I decided I had better hurry and post my autobiography so here it is. I have very, very few pictures of myself so this is the best I can do. The first picture is of my son, James, and me the day Peyton was born, and the second one is of me and Peyton.
In my 2003 autobio, I asked if you ever have shared your peanut butter sandwich with your dog. At the time we had three Maltese dogs, Poppy, Juniper and Tashee. Since then, I became a foster mom for Northcentral Maltese Rescue, and several fosters have passed through our home on the way to their forever homes. We also adopted one, Pal, and our precious Poppy went to Rainbow Bridge in May 2008. We have two permanent senior fosters. The seven of us live in Diamondhead where Tom and I have been since 1984. We were married in 1982, and the story of my boyfriend (Tom) and our marriage is on the blog.
My biggest family news is that on July 23, 2007, a new grandchild arrived. His name is Peyton, and he lives with his mom, Regan, and his dad and my son, James. He is our joy and dream come true.
I have two children, James and Paul. James moved from Atlanta to Meridian several years ago. He and Regan are continuing the process of renovating their home on the historic register at 2329 Poplar Springs Drive. James is in real estate, and the name of his company is JDH Commercial Realty. Paul is the father of my other two grandchildren. He and his family relocated to Germany in 2003. He was in the Army, attached to the military hospital, but left this year to work as a civilian, basically doing the same thing. He and his wife bought a home and love living in Germany, in a little town with 30,000 U. S. citizens.
My life changed drastically in 1995 when I had heart surgery, a quadruple by-pass. As a consequence, I took early retirement from the U. S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans. In “retirement” I have continued to work, mostly part time but sometimes full time. I have a dream job now in that I work four days a week, about one mile from home, come home for lunch, and wear jeans. I’m the bookkeeper, secretary, assistant and other titles for a local business. The folks I work for are very nice, the stress is low and so is the pay.
My husband and I are professed members of the Secular Franciscan Order, which is a third order instituted by St. Francis of Assisi within the Roman Catholic Church. This also has been written about on the blog. My husband (who was once very, very anti-Catholic) and I are converts to the Catholic faith. We are intensely obnoxious to some and merely passionate to others about our love for the Church, Saint Francis, and our dogs. We are in love with these and each other. In our circle of Catholic and Franciscan friends, we are normal and similar to everyone else. Outside this circle, others might think us aliens.
Beyond my job and our dogs, much of my time is devoted to work for Our Lady of the Pearl, my Franciscan community. I have held office on Franciscan councils, but mainly serve as their web designer and author for one website and two blogs and provide other computer services. I also serve on the board for Concordia Ministries, Inc., and authored, designed and maintain its website.
Peace and all good to everyone and your families. I’m looking forward to seeing you in October.
2 comments:
Ouida, thanks for sharing your life with us. Your pictures alone will tell me who I'm looking at when I
arrive at the "meet 'n' greet". And, I learned enough here to began a conversation without spending precious reunion time in "catch up" mode. Thus, my time can be more productively spent talking to other attendees about what I read in their auto-bios. My conversations with them, as with you, can be about what I've have already read.
This leads me to a question for you and the Meridian-based committee. Why not have all the auto-bios on the blog (website)? Seems to me you could scan in any hard copy for those who don't know how or want to send e-mails. If some stuff is hand-wriiten, I could convert some of it to type and I think others would do so, too. I think it's called helping.
For the hard copy booklet, text can easily be downloaded to any booklet print shop... if they have any technology beyond a Gutenberg press. Extraneous details and, of course, pictures can be easily truncated for the booklet format. This would save hours and hours of the typing and/or re-typing time now required of the committee. I'm guessing here, but I'll bet there are more important things to do with the time than mindlessly typing away.
Further, it would allow more auto-bio information than the name, rank and serial number info which people are reduced to sending, just out of concern for the committee's workload.
If I'm wrong here, somebody please spell out why and I won't bring this up again.
Thanks for sharing your interesting life, Ouida. You are a busy and involved woman. Peyton looks like you! So sweet....
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