The Bucket/Shovel List

Thanks to the Morgan Freeman movie, everybody now knows what a bucket list is -- the things you want to do before you kick the bucket.  We've made a list of things we want to do before we move back east at the end of July and have been calling it our bucket list.  Except Eli.  He calls it our shovel list.

Eli's preschool has been on a break for two weeks, so we've crossed quite a few things off our list just since the month began:  Lindsay Wildlife Museum, Pixieland, Crab Cove Visitor's Center, MOCHA, Yosemite, Oakland Musuem of California, Richmond Plunge pool, John Muir historic home, Keller Beach, and the East Bay Vivarium.  In between all these activities, there have been other photos and ideas bubbling up for the blog.  

Whew!  I've had very little down time to keep up with the house much less queue up blog entries.  Every place I go means there are photos to sort through and then process -- cropping, adjusting, etc. using Photoshop Elements.  Then I move photos into the blog, thinking about the best order as I go.  When I write about places we've been, I try to think about our buddies who might go there too.  What would they like to know in advance?  What would make a visit even better?  I think about grown-up Eli.  What would he like to know or remember?  And I think about myself.  What will I want to remember about that time or place or event?

Preschool starts back for Eli this week.  Soon I'll have some time to hear myself think.  But I'll miss vacation time with Eli.  We had some great little adventures...

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I keep a journal.  I am always working on photo albums.  The blog is something related to both yet necessary in itself now both as an online way to share with my tribe of family and friends but also as a product that eventually is printed in book form.  I'm craving time to dive into the blog!  I keep thinking about this quote that I love...

 

“I see the effect of journal-keeping in reverse when I don't do it for a while, for whatever reason.  I begin to feel a kind of malaise, an indigestion of the spirit; too many experiences have been accumulated without being truly seen or felt.  The journal has become a necessary extension of my thinking, feeling self.  If nothing goes into it, I become slightly disconnected, unresponsive, less than alert.  The solution for that is usually an entry of thousands of words that leaves my hand paralyzed and my spirit blissfully spent.

            If our lives are vessels, continually being filled, then each of us needs a way to empty them.  That emptying can take dangerous and destructive or creative forms; an explosion of energy or an outpouring of love.  The journal is a place to decant the stuff of life; reassuringly, none of it is wasted.  It remains fresh, still tasting of its source.  Transferring experience from the vat of rife into the vessel of the journal is a distillation: it sieves, concentrates, and ferments.  If after many seasons we develop some mastery of the process, the stuff can become as clear and fiery as brandy.”

-- A Trail Through Leaves: The Journal as a Path to Place by Hannah Hinchman.  NY:  W. W. Norton & Co., 1997.  pg. 16.

Comments

[Norma]

What a treasure!