My friends got back from Costa Rica and brought me coffee from my Tia Cynthia. I can’t wait to try it.
I feel nostalgic about the coffee, my friends visiting the familiar house of my Aunt. I wonder if I’ll ever be there again? The last time I was there, I never dreamed it would be the last time I’d be there.
Happy Thursday !
It’s another Monday with another batch of weekend pictures. It was a nice weekend lengthened by the addition of 3 days vacation time. I went to an old beach near where I used to live and walked up to the old Homestead as near as I dared.
I went to the annual Recovery Month Festival at Pedro Saint James.
And now I’m headed back to work, and for some odd reason, I’m actually looking forward to it.
Have a wonderful Week!
Four Tuesdays ago, she moved out. Four Wednesdays ago, I woke up alone in the house for the first time.. Four weeks is a month, sometimes.
The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life.
It’s not a bad book, kinda dry, lots of repetition. I’m about a little over half way done. There’s lots of useful information. I’m incorporating a lot of it, one area at a time.
Just for the fun of it, ask a random person if they have an old, dead printer or computer monitor hanging around their house. They probably do, I do and thought everybody did.
I’m not throwing away anything that belongs to the wife, except old medicines and perishables perishables. But I’m majorly cleaning.
The book reminds me of when I was packing to move here from the USA. I was clearing my house and I would throw a precious artifact in the garbage and feel incredible pain. Hand with item hovering over the can. But as soon as the object left my hands and fell into the trash can, the pain disappeared. Then I would be throwing another artifact away and look into the trash can and see the old artifact and the payment return. The secret is don’t look, you won’t hurt.
So this is a good exercise. Lots of old good stuff going to the humane society, partly because having a yard sale is too much hassle.
Have a happy hump day!
31 years ago today, I got out of the Navy after six years active duty and six months inactive. I joined on the Delayed Entry Program 15 Sep 1978 and went to boot camp 15 March 1979. They send you home the day before, ’cause I guess technically you’re still in while you travel.
I went at NTC Great Lakes, for almost two years, for boot camp and Electronics Technician School, then I got stationed in Pearl Harbor on board the USS Somers DDG 34. I also went to some schools at Mare Island, north of San Fransisco.
And that’s my post for today!
https://markd60.com/flashback-friday-second-grade-hell/
Above is a link to a previous Flashback Friday. Second Grade Hell. I just found a picture of that school, East Park, in 1918. Gross. At least it’s been torn down now.
Look at that frikkkin’ place. What a haunted house. I have no recollection of the outside as a whole. Just brown bricks.
When I was a kid, I didn’t completely understand the rules of American football. I got on the football team, hoping to learn the rules more than actually play football, but everyone seemed to know them (but me). They were never taught, and out of shame, I never asked. I sucked on my high school football team, msstly because I never knew what I was doing. To this day, I am still aware of rules I don’t know in American Football.
Not so many years later, I had been a lifeguard at a swimming pool for a couple of years. I took a pool managers course to learn about taking care of the pool itself. I think it was in the evenings at a local college. In the course, everyone (except me, apparently) already was a pool manager. They discussed flushing the filters, adding the chemicals. Everyone in the class was much older than me and already knew what I came to learn. In the class, we never flushed a filter, or even went to a pool! I never knew precisely what anyone was talking about, didn’t understand the terminology, and again, kept my mouth shut, because I didn’t want to be the sole idiot. I flunked the test, and was so angry, I wrote a scathing letter.
Both times, I didn’t know what was going on, I couldn’t see it until it was over, and I looked back with 20/20 hindsight. Both still cause me anger and resentment and shame today.
I don’t really know the point of this post. Something happened recently that reminded me of it, but now I can’t remember what that was.
I guess my point is, when in doubt, speak up.
A few days ago, my Mom sent this story, a lot of stuff I never knew. I guess I’ll have to read the two books mentioned…
My Mom said I could post this.
When I first came to DC in 1958, I lived in a boarding house on capitol hill called the Betty Alden Inn. It was at 111 First Street, exactly across from the drive. I was looking for a dentist and one of the guards, Mr. Ernie Joines, said, try Dr. William L. Walters on Connecticut Ave. He doesn’t take many new patients, but maybe he will take you. So.. I went to Dr. Walters and he began a two year appointment relationship of fixing my teeth.
As I got to know him better, I told him about my coworker who was into gemstones and the two of them became great friends over the years.
One day in his office, he said, Janet there is someone I’d like you to meet. He introduced me to Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She said a few pleasantries to me and that was it.
The reason I am remembering this, is that there is a new book out called “Hissing Cousins” by Dwyer.
The reason Eleanor didn’t like cocktails was because she adored her alcoholic skirt-chasing father. I believe on one occasion he left her sitting on the street for a long period before she went and dragged him out of the bar.
Alice chose my dentist because he lived in her neighborhood, DuPont Circle. I later lived on 20th street in the DuPont Circle neighborhood. for 6 weeks study before going back to Boston. I later lived about two years in Georgetown on Q street… this is where I met Marvin. .
Neither woman made much success of motherhood. Eleanor had five children who had a total of 17 marriages. and Alice’s daughter, Paulina, was commonly known not to be Longworth’s daughter but of someone named Borah. She toyed with the idea of naming her daughter Deborah. Paulina apparently took her own life in 1957 at the age of 31.
The book review brings together a lot of old memories.
Another good book is “Boys in The Boat” about WASHINGTON STATE Olympic team in 1936. It is nonfiction and you willo not lay it down.
Enough nostalgia for today.!!!!!
Yesterday, when I posted my post, my tablet had 11% power. When I got done, it was 6%, when I got to work, it was dead. Both my power packs were dead so I had no choice, I plugged it in. However, the data collection will continue. This morning looks like a typical, perfect Caribbean morning, fresh wind, mostly blue skies with some fluffy white clouds, and the sun, just peeking over the treetops.
Yesterday, a friend posted an old postcard of the Holiday Inn Grand Cayman.
Now I’m going through old pictures to see if I have good ones. I used to copy all my pictures to DVD once a year, now I keep them all on a portable hard drive. I am currently copying the pics from the DVDs to the hard drive, then I have to sort them. Not a small task.
This afternoon after work, I have a job interview.
Have a good day!
This post doesn’t mean I’m not feeling great. It is inspired by a post by Candy’s Daily Dandy yesterday.
GLAD IT’S FRIDAY!!!!
In first grade, I liked school and I got A’s. Then we moved half way across the country over the summer.
In second grade, I got bussed to this old, nasty school. I hated it especially because there was a new school very near my house.
My second grade school was all brown, brown bricks, brown wood, walls and floor, brown desks. Everything seemed dirty and stinky and unsanitary. I remember sitting in my nasty brown desk, trying not to touch the desk or anything at all, except what I had brought from home.
I remember there was a secret panel in the hallway (I shit you not) and at lunch the secret panel was opened and it led down to the dungeon/cafeteria. It was white-green florescent lights in a windowless stinking hellhole. I didn’t want to eat any of the food because it seemed dirty and unsanitary. And the dungeon smelled like nasty food, steam, and dirty dishwater.
When I got home from school, every day my Mom said I stank. I knew it was from that dirty nasty school. She didn’t seem to believe me when I said how bad it was.
My teacher was Miss Bolware. To me she was a disgusting filthy hag. When she first saw me she gave me a hug, and I hated being touched by her. She didn’t stay nice long, she would yell and grab you by the arm and whack you with her filthy brown ruler. I hated it when she touched me with her nasty old witch hands.
I felt trapped, and I couldn’t run away because I was seven years old and didn’t even know where I was, just some nasty place on the other side of town. I lived in that town for ten years and I don’t think I ever learned where that school was. I don’t remember ever seeing it again. I was in Junior High School before I saw any kids from that second grade year again.
From third grade on, I went to the new school, walking distance to my house. But I never got good grades. Second grade is probably what destroyed my relationship with my parents. I didn’t get good grades in second grade, and I got punished. Then I figured that if I started getting good grades, my parents would think their punishment was effective, so I didn’t get good grades, and was more or less in a state of constant punishment for bad grades till the 11th grade, (when I had a teacher I had a crush on, Mrs Berry, I got A’s in her class!)
Incredibly, we then moved again and I went to 12th grade and graduated from a different school. The idea crossed my mind that maybe we moved because I got some good grades again, but I didn’t really think that. But I got crappy grades in 12th grade too, just to be safe.
One year later, when I turned 18, I joined the navy, and got out of my parents lives as much as I could.