Whether you have plans today or are just staying in. May your Saturday be an awesome one. Stay safe, keep warm. Peace!
I made it to Sydney for my birthday today and the weather really put on a show. Short sleeves and sun hat and 500% good mood despite feeling like I nearly died a few times on the fucking roads. Getting thoroughly spoiled for the weekend. Made a few professional contacts this week too which was rewarding
E: thanks everyone for the lovely wishes!! Somehow lemmys notifications weren’t working so I saw nothing until now when I’m just about to go to bed and thought I’d check the dt. It’s actually great not being on a device all day. I’ve decided I’m going to go on more long trips and get through the backlog of Conversations with Richard Fidler
Man. Both my parents recently did ancestry kits. My mum’s dad was adopted so it was nice to work out where she really came from and she’s connected with a long lost uncle (I think I’ve mentioned that in the DT before)
But 90% of the stuff that has come out has been both fascinating and a headache. As the family academic historian, the job of wading through the shit has fallen to me. I love it but god damn once skeletons are out of that closet there’s no way to put them back.
Through ancestry we’ve found out that adopted grandfather is likely the result of family sexual violence, which is why the family wiped all record of him and long lost great-uncle never knew he existed; mum’s mum is not related to her parents at all, not anyone else in her family. She’s actually the child of a young girl that lived down the street who was 16 at the time she had nana. The father is the 46 year old father of her friend; it’s likely that the woman who, according to the new family tree, is nana’s niece, is actually also her sibling, which means old mate had a sexual relationship of some kind with his daughter.
I was just helping dad this morning. Populate his family tree and BAM. Ancestry gives us his grandparent’s marriage certificate, but also 4 OTHER marriage certificates in the name of his grandfather, with other women all over the world. And no divorce certificates. 🤦♀️ old mate had 5 wives and god knows how many children.
Is it too early for wine?
At this point I’m just like, come at me. Oh, incest? Is that the best you’ve got? Bigamy? Unregistered adoptions? Child’s play.
You wanna know the worst of it all?
Mum was always interested in the family history, but the older generations were VERY cagey about it all. When mum’s nana died, mum went around to the house where the will had just been read out to her grandfather. He told her, “your grandmother wrote you a letter explaining the family history and left it in with the will for me to give to you. But I was too incriminating to too many people, so I burnt it.”
To this day, when me and my cousins get together we get drunk and ask each other
What 👏 was 👏 in 👏 the letter 👏???
Burnt it? How dare they! That’s going against a deceased person’s wishes! For shame. No disrespect to your grandpa intended, but I feel almost superstitious about that stuff. As executor of my late mother’s will, there were things I didn’t agree with, but in the end they were her wishes and not mine.
Dear lord. I’m the sort of family tree person in my family and thank goodness no skeletons like that unearthed on my mum’s side. Mostly just war survival stories or unfortunate alcos/gamblers. There’s one pedophile but that’s been known for over a decade.
Dad’s side, we already had the bomb dropped on us when I was 18 and found out he had a whole 'nother TWO families in different countries and three children between them, one of which was born after his first grandchild. I’m not interested in finding out any more.
But your mum’s parents, christ on a bicycle. I wonder how she’s been coping with the revelations too
Tinyest is still not happy. We’re trying a dummy. He hates it, but refuses to let go till he spits it out. I tried to remove it and got smacked. I didn’t know he had that level of hand control!
Korean fried chicken and crispy lettuce sleeves 👌
My first tip is really more a superstition than a tip. If you spill salt, you have to flick some over your left shoulder and you might as well flick some over your right too for good measure because my Nana said so and she lived until her 80s.
I wonder why this is such a prevalent superstition. Salt as a means of purification is a big thing in Japanese culture and Shintoism as well. That’s why the sumo wrestlers throw salt over their shoulders before they run at each other. A lot of restaurants have little bowls of salt at their front door too and sprinkle on the sidewalk to ward off bad luck.
I know a few grannies who throw salt outside the front door when they’ve had a visitor that they did like/didn’t want to come back
The devil reportedly sits on your right shoulder, so you are throwing salt in his eyes so he doesn’t steal your soul.
