Pictures

Gavin's 4-month pictures will be posted shortly. In this case, "shortly" means some day between now and the next 365 days. Somehow, I don't seem to have time to even upload pictures lately! Everyone told me how I wouldn't have time for anything once "the baby" arrived. ...how my once glossy, fresh toe polish would become faded and chipped and would wear off on its own before I had a chance to soak in my lovely bubblebath, trimming and repainting my toes in a fresh shiny coat of perfect polish. ...how having shaved legs would become a luxury rather than a necessity. ...how I would wear a ponytail 6 days a week because I wouldn't have time for blowdrying or straightening my hair. ...how macaroni and cheese would become standard fare.

Well, last week, we had corn dogs and macaroni and cheese for dinner one night, I wore a ponytail 5 days of the week, I shaved my legs only twice, and I finally removed the last remaining tidbits of toe polish leftover from, ...get this, December! I do, however, still have the luxury of my bubblebath. Sometimes it's just 10 minutes to wash my hair after I hand freshly bathed Gavin to Cliff to be dried off and dressed, but a couple of nights a week, while Gavin is sleeping or hanging out with Cliff, I get into the tub and spend 20 or 30 minutes in there. It's not the three hours that I used to spend in the tub as recently as just a couple of years ago, but it's a relaxing bath.

I can't blame anyone else for my lack of free time though. It's not that I don't have it, it's how I choose to spend it. Cliff took Gavin to Menard's on Sunday morning and then to lunch at his parents' house so that I could get some of my pictures uploaded. So, they walked out the door, and what did I do? I sorted the laundry, got a couple of loads going, started cleaning out the fridge, cleared off the dining room table... and then kicked myself for not heading straight to the computer to upload pictures. I've been griping for weeks that I haven't had time to upload and print pictures (I'm going scrapbooking this weekend) and then I go ahead and take my one opportunity and instead do laundry? I can do laundry any time! It doesn't usually get folded until one of Gavin's Grandmas comes over, but at least it's clean. So, I did eventually get on the computer and worked with my pictures. I worked for three hours, staring at the computer screen, cropping, correcting red-eye, boosting color, recropping, saving, and finally... ordering some prints. You won't believe how far I got! I ordered prints of pictures taken from Nov 19, 2008 to Nov 30, 2008. That's only 11 days worth of pictures. Do you know how many pictures I took in those 11 days? How many times Gavin's angelic newborn face was captured in the viewfinder of my camera? How many MB of digital storage he takes up on our hard drive? For a short while, I had his photos on my work computer. I knew that if I kept that up, his photos were going to be the death of my computer, and how would I explain that one to the boss??? Not to mention one of the times that blue screen of death appeared, the computer would never come back again and the photos would be gone forever. Now they are safely stored on my hard drive. External hard drive. And backed up online just in case. But... only those through Nov 30th are backed up online. Remember when photos were stored under the bed in a cardboard box? Or better yet, in the damp, cobwebby basement? Or the moth-infested attic? Now they are backed up, stacked up, scrapped up, and shared. Speaking of sharing photos... Did I mention I will upload some pictures of Gavin soon? Maybe this weekend... no, I'll be out of town... scrapbooking! Maybe next week. I took his 4 month pictures on the chair and I think he may have even sort of smiled in one of them! I've always been a strong supporter of Proex for printing pictures. When the online photo sharing tools like shutterfly, flickr, snapfish, and picassa came out, I clung to Snapfish. It worked for me. I have hundreds and hundreds of pictures on Snapfish. Well, the other day, when I was uploading pictures, I decided to try out Wal-Mart's photo printing service. I had heard that people like it and it isn't as expensive as Proex. So I loaded all of these pictures on there and sent them to print. Great, right? I noticed that Wal-Mart's online photo sharing tool is EXACTLY like Snapfish's tool. It looks exactly the same. So, I thought, maybe they're run by the same... you know... people. I thought maybe I could just copy all of those albums that I have on Snapfish onto Wal-Mart and then they'd all be in one place. Do you think I could figure it out though? Nope! Why would they look exactly the same if they aren't? Why can't I copy albums from one site to the other? Ugh.