Purple Shag. Mauve Walls.

Max is at his dad's place for night, so I have no one to scan old photos for me. The only picture in my "oldies" file is this one...
It was supposed to be a photo of the 4 of us, but like a great executioner from the 14th century, mom always had a tendancy to cut off heads.

Originally I had planned to post a series about the 70's-ishness of our home, what with 120 ounce purple shag carpet (that my dad has rolled up and saved in the green barn in case one of us kids falls on hard times and need a rug), lime green and baby blue walls in the bedrooms and gold crackled 8" x 8" mirrored wall tiles. But I probably won't. I think all of us who were alive in '75 have enough memories about that particular time period. In '79 when I left for Bible school, I bought brown towels and a cream bedspread. And that was the extent of my teenaged rebellion.

You may have noticed that some of my older photos have handwritten notes next to them. In case you're wondering why, (one of you might...) it's because I started a project back in 2002 that I haven't gotten around to finishing. But I will. You mark my words, oh yes, one day I will.
You see, I've always had this thing about putting pics into albums immediately after developing. Back in the day, that meant that all my photos went into those peel back, non-acid-free sticky pages.

And, well, they were getting ruined. Yellowing. Decomposing. Becoming a frightful mess. So I thought I'd pull them out of that dangerous environment and lovingly move them to a safer home. Right around this time, my divorce was getting finalized so I was in a reflective mindset, determined not to throw out all evidence that I dated and married my high school sweetheart. I thought my kids needed to know that there was alot of love in our relationship before things went sideways.

So after I lined the albums up in chronological order, I sytematically took apart one album at a time and separated the photos into 4 piles. I made an album for each boy, as well as one for myself. By the time I'm done, each son will receive their own album with pictures of our/their story. All the albums start in 1976, which is when their dad and I became friends. They will have a visual record of their teenaged parents, their parents' friends and families as well as when each of them entered into the world. (Most baby books start at the child's birth. My kids' "stories" will start when their parents began dating.)

The albums I'm using are archival quality with acid free pages. Each page has five 4" x 6" slots, which is perfect for the current photos, but a little big for those old 3" x 3" square ones. So I've attached the older photos to 4" x 6" file cards and written some notes on the extra space. Thus far, I've done from 1976 to 1987 - the year Daryl and Julie got married, and the year Clint was born. (I was a very pregnant matron of honour at their wedding.)

Now that all my albums are not in a bookshelf but rather scattered on the floor and dining room table, I am motivated to carry on with my project. My plan is to take all their albums to 1998 - the year he left. My albums since '98 are safe. (Acid free) Maybe someday I'll divide up those photos as well, but for now, I'll leave them as is. Maybe divvying them up is something they can do together, with laughter after my funeral.

And on that happy note, I'm going to call it a night.