The Bracelet Story
So, my exciting life of reading depressing material that makes me think I might die aside...how are things going? Eh, I can't complain.
Trevor put in an offer on a 2nd house. It's already under contract so unfortunately we're still awaiting some kind of notification if the first offer went through. Not to be super boring because house talk can get really dry, but the hope is to have a 2nd house under our belt sometime this year. Trevor will rant endlessly about his house plan, so I will refrain from talking about it because I've already heard the same story a dozen times. Summary? We buy a bunch of houses and those houses float the cost of our real-life house that we love.
Work? I'm still working. I don't talk about work because as we've all learned from dooce, you don't mix work and play unless you wanna get fired. However in very general terms I'll say that sometimes I have great days, and sometimes I have bad ones. I'd say I had a lot more bad than good in recent memory, but in the last week or so I feel reinvigorated and reaffirmed that I am not an awful employee person. If you can't tell I take it pretty personally if my work is not at the level I'd like it to be. Lame...I know.
I was just thinking I forgot to tell the bracelet story.
Rewind to the women's weekend at the Cape. I am done emptying the contents of my unhappy stomach and have replaced it with waffles with blueberries and syrup. (Hey, what comes out must eventually be replaced or I go INSANE. I am awful without food. I am the grumpiest grumpster ever.) So anyway, as I'm eating Liza and the aunts are digging through these boxes from The Farm of GrandMarie's belongings; more specifically they're digging around in her jewelery and picking out who gets what. Moms got first pick and then it tricked down to us kiddies (Susan, Candice and myself) and it was actually a lot of fun. I know it might sound really morbid to dig through an old woman's former belongings, but since I never KNEW her the way they did it was nice to kind of get a piece of who she was from looking at her belongings. Clearly from their prospectives it was best that Marie's belongings go to people who loved her and for whom it would be meaningful, even if it was just costume jewelery. So a few tears welled up in people's eyes and stories were told of how they remembered her wearing a particular bracelet or a particular necklace. It was sweet.
Personally? I don't own a single thing of my maternal grandmother's. I know that must seem awful but I don't take it too personally. She had like 30 dozen grandchildren and I am at the bottom of the totem pole because I don't even live in the same country and I'm like the 5th youngest. I think that things of value definitely went to her own children anyhow. But that Susan and Candice got to have things of their grandmother? That's pretty cool. I guess Marie had her mother's bracelet (Trevor's great grandmother), which listed her grandchildren's names. Included in the bracelet were Liza, Christine and Deborah. It was an amazing bracelet because it was HUGE. It was totally full of names of grandchildren. It was incredibly awkward if you were to wear it, but clearly it was built with so much love. All the boy names had boy shaped profile tags, all the girl names had girl shaped profile tags.
Along with this, there was Marie's own bracelet. I guess at some point it was gifted to her and it was a silver charm bracelet with her four grandchildren engraved on four separate heart tags. Susan, Trevor, Candice and Devin. Somehow it got to us because neither of the moms claimed it, and Aunt Deborah said although it was nice that she wouldn't likely wear it now that she's retired and no longer going to the office everyday. The girls went back and forth about it and came up with a few ideas about splitting up the charms or adding new ones. But after no one explicitly claimed it, I asked if I could have it. And no one said otherwise so I got to keep it.
I guess it's kind of silly because I never really knew Marie, but I think it's so wonderful to have something that was hers. I figure one day, if I should have children of my own in the future that I can show it to them and tell them it was their great-grandmother's. I can tell them I wish I knew her better, but I hold a piece of her with me. And hopefully they appreciate it as much as I do.
I wore it to work this week and I don't know if that's what made my work week so much better, but it really was. I felt like I had a spring in my step. I also tinkled as I walked because the little hearts hit one another so I didn't wear it everyday just in case I was that obnoxious person you could hear from a mile away.
Oh, and before I forget, after hashing out who received what of the various jewelery boxes, we celebrated our fun by putting everything on.
Trevor put in an offer on a 2nd house. It's already under contract so unfortunately we're still awaiting some kind of notification if the first offer went through. Not to be super boring because house talk can get really dry, but the hope is to have a 2nd house under our belt sometime this year. Trevor will rant endlessly about his house plan, so I will refrain from talking about it because I've already heard the same story a dozen times. Summary? We buy a bunch of houses and those houses float the cost of our real-life house that we love.
Work? I'm still working. I don't talk about work because as we've all learned from dooce, you don't mix work and play unless you wanna get fired. However in very general terms I'll say that sometimes I have great days, and sometimes I have bad ones. I'd say I had a lot more bad than good in recent memory, but in the last week or so I feel reinvigorated and reaffirmed that I am not an awful employee person. If you can't tell I take it pretty personally if my work is not at the level I'd like it to be. Lame...I know.
I was just thinking I forgot to tell the bracelet story.
Rewind to the women's weekend at the Cape. I am done emptying the contents of my unhappy stomach and have replaced it with waffles with blueberries and syrup. (Hey, what comes out must eventually be replaced or I go INSANE. I am awful without food. I am the grumpiest grumpster ever.) So anyway, as I'm eating Liza and the aunts are digging through these boxes from The Farm of GrandMarie's belongings; more specifically they're digging around in her jewelery and picking out who gets what. Moms got first pick and then it tricked down to us kiddies (Susan, Candice and myself) and it was actually a lot of fun. I know it might sound really morbid to dig through an old woman's former belongings, but since I never KNEW her the way they did it was nice to kind of get a piece of who she was from looking at her belongings. Clearly from their prospectives it was best that Marie's belongings go to people who loved her and for whom it would be meaningful, even if it was just costume jewelery. So a few tears welled up in people's eyes and stories were told of how they remembered her wearing a particular bracelet or a particular necklace. It was sweet.
Personally? I don't own a single thing of my maternal grandmother's. I know that must seem awful but I don't take it too personally. She had like 30 dozen grandchildren and I am at the bottom of the totem pole because I don't even live in the same country and I'm like the 5th youngest. I think that things of value definitely went to her own children anyhow. But that Susan and Candice got to have things of their grandmother? That's pretty cool. I guess Marie had her mother's bracelet (Trevor's great grandmother), which listed her grandchildren's names. Included in the bracelet were Liza, Christine and Deborah. It was an amazing bracelet because it was HUGE. It was totally full of names of grandchildren. It was incredibly awkward if you were to wear it, but clearly it was built with so much love. All the boy names had boy shaped profile tags, all the girl names had girl shaped profile tags.
Along with this, there was Marie's own bracelet. I guess at some point it was gifted to her and it was a silver charm bracelet with her four grandchildren engraved on four separate heart tags. Susan, Trevor, Candice and Devin. Somehow it got to us because neither of the moms claimed it, and Aunt Deborah said although it was nice that she wouldn't likely wear it now that she's retired and no longer going to the office everyday. The girls went back and forth about it and came up with a few ideas about splitting up the charms or adding new ones. But after no one explicitly claimed it, I asked if I could have it. And no one said otherwise so I got to keep it.
I guess it's kind of silly because I never really knew Marie, but I think it's so wonderful to have something that was hers. I figure one day, if I should have children of my own in the future that I can show it to them and tell them it was their great-grandmother's. I can tell them I wish I knew her better, but I hold a piece of her with me. And hopefully they appreciate it as much as I do.
I wore it to work this week and I don't know if that's what made my work week so much better, but it really was. I felt like I had a spring in my step. I also tinkled as I walked because the little hearts hit one another so I didn't wear it everyday just in case I was that obnoxious person you could hear from a mile away.
Oh, and before I forget, after hashing out who received what of the various jewelery boxes, we celebrated our fun by putting everything on.
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