What does cleaning do for us; firstly it is a good routine so that you are not having to do this rush of cleaning at any time in your life. Secondly, it is really good exercise; I always exceed vastly my cardio load for the day when I clean. I think the time to hire people to clean for you is when you find it to be too much or when both are working with children and that frees you up from Saturday being cleaning day all day. As it turned out I hired my children and paid them a decent allowance to clean the house and wash the clothes and so going out to work (I proofread and copy edited for private printers for nearly fifteen years at home) ended being pretty straightforward and much easier than I had anticipated. It was a great job to have when my children were young although I ended up having to go in and work at the end. So I was rather content with eventually going out to work as proofreading and copy editing on a constant eight hour basis is not really what I wanted to do when I arrived at my late 40s. I wanted to work; do interesting things and I found places to work that fitted the bill. I then worked until I was 64 and I really had to retire then because of a shoulder injury. But it was also time; Edward was lonely at home and he needed my help by then with the gardening and the children were doing their own thing; finishing up their education and moving away as it turned out. But a lot of interesting ideas came my way in that period just before I retired as I finally came to seeing genealogy as a very interesting pastime whereas for probably 30 years or more I tried to stay away from it although I was always willing to help Edward with his research at the various repositories we ended up on the North American continent. Then I got inspired to visit my Blake cousin (Ivan Kent) in England and finally after five years (and actually much longer as I had wanted to backpack through Europe after Edward finished his PhD but that is a whole other story before I knew about my cousin Ivan with whom I corresponded for twenty years because my parents wanted a book for their 60th Wedding Anniversary (about their families). That was done willingly on my part but the interest factor was very very low especially when I couldn't find one of my grandmothers. I really wondered how one really did this research. Then along came DNA (which I had been really interested in back in my younger days and the first news of the shape of DNA hit the scientific world but that too is a very long story in the past) and its usefulness in genealogy. It was my mother for sure hearing about yDNA testing in the late 1990s that got that subject back into my brain once again but as I explained to her the value in yDNA testing and mtDNA testing is the deep ancestry although matches certainly would separate out family lines but only in those two lines going back and we had all these other relatives who did not share our yDNA (which only my brothers and the male line going back in the Blake family had) or the mtDNA which was restricted to ourselves and our maternal grandmother and her line going back solely in the female line. It was the realization after my mother passed (and our last conversation was actually on DNA) that I realized my father had passed, my brothers did not have any male children and that line would go extinct in our line and in the next generation of grandchildren there were only three carriers of the mtDNA of my maternal grandmother and none of them ending up have female children so that line too goes extinct in our family line. With that realization about the yDNA line and my mother's urging of both one of my brothers and myself to do the testing I did it; I persuaded my brother (and I did do all the purchasing (it is rather expensive to test a lot of people and their interest level is low); paying for it does encourage results). So the results came flowing in and then atDNA hit the news and now my interest was piqued; this was valuable but it would take a decade of testing before one really saw the effect and it is large. You can phase your grandparents if you have sufficient tests to work with and four of my six siblings tested over the next decade and my databases are huge because of that. I tested (and some of my siblings did pay for tests as they were interested) but for the most part I paid for all the tests mostly because it was something my mother had really wanted and I felt it was a good memory of her for me to do that. Little did I realize that it would come to occupy my entire waking life for the most part but that was my cousin George DeKay and his need for a profile of my Pincombe family for the book he was publishing (Westminster and Delaware History Books); contacted me in 2003 and published in 2005. I was intrigued; I have to admit especially when I sleuthed out Elizabeth Rew and her mother Elizabeth Siderfin. Never had I heard that one of my ancestors was from Somerset and the intrigue began as I had taken on English and Canadian Studies at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies and 42 courses (which provided me with the methodology for sorting through all those English records) and finishing up I had my Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies (PLCGS). I never really did much with it (my husband got me into lecturing (and others) but I do not do that anymore); it takes hours to prepare a lecture and that is too much time away from my projects) in terms of usage other than in my own personal research and helping Edward with his English research which took him back to the British Isles with his group of English Dissenters who left England in the 1620s and 1630s to go to the American Colonies. That so many of them were Patriots did not surprise me; their main characteristic appeared to be Dissenters and they were a fabulous crew that he was so excited to find and learn more about. We went to graveyards deep in the the woods of New England and found hand carved tombstones remembering some of them - they were beautiful and he had so much fun and I enjoyed the traveling and seeing new places that is for sure. I was still to come to genealogy in the 1990s and early 2000s but 2003 was the Great Awakening. I think it is nice to remember the people that influenced me on this path I am on in my early 80s.
Interesting looking back on that in my present state as I am busy writing; mostly preparing to write once again as I gather up the information for the next twelve chapters which will be the generational chart for both the Blake and the Pincombe books. Blake is dominating at the moment but it will soon be time to do the same with the Pincombe. I decided to work on two at the same time. It was actually one of my daughter's ideas and it was a good one. It keeps the subject fresh and going back to one or the other I more readily spot "fixation" which can leave one concentrating too much on one detail without really seeing the whole story and the possibility that the path is not quite right.
But also I need to recreate the family pictures albums from the mid 1960s to the early 2000s which occupy 40 binders (Edward loved putting that together). Many of the pictures are not family and I am reducing the binders to seven or so of just family pictures as they are more likely to survive time. Edward never wanted to be forgotten like his father appeared to have been he felt. He did so many things for other people; he really was a wonderful person and his daughters absolutely adored him and still do. He is always in their hearts and you can see the sadness when they arrive at the house and he is not there.
Anyway must get my breakfast as the tea is drank and the solitaire puzzles are complete once again. They do wake up the brain for sure as one flips the cards across the screen and isn't computerized everything wonderful really.
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