The arbitrariness of decades
Mar. 9th, 2011 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanI find I can't resist the census meme. I see that people are working backward and forward in time, as the fancy takes them.
March 1961 -- I lived with my parents and two brothers, a very large black cocker spaniel named Posey, and a shifting number of cats, in a subdivision called Robinwood West near Creve Coeur, Missouri.
March 1971 -- I lived in Nourse Hall at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, with Megan and an invisible roommate, I think called Linda, who was actually living with her boyfriend in the sumptuous quarters available to the fortunate in Severance Hall.
[Edited to add] No, that was March of 1972. In 1971 I was in my senior year of high school, living with my parents and brothers. My father was recently disabled, my mother working for the first time since she was in college, and nobody was liking any of this at all. I had offered to quit school and get a job; they very kindly did not laugh at me, but pointed out that I needed a scholarship for college, since all savings had been used up on medical bills after the insurance ran out.
We were in a gigantic white stucco house on South 58th Street in Omaha, near Elmwood Park. I had three brothers now, the elder two and three years younger than I was, the youngest ten years younger. We still had the ancient, creaking Posey, a black and white fluffy mutt named Cassandra, and a portly, dignified tuxedo cat with a shocking pink nose. His name was John Henry, but he was not a steel-driving cat. He drooled when he purred. We also had a huge while rabbit named Lulu. Our neighbor across the street was a kindergarten teacher who had a class pet every year, and she had zeroed in on my mother as the sucker who would take her animals at the end of the school year.
Not long after, while I was away at college, my brother Evan would leave home to live on his own, and everyone else would cram into a much smaller house just down the block. At first I had a regular bedroom there when I came home, but at some point, unsurprisingly, Evan came home again, so we had to partition off the end of the vast master bedroom and make me a narrow but very comfortable room completely lined with bookshelves.
March 1981 -- I lived in the third and last of my Minneapolis apartments, at 1920 Third Avenue South, on the third floor, with my cats MacHeath and Sukey Tawdry. I was working for Merchant, Gould, Smith, Edell, Welter, and Schmidt, a patent-law firm, running a gigantic dedicated word processor. [Edited to add]![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carbonel lived across the hall from me and I think shelleybear lived on the first floor by that time.
March 1991 -- I lived at Castle Terrabit, on Minnehaha Avenue in Minneapolis, with David, my husband of nine years, and Sukey Tawdry. I was writing a book; I guess that it must have been The Dubious Hills.
March 2001 -- I lived at Blaisdell Polytechnic, a South Minneapolis duplex, with David, Lydy, and Raphael. In that year, upstairs we had four cats, Beryl, Minou, Jordan, and Aristophanes; downstairs we had Lilith, for sure, and I think we had Naomi and Arwen by then. They were February kittens, and we had them in 2002 for sure. I was coming to the end of a dreadful writing slump, though I didn't properly pull out of it until November, when I started working on This Green Plot, a still-unfinished Liavek novel about the theater.
March 2011 -- still at Blaisdell Polytechnic with the same cast of humans, but a sadly diminished feline presence: Jordan and Ari upstairs, Arwen and Naomi down. Trying to write a short story and contemplating picking up the Liavek book again.
Pamela
March 1961 -- I lived with my parents and two brothers, a very large black cocker spaniel named Posey, and a shifting number of cats, in a subdivision called Robinwood West near Creve Coeur, Missouri.
March 1971 -- I lived in Nourse Hall at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, with Megan and an invisible roommate, I think called Linda, who was actually living with her boyfriend in the sumptuous quarters available to the fortunate in Severance Hall.
[Edited to add] No, that was March of 1972. In 1971 I was in my senior year of high school, living with my parents and brothers. My father was recently disabled, my mother working for the first time since she was in college, and nobody was liking any of this at all. I had offered to quit school and get a job; they very kindly did not laugh at me, but pointed out that I needed a scholarship for college, since all savings had been used up on medical bills after the insurance ran out.
We were in a gigantic white stucco house on South 58th Street in Omaha, near Elmwood Park. I had three brothers now, the elder two and three years younger than I was, the youngest ten years younger. We still had the ancient, creaking Posey, a black and white fluffy mutt named Cassandra, and a portly, dignified tuxedo cat with a shocking pink nose. His name was John Henry, but he was not a steel-driving cat. He drooled when he purred. We also had a huge while rabbit named Lulu. Our neighbor across the street was a kindergarten teacher who had a class pet every year, and she had zeroed in on my mother as the sucker who would take her animals at the end of the school year.
Not long after, while I was away at college, my brother Evan would leave home to live on his own, and everyone else would cram into a much smaller house just down the block. At first I had a regular bedroom there when I came home, but at some point, unsurprisingly, Evan came home again, so we had to partition off the end of the vast master bedroom and make me a narrow but very comfortable room completely lined with bookshelves.
March 1981 -- I lived in the third and last of my Minneapolis apartments, at 1920 Third Avenue South, on the third floor, with my cats MacHeath and Sukey Tawdry. I was working for Merchant, Gould, Smith, Edell, Welter, and Schmidt, a patent-law firm, running a gigantic dedicated word processor. [Edited to add]
carbonel lived across the hall from me and I think shelleybear lived on the first floor by that time.March 1991 -- I lived at Castle Terrabit, on Minnehaha Avenue in Minneapolis, with David, my husband of nine years, and Sukey Tawdry. I was writing a book; I guess that it must have been The Dubious Hills.
March 2001 -- I lived at Blaisdell Polytechnic, a South Minneapolis duplex, with David, Lydy, and Raphael. In that year, upstairs we had four cats, Beryl, Minou, Jordan, and Aristophanes; downstairs we had Lilith, for sure, and I think we had Naomi and Arwen by then. They were February kittens, and we had them in 2002 for sure. I was coming to the end of a dreadful writing slump, though I didn't properly pull out of it until November, when I started working on This Green Plot, a still-unfinished Liavek novel about the theater.
March 2011 -- still at Blaisdell Polytechnic with the same cast of humans, but a sadly diminished feline presence: Jordan and Ari upstairs, Arwen and Naomi down. Trying to write a short story and contemplating picking up the Liavek book again.
Pamela
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Date: 2011-03-09 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 09:03 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-03-09 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 04:44 pm (UTC)I think it's hilarious and amazing that we lived so close together and had no idea.
I should edit the entry again, because
P.
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Date: 2011-03-09 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 09:03 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-03-09 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-10 04:43 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-03-10 04:44 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-03-15 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-10 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 06:59 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-03-15 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 09:02 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-03-09 08:51 pm (UTC)I knew that Blaisdell had upstairs and downstairs people, but cats?
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Date: 2011-03-09 09:01 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-03-10 12:48 am (UTC)(Speaking of Carleton, I just applied there! I won't find out for a few weeks yet if I've been accepted, but it's exciting nonetheless. I also applied to the school right across the river... Carleton is definitely better academics-wise, but St. Olaf has such a marvelous music program!)
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Date: 2011-03-15 06:16 pm (UTC)P.