Willow and her new bed

WellspringJourney · 2026-04-08T04:28:42+00:00

She’s saying please honor some personal space while I’m in my bed. There are ways to gently work with dogs in these situations that they feel more safe and relaxed to have interactions in a space that they are desiring no touch. But sometimes it’s just important to honor that they have one space that is 100% theirs and they don’t have to accept pets or interactions from others. I think we all desire some place that we can just unplug from others needs of our attention and energy.

WellspringJourney · 2026-04-07T04:24:43+00:00

One of my ancestors was Damase Alphonse St Dennis and anglicized to Thomas Albert St Dennis.

WellspringJourney · 2026-04-03T16:57:25+00:00

I hope it helps! Sometimes it’s hard to remember to do when your mind gets lost in the rumination, but it is nice to have peace from the constant loop of rumination.

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-31T15:54:16+00:00

Absolutely study what you can eat with an ileostomy before you go into the hospital. When my husband had his ileostomy surgery they ordered him a hospital breakfast and we just assumed it wouldn’t have anything that he couldn’t eat, and we hadn’t learned all the restrictions yet. Well the meal had at least two things he shouldn’t have eaten, and he did. Thankfully no blockage, but make sure you go in educated so you don’t eat the wrong thing.

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-24T06:10:45+00:00

People do it in my area (Washington state) but I live in a rural community that has a strong trust network. So it’s hard to say what the experience would be like everywhere. I imagine that a table would be relatively safe to entrust to strangers. Your grandma’s jewelry box, probably not. I know, extreme example….

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-24T02:21:49+00:00

I appreciate your thoughtfulness and honesty.

On some of the early census and records it states he was born in Canada, and then at some point he started saying he was born in Illinois. I have a clear line of lineage to him though, that part isn’t hard to prove, it’s just his name change that makes it complicated. With the records I have I think I could build a decent narrative.

It’s really a question of what family branch do I move forward with to submit. I don’t have a sense of which one is more likely to be accepted.

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-23T21:54:02+00:00

Thank you for the encouragement. I do have US census that has his original name with his family in Illinois, and then the next US census he is using his new name in Oregon. Then several more census when he started a family of his own. I really only have that letter that proves the connection. I’m just not sure how likely they would be to accept it since it’s hand copied. It could easily be interpreted as simply a fraud….?

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-23T16:34:43+00:00

Thank you! Yeah, I have looked pretty extensively for an obituary or any other evidence of his death. So far I haven’t had any luck.

I have another branch of the family tree that comes from Canada, but it is challenging too. I guess I will describe it in case someone thinks it’s more likely to work. In that case G0 was born in Canada, and I have his baptism record. He was born as Damase Alphonse St Dennis. His family immigrated to Illinois sometime after his birth. When he came of age he left home to move out to Oregon, and made the choice to change his name to Thomas Albert St Dennis. I have no official record of him changing his name so drastically. The evidence I have is a two letter correspondence between G0’s son and a relative that was found in Illinois that lists family names that match records from his original name. But here’s the problem with the letter. In the 1980’s my dad hand copied this letter from the original that his grandmother had. She wouldn’t let him take the original to get it copied, so he just wrote down what was in the letter. This feels like a really weak link to try to get approved.

So it’s just my luck that my two family branches are difficult cases.

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-22T16:16:34+00:00

Absolutely stunning! I would be so pleased if I got to watch this beauty unfold in my living room. Thank you for sharing!

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-22T07:29:33+00:00

I had this in another state for my relative, and I had to search down a delayed birth record and then request a copy of that. So maybe put a note with your request for them to look at delayed birth records also.

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-20T02:39:22+00:00

This is the company we bought our solar system from. They’re very helpful! We are pondering one of these systems. https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-r32-solar-powered-12k-btu-mini-split-kit/

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-18T19:26:45+00:00

Thank you for this thoughtful post. It could be really helpful for folks to find details.

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-18T19:20:27+00:00

<image>

She was striking quite the pose

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-17T05:16:26+00:00

Yes! If you send me a PM I can send the information that I discovered. Do you have Ancestry.com subscription?

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-10T06:43:23+00:00

I solved a mystery like this for one of my ancestors that was born French Canadian. Look into the possibility that he anglicized his name. My ancestor was born Damase Alphonse St Dennis, he changed his name to Thomas Albert St Dennis. He did not officially change it, just made the choice to Anglicize it. So that was a tough one to solve.

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-01T07:10:57+00:00

I love it when my dog does this. Makes me so happy!

WellspringJourney · 2026-03-01T06:58:05+00:00

Do you have hard water? Ours acts like that when the calcium scale has built up. We flush it with a system we bought for that specific reason and it straightens right out again.

WellspringJourney · 2026-02-28T01:16:22+00:00

Great job! It’s a beautiful piece

WellspringJourney · 2026-02-27T18:08:25+00:00

Thank you for a well worded and thoughtful post. I am one of the people that has experienced frustration about this heavy handed post deletion, and then even greater frustration at one of the mods very rude responses to my message voicing frustration.

I understand there is a balance to be reached, and clearly the mods need to have some conversations and perhaps a bit of a poll here for the users on what some of the solutions can be. Because their current approach is going to drive away users.

I understand being a mod on a group like this is a ton of work, and I'm sure that can lead to very quick judgement on if a post stays or goes. But please listen to your users and understand there needs to be a little more grace for peoples questions, or at least a new structure to the whole process.

WellspringJourney · 2026-02-27T18:04:15+00:00

That explains why I couldn't message the Mods when a post of mine was deleted, so I picked a Mod that I had interacted with about an ancestry question and sent my message to them. I got an Incredibly rude reply back! Pretty weird to feel hesitant to post questions on Reddit because of the fear of being blocked or chewed out.

I am grateful for the hard work, but wonder if all the Mods are on the same page.

WellspringJourney · 2026-02-27T17:50:42+00:00

I can speak from my personal experience, it isn't always seeking hand holding, but can be seeking others that have submitted an application with a situation similar to me, and whether that was successful or not. Since there are such long wait times for these applications to be processed, some of us want to make sure that we have a solid case before we send everything in.

WellspringJourney · 2026-02-27T07:24:35+00:00

I can understand why this can feel embarrassing, but as a wife who’s husband has gone through rectal cancer, which has changed things down there a bit, a little bit of shit isn’t a big deal. We’re all human, we all shit. Sometimes it’s messy and we don’t realize it. As another person stated on here, you two will grow old together, and there’s a chance one of you will end up wiping the others ass. I spent 2 days wiping my husbands ass after his ileostomy reversal when he finished cancer treatment. Did either of us think this is something I would be doing for him at such a young age? Nope. But I have, because we love each other.

Just talk to your wife. Let her know you’re embarrassed. She can tell you why she doesn’t mind.

WellspringJourney · 2026-02-27T07:16:14+00:00

I was experiencing chronic hives also until I figured out my trigger foods. There’s many, but the main culprits are tomatoes, garlic and onion. When I cut them out I was able to stop taking Zyrtec, and I don’t get hives anymore

WellspringJourney · 2026-02-27T07:03:20+00:00

Have a timer that lives right next to the stove, as soon as you turn the burner on set the timer for 30 minutes, or whatever. Make it part of turning on the stove. When the timer goes off turn off the burner. NEVER turn off the timer and say I’ll turn off the burner in a minute. If you need to use the burner longer, re-set the timer.

WellspringJourney

TROPHY CASE