A Twiddling of Thumbs

John flew to Germany this morning on an " on-again, off-again" trip...which was on again as of last night. He's due back early Saturday morning and so will be losing a weekend day and a half, but gaining a couple of extra days he can tack onto his vacation. In the meantime, I'm here in the apartment with not a whole lot to do this week since I seem to have some easy-going professors this semester...one's who aren't exactly pushing the school work or assignment thing very hard. In one class (which began in mid-January), I've only had one quiz and one assignment. The assignment was supposed to be just a "weekly" assignment....but so far, 9 weeks in...it's been the only thing we've had to do. The syllabus lists a mid-term project but that date has come and gone, and according to the class schedule we are still on material that we should have been done with by week 3. Not impressed....at all.

The other class has been a little better, except this guy isn't into teaching so much...he has assigned 3 projects (out of 7 for the term) but he hasn't taught us anything yet. I guess we are supposed to figure out how to do these things on You Tube or by digging up tutorials on the web. My kids would laugh at me, complaining about not having enough work to do, but I really need this stuff to keep me busy. I am contemplating a mall trip....


And then, of course, what is going to happen when those boys down there in Dallas wake up and realize that they have let us get way behind? Maybe I should send out an email or 2 to let them know I'm going to be in Greece for 6 days next month, and therefore not to expect anything from me for a couple of weeks in April. Yeah...I can see that working...

I've been told that the internet service where we are staying can be spotty. And who knows, Greece might not have any internet service by the time we get there. AND....I want this to be a vacation with no internet (except what I can get on my iPhone). I can't believe that our holiday is only a month away! I've even started to mull over packing in the back of my mind which something I rarely think about more than a day or two in advance.

Maybe it's all of the travel booking I did in the past week that's got me itching to go again. We are now set for summer vacation to Halifax and a trip with the kids to New York to celebrate our 30th anniversary (WOW!). John wanted us to go to Paris but logistically New York would work better since we have to take the trip in the middle of the N.S. holiday. I booked us into the Doubletree in Times Square and got points tickets for the 4 of us. Can't wait! We really had a great time the last time we went there together. Much better than the camping trip to Prince Edward Island in 2001 which was supposed to be our very last family vacation ever.....yes, it was that bad....took us 7 years to recover.

Okay...well...I guess I should go work on the really long multi-part entry I've been picking at for months and months....or I could go and see if I can stay awake through a few more chapters of my book...or see if it's my turn in any of my Facebook Scrabble games....

(*Walks away in an aura of self congratulation for actually typing a few paragraphs without having to get up and do something else, instead....like check the TV guide for tomorrow....or something.*)

Going Back To The Very Beginning....Part One

Those of you who have been around since the very beginning of this blog....all 3 of you (YAY!)....since day one....might be interested to hear that I have FINALLY made contact my father's family. It wasn't the simple matter I expected..... using that phone number...nothing like that. That phone number would not have worked since my aunt, Elizabeth, died in 1998 when she was just 60. So, back in 2006, I didn't know I was already 8 years too late. Of all things, it was another death in the family that got me moving along this path after so many fits and starts....and it turned out to be a much more convoluted journey than I ever imagined.

You know how every once in a while you Google yourself just to see if you're sort of, kind of, maybe a little famous? Well, I was doing that one night, and there wasn't anything interesting about me coming up at all...in fact, none of the other Sally's were worth reading about either. So, I started checking names I knew from my father's family....just because. It's not really cyber-stalking is it? I just wanted to know if any of them were famous, too. Usually, nothing at all comes up....especially nothing that lets me know that an of these random people are my family members.

Anyway, I got a surprise when an obituary popped up, and it was for my cousin....one who was about 15 years younger than me. From his obituary, I learned that his father....my father's brother, Roy...was also deceased. I Googled him and ended up on ancestry.com where I found, and entered an email conversation with, the sister of my uncle's 3rd wife. God bless those who do the genealogical heavy lifting for the rest of us. She included what information she knew about the McMullin family in her family tree. In her family tree, she had recorded the death of my father and also his sister, Elizabeth, so that's how I came to find out that Elizabeth had died. Both of them died from brain aneurysms at age 60.

The sister of the 3rd wife was encouraging and seemed really excited to help, but my timing wasn't so great with a death in the family just happening. I told her not to bother anyone for a while. I was in no hurry for information or contact (obviously).

I didn't hear another word for over two years. I didn't know if she had told them I had contacted her or not....I wondered that maybe they didn't want to bother with it....just some long lost cousins...and maybe they really didn't need anymore cousins. Either way I had let it go for the time being. The only information that I was able to gather from the sister of the 3rd wife was that my cousin had died of a heart attack.

My uncle, Roy, had passed away on Christmas Day 2007. She told me that my father had been married many times....at least 5 but there was speculation as to the number of divorces....sounded like there might have been fewer....or things weren't necessarily done in the right order. My uncle had taken his ashes home to be buried in New Brunswick.....and that was about it. I think that was enough to stew on for a while.

Before I go any further, I probably should step back and organize the who's who of the McMullin family.....it gets complicated (understatement).

To begin....My paternal grandmother (Elizabeth Sullivan Cyr) was married twice. I am not sure what happened to her first husband. My mother's version of events has Mr. Cyr being killed when he worked on the railway. No matter....at this point, I suppose. What does matter is that it left my grandmother a widow with 3 children...Glenwood, John, and Glenna. She remarried, to Weldon McMullin of Perth-Andover, New Brunswick and had 3 more children...the oldest was my father Wendall (he went by Jim), then Elizabeth, and Roy.

My grandmother's first husband was an American and I think the first 3 children were born there (*turns out the were born in New Brunswick*)....my father and his sister, Elizabeth were born on the Canadian side of the border, though Roy was born in the hospital in Fort Fairfield, Maine. Unfortunately, my grandmother died, at the age of 39, on Halloween, the day after Roy was born, from complications of child birth.

Upon her death, Weldon (or "Stubb" as he was known), was left with 6 kids to look after. He was a young man in his 20's and wasn't able to care for them all, plus a new born...so the family was split up. The older boys were adopted by their American grand parents and given the last name "Sullivan". (Though census record show Glenna and John as having retained the last name "Cyr"....No wonder it's been so hard to find people!). Glenna, then a teenager, remained in New Brunswick to help care for Jimmy and Elizabeth. Infant Roy, as a new born, was too much to take on so he was given to another family for raising. Roy remained with that family until he was 6 years old. Unfortunately, the mother of that family passed away and he was returned to the McMullins by the father. I can't imagine how traumatic that must have been for a six year old.

At this point in the timeline there are still many big gaping holes. I know John served in the US Navy and died of malaria that he contracted in the South Pacific. When Roy grew up he left New Brunswick and, by virtue of being a US citizen, was able to join the US navy, too. My father joined the Canadian one. Elizabeth married and moved to Fredericton.....she might have studied nursing but I am told she really wanted to pursue a career in music.

I had no idea what happened to Glenn and Glenna. Mom said she new Glenna was married to a man who ran a hardware store in Fredericton and she had 2 adopted children, Pam and Butch. Elizabeth and her husband had 4 children...Moira, Grace, Mary Sue, and Will. I remember the names of the 3 girls on the Christmas cards Elizabeth sent my mother back in the 60's....Will was born in the 70's, but by then there was no longer any contact between his mother and mine.

I thought there was a shot at maybe finding out something about Elizabeth's 3 daughters since my gut told me they had probably grown up in Fredericton. Using their maiden names, I searched on classmates.com of all places. It seemed to make sense that there wouldn't be a lot of high schools in a small city like Fredericton and sometimes, classmates.com gives the married name and the maiden name. I tried Fredericton High School guessing at approximate graduation dates. My hunch paid off because I found them....and from there it was off to Facebook. One of the cousins had a profile picture that so resembled my sister, Patty, that I knew right away I had the right person. Her photo albums were public so for the first time I was able to get a glimpse of what people in my father's family looked like. And was able to discover a little bit about their lives.

continued in Part II

Will John Have A Fit When I Suggest We Adopt Her?

This apartment has finally been put to rights...which means that we switched out the sofas and ours are nestled comfortably in the living room, while the landlord's set is cowering under some gawd awful slip covers I bought at the grocery store. It's a bit crowded out there on the supposed-to-be-lovely terrace because we bought a patio table and chair set for six....complete with umbrella, and a deck box. We really have to get rid of those sofas....somehow. The landlord isn't taking our calls.

I got around to hiring a maid through an agency and, this time, had the forethought to make sure my keys were handy before she arrived for her first day. (See "How I Met the Maid" back in 2008) The doors, here, are the same as they were in Baku...you need a key to unlock them from the inside, and if someone wanted to, they could lock me in here, and take away the key....not that's ever happened before. Hmmmmm....

So...Charo, the new maid, shows up on her first day. My first thought....this isn't really the maid, but a girl who had gotten lost on her way to school. She's so tiny! In my head, I keep referring to her as "minute maid" because that's about how big she is.

As it turns out, she was 21 and had been in Dubai for four days. She was a little shy but managed to tell me that she had come from the Philippines on a two year contract. She had left her two daughters, age six and one, with her husband and she was finding it tough to be away from them. I can't imagine....I asked her when she could go home to visit them, and I think she said it would be at the end of her contract. I hope I have that wrong....it's so long!

On her second day Charo asked that if I had anything that I don't need or want she would be more than happy to take it off my hands. I tried to get her to be more specific about what she needed but she just said "anything". She didn't have a pillow and I got a bit sheepish about the two king size beds resplendent with 8 pillows each! And I still had ones I wasn't using....

I've made a couple of trips to Ikea to pick her up a few things, though I wish I knew what she needed the most. The other day she fished some wire hangers out of the trash and asked for those. She's always very grateful for a bottle of water and accepts all offers of juice or soda. She eats her lunch (a small bowl of rice with something on the side), here, before she leaves for her next place. At first she asked permission to sit on the floor in the foyer to eat, but I insist she sit at the diningroom table. I sit and chat with her, and am learning what a sweet young woman she is. She thinks I'm very kind, and I think she's very strong despite being no bigger than a minute. I wasn't sure I would see her again after that first day, she seemed so homesick, but she's still here trying to earn money for her family back home.

I do wonder, though, if a little bird has told her about my last place of residence because she only refers to me as "Madam".

This One Will Get My Gold Status Back...

Okay...so this is going to sound redundant...but I'm packed. Again! We are off to Halifax in a few hours because John's sister is getting married on Saturday, which also happens to be Mom's birthday. Speaking of packing and its sister activity, unpacking, I am relieved to report that this place is starting to look like a home. Maybe, even a little bit, like my home....er...better make that our home. It was touch and go there for a while but the 10th floor balcony railing hasn't beckoned yet. Things must be looking up.

All this moving around from place to place can become a voyage of self-discovery, especially when you see yourself repeating patterns of behavior. I've learned that we are "rent furnished apartment then get them to remove it all within the span of a month" kind of people. We did that in Denmark, right down to the carpets...with good reason, mind you...but still. We weren't looking for a furnished place at all this time. We had things from Denmark in port waiting for us. We had a housing allowance to fill in the gaps...but wouldn't you know it? The furnished place had the best view, and the most quiet location, and it just looked better on first glance. Not so much on the second, third, and fourth glances. Maybe it was the lure of saving a lot of money on curtains for floor to ceiling windows, I'm not sure.

When we looked at the place, the landlord agreed to remove whatever we didn't need (like his crusty ironing board for starters). We moved in within a week of first viewing and the day of our walk through (yes, it's as complicated as buying a house to rent one here) he sent some guys over to collect the things we didn't want. They took some of the things and said they'd be back for the rest....haven't seen them since. In the meantime, I've decided that there are few more items that need to go, mainly the living room sofas. They're off white and they're dirty....so he could clean them, just like he cleaned the off-white dining room chairs (not!). But....they are the most uncomfortable things, ever, masquerading as living room furniture. I have not been able to come to a resolution of this issue with the landlord, but I have picked out a new set at IKEA. The set we had in Denmark is on the balcony masquerading as patio furniture. Given that the chances of it ever getting wet in the rain is nil....I think it will do nicely out there. I even bought dust covers for it. Hope those covers fit the landlord's sofas because I'll be swapping them out to the balcony for mine if he refuses to cart them off to the dump. Apparently, his willingness to remove furniture from here was contingent on him having a place to put it in another rental. I've been told by our handy-dandy agent that all of his places are rented out and he isn't able to fob this piece of crap off on any other tenants.

Oh, well....his sofas can join his rugs out there. They were so dirty, and no one showed up to clean them as promised....we folded them up and dumped them on the balcony. I wonder if there is storage in Dubai....we'll hand him the keys and the locker number when we vacate. What's another storage unit, eh?

In other news, we bought a gas barbecue on the weekend. A couple of guys dropped it off yesterday afternoon, all put together and ready to go. Though I think I have to set up gas bottle delivery or something. Everything is delivered, here. Everything! Laundry, groceries, Subway, coffee...you name it, they will bring it to your door. I'm trying to wean myself off laundry pick up and delivery, but it's hard....

And I'm not sure where I put the iron when I unpacked it.

Packing....Well.....Thinking About It

I came back to the in-laws tonight. I figured it was time to survey the damage I had done since John left, and took part of the spoils of war with him. He was a brave soldier and marched four big suitcases all the way from here to Dubai. He did this so I would only have to hump two....he's such a thoughtful gentleman, my husband.

Unfortunately, it appears that my rate of consumption increased after his departure and it seems that two suitcases are just not going to be enough. It would be lovely if three would hold all the loot.....but an in-depth examination of the contents of the shopping bags piled in my room, leads me to conclude that one more trip to the Bay is in order. I do believe they had Samsonite 60% off this week. Hmmm...better check the flier before I push everything off the bed and hit the hay. There might be a door-crasher!

I have no idea what I was thinking! I mean...it's Dubai I'm moving to, home of the "Shopping Festival" I would be awfully surprised if I couldn't by king size sheets there....or kitchen towels...and an apron....and some salad forks....how about notebooks? address books? green pepper savers? pots and pans? coffee mugs? quarter socks? purses and sandals? make-up? hairbands? sunhats? Sigh....I have easily 40 pounds of books.

Oh...wait....I remember now...we are going to Dubai in order to save money. I wasn't planning to spend anything when I got there. (You can quit laughing right now!)

On Sunday, Mom and I are driving to Fredericton to see Carolyn, Andrew, and the grand-puppy, Veda.


We've never really been to Fredericton but, even if they have stores, I won't be buying anything bigger than a pair of earrings. Since Carolyn will be turning 26 a week after I'm supposed to be gone, we'll celebrate her birthday while there. I should fill up a bag full of miscellaneous new household items and give them to her for a present. I know she'll be thrilled...there is nothing that says domestic bliss quite like new tea towels. And let me assure you, I have excellent taste in them. Nothing but the best for my girl...

In order to get away for one night, Mom has had to arrange for Patty to come up to her place to babysit the princess. No cat boarding for "Precious Purrs Brandi Girl Morning Glory Delight"**.


Today, Mom mentioned that she'd like to have another Royal Dalton for Christmas....and since neither Patty nor I are enamored of them, we're pretty sure she is building a nest egg for the care and feeding of the cat for the rest of it's natural life....or until it turns rogue like the others.

**I think this name was a passive aggressive way to make Patty take a cataplectic attack....try and say it without laughing...just not possible.

Eight Days to Find An Apartment

I swear...by the time I get to Dubai, there won't be one drop of oil left in the middle east! John has to make a trip to Indonesia next week and since he isn't going to be back until the 18th, we decided I might as well stay here longer. That will give me time to return the things to the Bay that won't fit into my suitcases. Luckily, I have discovered Facebook Scrabble...that should keep me out of the bars at night for while.

Today I feel like a helium balloon on a winter's day....

My Visa Is Here!!

John submitted it today, after chasing around a bit to get another stamp on our marriage certificate. We are definitely married for sure now! This means I am free to go anytime, but we've decided to keep it on the 14th. That gives me time to pack.... buy more suitcases if need be.....and to go see Carolyn in Fredericton next weekend.

John says he's sent for our things from Denmark and they'll be arriving at the end of the month. So...two weeks to find an apartment once I get there. I'd better practice my rope tricks if we're to get that done on time.

Now that I've managed to spread myself, and miscellaneous and sundry related objects, between here and Dartmouth, the time has come to take stock to see just what I've got, and what needs to come with me, now. I don't suppose I will be needing a suede jacket or any hoodies in Dubai, will I? My eleven pairs of flip flops will definitely have to fit....and I'm still on the prowl for another pair those Clark's one I bought a couple of months ago on sale at Sears. For some reason, all of the store owners in Halifax and surrounding area have decided that the beginning of summer (sad to say it was the 2nd week of August this year) was a good time to remove all of the flip flops in favor of leather boots. Bad retailers!

No one has wanted to hear about it, but I've been Christmas shopping (and wrapping all week). I'm quite proud of myself. I even have a box of Christmas cards sitting on Mom's dining room table waiting for me to address. I'll just write the Christmas letter while I'm away, print it and stuff it into the pre-addressed envelopes when I get here in December....and pop them off into the mailbox. The only complication will be if Mom stashes them somewhere out of the way after I'm gone, and then forgets where she put them.

Another semester began this week...two classes this time; one on the History of Communication Graphics, and the other on Design Communications which is essentially a comprehensive Dreamweaver course. I've been a little slow out of the starting gate, as usual...but I have been picking away at the first week's assignments here and there over the past few days. I can't believe that I of the "thousand notebooks and journals" has been caught at the start of school without an eight and half by eleven scribbler. I really need to make notes for this history class from the text since the format for evaluation is a weekly quiz based on a study guide. The instructor has also given us a 20 pound hardcover textbook that I have to lug to Dubai without John's help. Should be fun since the book for the other course is about the same size and weight. They are going to need their own seat on the plane...

This summer I completed Advanced Photoshop....kind of timely since I've been presented with a bunch of crinkly old photos in the past week that really need fixing up thanks to my grandmother's habit of keeping her pictures in an old purse.

Here are a couple of projects from that Photoshop class....I did redo a wrinkled old picture for one of them but I liked doing these a lot more. The first one was to design a book jacket...real or imaginary. I chose to make it all up.


The second one was to do a full size movie poster, same thing...make it up or use one already out there. Made it up again...thanks to Rob for "Whispers" or it would still be called "Title Goes Here".



And so it goes....I have a lot more to write about, not the least of which is meeting Jill and her family....last weekend for the first time and again yesterday. But, I need to some time to do that justice. Let me just say for now that it was great! Photographic evidence.....



And so ends another blog that begins in one direction and ends up completely in another.