On This Day: Your History

[ER]

January 24:

1994: Went to college with my mom, who was taking evening art classes, and crashed a sociology course down the hall.

1995: In chapel we had a service for Rose Kennedy, who died at 104.

1996: Dana invited me to Lamaze with her, and the teacher kept saying “the three halves of tonight’s class.”

2005: Bought my first HDTV; 27-inches, paid $600.00.

2008: Visited Stonehenge, and was disappointed.

2010: Announced our engagement to our families in person, which seemed funny, but he said let’s do it right, so we did, sort of.

2011: My dad asked if I wanted to go hear Nicholson Baker’s talk at the Mercantile Library in May, and I said I would if I was home then.

2013: Our four-year-old was asking to get her ears pierced, which kind of freaked me out.

2015: Loved this VH1 scripted series called Hindsight, which had a woman from 2015 flash back to her life in 1995. Cool to see my era featured nostalgically.

2016: I was in the grip of weeks of sadness, which I kept telling people was not the same as depression, but only my Irish relatives got it and even knew a word for it, which unnerved me slightly, like it truly was in my DNA, but it was like after so many years the pain of loss had re-entered my life in intense fashion, and that morning I woke up thinking about something once said to me: “We survive everything together.” The fact we obviously didn’t seemed more painful than I could seem to banish, so I felt that remark all day like a long unrelenting deep-tissue bruise to my soul.

2017: Found out the corn snake we got my daughter for Christmas was actually a mislabeled king snake, which seemed even cooler, because that meant we could feed it a rattlesnake, though the name Cornelius no longer felt clever.

2018: My husband informed me our oldest often called him to tell when her siblings were misbehaving, and I asked if it might cure her of that if I showed her The Mob Book of Famous Rats, with its centerfold of a Brooklyn Necktie victim, but he said no.

2019: One of the interns at work, Livvy, was a colorful girl (the color being dark gray) and her thing was attending random funerals. I was playing hackeysack with her in the parking lot when she started telling me the guy in his twenties in the casket at the last service she went to was hot. It was too much even for me.

2022: Talked with my son about Lao-tzu and told him that except for his interest in guns, the way he lived was very Zen.
 
2023: Whole Foods donated over $300.00 in exotic cheeses to the food pantry where I volunteered. I came home and got an ASMR vibe off watching various faith healers and exorcists on YouTube. I don’t know why, but I truly did.

[ER]

January 25:

1994: For the first time that I could remember, my dad wasn’t coaching basketball that year.

1996: The worst flooding the region had seen since 1979 (yet 1997 would far outdo it).

1997: Played MTG with my friend Rob, and listened to Jeff Buckley’s Grace CD.

2000: Talked to my grandpa over the phone, and battling lung cancer he sounded horrible. My roommate, Jackie, who was receiving instruction into the Catholic Church, and whom I was sponsoring, asked me why I wouldn’t say a prayer for him. I told her if she wanted a sponsor who actually believed in God, she should look elsewhere. She told me I was indulging my own pride instead of making things be about someone else, and I considered that.

2004: My friend Hugh was launching a website for stories, fiction and non-fiction, and asked me to contribute a piece of writing. (It was a moderately successful, if unprofitable undertaking, but he tired of it after three years.)

2007: A dog trainer who went to Landon’s mom’s church said for $200.00 he could train my dog, Chocolate, not to chase deer. I declined.

2008: In Lyme Regis, and walked the wall, keeping both Austen and Fowles in mind while I did.

2010: Clare’s dad emailed me congratulations on my engagement, and it hit me to wonder how I was going to invite his daughter and not make her mad when I didn’t invite him, so I decided I’d call off the whole wedding, but Landon changed my mind by saying canceling a wedding because you loathe someone isn’t logical. (Though I think the unspoken word he had in mind may have been “sane.”)

2016: Took my green patch test in Krav Maga, learning new and creative ways to kick Arabs in the crotch.

2019: My surprisingly devout ten year old asked me to drive her to church, so she could light a candle and pray for my friend in Texas’s mom, who was stricken with cancer. She ended up kneeling and praying for an unbroken half-hour.

2020: Had makeup Christmas, as I’d been away for the actual one. I have a great family.

2021: After being away from home again due to work, though in this case for a shorter duration than in 2019-2020, I went home.

2023: My dog Bojack had surgery for an oral cancer. Ultimately he wouldn’t make it.

[ER]

January 26:

1993: Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors were supposed to play downtown, but that got canceled.

1996: Had exams in three classes, and cramps from Hell: not a good combination.

1998: The President denied he’d had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, and I figured eventually some accusation against him had to be untrue, a law of averages thing, so I halfway believed him.

1999: Watched Buffy while on the phone with my friend Rob across the country.

2001: Resisted feeling schadenfreude as this boy I knew named Greg complained to me about how much he hated his hideous girlfriend from Massachusetts.

2004: Great post-snowstorm fog that evening; couldn’t see a hundred feet.

2005: My cousin said the medicine for genital warts his friend was taking had the side effect of making his eyes paler than normal.

2008: In Cornwall.

2016: Decided my three year old was a solipsist, because she’d get upset if anyone suggested life existed in the world before she came along.

2022: Walked into the once a month session with a psychologist my job required, and the woman introduced herself as “a bulldog.” By the time the fifty-minutes was up, she’d made me dislike her almost to the point of violence.

[ER]

January 27:

1994: Left school at mid-day to have lunch with my grandma, and a girl named Andrea spread a rumor that I’d gone to have an abortion. A one-hour and back in class abortion…. really?

2007: Had a dream about the Loneygirl15 web series I’d been watching, that was like a complete episode.

2008: Cardiff, Wales, and woke up with a wheeze in my lungs.

2009: Four inches of snow fell, so I took my baby and my aunt’s children out in it, but came in and heard John Updike died. I’d written to him a few times and he was kind enough to reply, so it felt extra sad.

2010: To continue a coincidental theme, I learned JD Salinger, whom I didn’t like, and Louis Auchincloss, whom I did, both passed away. I remember mentioning that at the time in a post in here.

2012: Went out and saw The Grey with a girl named Sharon I used to tutor (before her dad perved out on me and I got fired for it) and with whom stayed friends.

2014: My five year old had a meltdown after spontaneously realizing: “Gramma Bee is going to die someday!” There’s only so much you can say to comfort that understanding.

2017: Found out one of our tenants shot himself after a breakup with his fiancé, who was on suicide watch himself afterwards.

2022: Because we were being goofy, I tried to talk Clare into wearing her old Catholic school uniform with me to Starbucks, but she wouldn’t. I told her her brother was possibly the only guy I knew who was actually turned off by Catholic schoolgirl uniforms, so I’d change clothes when I went to see him at his place after class, and she said, “Good for him.”

2024: Woke to the heartbreaking news that my long-troubled cousin-in-law was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, after her psychological state deteriorated to the point she’d spent the night claiming her husband and son were “imposters” and someone had taken her real husband and son and were hiding them from her.

[Trevor]

Saturday 27 January 2024: I had the best poo I've ever had. Still a bit dizzy 😑🥴😉

[ER]

January 28:

1991: My teacher wouldn’t let me make a cross-section of the Tower of London for History Bowl.

1995: An ice storm hit the city.

1997: My dad told me about the long history of my best friend’s mom, a nice lady but a serial adulteress, hitting on him over the years our families lived down the street from each other, and for some reason his nonchalant dismissal of her attempts to flirt with him amused me rather than left me mad. Perhaps to his detriment in the end, my father has spent his life very deeply in love with my mom, who can sometimes be less than rewarding to those who love her.

1999: Saw Shakespeare in Love, and thought it was unworthy of the praise it was garnering.

2005: My dear friend and almost sister-in-law, Clare, told me she was going to get married.

2008: In northern Wales.

2009: We got a foot of snow, and the sky that night looked like a pale blue opal.

2011: A friend told me she’d once had a “devil’s three-way” a yucky term I’d never heard of.

2012: Went to a commitment ceremony two women had at a Jewish social hall.

2017: Cleaned up a house we owned and leased out, which had been the scene of a suicide by firearm. Somehow you assume the police have someone they send out to sanitize the environs after such an incident, but no, absolutely no, and it was unpleasant work…

[ER]

January 29:

1991: My neighbor called to say she was going to the hospital to have her legs checked for blood clots, and asked that she be prayed for, but with: “Just regular prayers, not Catholic.”

1994: I wrote this haiku: Leafless trees swaying/On this winter night so cold—/In my room, I write.

1996: Roger Morgan, from AP Group, told me he and his parents were growing “a hydroponic, ultra-high THC Northern Lights strain of marijuana.”

2000: A mentally-maladjusted boy named Ryan was berating me and when I ignored him he pushed my head against a wall, then went, “Got your attention now?” And you know, nothing ever happened to him for doing that.

2006: Pea-size hail fell.

2008: Through the Cotswolds and the English Midlands, up to Manchester.

2017: We were all a little intrigued and concerned that my godson seemed to be showing signs of synesthesia, which his uncle had. Ultimately it came to nothing.

2019: Someone told me these great lines: "Time is the school in which we learn;/ Time is the fire in which we burn."

2022: Drove my daughter to Maplewood Farm, in Richwood, Kentucky, to see sites associated with Margaret Garner, who in the mid-19th century tried to escape slavery by crossing to Ohio, where she fatally stabbed her child, fathered by her “owner.”

2023: Took my youngest to see Shen Yun (for the third time in my life), a beautiful extravaganza of ancient Chinese dances, which the Communist Party has tried to shut down.

[ER]

February 2:

1991: Threw my best friend a surprise “unbirthday party,” and she spent the night afterward.

1994: My dad and my Uncle Lark, Dana’s dad, went to the Kentucky-Alabama game, each rooting for a different team and having one of their ever-bizarre non-money bets going on.

1995: Scheduled my driving test for next Saturday. I could not wait to be a driver!

1997: Brian and I climbed to a hilltop in Kentucky, and found where a Civil War gun battery had been installed by the general who later wrote Ben Hur.

1998: I missed home, missed people, and I didn’t eat in that state of mind, which made things worse.

2002: Saw Gosford Park while out and about with Landon.

2004: My cousin Alison told me for the first time in several years of long stints in rehab her father no longer had guardianship over her.

2005: Told Hugh down in Austin that I had gotten back together with Landon after coming home, and he was so disgusted he said, “No wonder women have been conquered and subjugated throughout history, you all do incredibly stupid things where men are concerned.”

2006: Went to the NICU to see my best friend’s niece, who was born prematurely, and who looked much better than I’d seen her on our last visit.

2008: In the Lake District when my dad told me one of the most beautiful churches back home caught fire, and I felt devastated.

2011: My cousins-in-law Vince and Lindsey over for a movie night, and saw Blue Velvet and Blue Valentine. Ugh.

2016: Found out a high school boy I used to tutor died.

2019: Took the children to a fire fighters’ museum.

2022: It was 2/2/22, so we kept doing things twice.

[ER]

February 3:

1996: Brian had some money come in and bought me a new dress, which I wore to my dinner at my Aunt Christie’s house, where we stayed til eleven, and it felt like life was wonderful.

1998: Saw Apocalypse Now with my roommate, and found it a dreadful movie.

2000: First read a Harry Potter book on this day.

2002: Found out my cousin Jared eloped and got married. They’d have a church wedding down the road.

2006: Let my new puppy, Chocolate, sleep with me, and woke to find she’d peed all over my bed.

2007: Went to the opening of a major Andrew Wyeth showing at the local art museum.

2008: In Glasgow, Scotland.

2015: Thought for a while my late Aunt Christie’s (adopted) eleven year old daughter Alba might be coming to live with us, but she decided to be with her sister, Alison, instead.

2017: Sobbed over an article about a dying seagull, which my husband insisted was not actually such a terribly sad thing, but I think deeply-buried emotions can find a way of hitchhiking out.

2018: Finished reading a 900-page science dictionary my mom got me for my birthday in 2014.

2019: Went to a chocolate-tasting event at Spring Grove Cemetery: interesting.

2020: At the Israeli Film Festival, Edie and I and saw The Spy Behind Home Plate, about Moe Berg, a pro baseball catcher and an OSS spy.

2022: The region was pounded by a sub-blizzard ironically dubbed Winter Storm Landon.

2023: Drove my ailing father in law around town to get him out of his house, and emerged believing---ultimately correctly---that he was planning to soon take his own life.

[HappyGilmore]

February 3, 2024: first big bowel movement since getting out of the hospital. The combination of painkillers and anxiety pills keep me backed up. I finally went. I needed it. Also took about 15 meds to help recover from my accident. Little depressed but I'm alive.

[ER]

^ Mazel tov! 

[ER]

February 4:

1994: Saw Ace Ventura Pet Detective with a girl from my school named Jamie, and two boys from the local public high school. My grandma teased me about how cute she thought it was, me going out on my first date, and I thought may she never know about all that went on last summer….

1996: Went to mass with my grandpa, it was nine degrees outside, and the furnace in church was not working. The priest’s breath steamed when he spoke, the most interesting thing I’d seen in church since I watched a bee climbing in some woman’s hair years before.

1997: Warmest February 4th in area history, in the seventies; at lunch went to the library with my psycho-nerd classmate Roger Morgan and looked at a USA Today which had photos of Carl Sagan’s memorial service in it. He cut the pages out and when I said, “You can’t do that!” He said, “I did it for you. Here.” He was probably the closest to a fearless, nihilistic person I’ve ever known. (And he never seemed to blink.)

1998: Blizzard of ’98 hit back home, “butt-deep” snow, but I was away.

2019: Clare’s dad paid me to sit in on a business meeting with Taiwanese, because it was the custom that one matched them person for person, the same number of men and the same number of women. I did nothing but sat there, yet he still insisted I take the money, though I did keep saying I’d do it for free. Through many good and bad parts of knowing him since I was a teenager, during some of those times I used to halfway wish for his death—and once I saved his life---he has always been generous toward me.

2021: Took a lunchtime field trip to a candy shop, and saw a Monopoly set made of solid chocolate!

[ER]

February 5:

1991: Rumor was Dave Thomas was coming to open the new Wendy’s up the road.

1998: 11.6 more inches of snow fell back home in one day, breaking a record.

2002: My cousin Alison came to my house wanting me to help her pass a drug test, and when I said no she ended up throwing a big fit in front of my cousin Dana’s two year old son, Tyler, whom I was watching, even breaking my car windshield, making Dana, last-trimester pregnant, want to pay someone to beat Allie up. Family, huh?

2005: Went out in the company of my neighbor Tilda, possibly the wildest woman I’ve ever met, while she drank excessively at several establishments around town, and made any other woman in the place look like a Victorian governess. I also discovered that night that she wore wigs and her head was burred down to stubble. And that she was aggressively bi-sexual. And liked me. And was a candidate for a future #MeToo post. And that getting drunkenly pawed at by a woman’s unwelcome advances is no more enjoyable than if a man is doing it. And that I could definitely live without her friendship.

2006: Saw Golda’s Balcony at the Aronoff, where Valerie Harper portrayed Golda Meir in a good play that I enjoyed.

2021: Said a sentence that has likely rarely been said, when someone I knew told me he was getting a vasectomy the next day, and I asked: “Want me to drink a toast to your vas deferens, for you?”

[ER]

February 8:

1994: At school everyone was talking about the American Music Awards the night before, where Shannon Hoon got arrested for assault, and I didn’t watch it!

1995: Got to go with my grandpa and my dad and pick out my first car, a blue 1995 Ford Taurus, which I’d own for six years.

1997: Saw Dante’s Peak, which Brian liked and I didn’t.

2008: Drove north from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, and the Highlands. (Or Grampian Highlands, as they said there, or sometimes apparently just “the Gramps.”)

2010: Walked through the woods in calf-deep snow with my dogs and badly twisted my ankle when I slid on some buried, frozen leaves. I was out at night in the pitch-dark with a major snowstorm over the horizon, weather in the low-teens, nobody home or knowing where I was, so I saw it as an ordeal to rise above, and save myself.

2013: Took a nun who used to be my teacher to her favorite restaurant, Olive Garden, and she said with the early Lent that year people were still in “a winter mentality.”

2015: After my Aunt Christie’s death, her sister, my Aunt Judith, said I could have her books, and it was such a sad thing to take them from the house where my aunt would never again be.

[ER]

February 11:

1991: My mom brought home multi-colored taper candles she made in her art class.

1995: Passed my driver’s test, and later that day very nearly had sex for the first time.

1998: I only had 450 calories that day; taped Dharma and Greg for my roommate, who had to work, and who made me promise not to watch it without her, an oath I had little trouble keeping.

1999: Got asked out by an Indonesian guy named Mando, and when I declined, he asked if I was racist, and I said, “Ohhhh, no, it’s not because you’re Indonesian, it’s because you’re Muslim!” He laughed and said he wished I’d change my mind. Nice fella, actually.

2000: Dana told me her mom was trying to micromanage “the f**k” out of our grandpa’s illness, which may explain why he would soon spend his last months not allowing anyone to come see him.

2004: My employers told me I had to close my LiveJournal account. They did like this place though.

2005: Still living like a he-slut a year after his divorce, Hugh in Austin told me he was dating a twenty-five-year-old virgin, to which I said, “Oh, well, no potential for a boatload of trouble there, huh?” Spoiler: there was!

2006: While driving to hear Robert Polland, Guided By Voices’ front man, Landon and I got caught in the worst white-out of our lives, swirling snow, couldn’t see brake lights in front of us at five car lengths.

2008: In Dublin, showed Landon Slieve Windfarm, the museum, and had remarkably good Thai food. Bonus fact: it’s possible our daughter was conceived that night.

2009: Tornado watch, and high winds knocked power off in the middle of Lost.

2018: Because my boss was a dickus maximus, as you might recall from my copious complaining about him in here at the time, I had to go to a disciplinary hearing. No big deal, just annoying, but I called him an a***ole on the record in the hearing and nobody cared because it was so undeniably true, and one on the panel even rolled his eyes to me about my boss, who didn’t last on the job, while I made it to retirement, so I’d say I won. I hope he’s selling door to door life insurance at a right-wing militia complex now.

2019: Nineteen year old Tyler told me he was hittin’ it at lunchtime with a sightless man he met on his job at the Library for the Blind, then met some other guy downtown for another round after work after finding him hours earlier on an app which had a logo of a thick screw going into a stainless steel nut. How has that boy made it to twenty-four?

2021: My friend had a vasectomy, which he described as “really very manageable as far as the pain went.” Even I kind of winced about it though.

2023: Bought gear for thru-hiking the Arizona Trail with my college roommate’s brother and his family, but our plans eventually fell through, which I felt was more unfair than the holocaust.