2009 Christmas morning and for some reason it's not as exciting as when the kids were home, or even with the grandchildren. This morning I didn't get up early and was lazy all day. We are stormed in. The lane is plugged solid and since both of us are unable to do a whole lot of shoveling now, we await the convenience of the snow clearing person. That's alright tho', it turns out to be a day of laziness and whatever. Another day, we will all get together.
I telephoned our daughter Noreen last night and told her not to come out at all and we will make it another day. Maybe New Years.
I am going to take this time to think back to even before I was married. The first job I ever held was at an old folks home, a private owned one.
It sure was different to what the homes are now. It was not very nice.
My second job was as a waitress and if you can imagine it, I earned 25 cents an hour. I can't figure out how we survived on that, but somehow we did.
Ron was working for $1.00 an hour on construction and that was when Noreen was small and Reg was born. We lived in a four room house with running water, but the bathroom was a pail down in the basement. I had no washing machine as such. I used a plunger to wash clothes and wrung them out by hand.
Eventually I did get a wringer washer and that made things so much easier. I can't remember whether it was oil or coal for heating but the main register in those old houses was one big one in the middle of the floor. In this instant, when you go from one bedroom to the next, you have to cross over the register or go out into the living room and then into the other bedroom.
Wooden cookstove, which I was terrified of but still used it and I had a treadle sewing machine. So different from today.
It was there we found that our daughter was deaf and within a short period of time moved from there into Winnipeg where we could get schooling for Noreen. There we lived until she turned old enough to live at the school and then we got to see her on weekends.
We then moved back out of the city to a little place called Wood Bay, no longer in existence. A mile north of #3 highway on # 34 highway, our youngest son was born.
I am going to back track here a few years to before Noreen was born. Ron went up to Thompson to work in the mines and he found a job for me there as a waitress. I took the train up north to Thompson and there I was taken to a company house where I had to stay. We couldn't stay with our spouses on the campsite where the men stayed. It is no longer done that way.
I went to work in Sinclairs restaurant while there. Noreen was born there.
From Thompson we moved back to Wood Bay and from there to Killarney where I went to work at the Tianon Cafe. Henry and George Yuen. George later went to work as head chef at the International Inn in Winnipg.
I worked for a number of years there and when we discovered that our daughter was deaf, we moved to Winnipeg where we went to live in an apartment not far from the Manitoba Clinic a block from the Womens pavilion. this is where my youngest son Marvin was born.
Enough for today, I will write more later on. Take care everyone have a safe and happy holiday and New Year of 2010.
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