I did not write for two nights in a row, something I don’t think I have done since July 26th. Between helping Annika with a paper, Elias having the flu, and me being in a funk, I could not bring myself to sit down to write. The truth is, Annika and Elias have nothing to do with my not writing. I didn’t write due to my funk, my bad mood, my am-I-going-to-work-for-this-jerk-forever fugue state. I started to say I don’t know how people who write for a living handle bad moods and not feeling like writing. I know. They write anyway, when paying the bills depends on it. What I will say is that I deeply appreciate the effort that pushing through the bad mood requires now, in a way that I did not before I started this stupid blog idea.
I am going to write about my great-grandmother Jean Riddell Marr but I want to start with a picture from my grandmother’s album of her grandfather, Andrew Riddell. Got that? It goes Andrew, Jean, and my Grandma Jeanne – who assembled the album. I have more pictures of Jean and her family, but fewer stories and less information from Ancestry.com than I have about Nelson.
That’s my grandmother’s handwriting on the back of the picture. Why is the picture that shape? Was it cut out of something else? And why did Grandma write “great-grandfather”? Did she originally create the album for my father and uncle Mike? I mean, Andrew is their great-grandfather. So when did she make the album and was there anything else she did not include? And why in the hell is Andrew dressed up in full Scottish regalia?
Argh. I just spent 45 minutes on f*%king Ancestry and got nowhere, except that now I know my great-grandmother’s middle name was Andrewenia. So, I guess I have confirmed that she’s the child of Andrew … which I already knew. Still, kind of interesting, too.
P.S. As to my overcoming my funk, it is just a meeting with the HR guy but I got an initial interview on Monday. So maybe I will not work for the jerk forever. Hope springs eternal.
P.P.S. He’s not really a jerk. He’s just got a lot of problems, working with women older than him, among them.