Everything in Its Place

BE HAPPY ALONG WITH FIORELLA! She has made another massive step forward arriba en su officina. She had already pretty well tossed what she wanted to get rid of, but that left piles of various sorts around the room, and every time she started diving in again, she had to re-identify everything. The solution was staring her right in the face: the file cabinets, the ones she had bought years ago and had only used half of. Now, please excuse Fio while she makes up some file-case tags.
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One whole drawer in the cabinets is labeled with her father's family name. Many, many years ago, when Fio was visiting her Pennsylvania relatives, she gathered a lot of information about that side of her heritage, then tucked it away in the shelves in her office. Well, the wife of one of her cousins is interested in genealogy so Fio is sending her photcopies of her own research. This could be interesting because genealogists have so many more tools available now.
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Another drawer will be dedicated to all Fiorella's lost manuscripts, the ones she never finished or that are now out-of-date. She'll also start keeping her WIPs in their own drawers. And then there's her poetry and journalistic endeavers. Organized at last--is it truly possible?

Akron Aftermath

Fio dove into the deep end and worked out an acrostic with the names of her paternal cousins, then added in their spouses, and is sending a copy to each one of them as a bread-and-butter gift. She's planning on photcopying old family pictures for her cousin on her mother's side.
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Fiorella likes the way Daughter interacted with both sides of the family. Needless to say, she related more to the younger generation than  than to Fio's agemates, but that's as it should be. If the families are to stay togther at all in the future, they have to make solid bonds now.
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Everyone takes Fiorella's art for granted, but she thinks it's pure magic and has no idea how it  happens. Some sort of weird collusion of her imagination, hands, and eyes, totally unrestrained by her brain. (Collusion--that word pops up everywhere.)
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Fiorella will admit it--she made a complete ass of herself in Akron. But then, she's never been one to do things by halves.
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 Oops, Fio almost forgot. She promised to send the genealogy research she did on her own thirty years ago to the Keeper of the Family Tree, one of her cousins-in-law. More stuff to track down--good thing Fio is working on the "office," which contains all things your faithful correspondent didn't know where to put for the last century or two.

Into the Past

Fiorella and Husband gave each other Ancestry.com for Christmas, which should be interesting. They did the National Geographic thing about twenty years ago, when genealogy could only be determined to about ten thousand years back so now they're looking forward to learning about more recent developments. Not that any of it matters.  We all are what we are--not our parents, not our grandparents, not our distant ancestors. Which, keeping evolution in mind, is rather a good thing.

Mulling Birth and Death

Fiorella is mulling over one birth certificate and two death certificates this morning.  Cousin Tom's wife was kind enough to send Fio the fruits of her most recent genealogy search, and now Fio knows the dates of her father's oldest brother's birth and death, and even the cause of his death--cholera infantism, whatever that is.  She also knows the date of her paternal grandfather's death, which was labeled as "accidental (caught in wreck of cars in mine)."

Even more interesting is the evolution of her grandfather's given name, which is spelled "Jno" in earlier documents, but becomes "John" later.  The surname also underwent an Americanization--of sorts.

Interesting how the family is now pouring over these documents.  They are our only connection with people we never knew, people who would have been dear to us.

Always Busy

Fiorella lives in a house of many unfinished projects, some of them Husband's (who has a REAL job), and most of them hers.  Upstairs on the landing, she has an art desk piled with paintings she wants to do more work on--and just this week she found an old sketch from a life drawing (translation: nude) session she wants to enlarge and frame--or even use as the basis for a painting.

Then there's the genealogy stuff on her mother's family yet to be researched.  Thank goodness Cousin Norma took care of Dad's family history, but Fio would like to set up spreading family trees for both sides of the family so we all know who our distant cousins are and when one of them ends up in the White House, we can wangle invitations to the inauguration. 

The house itself is another unfinished project, partially because Son isn't totally moved out yet, partially because the garage still contains unpacked boxes from when Husband and Fio moved in eight years ago, and partially because Fio has several sewing projects piled up in the workroom/utility room.

Then there's the major project--writing the Lolly book, the one that follows Kinkaid House.  Fiorella is up to chapter nine now, almost halfway through, but she's a slow writer, dammit.

Oh, and Fio has left out the dog training so that Sonia can be socially acceptable.  And probably countless other projects.

But eventually she'll finish them all.  After all, it took her a month, but she finally polished off the silver.

Springtime

Fio finally changed out the bright red Christmas tablecloth yesterday for one painted with pink springtime flowers.  It wasn't just that she was running behind, but that there were three projects piled on the dining table she had to get through first--the anniversary album, the framing of Son's digital painting, and the genealogy stuff.  The album, she finished; the half-done framing of the painting, she moved to the guest room for now; and the genealogy stuff, she stacked on her desk.

The framing will probably be finished this coming week and the genealogy stuff can't go any further till she hears from Cousin Sue or Cousin Syd.  Meanwhile a million more projects will pop up.  And what about that book Fio's supposed to be working on?

Queen Fiorella, Waiting in the Wings

This genealogy stuff is an interesting puzzle.  Tee-hee--Fio almost wrote gynocology. which would also have been accurate, because births are what the whole thing is about.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand, Fiorella  compared blow-ups and measurements of the three photos she has of of Kate and realized that one of them is not Kate.  Prowling the annals of the family line a little, she thinks the stranger is her great-great grandmother, Anna Davis, the mother of the real Kate's husband.

And, playing around on the internet, Fio discovered there is a defunct baronetcy in the name of her mother's line.  Aha!  Obviously if the total royal family of England goes down, Fiorella, as the oldest child in her generation, can step in and take over.

Cheerio, old chap!

Prospective Projects

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ever-busy Fio is going great guns.

First of all, Fio has finally come up with a method to compare and contrast the two major photos she now has of her ggmother Kate, the ones that look like they're of two different people.  She's planning to photocopy both pictures, enlarge the photocopies, then measure the lengths of the faces down the middle and their widths across the cheekbones. 

Another item on Fio's list is framing an 8"x40" digital painting by Younger Son.  Needless to say, Hobby Lobby doesn't carry frames of the appropriate size so Fio will have to improvise.  (Improvise,  as you know by now, is Fiorella's middle name. )

To top it off, Fio's decided to put together a booklet of her poems similar to the one she put together in memory of Wendy Dog. Not all of her poems, of course, just the personal ones--the ones that hurt.

She'll provide timely updates.

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? 

Comfort

Fio can't believe she's added yet another project to her overcrowded schedule--genealogy.  Cousin Norma, thank God, covered all the stuff on Fio's father's side so Fio thought she was off the hook--until she looked up her maternal grandmother's name just for kicks and discovered a second cousin was looking for relevant information which Fio happened to have.

Since then, Fio and Cousin Sue have been corresponding by email and Fio has promised to send her copies of the photo portraits she has of ggmother and ggfather.

It's a warm feeling knowing you belong to a nest of people out there, even if you've never met them.  Hmm--might go look up a few more names.

Secret Guilt

Fio forgot to mention that her maternal great-grandmother died when Fiorella was three, about six months before Fio's maternal grandmother died. For twenty-some years afterwards, Fiorella hid it in her secret heart that she had killed her great-grandmother.

Fiorella remembers the key scene vividly.  She was standing, alone, in the hall next to the front room, with the stairs on one side and an ornate umbrella stand on the other.  An older woman--maybe her grandmother, maybe her aunt--told her not to talk too loudly because her great-grandmother was dying.

And Great-grandmother did die, which meant that Fiorella must have talked too loud.