In Retrospect: August 20

We’re going to be doing an experiment in looking at what we were doing in previous times, here and at Hobbits. We’ve just gone through a major overhaul of how we organize pictures, up on Flickr, to put things into sets according to the day they were taken. It’s a different way of looking at the world, that’s for sure!

Apparently August 20 was a boring day last year: we didn’t take a single picture! We did, though, in 2007, and way back in 1999. Shown here are some horrible end-of-pantry experiments in cooking: a cornbread using chana flour (which actually turned out fairly decently) and a pineapple-upside-down cake … made with black currants, from polenta flour. Not a good flavor – and I could tell you that without even looking at the post! I was madly trying to wrap up this Baby Surprise Sweater, to give to my sister-in-law’s newborn. It turned out so large that my then-9-year-old sister-in-law could wear it. But it got done, and a hat to match!

We were also frantically trying to get the remodel of our condo finished, so that we could rent it out. In retrospect … well, let’s just say that we know a bit better about how to work with contractors, and know that if we ever get into a remodel situation again, we’ll just take a month’s vacation and come back to a finished job, rather than trying to live with all the chaos! The bathroom got done, though: 9 days before we left to come to Scotland. Shown here is my hat, after having been weather-treated with Scotch-Guard (which doesn’t exist over in Scotland, by the way). It turns out that the weather-proofing didn’t work so well: the hat is too small now, because it’s felt, and has gotten wet and shrunk. I have hopes of stretching it some day.

Apparently August 20 is a slim picture day, as the only other pictures we have, taken 8/20, are these, taken at a Sonoma County Beach (probably Doran, near Bodega Bay), way back in 1999. We still have prints of these – dragged along with us, in frames even. Flying a kite, on a beach. That used to be the shape of our weekends. We’d get into our little 2-door Toyota, and just drive and drive, seeing the coast of California, stopping for salt-water taffy, looking at all the places we thought we might be able to live “some day.”

It’s strange, the connection between these pictures. We used to drive to Benicia, to look at the neighborhoods, and say that we’d live there “some day.” We eventually managed it, only to move on, to let the house go, and to live a third of the way around the world. What ties these pictures together is the conflicting desires of our lives. To travel, yet to have a stable, presentable home, close to family and friends. To truly get to know the world, yet to have a place which fits us so well as we had before we left.

It’s strange, to look back upon our lives, and to wonder: where do we look next?

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.