Returning to Michigan...

Would be Shanna and her family. They received the good news a week ago just as they were preparing to move to a different state, much closer than MA, but not quite as 'charming'. They have been here for a week arranging details. They will go back to Boston tomorrow and then return here in less than a month for good.

So I will get to see my grandbabies grow up more regularly. Sometimes almost 6 months would go by without a chance to visit. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

 This week I've been busy between seeing my family, going out for birthday meals, running, shopping, cooking, going to Maya's therapy, going to bouncy castles, etc. Yesterday for example, I did not get to rest for more than a few minutes until after 8. I was too tired to even trot outside to see some of my new solar lights.

I've also started out some of my projects: my garden and dealing with photos. I've cleaned up some of my gardens a little bit. First thing I did was grab a stinging nettle with my bare hands.When will I learn? I've cleaned out my rock garden which is currently overrun with lilac colored phlox and snow on the mountain, which has not bloomed yet. Still lots of work to be done. Next week...

The bags of photos and the boxes that I took out to recycle

My father spent almost every spare moment taking pictures mostly with large format cameras. When I was in Boston, we watched Fur, a semi-biographical movie about Diane Arbus. I recognized her large format cameras from my childhood: the Graflex, Hassalbad, Leinhoff. The medium format cameras my father had were the Mamiyaflex, the Topcon and the Leica. He wasn't fond of 'small format' cameras such as 35 mm ones as the photos could not be enlarged to his satisfaction. Nothing was automatic. He did have a photometer to measure the light intensity. The correct exposures and f-stops had to be calculated. I was probably one of the few 8 year olds that knew the formulae.  He sold his work to various stock photography companies around the country. They kept a 50% commission but still, for some photos he would get several grand. Digital photography mostly put an end to his side business. Since his death, these stock photography businesses have been sending me all the photos he had on file. Thousands of them; all colored transparencies. Boxes and boxes and we have very little storage space here. My brother has some of these boxes too. So the other day, I put on some music and spent 4-5 hours sorting through these things. He had a few pictures of our family and of our pets thrown in the mix so I didn't want to throw those out. Most of the photos are scenery particularly of the Canadian Rockies and Vermont in the fall, his two favorite places. But often he would take twenty variations on the same scene. I would keep just one of the twenty.

Me at 5 or so. Transparencies do not scan well on my scanner though a friend has access to  a slide one so someday I can scan these properly. My mom wasn't  too interested in  hair styling as she said I had bad hair, straight as an arrow and fine. Eventually long, straight blonde hair came to be socially acceptable. Fortunately, it became thicker as I aged.