Sister Golden Hair Surprise

Well. We'll be out of here in just under a month. It's good and bad--we really have made a home here in Minnesota and it's too bad we have to leave it (with all the chaos that brings), but of course we are delighted to be able to see everybody we would not be able to see if we were not leaving our home for the summer. So it's a mixed bag. There are many complicating factors, of course, but the one that is on my mind right now is that someone is going to be living here while we are not. So I have to somehow make this apartment the kind of place someone else could live in. All the papers on and around the desk need to be sorted through and taken care of, some cupboards will need to be emptied out, clothes packed up to make closets available, incriminating evidence hidden, even some furniture will need to be moved, but i don't know where--maybe stand Stanley's bed on end in our room? Anyway. And it will have to be very clean, not just good enough to leave it for the summer. Everything will be different when we get back, too. Henry will be crawling around, standing up, and maybe even walking. Stan might be starting to read, and two of my skinny little friends will be sporting nice pregnant bellies.

On another topic, I have been going through PAF looking for people whose year and place of birth strikes me as interesting, and then reading about that place during that time--if that makes sense. It's a very engaging way to study history. When you don't know anything about a person but their date of birth and county, it's fun to find out what was happening during their life- what they would have been talking about and worrying about. There's a lot I don't know. For example, Tennessee was really on the borderline in the civil war--It was the last state to secede from the Union, and it could have easily have gone with the north. One county even threatened to secede from Tenessee and become part of (North?) Carolina if Tennessee stayed with the Union. Many of the battles of the Civil War were fought in Tennessee, with only virginia having more. It was the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the war, and because it was quick to pass an anti-slavery state constitution, it was the only state not subject to a military governor during reconstruction. Luckily, my guy died just before the war started, but boy! what must he have been imagining about the future, dying at a time like that! Especially when he was born there, in Tennessee, two years before it became a State.

Well goodnight.