Category: Family

Winter Solstice with family 12/22/2019

Eldest son and eldest grandson made a very quick visit, arriving yesterday afternoon and leaving this evening. I traditionally prepare the Christmas Day dinner, turkey, ham, and all the fixings, but since they couldn’t be here on Christmas Day and since they arrived on the Solstice, we had Christmas/Solstice dinner with all the fixings for them and daughter and her kiddos. Brother and sister got to spend some time together as did the cousins, and they shared gifts, I got some help in the kitchen, and we all ate well. I even spatchcocked the turkey all by myself. Doing a chicken isn’t too hard, but a larger turkey is difficult for me to do.

Yesterday morning, two of the young men who are part of the team who mow our farm and get a share of the hay for a small herd they share, came over with chain saws, a hydraulic log splitter, dump bed truck, and a big tractor and cut up a red oak tree that fell into our hay field winter before last. They had hayed around it for two summers. They brought the entire cord plus of wood up to my woodpile and dumped it. They even offered to stack it for me which I refused as I hadn’t expected the entire tree. The three grands got out there while dinner was being prepared and spent a couple hours stacking firewood.

This morning, this is what I found. The kids ate well and I’ll bet slept well. This morning after fixing biscuits and gravy with grandson’s help, sharing gifts with son and grandson; grandson and I went out and did some cleanup of the last little bit, hopped the short stack on the right over the pile on to some cedar poles on the opposite side of the big stack where we had also stacked the clean up amount.

Son was in the house nursing a finger he had seriously cut about a week ago and finishing grading the papers from one of his upperclass University classes he teaches. To try to keep grandson out of his way and away from too much TV time, I also got his help finally pruning back the dead asparagus tops and getting spoiled straw from the compost pile over it, getting about a foot of hay into the chicken run for them to peck through and to keep it less slippery for me when it rains. The big round bale was wedged between two objects that made it difficult for me to peel layers off of it, but with his help it is now more accessible. I asked son if I could keep grandson for a while. He jokingly asked me how long. My response was as long as I could still get good help out of him or until he started treating me like a parent instead of grandmom.

Son got his grades done and submitted in time to have hot turkey sandwiches and other leftovers before heading home this evening.

We will go to daughter’s house on Christmas Eve for dinner and back for a bit on Christmas Day give them their gifts. Christmas morning will be quiet, just us. Jim will primarily get a stocking as his gift was “the chair III” which arrived Wednesday and he has been enjoying it for a few days now.

On Thursday afternoon, daughter came over and she and I were able to get the two deteriorating pleather loveseats onto our trailer and off loaded at the local trash location. After Christmas decorations are down, we will consider what to get to put in the living room. The loft got a rocking chair that had been in our bedroom and had become a place to dump things instead of putting them away. Maybe I will be better about keeping that area organized now.

Gifts- 12/3/2019

A plan is finally in place and not too stressful, I hope. With lots of doctor’s appointments, PT, and hearing clinic appointments between us, we seem to be spending lots of time in waiting room which affords me knitting time. Yesterday, daughter needed help with a sick child so she could go to work, so more knitting time. During hubby’s TV time is even more knitting time. The amount of it though is causing some joint pain with the cold raw weather. I have taken to wearing lots of wool layers from skin out to keep warm.

Hubby needed a new chair as “the Chair II” had failed, and then his laptop crashed so we ordered a new chair and he ended up with a business grade refurbished computer from the computer repair shop. He will only get a stocking stuffed. Child #2 provided a few wishes and wants experiences for her kids rather than more toys. Doable. Child #3’s family is taken care of. Child #1’s family is partially taken care of, that one is still in progress.

This weekend begins 3 weekends of craft events and hopefully, folks will buy my goods as gifts for their families and I will go into the new year low on stock which will make my personal property tax lower next year.

Time to get back to knitting.

Names – 12/1/2019

I was named for my grandmothers, my first name is Frances. Born when I was, I started school just as one of the early “talking” animal comedy movie series was released and I was relentlessly teased. I had been tagged with a corruption of my name as a nickname that was cute for a small child, but I didn’t want to follow me as I grew up. We had a family friend who was Fran and I didn’t care for her, so I didn’t want to be hung with that. As I left for college and into the work force, I used my birth name of Frances, but that too presented it’s own difficulties as Francis is a man’s version and I have spent years using the phrase “I as in his, E as in hers” to educate/correct people. To add to the difficulty, my maiden name was and should have been simple, Sale, just like it sounds, but I got Sales, Sally, Soles, Salle.

After I married, I added Stafford and we get Stratford, Stoffer, Staffer. And I changed jobs and introduced myself as Frances, but one of my new co-workers tagged me as Fran and thus it has been except with my family.

When our children were born, I didn’t want to give them names that could be corrupted with a y or ie on the end. We didn’t want their initials to spell something that would cause them issues and both son’s as they grew up went by their middle names, even being enrolled in school with a first initial, middle name, last name. One son as a professional knows when he receives a call, email, or letter if the person really knows him by whether it is addressed to his first name or his middle name. Younger son chooses to go by his birth first name in formal form now, except by immediate family and we haven’t been able to make the change, so he is still called by his middle name. Daughter grew up with her first name, sometimes first and middle.

Her children’s first names are palindromes.

As an educator, I was exposed to many different names of children and wondered where some of them originated, were they made up, family names, names from countries of origin. Sometimes I worried that they were being teased or bullied because of the name with which they were tagged.