I might as welll check in

[awanderingbard]

Hello there, folks!

I haven't posted since Jan 1st, so I thought I should at least let people know I'm still here. Which I am.

Things that have occurred since we last spoke:

Mr Pax is a man no longer bound by the cruel mistress that is the dog gate. We let him have free rein of the house (barring a few rooms) and he's proved to be a very good boy. We still put him in the kitchen if there's no one up to watch him/listen for him, but otherwise he's free from morn until bedtime, and is enjoying himself. He's a sock thief, but that is the extent of his crimes. He just can't seem to help himself. He knows he can't have socks, yet he always tries to sneak over to the lost sock bag and steal one out. He also stole a napkin from a laundry basket, but we let him have that one. He loves to grab something with his mouth and wave it around, especially if it's unwieldy and/or makes a lot of noise.

I think I mentioned my dad hurt his back in the autumn, and he finally got an MRI a few weeks ago, which showed Degenerative Disc Disease. Not a great diagnosis in that it can't get better, but from our reading, it suggests you may have good periods and bad ones and there are things to do to help. The doctor put him on a long-lasting narcotic for the pain, because she wants him to be able to get up and walk and move around due to other health issues he has that really need him to be more active. It seems to be helping somewhat.

A little note about that: narcotics are hardcore and obviously you don't want to be on them if you don't have to be, but I find it really interesting that my mom ruptured three discs in her back eight years go and had bone-on-bone degeneration in both hips waiting for her replacement surgeries, and I have been chronically passing kidney stones, generally recognized as one of the worst, if not the worst pains in the world, for four years or so now, and at no point were either of us offered anything stronger than NSAIDs for the pain. I don't begrudge my dad the help he needs, and I don't really want to fuck around with narcotics if I don't have to, but there does seem to be some kind of sexism at work there.

Anyway, it's been kind of stressful around here due to that, especially Mum and I taking over some of the stuff he was doing when we aren't at our best ourselves, but we're doing okay. Plus, considering other events going on the world, we are doing more than okay.

Last year, I got two pairs of glasses--one for distance, one for close--to see if that helped things, but I haven't found it particularly useful, so we're trying progressive lenses now. I just found I never really used my distance glasses except for leaving the house (which I don't do often) and my close glasses were okay if things were a foot from my nose but for anything in a middle distance, which was most activities, neither were cutting it. The progressives should help with that, though I've been warned they are hell to get used to. My aunt, who has the same eye condition as me, but much worse, said she's been in progressives for twenty years and found them really helpful and didn't have trouble at all getting used to them, so that's hopeful. I get them in a couple of weeks and we'll see if I feel more motivated when I'm not bumping into things all the time.

I've got my annual month of Ancestry subscription to keep me occupied at the moment, and it's been fun to see what mysteries I can solve, but they only get weirder the more records I find. My mom's great-grandfather and his siblings were so bizarre, and I don't think I'll ever know the full story. They had multiple spouses, lied on census records, went by each others names, lied on marriage records, and one of them disappeared from all records and I literally cannot figure out what happened to her. I want to try to figure out that generation, since my mom's grandfather was an illegitimate child adopted by her great-grandfather, but her Ancestry DNA matches shows he was definitely a blood member of the family in some way or another, and a lot of the stories we were told don't match up with records. I may not ever know, but it's fun trying.

Anyway, I hope you all are coping in these troubling and stressful times. If LJ goes down at some point, my journal is backed up at Dreamwidth and you can find me there as 'awanderingbard', same as LJ, and, of course, if you are reading this on DW, you already know I'm here!

Comments

[donutsweeper]

I got progressives a few years ago. The first week or so was hard but after that I find them so much better than trying to shift what I'm looking at up closer or further, dependingly (although I need distance glasses in the house as well, not just when outside).

Genealogy can be really fun! I tend to get a subscription to Ancestry every summer when there's a 6mo half price sale so don't have it at the moment. Sometimes what you find can be baffling though and impossible to parse through - a birthday can be given on official documents completely differently each time (did they lie, not know, not care, figure it out/convert it differently? Who knows), names randomly change, people appear and disappear - fun but frustrating to try to figure out. Good luck with your search!

[awanderingbard]

Good to know you had a good experience with your glasses! My mom had them in the past and she had a hard time getting used to them, but she did wear them for years until she had her cataracts done and no longer needed glasses. She said going down stairs was the hardest, but my eye problem makes me have poor depth perception so going downstairs is already hard. Maybe it won't be much worse!

I usually get a month's subscription to Ancestry around March every year to see what's come up since I last looked. There's a slew of New Hampshire death records this time, which helped me out a little and also confused me more. The birthday thing is weird for sure. I think that people just didn't pay that much attention back then because they didn't have to rattle it off for forms the way we do now. And if you have twelve kids, you might not remember if John was born two years ago or three years ago and if you didn't write it down in the family bible, maybe you just take your best guess. There was definitely some fudging of ages for people to get married in my family, saying they were older than the were so they could do it without parental permission. My mom's family live right on the border to the States and popped over to get married in Vermont all the time (presumably to avoid having go through the Catholic Church) and a lot of them just made themselves older, I think. They were also all French-Canadian and the transcriptions of their names by the obviously Anglophone clerks is fun to sort through. Langlois becomes Longyer, Coderre becomes Cuddy. What I can't explain is why one of the siblings in the confusing generation started going by her sister's name for awhile and returned to her own name later in life.

[donutsweeper]

With my genealogy there's plenty of name changes to due moving to the US from 'the old country' (due to trying to fit in or hide or who knows) and with important dates there's no way to know if a birthday was a) never recorded so guessed, b) changed purposely for reasons, c) changed due to the conversion from the Hebrew calendar or possibly guessed and also converted (i.e. Adar is usually March but not always or exactly).

It's smart to check back every so often. I love how new stuff gets put online all the time. In the US the 1950 census will be available soon, I'm hoping that will help me locate some more people.

[awanderingbard]

A lot people didn't read, so might not have even been able to make use of a record that was written down. And in Quebec the baptism date was more important than the date of birth. A lot of my ancestors gave that on records. Even in my parents' era, they had baptism certificates, not birth ones, and had to apply for them when they came to Ontario. Usually if the names match up and the ages are within five years or so, I assume it's the person I'm looking for. I had one branch on my dad's side who didn't know when they came to Canada like, four years after they came to Canada, but then on the next census, were totally accurate about when they came to Canada, so I'd like to know how they were confused four years later but fine nine years later.

The 1931 Canadian census should be up next year some time and I'm hoping that will help with a few questions I have, too. The 1950 American census might help me as well, since a lot of the confusing generation went to New Hampshire.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I'm sorry about your dad, but I'm glad they've found something that helps. I am not one whit surprised about the difference in medication he was offered versus you and your mom.

I got progressives some years ago. I use the middle part all the time—that's where I'm looking right now. I can't remember how long it took me to get used to them. When I got them, my mom reminded me of something I had utterly forgotten: when she got them, she had trouble getting used to them, so she kept switching back to her regular distance glasses. And I told her that she needed to stop and just stick with the new ones to adjust properly, and she did, and I was right! I still don't actually remember this, but it sounds just like me. So of course I had to take my own advice.

I think all my LJ friends are now on DW. I feel a bit conflicted, remembering when I was new to LJ and it was all shiny, before it was sold (repeatedly). I still have my LJ, but everyone might read my posts here too now.