Shedding

I'm melting.......

  




Well, this is really embarrassing.  Whoever is in charge of my graphics misunderstood.  I'm not MELTING, sheesh! 

I'm MOLTING!!

Does that clear things up?  At the ripe old age of 60, my hubby and I are looking more and more like a retired couple.  I'm there and he's getting closer all the time.  As we molt or shed or whatever it is we are doing, we look toward the future with a positive outlook.


As far as I'm concerned, molting is a very good thing. If we never molted-or shed- we'd be a big mass of dead skin walking around.  Isn't that gross?  Do you remember the scene in one of the Narnia books about a dragon that went through a very painful molting?  He come out of it a new "person".  It's a chance to get to the things that are essential and stop carrying around dead weight, excessive baggage and all that.  The analogies and metaphors aren't new but they have new meaning as we grow older.  We shed excess pounds to feel and look better.  It's healthy.  Whether the pounds are measured as fat off our bodies or stuff out of our house or toxic memories, all this excess in our lives does one thing: robs us of the true joy of simple living.  Back to the basics and all that.  Debride the wound (medically speaking).  Trim the fat.  Clear out the  deadwood.  Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

During the past few weeks I have attacked almost every nook and cranny of our 2,300 square foot home.  Every photograph is not in my living room, sorted by person, age and activity.  We have all the remaining photographs of the Friesen and Dick families going back several generations.  All the extra kid, wedding and miscellaneous photos we gave to our parents over the years has come back to us to there are duplicate, triplicate and quadruples of some pics.  An example is our wedding pictures.  We have our wedding memory book and album, "Our Son's Wedding" album from Al and Dolores, all the negatives from our wedding, snapshots, formal shots, newspaper photos, articles and on and on and on.  A forty year marriage is enough testament to the fact that we had a ceremony on a hot August afternoon.  We don't want or need those.  Plus, to be perfectly honest, that wasn't the happiest day of our lives.  We were very young, still in college and broke.  We took a quick "honeymoon" from Illinois to Kansas and two weeks later I stared nursing school and Dave continued on at Wichita State University.  We had part-time jobs, an old--yet quaint--apartment and lots of stress.  The wedding was simple.  I wasn't one of those girls who tore out pictures from wedding mags and fantasized about my wedding all my childhood.  Anyway, we don't need a lot of reminders of that time.  We've changed, our marriage has changed and I like us a whole lot better now than then.  So, last weekend we went to an outdoor cafe and with a sandwich and glass of wine, dug through our box of wedding pics and tore up about 2/3 of them.  I plan to throw out more but now it's down to a small pile.  Feels way better.

One of our many Pismo trips with Grandpa Friesen.

The pics of our kids are also numbered in the thousands.  We took a lot of pictures of the rascals.  So now I'm going through them and eliminating the ones I never could part with before.  You know, the blurry ones that you can still see well enough to know how cute that kid was that day, the many copies of each pic of some random kid  kicking a soccer ball the wrong way on the field, etc.  They're being sorted and sifted.  I can't even explain how much this is helping me simplify my life.

The first time my dad met Emilie.  Mike on hand to give advice.

Dr. Friesen

The scary thing is that this project is just starting.  I haven't even thought of where all the digital photos are.  A couple years ago our nephew Nick scanned hundreds of pics for us.  But that was just a start and, of course, I didn't throw away the hard copies.  I don't trust technology THAT much!  That will be the next thing.  It makes sense to do that.  How are we supposed to manage all this media????  And, the piles of videos have to be gone through, too.  A few years ago I started transferring the VHS family vids to DVD.  That project needs to be resumed.

The most fun is finding long lost pictures that are real gems, then going through these with the kids.  If I can't have those times back, at least going through the memories is second best.  

Still adorable!

Mike with HIS pride and joy

A face only a mother could love!

Doesn't smell quite as good as a baby but she loves me unconditionally!

I will stop for now because this is getting out of hand and if I don't get back to my sorting it will  not get done.  Just be assured that you haven't seen the last of me/us!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll be back...