Their lives are so short, and they give us so much love, so much joy. It is a challenge to keep the worries at bay, to enjoy them as they right in the moment, lest we smirch their presence with fear. This is my mantra when I hold a purring Harvey: I am holding you right now; right now I am holding you.

This is how I feel about mine, too. I get seized with the fear of the inevitable, and I try to put it aside and live in the moment with them.

Teppy Bidlingmeyer-Berghausen

That reminds me of a donor at an old job whose name was Budenhagen, and we took to using it as a curse. "What in the Budenhagen??" We actually felt better when we learned we were mispronouncing it (according to the actual people): they said budden-hay-gen, we said BOO-den-hah-gen.

I like to think of you now as Teppy Bidlingmeyer-Berghausen. Von Strauss. Just so you're forewarned.

That's how it feels. Longest name EVAR.

Dang, Hil, I'm impressed!

All the genealogy talk reminds me: Can anyone recommend a free or very cheap source for making family trees? I've downloaded a few free templates, but none that you can edit in Adobe; they're just for printing out and filling in by hand. I'm looking for something I can do on the computer.

Gar, I just looked through those records again, and I'm a lot more certain now that the immigration record is the correct one -- the last name given for his aunt in NY is the same as his mother's maiden name on his death certificate, and the aunt's immigration records show her coming from the same part of Belarus as him.

All the genealogy talk reminds me: Can anyone recommend a free or very cheap source for making family trees? I've downloaded a few free templates, but none that you can edit in Adobe; they're just for printing out and filling in by hand. I'm looking for something I can do on the computer.

Just about any genealogy software will have a bunch of different types of trees you can print out. There are reviews of a bunch of free ones here: [link]

ION, my eight-year-old cousin has a recurring role on a new Showtime show! The show is called "Masters of Sex," though, which makes it kind of difficult to talk about without a lot of explaining. It's non-fiction-ish, based on the lives of Masters and Johnson. My cousin plays Johnson's daughter.

Hil, I saw your post on fb about your cuz, and then there was a thing on NPR this morning about Masters of Sex. Good for her! Even if she can't watch parts of her own show just yet.

Very cool about your cousin, Hil, and I'm impressed by your genealogy-fu. All this talk is making me want to sign up at Ancestry and give it another go.

(waves at Shrift) Go, Hil, with the finding stuff. Cool about your cousin too...that looks like it could be a big one.