Thursday, December 25, 2008
My Christmas Past - My First Christmas
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
My Christmas Past - My First Christmas as a MOM

Friday, December 19, 2008
Ice Storm
Thursday, December 18, 2008
My Christmas Past - Christmas 1968 - Or How I learned to smile again!
This was the year after the infamous "Christmas Slap" and right after my braces had been removed. I suddenly felt like smiling again.
© 18 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder
The 62nd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy Has Posted!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
My Christmas Past - Shoe Envy 1955

A Blog Caroling We Will Go - Part Two
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Happy Birthday Moe Dog!

Monday, December 15, 2008
A Locket of Hair, An old Christmas Recipe and A Family Bible - Three Genea Wishes for Christmas
Friday, December 12, 2008
A Christmas Caroling We Will Go
Thursday, December 11, 2008
My Christmas Past - The Mustachioed Christmas
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
My Christmas Past - The Christmas Slap

Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Graveyard Rabbits AND My Mutated Gene
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Today I cannot write
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
8 Things You Might Not Know About Me
Sunday, November 23, 2008
A Little Game of Scrabble
Thursday, November 13, 2008
November - I Weep
It seems only fitting, then, that November would house one of my worst memories, one of those before and after moments that people call “defining.” In the scale of things, it was just a small moment. I’ve come to realize if you scratch below anyone’s surface, you will find similar moments. I’m not special. God did not single me out, but at twenty-four, with a limited worldview, it felt as if he had.
In my mind, I see a little blond girl, smiling and running towards me with arms outstretched. I smile back. I reach for her, picking her up and kissing her warm forehead. It is a cherished fantasy, decades old. It’s all I have of her, my youngest daughter, Heather, the fantasy.
When Heather was born, she had massive birth defects. That is what I tell people, when I talk about it. It sounds much better than the truth. That as a seven-month preemie, she weighed over ten pounds. That her little body was so bloated with fluid it had crushed her fragile bones, and made it impossible for her to come down the birth canal.
The fact that she managed to survive for twenty minutes after her caesarean birth, might qualify as a small miracle, on a day when miracles were in short supply. I am haunted with the idea that she was waiting for me, and in one final insult, I let her down, not coming out of the anesthetic fog until after she had died.
Funny, when they told me she was a girl, for a brief moment there was pleasure. I hadn’t known until that instant how much I was hoping for a girl. In that instant, I forgot that a short time earlier I had begged the doctor to give me some small piece of hope as they put me under the anesthesia. His response had been a negating shake of his head.
How much of my grief-inspired insanity do I share? How much can you hear? Do you want to know that because I never held her or kissed her little cheek, or even saw her ravaged body that the ache of it can still make me weak?
Do you want to know that for months afterwards, every time I got into my car it somehow ended up in the hospital parking lot? Even I couldn’t understand the compulsion, until finally, one day, it dawned on me that the hospital was the last place Heather had been alive for me. The baby that had kicked inside me whenever I stopped rocking in my chair had disappeared. My mind and body were still looking for her.
Do you want to know that it would take five years, but eventually the event would highlight the growing cracks in my marriage, making a divorce the final footnote of the tragedy?
I wanted the world to stop. I didn’t care about someone looking for a new house. I didn’t care if they lost their job, or their plumbing stopped working. I wanted to shout, “My daughter has died! Nothing else matters!” But of course, as everyone knows, everything else does matter, and eventually, even I had to pick up the pieces and move on.
I hope that in your gravest moments of crisis you will find the same support and compassion I found in the cadre of women who nurtured and sustained me through mine. My mother, my sisters - Marcia and Lee, and my sister-in-law Nancy had the difficult task of withstanding all the vitriol and angst that I could muster. Over and over again, they let me cry, and rage and once done, let me regurgitate again all the bile that filled my soul. They must have wondered at times if I would ever stop, and eventually I did, when the well of bile finally ran dry. I don’t know how these women weathered my storm, but thank God, they did.
And so there was before, and then there was after. One day I was me, and then I was another me - not necessarily a better me, or even a worse me, just a different me. That is how life is.
Most of the time, it is behind me, though never lurking too far below my surface. With decades of practice, I can talk about it clinically, dispassionately without the slightest wave of disturbance. Except in November, when the sky is overcast and the calendar stares at me in defiance. Then I weep.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
For All My Sandusky County Kin Hunter Friends
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Sandusky County Kin Hunters Meeting Reminder
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Some Final Thoughts on This Election Day
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Ouch!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
One INTERESTING Week
Monday, October 20, 2008
Terry Accidentally Learns How to Make a Movie with Her Camera, Hah!
So, the other night as I am taking pictures for my ‘autumn’s here” post, I was screwing around, uh, experimenting with my digital camera’s settings, and I accidentally made the movie you see below.
I want to mention that this is the very camera, that I asked Santa for last Christmas in the Carnival of Genealogy’s “Dear Santa” edition. Jasia of Creative Gene expressed real concern for someone who was taking pictures on an old camera that still used floppy disks. So Jasia, if you are reading this, I wanted you to know that Santa was good to me, possibly because I pointed out your concern to Santa’s helper, who just happens to be my husband Al. I pointed to your words and said, “See, people PITY me.”
So it’s been what, almost 10 months now, and I can honestly say I haven’t read one word of the manual. Now this is something that drives my husband completely insane. He LOVES owner’s manual. He reads them, keeps them all nice and neat, and frowns and grouses around if for some reason he can’t find them where he is sure he left them. He will say things like, “Someone moved my blah, blah, blah manual.”
Okay, since we are the only two people living in the house, we all know who SOMEONE really is, don’t we?
So when I showed him my proud masterpiece and admitted that I had no clue how I did it, predictably, he said, “You really ought to read the manual.” Hah!
As for the masterpiece itself, you can hear me clicking the “picture taking whatjamajig button,” which of course it wouldn’t do because the camera was all like, I’m making a movie, obviously. I am so proud that I didn’t utter any swear words. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to show you my accidental baby.
Of course, in order for you to see it, I had to load it on to YouTube. I entitled it, “Terry Accidentally Learns How to Make a Movie with Her Camera, Hah!” which is longer than the movie itself, and is, in fact, infinitely more interesting than the movie. It’s probably going to become an overnight sensation. CNN will want to interview me. David Letterman will ask me to read the top 10 list. And my husband will look at me and say, “Oh, Terry, I see now that I have been so wrong to smirk with an annoying air of superiority because I actually read owner’s manuals and you alas, do not.” (What! You think the “alas” was too much?)
Okay, now you see why I blog. I have a ridiculously rich imagination. Sigh . . .
Until Next Time!
Geneablogger Tag
Monday, October 13, 2008
Reflections on an Autumn Day

I like autumn - cool evenings that call for the comforter to be pulled tight around you, the reds and yellows topping tree-lined streets in town. Sweatshirts pulled hastily over your head, as you run to the end of the driveway to check for the daily mail. I swear it was just spring. What happened to summer?


Sunday, October 12, 2008
Attention Fellow Bloggers - Blog Action Day October 15
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Sandusky County Kin Hunters This Sunday
Monday, October 6, 2008
Fly Killer
Thursday, October 2, 2008
I Read it in the News - Evidence of Collateral Damage
When people get divorced, whatever wonderful quality they first saw in each other, has long since vanished. What doesn’t vanish is their mutual offspring, something often overlooked by warring parties.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Geneablogger Gnome makes a visit to the Desktop Genealogist
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Getting to Know Me, Getting to Know Desktop Genealogist
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Strange Things A Happenin'
So being a Curious Georgia type a girl, I clicked on this new link to my old post, and what do you know, I end up on Cincinnati.Com’s very own online edition. AND THERE I AM IN ALL MY GLORY!
I’m giving you the link right HERE, but just in case they fix the darn thing, and you start thinking, “That Terry chick has finally gone off the deep end,” I took a print screen picture of me, on Cincinnati.Com’s online edition. Darn, I almost feel famous.


Terry
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