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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
wordmad's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 | | 8:47 am |
Well, I was just congratulating myself that I finally got my cats weaned to wet food 2x and dry 1x per day. (Reason: my youngest is overweight and our vet warned us about the diabetes epidemic, which is supposed to have started when dry food became popular.) I even figured out what flavor they like best: Friskies "mixed grill"--yummers--and what they don't like: mainly the fishy varieties.
So natch, when I see my brother Frank, whose cat has FH (feline hypothyroidism), he tells me he read an article wherein the rise in FH has been linked to eating *CANNED CAT FOOD* that has the pull-off tops, which, of course, is what I've been feeding mine. AACK!
Then I go to a couple of very erudite vet websites and find out that:
The first study was done because someone noticed that the rise in FH frequency came about the same time pull-offs entered the market.
Aging is still the single biggest risk factor,
Himalayans and Siamese cats seem to have a lower risk of FH naturally. (Well, Yoda is half-Persian. Does that count?),
Cats who prefer fish or liver and gibs flavors have twice the risk as those eating only dry (Oh, goodie, mine only like the ones with meat and poult byproducts... well... and liver....),
(DOUBLE AACK!) Cats who use litter have a three-fold higher risk for FH (versus those tight-arsed little prodigies that squat on the toilet, I suppose),
Another study showed that elevated levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been found in cats with FH. PDBEs are present in flame retardants, and, therefore, most of the upholstery and bedding in our home. (These also entered the market about the time the rise in FH was noted.)
This means that Wally and Shiro, who spend most of their time outdoors, have a lowered risk for FH caused by PDBEs. Unfortunately Yoda, who likes the wet food best (and usually cleans up what the other two don't eat), is also the oldest and spends the least time outside.
What to do? What do do? (I know what you're thinking: stop reading so many @#%&**! articles.) | | Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 | | 11:20 am |
It is reeellly nice to sit down to my journal and read some fun stuff about Harold and Kumar and sync swimming and such because it took my mind off the fact that I am so mad at everybody who I had to e-mail today because every lousy effing letter got bounced back at me. I feel myself going slowly postal. (Thank God there are no guns in th house.) I just want to say to the world
IIIIIIIIIII---AAAAMMMMMMMM---NNNNNOTTTTTTT---SSSSSPAMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!
Stop bouncing my innocent replies back, whoever you are. I'm just trying to answer your effing questions!!!
Ahhh--I feel much better now. Thanks, guys. | | Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | | 12:58 pm |
Concert Here's a picture of the Early Music Society of Northern Maryland, playing in the incredibly neat atrium of the Towson Library. There's this spiral ramp going round and round, from the front door up to the library proper, which often has lots of neat pix on the walls. Note some of our audience over top of us, delighted--nay, enthralled--with the echoing melodies. I'm the gray-haired lady on the far right, not watching the director, natch!  | | Monday, March 31st, 2008 | | 7:34 am |
Since vees is mentioned carnivores/cats in his last poll, I thought I'd announce that my three cats are on a diet. Well, Shiro is because he's tipping the scale at fourteen pounds. Bro Joe told me his vet says his cat Cassie is over too and recommended an all meat diet because evidence is mounting that the dry food contains way to much carbs which is probably causing the surge in feline diabetes they're seeing. I checked on the Pet Stop site and it says that a nice mouse two or three times a day is the perfect balance of protein, moisture, and fat, and the only carbs it contains is whatever's in mousie's tummy at the time. But, since the critters are hard to come by these days, and Shiro's too fat to chase them anyway, I'm trying to wean all three kitties to a wet/meat diet. Last year, I started supplementing their dry food with a can (divided among the three) of wet food because after Shiro's serious bout with a blocked urethra, the vet said "get as much water into him as you can." No problem with the long-hair. He's always crying for canned food. But the other boys are more wary. They like their crunchies. Any suggestions for types/brands of food? I think I've figured out how much they need, but what to give? Canned? Home-made? Cheap? Expensive? Hmmm... | | Friday, March 28th, 2008 | | 9:22 am |
For you Reallly Early Music junkies...
Concert update:
"The Road to Compostela - Music of the Pilgrims"
8:00pm, Saturday 19th April, 2008
Joseph & Alma Gildenhorn Recital Hall
University of Maryland Collegium Musicum
directed by Philip Cave
Admission free.
Lots of really beautiful melodies and harmonies accompanied by authentic facsimiles (?) of period winds, strings, and percussion. Everything's in ancient Spanish, Portugese, Latin and south European dialects and permutations thereof, guaranteed to transport you to the heights of confusion and religious ecstasy. | | 8:35 am |
FREE STUFF!
Some of you may know that my daughter Liz does renderings of strategy guides (mostly for Brady games) from Japanese to English. They always send her a box of the finished product.
So we have this stack of half full boxes of really neat looking guides taking up a corner of the dining room, and she said it would be okay to share the wealth. So here's a list of what we have, and if you'd like copies, just let me know, and I'll figure out a way to get them to you. (Library rate's still pretty cheap, I think...)
Shin Megami Tensei--P3 Persona (Atlus)
Castlevania--Dawn of Sorrow (Konami)
Genji--Dawn of the Samurai (PlayStation 2)
Soul Nomad and the World Eaters (NIS America)
Heroes of Mana (Brady: Square Enix: Nintendo DS)
DQM (Dragon Quest Monsters)--Joker (Brady: Squre Enix: Nintendo DS)
Mana Khemia--Alchemists of Al-Revis (NIS America, DoubleJump)
Final Fantasy (Crystal Chronicles)--Ring of Fates (Brady: Square Enix: Nintendo DS)
Final Fantasy VII--Crisis Core (Brady: Square Enix: PlayStation Portable)
Rune Factory--A Fantasy Harvest Moon (Brady: Natsume: Nintendo DS)
Send requests to maryellis@harpfolk.com in case we need to trade addresses.
Current Mood: productive
Current Music: "Stella Splendens"-Anon, 14th C. | | Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 | | 2:19 pm |
Monday was bad all around. I had placed a huge order for my store (Martins -grocery- in Eldersburg) because of inventory coming up It's the only company I know of that wants the shelves packed for inventory (something about shrink being a lower percentage of a huge count). I had to put up the dozen of so totes' worth. Took forever--well, it's cosmetics mostly: teeny-tiny little bottles and tubes and eyebrow pencils with miniscule gold writing that makes my eyeballs shrivel and spazz.
From there, I had to go to a rehearsal for a singing group at UM, called Collegium Musicum. We're doing a concert in April themed "On the Road to Compostela", mostly medieval pilgrimage songs (or maybe--shudder--sung by Crusaders expecting grace for their slaughter). There's singing (which I do--tenor, mostly--not enough men) but also instruments like shaums, recorders, and finger cymbals, tambours, and these little baby harps.
Well, I've only been to one rehearsal out of four so far (and was an hour late for that one because I mixed up the time, though I did show up for two sessions that didn't happen because the director didn't have me on his call-list) So, I didn't know the music all that well, and it's in Old Spanish and Middlin' Latin, and Catalan, Galician (whatever that is),Portugese, you name it. So the words are--well--hard.
I drove down, and wouldn't you know it, there was an accident on 95, so I was late, and at least two other people came in after me, and nobody knew the words very well, so the director got mad and threatened us all with expulsion or (for those of us who weren't taking the actual course) excommunication or, for the non-Catholics, vague hints at reincarnation as something slimy and highly expendable; it wasn't pretty. But the people with the instruments were fun to listen to and very, very good. Of course, they're majoring in strings and horns and stuff, AND they don't have to worry about the words.
One good thing: I got home to find out that I wasn't needed for a Hallmark job the next morning, so I got to sleep past five a.m. | | Monday, March 24th, 2008 | | 7:37 am |
Wooo! Had a great holiday with some of my favorite people! Mike and Joe and Liz, natch, and Rebecca and John, and two of my brothers Joe and Frank. (Al is in Holland with his family celebrating his in-laws' anniversary.)
Showed Frank how to use my laptop. At 67 he's going to take an introductory computer course, so I wanted to give him a leg up.
We spent time wooing the cats, of course, especially Yoda, who took the admiring stares and petting with his usual queenly grace.
Frank brought me this really cute book by John Grisham. (Whoa--did I just put the words *cute* and *Grisham* in the same sentence?) But it is-- really. It's about C'mas actually, so how can it not be? And I'm going to read it just as soon as I satisfy my Aubrey-Maturin fix with #3 "The Mauritius Command."
While we waited for the others to show up, Bro Joe and Liz and I made candy with a kit Liz gave me at C'mas. I thought's we'd just be dipping fruit in the melted chocolate and vanilla candy, but Joe of course wanted to stretch things so he started making stacks and sandwiches of fruit, then we painted faces on some strawberries. It was fun and brought back memories of dye-ing eggs as kids and some of the bizarre experiments we tried (e.g. mixing all the colors together). Joe said he was in an elevator recently that was painted that exact color.
I had found this Bach guitar-recorder duet book on-line and gave Bro Joe a copy. He's going to look it over, and maybe we can play some together. That would be awesome.
But back to the festivities: in toasts of a nice white merlot that Bro Joe brought, we remembered those not with us. I thought of Kathy and Charles in Chicago, Sally and Tom, Ian (being currently wooed by the submarine corps) and his Emily, Dave and all his children and their sweeties, and Mike Taylor. Bless 'em all!
Dinner was pretty good. I overcooked the asparagus as usual, but the ham was nice--all clove-y and brown-sugary.
Dessert was a cheesecake with optional strawberries and a falling-apart chocolate cake (falling-apart because the layers would not come out of the g-d-mn pans.) There was fruit salad too, but nobody touched it.
After dinner, we played a game called Las Vegas Showdown (?) that John brought. (It was out of print, but he bought it on e-Bay) It was fun and exciting with appeal for all my sensibilities: strategizing to maximize profits, but also choosing and arranging the rooms in my casino and hotel for accessibility and variety like an interior decorator. Oddly enough there were no snide asides about mafia connections. With Joe E. and John tied at the end; Joe won the tie-breaker by having the most money. (So what else is new?)
Now we have the choice of eating healthily or decadently for the rest of the week. On the one side: ham, rice, cake, candy, sweet bread, and more cake. On the other, tropical fruit salad, strawberries, greens, and asparagus soup. Maybe we'll alternate.
Mike did voluteer to take the rest of the cheesecake in to work--noble of him. | | Monday, March 3rd, 2008 | | 5:51 pm |
| | Saturday, March 1st, 2008 | | 9:24 am |
Omigosh, I just got hit on, though this one wasn't nearly as juicy as thibeaux's. To explain: I put my name on a musicians meetup group for the Columbia area (for jamming only) a couple of months ago. Got a few hits, none of which fit, then forgot all about it, then this: > Hi, > I am hoping you are single? > I hope you are single and will read this if so. > I am 5'11, 170 lbs....slim/average build. > I am a single, 45 yr old, cute, blue eyed male. > .... > I am looking for a girlfriend and...a > "partner" to live with sometime in the > near future. She preferably is a "low > maintenance" and mostly "homebody" like me... and > a kind, easy going type, likes to laugh a > lot..like me. And it goes on with a lot of personal (though thankfully chaste) stuff. Aw... I felt kinda sorry for the guy, so I just had to tell him I'm a 63 year old gal (low maint to be sure) but long and happily married. I am a bit surprised at his frankness. But I guess everyone nowadays is so used to U-tube and Funniest Home Videos and all those dating services, they think nothing of pouring their hearts out to complete strangers. Current Mood:  curiousCurrent Music: It Ain't me You're Lookin' For | | Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 | | 12:46 pm |
Tale of Two Kitties
Some weeks ago, Liz heard a cat miaowing outside in the night, and we went out to investigate, flashlight in hand. We found the creature on the side of the house, and it looked just like our gray long-hair Yoda. It wouldn't come up to us though, and when we got back inside, there was Yoda, looking up at us with his usual blank, wide-eyed stare.
Last week, the other two boys (Shiro and Wally, the doughty ones) were found to have injuries, Wally, a gash behind his ear and Shiro, what looked like a puncture in his left flank. The vet checked them out and told us that these were just bites or scratches from another cat. The next day, there was a cat in our yard, a gray tabby with a bushy tail and the sweetest kittenish face and almost-blue eyes. The boys went crazy behind the glass of our sliding door,rowling and hissing like all get out. I thought maybe this was the one we had seen at night, but Liz was sure it wasn't. Today she was vindicated. The long-hair showed up, and while it doesn't look exactly like Yoda (no half-moustache and it has green eyes, not yellow), the white blaze on the chest and neck is the same and it has white 'spats,' the image of old Yo-Yo's.
We don't know if they're strays or neighborhood pets as they have no collars. If a check with the neighbors doesn't establish ownership, we may try to borrow a humane trap from the ASPCA.
Ooh, the longhair is back, and Wally and Shiro are looking out the door, arching and bristling and ready for a scrap. (Yoda ran at the first sound of Wally's caterwauling. William Wallace has more vowels in his vocabulary than Professor Higgins of "My Fair Lady" has on his phonetics recordings.)
The longhair is going around marking things and rolling on the sidewalk with not a care in the world. Now my boys are getting a taste of what all those hapless dogs feel like behind their fences when Wally and Shiro go parading down our street, smirking, their tails high, knowing they can't be touched. Will they remember this lesson? Not likely. | | Monday, February 18th, 2008 | | 10:21 am |
Irked at Firefly Presidents' Day, watching a Firefly marathon. Still just can't see the appeal of Mal, but the rest of the cast is worth watching. I think it's the writing. He's supposed to be the hero, but he comes off as sooo skitzo. (Gee, I'm such a tough guy, no, I'm really a powderpuff at heart, and, oh, I'm so misunderstood, I'm really a patriot, but they did me dirty, and I'm a virgin too, just waiting for the right girl, and an atheist, with a heart of gold, of course...) Also the actor doesn't always remember his cute slangy accent. Current Mood:  irritatedCurrent Music: A Shokin Farewell | | Friday, October 5th, 2007 | | 8:39 am |
writing I am now going to post links to my writings because some friends (one or three) have asked for the info. Reasons? 1) I like people to read my stuff. 2) I've spent a substantial portion of the last two years creating it. 3) I've just finished two out of three parts of a trilogy, and want to brag a little that I stuck to it so long. 3) This says who I am and what I'm about as well as anything. It's HP-based so won't be interesting to everyone, which is fine. The trilogy, "Before the Beginning", is about how Professor McGonagall became who she is. (I like to think Dance Shiva's detailed and entertaining back stories for her LARP characters inspired this somewhat.) My stock in trade is taking the more obscure characters in JKR's saga and the Chocolate Frog Cards and fleshing them out. Ditto her beasties and the theory behind the magic. I particularly like to explore what Tom Riddle was like, before he became Lord Voldemort. (Evil, uncharismatic bullies whom an author has given no cogent reason to have success in their power-grabs always stick in my craw.) "Tin Angel" (about Tom Riddle) http://wizardtales.net/viewstory.php?sid=3971&warning=4"An Innocent Tea" (Tom Riddle) http://wizardtales.net/viewstory.php?sid=3969"Childhood's End" (part one, the trilogy) http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?storyid=2730&chapno=1"Three Orphans" (part two) http://wizardtales.net/viewstory.php?sid=4028&warning=4"Colin's First Love" (Colin Creevey, boy photographer. You need to have read book six to get the ending.) http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?storyid=2914&chapno=1"Filch's Regrets" (Argus Filch, the Squibby caretaker) http://wizardtales.net/viewstory.php?sid=3611"Minerva Moves On" (mature McGonagall) http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?storyid=3047&chapno=1"The Gallery" (A McGonagall-Dumbledore ship) http://wizardtales.net/viewstory.php?sid=4461"The Gift of the Mages" (A Weasley Christmas story, not book 7 compliant) http://wizardtales.net/viewstory.php?sid=4150"The Ransom of Albus Dumbledore" (aka "The Perils of Hermione Granger" with the ghost of Sirius looking over her shoulder) http://wizardtales.net/viewstory.php?sid=4170Enjoy! Or not. <)8-.) | | Monday, September 3rd, 2007 | | 9:09 pm |
Yesterday we went to the wedding of our son Joe's best friend Dave Hevey. Originally Dave's friends were going to play a round robin of games to decide who would be best man, but they eventually decided that, as Joe has been Dave's friend since they were two years old, that he could be best man--and hold the rings and make the toast. So instead, the guys played computer games and Scrabble and maybe a little Texas Hold-em to see who else would be in the wedding party, (and get to dance with the hot babes.) And the winners are (Joe is farthest left)...  And the hot babes are (with Dave's sister Julie farthest left):  It was very nice. Dave's father is a minister, and he presided. His sermon included ten very practical commandments for each of them. Blessings on Ashley and Dave and their new household! | | Saturday, September 1st, 2007 | | 4:23 pm |
Cats rule! Last Saturday, it was very hot, but the weatherman promised a cold front with showers. When it finally came, there were about two minutes of heavy, cold, refreshing winds. I heard thunder in the distance, thena crack which I thought was the start of lightning, but then there came another crack, and I thought the big pine tree, about fifty feet tall, on the hill behind our house, and within--yikes--thirty feet of it, was about to topple. But no, it turned out to be another tree, one of our neighbors', and all it did was smash their fence.  The next morning, Mike looked out the back window and saw that someone had claimed the devastation as his own.  Current Music: Alaska Cats Are Mean by Garrison Keillor | | Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 | | 8:55 am |
tomatoes you'd like to throw at a Neocon I got home from the north, fully expecting the wonderful tomato plants I grew--from seed--to be burgeoning with the juicies. Well, they were that--sorta. Make that squishy, black on the bottom, and rotten through. It's called blossom-end rot. The old wives' tales of my youth told me it was due to too much watering. Hah!--no way. Cow County hasn't had enough water to fill a shot glass this summer. No--turns out it's basically a lack of calcium, which can be brought on by a number of no-nos, all of which I think my garden has: drought stress (no water for long periods, then deluges), acid soil, a high-nitro fertilizer that gets the plant all hot to put out foliage (mine are lush, green, and lovely), and--get this--the wrong kind of calcium. Okay, I stripped off all the icky-looking fruits (CSI corpses are nothing by comparison) and gave my humonguous, healthy-looking plants a dose of lime. And am praying. Can't hurt. (Cue background choir: Oh, Lord, If it's not asking too much, I'd like just one big, juicy beefsteak tom for Mike's hamburger before winter sets in. Ah-mennnnn.) Current Mood: aggravatedCurrent Music: martial bagpipes | | Saturday, August 25th, 2007 | | 10:35 pm |
back from Ontario I spent a week and a half in northern Ontario with my friend Emily. She owns a piece of a small island in the middle of a beautiful lake. We kayaked, (Emily swam, though I did not--too damned cold), chopped wood, cooked over a cast-iron stove, picked blueberries and made pancakes with them, went to a bookstore/lending library that I think has more books that the Library of Congress. They need one up there with their long, cold winters. Also learned that the exchange rate with US $$$ is much more nearly equal than it once was. Got homesick around day six. Lots of rain on the way up--scary with a big formula-one touring bus on our tail; lots of detours on the way back--intriguing with sights of small town life. Hey, Rebecca, I think that northern O and Punxatawney PA may have something in common. But there are a lot of French-speaking people up here. Also stopped in Niagara where Emily's parents live--still. I say 'still' because the town itself looks post-Apocalyptic. Almost every store is boarded up. Very depressed area. Sad, that. But the tourist side is booming, if sleazy. Saw lots of busloads of tourists, mostly Asian. Lots of languages--European, Asian, Middle Eastern. Hardly any Hispanics, but more blacks than northern O (or Punxey). Learned how to take pix and vids with my cell phone. Just can't believe the volume of water that spills over the falls every day. Magnificent! No wonder people still flock to see it. Beck and Kath, do you remember visiting Niagara with Dad? We still have the pix somewhere. Got back to find a lot of hits and reviews for my stories. Guess the appearance of the last HP book didn't close down the fan fic sites after all. Yay! Current Mood:  giddyCurrent Music: Frank Lloyd Wright by Simon and Garfunkel | | Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 | | 9:35 am |
changes As of this Friday, I'll no longer be working for RSA (my second job--stocking cosmetics and baby supplies at the local Martins.) They lost their contract with Giant (Martins's parent co.) I'm starting a new hobby--playing recorder. Actually, I've been playing soprano for about two years--I think it was Kath's or Rebecca's old one from school. I got the idea from whwn I was at the Israel LARP in PA some years ago. We were on break, sitting in a courtyard and I heard this flutey music coming from the woods beyond. One of the participants was tootling away on --I think--a soprano recorder and I thought: instant, portable loveliness. And I decided someday, I'm going to learn how to do that. I was finally 'forced' to act on my serendipity when a professor at the local college I was singing in the chorus of announced that she was getting a group together to learn recorder. So I learned some medieval music from that, and another prof who was heading up the school's jazz band made up a piece just for us. Now I have four recorders of various size and tone and am having a lot of fun playing Irish music with my friend Emily Reid who is a Celtic harpist. We played together at the Fairy Festival in PG over the summer and it was great fun. And I just joined a group that plays antique music (and I think also some world music and jazz). They are a bit antique themselves, so I'll fit right in. They meet in Bethesda. (Yeah, it's a long drive, but it's only twice a month and they have free food.) Current Mood:  rejuvenatedCurrent Music: Chelsea Morning--Joni Mitchell | | Sunday, June 25th, 2006 | | 10:03 am |
I just finished my first book on SugarQuill--about Minerva McGonagall's childhood through her first year as a student at Hogwarts. It got a lot of good feedback. I'm starting my second--which finishes off her school years--have about ten chapters finished. Her character intrigues me, not only because I find myself to be a bit like her--cynical, but caring underneath--but also because she grew up during a great Muggle conflagration--World War II--in Britain (the Battle of Britain has always intrigued me)--and two of her peers were Hagrid and Tom Riddle. These juxtapositions held great possibilities for a writer of any imgination at all, so I plunged right in and had not trouble finding plot threads aplenty. One might say, the thing wrote itself. I'm also beta-ing for three very different writers. Diana Summers, pen-name GraceHasVictory, is polished and original. Her collection of books--she's on the fourth and final one now--is about Remus Lupin and his romantic relationship with a thoroughly delightful Scots breweress (expert potion maker) named Ariadne MacDougal. Diana researches her work carefully and has some interesting and cogent theories on the workings of magic in the Potterverse. She's also a dead serious statistician and psychologist. Her way with the words of children makes me weep with joy. The little ones really come alive in her writing. Sandra Kaput is a Dutch writer who also has dyslexia, so her work requires a bit more patience. But her lively imagination and sense of humor makes it all worth the bit of trouble. And she has improved rapidly in the trivial mechanics of English writing. Liam Lane is a beginner and freely admits it. He's set a prodigious task for himself: re-writing Chamber of Secrets with Ginny a much more important character and a whole parallel universe of god-like creatures observing Harry and his friends. Also, I'm now head beta for WizardTales, a new fan-fic site for all things Potter. It's not a big job, just assigning pieces to the other four betas, but it gives me a chance to help shape a site that is devotingitselfto helping writers write better--without destroying their spirit. Still working for Hallmark--Gawd, last week was awful--Liz ill tell you--but it's money and it gets me outta the house! Current Mood: satisfied | | Saturday, March 25th, 2006 | | 7:40 am |
memories of my sister kathy
My sister Kathy died two weeks ago. Bone cancer. She was fifty-six. This and two small comments made by my husband and daughter prompt me to write. A few days after I got home from the funeral in Kentucky (more about that someday), Mike came into the dining room, where we camp out with our computers, and said, "Didn't your father say he was going to write his memoirs sometime?" My father has been dead for years so I don't know what it is that made him think of it, but it made me remember that Dad always wanted to do it. I remember seeing some pages he wrote when we were at his house one of those last times. And earlier--before he died--he had hinted that he was going to tape some stories, but if he did, we never found them.
And just the other day, Liz asked me (I think while we were waiting for a table at a restaurant) if I ever thought of writing my memoirs. I confess it smacked of family conspiracy to get-mom-away-from-that HP-fanfic-obsession. (I was sort of waiting for my son Joe to start dropping hints too, but we're on very different schedules, so it would be hard for him to casually drop a line about it as he'd pass me in the hall on his way to bed after night-shifting at Martins.) But the more I thought about it, and the more I thought about my dead sister, the more it made sense. So I'll start--with Kathy.
But first some background. I'm from a family of seven kids. Catholic, lower to middle class. (In those days it didn't take so much money to have a decent life, so I'm not sure where the sociologists would put us today.) Mom (Kathleen Ann--nee McGlone) and Dad (Francis Joseph Snyder--'Snitz' to his buddies)were from Baltimore. They married late (in their late twenties) and moved as soon as they had the wherewith to Parkville, northeast, just over the city line. To give you an idea of the timeline, my oldest sister Betty was born in 1938 (?) and my youngest brother Joe in 1953 (?). That puts me square in the middle (1945--this I'm sure of). Frank and Al (rechristened by Dad 'Butch' and 'Spike', respectively) filled in between me and Betty, and Sally and Kathy came after me and before Joe. There are approximately two years between each of us, except for two gaps-between Al and me and between Kathy and Joe, which someone (Betty I think, who was a nurse, so she had God's permission to think about stuff like that) postulated were years when Mom may have had miscarriages. But you never talked about 'female problems' back then, so we don't really know. Likewise we have to guess that Mom and Dad used the 'rhythm method' to space the births so well, Mom being an Irish Catholic--which means no artificial birth control--none whatsoever--and it's a sin to even talk about it. That or they only had sex about nine times in their married life--which would fit with Mom's very chaste nature, but not with Dad's more forward one, I think.
Kathy was the youngest daughter, born in June 25, 1950, the first anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Is that right, you historians and poly-sci majors out there? If so, it has to be more than just coincidence because she was always a feisty kid--sort of the MacArthur or maybe the Truman of the Snyder family. ('I shall return',and 'The buck stops here' and all that.) But the Truman part--shouldering responsibility--was slow in developing. As a little person, she was much into ratting us older kids out. My sister Sally reminded me after the funeral that Al had early on nicknamed her 'Ratter Swink'. (I don't know where the second part of the name came from, but it was probably associated with sports in some way. But more on that later.)
Got to go. People are waking up, and I have a coffee cake in the oven. |
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