Friday, January 06, 2012

Blaaaaaah!

I'm sick. Yuck. Just the normal winter cold, or what they call down here the "Texas Crud." Terry started by getting it last week, but the worst of his lasted only two days. Mine promises to surpass that number and make my life miserable for a few more days. I feel like I'm choking.

Yesterday before I got to feeling worse, Terry dragged me out of the comfort of my motorhome to parts unknown. I remember him saying something about an appliance store, but before we were done, we had hit just about every store that sells appliances in McAllen. We are looking for items we will need for our Texas room. That will be started the end of January, so the time is quickly approaching. I don't know that it will get finished this year, but we will get a good start on it.

The Texas room will have a full bath, laundry area, kitchenette and living/dining area. It will be about 12 x 30. It should be very comfortable and allow us to have guests if anyone cares to visit. I don't like building stuff. . . don't like stuff in disarray, so this will be a real challenge for me. I will probably spend more time in the motorhome ignoring what goes on outside as best I can.

I got Terry a new scanner for Christmas. It's an Ion Document Scanner. I had an ulterior motive in purchasing it for him, I must admit. Every year I carry a box of snapshots from years ago with the intention of scanning them into the computer. My goal is to scan the thousands of pix I have accumulated in 40 years and catalog them onto DVD's. I figure the kids would like some of these old pictures. Some I have never looked at since they were taken and they are interesting. The quality of the pictures is not good. Unlike the advantages of using a digital camera now, pictures were much more subject to bad lighting and bad focusing years ago. I scanned in about 600 pictures earlier this week. Then I straightened them and cropped them. They really turned out well. I must say a little clarity was lost, but the advantage is that they are all together on one medium and easy to flip through. In six years on the road, I had never bothered to get out the big scanner I keep under the bed in order to complete this task. This little portable scanner did a great job and I am looking forward to doing more this summer when I get back to my larger stash of old photos.

The first picture is of my kids and their cousins. There are seven of them. Our daughter Jocelyn is left front. Our son Brandon is right front. Another picture shows Jocelyn holding Brandon soon after he was born. Another picture shows them both on a ride at Santa Claus Land. The last picture is of our beloved Fritzie. We got him when my younger sister Nita was a baby. He departed life soon after she left home at age 18. He had a great life. He came from Arizona where my Dad's brother and wife had Fritzie's Dad. I think he was known at Big Fritz. My aunt took Fritzie and housebroke him and put him on a train to Indiana. He was a great dog. How scared he must have been on that ride, but he was loved for all of his years.

Do you get nostalgic looking at old pictures? I am finding that I look at these old pictures and wish I could hug my kids again when they were that age. I miss having them running in the yard, playing with the dog, etc. That will never be. It is sad for me. Even though they are adults, married and I have one+ grandchild, there is something in those old pictures I wish I could hang onto besides just the memories. It is a weird feeling.

Till next time. . .

Dale

3 comments:

Tom & Ella Williams said...

I like your post about scanning the photos. I was just talking to someone else this week about our stashes of old photos. I was wondering what my kids would do with them if something happened to us. Most likely they get trashed because they would mean nothing to the kids. If they were scanned, I could caption them with 'why they are important to me'.

Dale said...

Well, that is what I thought too. And I have thousands of old photos and the kids have probably never seen most of them. I am planning on doing them all. At least they may be able to enjoy them then.

Nita said...

Sis, I feel the same way, when I look at old pictures! Must be in our genes! I even get teary eyed. I just set and try to remember what a day was like when the kids were little and they were all around the house playing. Makes me sad, that the time is gone, and more time is passing ever so quickly! Please send me that picture of Fritzie. would love to add that to my stash!