Snapshots

Things I'd Like to Get Better at:

Totally grammatically incorrect title, I know.

Computer skills - web page design

Healthy eating

Working out

Saving money for travel - then going

Writing regularly

Calling friends

Sudoku

Taking more pictures of my family

Daunting, isn't it? At least I didn't say things like singing, which I am so certain is out of my realm of reality, at least in this lifetime.

But a little photography may be do-able. My sister-in-law is a photographer and, if I may say so, a damn good one. She started her business not even a year ago and is already quite successful. I would say I was jealous, if I were any good at photography at all, which I am not. I'm envious, of course, that she has this great talent and that she's able to bring it to the rest of the world. I wish I had a gift like that. But the coolest thing about her job is that she's constantly taking pictures of her kids and chronicling their lives as she goes. She's capturing all these great moments that we think we're going to remember but, I know from experience, we don't.

Check her out when you get a chance:www.celestemorrisonphotography.com

She used to scrapbook and was amazingly good at that, too. When she first moved here, she kind of got me interested in it and helped me get started. It's such a huge, huge hobby though. Expensive and time consuming beyond anything you can imagine. You scrapbookers out there are laughing at me, I know. It's not time consuming, it's fun! Not for someone like me. I'm too impatient. I'm too scattered. Remember, too, I can't make a decision to save my soul? I'd lay out an entire page, get the glue ready, then think, oh, wait, let's put that, there. And this, here. By the end of my 8-hour scrapbook clinic sponsored by the high school Drill Team, I'd end up with one thing - like a button, or a strip of ribbon, glued to the page. Then I'd haphazardly stick the rest of the stuff on there so as not to leave without at least a complete page. One page! That was a good day!

And then it clicked. I got hooked. I started buying stuff. Brads and paper and raffia and things I'd never heard of, like velum. I started a book for Matt, a small, reasonable book that even I thought I could finish. I intended to give it to him for his 13th birthday, before he got too old and thought it was dumb. I had visions of him reading through all my little stories, smiling at all of our tender memories....

...he'll be 17 in a month and that scrapbook is still in the drawer upstairs. Unfinished. He's never seen it. Sometimes I go up there and sit on Casey's bed, lay it all out in front of me and read every word, savor every picture. My kid when he was three, in the cockpit of my dad's airplane. He and I, taking a picture of ourselves together on his bed, upside down. I want to finish it. I want to take all that out and pick up where I left off, as if that will somehow help me remember him. The Matt I used to know. But, woah, that's going down another path altogether. Let's not go there right now.

What I mean to say is that I would love to have that later, to have more pictures and memories and stories about my children and their lives. Ones that don't float around in my head, but ones I can put out on the coffee table, or hang in the hallway. I want to be a better keeper.