Time and again

Okay, so I was struggling with it before, but now that we have the dog I'm finding it even more difficult to give this the time and effort I would like to give it. I feel that the vast majority of my posts are but wisps -- wisps! -- of what I intended them to be and have more to do with getting it done than doing it well. I'm trying to figure out how to carve out a bit more time for this, particularly because I realized that what I enjoy so much about other people's blogs I read is that the writers' insights, reflections, and revelations (as well as their photography and story telling) broaden my own perspective. That is, they give genuinely and generously in what they share and I learn from it, think about it, enjoy it. I'm not returning the favor with short, just-get-it-done posts and that make the experience unsatisfying even for me.

So, I'm trying.

Hope Revolution rocks on:

I noticed that another of the participants in the Flickr group added "Pass it on!" as well as the full Hope Revolution title and URL. I'm going to do that on my new batch of cards so that the project is a little more clear for any recipients who are curious about the card they've ended up with in their hands. My favorite drop-off point these days is inside books in the children's book sections we frequent, and I have to storm the library with these as well. I figure that making the card useful as a bookmark may mean it hangs around longer.
Spring is making inroads in New England! These tiny bits of color that start to come up in the trees -- lots of colors, not just greens -- are an endless delight to me. Red is as much a spring color here at green, thanks to the maples and maybe even the oaks coming out. I love the soft haze of color, like smoke.

And I am working this month on self portraits. There are a lot of reasons why I don't feel I have many (any?) recent photos that capture how I think I look, or how I want to look. Like most moms, I have eleventy million pictures of Dean and almost as many of Ken (and of Dean and Ken) but barely a handful of me and I don't like most of those. Yes, it does feel strange and self-indulgent to take pictures of myself, but I realized that I have very few photos of my mom at the various stages of her life and would like at least to give Dean the ability to remember me along the journey we've taken. I wonder if he'll think a picture like this really looks like me; such a hard thing to grapple with -- how do we see ourselves, how do others see us? And unlike those teen years when you have (and take) all the time in the world to stare in the bathroom mirror to contemplate who you are and how you look, it turns out for me anyway that I barely really even know what I look like anymore because I don't think about it. So I invite you, too, to put some effort into getting pictures of yourself that you like and I highly recommend taking them yourself.

Were we the last family in America to finally see Pirates of the Caribbean: The Black Pearl? I remember we saw a preview when it first came out (2003) and Dean was totally freaked out by the marching skeleton feet and it went firmly on his "no way" list. But times change, boys grow up, and Netflicks delivers. We loved it. LOVED it. I think we especially loved it more for seeing the WDW ride come to life, but maybe that was icing on the cake of a story we loved as well. I understand the third one isn't worth bothering but we've got the next one (Dead Man's Chest) on our list. Yes, it is good to have the weekly family movie nights back.