Clear the Deck...

As I said, I'm TRYING to work on my "Yearbook 2009" video. Well, I AM working on my video...but I take, easily, three hundred pictures for every one that shows up on my blog...so weeding through them is an onerous, odious, o-boggling task. Scatter-shot, the amateur digital photographer's bane.

Last night, as I sorted, and cropped, and straightened, and sharpened, and SAVED (very important step) I noticed a troubling pattern. My counters are never clear. Seriously...if you wanna know how the day that I took the picture was going, look BEHIND my children.

Here is an example...


Bean had decided to make an "experiment"...it was late-ish afternoon, sometime between 2:00 and 4:00pm. After lunch but before my 5:00pm "clean the kitchen before I make dinner" time slot. Now the stuff on the counter in front of her is stuff she is working with...but I draw your eyes behind her...note to self, either change the "clean the kitchen" time or stop taking pictures in the kitchen until the ten minutes per day that it IS clean.

Here is another one...


This is from our Girly Trip 2009. We were dancin to Jim Croce. Note the counter in the fore-ground. See all those apparent "medicine" jars? Those were there on purpose; we had seven kids between us all taking the same vitamins AND several of them had colds...so our herbal cold stuff is right out in the open for any 'ole mommy to grab...still looks messy, but understandable.

HOWEVER, see those spritzy bottles...the blue and the pink? That's how I untangle Bear from her curls each morning. It would appear that we got too busy dancing to find a proper home for those...and yes, they were pretty much there the entire Girly Trip.

And those clothes...I don't know what they are or what, on earth, they are doing on the counter.

There are more...so many more...most of the pictures of my kids at the kitchen table are very telling too...next time you see one, look behind them. My kids "clear the deck" to the next closest flat surface, and you know what, I often forget to notice.

I had a friend many years ago named George. He said that he suffered from an ailment called "Flat Surface Syndrome"...in other words, flat surfaces were there to pile STUFF on, so pile stuff on them, he did. I never really thought about it, but I, well, my whole family, seems to suffer the same malady. And it REALLY shows up in pictures.

How embarrassing...

Here now, I was going to show you a picture of my kitchen clean...so I dug around for the pictures I took to show my counters to a friend...so the counters are indeed clear...

From 02.2009.Pics

But there is another flat surface here...one that I don't think will ever be clear except for once every couple of months when I get up there and clean it...yep, the top of the fridge.

So, there it is, my failing laid bare. Now, when you see my pictures you can say..."Wow, look at all that stuff"...but you won't have to say, "Wonder if she knows that's there?"...cuz now you know, I do.

See ya around...

Oh Bother...

Look at that...another month gone...very few pictures taken...no blog posts...

I blame Facebook. It's an evil construct that promotes instant gratification...and I've fallen to the 420 character limit too many times...sigh.

But do you know what this REALLY means? It means I've made all my holiday stuff harder. See, last year I sent pictures and DVDs at the end of the year as Christmas cards / presents. It was pretty easy last year...I had all these blog posts and pictures to help me remember. This year? Not so much.

And this year, for my birthday, Bubba got me a new fancy-schmancy DVD maker software...and I'm really excited to use it. But my inspiration is lacking. Guess I need to figure out how to power through it, because if I don't, that fancy-schmancy software would go to waste...and we can't have that now, can we?

Here is a little sample of what my new software does, all by itself. Being an old techie, I, of course, have not yet read the manual...but I DID do a wizard with some pictures of Bear's newest lost tooth... Look what it did. (56 seconds)



It comes off pretty dramatic...but it was just the template that I chose...what is funny about it to me is just how goofy she was during the TAKING of the pictures.

Alright...so what is the moral here? That's right...Facebook is evil...Self-control has been lacking and Stack needs to get a grip. I think it also means that ya'll are about to get more blog posts...maybe (how's that for commitment). But you definitely have the potential of seeing more videos. Note that is a potential...not a promise.

I hope you all are having a wonderful autumn and are looking forward to Thanksgiving...

See ya around...