valeriesbookofme

Re-reading my “On this Day...” journal entries this past week, I was reminded of how much better off I am than 14 years ago: on August 26, 2008, driving back to Las Vegas from visiting Laurie here in Sierra Vista, sick with a cold, alone, dealing with a car that would unexpectedly stall, I found out that our house sale had fallen through.  R had taken a job in Los Alamos several months earlier and was living in a rental house just outside Santa Fe. Having resigned from a stressful job in Vegas, I had planned to join him and once again become a lady of leisure, enjoying all the many things that Santa Fe had to offer. All the signs had pointed to that plan going ahead: we had found a buyer for our house in Las Vegas, a couple who were also going to buy a lot of our furniture (shades of our moving to Ireland six years ago!) Then literally two days from closing on August 28th, I received a call from our realtor that they had backed out because “the Spirit” had told them it was the wron...

  Bill Meredith, aged 75, died last night in England. He was my 2nd cousin 1x removed through his great grandmother Adele Torrance who was my mother's aunt on her father's side and my great aunt. I am writing all this out very carefully, as I try to process his death and how it's affecting me. Which might sound quite selfish--oughtn't I to be thinking about Annie (pictured with Bill in myself in this photo from last September in St. Alban's, Hertfordshire, England) his wife? Of course I am thinking about Annie and all those who knew and loved him. I knew and loved him, even though, we only met in person twice. Do I wish I could attend the memorial that will no doubt happen in England? Of course I do: Bill had three living brothers, a daughter and sons, grandsons. He was a great musician who played in bands on and off in his life, in between teaching French; I know his fellow band members will get together and celebrate his life.  But this post is about...

  School started last week. Having done some subbing during summer school, I thought I would leave myself open to do some subbing this school year. However, in their "wisdom," the contractor that is responsible for all of the timekeeping and payroll for subs decided, the day before the school year began, to switch to a completely new, completely different timekeeping system. We subs learned about it at 5:30 the night before school began. I felt angered and frustrated because the new system is completely different from the old and the so-called "instruction manual" that was included in the email contained so much extraneous information that, in order to find the information a sub here would need, I had to wade through pages of info that didn't pertain to me. My first reaction that night was to say "Nuts to them I'm just not going to bother this year." And then I thought of writing one of my infamous emails to the District detailing why doing this at...

 It’s difficult to say whether I am more like my father or my mother because my mother died when I was 16 while I had my father in my life until I was almost 46. Thirty years more, from a child to an adult. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting question, worth writing about. First how I remember my mother, Jo, what resonates with me about her. My mother was the eldest of two daughters, very vivacious and headstrong. Popular, she didn’t marry until she was 27 and when she did, she married one of the workplace heartthrobs, the “Robert Taylor of the United Shoe Machinery Company.” (For those who don’t remember/know Robert Taylor, he was a tall, dark and handsome actor from the 1930s to 1960s. Born in the same year as my dad, actually, 1911.) She lived with her parents until she married and apparently caused my grandfather some consternation with her socializing late into the evening. Back in the 1930s I think 11 o’clock was late. She was close with her younger sister, who was quite shy an...