Saw my parents off earlier this morning. The visit was good but my house does seem a bit small when it has more people than just me in it. (It's just under 1300 square feet but part of that is storage space).

I feel more...myself...after spending time with my family. I suppose it's because they are people who understand me without my having to explain anything about myself. And I do have half of my genes from each parent.

I didn't do much craftwork while they were there - I did get my sister-in-law's purse finished just under the wire to send it back with them (so, no picture, but I will share one of my purse made off the same pattern when it's done).

I did, with my mother's help, get all my leaves raked up and scrape the leaves off my roof, and clean the gutters. That's a good end-of-season chore to have done.

And my house is still clean. I just need to do a bit of sweeping this afternoon and maybe spot-clean the kitchen floor (2 people + small kitchen = tendency to spill). So this will be a pretty good relaxing weekend.

They also brought a dvd that one of my cousins made (apparently he has a small business where he does "video memorials" using pictures and documents from a person's life). He had done one for my grandfather (my father's father). My one complaint is that there were only captions; there was little detail on things. Like, my grandfather was an early, early flight instructor in what was the precursor of the Army Air Corps in WWI, but there's little about it other than that he trained in Illinois and Texas.

One thing about my grandfather - I only knew him very close to the end of his life. He looked much different as a younger man. When his face was serious, he looked not unlike W. H. Auden, but when he smiled (particularly with one particular haircut - cut fairly short on the forehead) he looked like a less-handsome version of JFK.
(When he got older, he reminded me a bit of Carroll O'Connor - you know, Archie Bunker.)

My father takes much more after his mother, I've decided. There were a few pictures of her in there - both as a young woman and also, as I knew her well, when she was in her 60s and 70s. (It's funny...my grandparents, when they were in their 60s and 70s, seemed to look a lot older than the 60 and 70 year old people - even ones who don't "have work done" like my parents - that I know now. I don't know if it's partly a function of this current generation mostly still having their own teeth? My grandfather - one thing I remember a lot about him - he didn't keep his dentures in unless he needed to and that did affect his appearence a lot. Or is it simply because I'm a lot older now...I'm actually more than halfway to 70 if you think about it...and so it doesn't look so far off as it did when I was a child? But then again - seeing the old photo of my grandparents in their 70s, they still look old-old to me, and my parents don't).

I think I look a little like my grandmother did when she was my age except my nose is more like my mother's - sharper and a bit longer. I think - as best I can judge from black and white photos - that my coloring is like my grandma's. And my body shape is definitely hers; she tended to be fat* even as a fairly young woman. (One of my cousins - my dad's youngest brother's oldest daughter - is almost a spitting image of my grandma except she is thinner).

(*well, not FAT fat...sort of plump and rounded. Rubenesque, if you want to be nice aboout it).

Actually, you know, that's not such a bad thing because when she got old she still looked nice - she didn't have a lot of wrinkles and she had an open happy face. And her hair went white and it was quite beautiful, she really worked to keep it nice. So if I look like my grandma, and she aged well, maybe I will age well too.

My father is pretty instantly recognizable to me in photos, even photos of when he was a kid. His face has not changed that much over the years. There was one photo from 1965 of the three brothers and their dad - my father has almost a crew-cut and looks serious (he would have been married about 5 years and in his first professorate), my oldest uncle (the middle son) is grinning (he ALWAYS grins in photos); he probably would have been beginning med school. My youngest uncle looks serious and a bit grumpy but I think he would have just been coming out of teenagerhood at that time.

Anyway, it was interesting to see the dvd, lots of photos I had never seen before. I know now that my great-grandfather on my father's father's side is buried in Mt. Olivet cemetery in Chicago. (He managed a shoe store and died quite suddenly in 1904; apparently he was well liked by the other employees because they chipped in and bought a second memorial - that says it's from the 'grateful employes [sic] of Holden Shoe Store' on it). Apparently it is still there.

But, as I said, I'd like to see more stories attached to the photos rather than just photos. There are all kinds of cool stories about relatives in my family that I only know bits and threads of - there was a great-uncle who was an opera singer, and another who invented and made brass scientific instruments and supposedly there are a couple patents to his name but I've not been able to find them on the Patent Office website.

Today, I'm in work because I need to
type an exam
grade a quiz
write a grading key for the take home exam I'm collecting Monday
look over some research my dad is doing, he wanted some input
maybe finish one stage of some of my ongoing research.

If I am diligent, I can be home by 1 pm I think.

Tomorrow I am going to relax a little and go antiquing - something I haven't done in a while; it seems lately my trips-to-Sherman are mostly flying trips to get things I need, rather than to take time browsing. Or maybe I'll come in here and work on research; I don't know.

One of my goals for the coming week or two is to bind the various quilts I have that I haven't put bindings on. My mom wanted to see them all (& took pictures to share with her quilting group) and I now have four quilts that need a binding.