Monday, December 4, 2023

Six pages of received text left from my Siderfin cousin

I just have six pages of received text to complete. It will be nice to be finished and too bad I am such a knit picker but if I put census in then I like to have the details to add and I always have to check the children  so that takes time as well. But it is moving along nicely. Perhaps tomorrow I will finish but it is my large cleaning day so can not be positive about that. 

I will start proofreading and indexing though from the beginning. I need to look at the figures and see what I could add although I am starting to retreat from doing a lot of  limited genealogy charts. Given that from the mid 1700s there appears by the records to be only one family contributing to the descendants with the Siderfin surname (Robert Siderfin married to Elizabeth Question) I am not really sure that accomplishes very much. People can always construct their own trees. Or at some point in the future I could do the trees on Legacy and just publish an addendum to the book. Will think about that. A separate document is not a bad idea as charts tend to be larger and add to the document in a largish way considering it is electronic. When it is mostly text it can be quite long without being unduly large in terms of size. 

Another lovely Sunday and the snow gradually arrived  with this area getting up to just 10 centimetres of wet slushy snow; our snow generally is dry as it is cold here mostly and we are not in the snow belt of the Great Lakes where wet slushy snow is pretty common.

Christmas is coming now that Advent Sunday has arrived and I, as usual, have done nothing. My neighbours put up lights on the fence which is lovely. I did give them our Christmas lights because I am not doing that anymore. Outside work is not really my thing for sure but do do what needs to be done and this fall has been exceptional as I have put out maybe six bags of leaves with one half bag that will go out soon. Thought I would collect branches and break them up but the snow is covering them so they can rot a little through the winter although the snow will protect them. 

The question is always should I decorate inside but I have all my religious ornaments to put up and that will be nice. Must do that today actually as I clean I will come across all of those ornaments. Not a tree though; I shall think about donating that along with some of the ornaments that do not have sentimental value to me. Last year I cleaned them out and put some on our daughter's tree and will probably do that again. There are some that she bought so it would be nice for her to have them. We bought a lot on our travels in the British Isles and Europe but I will let her choose those. I have boxes and boxes of things we bought although I should really say Edward bought them I am not really into accumulating things so very much. Along with the wedding presents I brought just one very large box of my belongings to our marriage since I moved from home I did not have any items that were housekeeping particularly. I had one bookcase full of my things, both books and other items and I still have that bookcase which is just three shelves and about a metre tall. The second bookcase that is mine (acquired from my older sister at some point in the past) is just a little larger. As always my room contains what I want to keep with me although I am not that overly committed to any of it as I have already arranged for the historical material to go to an Archives. This summer the large dresser goes as it does not have any clothes in it just things that need to be sorted. Two tiny drawers at the top are mine and the rest is Edward's things that he valued. I want the girls to decide what they want to keep but it likely isn't time to do that yet. The rest of the house I do not have any particular interest in those things and gradually they will get minimized to Salvation Army if there is any value or elsewhere if not. 

Another lovely day in God's World; it is a white world out there today and the snow continues to fall but not as heavy as predicted. That is a pity as I was getting quite excited thinking about skiing in the back yard. However the little animals have been about looking for their hidden caches I suspect before they finally hibernate when the intense cold arrives. 

Thank you God for the goodness of this world and hopefully the world can find the ability to make peace so that everyone gets to live on that uplifted plain where people are not killing each other. As the population dwindles over this next century perhaps that will be the incentive. Mother Earth will welcome a smaller population as the environment will improve. 

Cleaning day and some work on the Siderfin book. It does look like I will finish the 12th generation either today or tomorrow but more likely tomorrow as cleaning does come first. Do the hard things first my grandfather and grandmother always said and then you can enjoy the things you like to do because you are not thinking about what you have to do. They were very practical people my grandparents but then they lived through the slaughter of the 19th century and the slaughter of the 20th century and are for sure saddened that it has carried on into the 21st century. The only thing that really works is fighting back and eliminating the crazies of which Hamas, Russia and the RSF Sudanese fighters are the worst at the moment. All are equally deluded and ignorant one might say. Israel, Ukraine and the Sudanese Armed Forces are holding the line against such extremism and taking it back to them; that always works in the long run. The loss of life is very sad but then look at Sudan; no one is supporting the Sudanese people and they are being equally killed in huge numbers; genocide or selling people into slavery is ongoing there as it always has been in Africa. No wonder South Sudan wanted out of that mess - the RSF in Sudan are also very sick. The United Nations does its best but there is a limit to how much they can do when they are not supported sufficiently by all the countries in the world to stop these rampaging crazies. The United States does try but there is only so much that can be done and then it is just up to time and that uplifted plain of peace is out there and it can be achieved when the crazies are eliminated. Stop supporting the crazies rest of the world. The French Resistance during World War II could tell you about that; they tried to keep their people as safe as they could but then they knew who could be trusted. Israel has to protect themselves because somebody gave the actual layout of their homes to Hamas but of course Hamas could have forced them but we can not tell nor can Israel.

The Islamic State in the Philippines has taken credit for the bombing of a Roman Catholic Church; like I said the crazies in the Islamic world are after the Jews and the Christians and everyone else that isn't born Muslim. Do not support them or you are supporting your own demise!

On to the day. Breakfast, I am very hungry although last night's dinner of scallops, potato cooked in its skin with cut up carrots and corn on the side and a crust of bread was quite lovely. I do really enjoy fish but probably eat far more vegetables than I do meat as I am really fond of vegetables and bread with milk type things like yoghurt, cottage cheese, cheese itself in second place. Then there is peanut butter which I am very fond of as well for my lunches although do have egg salad on occasion or a fish salad on my bread. But breakfast is the best - cooked oatmeal in milk with raisins and cranberries then add in wheat germ, wheat bran, cocoa along with blueberries at the end. Absolutely delicious and I should get tired of it but it is easy and I never have to think about what I would like as I enjoy that the most; makes for an easy beginning to the day and I am 78 years and two months and a couple of weeks old now. The average life span is just 82 years apparently having decreased during COVID. I must get busy on my books and get them done. 

Accidentally set off my alarm when I dropped something very heavy, took me about three minutes to get that all cancelled. Must speed that up although it is the first time in more than a year that I have accidentally dropped something when the alarm was still on. Getting old for sure.

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