Friday, December 09, 2011

Season of Change - and of Catching Up

 Again, we are deep into fall, and the season of transition as we move from outdoor pursuits to indoor comforts.  Life has been busy with rearranging and repurposing rooms; adding a couch; cleaning, organizing, and purging outgrown and unwanted items from our lives; making sure everyone has the clothing they need to be warm and cozy in the winter months - both kids have grown inches since last fall; preparing for the upcoming holidays; dealing with the fallout of yet more chaos from my family of origin, in the form of another visit from Child Protective Services to address invented claims that the children "aren't in school and there is no alternative education being provided" and that "there is dog urine and excrement all over the house", and yet more illegal demands made by the school superintendent of our local school district, who is charged with reviewing homeschoolers' paperwork for compliance to New York State's convoluted homeschool laws ; and, of course, visits to far-flung friends, area farms, museums, and events; my learning my new little Lenovo netbook.....

So, while I've been intending to get back to this blog and post some of the many, many wonderful pictures I have of our travels and activities, the intention hasn't come at a time when I also had the means, time, and energy to devote to it -until now.

Happily, with my sweet new computing machine, and the end of fall settling that has occurred in the past week or two, and with the children becoming far more capable and independent in the activities of their day-to-day lives, I am finding myself with some bits of time not claimed by the urgency of  other things.

Since our computer was filed with computer glitches and weirdnesses, there are still spring and summer photos aplenty wandering in limbo in several places.  One of my personal goals for the next weeks or months is to track them all down, edit them, and prepare them for sharing, because there are times when pictures say so much more about our lives and ourselves, and far more eloquently, than any words ever could...


The first album is our our trip to Philadelphia on July 28 - the camera batteries died just before we realized our car had been towed -  the City of Brotherly Love isn't very loving, or even forgiving, in the parking department.  I'd thought I did what I needed to, by reading the sign carefully and buying a parking stub -  but apparently not.  Jeremiah, Annalise and I had a  long walk back to and around the Independence Hall area, until we could find a helpful security guard - R. Reilly - who helped us call the impound yard and hail a cab.

We got a bonus trip to the docks, where we saw a massive cargo ship, and the oddness of Targets and Home Depots butted up against strip joints and adult movie theatres......everything, I imagine, that a sailor would want on reaching port.  Then we went through the lengthy process of reclaiming our trusty Dodge Intrepid - at the impound yard where, apparently, a reality series called Parking Lot Wars is filmed....




The next album is from our  trip to visit our friends Sylvia, Jim, Gabriella, and Harry Woodman.  By "our", I mean Jeremiah, Annalise, and I, because most of our travels happen over weekends, and chefs don't very many weekends off...





There will be more photos to come, as I hunt down, edit, and arrange.  I also hope to edit the many typos in these captions......and maybe to get through the summer pictures before winter gets here!

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