Cali Explains Painting...Or: If You're Wearing Honest-to-Goodness Carhart Painting Overalls, You Must Be an Expert.

So, no more than a month ago, I had a brilliant idea: turn the little-used guest room into my very own craft room.  I have been poring over the IKEA catalog, drawing plans, and dreaming about it since then. I know what I want in the way of furniture and what I am going to put in each drawer and on each shelf.

As OCD as that might sound, I think I have a good reason: I am currently crammed into a little space in our home office, having commandeered several shelves of the bookcases.  I know what I use to scrapbook and where/how I would like to store it.  By drawing the furniture and assigning my scrapbooking supplies to each space, I was able to determine how much (or how little, if you prefer) furniture I would need.

Somewhere along the way, in the last week or so, I decided that I HAD to paint the room.  And why not?  It’s completely empty right now, as the thrift store people hauled off all the furniture a week ago…  Perhaps it’s because the room looks dirty and disheveled without furniture.  Or, perhaps, the furniture was hiding a litany of sins…

Several years ago, I painstakingly scraped all the wallpaper off the walls in my soon-to-be craft room.  Then I painted the walls in a faux denim finish that I liked for a couple of years…. No more.  Time for a change….

And so, after countless hours of prep (which I HATE to do), I was able to put some “Cotton Grey” paint on the walls.  As I started, it looked beige, not gray, but after the blue was all covered, it was the color I had hoped for….

This room was my brothers’ room when they were growing up.  Boys are hard on furniture and walls.  Thanks to years of putty repairs and millions of coats of paint, the walls are uneven and difficult to paint.  The roller rolls right over some of the deeper recesses, and going back over the wall with a brush is a necessity….

Okay, okay, you know how to paint, enough of the details.  But do you know all of the little nuances of painting?  I know I didn’t…..until now.

For instance, did you know that no matter how many times you paint gray over blue, you will still see blue wherever you look?  Some of it I really did see, and I hit it with a brush-full of gray paint….

Did you know that, after sanding the baseboard a hundred times, you STILL won’t see all the remaining carpet fur until you have given it a coat of paint?  So you sand it again.  And again.  No, the carpet is long gone, but not the fur, apparently….

Did you know that you can go from excited to get started to ready to be done with it in a matter of moments?  And boy, have I had my moments…..you should see the floor…

No longer my entree into "High Society", my Crocs are now
relegated to my "paintin' shoes"...

I also think, but I could be wrong, that the doorway has shrunk due to the 15+ coats of paint that it has had in the past 62 years.   I know that I have given it three coats this week myself, and I’m wondering if the new furniture will fit through the door…

I’m down to the last chore: the touch-up detail.   It’s really quite simple: you have a small paint brush with the wall color on it and another one with the trim color on it.  You touch up the trim where you got the wall paint on it and then you touch up the wall where you just got trim paint on it.  It can go on for hours.  And hours…

And then it suddenly hits you:  “it looks great” you tell yourself.  Does it really?  Doesn’t really matter, in your mind, you’re DONE!

And, if you are unfortunate enough to be asked by the painter:  “how does it look?”  do NOT blurt out that it looks perfect!  We both know it isn’t perfect and painters don’t appreciate being patronized.

To a point…. 

When asked that loaded question, take your time answering it.  Look up curiously at the freshly-painted walls and trim.  Squint one or both eyes to denote that you are really working at this, then sigh softly and prepare your answer. 

The answer HAS to be positive.  I have worked much too hard to have someone, anyone, point out what is wrong with the work that I did.  So be charitable.  Use a word that doesn’t tell me that you’re lying through your teeth.  If you’re a gusher, tell me it looks “fabulous!”  If you’re not, just say it looks “great” and pat me on the back…..but not too hard because I’m sore all over…

I may not be the best painter, but I DO make the best messes!

Cali

Telling Stories....

When I started blogging five years ago, I frequently wrote about my experiences at work.  Or family life. Or something I saw and wanted to comment about.  I used a photo to illustrate the blog and that was it. Ever since I started, I have always hoped that my words would make my readers think and relate what I have said to things in their own lives…

A little more than a year ago, I started scrapbooking again.  Things have changed in the scrapbooking world: it’s not just about photos cut into cute shapes and lots of stickers to decorate the page.  Somewhere along the line, people figured out that pasting photos on a page wasn’t enough.  And cutesy stickers didn’t add much to the story of when, why, and where the photo was taken.

And so, scrapbooking (in whatever form you choose) has become a method of telling our stories about our lives, our families, and our adventures.  Photos are accompanied by “journaling cards” that recount what happened, or was going on, in each photo.  Sure, there are still stickers and other ephemera but they are an adjunct to the story, and a small one at that.

Currently, I am doing Project Life for the second year in a row.  It’s a system of telling our stories in an easy-to-do format, with pockets for photos and other souvenirs of everyday life. Becky Higgins

What I like about Project Life is that it makes me focus on today.  Sure, yesterday and tomorrow were, or will be; important in their own time, but today is what I have right now.  In other words, I live in the moment, recording life’s ups and downs as they happen.  The only thing better than living in the moment is being able to go back and look at those moments later…

My just-completed first page from last week.

And my second page from last week.

I bought in to the project, literally, and purchased a “core kit” from Becky Higgins.  This year, I have been making some of my own journaling cards to add to the core kit.  I want to personalize my story, after all, as I am the only me around…

A few of the journaling cards I have made...

Whether the photos show snow-capped mountains or mountains of laundry in front of the washer, there is a story there.   Not a what-I-did-last-summer story but the story of everyday….. And that is what matters: telling our stories.

 

So, though the format and content of my blog may seem different, it really isn’t.  I am still focused on telling my own story but I am using several modalities and not just writing.  The important thing is that, someday, someone who knew me and loved me will have a better glimpse of who I was and what I did.

That’s telling my story…

Cali

Going Home Again...and Again

Then

In an unexpected turn of events, we traveled 25 miles southeast of Podunk to another, even smaller, Podunk…  Having been sick with a cold for more than a week, I was glad to get out of the house and “see the world” as it were…

We traveled to a quaint little town east of Podunk to visit my favorite antiques shop.  Afterwards, we stopped in at the hardware store.  Truly, a hardware store, with creaky wood floors, items displayed in divided shelves, and an old-fashioned heater grate in the floor.

Ever solicitous about my health, he asked me if I wanted to go home…. I said “no” because I was enjoying being out in the sunshine.  And so, he had an adventure in mind: “let’s go to Lindsay (an even smaller Podunk) and find the house you lived in….”

I don’t know why, all these years later, that I remember the name of the street we lived on….But I do.  And I found it on my iPhone’s Google Maps app.  As we drove through town, the little blue dot on the screen was moving with us, ever nearer to Linda Vista Drive.

I remember what the house looked like because I have several photos of family in front of it.  My mother told me once that the house was featured in Sunset Magazine in 1947.  I don’t know if that is true or was invented by a realtor who wanted my parents to buy the house.  I think I may have to look into that at some point…

I felt a lump in my throat as we drove down the street…..and there, at the turn in the road, was the house.  I remember it as being gray—the color of the kitschy cinder-blocks used to build it—and now it is a beigy-gold paint color.  The window frames are still hunter green, and the windows are original, too.  A cooler is precariously perched in one of the bedroom windows, and the lawn is winter dead.

Now

Although we only lived in that house for a couple of years, and I was VERY young, I do remember lots of things about it.  For instance, the bathroom floor was black marble.  Why do I remember that?  Perhaps because I spilled my mother’s face powder on it and she thought she would never get it all cleaned up…

My favorite spaces in that house were all outdoors.  There was a screened-in sleeping porch along the entire back of the house and I would sleep there at night during the long, hot summers.  Just beyond that porch was the back patio, which was huge.  It was angled and free-form to make it blend into the back lawn in a pleasing fashion. 

One of my favorite things to do (remember: I was VERY young) was to push Daddy’s push mower across the patio, delighting in the clackety-clack sounds it made on the cement.  I do remember the last time I did that, too, as Daddy was home for lunch and came outside to ask me to “stop doing that!”

I remember the houses on each side of ours, too.  On the one side was the “elderly” neighbor with the apricot tree.  I amazed my neighborhood friends by being brazen enough to sneak into her back yard and steal an apricot from her tree.  Not only that, I stopped at the faucet under her kitchen window and washed it off before running out front to eat it in front of my cohorts…

On the other side of our house was the home of my best playmate and friend.  She and I had some great adventures, such as painting her porch red with the blooms on my mother’s rose bush.  Also not a popular pastime with adults…

That relationship had its ups and downs, too.  When I was allowed to paint the picket fence on her side of the back yard (remember, I was too young to have read “Tom Sawyer”), she was upset that I wouldn’t let her help me.  I tried to explain that my mother told me just to paint our side of the fence, and that she had to ask her mother before she could paint her side of the fence…..  She was frustrated and slapped me—hard—on my cheek.  Without thinking, I ‘slapped’ her with my paintbrush across her cheek.  After hearing both of us shriek, our mothers both came out of the house and, needless to say, neither one of us got to do any more painting….

We had moved to that little town because that’s where Daddy found a job after the war.  I also remember why we left that house and that town….

It was Christmastime, 1950, and my mother was busy getting ready for Christmas.  One of the things she did to “get ready” was to take down the living room curtains and wash and iron them.  It was a whole day’s chore, I’m sure.  And then, on Christmas Eve, the weather dropped to below freezing.  Since that little town is situated in the middle of miles and miles of orange groves, the night air smelled of the smudge pots burning all around us, keeping the oranges from freezing.

Perhaps it worked, and the crop was saved.  I really don’t know.  What I DO know is that, on Christmas morning, my mother shrieked when she saw her newly-washed and ironed curtains: they were now charcoal gray, thanks to the freezing temperatures and smudge pots…

By the next Christmas, we had moved here, to Podunk, to the very house where I am writing this…

We had prolonged freezing temperatures here in Podunk last night….maybe that’s why I was thinking about that house in that even smaller Podunk, 25 miles away…

Cali

Memories of Christmas...

It’s a beautiful December day in Podunk.  The wind and rain earlier this week have cleared the air.  The sky is a glorious blue with not a cloud to be seen.  To the east, the Sierra Nevada Mountains are capped with snow. 

It’s a match made in heaven: snow on the mountains and snowshoes in the back of our car.  Soon.  Very soon, we will go for a winter hike in the Sequoia Nat’l. Park.  Or Kings Canyon Nat’l Park.  They’re both less than an hour away…

For now, I’m baking.  I have to do it by myself this Christmas because my granddaughter is still in school and won’t be joining us until the night before Christmas Eve.  She will, however, be here soon enough to help with the clam chowder and carrot cake for Christmas Eve supper, and the egg casserole for Christmas morning brunch.

 

As I make cookies, I am listening to Christmas music.  The old-fashioned, politically incorrect religious kind of music.  The music that I associate with Christmases past and present.  At my age, there are a LOT of memories of Christmas.

 

And I am awash in those memories right now.  Missing those people who were such a huge part of my life so long ago… My parents and grandparents, of course, but mostly those bright, shiny little faces that belonged to my little children.  Their freshness and innocence, their delight with all things Christmas, their joy as they saw what Santa brought them.  Their beautiful faces as they solemnly participated in the Christmas Pageant at church…

I realize that it was inevitable that they would grow up and move out on their own, but that doesn’t assuage the nostalgia of the moment.  It does help that they are all healthy and happy and have families of their own.  And they DO come to visit when they can…

I don’t need the Ghost of Christmas Past to remind me of things I have done, or the Ghost of Christmas Present to show me how fortunate I am to have love and joy in my life.  I already know all that.  I am thankful for all the good in my life right now.  Very thankful.

 

But I also wonder: “why me?”  When others are fighting so desperately to stay alive and find shelter, why do I have so much?  As other people my age search longingly for someone to love, I have someone to love.  Someone who came to me late in life, and reminds me every day how lucky we are to have each other.

So what, if anything, am I trying to say?  I think it’s this:  Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Santa) lives in our hearts.  It isn’t about presents, or being surrounded by every person I have ever loved, or having the biggest and best decorations ever.  No.  It’s about the feelings I’m having right now, the memories that have descended on me this morning, and the flour on my hands, clothes, and kitchen floor.

Joy is in our hearts.  Love, peace, serenity, tranquility, whatever….it all lives inside of us.  Those memories are brought forward to remind us of the journey that we have taken, the places we have been, and the suffering that we have survived.

It’s an annual renewal of those things that we hold dear to us.  It embodies all that the human spirit holds dear, and it allows us to indulge our memories of Christmases past and our hopes for Christmas in the future.  (Of course, tomorrow IS 12-21-2012….)

And so, I will go back to the kitchen, the flour on the floor, and the cookies waiting to be baked.  I will keep listening to the Christmas music, thinking about my loved ones, and being thankful for all that has been given to me.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours!

Cali

Farewell....

What can I say?  My heart hurts right now.  A beautiful lady who was a huge part of my life for nearly forty years has died….

  

She has had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade and didn’t even recognize her own sons when they came to see her.  I know it was hard on them because my ex-husband (her first-born son) and I have talked about it.

My daughter told me today that she is saddened, too.  She thought she “shouldn’t be” because Grandma has been gone from all of us for a long, long time.  As I told her, the fact is that we are never prepared to lose a loved one, no matter how imminent the death might be.

She’s gone.  How can that be?  It isn’t fair, that’s for sure.  She was more to me than a mother-in-law; she was my Other Mother.   She was my shelter from the storm of my relationship with my own mother.  She was everything I wished my mother had been: kind, caring, gentle, loving and approachable.  As odd as it might sound, my mother was never approachable……  Yet my Other Mother was always there for me, as I tried to be for her.

Walking in the orange groves, after supper, so many years ago when I was pregnant with my first child, we would talk.  My husband worked evenings and my in-laws invited me out to their ranch for supper at least one night a week.  So, we talked.  We walked along a row of orange trees highlighted by the setting sun and she answered my questions about my pregnancy.

Over and over again, I asked her to tell me about “labor” and what I would be going through.  I asked her what things I needed to have on hand before the baby came home from the hospital.  And I listened in amazement as she described how I would feel when I saw my baby for the first time.

And she nailed it…

I remember after Steve and I separated that  she hoped we would reconcile.  She even “set us up” by asking each of us to come out to the ranch and help her on a Saturday afternoon.  I hadn’t seen Steve in a while as he was dating someone else and so was I….

It was hard to see her so desperate to fix something that was irretrievably broken, and neither of us could get mad at her for trying so hard.  And neither of us was in a place to try to fix it.  It was over, but NOT my relationship with my Other Mother.

She continued to be my friend and called me frequently to see how I was doing.  After her husband died, she called me and asked me to come by and see her.  She had a gift for me: a beautiful, dark red flower vase.   She wanted me to have something of hers to remember her by.

As if I needed an object to remind me of her…..

And now she’s gone.  Gone to a place where she is whole again and not suffering.  We are left with our memories—wonderful memories—of a beautiful woman, a beautiful person.  We will talk about her often, sharing stories and remembering her with much love and affection.

 

And shed some tears, too….

Cali

Things That Go Bark in the Night...

We were awake this morning at 4, listening to the dog bark.  There was a sense of urgency in her bark, and it was punctuated with growls.  He said “it’s cats….” but I wondered.   Cinnamon barks at cats all the time, but she doesn’t growl….

I went outside to see what she was up to but it was too dark (it usually is in the middle of the night….).  He brought out a flashlight and, shining it on the potato bush along the fence, there it was.  Not a cat, or cats…..

A possum.

He wasn’t frightened by the light, the dog, or us.  He just sat there calmly on the fence and stared at us.  Cinnamon was still barking furiously, yet she seemed amused that “mom and dad” had joined her in the backyard.  Bark, bark, bark, growl, bark, growl….

Still, the possum didn’t move.  He wasn’t “playing possum”….he was staring at us, then at the dog, then back at us.  Perhaps he is acclimated to humans?  And dogs?  And the four or five cats that live in our alley?

It seemed rather obvious that the only way to get Cinnamon to stop barking was to convince the possum to leave…..  Have you ever tried that?  Neither had I…

So, armed with a hose with a spray nozzle, he aimed it at the possum and turned it on.  The possum moved from one side of the potato bush to the other, then back again.  At one point, he turned around and we got to stare at his soggy, wet behind

.

And then, he disappeared….

Was he really gone?  Cinnamon was still quite antsy but she had stopped barking.  He got a piece of PVC pipe and started poking it into the foliage of the potato bush.  Nothing.  No movement, no sounds except the rustling of the leaves as the PVC passed through.

Is he gone?  Will he be back?

I “ordered” Cinnamon to get in her bed and miraculously, she did.  She seemed calmer now that the possum had disappeared.  I felt comforted that she couldn’t smell him, hear him, or sense his presence, so maybe the possum hunt was over….

I went back to bed but I couldn’t sleep.  I kept waiting for Cinnamon to start barking again, but she didn’t.

There’s always tonight…..

Cali

The Keeper of Memories...

So, where have I been all summer?  The short answer is: here, at home.  The long answer is that I haven’t been blogging.  Why?  The Social Networking Site where I got my start as a blogger suddenly disappeared at the end of May.

Frantically, I tried to locate my friends on other sites.  I joined two SNS sites, decorated my profile, and found a lot of my friends.  One of the sites was not a good fit for me from the beginning: they have blogs there but nobody reads them, and few people write them.

The second site I found was more promising: there are blogs and people actually do write over there.  Again, nobody reads them, either.  Is that the only reason to write a blog?  So someone will read it?  Yes and no.  I have to write for myself: my feelings, my observations, my thoughts.  Yet, it is nice to know that someone has read what I wrote and felt a synergy or connection with it.

It’s not that I haven’t been creative.  I just haven’t been writing as much.  What I am writing now is in the form of “journaling” on scrapbook pages.  Because of my writing background, my journaling is more substantial and interrelated with the photos’ subject matter.

After taking a weekend class in May, I was hooked on scrapbooking.  I actually got back into scrapbooking last fall at the encouragement of my daughter.  She is an accomplished scrapper and artistic genius, IMHO.

But taking classes made it all official.  Each day of class, there is an assignment to complete.  Each day, I happily think about the subject at hand and gather photos and papers and embellishments to complete the project.

And every day, the completed project goes into the Student Gallery for others to see and comment on.  And every day, I get up to a dozen or so encouraging comments on my scrapbooking efforts.  It’s fun to have that feedback and to see my work through others’ eyes.

For me, scrapbooking is about telling a story.  The photos are a big part of telling that story.  The photo part got much easier for me late this spring: my daughter graciously spent a couple of hours with me, helping me conquer Photoshop.  No, I’m not completely victorious yet, but I know—and can do—a heck of a lot more than I could before she helped me.

For today’s class assignment, I used paper scraps to “weave” a background for my photos.  And those photos were a mere 1.5 inch square!  Photoshop to the rescue, again.  I cropped and custom printed the photos I wanted just like a pro…..sorta.

The woven scrap papers were then sewn on with my sewing machine, making them look like a quilt.  I then added the photos, some embellishments, and my journaling.  What I have now is a scrapbook page that shows what was important to me today.  Hopefully, someday, my children and grandchildren will view my scrapbooks the way I want them to: as a family history.

Scrapped with love by Mom/Grandma: the Keeper of Memories….

Cali

And here is today's scrapbooking project:

Planting Seeds...

I wrote a blog, a few years ago, and published it on Eons….of course, it’s gone.  I was reminded of it today by something that came in the mail.  But let me tell you what I blogged back then, first..

In the early Nineties, I was the Charge Nurse in the Operating Room at the local hospital.  We had  eight operating room suites on the first floor, and two in Labor and Delivery.  Additionally, during my tour of duty, the hospital opened its Open Heart Surgery services.

Also during my tenure, many of the scrub techs went back to school and became RNs.  And many of the RNs took their training to become RNFAs: Registered Nurse First Assistants.  That was the time of big changes in the OR, insurance companies were no longer paying MDs to “assist” surgeons with routine surgeries….  And so, RNFAs took on that role.

One person I remember fondly was Noel.  I called him Noelito because he was Hispanic and barely 18 at the time he was hired to work in the OR as an orderly.  His job was to go fetch patients from the nursing units and bring them down to the OR holding area.

 

When patients were transported directly back to their nursing unit, without going to recovery, Noelito would assist the RN who had to accompany the patient and give report.  He was always busy and always willing to help anyone who needed help.

In the holding area, he would take time to make the patients comfortable, bringing them warm blankets and getting a nurse to answer their questions.  I was quite impressed with his demeanor and with his work ethic.

One day I brought him a book, an English-Spanish dictionary for medical workers.  Since he was Hispanic, patients naturally started talking to him in Spanish, a language he could not speak.  As he was standing at the desk in the holding area, determining what he needed to do next, I approached him and put the book down in front of him.

He looked up at me, and I knew he needed an explanation why I would buy a book for him.  My reply was simple: “you can go far in this world, if you want to…”.   He carried that book in his pocket all the time and I saw him looking up words in it more than once.

I mentioned in my previous blog that I was planting seeds with him.  I don’t think he was aware of how much he had to offer, or how much he was capable of learning.  I wrote that blog because I had seen Noelito at the mall.  Not Noelito the orderly, but Noel, the RN.  Since my departure from the OR, he had gone back to school, gotten his prerequisites done, and entered the nursing program.

I forgot to ask him if he still had the dictionary—the seed—that I gave him…

In today’s mail, I received the quarterly magazine from the hospital.  One of the articles was about their new Endourology services and equipment.  In the photo, dressed in an OR gown, gloves, hat and laser goggles, was Noel, RN.  But not just Noel, RN, anymore: he is now Noel, RNFA, having completed that advanced training, too.

I am not going to take any credit for his accomplishments.  He is the one who did all the hard work of going to school and working fulltime.  He is the one who balanced his new little family, his job and his schooling.  And he is the one who graduated, took his boards, and passed.  And then decided to get some additional training, too….

All I did, I think, was plant the seed….

Cali

Going Back...

I’m taking a scrapbooking class online:  daily word challenges.  We find the meaning of the day’s word in our life, write about it, and add a photo.  The purpose of the class is to help us learn to dig deeper and find what we really think about the everyday things in our lives.

Through posting my daily writing in the online gallery, I have met some wonderful women who share my love for documenting life as it happens.  Through our stories, we have learned about each other and how each of us approaches our life, today.

I feel a touch of the green-eyed monster as I read what others have written.  No, I don’t want to be somebody else, or live somewhere else, or have a different life.  Not really.  What I want is to revisit those wonderful days when my children were little.

I want to be a time traveler, going back a few decades in my own life.  As a time traveler, I can take all the knowledge and experience I have collected through the years and apply it to that time, back then. Perhaps I would make some different decisions, handle situations differently, or respond differently to the scuff and banter of everyday life.

Or maybe I wouldn’t…

Mostly, I would love the opportunity to just sit and watch my children.  Not fix supper, clean house, do laundry, or work in the garden, unless, of course, the children were there doing it with me.  I would know from all the life I have lived that I need to savor the moments.  Savor the special times that occur daily.  The words and voices that were my children.  The things they had to say…

I would discipline differently, trying to find out where the behavior came from instead of just punishing it.  I wouldn’t say “not now” when my children wanted to do something with me.  I would let the housework, or cooking, or laundry wait, instead of the children.

I would tell them how I felt about things and what I saw when I looked at them.  I would tell them how much joy they brought into my life, instead of telling them to “sit down and be quiet.”

Oh how I long for those little voices, those thoughts and ideas, and even that squirming and silliness.  Those days of innocence that pass too quickly, and leave a hole in an old woman’s heart.  I travel only through their photos for now, remembering and smiling as I look at each one…

There is a connection to that past that will never die.  It is emulated, closely, as I look at the faces of my grandchildren, catching fleeting glimpses of their parents at the same age.  I am sure that will come around again, with great grandchildren, if I am lucky.

But I really am lucky: my little ones are all grown up now.  They are good citizens and good parents.  And loving children, still….

Cali

All in a Day's Work....

Sometimes I look at what I have “done” during the day and chastise myself for not doing more.  Since I am retired, I can always do whatever needs to be done “tomorrow” if I want.  Ah, but tomorrow never comes, does it?

So, what did I have to do today that didn’t get done?  Truthfully, nothing.

Maybe I feel guilty because he spent so much of the day outside, mowing the lawn and working in the yard.  I don’t have nearly as much to show for my efforts today….. Let’s see: I have done two loads of laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, put some things away, and worked on my scrapbooking.

Is that enough to do in one day?  Does every day have to have monumental results?  Is there really anyone who would be impressed if I did more?  Or less?

Actually, there is more that I did today.  I was online, finding out more about Harald Hardrada.  He was the King of Norway and my 33^rd great grandfather, on my mother’s side.  Funny thing, he tried to conquer England in September of 1066 but died trying.

 

He was known as the last of the Viking warriors.  After King Edward the Confessor (of England) died, there were three men who claimed the throne: an Englishman, Harold Godwinson, a Norman, William of Normandy, and Harald Hardrada, King of Norway.

After defeating Harald Hardrada at the Battle of Samford Bridge, Harold Godwinson marched his army to Hastings to meet his other foe, William the Conqueror, husband of my 33^rd great grandmother on my father’s side, Matilda of Flanders.  Exhausted from the previous battle and forced march, Harold’s army was defeated by the Norman.  What my maternal ancestors couldn’t accomplish, my paternal ancestors could.

No wonder I’m so tired…

Cali