Time and How It Appears

Each December (hopefully!) when I start to get ready for the next year's Project Life pages, I make folders for a month or two's worth of weeks in a couple of places.  My iPhone photos automatically go to Photos on my computer and there they can be auto sorted by week if I set that up. btw, most of these organizing helpers came from designer Cathy Zielske not my own brain!

Once I have a few weeks' folders ready in Photos, I go to my main EHD where my exported-from-Photos images are really stored in a yearly folder (2018 e.g.). Then I make folders for each week so when I export a copy of each image, I have an empty folder waiting. It's from this folder that I add the links to Lightroom where I do almost all of my editing.

Why are you getting the back story to all this Project Life stuff? well it's because as I added some images Sunday to that EHD, I am reminded that I'm approaching Week 26. That means the year is really half over. It always comes as a bit of a jolt to me as opposed to those many years of being in school where the real-to-me year had solid start and stop points and with that timeless period known as summer in between. Sigh.

Ah adulthood and the way we see time.

Five on Friday: May 30 2014

1. One of the pitfalls of doing scrapbook pages from another year is that  I (you too?) tend to forget which year this actually is. I was doing some data entry from a spreadsheet to a data base at one of my volunteer jobs and I must have entered three dates before I caught that they were September 2014. Uh...that hasn't happened yet, has it? But for a moment I wondered if this year was 2015 and last fall WAS 2014.  Fortunately, the original mistake wasn't mine! Phew!

2. Do you want to see pretty things for free? How about this magnificent art, now free, from the Met.  Other than the one above, there are downloadable Picassos, ancient art, Rembrandts etc. Apparently, initial demand crashed their site. Apparently, I was asleep for this announcement.

3. Mangoes. I adore them and while I miss the luxury of having a maid present me with a plate of beautiful mango slices, I'm grateful that they are now readily available in Maryland. This was not the case 30 years ago. Some things do remain the same if you have to eat the mango on your own. For me, it's 1. always eating it over the sink and 2. spending endless time getting those pesky fibers from between my front teeth. Time to get more dental floss during the height of mango season.

4. Years ago, I bought a peony plant and planted it as near to the house as I could so I'd see it and enjoy my blossoms. Of course, these stubborn little gems take a while to actually bloom. I think it was close to 5 years. When they did, ugh...I had bought a deep fuschia peony plant.  What I want is a variegated pale pink or white or either of those two colors.  I may finally bite the bullet and buy the kind I want this fall. And then wait....

5. The humidity has returned.  That is a statement, not a complaint but you know what I really mean!

AAM Monday: Reflections on Time

Yesterday, we took a drive down Interstate 81 to Harrisonburg, Virginia, to a book sale. We haven't been down there for quite a while, a year or more, and it was a beautiful day for the drive. I have always been aware that the drive takes us through Civil War territory but it's mostly been in the back of my mind. Not on this trip.

This year, the road was dotted with signs and a lot of sprucing up of towns that played a role in the many Civil War battles.  If Northern Virginia is Mosby territory, my dh told me that the Shenandoah valley is Stonewall Jackson territory.  Both Confederate officers, Colonel Mosby and General Jackson, still have Virginia schools named after them which tells you that you are in the South.

This is the 150th anniversary of many of those battles and it got me to thinking. 75 years ago my dh was born. That means that when he was born, it was also 75 years ago that these battles took place.  Just one lifetime away. 

When I was a child of about 10 we drove from Maryland to Florida one winter for a very special Christmas vacation. Before interstates, this was quite a drive, and I clearly recall my father pointing out the 'Sherman' monuments' as we entered the deep south. Homes that had been burnt in General Sherman's March to the Sea from Atlanta, no longer existed except for brick chimneys and the occasional wall. The areas we drove through back in 1954 still reflected a defeated Confederacy and the poverty that remained after this scorched earth policy. Had I really understood this it would have made me realize that I could be seeing people a bit older than myself who had grandfathers who fought in our Civil War, or the War Between the States, as it is still known in this part of the US.

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, May 12 a day in which 17, 000 lives were lost in a 22 hour period. "Clubbed muskets, and bayonets were the modes of fighting for those who had used up their cartridges, and frenzy seemed to possess the yelling, demonic hordes on either side." By dawn, when Union forces approached the trenches,  "They were lying literally in heaps, hideous to look at. The writhing of the wounded and dying who lay beneath the dead bodies moved the whole mass..." 

Just two lifetimes ago.

Wordless Wednesday: Glimpses of a Day

Good Habits...where do they go

There it sits, the lonely journal. So neglected, so ignored, trying not to judge me. How many years have I been writing my 3 pages each a.m.? Since 1997, and yet...and yet there are times when the rebellious child still inside the crone says No! I don't want to! It doesn't happen often but when it does, I am always surprised to find that a week, a month, whatever time has passed and it was not a conscious thought to stop. I look back and think... How long has it been since I ???

Today I looked at that lovely red and black journal, given to me at JSJ class last year by a fellow student, and thought Ok, you've had your time out. Get going. And so I took a photo of the book with only a few pages left, checked the prior date, and sat with pen in hand to write. Clear the mind, sweep out the remnants of last night's mental and emotional dinner. Nothing brilliant gets in there but less lingers in the crevices of the brain to come popping up at various times in the day - that flotsam and jetsam that hinders a day's passage.

I also thought I'd add the little Buddha that I call Sky Buddha. He sits on my window frame and the light shines thru him. I believe that what shines in to us changes us and then it is our responsibility to reflect it back to the world. Light in, light out. May your days be light.