Life Books

I stood in the scrapbooking supply aisle of a discount mega-mart yesterday, contemplating buying a scrapbook to make a lifebook for Sam or Sophie.

Being a discount store, they had pink albums, and baby blue albums, and a red and white checked album with a rooster on it, and black albums, and dark navy albums.

What they did not have, was green or yellow, which was what I was looking for.

"Why don't you just buy the blue one?" Husband asks.

"Because if I get the blue one, and if, by some bizarre twist of fate, we get a girl, what are we going to do with it? We'll be out $15.00."

Husband contemplated this. I could see the look in his eyes. It meant, "pigs will fly before they give us a girl when they know we'll take a boy" - but he just said, "ok." Then he said, "once we get the child's referral, we'll have several months to put the lifebook together before we leave for Vietnam. Let's just wait."

So, we didn't buy a lifebook. Or rather, the container for the lifebook.

I am a lousy scrapbook person. I suck, I really do. I have boxes full of pictures of Gabe and pictures of vacations and birthdays and Christmases, which are not in any order whatsoever.

Until a few months ago, all of the digital pictures we had taken with our digital camera were on the computer. Neither of us had the mental energy to figure out how to get them printed.

When Husband finally did upload them all to Walgreens.com, we had 100 photos (culled down from some 350 shots taken) going back over a year and a half.

There are two nearly identical pictures of Gabe and I standing in front of the Cheese Haus in Frankenmuth, Michigan on two Thanksgiving weekends, (2004 and 2005). We are wearing the same coats in both pictures. Only the fact that one of us is taller (Gabe) and one of us has slightly longer hair (me) makes the pictures discernable.

I guess we are predictable folks.

Maybe I should concentrate and getting these pictures in an album before I worry about the lifebook...

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There was commentary on NPR yesterday afternoon, by a Vietnamese American named Andrew Lam. He has written a book about his experience, leaving Vietnam at a young age, and growing up in the America. I think I am going to try to find the book, but of course I cannot remember what the name of it is - I'm going to have to go to npr.org to look it up.

I need other reading suggestions, because I am at a loss. I picked up "Track of the Cat" by Nevada Barr at the library last night, at the recommendation of a friend of mine who is a wildlife biologist for the US Government, and who loves this series about a National Park ranger. I am hoping it will be great, because there are about 10 books in the series, and that could conceivably keep me reading for a while.

LM