I finally got some time to go to the Library and get some more research done in the city directories. I kind of surprised myself at how anxious I was feeling as I checked each year’s entry. I found myself silently saying “please be there, please be there”. I really did not want my Thomas family to ever move! Unfortunately, 1939 is the last time they are listed as living in the house. By then they’d lived in the house for 42 years! (or at least Ida had). They make up so much of the soul of this house. I looked through the next few years’ worth of directories and I can’t find them listed anywhere! By this time, Robert was 76 old and retired for 2 years. It’s possible they found the house too large and moved in with one of their children—as no longer heads of the household, they wouldn’t be listed in the directory. I suppose one of them could have died and the remaining one sold the house, but I can’t imagine that it would happen as fast? I guess we’ll never know. And unless I can find another way to get info, I’ll never know when they died, or who died first. I wonder if Ida became a widow twice in her life?

Whatever it was that happened, the house was sold and in 1940 a new occupant is listed. John Maxwell, Chief Engineer at Imperial Oil. Unfortunately I don’t have access to any other census info after 1911, so I don’t know anything else about him, or if he had a family. I hope to get that from the Assessment Rolls at the City Clerk’s office--the next project! I suppose I have to get to know them more, but I’m still sad about losing the Thomas’ and not so excited about researching the Maxwell’s right now. I can only imagine how attached biographers must get to their subjects!

In other house news, I found a company that makes reproduction twist doorbells! I have a place on my door where there should be one, but it’s long gone. I could have held out for an antique one, but I’m going to give this a try. Now maybe we’ll actually hear when someone’s at the door! I already know the cats will hate it.

So the holidays were a long time ago, but I should mention that they were great. They always are. I can only remember one sad one and that was sad and pathetic for a number of reasons, but we made do. It’s funny how when you look back on difficult situations in your life, you wonder how you ever got through them, but in the moment, you're just doing it. Or maybe that IS the answer.

One lingering problem leftover from the holidays is the need to eat eat eat everything in sight as well as crave crave crave whatever isn’t in sight. This leads to fat fat fat! I’m trying to eat better again and get more regular with the noon-hour workouts. Today we did a Salsa Dancing workout. Fun! And Hard! My legs are hurting already and it didn’t feel like we were actually working that hard.

Well, this was a boring entry so I’ll leave you with this little gem. Those of us that grew up in Canada will remember these “Hinterland Who’s Who” spots airing on TV regularly. Here’s a funny take on those on youtube.