for the holiday week.  Josh and Meredith and Ainsley made the trip as their vacation this year.  We've been home for 3 days and it almost doesn't seem like we were gone there is so much to do.  I just keep telling myself:  one day at a time, one day at a time.  It is wicked hot around here.  Seems like that is the case all over the country right now.  Duff has had two job interviews since we've been home and he got both!  So he is off to work this morning!  Yay!  We are so grateful. I hope to catch up blog posts soon.  There is so much to report.

Today my goals are:  walk, finish blessing baby blanket, finish laundry, index, stay cool.

Index 1940 Census: Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland

I have been crazy busy this week.

I finally got to indexing this morning, so I did three states to make up for not being able to work on the census in the past few days.

Illinois was very diverse in it's employment.  Many 'homewifes' is how it was indicated.  There were several heads of house who were not employed.  Some other occupations were teacher, veterinarian, clerks, salemen, and 'homeworker'.

I forgot to look at Kentucky.

I loved doing Maryland.  The census taker wrote boldly in all capital letters and there was no problem understanding any spelling.  Some occupations I noticed were:  laborer, stone mason, manager of a bond company, manager of a drug store.  Printer, mechanic, packer, clerk.  Foreman at a steel company.  Also a bender and 'helper' at a steel company.  Minister.  Baker, salesgirl, and a barber.  It seems to me that on this street you didn't need to look much further than a neighbor for all your needs!

I am almost at my 10 hours required for my YW project.  I'm kind of thinking I may keep doing it.  I like it.

Daily Q

Question:  What is your favorite restaurant?  Why?

Answer:  I don't have one.  We really don't go out to eat very often.  We never really have.  Guess it comes from our early dating, courting, and marriage days of  'it doesn't fit in the budget'.  But I really love SuperMex for great authentic mexican food.  It is a hole in the wall and those are often the best kind of restaurants.

I love our local Tutto Fresco for Italian, and other than that, I like Wahoos, In 'n Out, Wood Ranch.

Indexing 1940 Census Georgia

I've decided to go down the batch choices in alphabetical order now.  That means that Georgia was next on my list of indexing.

The batch was neatly done and each column was completely filled out.  Sometimes the census taker would use ditto marks and leave certain columns blank.  Not this one.

All the families were farmers or laborers.  Every single one.  This county must have been all agricultural.

On another note:  I received a 'report card' for my work.  I have been 97% accurate on my indexing over all so far.  Once I submit it, it goes to arbitration for a second look.  I didn't know that, but had wondered if familysearch just took my word for it or if they had some way to check it.  Checking it would make sense to me because of how hard some of the census records are to read.  Being all done by hand back then means as many different penmanships as people.  The good thing about this 'report card' from arbitration is that I can go back and see what I made a mistake on and learn from it.  Some of my errors were silly mistakes, and others I learned from the handwriting analysis how some letters were written in 1940.  It helped a lot.

"Mom. Can I Go Over To Cindy's House?"

Today, my childhood friend, Lisa Birk Kowallis, came over.  She lives about an hour or so away.  Wished we got together more, but life gets in the way sometimes of that.  The good thing though, is that she is the kind of friend that you can pick up right where you left off with no matter how long it's been. 

One of her daughters is having her first baby in September, and she wanted help to make some of the self-binding receiving blankets and burps for the new baby.  She got a new sewing machine for her birthday this month and took a lesson on how to use it.  It's a nice machine.  A Singer Curvy.  I know 'Martha' recommends that particular one.  I liked it a lot.  It threads itself and has some darling decorative stitches on it.

I measured and cut and she sewed and we both ironed and during it all we talked, gabbed, laughed till we cried and cried till we laughed.  She got 3 blanket sets done and did a great job.  Becky will love them and be SO surprised that her mom made them. 

It was a beautiful day.  Sometimes you just need those old-days-gone-by relationships to anchor you for a while again.  I was grateful for that today.

BBQ with Jan and Ann and Families

Jan and Ann and their families are in town for vacation.  Tonight everyone came over for a family BBQ.  I took no pictures.  Christine took some of the cousins swimming next door.  I'll have to get them from her later.

Ann and fam came in the afternoon and they all went to see Brave.  I hear it is a really cute movie.  Jan and fam decided to get one more day in at Universal Studios.  Only bad thing about that is the drive after on a Friday night in LA traffic.  It was BAD.  Poor guys.  We sat around the table and talked and talked.  Cleaned up and then the guys divided between the bonus room and family room.  We gals took the living room and talked and talked and played with the baby who went back and forth from many sets of loving arms to the play mat.  The kids went between the pool and playing Nertz in the dining room.

All too soon it was 10:30pm and time for them to get back to their hotel.  Lots of hugs and kisses and more hugs and lots of waves and kisses blown as they drove away.

Great day!

Daily Q

Question:  What is your definition of contentedness?  Are you satisfied with it's presence in your life?

Answer:  At first I didn't know what to think of this question and almost put it back in the jar in order to draw out another one.  I think what bothers me about this question is the word 'contentedness'.  So I looked it up in the dictionary!  (so me....)  It says: "having or showing no desire for something more or different; satisfied."

I guess on the one hand I'm 'satisfied' that I'm not 'content'.  I want to learn more, do more, be more, improve who I am, keep growing.

On the other hand,  I am more content now than I have been at earlier times in my life when I compared myself to others, tried to keep up (now let's be honest, we've all done that...), and was figuring out who I am (and the later is an on-going process).

Index 1949 Census--District Of Columbia

I worked on the District of Columbia this morning.

I try to do my indexing in the mornings.

This batch was SO easy compared to some of the others.  The handwriting was perfect, and it was cursive!  This is in no way meant to be offensive, but my observations are that this was a very professional state and the penmanship and execution of the form reflects it.  Everything was neat, tidy, no scribbles, and thorough compared to more agrarian areas.  None of that occured to me until I did today's indexing.  This area had the most diverse employment as well:  salesman, chauffeur, statistcal clerks, printers, stenographers for the US Federal Trade Commission, auditors, clerks, secretaries for US Federal Reserve, florist, teacher, chiropractor, palentologist, superintendant of a publishing company, and an accountant for the US Treasury.  There were also a lot of females who were heads of their households which has not necessarily been the case in most other batches I've done.

I got an email from familysearch.org thanking me for completeing my 10th batch.  That's gone by fast for me.  Just a little bit of time each morning.  So far, I'm surprised at my feelings.  I began this for my Personal Progress goal, but now I'm fascinated by the people and the areas they lived in and a little glimpse into how they lived.  It amazes me how different we all are and yet connected by each individual contribution we make every day of our lives to each other probably without even knowing it.