Skip to main content

Picture perfect

Every year at this time, I find myself scrambling to get everything done. Yet I don't bake, I tend to have fewer than 15 presents to wrap, and I work only sporadically. So what is my excuse for being so behind?!

My biggest labor of love during the month of December is creating an online photo album for both my and Brian's moms. It is an arduous process. I go through the hundreds of digital photos I have taken and saved the past year, upload them to a site, and place them in a suitable layout for each page of the album. Since more than half of the pictures I take come from my crappy, stupid phone, I have to make sure they are small enough to look decent. And it never fails that as soon as I think I am nearly finished, I realize I forgot to include a really great picture in one of the layouts, which means I have to redo the page to fit more pictures or I have to part with a picture I really liked.

Despite the time this takes, it is a gift for me as much as it is for our moms (and not just because I also order a copy of one of the albums). As I look through each picture, season by season, I am reminded of days or even hours that I may have forgotten about. Since my kid, at 8, is still growing and changing each year, I often stop and notice how her hair was different or that a few months ago she was shorter than a classmate but now she is taller. These things are just not that apparent in day-to-day living. On the other hand, it is often striking how much some of my nieces and nephews, who range in age from 16 months to six years, have changed over the year. It is nice to see that in color.

Now that the albums are ordered (and my fingers are crossed that they arrive days in advance of Christmas), I can think about Christmas cards and whether or not I am going to include a photo or create a photo card. Considering I used to send out my Christmas cards on Christmas Eve, I think I am way ahead of the game.

Smile!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What a year 2021 has been (Day 7)

I have almost no words for what happened yesterday at the Capitol. Protesting is one thing (though I truly think it is and has been time to move on). But to storm the Capitol? A friend on Facebook said, quite simply, " Almost 20 years ago a group of people on an airplane sacrificed themselves to protect the Capitol. How far we have fallen!" Indeed. And, yes, it IS storming the Capitol. I have seen numerous videos of people knocking down barricades/fences, pushing police officers, and breaking windows and climbing through them. That is beyond protesting. And even if a protestor did not do those things, if they followed those seditionists past those barricades and into the building, they are just as guilty. I did not support the violent protests this summer that resulted in damages to businesses and public property (I was in full support of the actual protests). But I also acknowledged as a white person, I cannot truly put myself in the position of a black person who is angry a

Melancholy and Gratitude

 A few days ago, I decided to do gratitude posts on FB. I was good the first two days. Day 3 I got a little snarky as I posted about "doing the right thing" in regards to Covid. The Covid cases in Allegheny County have been on the rise. For a while, we had daily counts between 50 and 100. After July 4, we saw a spike for a few weeks, and then cases were back below 100. Unfortunately, other than one "low" day this week, where "only" 288 cases were reported, we have had between 500 and 620 daily cases. Fortunately, only a few people have died this week. But of course, any death is too many. I started to keep track of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations on 6/12/20. On that day, since 3/12, Allegheny County had had 2,034 cases, 352 people had been hospitalized, and 172 people had died. On 11/19/20, the county has seen a total of 22,042 cases, 1,724 people have been hospitalized, and 465 people have died from Covid since 3/12. In just over 8 months, we have had

Hug your loved ones!

I hate to say that I am still working through my grief. I mean, in some ways I can imagine I will always be grieving. But I feel pretty confident it will get easier, and I will cry less and less. But, yeah, I guess I am still working through it. Yesterday, a thought occurred to me: I had not hugged my dad since the end of February, and that will now be the last time I ever did. I did not see him for almost three months because of COVID, and then at the end of May, he started his series of hospital visits with skilled nursing stints in between. I was always afraid to hug him then. What if I gave him COVID? And yet when my dad had really bad ICU delirium during a few different hospital stays, I fed him. If I could do that, why not hug him? So I cried a bit last night thinking about that. I am not necessarily a big hugger; I used to hate it, and then probably before Jordan was born, I got back to doing it again. Before COVID, I hugged my friends goodbye (and sometimes hello). I always wou