Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Secret Weapon of Women

The dress. Yes, my friends, the dress. Put one on and suddenly you get all of these compliments. Put one on and you somehow feel pretty, more feminine. Put one on, add some simple jewelry and you have an instant outfit – no standing in front of the closet holding up combinations of shirts, skirts, pants, sweaters, and capris together only to put it on, not like it, and start over again.

I am that someone who has spent many a day changing outfits, putting on one shirt and then another and then changing my pants and then my shoes until my husband says, “What are you doing? You looked fine with what you had one 10 minutes ago.” Yeah, well, I don’t really want to look just fine, thank-you-very-much.

So, last summer I happened upon some GREAT dress deals at Target (we are talking like $8 and $12 here) and I was hooked. I wore the flirty 50’s style shirt dress and the navy blue and white seersucker all summer long. So, when fall rolled in, I invested in two sweater dresses. One of which I am wearing today.

This past Saturday I moved my summer dresses up to the closet – ready to go once the weather gets warm enough. Ready for those days where I need a little pick-me-up, a little instant-pretty.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

climbing my family tree

I’ve been doing some genealogical research in preparation for our trip to Ireland which is both fun and maddening (going through loads of census records without getting a drop of new information can get pretty boring). Here are some of my gleaned insights on the Gormley family:

1. Don’t name your son Henry. It doesn’t seem to end well since three of the Henrys in my family tree died prematurely.
2. Don’t tell the above tidbit to your brother who then confides that Henry is their top boys name. Crap.
3. Don’t go logging. Two men have died via logging. So, dad, stay away from cutting down trees, ok?
4. People were not real original with names. In three generations there were 6 Thomases, 5 Peters, 5 Janes, 6 Henrys, 5 Sarahs, and 5 Margarets.
5. It was apparently ok to marry a cousin back in the day… thank goodness that was not in my direct family tree…

What the family tree doesn’t tell me is what provoked my widowed great-great-great-great grandfather to immigrate from Ireland with his nine children just before the potato famine in Ireland. Why did they settle in Canada before heading to Michigan? All of the census records in the world aren’t going to be able to tell me that. Which makes me want to lug a tape recorder to my three living grandparents and record their stories. Not just the where and when and what but the why and the how.