Sorting through the memories

While recovering from shoulder surgery, I've been sorting through photos going back to the late 1950s. I've now filled eight albums (over 4,000 photos), plus set aside hundreds to give to my kids and other relatives! And I still have 17 more years to go!

The project took over my cutting table and the dining room table, but when you live alone, who cares? Most of them were in the original envelopes from when they were developed, but since I switched to digital they're not so organized.

Here's a sewing related one. That's me at age 32 and nine months pregnant with my daughter, embroidering her baby cross-stitch memento.

And this is my mother with my first child, Keith, in 1986 at my apartment in San Antonio.

Here are both kids when we had to live in a hotel in Manhattan, KS, until we could find a house to rent. The Army had transferred us there from St. Louis, but there was no housing for us on base and since it was a college town rentals were slim. We finally found a house, and I was ecstatic but I think the kids were sad to leave the hotel pool and playground.

Here's me as a kid, studious as ever.

And still studious in high school, shown here when I was working as yearbook editor.

 

I wrecked my grandmother's old car in 1976 when I had a reporting internship with a newspaper in Pennsylvania. I was driving back to the office from covering my first school board meeting. I was preoccupied with organizing the article in my head when I turned (on a green light but not a green arrow) right in front of an oncoming car. No one was injured, but my editor made me write the accident article the next morning and the police got a good chuckle when I showed up at the station to get their report.

Here's a happier college memory: my roommates and friends gathered in our apartment for a party in the '70s.

These next ones are from 1985 when I went on an Outward Bound sailing trip in Florida. That was both fun and challenging.

Here's another sewing related memory. This is part of a quilt that I helped a fifth-grade class make, based on a Kandinsky painting. It was auctioned off at a school fund-raiser.

Fun sibling memories! Above are my mom and two sisters decades ago. My mother, on the left, is now 90!

And this is my brother and sister looking stylish at my house for Christmas 1987. Those photos were actually sent to me last night by my other sister. We were all sharing old photos via text, and I had never seen these two but I love them!

Finally, the sunset is from last night, the last night of our official monsoon season (June 15-Sept. 30). You can see the rain falling over the mountains to the left. And this morning was sunny and crisp for my walk, a perfect start to October!

Have a colorful day