If you’re my friend on facebook then you might have seen the Week In The Life photos I’ve been posting. Last week I adopted the role of photojournalist for my family’s everyday life. Okay, to be truthful, when I looked back at my photos for the week to see what I could observe about each family member I realized that my documenting skewed toward my own everyday life, more than my family’s.

There’s not as much to learn about Trinity’s week, for instance, as there is to learn about my own. I did get a lot of Izzy’s day to day, though, and made some observations I thought interesting enough to share.

From my series of photos I proved that Izzy is almost always physically attached to technological devices, especially those involving video. Let me illustrate…






If you know Izzy at all, you already know that about him. What you may not know is that when his hands are not gripping technology, they are sometimes strumming a guitar…

And every few weeks his hands are buying me the most beautiful bouquets of flowers…

They cook dinner with me (and I confess his hands do more cooking these days than mine do)…

They take the kids to school every morning while my hands are lifting weights or supporting an alligator pose or plank or cutting through the air while I run on the treadmill…

…and pick the kids up with me after school ends.

They even keep the kids and the dogs busy so I can have a daily Me-Time…

What I failed to capture from the week is how you will truly find Izzy and me physically attached to each other even more often than you will find him attached to a piece of video equipment or computer or other device. I don’t mean to get graphic here. We’re just affectionate. I’m pretty sure that my kids’ memories of their mom and dad will involve a lot of the hugs, the piggy-back rides, the hand-holding, the kissing, the laughing and teasing about stuff we hope they don’t understand yet.

I know if the day eventually comes when my contact with Izzy will have to be through memories, it is the physical affection that I will remember. The kisses on the back of my neck that give me chills. The massages. His rock-hard biceps. The smooth nape of his neck that I like to feel while he’s driving. The warm spooning in bed. The dancing. Lots of dancing. The way he sweeps me up around his waist. How, if I’m wearing a mini-skirt when we arrive at the school to pick up the kids, he loves to offer me his back and ask, “Piggy-back ride?”

These are the types of physical contact images I failed to capture. Hmmm . . . maybe I have a new photo project to work on soon.

In my teeth.

After years and years of painful and humiliating metal contraptions and wires. Five years, to be exact.

Exhibit A:

(Congratulations. You are now looking at the most embarrassing picture of me ever to appear on the internets).

After so many years of braces and weird retainers and a headgear, it was horrifying to get those braces off and find my teeth immediately separating back toward their original spots.

Exhibit B:

The Gap Before braces:

The Gap That Is There Now:

The black gap, post braces, started as just a slight narrow slit, but when it continued to grow and grow, I had no way of knowing if it would ever stop. Whenever I saw the gap I imagined an eventual inch-wide chasm, so I hated the gap in my teeth until last year when I realized my teeth seemed to have found the happy place they were looking for and haven’t marched ahead in their east and west treks in a few years.

So now that the nightmares of a huge hole into which a dentist tries to insert an extra fake tooth have stopped, I finally like the gap in my teeth. I think it’s kind of cute and it’s different. I like different. A lot. As long as it’s not hideous.

So it occurred to me the other day to also like the new jagged splotch-line in my forehead that stretches from the center of my hairline under my bangs and reaches down into my eye brow.

Exhibit C:

I guess it developed as a result of my living in the skin cancer capitol of the world: sunny Arizona. Or perhaps it’s because I was a teen of the 80’s when all that mattered to us was super tan skin and foundation makeup in a layer so thick you could scratch your name into it.

That jagged splotch-line? It’s now my Harry Potter lightening scar. It means I have special powers.

Now if I can just find some positive association to the other dark splotch that is surfacing above my lip.

Exhibit D:

Can you see it there? I’m thanking Mary Kay Cosmetics and their Even Complexion Essence for helping me to minimize this one because I’m having a bit of a harder time finding a reason to like a dark upper lip. Seriously. Of all places to get darker skin pigmentation as I age, did it really have to surface above my lip? Come on…

Some things just don’t change.

2 years ago Today in 2008

I got together with some friends in the scrapbook industry who I met online. One was my girlfriend, Dedra, who lives near me but who introduced herself to me on the scrapbooking website, TwoPeasInABucket. The other was Lain Ehmann who worked for Simple Scrapbooks Magazine and was visiting my hometown to teach classes at the Creating Keepsakes Convention.

Today, April 20, 2010

I got together remotely with other friends in the scrapbook industry via skype to record an episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable. Two were Cathy Zielske and Ali Edwards, who for years I admired in Creating Keepsakes and Simple Scrapbooks Magazine, who are now a regular part of my audio show, but who I have yet to meet in person.

Another was Nancy Nally, who we all know from her news coverage of the scrapbook industry and who I got to meet in person at the Craft & Hobby Association trade show last summer when I met up with her and Lain and others to record a Paperclipping Newsbreak episode.

The fourth person was Izzy, who helped me build a business out of my scrapbooking hobby, who I know in “real” life, in the “online” world, and in the biblical sense.

* * *

2 years ago Today in 2008

I talked about scrapbooking with Lain and Dedra — about our different methods and about the people we admire and learn from in the industry, both in the magazines and online.

Today, April 20, 2010

I talked about scrapbooking with Ali, Cathy, Nancy, and Izzy — about methods for integrating our personal internet content with our scrapbooking content.

* * *

2 years ago Today in 2008

I pulled out my camera. Dedra and Lain pulled out their cameras.

We found innovative ways to frame ourselves in the shots.

And we took lots of pictures being silly and having fun and bonding through this intersection of our online worlds, our “real” worlds, and the hobby we love of documenting our lives.

Today, April 20, 2010

I pulled out my camera and set it on a tripod.

Cathy and Ali had their cameras out and ready. And we took pictures of ourselves in headsets and in front of microphones, being silly and having fun and bonding while talking about the intersection of our online worlds and our real worlds and how we choose to (and in some cases, choose not to) document the parts of our lives that we share on the internet.

* * *

Later This Week

We will share the audio show with others like us who love to scrapbook and love to talk about scrapbooking. And they’ll have some very cool thoughts which they’ll share back with us on the Paperclipping blog. And some day I’ll get to meet some of those people as well.

Like I said, some things never change, except to grow bigger. Or maybe this is just what happens when you find a way to make a life doing the things you love.

* * *
Hugs to another online scrapbooky friend I’ve yet to meet in person — Stephanie Howell — from whom I learned to compare and contrast my past with my present by looking at my photos.

I took my oldest son to his first concert last weekend. I’m raising him to be cooler than me, since I was sixteen before I went to my first concert and he’s only twelve. So if he doesn’t end up beating my own level of coolness, then I’ll just have to throw up my hands. What more can I do?

So far he seems to be effectively rolling his way toward said coolness, as some of the teens next to us helped him and his best friend work their way up to the very front of the packed standing-only theater. He also got a shout-out in this Phoenix New Times article about how perfect Owl City’s music is for tweens since it’s so squeaky clean.

Lucky Boy

Blake has been a fan of the band, Owl City, for a while and when he saw they were coming to Tempe, he jumped on the pre-sale opportunity and bought his own ticket. The dude lucked out. Pre-sale tickets were only $15 but they quickly jumped up in price and then the concert sold out.

Not only was it the least expensive concert I’ve ever been to, it was the biggest one I’ve seen at the Tempe Marquee and gave me the impression that Owl City is already poised to upgrade to bigger venues. He had two opening bands. Not one. Two, equaling three hours of music. That was a first for me.

Lights + Male Audience = Numerous Massive Crushes

One of the opening bands was Lights. Have you seen the girl who, apparently, is Lights? She’ll make any boy believe he’s been to the best concert in the world, especially if they’re gamers like she is. She is an adorable girl (I can’t believe I’m old enough to be calling a musician a “girl”) and fun to watch. She got a number of marriage proposals shouted to and thrown at her (in the form of a t-shirt) from the audience.

Yep. Blake and his friend enjoyed Lights. A lot.

Blake’s $15 paid for more than just three bands in three hours. I can’t leave out Owl City’s choreographed light show, which was surprisingly flashy — not that I’m a big fan of that kind of thing but I suppose if you like synthpop then you might be. It was about ten times bigger than the other concerts I’ve attended at the Marquee.

Let me just say that Blake was thrilled with the experience. And while it’s not my personal favorite style of music, it was a lot of fun and continues to fuel some good conversation and bonding with my boy.

Have you heard this Dave Matthews song? Have you heard this live version of it? It’s one of my favorites, but it’s not particularly…ummm…mainstream. You might think it’s weird.
The banjo-style guitar playing — both Tim Reynold’s accoustic and Matthew’s electric — it’s human brilliance on display.

You’ll have to take off any conservative hats you might be wearing and just relax and enjoy (and don’t let Matthews’s crazy-sounding introduction freak you out). Because this is insane but so amazing (and totally fun). . .

Did you check out his feet?

This live version makes me so happy. It’s my favorite of all of Matthews’s songs.

Aiden makes me laugh all the time. But I’m his mom and he’s my baby. You might think he has extra powers when it comes to me.

Since he is Blake and Trinity’s little brother, he’s got major strikes against him when it comes to making them laugh. But I see all the time that Aiden amuses them, too.

Recently, after Aiden inspired a good laugh in Blake and Trinity, I said, “I love that you guys get such a kick out of Aiden.”

And Blake said to me, “I get at least one kick out of Aiden every single day.” (Blake has his own sense of humor, no?).

Sometimes Aiden entertains on purpose, like he is doing in this video here. . .

And sometimes he entertains by accident when he is just passing on important bits of wisdom, combined with his personal application of such wisdom. . .