Sunday, January 12, 2014

Blogging with the Flu--Today I'm the Wrong Person to be the Family Historian

A super-late post about creativity while self-medicating, or something.  I may need to delete this post when I wake up tomorrow--

Aside from being a regular history freak, I'm also a FAMILY history freak.  Since my schedule's pretty much wiiiide open, an old project I started in 2003 has re-emerged, now that I have TIME, so I have finally started compiling the masses of files full of random Ancestry.com tidbits, Ellis Island records, family stories, and photos that I have for so long wanted to DO something with.  I spent a full year back then, collecting and tracking down connections and our Polish immigrant roots in Pennsylvania, emailing relatives (and some strangers who turned out not to be relatives, but now we're friends, so it's all good because we're from Poland, y'all), and now it's time to light the torch back up, so to speak.

My grandmother's sister's wedding, with my great-grandma seated at right

Since I'm also fighting the flu that my husband's had all week, I'm taking frequent breaks to drink a revolving cocktail of Emergen-C, Airborne, peppermint/lemongrass tea, vodka and OJ, and Elderberry syrup that I made this summer, while simultaneously sanitizing every possible surface repeatedly, and washing my hands every time I pass a sink, like Leonardo in The Aviator, (except without the crazy mirror flashbacks...)  FOR LIKE A WEEK STRAIGHT.  EVERY HOUR, ON THE HOUR. 

So, yeah, now seems like as good a time as any, to start compiling all our family stuff into a well-thought-out and informative blog.

Today I spent the day NOT talking to customers, and I created a new private blog (sorry, no, you can't check it out).  I've been having a blast putting our family's history and info together in one place where we can access it from our various places around the world, but it's in a pretty rough-draft stage for now.  Emphasis on "rough".  Probably...doing something like this while simultaneously trying to NOT be sick might make for some, um, interesting editing later ("WHAT is this file doing here??")  And I may decide that purple free-hand script that looks like my grade-school hand-writing may not be the best choice of font for blog posts (I did NOT ace "penmanship" in 1978, as I recall)...but it seems like a GREAT idea when you're living on not much more than Elderberry syrup  for days on end (berries and brandy, straight up, folks).

Of course the goal is to eventually have a cool place for our family to share everything we can remember, post pictures and anecdotes, and save our family's Polish coal-mining immigrant history for our kids.  But it's getting late, and there seem to be too many Charles's (what's the plural of Charles?) on both sides of the family, which is making my eyes cross. 

I also have a second cousin who is going to Poland and Lithuania this summer, and she will get to SEE a lot of the places we came from at the turn of the 1900s, so I can't wait to hear how that goes and what stories she will bring back. 

Ok, I know.  This is SO not interesting, right?  Or maybe it is--or maybe I just need more Elderberry syrup.  But it may explain if I disappear from here for awhile.  New projects make me a bit...obsessed at first.  Like starting to knit a new sweater.  You think you're going to finish it allthefirstnightandwearittomorrow, riiiiiight?  Yeah.  I've been working on the new blog for hours today, but now it's 12:34 a.m. and I'm at the part where I have to get off my butt and go dig through drawers and photo albums and actually SCAN stuff into the computer before I can continue, which is considerably LESS fun than the 'cut and paste' stuff I've posted so far today.  ("Scanning?  I'm out.")   And it's really late, so maybe it's time to turn in. 

*pause*

I'm back--The bad news is that my husband long since went to bed, and he's been SO sick with the flu this week (a little better today), so I really don't want to wake him up, but there's a little detail about how I super-efficiently tore apart our bed and washed every-single-thing in hot water today, to make it flu-germ-free so I could sleep there, but then I totally forgot to put any bedding back on the bed yet, because I was doing tons of laundry, but I got busy with, you know, THIS, so...the bed is still bare.  And he went to bed.  It's just a mattress, with him sleeping on it, but he's NOT coughing, and if I wake him up and make him stand up so I can put sheets on the bed, he'll start coughing again, so that's out.  So now what?  I can't sleep on a plain mattress; it reminds me of sleeping on a park bench or something (not that I've done that).  I guess I could throw the comforter over him and go sleep in the spare room again, where I've been the last few nights, in an effort to quarantine myself and not have both grown-ups in our house sick at the same time, but I was really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.    *sigh*

Ok, I better hit "Publish" and go.  My throat's starting to hurt again, and I need to find some Kleenex.  Wish me luck-



Has anyone worked on a blog/family history website project?  I'd love to hear any tips you can share.  I already kind of know that I should not work on it while self-medicating...

No comments:

Post a Comment