Friday, December 21, 2012

{this moment}



{this moment} A Friday-ish ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

day planner


I still keep a day planner.  I've had one for the past 16 years.  When I was diagnosed with breast cancer I needed to write down a lot of things -- appointments, doctors, names of drugs and protocols to look up, clinics, adjuvant and alternative therapies, and secret thoughts -- happy, sad, transcription of a day's event-- that I needed to get out of my head then turn the page.  That's when I started using a day planner.

It may have been the third or fourth year when I realized that my day planner had become such an integral part of my day-to-day that I decided to treat myself to a really nice one that felt good in my hands. I wandered into Papyrus one afternoon and knew I found the one -- a black leather weekly planner with the year embossed in gold letters on the front, its page edges embellished with gold metallic ink (?), and a simple ribbon to help keep my place.  Every year, this was my annual gift to myself and it felt like such a splurge at ~$40 -- and it had maps of the world, international flight patterns and calling codes for my reading pleasure.  I felt so worldly toting it around.  I loved it and picked a different color each year.  

One year, they didn't carry it...or it was sold out(?)...online shopping wasn't around (gasp!) to let my fingers do the walking.  I was bummed, but needed to find a quick replacement because January was right around the corner, so resorted to a black spiral planner from an office store.  Blech, but it served its purpose. I was in a planner funk for a long time after that.  One glorious day, I came across a similar design at Marshall's of lesser quality leather minus the oddly fascinating useless international pages, but it got me back in "style".  After this bargain find, it was hard to think of even going back to the pricey version. Can you believe I hit a dry spell with Marshall's a few years later too?  I gave the Sierra Club's version a chance last year and  realized I missed the ruled lines and journal area in the back.  Nice pictures though!  I am comforted that I found my old style planner at TJ Max for 2013.  It's spring green -- a new color for me.  It has been sitting atop my dresser for about a month now and I'm looking  forward to breaking it in.

I've thrown most of my planners away -- mostly because I wanted to move on from anything I wrote from the past year and start the new year fresh.  The ones I have are still around because at some point when cleaning out the shelves I convinced myself that there were references or contacts I wanted to archive before tossing it out (and somehow also convinced myself that I would actually do it) or have just not made it into my circular filing system.

So, what's with the history of my day planners?  I was catching up on Design Mom and  came across this woman's tribute framed around her late mother's day planner from 1967. It's magical. I wonder if it will influence what I capture in 2013 with the thought that it  may someday fall into Cole's hands as he filters through my old belongings and I try to imagine what insight he'll have on my daily activities. If it were to happen, I would be so delighted if "make granola" reminds him that he used to call it "dodo" and that I didn't do a thing to correct him because his early language was so precious to me.