Introducing Myrna Conrad

Wow! Today my cousin Myrna Lusk McLean (daughter of my second cousin Rita Conrad Lusk) posted a picture of her grandparents' oldest five children (who lived--Mary was both born and died in 1942). So, my "Uncle" Lou, whom I have already written about, was actually my father's cousin. Uncle Lou was the son of my Uncle Milt and Aunt Josie.  Since he and Dad were always very close friends as well as cousins, and since his wife, "Aunt" Ethis, was actually factually my Auntie Beulah's sister--well, we just always called them "Uncle" and "Aunt."

Uncle Lou and Aunt Ethis had four five daughters: Rita, Myrna, Mary, Jeannette, and Judy; and three sons: Larry, Doug, and Burton. Myrna was one of the reasons behind me being named Myrna. But I have never seen a picture of her before, and I was pretty excited to see one today on Facebook!

Jeannette, Judy, Rita in the back, Myrna holding baby Larry in 1946

And I have to say--wasn't Myrna so cute?

She was born 4 Feb. 1939, and died a victim of the polio epidemic in Alberta in the early 1950s. So, 6 August 1952 was when she died. I, for one, am so grateful for the polio vaccine.  Because I grew up knowing how Myrna had died of polio, and also Kathy Francis Turner's mom, LaRue, who did not die, but was crippled due to polio. Actually, if you say "polio" I think of LaRue and Myrna always, immediately.  Only before, I thought of LaRue in a picture, and Myrna as just a name, because she died before I was born, and I never saw a picture of her. Until now!

Here is a picture of LaRue, just so you know what I think of when I think of her. Although this post in not her post, but Myrna's:

I think I already told the story of how Rita came up to Marie and I after her baby girl was born, and said, "Guess what the baby's name is?" and we couldn't guess, and she said "Myrna" and that totally miffed Marie, because Rita was her REAL cousin, and not mine. (Marie's first AND second cousin; only my second cousin.)

Anyways, this is just so I can save the picture of Myrna here!  How happy it makes me to finally see her! (And Larry's daughter, Shannon, remarked on her dad wearing tights--so I mentioned how they used to dress babies in baby clothes, and they didn't care about the gender so much. I think sometimes that was the right idea.)

This prompted me to go looking on Family Search to see if there were other pictures of the Myrna I Never Knew...and there is another one!

Myrna, Rita, Jeannie in front. Uncle Lou holding baby Judy and Aunt Ethis

Anyways, MYRNA. So nice to meet you! (PS: If you look on Family Search, there are now TWO pictures because I added the other one.)

Why don't we...?

I just finished reading Azar Nafisi's memories of growing up in Tehran. It was a good read, though I really wonder WHY was it in the Juvenile Collection. It seems totally like a grown-up book to me, though of course it starts with her memories as a young girl.

Her family was quite prominent--her father was the mayor of Tehran back in the days when my high school friend Debbie McKenzie and her family were living in that city. Her mother was a member of parliament during that blip of time during which women in Iran were given that opportunity, before the Shah fled the country and the Ayatollah Khomeini attained power.

There was a little girl in Kelli and Abbi's dance class in San Diego in 1980-1981 whose family had moved in 1979 because of the revolution.

All these memories and connections, and thinking about Iran now...

Well, I just wanted to quote from page 306, her thoughts upon the death of her mother in 2003: "Why don't we pay more attention to those we love? Why don't we ask them more about every little detail, about their childhood, about how they feel, what they dream of, and if they are tired or don't want to talk, why don't we insist? Why don't we keep every photograph, take notes, why don't we ask others about what they know, those who were there before us, those who know things we don't?"

Why, indeed. Well, I have been trying to record what I can remember by answering the 52 questions. I guess it is time to get back to that!

The fashion choice of vogue...

It can be a good thing to have Amazon Prime.  Like, the plug on the HDMI cable broke, and HDMI cords are much less expensive on Amazon than at the local stores, and with Prime, I could order a new cable and it would be here tout de suite. So I ordered a set of three cables at a great price...and then Amazon said, "Oh, but, what about this maxi dress? It is only $3.99! Don't you want it, too?"

Well, I was not sure where this dress came from...so many of the clothes on Amazon come from Asia and the sizes can be hard to determine. So you order them, and then they come and are for teeny tiny people quite a bit smaller than you. But $3.99 with no shipping charge? Might be worth it, just for the fabric. So I bit.

The dress is lovely. It is definitely worth $3.99. Plus more.

 Now I wish that I had ordered the one in black and the one in navy, too. Because now that I have it, and I like it, I would be happy to have a few more colors. But the price has gone up. I had been worried about what the quality of it would be, so it seemed smart to get only one. It fits beautifully, although it is a bit long, so I will need to hem it up.

BUT, the tag is almost the best part:

I wonder what they were trying to say?  What do YOU think?

Welcome to my nightmares

I used to have horrible nightmares, pretty much every night, until I was a great big grown-up mother. With almost grown-up children. Just ask my kids to whom I have told some of my nightmares--they were truly terrifying. I started to write one of them once, thinking I had a horror novel on my hands, so why not use it? But actually, writing it down was so dark, so black--a place I didn't want to be. So I stopped writing it.

Well, last night I had two nightmares! Bad enough to wake me up! But...I have to say, they were pretty pansy nightmares compared to the good old days.

Nightmare 1: I was in bed sleeping, but heard knocking at the door so got up to answer it. I was in our old house in north Orem, which became apparent when I got up to answer the door because that was the architecture I was navigating. I opened the door (normally, there was a screen door there which I would talk through without opening, but in my dream, there was just the one door--no screen) and there were two men there. One was standing right at the door, the other one a bit further back. The one in front said, "Have you ever wanted your own personal robber?"  I said, "No!" He said, "Well you have one now!" and made a lunge forward, but I quickly slammed the door and locked it. Then I had to run around and make sure all the other doors were locked, which created quite a bit of frenzy for me. There was something weird about the back door--it had a kind of chain on it which was the only thing holding it closed. (And which that back door really did not have in real life.) But fortunately the men did not go to that door. They had gone to the neighbors, and then I saw them run to their car, which was parked in my driveway.

And then I woke up, sort of scared, and heard actual noises. And realized they were kitchen noises. It was 1:35 AM and Patrick was having a post-midnight snack.

Upon reflection, that dream was not scary at all! It was just stupid.  But I knew where the worry about checking the doors came from--I have my eye on a house that I really like. The house has been for sale for months now--I toured through it in June or July last year--and the price has been going down. It was $360K when I first looked at it, and this week, they are asking $309K. I really like the house...but it has SIX doors. How do I check them all at night, without having six people who are at the doors simultaneously locking them all at once? Because it is a really big house...

Nightmare 2: I was trying to find a place to curl up and take a nap, but every soft place in the house was covered with stuff! (And I really hate stuff laying around out of place.) Every bed, every couch! I would jump up onto the couch, and just stuff everywhere! It was so annoying! And then some conscious part of mind realized that I was the CAT. I was Winter, Josie's cat.  From her point of view, not being to lay down and sleep on something soft was a terrible nightmare. She (I) was very distressed about that.

And then I woke up, all distressed, and realized that I was laying in bed, and I was NOT the cat. And the cat doesn't even live with me anymore; she lives at my niece Carlie's house.

And that dream was not scary at all either, even though to my cat self in the dream, it was terrifically unpleasant, and enough so to wake the real me up!

I think I know why I had that dream, too. Patrick has been having a lot of trouble with his car lately. First the back window popped out (he has a convertible) and so he brought a lot of stuff into the house from his car (he carries A LOT of sports equipment and coats and clothes for all sorts of weather and activities around with him) and plopped it on the couch. Where it stayed for awhile. And then yesterday, his car wouldn't start, and he had to move some of his stuff into my car, and also I saw the stuff in the trunk of his car that he didn't move, but imagined where he would put it if he had to bring it in from the car...like on another couch, probably...)

After waking up from that dream, I went back to sleep, and amazingly, remembered both dreams in the morning. If these are nightmares for me now, I will take that. So much nicer than those awful, horrible, shaking with fear nightmares of the past.