Tonight I am so grateful for intuition. I have been cooking Liesl's meals for three days now. I am happy to report that she has not had any need for Benadryl for about 21 hours. She had been in need of one every 5-6 hours and it did not seem to be helping much. I am happy to report that we both had a good night of sleep last night. Other than giving Liesl a Benadryl at 2:30 am, I slept a total of 10 hours straight. I was awoken at 8:30 by a pair of puppy arms landing on the bed and having a big black nose up against my nose. There was a look in her eyes that said, "Breakfast is not going to cook itself..."
The other benefit beyond the lack of itching is that Liesl is SO happy after she eats her dinner. Tonight she had salmon, rice and broccoli. Coincidentally, I had the same thing. LOL Now Liesl loves her some salmon. I suspect she is part grizzly bear. I think if given the opportunity, she would devour an entire salmon herself. So she was very happy after dinner. She came over to me with a big smile and her eyes all bright and sparkly.
It was a pretty good day today. I treated myself to a pedicure. The place that I go to has the massage chairs, which are awesome. Then the nice lady who did my pedicure did a really thorough foot massage. It took everything I had not to fall asleep in the chair. It was so relaxing. I read my magazine, too. It was like a little mini vacation.
I also got to stitch tonight, since it was so peaceful. The Lady of the Thread is really coming along nicely.
I also got to indulge in my other hobby tonight-genealogical research. I have found that I really learn about myself as I learn about the people who have come before me, and basically laid that groundwork for the life that I have now. I have shared in the past that on my mother's side of the family, most of the family came from Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. Most were silk workers, which is somewhat funny since I have always had a real love of silk. I love raw silk and super soft silk. My great great grandfather came to this country with his siblings to work in the silk mills in Paterson, NJ when the silk trade moved there.
Most recently, after working on that side of the family for the past ten years, I decided to research my father's side of the family. I know that a family tree exists somewhere for his paternal line. What was really interesting to me though was what I discovered about his mother's side of the family. I had seen a census report that her family was Bohemian. I did not realize the full scale of the Bohemian influence of the family going way back.
What I have learned since my discovery is that Bohemia was a country that was 2/3 Czechoslovakian. However, it also contained part of Austria and Moravia. When people hear the term "Bohemian" some tend to think of gypsies. Bohemians were actually mostly farmers. During the middle of the 19th Century, there was a large exodus of Bohemians from Europe to Nebraska. From 1856 to World War I there were 50,000 Bohemians in Nebraska.
My grandmother was Austrian Bohemian, however, her family also is made up of Czechoslovakian Bohemians as well as Moravian Bohemians. I was not totally aware of these cultures in the family make up and I am absolutely fascinated. I was really fascinated to see that my great grandmother was born on an ocean freighter in the Atlantic Ocean on the way to America. I love to see their names-Magdelina, Frantisek, Josef, Ludmila, Vaclav, etc. In a way, I feel like I have known these names all of my life.
So I truly honor my ancestors and think about them a lot. It is because of the choices that they made that I have the life that I have now. It must have been really difficult to move to an entirely new world. When most of my entire family from both sides were immigrating to America, this country was only about a century old. I have to wonder what they thought awaited them. It took so much courage.
No comments:
Post a Comment