Skip to main content

Taken By Surprise

My girlfriends want to plan a weekend getaway at a Scrapbooking retreat. Before the pandemic, we usually did this twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall.  The last time we went, it was early March of 2020 and the lockdown came a week or two later. 

The Scrapbooking Group from 2020

If you've never been scrapbooking, it's pretty impressive how much STUFF each of us brings to the event. Carpooling isn't possible because our supplies take up all available space in our individual vehicles. Seriously. It's a little obscene. Paper. Stickers. Albums. Ribbons. Stamps. Glue. Silhouette or CriCut machines. Pens. Laptops. Printers. 

Yeah, it's a lot. 

My favorite scrapbooking haul might have been the year I opted to work on editing senior photos instead of scrapbooking.  That year, I only had to pack up my laptop.  It was glorious being able to walk into the building with only one little bag slung over my shoulder. 

I'm not sure what tactic I will take in April 2023.  Is it cheating if I decide to work on a computer-based project?  Or should I return to my scrapbooking roots and lug everything out to the car, into the weekend rental, and then back into my house? The hard part about traditional scrapbooking is not just the bulk but the emotional weight of sorting through pictures and revisiting more pleasant times. 

Already, I've taken one emotional hit just by looking at my April 2023 calendar.  Ken's birthday is in April but that's not it. I know when his birthday falls and I'm mentally and emotionally prepared to see that on the calendar.  What I wasn't prepared for was an event reminder celebrating what should have been Ken's retirement from the university. An event he had created who knows how long ago..



I saw that on my calendar and I cried. He was so close to being able to retire. We were so close to retiring together and traveling in our RV like we had dreamed about for years. It's really not fair that he never got the chance to live this particular dream. It's not fair that I won't get to live that dream with him by my side. 

Do I actually think he would have retired from the university next April? Probably not. For a couple of reasons. While he might have met all of the requirements set forth by the university, we still have a kid in college and tuition is not cheap.  Also, Ken was not the type who could sit still and do nothing. I always thought he'd find retirement a difficult transition, especially if I was still working. Then there's the fact that letting go of his role in ITS was hard when he so very sick, so letting go when healthy would have been even more difficult in my opinion.

Still, seeing how close he was if he had wanted to...that was heartbreaking. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Camping with Little Boys

  Our first travel trailer. I don't remember camping much with my family as a kid. This is likely because we always had the same vacation destination: a family plot in Baldwin, MI. There was no cabin there. Instead, there were two structures: a small, silver camper and an old single-wide trailer. The silver camper is gone but the single-wide still sits there and is used by extended family members to this day.  It wasn't until I was a teenager that my step-mom and dad bought a pop-up trailer and we started camping elsewhere in the state. My memory isn't the greatest, but I'm almost certain they got the pop-up after I started dating Ken. Eventually, my parents upgraded to a fifth wheel that my dad still pulls around to various nearby camping spots. Ken, by contrast, didn't have a set vacation destination growing up. His family camped. They started out with a truck-bed camper, I believe, and eventually upgraded to a fifth wheel.  Ken and I vacationed both in Baldwin an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Looking for Willing Victims

I've decided I'd like to expand my photography skills and experience. This means I need willing models. So far I've got a couple of people who might be willing to let me practice on them. I'm excited but nervous. I want so badly to take amazing pictures and give them each something they like. Shoot #1: Mom wants me to take Christmas pictures of her three daughters. I'm very excited, but I also want a lovely background. I was thinking of taking them to a park or some other such setting where there's a lot of pines. The problem is that Fall has just arrived and these are supposed to be Christmas pictures. Any suggestions? Shoot #2: A senior. I think I'm okay on this one. She wants fall colors in her pictures, so I just need to wait for the trees to do their thing. Then its a matter of finding the right location. Now here's my real delimna: Where do I upload them so they can be printed to look like professional pictures? Rounded corners and im...
9 comments
Read more

Poor Little Doggie

The dog and I both had dentist appointments yesterday for teeth cleanings.  While my appointment turned up a crack in a couple of old cavities, one of which will require a crown (ouch!), I was at least able to walk out of my appointment without feeling miserable.  Not so for this little fella.. Cash's cleaning turned into a tooth-pulling frenzy.  He lost a total of fifteen (15!!) teeth yesterday.  The rot was so advanced in some of the teeth that an infection had spread throughout his little mouth and into his blood stream.  If we wouldn't have taken him in to the vet for this cleaning, we may have lost him.  According to the vet, the infection would have eventually worked its way to his heart and given him a heart attack. For the next five days he's on a liquid only diet of chicken noodle soup and water; he is not happy about this decision and is convinced he's starving to death.  There is a lot of whining and pacing back in forth in front o...
3 comments
Read more