Not Readers Digest. Proceed with Caution.

I know that I am weird. No need to tell me. I am fully aware of my oddity. In fact, some may observe that I revel in it. I enjoy being weird. I have shared with you, my blogging friends, some of my idiosyncrasies. For example, I am a FREAK about cleanliness…well, not so much cleaning, as order.

The time has come for me to share another. Before I proceed, let me first preface this confession by saying I have been single much of my adult life, and I have only recently had a child…and that ONLY one child, which I find pretty manageable most of the time. So before you judge me, remember these things!

Here it goes: I have always felt like I have too much time on my hands. From the time I was a kid I lived in a constant state of “I’m bored.” Ask my mom. Besides saying “I’m running away to Grandma’s house, “ “I’m bored,” was my favorite and most used phrase. After which, she would reply, “Okay, I’ll give you some chores to do.” That always temporarily cured me of boredom.

In my adult days, I always had to have “Projects” to do. Of course, all of the church things that I was doing, but other stuff as well. Painting a room, planting a flower bed (miserable failure at that!), or creating a 10 year life plan With work, almost all of the jobs I have had since adulthood, I still had a level of discontentment because I was/am bored. My current job is REALLY bad. But it seems like I never have enough projects to be juggling at once.

I know. I’m weird! And I feel like I shouldn’t be admitting this because being over committed is a badge of honor in our society today. I guess I should also admit that I am NOT an overcommitter and never bothered to read the famous “Boundries” series because…well, it’s just not my problem. I can tell anyone “No, I can’t do that.” any day of the week, it doesn’t matter who or what(Books I HAVE read on issues I DO have is fodder for another fire...or another post!)

Okay, that said, let me add that Isabelle keeps me busy. I like that. Just the day to day running around taking care of her is itself busy-ness. Not only do I enjoy it, but the time frame that I get to do it is so compressed that I feel like its precious busy-ness too. I know what some of you are thinking, "So have more kids!" Okay. Sure,in the undetermined future. But as I mentioned before, I'm not an overcommiter.

And, I said ALL of that, only to share with you a little project: My scrapbooking. I LOVE scrapbooking. Being the checklist person that I am, I keep a running list of life events I need to scrap. My approach is that I don’t need to include E VERY picture I ever took or include every event. But I do include all of the important milestone events, plus if I take some great pictures, creativity usually seems to hover there.

I will spend days and days with ideas rolling around in my head of pages I want to do. Then I will jot them down on paper, spend an hour or so on the internet looking up quotes and fonts that I like, then I sit down and scrap 10 or 20 pages in a night or two. Then I tire of scrapbooking, and put it away for a couple of months. Repeat cycle as needed.

I have been looking for a “Family Tree” Page like you would find in a baby book to scrap for Isabelle. I sat down with Conrad’s parents while I was in India last Fall and gathered as much lineage as I could(Indian families don’t follow the surname rule, so it’s surprisingly hard to trace lineage. Example: Conrad’s last name is Michael. His parents’ last name is Williams. His sister-in-laws last names are their husbands first names. I don’t think names hold the same value that they do in the West) . Then I shook the tree on my side to gather all of the missing pieces (like my great grandfather’s last name was Golden (he was Jewish) but was then adopted by a Payne when he was a kid.)

Last week, I finally found a cool tree and a few lineage pages to go with it…yeah! It was a pre-fab page so I could conserve my elusive creative energy, but it is great heritage stuff that I’m so happy I can include in Isabelle’s book! (Of which I am officially on Book #2)

All of this blah blah blah, and this is my point?? Sadly yes.