Xing the Days

Postcards of sites in Aztec New Mexico circa 1920. See last paragraph for explanation.

Four weeks from tonight I will be packing. I pray I won't have left it all for the last day. Actually four weeks from this moment I had better be 90% packed. Sunday, June 21 is the day set for traveling and whoever is driving me south will be meeting up with my husband at the approximate halfway point between here and Phoenix OR. And Ed is a morning person. He'll be wanting to meet no later than noon.

My thoughts are torn between here and there. I will have been here six months by the time I leave. I have been anxiously awaiting the time to go home and yet suddenly it doesn't seem like four weeks is enough time to finish all the projects I've started here that can't go home with me:

• the sweat pea sweater embroidery
• the family photo scan
• the photographing of interesting items around this house
• the cutting into project size of several lengths of cloth and canvas for needlework projects
• the sorting and organizing of my sewing and crafts stuff
• finishing several library books that aren't available in our library there

That last has the lowest priority of course. And I guess I pretty much listed them in the order of priority. I suppose if push comes to shove the cutting down of cloth and canvas and the organizing of my sewing stuff could be done after I get home--if I want to try to do it on the bed with our cat Merlin's help or take it out to my in-laws front room after they go to bed.

Today, I reorganized and rearranged my 'office' here at Mom's to put the focus on the family photo scan. I made room for the rest of the boxes of photos that were in the closet in the computer room. I also moved the printer/scanner again and this time raised it up so that I can reach it while standing without bending over. There just wasn't a good place to put it where I could sit to work. This was the fifth or sixth time I rearranged this space since I got here.

I also cleared off an antique table in the hallway for use as a stand for the items I wish to photograph. Items of interest for nostalgic reasons or because they could be used to illustrate posts or make cool pictures to use in my jigsaw puzzle game. Books and games from my childhood. Some really old books. Plants in cool looking pots. A bushel or so of buttons my Mom has collected over the years, some of which came from a generation before her--from grandmother's and great-aunts. Vases and cutlery and dishes and picture frames and dolls and antique tools and utensils and...

I intend to be scanning and/or snapping photos most of this night as Mom is spending this night and most of tomorrow at my brother's so I'll have the upstairs to myself all night. But before I get started on that, I'm going to be helping my sister rearrange the living-room furniture.

The photo scanning project often morphs in surprising ways for mixed in with photos are letters, greeting cards, postcards, items torn from newspapers and magazines and all manner of other memorabilia of more than three generations. My Mom was the executor of the estates for two of her great-aunts so there are stuff that was once theirs as well as stuff from both sets of grandparents and both parents. Like my Dad's memorabilia from his visit to Japan when he was in the navy in the early 50s. And like those postcards pictured at the head of this post circa 1920s. One of which had a note written by my Mom's father to his own father in 1922 before his marriage to my grandmother. This kind of thing really makes it hard to just plow through the pictures. I can see I need to hunt that card down and scan it again as I didn't get that edge on the scan bed.

Both such memorabilia and certain pictures of myself and my siblings cause me to pause and my imagination feasts on them and I need to know more. When I first got here Mom was not able to answer many questions. Her energy and focus is better now and her aphasia is decreasing so it has just in the past month become possible to bug her with such questions.