Planning and Preparing

Fiorella is packing for her trip to Ohio. She has a list and is checking it twice, but knows she'll forget something vital. But one thing she won't forget is La Senora Isadora de la Computadora. You'll be receiving daily updates.
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Minnesota son helped her buy a NEW CELL PHONE for the trip and sent it to her overnight, and of course, as she's already mentioned, Daughter will be accompanying her on the trip. To top it off, Bastrop son will be checking on his father daily while Fio is gone. So proud of all three of them.
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This will be Fiorella's last trip to Ohio so she'll be taking a lot of pictures. She's especially interested in getting a picture of her daughter sitting on the same glacial rock that Fio has  photo of herself sitting on when she was about seven.

Fiorella, Blow by Blow

Fiorella had a great morning yesterday. She drove from her driveway in the boondocks of Georgetown to busy North Austin without encountering a single red light until she hit Koenig Lane, which was only a brief pause. Then, when she was pulling into Starbucks to meet up with friend Evelyn, another car obliginging backed out of a primo parking spot which Fio quickly claimed.

Inside the store, Fio and Evelyn had an even better time than usual, and a guy who knew Evelyn stopped at their table to talk about the basketball program he runs for disadvantaged kids. Fio was uolifted and her eyes went damp. After the Singapore surrender, she needed to hear from someone who was doing his best to make the world a better place.

Next, Fiorella met with her brother and friend Paula at Dan's Hamburgers, and it was a merry threesome. Turns out that Brother and his wife are thinking of attending the family reunion in Ohio that Fio and Daughter have already committed to.

Fio's ride back to Georgetown was uneventful, thank goodness, because Fio hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and was about to conk out, which is exactly what she did when she got home.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Rocks in Her Head

Fio must have been a rock in a previous life because she LOVES rocks. She's always loved them, ever since she was a child in Ohio and sat on the huge glacier rock on the edge of the backyard. When her family moved to Texas, she explored the driveway for pretty pebbles, which her mother did not appreciate. In college, she delineated a boundary between her side of the desk and her roommate's side of the desk with rocks she and her boyfriend had gathered while out driving in the country. When she and Husband moved to Georgetown, she gathered stones from their long, long country driveway--pretty stones, sparkling stones, weird stones, flint--all of which are stored on the back porch in plastic boxes. Now, of course, she's in her glory building a rock retainer around the drveway, and when that's finished, there's the brick curb around the lawn that needs to be reinforced with rocks.

There is something wrong wth Fiorella, but you knew that all along.

Jeanell Buida Bolton

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Jeanell Buida Bolton
27 mins · 

Fio has always loved rocks, as you can see in this picture of her perched on a glacial rock on the edge of her back yard in Ohio.(It's a glacial rock, if you're interested.) Then, when her family moved to Texas, she explored the driveway for pretty pebbles, which her mother did not appreciate. In college, she delineated a boundary between her side of the desk and her roommate's side of the desk with rocks she and her boyfriend had gathered while out driving in the country. Wh...
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Fio's First Home Run

Fio encountered softball for the first time when when she was seven and her family moved from Ohio to Texas.  At Ellet Elementary, recess had meant running around and playing on the swings, see-saws, sliding board, monkey bars, or jungle gym. Recess at North Waco Elementary meant being sent out to the barren school grounds with a bat and ball (or, according to season, a kickball or a jump rope).
Needless to say, Fio panicked when a softball--or any ball--whizzed toward her.

Well into junior high, she couldn't hit, although she always tried, so when the her father's department at General Tire held a picnic and  set up a softball game, she lined up to participate. The pitcher gave her a long, slow ball, virtually aiming at her bat--what else do you do for the boss's daughter--and SHE GOT A HIT!
 
Maybe it was the feel of the bat thwacking the ball, or maybe it was that the slow pitch had given her a moment to think about what she was doing, but from then on,she was a reliable playground batter.

We'll save the story of how she learned to catch for another day.

Rounding out Heaven

Fiorella's heavenly addenda include finding everything of hers she has lost or that someone has taken from her or destroyed, like that autograph book her Brownie mates signed before she left Ohio, her painting of Grendal she took to school in the twelfth grade, her grandmother's and great-grandmother's engagement rings, the ceramic she molded of a beloved guinea pig.

And Fio wants to reunite with her parents (although her father will probably be playing golf with Gabriel and the guys) and to visit with friends and family who have preceded her.  And she wants to cuddle her first baby, the one who was never born, the one for whom she still mourns.  And she wants to see all her dogs--Tina, Freelove, Sandy, Blackie, Hugo, Bella, Wendy, and, when her time comes, sweet Sonia. Heaven wouldn't be heaven without dogs.

Story Source

Before Fiorella wrote stories, she told them--to herself while she lay in bed at night.

Fio was afraid of the dark, or, more correctly, of what might lurk in the dark.  Her family had just moved from Ohio to Texas and everything was new and strange--and scary.  Instead of having a cozy little room next to her parents' bedroom,  Fio had a large room at the front of the house, and the filmy curtains would blow in the evening breeze, reaching out toward her on the bed like ghostly hands.  And, unlike the house in Ohio, this one had just one story, which meant someone--or something--could leap in on Fio at any minute.

Fio couldn't sleep, but she needed to sleep, so she calmed herself by making up happy stories.  As she grew older, the stories were based on her mother's Book-of-the-Month selections, then on her own reading.  And every story had a happy ending.

As do her stories now.

Rain

When Fiorella was a little girl in Ohio, she would stand on the back porch with her nose pressed against the screen and chant "Rain, rain, go away.  Come again some other day."  And right now, even in drought-stricken Central Texas, part of her is thinking the same thing.

But the other part of her is saying "Thank you for the rain, God.  Keep everyone safe, but please fill our lakes because the long, hot summer is to come."

Amen.

Cousin Mimi

Fiorella's Ohio Cousin Mimi and her husband visited on Tuesday, and Fiorella is still basking in the glow.  She hadn't seen her cousin in about ten years, and this was the first time Mimi had ever been in Fio's home.  The house was its usual chaos, of course, but who cared--the important thing was that Mimi was sitting on the couch beside Fio, talking to her, laughing with her, catching her up on everyone and everything. And through it all, Fio felt the kinship, the pull of blood to blood.

Family is everything.
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Gardening

When Fiorella was a child in Ohio, her family grew vegetables in a communal garden--corn and cucumbers and the like.  Fio remembers her mother doing a lot of canning.  When the family moved to Texas, her parents started up a garden in the backyard behind the garage, where the previous owners had kept a horse.  Back then, everyone in the neighborhood had vegetable gardens and fruit trees of some sort, and bushel baskets of excess regularly crossed the street.

Later, the vegetable garden was allowed to grass over, and Mother redirected her agricultural instincts to lining the house and back yard with flowers. 

Fio and husband have never planted a vegetable garden, but they have sodded lawns, landscaped with trees and bushes, and hosted a vast array of indoor plants, from a venus fly-trap to a peace lily.  But Fio's favorite is the Christmas tree, and it's a fake.

Weirder and Weirder

Back to that genealogy thing again, Fiorella's ggmother is proving to be something of an enigma. Some records say she was born in Farmerstown, Ohio, but she said she was born in Switzerland.  She said she was an orphan, but records show her mother was still alive when she was a child.  She told her grandchildren that her father was an Egyptian, but her last name was Bergdorf.  She also told them that the aunt who supposedly raised her was a witch who haunted a house, then bought it up cheap.  Also, the two photos of her that Cousin Sue and I have don't match up.

Were there two women with the same name living in that area of Ohio back then?  Or has Fio come by her talent for fiction all too honestly?