A Big Project in Jane’s Domain

Earlier this past week I had one of those days where I had many things I should have been doing, some things I needed to do and a few things I wanted to do. Instead, I sat here at my computer and started to write.

 

But, then, writing is something that combines all of the above. So that can’t be a bad thing, can it?

 

It was the 28^th of June, and if my parents were still alive, they’d have been celebrating 71 years of marriage. As it was, they were able to celebrate their 63^rd anniversary and were literally three days shy of their 64^th when Dad passed in 2016.

 

I still think of them every day and am so glad they lived good, long lives. And they were able to show us what a happy, healthy, loving marriage looked like.

 

That day I also learned that a high school friend, who has been fighting pancreatic cancer, found out the cancer had spread to his liver. Pancreatic cancer is one of those scary ones. But he was truly fighting – and I believed he was going to beat it. I still believe he can, but the news brought tears to my eyes. And this is a person I haven’t seen since I was seventeen. I can still picture him in Mr. Seavy’s World History class, giving me grief because if I didn’t know the answer to a question, Mr. Seavy was going to give the entire class a pop quiz.

 

(And, c’mon. I knew the answer!)

 

But if anyone can beat cancer, he can, so I’ll continue to keep him in my prayers. If you can, as well, I’d appreciate it. And if you don’t pray – then send good thoughts, vibes or whatever voodoo you do out into the cosmos for healing.

 

The subject of the blog I was intending to write escapes me now as I’ve just gotten back to my computer to finish it. Since I’m not a duck, I guess sad news is harder to slide off my back than, well, water would.

 

Or something like that.

 

Anyway, I ended up spending the day working on a project I’ve been meaning to start for more than six years when I cleaned out my parents’ house. And that is – to organize the boxes and bins of photos I have stashed away in the spare room closets. I want to sort through, toss the blurry or bad ones, scan the good ones, and then get rid of the hard copies.

 

These aren’t only my parents’ photos, but those two or three extra boxes and bins were enough to add to the scope of the project and make it really challenging.

 

Because I, myself, took many, many photos through the years. And in the thirteen years we were together, Vince took even more. But so did my dad. He brought his trusty camera with him on every globe-trotting trip he and mom took. And after he got those photos developed, he carefully labeled each one and placed them in a small album dedicated to that particular trip so that they had photographic evidence of them all.

 

If something came up in casual conversation about a name of a town in a foreign country, Dad would excuse himself, find the album and bring it down to show us the photo and describe the significance of that town.

 

When he met Vince and learned the spelling of “Cordova,” he stood up and left the room. Dad was not someone anyone would ever describe as rude, so I just looked at Vince and shrugged. But soon Dad came back to the family room with an album showing numerous photos of Cordova, Alaska, from a cruise he and Mom took years prior.

 

Sadly, these photo albums don’t have the same significance to us as they did for mom and dad – and no one wants a shelf full of travel photo albums to places that we didn’t travel.

 

That breaks my heart a little bit, but I simply don’t have the shelving real estate necessary to keep them all. And my closet space is at a premium, too, and I’d like to free it up for, oh, I don’t know, clothes, maybe. Or shoes. You know, stuff that’s supposed to go in a closet?

 

So my plan is to look through the books and find photos of mom and dad that we might like to have – photos from a time when they were healthy and able to enjoy and remember every moment of the particular trip they were on. Then I’ll scan those photos for my family members.

 

Great plan, eh?

 

Yeah, well. I’m now in the thick of this great plan and my living room is filled with small bins of photos that I have separated into categories. Photos from my childhood years. College years. Adult years. Family photos. Friend photos. Vince photos.

 

My living room looks like one of those old Foto-Mat kiosks exploded. (Remember those?!)

 

Yikes.

 

Now, of course, I’m torn because I have other things I need to do. There’s a stack of financial paperwork on my dining room table for a project I’m working on. There’s a stack of clothing in my bedroom that I started to sort for donation or resale purposes.

 

And there’s a stack of large, unmarked bills in a duffel bag that I need to count and then launder.

 

So I have a lot of projects going on.

 

Yeah, yeah. I know. Obviously that last one isn’t true. I was just checking to see if you were still paying attention. Besides, I’d be the person who’d actually put the bills in the washing machine because I didn’t understand the concept of “money laundering.”

 

Crime would NOT pay in my case.

 

Anyway, I digress.

 

And I procrastinate, too. So I’d better get back to those photos. Since I’ve gotten this far, I can’t stop now. It absolutely cannot be six more years before I start scanning them.

 

Wish me a little luck – and a whole lotta perseverance.