Despite the advent of far cooler temperatures hereabouts ─ and even some rain as of last evening that has dramatically killed the heat ─ I am still sleeping poorly.
I got to bed last evening just barely after 9 p.m. without having had any supper ─ just my single meal of the day smartly after mid-afternoon. I did have a beer, though.
Eventually what sleep I did get was paused when my wife ─ who had worked the day at her friend's Thai restaurant ─ kept making what seemed to be unnecessary noise in the bedroom after she was home and as she rummaged about.
I had been sweating in bed. Sure, I was covered up quite heavily, but it seemed more as if the problem lay with me and my well-being, and not any overuse of blankets.
Just as I resolved to get up, my wife exited the bedroom, so I checked the time ─ it was 12:14 a.m. This seemed almost impossibly early from the perspective of how long I had lain abed, for I had been thinking that it must be well into the a.m. by this time.
I rose anyway, and found my wife to be shut up in the bathroom. I had yet to brush my teeth ─ a lengthy process involving coconut oil that can take 15 - 20 minutes ─ so I grabbed my toothbrush which I keep here in the same room as my computer, and I went downstairs for the coconut oil.
My eldest stepson was at the dining table with his laptop open, but the screen of his cellphone holding his immediate attention. I had with me the billing for the annual property taxes ─ it had arrived in yesterday's mail, but I only got around to opening it after having risen in the midnight hour.
The property taxes had jumped by over $500 since last year ─ the government's greed is boundless. They care nothing of economic conditions ─ they always want more and more, and to hell with the state of people's financial health.
Anyway, I lay the bill on the table for my stepson's leisurely perusal, and I then stretched out on the chesterfield in the darkened living room and got to work brushing my teeth.
When I had finished and had gone outside to expectorate the oil over a far section of the wet lawn, I then came back here to my computer and got involved in an E-mail response to the chap I wrote about in yesterday's blog post. By this time my wife was now shut up in our bedroom.
The chap I speak of is trying to help me uncover the firm identities of my great grandmother's parents on my father's side of the family ─ so I suppose that I must have to call them my great great grandparents.
What is so mysterious about my great grandmother's parents is that although their identities are murky and at this point are only being presumed ─ there is no proof; her own grandparents on her mother's side are known, and we have a fairly strong belief as to whom her grandfather is on her father's side. We may even know which of the latter's wives was the grandmother.
Both of her supposed grandfathers are quite historically well-known men from the Red River Settlement and Hudson Bay Company period in the early and mid-1800s.
Yet my great grandmother's certifiable parentage has thus far eluded us We do have two candidates, but we as yet cannot prove it.
This chap ─ I will only call him Stan ─ whom I have been just recently corresponding with via E-mail suggested that I seek my great grandmother's birth certification at this Archives of Manitoba weblink:
Well, last night as I sat up, I did go through the process of doing so ─ perhaps this account I subsequently wrote to Stan will best explain my experience:
I nearly bailed a couple of times ─ I did not like at all having to include everything I could about her parents, for example. That's supposed to be the information that I am after!
The only fields I should ever have needed to complete were those for her name and her full birth date ─ how many S**** A**** B***s could have been born on that very same day?
I can tell you ─ none!
But all of those other fields were mandatory? I just wasn't in the mood. Nevertheless, I went ahead.
And then before I was even allowed to know if I was getting anything I wanted ─ no preview was offered ─ I was presented with the $30 price option and then expected to fill in all of my details as a prelude to purchasing this on-demand replica.
Well, if it turned out that T***** B*** and E**** M******* were indeed her parents' names ─ which is what I have been supposing ─ I have to pay these history-hoarders-for-gain thirty bucks just to see what I have already come to believe?
No, the feature should have been able to work with just knowing her full name and full birth date ─ nothing more. Making it mandatory to provide all that other information made me suspicious and distrustful.
I was somewhat reminded of those mail scams from before the Internet existed where a company would offer to do a free historical family name search; and then the next step was to unload a family coat-of-arms reproduction plaque that the unwary customer's own ancestors might never have had anything to do with.
Sure, I am not accusing that the Archives of Manitoba are shysters who would only be creating a birth certification strictly from the information I would have been providing, but it definitely brought that notion to mind.
I am not presently tempted enough ─ nor in a position ─ to lay out $30 for something that is 'sight unseen'. However, I will fill in cousin Doug on the feature ─ he isn't married and buried beneath debt (insofar as I know), so maybe he'll want her birth certification document badly enough.
I've got a wee headache (I slept poorly) and I haven't yet had a coffee, so I'm going to soon remedy that. But I'll E-mail Doug.
I won't outright ask him if he's going to go for this; but if he does say he wants to, then I promise to share the outcome with you.
🙂😊
I later then E-mailed Doug ─ the only relative I am in touch with on my father's entire side of the family, believe it or not! Doug is the son of one of my father's sisters.
My father died back in 1983, and all of his brothers and sisters are long gone as well, so Doug and I have no one remaining to ask questions of. He is in his 60s, and I am 71 years old.
What has us so inspired with all of this is that we apparently have lots of aboriginal (i.e., Indian) blood derived from both of our great grandmother's parents, if the two candidates we have in mind are indeed her parents. Both her father and her mother had mothers who were Métis; and it is even possible that the father had a full-blooded Indian as his mother.
Yet Doug and I knew nothing of this until a few months ago. All my father and his brothers and sisters ever let on was that we derived from both Spanish (by way of Spain) and Scottish ancestry. If the family suspected that there was lots of Indian blood mixed into the bloodline, we were never apprised of that possibility or likelihood.
So if we do have Métis or Indian ties, we very much want to know of it ─ maybe even come into contact with remote relatives who are Métis or Indigenous. There is some desperation in view of our ages, for we are not going to be able-bodied for decades to come ─ the time is approaching when neither of us is likely to ever travel or care to engage directly with any Indigenous relatives.
If Doug cares to go through the application for birth certification for our great grandmother, at least we will have the certainty of her parentage. And then we would have a far firmer grip on who her two Métis / Indian grandmothers were.
There would have to be many descendants resulting directly from those two women.
But I have gone on long enough about this for today. Allow me to get back to this morning, following my rising.
I want to mention that I did get up at something like 7:41 a.m. in order to use the toilet, and I was quite surprised to find that my brother had already risen. His bedroom door was wide open. He was probably downstairs at the dining table reading the Saturday morning edition of the Vancouver Sun that I subscribe to, and drinking coffee.
I returned to bed after gaining that relief, but never really managed much sure sleep thereafter, and that was why I rose just after 9 a.m.
But my brother was not home. I have no idea where he went. As I type these words at 11:43 a.m., he is still not back from wherever he went.
And with that said, I am going to break from his post, for my wife has risen and is presently shut up in the bathroom. I will allow more developments to mark the day, for there is nothing thus far worthy of reporting upon.
Well, it is just now 6:31 p.m., and my wife has just left with her eldest son. I expect that he is taking her to the SkyTrain so that she can continue on to Vancouver. She won't be back tonight. Maybe not even until Monday ─ such is our marriage.
Notwithstanding, the only other occurrence of the day has been a non-occurrence ─ my younger brother never did return home from wherever he went early this morning.
I find myself kindly disposed towards a can of strong (8% alcohol) beer, so I am going to put this post to bed and watch some T.V., getting myself all prepared to seek an early bedtime once I espy my younger brother arriving home from wherever he has no doubt been drinking most of his time away.
I'll do my best to nap away the latter evening, and see how deeply into the early a.m. I can manage to sleep. Then as usual, I will rise to sit up several hours overnight.
My grand life.
Before I close shop for today, I want to link to a wonderful video that I came across today for folks who may be having lymphatic circulatory issues ─ and the lass performing the short sequence of movements looks utterly fabulous: How to improve the Lymphatic Circulation - Simple steps for a better circulation.
Wow!!!
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