Paging Dorothy Wentz

I have always been fascinated with history. I can never remember it correctly, but I love learning about it. In fact, I graduated college 3 classes short of a history minor. I sometimes regret not completing it and wonder where my life would be now if the accounting program had not changed allowing me to graduate a semester earlier than originally planned. Who knows-maybe I still would have ended up right where I am today, and besides, what does one do with a history minor anyway?

An aspect of history that I find especially intriguing is genealogy. After all, it is because of my ancestors that I am here today. I have always been curious about my family tree, but it wasn't until my friend really started digging into her family history that I decided to do the same. Right now, I like her family much better than mine as hers is much more cooperative when it comes to being found! (At least from where I am sitting-I know she would beg to differ on one of her more convoluted lines).

In 2002, I took a beginning genealogy class through the community enrichment program at our local community college. Armed with new found knowledge on things such as pedigree charts, family group sheets and a multitude of places to search for ancestors, I eagerly dug into my and James' families with no rhyme or reason as to which line I was researching. If I got stuck on one, I would just work on another. It is a very frustrating hobby, but one in which the littlest find keeps you going. But some ancestors are much more frustrating than others. In my case, that ancestor is Dorothy Josephine Wentz.


Dorothy is my great-grandmother on my mother's side. The first record I found of Dorothy was the 1900 Federal Census, which shows her living in Ohio as a nurse in the home of Marc and Helen Rowe. By 1910, Dorothy was Mrs. Marc Rowe and the mother of his sons Albert and Oliver. Both the 1920 and 1930 censuses have the Rowe family living in Babylon, NY. The 1940 census has not yet been released; I have yet to find her in the 1880 or 1890 censuses, however, most of the 1890 census was destroyed by a fire.

Dorothy died at the age of 81 on December 21, 1954. Her death certificate lists her parents as Charles Wentz and Mary Hunt, with Mary typed and Hunt handwritten. Her death certificate says she was born in Philadelphia; they say they don't have a record of her birth. And naturally, I can find information on several men named Charles Wentz, but none that are married to Mary Hunt or father to my Dorothy. If I could just verify her parents, I would do a very serious happy dance.

There has been a lot of research done on various branches of the Wentz family in the United States dating as far back as the late 1700's. My grandfather told my mother several times that she should join the Daughters of the American Revolution and we know if there is a link that would allow us to do so it is Dorothy. I have read some very fascinating stories on various Wentz family members. It sure would be nice to prove that I am one of them. Fingers crossed, one day I will get the breakthrough I have now been waiting for for 7 years. And then, I can move on to the next elusive ancestor, Dorothy's husband Marc.

3rd times a charm, or I'll be moving soon

When James and I met, he had a lease that expired at the end of August 2000, and I had a lease that was month-to-month. After about 3 months, we agreed that we would talk about possibly moving in together after 6 months. By the end of 4 months, we were pretty much living together; I officially moved in with him after 6 months.

He had a small one bedroom apartment and when his lease was up, we moved into a much bigger two bedroom apartment in a complex our friends lived in. In March of 2001, they bought a house. We had never even talked about getting a house; now he wanted one too. Since I was the one who paid our bills, I thought we couldn't afford it. We had a lot of problems with the apartment and the front office and so we knew we wouldn't be renewing our lease and would have to find a new place to live before our lease was up in September. So, we decided that we would look into getting a condo and then after a few years upgrading to a house. The next thing I knew, we had a realtor, a mortgage broker and a pre-approval letter for $150,000. Eight years later, I am still wondering how that happened!

As we started looking around at houses, we made a deal: if we did buy a house, the garage would be for the cars, not storage. A novel idea, I know. It turns out we were full of novel ideas. In July 2001, we bought our first house-a cute 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch-style home with a 2-car garage. And we stayed true to our pact-the cars were parked in the garage.

Of course, having lived in apartments, we didn't have a lot of garage "stuff," but there was some that was being kept in boxes. Finally one day after we had been in the house for almost 2 years, I decided to unpack those boxes. A few months later, we moved to Arizona.

We spent the first 7 months living in an apartment, with most of our stuff in boxes in the garage, but we were still able to park the cars in there too. After that, we bought a house and once again, everything but the garage was unpacked. Finally, after we had been there for about a year and a half, I resigned myself to the fact we were never going home and unpacked the garage. A few months later, we moved back to Washington.

For the past 3 1/2 years, I have been afraid to unpack the garage. I love our house and I was afraid if I unpacked the garage, we would move again. I felt we had one more move in us before we were done, and we had been talking about buying a piece of property and within 5 years building our dream home. We were even talking about what features the house would have. But even with this on the horizon and seemingly in the future, I still wouldn't unpack the garage.

A few months ago, I went out for dinner and (really awful) karaoke with a friend. When we got back to my house, he asked if I had always parked on the left side of the garage. I thought it was a random question, but just answered that in this house, yes, I had always parked on the left. I did not tell my friend this, but there is a short post on the right side in front of the water heater and given my lack of depth perception, James was afraid I would run into the post and damage my car. He was probably right, and it probably would have happened more than once.

From time to time as I have pulled in the garage, I have wondered why my friend wanted to know if I had always parked on the left side of the garage, so I finally asked him, thinking there might be some deep psychological inferiority of the left side vs. the right side thinking behind it. He said it was because I had something bulky (leftovers) that I was trying to get out of the car and it seemed to him that it would be easier for me to get things out of the car if I parked on the other side of the garage. I told him that I didn't usually have a passenger and usually just put everything in the passenger seat, but I could see his point. I also said, "of course, I could just unpack the garage, and then I wouldn't have to maneuver around the boxes."

So there it was: after 3 1/2 years, I was toying with unpacking the garage. Three weeks ago, I finally broke down and did it. It looks great, and it is much easier to get things out of my car now. But this also comes at a time when I feel I am at a crossroads. I have been feeling lately that I need to keep moving forward-that I need a fresh start. And I don't know if I can do that in OUR home. Plus, now that my social (for lack of a better term) calendar has come to a screeching halt, I am realizing just how big and empty and lonely this house is with just me and two small end of medium sized dogs in it. So, I am considering selling the house and moving into something smaller. But I don't know if I can walk away from a house James picked out for me either. I really do love this house and there is still so much of him here, beyond the material possessions. I don't know that I can give that up; I don't know if I can truly move forward until I do either. And of course, there is the economy to consider. So, I have a tough decision to make: do I break the unpacking the garage "curse" and stay put, or do I continue the "tradition" and sell the house? I think in my heart I already know the answer. And I think those who really know me do too.

Bittersweet May Day

When I was a little girl, we would go around and leave flowers on our neighbors' doorsteps in honor of May Day. Of course, being that we had school, this wouldn't always necessarily happen on May 1st-it would usually be on the Sunday nearest to it. We would then ring the bell or knock on the door and run and hide and watch in hopes that someone would open the door and find the flowers. It was always so disappointing when no one was home. We would also hope the neighbors wouldn't recognize the flowers as having come out of their own yards. I wonder if anyone still honors this tradition-hopefully, without "borrowing" the flowers they leave behind.

I took pictures of these flowers the other day and wish I would have done it sooner. These flowers have special meaning to me. They were the flowers that were on the tables at the reception following James' funeral. It was hard to see them start to come up and bloom, and now that they are almost "done" for the season, I am saddened to see them go.

The Challenge: 30 posts in 30 days

Another blogger whose blog I follow posted that she had read about posting 30 blogs in 30 days on a blog she follows. She decided to try it. I decided to copy her and try it too. I figure with as much as I love to talk, coming up with something to say every day for a month should be a piece of cake. Plus, I find writing to be very therapeutic and I think it will help to get some of the thoughts jumbling up my mind out of my head.

So, starting tomorrow, my goal is a post a day for the month of May. Yes, I realize there are 31 days in May. I can be an overachiever every now and then.

You know you spend too much time at the office when...

You know you spend too much time at the office when you log on to Mapquest from home and are surprised that your address is not in your list of saved and recently used places. And then it dawns on you-you can't find it because you are looking for your work address.

6-Word Poem

I have been listening to the Top 40 radio station that James used to listen to on my way home lately. I would listen to this station more often but I cannot stand one of the morning hosts. Plus, I really don't like listening to people yammer on first thing in the morning so I listen to a station with very little talking and lots of good music.

Anyway, the past couple of days, I have heard a commercial for the morning show and apparently, at some point, they had listeners call in with a 6-word poem to describe their lives. I thought about it, and if I had heard it live and called in, this would be my poem:

"Widowed too young,
what happens now?"

I wonder if I would have made it on the air with that one? But, more importantly, I do wonder what happens now? I am not good with the unknown, and I'm not really a big fan of surprises. I know that I have to keep moving forward, as hard as that can be, but it would really help if I knew what it is I am moving towards.

What's up Officer?

I was pulled over tonight for the first time in my life. Granted there are times when I definitely deserved to be pulled over in the past since I do have a tendency to treat the speed limit as a recommendation rather than the law. Although after discovering that photo radar is not my friend, I do try to do better with that.

So here I was driving home from spending a very nice afternoon and evening with a friend when I notice flashing lights behind me. Given that I don't see well at night, it took me a bit to realize the cop was actually right behind me. I figured that since I wasn't doing anything wrong, he must be after the person in front of me. So, I signaled and pulled into a parking lot expecting him to just go past me. I was surprised to see him pull in behind me but not scared like I always thought I would be if my luck ever ran out. And then I had a moment of fear: "oh crap! Did I run a red light?" After all, if you are going to run a red light, it is probably best not to run the one right in front of the State Patrol office.

I checked to make sure my doors were locked and opened the window partway. He kindly asked for all the pertinent paperwork and I asked "may I ask what this is about?" He responded that he was going to mess with me and say "didn't you get the memo? No University of Idaho alumni are allowed on the road tonight. " I didn't have a response to that, which was probably a good thing. His real reason for pulling me over was because I don't have a license plate on the front of my car. I do have it; its on the floor in the back of the car. My little car kit to attach it to the car is missing pieces and there is only one authorized Mitsubishi dealership in the area and their hours are totally inconvenient. Looks like I am going to have to make them convenient.

In addition to driving with no license plate, I was also driving with an expired proof of insurance. I explained that I had recently switched and that was the temporary card but my insuance was valid. I think it helped that I had an envelope full of proofs of insurance.

After promising to attend Washington State if I ever go to grad school and after he verified that I really do have insurance, or whatever it is they do when they go back and sit in their car, I was complimented on promptly pulling off the road instead of just pulling to the side and blocking traffic and was let go with a warning for both the insurance and the license plate. Had I been ticketed, it would have been a $124 fine for each offense. I wisely did not ask "is that just your standard fine?" although it was on the tip of my tongue.

It occurred to me after I drove away that he may have actually been flirting with me. And even if he wasn't, I'm going to pretend he was. It's just more fun that way.