Woodjie's First Job!

 

School just got out a bit ago here. Woodjie is working as a line cook at a restaurant in the big city this summer. His uniform also comes with a little beanie. He'll be a senior next school year.

Bringing Garbage Home

Some people up the street were throwing this table away. It was in pretty bad shape and one of the legs was off. I've glued the leg back on, stripped it, sanded it, and stained it. It is still not any sort of heirloom quality but free is free... and I have several "children" here at home who are (hopefully) thinking of leaving the nest one by one again soon.  So this will work as one of several pieces of first furniture.

Ignore the trash on the floor. Right now the table is dry enough to be taken out of the high traffic areas of the house, but not dry enough to put things on just yet.  I still have all my sanding/ stripping supplies nearby too.

 

What A MESS.

Maybe my bloggy friend Virginia has seen a six and a half-foot tall curly-top kid driving about in a grey car with Missouri license plates since last November, because Emperor and Elf now live in the suburbs of Firebird City.  Patrick joined them in April.  I'm going through the stuff they left (everything but one suitcase each, thanks guys) and boxing it up.  And finding graffiti from ages past.

This is what I am left with.  You would think packing up all the stuff they had would mean I had MORE room but apparently not!  Packing things into boxes makes the items inside expand by about 60 percent.  Scientific fact.

 

Not sure why I am trying to paint a room full of boxes, but since I no longer do laundry and flip the dishes about in the dishwasher so much I don't have much else to do... Well, there is the poison ivy in the rock garden but I am pretending not to notice that... the house seems veryyy empty with only two children in it.

 

Polish Festival in Weston, Missouri!

I went with a friend last weekend to the festival in Weston, Missouri.  There was a band playing Polish music, lots of Polish food for sale, Polish outfits and almost every sort of trinket from Poland you could imagine.  These bunnies are Polish pottery cookie jars.

Honey pots with little drizzlers.

Um... can you tell that Kansas City has a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs?

One of the shops downtown had works from several metalworking artists as well as some stained glass. 

Here's what I bought.  A giant bowl with bunnies. I love bunnies!

And my mug.  It was a great day!

 

Go Away, Greitens.

Junk mail from Missouri First Action, top clipped to remove my address.

The "establishment thugs in the D.C. swamp" attack former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens for his "America First" values? Ew. Let's see... he cheated on his wife, left office in shame and even got indicted by a grand jury. If you're feeling brave, google "50 Shades of Greitens" sometime and see what this guy got up to. Ages ago I thought he was just not conservative enough... no... now I know it's way more than that.

The Robinson Family Photos

My great-grandmother Ruth Ida Robinson (1889-1970) is tending a cow on her farm in Weedsport, Cayuga County, New York. Here are a few pictures from her photo album.

Here's her son! I knew him as Granddaddy, but his name was Ross Robinson Monroe.  He was born in Cayuga County but grew up in Toronto, Canada. 

This is Ruth's brother/ Granddaddy's uncle, George Gates Robinson. During this time, it was almost mandatory to give the oldest son the mother's maiden name as a middle name.

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What a fun bunch of people! I would not have ever thought any Robinsons to have been informal, having met some of the older folks myself, but the album had a few surprises...

A picnic!

 

When going out on the town, hats and gloves are a must!

Granddaddy with his aunt Jo and dog, Sport.

Granddaddy again in the same outfit riding a horse.  He may actually be quite young in the photos because he was just under 6ft 5 as an adult.

Only in Kansas

 

Dear Family Genealogists, 

As you know, the only way to do things properly is to do them yourself.  What makes the state of Kansas unique is that it allows you to order your own death certificate a bit early.  This way, you can walk to the courthouse yourself and file probate and save your oldest boy the trouble.

This is SERIOUSLY NOT A SNARK POST.  This is REALLY a real and true copy of part of the application for a copy of a Kansas death certificate. It is absolutely unaltered except for the oval I put around "self". What I will clarify, however, is that if the dates you put down on your application don't exactly match what the state has on file, the bureaucrats get to pocket the money and give you a slip of paper that says "no record" and laugh at you.

I sort of like the idea walking into probate court early and cashing out toward the end of things though.