64 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 7-5-18”

  2. Donna’s house is worth only $3200?
    Aj, thyroid can be treated.
    I think I told you this before.
    My friend, Ed, had thyroid problems in 1962-63. He started taking medication.’
    He said he would have to take it the rest of his life.
    I got an e-mail from Ed yesterday.

    I don’t know all the ways his thyroid problem affected Ed, but I overheard his wife say something I don’t think I was supposed to hear.
    She said to him, “pretend that you love me.” One of the saddest things I have ever heard.
    They have a daughter now, I don’t know of any others but they are still together. (I suppose. Ed would have said something if he had lost her.).

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  3. Me too, Jo.

    I once got to meet a lady who lived in my house during the 1930’s. She had a picture of what the house looked like then. I have it in a file somewhere.

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  4. Morning! Well for Dj I suppose you can still find “gold” in California…what treasures!
    I wrote a post on here last night and lost it…then I went to bed… 💤
    We spent most of the day with dear friends…sweet fellowship, lots of conversation and too much food! When we arrived home it began to RAIN!! We had three separate rain showers last night and I actually got tears in my eyes at the sight of it all! The air is fresh and crisp this morning. How thankful are we for the blessing!
    We have no documents pertaining to our home. We are the fourth owners but have lived here longer than any of the previous owners. We kind of like the peace and quiet of the area 😊
    Daughter’s family is arriving today from CA…they will be here until Monday and I am already exhausted at the thought of it all…but it will be good to see them….

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  5. The Boy has been enjoying the town’s Rec program, but today he is home with me, while Nightingale works, because he is not feeling well. We both have a little cold. Also, I think he is worn out from a lot of activity this week, which included staying up pretty late a couple nights. But so far, he is having a great summer.

    He was scared the first day of Rec, because he didn’t know if he would know anyone there, or if anyone would be friends with him. Well, God bless little Avaline. She’s a little girl from his class who likes him, and she buddied up with him at Rec. (When I say she “likes” him, I don’t know if that means liking him as a friend, or liking him like little girls sometimes like little boys, and vice versa.)

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  6. Something I have thought of recently is that another reason I am grateful that Hubby’s passing was relatively quick, and he probably had very little time to realize he was dying, if he in fact did ever realize it, is that I know he would have had regrets. He would have regretted letting some things slide around here that he had promised to do, or was in the middle of and then stopped. He would have regretted not spending more quality time with me, not getting around to taking me to some of the places he wanted to take me to. He would have regretted not having more time to love me and make up to me the years he wasn’t appreciative. (He had grown very appreciative of me in the last couple years – and I appreciate that!)

    He would have regretted not taking the time to take The Boy to a couple places he really wanted to take him, like the New England Air Museum. He always thought he’d get to that when he had more time, so I think he would have regretted not making the time.

    I’m sure there are other things he would have regretted that only he could know in his heart. So it really was a blessing for him to not know too far ahead that he was dying.

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  7. As for me, although I do sometimes feel frustrated over a couple things he didn’t do or finish, I don’t hold anything against him. He was a hard worker, working long hours at his job, and taking care of some things around here. I don’t begrudge him the time he took to rest and relax rather than diving into some project that he didn’t have the energy for.

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  8. Hello.

    All our children got here yesterday and we spent several hours with my parents. My dad is well enough to visit for longer than we thought.

    Liked by 4 people

  10. I am still waiting for the final word on what is happening in the autumn, but I received an email from the school today. One of my teachers (who is one whom I really like and appreciate) nominated me for an award and I was selected by the awards committee. I have no idea what the award is, but it was encouraging to me that a teacher thought my work good enough to nominate me. The awards ceremony isn’t until next March, but just getting the email was nice.

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  13. Glad to hear that, Peter.

    *****
    YF has been on a Facebook rampage of sorts for a few days. Most of the things she’s been sharing have been of the anti-Republicans-and-conservatives sort, with ridiculous exaggerations and caricatures. I think I mentioned the one that asserts that conservatives are in favor of genocide (of the immigrants coming from south of the border). (She’s not writing these things herself, but sharing them from others. But they definitely reflect her own views.)

    Even centrists and libertarians have been mentioned. In the genocide one, centrists would supposedly argue for a compromise of just “some genocide”, while the leftists are the only ones refusing to commit genocide at all. Another one claims that being “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”, as many libertarians describe themselves, means pretending to care about marginalized people while keeping them marginalized through economic policies.

    She truly believes that only pro-choice, progressive Democrats are caring and compassionate and moral. I pray that Chickadee will not be further poisoned by this hatred masquerading as moral superiority, and that her eyes will be opened to see the hatred behind the attitude.

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  14. Chickadee may just find it all boring after a while.

    What was really fun is seeing the two girls — Helen and Mildred (and their little dog Prince) — around what was to be their new home (it looked like the house was still under construction in some if not all of the photos). And this could have been the first house on this stretch of the hill, it’s amazing to see almost nothing around it — the one house seen below on the hill not too far away may still be there, there’s a roof I can see from my house that looks like the one in the photo. I’ll have to drive by it — it would be just below us on 10th Street I think — to see how old it looks.

    And yes, the cost and the phone number, how cute.

    Otherwise, it’s a landscape of nothing. I wish there were more pictures taken from a distance, though, to get the overall look of what was here.

    I could see the fireworks from the show at the beach up here last night — from my front windows — as they blew up over the tree lines. My dogs were stressed as usual, especially Cowboy, but we got through it.

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  15. Ah, new picture. So they’d be standing on the south side of the house near the chimney and the view is facing east, with the (unseen) harbor below. The one house with the dark roof is the one that looks very similar to a house that is in that same spot in my view today (now surrounded by other homes, of course). So it may still be there and pre-dated this one on the hill, if it’s the same house.

    And THAT is the wonderful arch I’d love to re-create if I could. How cool is that? Notice the notched dip in the top of the arch, it would have matched much of the rest of the Spanish home.

    Pictures were all from a scrapbook that belonged to Helen Webb, the older girl in this photo, when it fell into the hands of my historical society friend who scanned in many of the photos as she has made a study (and has led walking tours) of the different neighborhoods in town.

    Shown with Helen here is her sister, Mildred, and “Prince Webb.” So my house had a “first” dog, how appropriate.

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  16. Missing, too, are the forest of trees that now populate our hillside.

    Kind of interesting to think of my house as being a lone little outpost up here amid what was a pretty barren landscape in LA, once upon a time.

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  17. DJ, it is pretty amazing to see those photos.

    I lived in my childhood home 14 years (from 8 months old to the time my dad retired and my little sister graduated from eighth grade and we moved). We “sold” it on a really bad deal that came back to haunt us (interest rates were above 20 percent, and it was no time even to try to sell a house), but we repossesed and resold it, and if I remember correctly it sold again a couple years later. But last I checked, those people who bought it in the 1980s were still there, so our 14 years when the house was quite new pale into insignificance.

    On one of my visits to Phoenix, late 1990s or early 2000s, I went to the house of our next-door neighbor (who still lived there) and visited with her a while. She wouldn’t have seen me for 15 or 20 years, but having spent a lot of time at her house, she remembered me. After a while I asked if she knew her neighbors, and if she could introduce me, and she happily did. They then showed me the house as it was then–they had added to the back, put a skylight in the master bedroom (because otherwise it would have had no windows with the addition), and gotten rid of the smaller of those two halls I mentioned and “opened up” the house by taking the front and side walls off of what had been the girls’ bedroom and making it into an open office. They had then taken the wall out from between the two closets of the children’s bedrooms and given the remaining bedroom a deeper closet.

    We were the last (only) house on the street without a concrete driveway by the time we moved out, and they added one and also added a fence to the front yard and they (or the previous owners) took out most of the trees and also the large barbecue that pretty much filled the backyard. (We had a built-in barbecue, a second patio up next to it–we had a first patio under a patio roof, the second in the sun–and around that patio a low brick wall on one side that got higher as it went back and finally wrapped around the barbecue and its two firewood / charcoal pits.)

    When they showed me the house, I was able to tell them how it was used in our day, that this former bedroom had two girls in it, and that the other one (which was now used by one teenage girl) had housed all my brothers over time, at one point having three teenage boys in triple army bunks. Her mouth dropped open at that, to imagine three people in that small bedroom (with a smaller closet than she had). (My oldest and youngest brothers are 17 years and one month apart. Up till the time my youngest brother was born, the third brother voluntarily slept in the nursery with us–I was three and don’t remember that–but when the seventh and last child was on the way, it was determined there was no room for seven children in that small house, and my oldest brother joined the army, allowing brother #3 to join his older and younger brothers in the boys’ room. I assume our room continued to be the nursery until the next brother or two moved out, but the funny thing is I mostly remember the boys’ room as the bedroom of the brother who wasn’t yet born when we moved there, because I really only remember one of our older brothers living at home, with a vague sense of one of the older ones (the next older) being with us on some family vacations and in the house with us sometimes. By the time I was nine or ten, none of the older ones still lived at home, so most of my contact with them was one or more of them coming to visit, including everyone coming for Thanksgiving or Christmas. And after a while someone would ask where that younger brother was, and he would have gotten “enough” of the crowd and would have slipped off to his bedroom and closed the door. Our older brothers almost seemed more like uncles than brothers; and my younger brother, who had four older brothers, mostly grew up as “the only boy” at home, since they were 10-17 years older than he and all of them moved out at 16 or 17.

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  18. AJ, Tess also has hypothyroidism so you have company, blog-wise. She takes a pill everyday, courtesy of me of course. She was diagnosed with that some years ago.

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  19. How fun to fill the new occupants in on your house, Cheryl.

    I “know” some of the more current residents (since the ’70s) thanks to my neighbors who have been here forever (and their house was owned by her grandmother before they bought it, so she recalls visiting as a child). The photos and first family were a real find (and an easy start, I think) in putting a little house history together for posterity.

    This would have been classified as a small Spanish-mission style bungalow, I think, built for more working class families perhaps from a kit (need more research for that). It’s been added onto since then (in the ’70s with a new back kitchen and extra room, now Kim’s “den”). That brought it to 1200+ square feet.

    I’m still not clear on where old kitchen would have been, perhaps some of that was destroyed and replaced with back portion of the house.

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  21. DJ, that is Hollywood cool having all that old info! It is amazing.

    I have been in a slump since we lost so much sleep with Wesley’s extreme flight arrangements for his trip home. Old folks were not meant to be at the busiest airport in world at all hours of the night.

    Kizzie, your comments about what your husband would have regretted had he knew the timing of his death touched my heart. You knew him so well.

    Thyroid troubles can be complex. Art has taken medication for years and it has never been well controlled. Be careful to not take the med with calcium supplements as Art did for a long time. That cancels out the med.

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  22. That is a neat picture. I like the archway. The girls’ clothes are interesting. It looks like a hot day, and the younger girl is wearing a dress that looks to be made from muslin, but they are wearing stockings and shoes. I would have expected them to be barefoot, but perhaps the rocky ground wouldn’t be very comfortable.

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  23. One of the downsides of thyroid meds is waiting for an hour after taking before eating. That is taking it before eating anything for at least two hours. Yes, you do have to watch out for any supplements you use. Space it out. Hopefully, you will feel better in a few weeks. It can creep up on you, so you do not realize how tired you have felt etc.

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  24. That’s no area code, Michelle. That’s the entire phone number. Interesting to see all the empty land. I imagine it’s all full of housing now.

    As we’ve been driving around Tucson I’ve been pointing out some of the changes to Mrs L and the children. The house I grew up in looks nothing like I remember it. for one thing, the palm tree that was about 3′ tall is now towering over the house. And the palo verde tree blocks the view of the house from the street.

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  25. DJ – Nightingale has a new acquaintance she is working with for Boy Scouts, as she gets herself ready to be the assistant den leader. This lady and her husband bought one of the lovely Victorian homes in town, not far from us. Nightingale got a tour of the house.

    It has five bedrooms and two servant’s rooms (at the end of a long narrow staircase). The kitchen used to be in the basement, but a new one was put in on the ground floor.

    But the woman who owned the house before this couple had done some renovations, one of which was squaring off the lovely archways within the house. Why!?!

    Maybe that’s part of the reason this young couple were able to buy it really cheap.

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  26. We have some Victorian homes near the harbor as well, one couple has been restoring one for the past 10 years but they can do much of the work themselves.

    I agree, it’s so sad when people make those changes to old homes, but my neighbors — whose house was the ‘twin’ almost of mine, built at same time — have swapped out all of their classic old windows and front door through the years for ‘newer’ models. You either have the ‘old house’ bug or you don’t.

    I’m lucky more things weren’t changed on my house through all those years.

    I’d love to recreate the arch somehow, though, but it may not be feasible logistically or financially. It would have to be a tad narrower, I’m thinking it would have gone into what is now my neighbors’ driveway to the south.

    When I look out my front side windows now (you can barely see them in that photo, the girls are right next to them but they’re hidden by the chimney bulge) I think of those two girls standing there posing, wearing their cute frocks.

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  27. That same walkway is still there, though — and next to that on other side, where Prince is, there’s a narrow garden strip that travels down the front stairs to the sidewalk. That also may be original, this photo may have been taken before some of that was put in.

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  29. Oh Mumsee our humidity level is 44% right now…today I have “big hair”….and I am “perspiring “ which is something I do not like at all…the trade off is moisture in these woods…I shall suffer through 😊

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  30. So this photo is taken on the south side of your house facing the harbor (east)? I’m waiting for the northwest shot over the 6th street canyon to where my house will be built in 1957! LOL

    Amazing to see how empty the hillside is, for sure.

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  32. Michelle, we’re all wondering why the canyon doesn’t show up.

    Your house would have been built 1 year after *someone* (not judging) added the cowboy ranch-style front porch to my house (making it look like a western saloon, according to one person, and replacing the original front Spanish facade). 🙂 Oh well, what’s done is done.

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  34. I was suppose to take Karen for a dental appointment tomorrow after her consultation today. The dentist would not let her return home in such agony today. He extracted her broken tooth. She called me in horrible pain after she got home. I prayed for her over the phone, and she said that halfway through my prayer that the pain stopped. She was in tears of joy. I am thankful God chose to relieve her pain during the prayer so He gets total credit for it because Karen will share with others what God does for her.

    In addition to that, today I heard from a client I told about a local grant writing class she attended. Now it seems she is on her way to getting a grant. I am so happy when God uses me to help people who are in need!

    Liked by 1 person

  35. I think it is okay for me to share my student project from my website creation class. It is not yet ready to go live, but should be soon.

    If you have a chance to take a look, please tell me if there is any information that you would like to see on a tax preparer business that I have not included. Thanks in advance for taking time to look at it.
    https://wphomeoffice.com/marker/

    Liked by 1 person

  36. Michelle – I think YF gets out with a friend now and then, and family, too. But I really think the fact that she has not had a real job in the seven or eight (?) years since she graduated from college has stunted her growth and maturity. My theory is that she grew even more liberal in college, and then has fed herself from very liberal media and online groups since then. If she were exposed to more actual people (rather than online) who disagree with her, I think she would be able to see them as more complex and decent than she allows herself to believe.

    (Note to Roscuro – You have mentioned that you are in a similar situation, but the difference is that you are making an effort. You went to the Gambia for a while, and are continuing your education. And I don’t think you cut yourself off from the views and ideas of people you disagree with, as YF seems to have done.)

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  37. Prince!

    He’s on the porch apparently before the little alcove was constructed — and there’s some real funky stuff on the walls, this must have been sometime before final stucco coat was applied But those windows are still with me and so is the door.

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  38. Janice, looks like a nice site and sounds like you have a relaxed outlook. My only thought is on the Find Us portion. I like to see an actual map. Of course, I could google the address but it would be nice, for me, to see the location on a map.

    Liked by 1 person

  39. Thanks, Mumsee. I think Google Maps charges to put that on a site like this. I will be looking into other ways to include a map. Good idea.

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  43. DJ, years ago some kitchens were separated from the house for fire hazard reasons. It could have been torn down years ago. Just a thought.
    I love that you have all this information about the house.
    How is the den coming now that you mention it?

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  44. AJ, BG has hypothyroidism (Hashimoto’s). You may find that you are very low on Vitamin D. Ask your doctor to check it the next time you go in for blood work. Follow the directions on taking your thyroid medicine. You may even want to set the clock and take it at 4am then go back to bed. It is very important to take it at the same time every day.
    I didn’t know about supplements canceling out thyroid medicine, but I would caution you to be careful about what you do take an when. Your endocrinologist can guide you on all of that. Do get someone who specializes in endocrinology.

    Liked by 1 person

  45. Permit says 1 dwelling, 5 rooms (living room, dining room, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, kitchen?).

    I was pretty sure the back (2nd) bedroom was original, but maybe not … hard to tell, it does have a wood double-hung window in there which was characteristic of the rest of the house, and the same wood flooring which is supposed to be all original. Maybe bedroom was extended out, or the kitchen was partly in that area?? Maybe things were just configured differently.

    There are a couple photos where I don’t recognize the window patterns, which could have been the original back part of the house. The original plans may be available somewhere in some other city records — or maybe if it was a “kit” house I’ll come across the floor plan there, just need to figure out the company.

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  50. For the past almost-week, our humidity has been in the 70 – 80+% range on some days (even higher, 90-something % when it was rainy), with the lower days being around 55 – 60%.

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  53. West Point, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Fort Gordon, Georgia. All hot, humid, and crowded. Beautiful places for a season but I do hope that season is over for me.

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  58. DJ, I was going to mention that bathrooms aren’t counted as rooms now and maybe they weren’t back then either . . .

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  60. Humidity does me in, too.

    Thankfully, our seven-day heat wave comes to an end tomorrow after some thunderstorms roll though throughout the day. The temperature and humidity will both go down quite a bit. Yay!

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  61. Janice, could you just put a link in the text to the Google Map location? I think that would be helpful if you don’t have an actual map showing.

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  62. Enjoyable, but tiring day. We spent th e morning at the pool with my parents. Later my family went and did a couple of tourist things, then stopped to visit my mother’s grave. It took a several minutes to find it. I knew which section of the cemetary, but hadn’t visited in many years.

    Later we went to my folks for a few hours, including supper. Now the young folks want to go on an early morning hike before it gets too hot. So, we’ll leave the house before 5am.

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  63. It’s going to be 98 degrees today. It’s already 76 degrees with 56% humidity.

    I went out and watered last night, trying to give some extra protection to what’s left of my grass and the potted plants (which I’ll haul in under the patio and porch if I have time this morning — just to get them out of the sun for the day).

    It’s supposed to drop 10 degrees tomorrow, but we’ll see. They often say that but then the conditions decide to camp out a while and get a string of super-hot, uncomfortable days.

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  64. Janice, our graphic artists can do very nice, quick maps via the computer, there’s probably an easy way to generate your own map you could post on the website. There’s possibly a program or software that would do it for you?

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