we'll paint it red to fit right in

Today was a v. different #smalltownlife day from the last few, full of rain and death and memories. Yes, that was unnecessarily dramatic. But it rained quite a bit overnight and early this morning, which was desperately needed - it interfered with our plans to do a cemetery crawl around the small half-abandoned cemeteries in the county, but the rain was v. necessary for the crops, so it was a worthy sacrifice.

So, since there was no cemetery-hopping to be had, my mom and I started tackling the boxes of photos that we inherited from Uncle Mark, who seemed to have taken them from Gram's, thrown the boxes into a shed, and never organized them after that. We spent several hours this afternoon sorting things out by side of the family + decade, and after several hours of work, we'd gotten through one of the four boxes. So, that's good progress, but perhaps not as fast as we need to be - and now we still have to go back through those piles to decide what we want to keep vs. what we want to send to other relatives vs. what should be tossed.

It's hard to toss things when they're interesting. Case in point: what do you do with my great-grandma's picture album (almost a diary) from her teenage years in the 1920s? It's full of photos of people we don't know, notes about events that are long gone, and enough dust to choke you. But it also has v. amusing bits, like her list of the 'boys I stepped out with', which got up to #36 (fun fact: my great-granddad was #19); photos of all the fun she had with other teenagers around her; and the newspaper clippings from when she and my great-grandfather + another couple eloped to the next county over and got married in the middle of the night (the newspaper was clearly scandalized). But how do you preserve something like that? And how do you cull through hundreds of photos of the past and make it into something that will continue to be interesting in the future?

sssanyway, we threw in the towel around four and I sat on the porch to get some fresh air and journal. Sometime shortly after that, my mom noticed that one of the kittens was weirdly lethargic, so this turned into an effort to save it, which (despite my dad running into town to get milk replacer, and despite my mom attempting to feed it with a syringe) sadly turned into a funeral. We think our cat had too many kittens to feed successfully, but hopefully the remaining four make it....

I couldn't stay to play with kittens, though - I had plans with Hannah (who is both a friend from high school and a distant cousin) to go to her house for dinner, so I headed that way. We had a lovely three hours on her back patio, watching the wilderness beyond her yard and discussing all sorts of fun and interesting things. I could have happily stayed another hour, but since the drive home is treacherous and full of deer waiting to total your car, I got out of there around ten.

And now, I should really sleep so that I can accomplish something in the morning - goodnight!