Or maybe Whack-a-mole more aptly describes my ongoing dilemma.

A facebook friend posted today about the huge prodject she’s tackling this week. Organizing / scanning a multi-generational collection of family photooos. Yes, she did say “week”. [snort] I fling this and that and I make some progress and then we go down to Crazy Old Florida (man, that was fun!) or somewhere and I backslide a bit. And then I get started again.

I can deal with most of the “stuff”. Well, there are some struggles about lamps and crappy old furniture but we’ll get there. It’s the photos that stymie me. Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. Photos. Negatives. Slides. A few moldy old movies. Multi-generational media from every branch of the fam — Fin, Mac, cFam, you name it. I. Cannot. Organize. This. Stuff. I am a paid systems analyst. I get paid to analyze and organize data. Slice it and dice it and turn it on its head. Look at it in a new way and wallah voila! Family photos? I am flummoxed.

That little shoebox in the photooo? It represents the tip of the iceberg. Doesn’t look like much does it? It is chock full of [mostly] unlabeled negatives. There are other boxes, every shape and size, albums galore, portraits in plastic bags. BIG portrait of my eccentric great aunt Anna in her old age — wonder who talked her into getting that thing done (and I’m not gonna post it because I bet she wasn’t happy about it). Anyway, I can’t even sort out the CONTAINERS, let alone their contents. I can’t even seem to get the containers into one room! Jeebus!

This box came from The Commander’s house. She spent the last six years of her life diligently deacquistioning things so that her living children (aka meeeee) would not have to put a dumpster in her driveway or hold an Estate Sale (horrors!). She did a pretty good flinging job but I don’t think she could quiiiiite manage to deal with the photos. And that’s okay. It is a daunting task.

And so here I am. Again. Because this is not a new topic. The conundrum of the moment is how to look at the negatives in this box. I need some kind of a musheen to view them properly. Those musheens exist but it is daunting to research them. I had a moment yesterday when I wanted to bag it and throw all the negatives out. If they turn out to be crappy photos from the parents’ trips to Europe, I don’t really want them, except for the few that include my parents. But then, I thought I could make out a gal who looked a lot like UKW in The Comm’s house with a baby. I might want to keep that one. But it was a negative and I couldn’t exactly see what it was.

I wished my facebook friend good luck and asked her to share any tips she may come up with during her prodject journey. I could sure use some.

Maybe “How do you eat an elephant?” would’ve been the best title.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2015 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.