Limbo Land vs. Disney World

I'll start things off with a guest book comment from one of my favorite blog writers, Vickie Buenger. (Vickie recently lost her beautiful and brilliant daughter, Erin, to Neuroblastoma.) I always love stopping by Vickie's page because she loves interesting words as much as I do.

Anyway, concerning my recent post on organizing family photos, Vickie wrote:

So, you do your photos in something other than chronological order. This is very confusing to me. Don't they just go in albums in the order that you took them? Please explain the logic of twelve bags. Is that like twelve dancing princesses or twelve days of Christmas or twelve something else?

Vickie, I have to admit that your entry made me laugh out loud. In addition to the quirky line about the "twelve days of Christmas," the sentence about "putting the photos in albums in the order I took them" was pretty funny too, because I only WISH I could ever be organized enough to do that! (Sigh.)

Actually, there IS no complicated logic to the twelve (or so) bags. They simply have to do with categories, i.e., pictures of Nathan when he was a baby/toddler, pictures from our time on the road, pictures of extended family members, pictures from Steve's and my childhoods, etc.

My goal (once we eventually get jobs again) is to have a thousand of my photos scanned. (I found a company that will do a thousand pictures for just $50.) That way I can store my most treasured pictures on disc and on the web for safekeeping. And that's part of the reason I started organizing my photos, so that I could start laying aside the ones that I'd like to have scanned.

Okay, so now that my pictures are organized and I've worked in the garage for a day, my current project is sorting through all our Cd's and family papers. For those of you who might have somehow gotten the very mistaken impression that I am a neat and highly organized person, these next pictures should quickly dissuade you from that view.

I've been working on this recent project for two days already and probably have another several hours to put in before the Monster Mess is finally tamed, under control, nicely sorted, labeled and put into storage bins.

But what a great feeling! When I'm done, I will be able to put my hands on just about any picture, paper or school record in less than ten minutes. Yippee!

Okay, I'm sure you've all had about enough of my sorting endeavors. (So have I, for THAT matter!)

So on to new horizons! Topics! Subjects! Family members! In fact, how about if I move on to a report of Steve and Sarah's evening out last night?

At the end of each school year, Steve likes to take the kids out separately for an evening to celebrate their accomplishment; yesterday was Sarah's turn. The two of them left in the early afternoon for a pre-celebratory trip to Duke where Sarah had a follow-up hearing aid visit. After the audiologist made a few little tweaks to her hearing aids, they were back out the door to an evening that included a trip to a bookstore (of course!) dinner out (with a "buy one, get one free" coupon), a stop for ice cream, and a $2 movie.

Here they are getting ready to leave for their big outing.

I included the following photo in the hopes that it would inspire any aspiring photographers to continue to work hard so that you will eventually be able to achieve the lofty level of skill that I have acquired. If you look closely at this picture, you will doubtless understand that it has taken me many years of practice and study to be capable of composing a picture where one subject's hand is completely in front of the face of the other subject.

I know. I amaze even myself.

As far as our future plans go, the clock continues to tick rather loudly toward certain deadlines and decisions. I'm sure it's obvious that we cannot remain here in Limbo Land (sort of like Disney World, but not as much fun) forever. Part of the reason is that our family has unfortunately acquired this nasty habit of needing to eat at least a couple meals a day. Also, we sort of enjoy having beds to sleep in and a roof over our heads.

The current church openings have been been basically narrowed down to one. And if that one doesn't work out, well, what then?

Good question! I'm so glad you asked it. I only wish I had a good answer.

Do I feel stressed? Yup.

Does Steve feel stressed? Yup.

Does Snowy feel stressed? Nope.

He's snoozing away placidly beside me, full of trust and faith that we will take care of him and will continue to provide him with Kibbles (not to mention Bits) for the rest of his life.

I guess if he can trust his (very) imperfect caretakers that much, maybe we should be able to trust OUR (very) perfect Caretaker just a little, too?

We're trying. Believe me, we're trying.

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Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting a few songs from our CD's that are for sale in the right hand column. This first one is called, "Heaven's Calling" and was recorded right before Sarah was admitted to Duke for her bone marrow transplant.

Although the song was not written specifically for Sarah (it was inspired, instead, by other people we'd known who had passed away), it was still an emotional song for me to sing due to Sarah's bleak chances of survival. I love the song especially because it offers such hope to those who have lost loved ones. ("Heaven's Calling" can be found on the "Like a Blanket" CD.)