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Today in My History

2000:  Touchspace or Cyberspace
2001:  Law of the Land
2002:  Making Molehills Out of Mountains
2003:  Judy & Ethel Together Again
2004:  It's All Routine
2005:  An Eddie-like Dog
2006:   Here We Go Again


IN MY OPINION
"Kiss Me Kate"

Books Read in 2007

Updated 7/30:
"Edwina, the Invincible"

FUNNY THE VLOG

Another Opening
click here to download

You Tube version

Mefeedia Video Archive


My Favorite Video Blogs

Desert Nut
Missbehavens

(for others, see Links page)

Look at these videos!
The Barry Z Show
How to fold a shirt
College Conservatives on Iraq

Book Trailer for "Schuyler's Monster"

Family Stories Vlog
(updated 6/17/07)


New on My flickr_logo.gif (801 bytes)

4th of July Barbeque


Have you seen this woman?

The aunt of Steve & Jim's adopted godson, Jason Hungerford, Joey Lynn Ofutt, a 33-year-old single mother, has been missing since July 12, 2007, after a fire destroyed her home in Sykesville, Pennsylvania.  If you think you may have seen her check out this web page for additional information.

(It's only by sheer coincidence that she is from Sykesville!)

 

 

BEAVER LAKE

3 August 2007

"How did I get my nickname 'Murphy'?" my cousin Kathy asked my mother.  My mother couldn't remember.  She hasn't been called "Murphy" in years, but I remember when she was either "Murphy" or "Pug" (because of her pug nose) when she was a kid.  It seemed strange when she got into her teens and people started calling her "Kathy."

"Peach" is also a nickname, of course.  Her given name is Carolyn, but when she was born, her mother, my Aunt Marge, decided she looked like a delicious peach and she's been "Peach" or "Peachie" in the family ever since. 

Marge was a great one for giving nicknames.  I remember that she called one uncle "Low Pockets" when they were kids and could bring him to tears by doing so.  She had a nickname for everyone -- Mr. Wonderful, Scotty, Queenie, Ree, Sweetie, Dude, Kasuni, Sadie.

My mother's name is Mildred, but I never thought of her as Mildred because in her teens, someone once called her "Chub" (she says "it was a condition, not a name" at the time) and Marge glommed onto it.  She was "Chubbie" forever more.  My father and his family never called her anything but Chubbie.  In fact, it rarely occurred to me that it could be any sort of a negative nickname.  It was just what my mother was called, except by Father Joe, who baptized her when I was 10.  He (and his crowd) always called her Millie.

When she married Fred, he called her Mildred and she's been Mildred ever since then.  All the people who have met her in the last 30 years know her as Mildred, so she was mortified when my cousin's daughter went into the place where my mother volunteers and loudly called across the room "Aunt Chubieeee!"

None of our kids have nicknames (unless you consider "Ned" a nickname -- his real name is Edward).  The other kids just had shortened versions of their name.  Jeri for Jerilyn, Dave for David and Tom for Thomas.  Tom, for some reason, was never called "Tommy."  I think part of the reason was that when he was a baby, I was also collecting breastmilk for a baby in the hospital, whose name was Tommy.  (I collected milk for him through Tom's babyhood and also through David's.  He rarely left the hospital and died when he was about 18 months old, at which time he weighed a whopping 7 lbs.)  I think subconsciously, I started calling our new baby "Thomas" instead of "Tommy" because I didn't want to identify our baby with the sick baby in the hospital.

I never had a nickname.  Sometimes I think it would have been cool to have had a nickname and I commented on that at Cousins Day.

"But you have a nickname," Peach reminded me.  "Beaver Lake."

Ah yes.  Beaver Lake.  I'd completely forgotten that.  I think Peach is the only person who glommed onto that or who ever called me that very much (probably appropriate, since her mother was so into nicknames!) 

I was given the name by a priest, Father Bose, who came to the parish where I went to school and would visit the classes from time to time.  I don't remember how old I was when he came into our class for the first time.  We had our names on the desk in front of us when Father Bose was coming to visit for the first time.  I was sitting in the first desk you see as you enter the room with "BEVERLY" printed neatly in front of me.

"Do you know what that means in Scotland?" he asked me.  Then he told me that it meant "Beaver Lake."  He became a family friend and would tease me from time to time by calling me "Beaver Lake."  It wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I thought that it would be cool to have a nickname.

Fortunately that particular nickname never really stuck (though I suspect that now that I've confessed that, Ron will start calling me Beaver Lake).

 

PHOTO OF THE DAY

I'm a happy camper!  Walt got the window blinds hung today!
(We're going to wait on the door blinds until the puppies leave)

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