Category: Our Traditions

One day, I hope to write a memoir. Not to publish or distribute. Just a  way to maybe connect with future generations of my family. Llewellyn’s journal has made me feel connected to her and I want to recreate that in some small way.

If I were to write my memoir, I’d include all those funny child anecdotes, and not to mention all those teenage years where I was unruly and needed a good talking to. I’d be sure to include how I dealt with the fact that I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. All that drama and deep thinking wouldn’t be a very accurate portrayal of my life. To be perfectly honest, we’re pretty funny in this family. Our family is not only filled with drama, loss, and tears. We’ve had a whole lot of laughter too. The latest adventure I’m definitely putting in my memoir. It would be titled “The Comedic Chapter”.

You see we’ve had a battle going on since we put our new house on our property. We lived in a trailer here forever and never once had an issue with anything. You put a shiny new house on a lot of land and all of a sudden you’ve lost all street cred in the neighborhood.

The first year there was a mysterious incident where our mailbox was infested by ants. When I say infested, I mean INFESTED. After much discussion, we don’t believe there was any reason for it but hooligans. You know the type.

Six months after the infestation, our house was broken into. The only things taken were an X-Box and a bag of quarters. Well and the laundry hamper they used to carry it off. Again, HOOLIGANS. We have all kinds of shiny equipment that would make anyone drool. Yet it wasn’t touched.

The second year (or six months after the break-in), our mailbox fell victim to a rash and rare case of Mailbox Baseball. We’re pretty sure that’s what it was since the box was only hanging on by a nail. It wouldn’t have been so bad except we were the only mailbox affected along the whole street.

The third year, our signpost was physically picked up and thrown onto the pavement. How Rude! When I say physically picked up, I mean they had to use force because we’d gotten smart and started sinking things pretty deep. The signpost was shattered on the hard surface of Highway 235.

This Saturday was our breaking point. Things just went too far. Only this time, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Well, no one’s fault that we can prove. On Saturday morning a police officer knocked on our door at 6:30AM. He was informing us that our mailbox was involved in an accident on the road. The kind police officer handed over what mail he could find in the dark and gave us a information booklet about being the victims of a crime.

When the sun came up and we could finally go out and survey the damage. We were all shocked to see the carnage left behind.

This is all that survives of our mailbox. The poor box was shattered. We’ve just put up our new box. It’s only temporary while we get a battle plan together. Gosh darnit, we will not be victims again. My idea to paint stop signs on the box was rejected.

This is what I would put into my memoir. This is a peek into our everyday life. Dinnertime conversations can be anything from politics to ways to thwart mailbox vandals. It’s at least a way to break up all the monotony of everyday life. This is what I find interesting. You never know what a future family member could take away from it. Will they call us the eccentric nutjobs? Maybe they’d keep reading in hopes of finding a sitcom like chain of events? Or maybe they’ll take the advice given and get a big, oversized dog to chase off any would-be vandals. It seems to work for my neighbors.

It’s been so busy around here this week. My Aunts and their husbands visited for the first time in like 30 years this weekend. So we were busy cooking, catching up, cooking, and revisiting some old haunts. It was definitely a great visit. I’m getting much better at prying information from people. Don’t worry, there was no harm done, but sometimes you just have to steer that conversation back around to why Grandpa’s family practically disowned him. It’s just vital to my getting to sleep at night. Many things my Aunt told me, she said if I ever published before she died, she’d haunt me forever. Yikes!

We definitely have a project we’re working on though. Our own family cookbook. We have a very basic binder in the shed we can use. Everyone is going to send me some recipes for it. The ones that don’t, well I’ll just bug them until they do. The idea came about when I was showing them the Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant Cookbook that I wrote about earlier. Both of them loved it so much they immediately had me order them both a copy. They should have them by next week, if not the end of this week. So that’s something we’ll be working on, and we hope to finish putting at least a first copy together by Christmas. We’ll see how things go!

Unfortunately, because my Ohio Aunts were coming, I had to miss my annual New York Moore Reunion. My dad and siblings went, but I stayed in Maryland to help Mom with the company. I don’t regret it! I did miss not seeing everyone but I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot of family stories when everyone was cutting loose. Now all I have to do is log them in One Note before I forget all the who, what, when, wheres.

I’ll keep everyone informed about how the Recipe book is coming!