About the Fridge Door Art Gallery

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[It’s been a while since I did a throwback. I wrote this one is about the accidental art gallery that happens in so many kitchens.]

            Show me a person with nothing on their fridge door and I’ll show you someone who just had a new refrigerator delivered. The metal exterior and wide-open space seems to lend itself to magnetizing everything and anything to the fridge door – well at least anything that a magnet can hold up. Before you can say “What’s for supper?”, someone has christened that gleaming exterior with a take-out menu and matching magnet.

            The fridge door is really a microcosm of the household, showcasing what’s important and memorable to the family that lives here. At the very least, it’s a great place to stick stuff that you’re not really sure what to do with. Nearly every home has at least one or two photographs on their icebox, a collection that usually grows into a multi-people collage just shortly after school pictures and Christmas cards come out. And of course, if you’re a parent or a grandparent, or even a neighbor to a family with children, chances are you’re going to have some wax crayon, glitter glue and egg carton creation adhered to the fridge with at least a dozen magnets or more likely with some glitter glue that seeped to the back of the project. Because the fact of the matter is children are prolific artists. Even if your three-year-old had just scribbled a two-second blue circle with a nearly dried-up marker, they will insist that you hang it on the fridge because (apparently) that blue circle is a picture of you and it goes with the series of twenty-five identical pictures of you already layered on the fridge door. (You probably never guessed you were so complex until you had children.)

            But the short people in your household aren’t the only culprits. The fridge may be the place where you stick a funny comic strip you cut out from the newspaper (usually mirroring your life is such an eerie manner you wonder how the cartoonist got into your house.) In our home, the refrigerator is close enough to the garbage where I go through the mail. Therefore, the fridge is the place that all those reminder notices from the dentist get pinned up. There are other reminders, too. I have something up that’s called “Prayer for a Tired, Irritable Parent”. Although I don’t actually read it that often, just seeing the title reminds me to be thankful for noisy, wrestling children because (apparently) that’s a sure sign that they’re healthy. Well, healthy except for reaching abnormally high sugar levels on cookie baking days. And another clipping encourages me to be thankful for things like high gas bills because it means we’re warm and for snug fitting clothes because it means we have enough to eat.

            Which most of us do. And because the Pavlovian response to any sort of anxiety, from high gas bills to wrestling children to “How am I going to get this glob of petrified glitter glue off my brand-new fridge?” is to open the fridge door. So many of us will use this spot to strategically display some sort of deterrent to doing just that. One does need to weigh the matter carefully, since fridge doors are somewhat like public property. Everyone who walks into your home is going to look at what’s on your fridge and some will even go a step further and check the contents inside. (These are good people to play the marbles-in-the-medicine-chest-trick on.)

If you choose to put up an inspiring picture of yourself at your fittest and thinnest, some may look at it and think, “Man, did she ever let herself go!” If you put up a picture of yourself at your worst, some may look at it and think, “Man, did she ever let herself go!” If you put up a picture of some attractive girl (which really doesn’t work any way), you may have a problem with your husband making too many trips to the refrigerator and some clueless people will still say, “Man, did she ever let herself go!” And finally, if you put up a picture of some attractive male, people will assume your marriage is on the rocks.

Which is why I have a nice, unassuming calorie wheel on the fridge that will tell me that eating that cookie dough myself will sentence me to seven and a half hours on the treadmill. Seeing this induces such stress, I find myself struggling to open the fridge door, anyways. Luckily, I can’t. It’s been sealed shut with glitter glue.

About Failure

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Failure – in the conventional sense – is not an attractive word. It’s the kind of event – whether it’s getting turned down for a date or the demise of a multi-million-dollar company – that we never wish for. Indeed, what precipitates failure is the optimistic progression towards what we hope will be success. No one, in the particular sense, hopes for failure.

In the general sense, however, failure is actually not such a bad thing – it will, in fact, teach you way more than success. For example, in high school English, my teacher took one look at my name at the top of my paper and assigned me exactly the same grade almost every time. I was 85%. But in university, I learned that I was only 50%. But I didn’t want to be a 50% student forever – in English, anyways – so I learned that I had to learn, to listen, to try, to fail if I was going to succeed.

It’s not a lesson that’s easy for a semi-perfectionist – my husband reminds me that I fail at little, but mostly because I risk little, but I resist hearing the message from him, as we often do from our nearest and dearest.

I just finished another book by Neil Pasricha – You Are Awesome – and it’s all about resilience. Pasricha’s style resonates with me but the chapter Lose More to Win More really hit me. (Don’t tell my husband.) At the end of the chapter, he writes: “Admitting failure is hard. But you can do it! Trumpet them! Be proud of them. Because you learned from them and they were fumbles on the path that got you here. You wouldn’t be here without there. And you can’t get there without here.”

So this is me trumpeting my failures, of which this is by no means an exhaustive list:

  1. In Grade Two, I peed my pants in school. For years, I felt such humiliation – and failure – about this incident. It helped once I realized that I was not alone in this experience and it gave me empathy for pants-wetters everywhere. When a co-worker had an accident when we were both in our twenties, I covered for her as she slunk home and then never mentioned it again. I was the only one she invited to her wedding.
  2. The story of me trying to do better in my university English class? That didn’t hold true for Intro Physics – a course I enrolled in and dropped – twice. I had no desire to get better and it helped me recognize that pursuing a degree in the Sciences was totally wrong for me. And I can enjoy learning about Einstein without a full appreciation of E=mc2.
  3. When I was 21, I saw my car’s dashboard light up with “check engine” when I was two hours away from my destination. I ignored it. I will NEVER do that again. R.I.P. Chevy Nova.
  4. I failed to visit a dear friend in the hospital when he was dying of cancer and I deeply regret it now. I hope I never make that mistake again.
  5. I have barely read any classic novels. I have yet to add any Dickens, Dostoyevsky or Doyle to my list. But I have learned that while actually reading the classics is kinda boring – especially if I already know all the plot points – listening to one on audiobook is a painless way of increasing my literary street cred.
  6. When our boys were little and I was first starting to write publicly, my hubby and I created a family newsletter – the kind you needed people to subscribe to and pay real dollars for and that we would send in the mail in a manilla envelope. How quaint! We did four issues, had even less paid subscribers and I thought the whole thing was a silly mistake. I was reminded of it in Pasricha’s book when he recounted how many years and blogs he went through before his 1000 Awesome Things landed. I no longer see that as a failure but as a stepping stone. Plus, the kids had watermarked scrap paper to draw on for years after that.
  7. I have started more days with the effort to “eat perfectly” than not and most of those days have ended up in perfectionistic failure. I have tried programs, paid for classes, bought fitness equipment and I’m still unhappy with the size of my pants. But: I’ve learned that working out – especially on a regular basis – and eating lots of vegetables and not so much artificial food, FOR REALS makes me feel sooooooo much better. Maybe someday the message will get to my heart. Both the metaphorical one and the beating one.
  8. I haven’t written as much as I should have. I haven’t risked, haven’t prioritized, haven’t queried enough in my writing career. To my own detriment. Because if I don’t fail, I won’t learn. And if I don’t learn, I won’t get better. Which is what I want to do. *Sigh.* But for some reason, this blog gets written every week – somewhat mysteriously. Not like elves who helped the cobbler, but like I don’t know yet what makes me write this every week and not work on my other projects.

The real success, it would seem, is in failing better and dwelling just long enough on it to learn the lesson behind it.

About Jell-O

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Tell me everything you know about Jell-O. This was the prompt I came across this week in a writing book.

I hadn’t thought about Jell-O that much until a couple months ago when my nieces came here for a day during that surprise extra week they had off after Christmas. We talked about school and Covid and teachers and masks and hot lunches and that’s when I found out that THEY NEVER GOT JELL-O ANYMORE. With whipped cream. And that this was one of the great disappointments they’ve had to bear during this pandemic. (I’m not really sure why but I took their word for it.) Since they would be at my house for a few hours, I suggested we make some Jell-O. If we started right then, it would be ready for afternoon snack.

Of course, I had some packages of Jell-O around because – Hello? – I was raised by my mom who became a housewife in the fifties. That’s when the necessary refrigeration to make Jell-O became de rigeur. As we boiled some water, I told the girls that when I was their age, I helped my mom make Jell-O every Saturday night for Sunday dinner’s dessert. Nothing about the process has changed: empty one package of Jell-O (or jelly powder if you eschew the name brand) into one cup of very hot water – measured with a Pyrex measuring cup, of course – and stir until dissolved. Then add one cup of very cold water and stir again. Mostly I “helped” because Mom would always pour me a teensy glass of the hot Jell-O water before she put the rest into a cut glass bowl to set in the fridge. It was like a warm liquid lollipop. Usually it was fake strawberry flavor, sometimes it was fake lime or fake orange. I don’t think it was ever fake grape.

Nothing could be simpler. Mom once got frustrated with someone “who couldn’t even make Jell-O!” – sort of the way you would get mad at someone who couldn’t boil water. However, everything seemed easy for Mom in the kitchen – she was such a good cook. But that didn’t exclude putting Jell-O on the menu every weekend.

It also did not mean that every time I saw Jell-O in the Co-op Cafeteria, I didn’t want some. The whipped cream they put on it was part of the allure – that and those sexy cafeteria sherbet glasses. (You can buy six dozen of those for $237.00 online – but that doesn’t include shipping.) I didn’t have any fancy bowls, but I did have some leftover whipping cream in the fridge from Christmas, so I whipped it up for the girls when the Jell-O was ready. It was a pretty easy thing to do for them.

I guess that is part of the charm of Jell-O – it is easy. But another part is that you have to wait for it. (Unless you just want to drink hot Jell-O water.) When my boys had their wisdom teeth out, I made sure that I made Jell-O before we left for the dentist’s office. Jell-O marked both the low bar and the high bar of my career as a mom. Easy to do, but you had to remember to do it.

Got any Jell-O memories? There’s always room for Jell-O – and memories.

About Ukraine

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Our Lady of Ukraine

It’s been a sobering week watching events play out over the borders between Ukraine and Russia. I sometimes think that I’m not a political person, but there’s something about hearing the words “World War Three” that make me sit up and take notice. It’s actually made a lot of people notice: countries, companies and individuals are imposing sanctions on Russia and voicing their support for Ukraine. Even Saturday Night Live made New York’s Ukrainian choir Dumka the headliner last Saturday and another choir sang the Ukrainian national anthem before an NHL game in Winnipeg. With the modern-day capability of being able to film everything, nothing that the Big Bully of Eastern Europe does goes unnoticed.

One look at a map, comparing the size of Ukraine to Russia, is enough to make one furious. It reminds me of something my preschool son Simon once said to a playground bully: “Hey you mean guy! Leave him alone!”

When I was in university some thirty plus years ago, I took a course one spring session in Ukrainian Folklore. It was actually a required course for anyone who had been hired to work at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village for the summer as an interpreter – someone who dresses up in period costume and provides an immersive experience for visitors. I wasn’t working there, my part-time job as a bank teller was too good to give up, but I wanted to knock off some credits towards my degree and thought it would be an easy mark. After all, I am Ukrainian – I should know this stuff.

It turns out I got a lot more than I bargained for, namely a new minor for my degree. I fell in love with the subject – especially of material culture, the objects that remind us of who we are and what we do as a particular people. A lot of it was due to an infectious teacher, Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky, one of the few professors whose full name I remember. We watched the movie Taras Bulba in class, we learned the poetry of Taras Schevchenko, and we started calling any person named Terry by their new nickname, Taras. But a good part of it was the awakening of an affinity to my heritage, the pride that comes with identifying with a historical people.

It was during my time at the University of Alberta, taking lots of classes from the Slavic Studies department, that the Soviet Union fell apart. Nations that had supposedly been absorbed started to rear their nationalistic heads, those heads adorned, so to speak, in Ukraine with vinoks and sheepskin hats. It was heartening to see that self-determination was so stubborn. The nations were still there, no matter how hard the Soviet Union had tried to subdue them.

After Little Simon stood up to a much bigger boy on the playground that day, we found out that it was actually his own little brother that he was bullying. People, just like countries, want their own self-determination. Russia is the economically and geographically bigger than Ukraine. But that doesn’t mean that Russia gets to boss Ukraine around. It’s heartening to see the world stand united to tell the Mean Guy Russia to leave Ukraine alone.

About the Perfect Day

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About thirteen years ago, our family took an epic trip to the other side of the world to visit friends that lived there. Besides the obvious attraction of reuniting with our peeps, along with free accommodations and translation services, it was a warm country surrounded by ocean. In other words, a perfect holiday destination, completely different from our temperamental country of origin. It was a vacation I’m remembering wistfully today, in the midst of our February deep-freeze, as it were.

Towards the end of our time together, we crammed all eight of us – with suitcases – into their car and made a pilgrimage to the sea. Our destination from their inland city was less than Vermilion to Edmonton, but it took us all day to get there – we actually broke up the trip into two days. Because: Indonesian roads, traffic and time are just not the same as in North America. We arrived at our beach house in the pitch dark and fell exhausted into bed, the roar of the ocean so loud we thought there was a good chance we would be swept away in the night.

The next morning, when we cracked open our bedroom door – after checking that we were still, indeed, alive – we were greeted by Dave who had (bless him) made coffee and opened up an entire wall of doors to a porch where we could sip and stare at the ocean in our front yard. Not long after, we took a walk along the beach until our crew found a place to play in the surf. We spent the rest of the day exploring the jungle (and somebody’s fantastic treehouse – even though we weren’t actually invited to), alternating with dips in the pool and playing beach volleyball. When the sun disappeared, we ate a perfectly grilled supper of marlin steaks, prawns the size of our hands, and fresh vegetables. And then we played all the card games that Lynn could think of until we were too tired to stay awake anymore, even though we didn’t want the day – or our time with our friends – to end.

At one point that afternoon, when the sun was high and we were cooling off in the pool, Dave pronounced that it was A Perfect Day. It is something that has always stuck with me. While I don’t usually pine for sandy beaches, there is something to be said for the resetting nature of time by the water. That day we had nowhere to be but HERE AND NOW. The day progressed slowly and quickly. We spent time outside, we walked, we were curious and explored, we got a little wet and sweaty, we ate some pretty simple food and we were with people we loved. It’s a pretty simple equation.

And one that could actually be replicated anywhere. Sure, a beautiful exposure to ocean or mountain is helpful but it’s also good to remember that Perfect Days are just the sum of Simple Things. Plus, the time and the awareness to realize that Perfect can be Now. Even in February. In Alberta.

About The Happiness Equation

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I’ve already said this: I am a fan of Neil Pasricha. My admiration started with his podcast Three Books and then I realized I had heard of him before – I had even slipped a copy of The Book of Awesome in one of my son’s stockings one Christmas. I fangirled so much over Neil’s kind and endearingly nerdy interview style on his podcast that I left a voicemail of appreciation. Then one day in the car, as I was catching up on episodes, to my surprise I heard my voice coming from my radio. If you’d like to hear it, check out Episode 89 after Neil interviews Zafar the Hamburger Man (at time 50:17).

It would make sense that I would then want to read all the books that Neil has written. But while The Book of Awesome and its spawn are New York Times bestsellers, I prefer to stick to his more prescriptive books, starting with The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything.

The book is full of good advice which humorously ends with the caveat: Don’t Take Advice. This is #9 – you need to read the whole book to understand why – but basically, the book is filled with information that resonates and makes sense. Although it seems weird in a book whose very title suggests it will teach you what you need to be happy, the very first section tells you to Be Happy First.

Wait, what? Is it really that simple? Think it, do it?

Actually, the important part of that mini-sentence is the DO. In the first few pages of the book, Pasricha outlines 7 Ways To Be Happier RIGHT NOW as verified by the field of positive psychology. Here they are:

  1. Three Walks – We all know that exercise makes us feel better, if not while we’re doing it, then for the benefits after. Research backs that as little as three 30-minute walks a week will activate pleasant feelings – a.k.a. happy feelings.
  2. The 20-Minute-Replay – If you’re happy and you know it, write it down! Writing about a happy experience lets you relive that experience as you write it down and every time you re-read it.
  3. Random Acts of Kindness – Hold open a door. Shovel someone’s sidewalk. Pay for coffee for the next guy in line. Five kindnesses like these a week help you feel good about yourself and thus, happier.
  4. A Complete Unplug – Periodically – be it after supper, for a weekend or during a vacation – disengage completely from social media, the internet and incessant texting. In fact, Pasricha is a proponent of landlines – if people really want to reach you, they can call you at home. (No one every does.)
  5. Find your Flow. Engage in a personally challenging activity that makes you forget everything else.
  6. Meditate – FOR TWO MINUTES. 2-minute-meditations on a regular basis increase compassion and self-awareness and decrease stress. All for the cost of TWO MINUTES.
  7. Be grateful. Once a week, write out three to five things you’re grateful for. As Pasricha says, “If you can be happy with simple things, then it will be simple to be happy.”

Sounds good to me. And easy. But hard. Because in the end it’s up to us to DO these things – no one else can make you happy. It’s all part of the equation.

About Romance

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[Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash]

[Another throwback: here’s what Valentine’s Day looked like for us twenty years ago!]

My husband and I are approaching a benchmark in our marriage. With nearly ten years behind us since we uttered those fateful words, “I do”, you would think that the idea of romance has been crystallized in our mind. After all, we’ve been living together for a decade. We should know what turns one another’s crank. And for the most part we do. Rick cleaning the bathrooms in our house is infinitely more romantic to me than say, laying down his coat over a mud puddle for me to walk over. (Don’t forget: I still do the laundry.) And if I would just sit next to my husband on the couch for an entire hockey game and actually pay attention, he would consider himself the luckiest man in the world.

What’s that? That doesn’t sound very romantic to you? Ah, well, don’t you remember? We have three small children. When it comes to romance, our paradigm has definitely shifted from the days of dating and smooching and holding hands. Not that that stuff is unheard of around here. Let’s just say we’ve become a lot more, uh, efficient. The trouble with Valentine’s Day is that it’s all about someone else telling you what to do and what to say in order to guarantee the appropriate swooning from your mate. And the flower and chocolate shops aren’t completely to blame. Let’s take a look at the origin of Valentine’s Day.

Although many myths surround this lovers’ day, Valentine’s Day is named for a priest, the patron saint of lovers, who secretly married couples against the wishes of the emperor. Erroneously, Mr. Emperor thought that this ban on marriage would encourage more men to join the army. It’s sort of a tragic Romeo-and-Juliet-forbidden-love-thing, which incidentally was also set in Italy. Hello? Italy? How are we supposed to get to the birthplace of romance if we’ve only accumulated 157 airmiles in the last 10 years? And no wonder those personal ads seeking romance always claim an affinity for candlelit dinners and long walks on the beach. Italy is surrounded by water! And Valentine’s Day was invented in the Middle Ages. They didn’t even have electricity back then! Clears things up a lot, doesn’t it?

You have to give credit to those Italians, though. Notorious as they are for their romantic reputation, they also have big families. Maybe we have the whole idea wrong over here in North America. Romance isn’t for twitter-pated teenagers. It’s for the seasoned veterans of love who know romance doesn’t have to fall between the confines of red roses and serenades. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Romance CAN fit in between the laundry and the bedtime stories. But sometimes, a babysitter is a pretty good thing.  

About February

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Ok, so it’s February.

While January has all the momentum of a sled on an icy toboggan hill – What? January’s done? – February comes in and sits, immoveable, like a four-foot-high snowdrift in front of your garage door. It’s hard to get going anywhere and it really feels like a lot of work.

“Well,” I thought to myself this morning as I surveyed the -35 degrees Celcius landscape out my window, “at least it’s a short month.” Not that weather is any respecter of Gregorian calendar lines – I got married the day after a snowstorm in August in Alberta. Oh, Alberta.

But then I got to wondering: just why IS February only 28 days (usually)? I mean, there’s a whole seven other months that have an EXTRA day and here poor old February is missing two. Did February miss a couple turns when picking teams on the celestial playground? Oh, February.

And so, I went down a short World Wide Web Wormhole, quickly realizing that there really is no rational answer. February (along with January) wasn’t even a thing until a Roman guy named Numa first corrected the old lunar ten-month calendar. He tried (unsuccessfully) to avoid having any months with an “unlucky” even number. He had 355 days to work with, so one month had to have an even number of days. (Which lends credence to the myth of Why February Feels Unlucky.)

One would think that when Julius Caesar decided to “fix” things, adding in the lost 10 days (they USED to add a LEAP MONTH every four years to rectify things) that he would just shuffle the deck and a bunch of 30s and 31s would be dealt out. But no, he didn’t want to mess with the existing 31s. He did, however, give February 29. And he renamed one of the months in middle after himself. (As “luck” would have it, Julius Caesar was murdered shortly after in the month of March, which was shortly after the now “lucky” February.)

This changed as soon his adopted son Augustus was in charge. As emperors will do, he decided that HE needed a month named after him, too, so whatever August used to be called was renamed for him. But since he had to be even-stevens with his dad, he stole a day FROM FEBRUARY to give his month 31. Oh, Augustus.

This begs the question: are people who are born on February 29 lucky? (They age a lot slower.) Or unlucky? (They don’t get as many birthday cakes.)

I’ll just let you think about that.

About My Pants

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Last week, a button popped off the waistband of my pants. Thankfully, it wasn’t because of undue strain due to Christmas binging or two years of Covid (over)eating. No, this favorite pair of pants have just started getting old: first the sporty emblem began to rub off, then one of the zippers on a side pocket went kaput, and now, the threads holding my button in place gave up their ghost.

Rather than change out of said pants into another, nearly identical pair for comfort and fifty-something style, I just grabbed a large safety pin and used that to fasten my pants and prevent them from sliding down every time I stood up. And I thought to myself, I guess this is what I’ll be like when I’m old and don’t want to go out and buy new clothes anymore.

But then it hit me: Who am I kidding? Apparently, that time has already arrived.

Actually, I’m not really sure if my swift employment of safety pins is about my age , my laziness to sewing on the button or my aversion to buying new clothes. I think I’ve always been one to resort to a quick fix when I’ve got better things to do. And for the most part, I work from my chair, drink lots of coffee and water, and only get up for hourly bathroom breaks so maybe the pin wasn’t even that necessary. I mean, I could hold my pants up for the ten seconds it takes to traverse the hallway to my urgent destination. Plus, there is the added efficiency to getting the job done: no button in the way. And who am I kidding? Most of the time, sitting in my chair, with my Christmas/Covid indulgences pressing the matter, I often undo the button and relax into a (girlish) Al Bundy posture in front of my laptop.

But there is a certain decency to wearing clothes that are in good repair. Granted, these particular pants have crossed over to the designation of “Home Pants”. They’re too shabby to wear to the grocery store (unless I’m wearing my uber-long winter coat, shhhhhh!) but they will do if I need to answer the door for a signed delivery or a surprise bottle-driver. (I will quickly run to change before I answer the door if I am caught still in my pajama pants because, I need to at least provide the illusion that I’m working, both to myself and to strangers. Covid dress-code, be damned. For me, anyway. You do you.)

Those pants have lasted me a very long time – I’m guessing about seven years. The replacement cost would be about $70 meaning the originals only cost me about $10 per year. By my Starbucks reckoning, that’s only two fancy-schmancy drinks. A year. So yes, I think I do need to go shopping, whether I like it or not.

Or maybe I just need to sew on that dang button.

About Cell Phone Photography

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Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash

I have to organize my photos. Well, not all of them, but there’s a whole 2021 backlog on my phone that I really need to go through and then delete off the Cloud or else I’ll start getting those warning messages that my phone is NOT backed up and that Certain Doom will thus occur. I hate those messages so much that last year, instead of doing the work of paring down what needed to be stored in my phone, I just paid the extra for storage. Now I am a slave to Apple to the tune of $1.35 per month.

Okay, so that’s not a terrible price for ensuring that my memories don’t disappear – it’s only about the cost of one third of a Starbucks Grande Caramel Macchiato (with oat milk). The cost of Starbucks drinks helps me to relativize a lot of purchases that, in theory, should be a lot more important than coffee. Like photos. Like memories.

But when I do get around to looking at the photos from my phone that Magically-Instantly download to my computer to see what I can delete off my phone, this is what I find: screenshots of memes and their cropped versions that I sent to someone, screenshots of my phone mid-podcast to remind me to go back and listen to something again (which I almost never do) and screenshots of texts to remind me to do something. Oh, and some genuine photos.

I’ve learned not to delete them all. While many of these things are actual pictures of people I love blowing out birthday candles or beside the huge pile of snow they just shovelled or selfies of a group of us hiking in Canmore or just me on the trails in Vermilion Provincial Park, the memes and the texting and the podcast screenshots are also moments in time. I save a lot of conversations with my kids or my husband (either for future enjoyment or for future proof of things that moms and wives need to prove to their beloveds). A snap of a podcast shows me what I was into at the time I took it. And All Those Covid memes will (hopefully soon) remind me of when we wore masks and bought a lot of toilet paper.

Some stuff has to go: the price of SPAM at Costco, the mysterious & blurry shots of my shoes, the doubles and tens and twenties when my phone was accidentally in burst mode. But the random and odd pictures that my phone seems to take of its own accord have the flavor of those old time real photos from the end of the Kodak camera reel: slightly exposed, weirdly angled and capturing something ethereal that just might be happy to look back at twenty years from now.

Maybe I don’t have to organize my photos just yet. Maybe I’ll just time-capsule them instead in a folder on my computer or buy a round of Starbucks for a year’s worth of storage. And then twenty years from now, like looking through a shoebox of photos, I can then wonder what the heck I was thinking. Or not.