not-so-sticky

It should be obvious to you by now that I recently bought a scanner.

I recently bought a scanner so I've been scanning all of my old treasures. In my scrounging around for fun items, I uncovered the best postcard I have ever received. Postcard writing is a lost art, and my father was a masterful postcard artist. This was a postcard I received from him when I was 11 years old. I was on a Girl Scout bike trip from Fort Ann to Saratoga and back again. It rained the entire time I was on this bike trek so I'm particularly glad this item survived the trek. I remember smelling like mildew for several days... The 'ugly doll' he references was my beloved Cabbage Patch doll... [And for those of you who didn't realize 'Alex' was not my first name growing up, I think you'll understand why I abandoned it, and I don't want to hear any comments about it!!!]

Neither Lil nor Liam have ever had a 'professional' photograph taken in a 'studio'. I currently have over 3800 pictures of my family on Flickr so I think I have it covered... home-grown photo of liam taken by alex at forsythe park. However, my sister-in-law, Christine, has studio photos taken frequently. She has already had photographs of my three-month-old niece, Rae, taken twice ! I've never pulled it off once ! I've always been impressed with Christine's ability to both organize and execute group events. If it was not for her, my brother's visits would be no more than the two of us getting together under one roof to nap (the first hour of our visit together, the two of us spent napping). Christine knows this. So, she scheduled the appointment at Sears and posted the details on my Facebook 'wall'. All the cousins were to get their photo taken together at Sears on Saturday at 5. Seth narrowly escaped this event as he is visiting family out-of-t

I'm not a spontaneous person. I'm sorry if that doesn't make me much fun, but I grew up with my father, and if you know my father, you know that spontaneity not only did not come to him; it angered him. He always said that if he had ever been given a surprise party, he would have turned right around and walked back out the door in the other direction. He said that anytime in his life there had ever been a surprise, it had been a bad one. Never a good one. Boredom was a 'good'; it meant that nothing bad was happening to you. Every moment was planned. We didn't do anything without discussing it, planning it. Sometimes he wouldn't even answer the door when my Uncle Bill would stop by unannounced - because he hadn't called us first. Of course, had Uncle Bill called, Dad would have told him not to come... So, it is with this nature that I tend to look at life, too. I like to know what is going to happen, in the order it is going to happen, from the start of m

Last year, Seth came home with an English textbook. It was a reading primer and his assignment was to read Ricky Ticky Tavi. The next day, I called the school to make certain Seth had been not been accidentally placed in the wrong class. Nope. Guidance verified he was in the right class. In fact, the counselor confirmed that Seth was in the highest level available for English. What books did he read last year? Nothing remarkable was assigned by his teacher, so I generated my own assignments for him. Poor kid. And remember the library? Seth asked to go there in place of recess. It wasn't allowed. In fact, you were permitted to go to the library only if your purpose was to research a paper. You could not just 'go' there without a school-designated 'purpose'. Going to a library simply to peruse books was arcane. Given these fine experiences and the fact that Kingston High School is also centrally located on lower Broadway, we registered Seth for Coleman Catholic and r

I was standing at the sink washing dishes when Dad made his first round down the hall to the kitchen from the living room. He seemed a bit anxious but the day had been a long one so I didn't think much of it. It would be time for bed soon. As always, he stopped by the sink in his circular trip through the house. Typically, he comments on what a great job I'm doing washing the dishes but today, he said something I thought a bit unusual. "Are the blogs all OK?" he asked. I paused. Dad has long ago forgotten how to use a computer and to reference a blog in any universe is new knowledge. He has heard me mention the word before, and seems fascinated by it; he always demands to know what a 'blog' is when he hears the word referenced. However, he never pulls it out of nowhere. It's always in connection to something he has just heard. And no one in the house was talking about blogs at the moment. "Yes, the blogs are all O.K.," I said. He didn't loo