Mom's idea

You know what when your mom gets an idea why is it that we do it? I don't know. I sware it seems like every time my mother gets an idea I seem to be doing that idea that she came up with. I have way too many examples to list them all. But I will name a few. Like this one time at band camp..... Sorry I couldn't resist on that one. Okay so I had these Disney VHS videos that I didn't need anymore. I was going to try to sell them in a garage sale. Well, my mother wanted them desperately for work. We both work at Children's Hospital in the south location. She works for the after hours part of the evening. I work for the PICS section which is during the day. Anyways in the clinic rooms are some VHS/TV combos. That's what she wanted them for. I said that was fine. At first she wanted to buy them for this reason. I told her that it wasn't necessary to do that. My mom put them in a box and I gave them to one of the clinics' supervisors. This last one was a doozie. Seriously insane idea that originally was mine to start with. See, my grandmother had this wall that had all the family member's pictures on it. It was a lot of pictures too. I mean she has 5 grandchildren, 13 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren. There's one great-grandchild in the oven as we speak that's apparently due in April I think. Go Jeff (the dad)!! As I was saying there were all these pictures. My mother wound up taking every one of them down. This was for the sole purpose of improving the house. My parents are currently living with my grandmother so they wanted to give it a makeover. Boy did they. I barely recognize it anymore. Well, in order to make room for what they wanted to accomplish the picture wall had to be knocked down which meant all the pictures went into storage. Well, this made some of us kind of sad. For years we've seen these photos and so has grandma. That picture wall had been there since my pepa finished building it. I don't remember how old I was I think maybe 6. So, basically that wall had been there a really really really really long time. Basically seeing it go wasn't the easiest thing for any of us. I couldn't help but feel sad mostly for grandma who absolutely loves pictures. She loved looking and putting a new picture up on the wall. Now she can't anymore. Well, I got this idea to get her a digital photo frame. I thought I could scan all those photos, downloading them, and putting them in the frame would be a great gift for her. With only two weeks till Christmas I'm tell you I should have started this task in June. I'm not kidding. Boy, did I have my work cut out for me. How many pictures was it? Well, 298 to be exact that I scanned in the span of two weeks. Yeap, I stayed up till 1:00 am just about every night doing it. What took so long? Taking them out of the frames proved to be a bit challenging. My husband was a big helper on that one. I'm thankful that not too many of them were stuck to the glass. The ones that were stuck to the glass wasn't that bad. I need to say that once I scanned all these pictures I had to crop them too. This task was tedious. I came across a lot of photos that weren't a good quality when I scanned them so I needed to try to make them better. This was the longest part of the process. I had to give up after a while because it was too much. Besides I was running out of time. I need to mention too that I had a house to clean, laundry, and a 4 year old to attend to during this time. Yes, it was almost an impossible task. Like I said I should have started this scanning crap in June. So which part was my mother's idea. Well, she was the one that wanted everyone to have a copy of the disk. See, the neat part about it is I didn't just scan the pictures from her wall. I also scanned some that she had in a box of hers. Man there was a lot. While I was scanning my mother found some more. I told her that would have to go on the second batch or something. I definitely didn't have time for those. Down to the wire. In one night I still had about 30 pictures to go, Christmas presents to wrap, and disks to make. Yeap, I was up till 2:00 am. I got half of the disks made. I decided to get the other half in the morning. After all I got tired of my computer freezing on me after a while. There were several times throughout this process where I had to turn my computer off and back on again to get it to work properly. I was even late to grandma's house. Usually I'm there by 10:00 am. This time I didn't get there till 12:30 pm. I finally finished getting the disks together. I was going to put them in chronological order but ran out of time. So, all the pictures are in alphabetical order. Matthew, one of my cousins asked, if there were in alpha order. I said yes because it was the fastest way to group them in some sort of order. Seriously if I had started in June I could have put them in chronological order like I originally planned. It was nice to see all those pictures again. Although I kind of wish it was in a different way though. I don't think I would have felt so bushed about the whole thing if I hadn't started at the last minute. So, I handed out the disks and what happened? Well, what I wanted to happen....everyone thanked me. That's all I wanted. I worked really hard on it and was going to be POed if someone didn't say thanks. I got better than that. I got a thank you from everyone. The part that was the best out of all of it was the smile on my granma's face. I made her very happy. She liked seeing those pictures again and she was happy that everyone got to have them too. Really it was the best Christmas gift I ever gave. Am I done scanning pictures? Nope, there's lots more. Yeah me I get to do it again. I hate to break it to people but I'm taking my time this time. Shoot doing the mad scanning dash picture thing is for the birds. Why am I doing this? Well, for one I have a bigger scanner. Dad's scanner would have never fit the big graduation photos of my mom and her siblings. Mine didn't fit the whole picture but it did get the most important part which was the faces. Why am I finishing it? Well, duh?! I started it. It only seems right that I finish it. The final one will be disk 2. I am welcoming any pictures that all my cousins, aunts, and uncles want to add. Photos taken with a digital camera can be added at any time. It's as simple as putting the pictures on a thumb drive and downloading them into the frame's memory. Isn't that just neat?! You'll never guess what I'm about to do with all those pictures I took out of the frames. No there not going back into the frames. My mother didn't want them there. Guess what I'm going to do now. Heck I'm going to put them in this photo album. Yeap every single picture except the graduation pictures. Those won't fit. I had to put them back in their frames. I'm going to have to buy another photo album because not all the pictures are going to fit. Some of them will take a whole page because they are so big.
What's the point in all this? I guess my point is: it's funny what you'll do when all your mother does is ask for it. I mean seriously. It starts out as an idea that makes her happy and so what the heck. You might as well do it right. It's true what they say. If mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy, right? For me I feel like I owe her a whole whole whole lot. I mean seriously so much money it's not even funny. I know it's not my duty to pay her back. But, I'm sorry it's hard not to want to pay her back in some other way. I don't have money so I do what I can when I can for her. A lot of the times I wish it was more.
Hey, guess who's idea it was to write this blog. If you guessed my mother you are absolutely correct. I don't know why though. I don't have any sob stories to tell and my life isn't that interesting. Nobody but her and grandma would read it anyway. So, you are reading this mom. I love you. I do. You are the best mom in the whole world. No, I didn't mind making those CD's for everyone. No, I'm not mad about any of it. I did enjoy my Christmas even though I had to play musical beds two nights in a row. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. That is a whole other story in itself.