MY LIFE IN PICTURES

Right now I have about 500 pictures in my phone. I kid you not. I went through them recently and right off the top was able to remove about 40 or 50, but there are still tons more that have to go. For instance, I often take pictures of my lunchtime salads and text them to Mary, and she in turn sends me pictures of her beautifully photographed vegan dinners. I have plans to someday showcase Mary’s healthy meals (still trying to work out the details on that project) but my ordinary pictures of my ordinary salads have little value beyond the moment. When I have more time, I’ll delete them.

Having a camera phone and the ability to take pictures at a moment’s notice, even of the most mundane things, is such a blessing. Remember, it was not that long ago we were buying film, taking 12 or 24 shots, bringing them to the store be be developed, and actually paying for prints, only to find out that half of what we paid for was blurry, or somebody’s eyes were closed, or their head was cut off. (Well, not literally cut off, I mean their head did not appear in the photograph, but you understand what I mean, right?) We’ve come such a long way, and it really is a great thing to be able to document the ordinary as well as the extraordinary moments in life. Only, I have to remember what my Uncle Chet told me years and years ago when I was a teenager and had my first “real” camera: only about one or two of every hundred pictures you take will be worth keeping.

Here then, are just a few of what I feel are the “worth keeping” photos from the 400-500 or so currently in my camera phone:

Near campus—in fact, across a very narrow street just opposite the mammoth football stadium—there’s this little diner called Rama Jama where on a summer afternoon from 2-6pm you can get hotdogs for a buck each. It’s a good place for some cheap junk food, but the real attraction is just sitting in this old building and looking at all the sports memorobilia—hundreds and hundreds of photos and posters, many of them signed, jerseys, footballs, and even the shoe that kicked a winning field goal. As you can see, there are even references to Alabama football on the ceiling! It’s a fun place steeped in history, and a summer hot dog (or two…) at Rama Jama is the perfect way to get ready for the upcoming football season (less than two weeks away now!!)

When I turned the page on my calendar recently I was greeted by this fine fellow, jauntily carrying a stick as he prances through the grass. What a great cat! He looks so happy, and so full of self-confidence (as any self-respecting cat should be.) I loved looking at him for the whole month of June, and was sad when I had to turn the page for July, so before I did that, I snapped this picture so I could always remember him.

Speaking of cats, I recently spent a Saturday reorganizing all my music CD’s, and as you can see here, Squee helped. Well….no, actually, he just got up on the table to be in the way.

The organization process was a complete success, and I now have every CD alphabetized on one shelf, or in several binders on the shelf (behind Squee). The point is, it’s all alphabetized, so if I take care to put things back where they belong, I should always be able to find any CD I’m looking for in a matter of moments. Of course, I’ve done this alphabetical thing at least a couple of times before in the last few years, so obviously though I might be very good at creating order out of chaos, I’m not really very good at maintaining that order.

But it always feels good to get some aspect of my life in order. Our next big project (and we’ve already decided we’re going to do it on Martin Luther King weekend, because it’s going to take at least three days) is putting Russ’ comic book collection in order. I’ll keep you updated on that one when it happens!

I’ve been on kind of a nostalgia kick lately (more on that next time, after a couple of Ebay purchases make their way to my front door), but in the meantime, here’s an image of a poster I had hanging in my room when I was in college. Don’t know why I find this so picture so appealing. I guess I just love the colors, and the quirkiness of it all. Well, I loved the color and quirk when I was in college, and I still do, and now in addition, it has that nostalgic appeal. I love finding things I used to love, and discovering that I do indeed still love them. Some things never change, and sometimes, that’s a good thing.

With Russ’ mom recently passing, we’ve had several opportunities to peruse some of the old family photos. There are many gems, and I’m presenting just a couple of them here. Photography is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? To capture a moment in time, a smile…In a small way, it makes you feel that all times are NOW. A picture, a song, a voice, a smell, a taste of some special food… Hey, maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, and thus more sentimental, but I really love these reminders that our lives are so rich and full, never the same from moment to moment, and so many of those moments can be exceptional, and so worthy of remembrance.

Another thing I really love about these old baby pictures is when you’re able to look at a picture of someone as a child and see the person you know in the features of that child. Russ obviously no longer looks anything like the child in these picture, and yet…the child in these pictures is so obviously him. Again, it’s such a reminder that some things never change, and it’s a delight to be reminded that no matter how old we get, somehow the child we were is still always somewhere inside us.

Russ gets his hair cut every six weeks or so (even though I would love to see him try to grow a ponytail!), but I have trust issues when it comes to my hair. Too many times I have walked out of a salon with something that was not at all what I was hoping for, so mostly I snip at my hair with scissors in the hallway mirror, and Russ is very good at trimming the back for me (No trust issues there!) However, when I recently accompanied him to A Cut Above, while perusing the style books I found this cut that I think is super cute. Now, I don’t know if I would be able to carry this off at my age and my weight, but if I ever do actually lose all the weight I’d like to lose and somehow can get my face to look about thirty years younger (HA!) I might like to try this. Well, I’m being facetious about my face, I know that’s not happening, but I might like to try this anyway.

Right now I’m flirting with the idea of “going gray gracefully,” and my real wish is to grow out my hair and perm it, so I’m the crazy old lady with all that crazy gray hair, but I understand gray hair doesn’t always hold a perm that well. I guess when I get there I’ll have to see what my hair is like. But if my gray hair won’t look good long and curly, I think it could work with this short cut. I love this shade of red, but I think this cut would work in gray as well. Anyway, I’m not quite there yet on the gray, but someday I’ll be going there, so right now I’m just collecting ideas for when I get bold enough to finally make that decision.

Sometimes I eat healthy, and sometimes…not so much. When I’m not eating healthy, I have a biscuit for Sunday morning breakfast, but when I AM eating healthy, I like to create a little container of beans and veggies to bring with me to add to my side of pinto beans. Throw in some hot sauce and vavoom!! I can do non-traditional breakfast just as easily as the traditional. It’s all food, right?

And speaking of food, this is one of my new weekday breakfasts: a shake that usually contains a banana, some frozen fruit (right now I’ve got strawberries, or a mixture of tropical fruits), some almond milk, maybe some orange juice, and a healthy handful of kale. It’s the kale that gives this drink its beautiful green color, but does not overpower the sweet fruitiness. Kale is a wonder food, and I can’t believe I’ve only discovered it in the last year or so. I tried making kale chips, which was not that big of a success, but I’m always willing to throw kale in a juice or a shake. Next experiment in the kitchen: sauteeing kale with onions, garlic, and maybe a pinch of brown sugar.

And still speaking of food, here’s a lovely basket of peaches we picked up in Chilton County this past June, when peaches are at their peak. It’s a couple hours’ drive, so we stopped for lunch at the local Shoney’s, then picked up a bunch of fruits and veggies from a roadside stand. In addition to these lovely peaches, we also got a good selection of tomatoes, sweet potatoes and cukes. The veggies are long gone, but we’ve frozen six bags of cut-up peaches so that once every two months over the next year, we can pull some peaches out of the freezer and bake a peach cobbler. This way we have peach cobbler all year long…until next June, when we’ll make the trip to Chilton County once again, eat at Shoney’s, and stock up on more peaches!

A pretty picture of a rainy day

Okay. Here’s a major milestone in my life. For the past several…oh, decades, I would say, I’ve been a big fan of the Pilot fine point black pen. No other pen writes finer or smoother. I’m sort of a nut about pens. When I have to fill out forms, like at a doctor’s office, I always bring my own pen. And I’ve always had a Pilot black fine point on me. (Once, as I was cleaning out my purse, I counted no less than ten pens! I’m sort of obsessive about pens.) However, a sad day looms, because Pilot has stopped making this particular pen. I spent several months looking for it all over town and on the internet, only to realize it’s a thing of the past. What to do, what to do!? Well, no problem, mate! Because along comes the PaperMate InkJoy 300 0.7F. And now I am here to tell you, there is no pen in existence that writes finer or smoother than this one! I’m not kidding. This is the best pen ever.

So I guess the moral of this story is: don’t be sad when life throws you a curve ball, because who knows? There might be something better just beyond the horizon. (Hey, was that enough mixed metaphors for you?)

If you’re willing to eat corndogs, is “whole grain” really something you care about?

Springtime in Alabama, flowering trees

This past Spring Squee spent some time in the yard, soaking up the sun, and he really loved it. But then, as will happen in Spring, there were BIRDS, particularly those nasty Mockingbirds, that swoop down when they’re protecting a nest. I don’t know exactly where their nest was, but they swooped Squee a few times and the big scaredy-cat refused to go outside anymore. At this point I don’t know if he even remembers that he used to enjoy going outside. The bird feeders are in the front yard now, so there are less birds hanging about in the back, but still Squee is not interested in going outside. Just as well, because it’s the middle of Summer and freaking hot. We’ll try the yard again when the weather gets cooler.

And one more chapter in The Life of Squee: here he is looking so contented as he enjoys a nice chin-scratching. He’s such a cat, and really a very good boy. I miss Boogins, and I miss having more than one cat, but for the moment this is working for us. Squee loves being an only child, he’s adjusted quite well. We’ve determined that any behavior issues he had sprung out of sibling rivalry, so remove the sibling, no rivalry, no problem.

Last year we bought a lawn mower and edger and have been saving money by cutting our own lawn. In less than a year we broke even on the cost of the equipment, but I must admit, we don’t always do that job as often as we should. But don’t let the size of this weed make you think we are so incredibly lax in our duties This weed was the exception, not the rule, that’s why I took a picture of it. The rest of the grass was only moderately high, with some random weeds reaching up a little higher than the ankles, but this one…this one was right out of Jack and the Beanstalk! I shudder to think how tall it would have gotten if we had not finally put clipping shears to hearty stalk and hacked away until it finally came down. (“Timberrr!”)

Well, that’s it for now! Love my camera phone, and love creating this photographic panorama of a brief moment in my life. Next time, hopefully: the return of Tessie, and a Blast from the Past!