Planning...

As my cough fades, I am organizing accommodation for Lukas and myself as both of us need to vacate our home for a few days in October due to a scheduled tenting and extermination for termites.

Funnily enough, my exterminator checks during his visits and has told me several times that there is no new damage that he can see in my unit. Apparently, all the action is upstairs in the apartment with the roof leak and mold problem.

Preparing and packing up, getting keys cut and emptying the refrigerator and freezer as well as any other open consumables takes a fair bit of work for which I'll enlist help.

Today though we had an afternoon rain, complete with what a friend calls rolling thunder. For a while, the heavens erupted, saturating whatever lay beneath. Tomorrow, the grass will need mowing, a job I am happy not to be obliged to do.

As a young person, I once attempted to cut grass on the riding mower belonging to my maternal grandfather. I thought I put forth a decent effort until he alas complained that his grass was more wavy than a hula girl's hips.

Wishing you all a good evening...

Catch Up...

I've been meaning to post for days.My cough, congestion and tiredness have returned with a vengeance. Not sure why but I'm beginning to feel like a cold magnet. 

There was the hurricane, a birthday party, a trip to the dentist, grocery shopping and lunch out with an interfaith women's group before any new symptoms asserted themselves. My massage therapist and several others have also been sick.

Coughing seems to trigger my gag reflex, never a pleasant experience. 

Aside from this, my genealogy interest led me to a mystery which will likely never be solved. The man who would have been my paternal grandfather died at age 22, leaving a younger widow and baby. When asked, my mother said that he had died in a drunken car crash, a story told to her by her first husband. The same story was shared with his second wife and another of his children and I'm assuming the third wife and the remaining children as well.

Interestingly, however, upon sharing information about my lineage with the historical society in another state, the president of the organization is a distant cousin and shared two stories he had heard from family members about this death, neither of which has anything to do with a car crash.

The first involves family members, a dispute about stolen cattle and a shooting while the next concerns a self-inflicted gunshot during a family card game. I don't mind telling you that I found these accounts disturbing on a number of fronts. Who wants to be part of a family in which members shoot each other? Additionally, coming from a well known family in a small community, why would a suicide be any less scandalous than possible murder?

Neither the death certificate nor the obituary hint at either scenario. The certificate, signed by his brother who reported the death, a doctor, an undertaker and a clerk, states the cause as coronary occlusion which is basically either a clot or atherosclerosis. Acute indigestion is also mentioned. No autopsy notes are included and people during that era were under no mandate to even get a death certificate. Nor was there much known about heart problems eighty years ago.

Was there a cover up?

Only the dead know...