Yesterday was definitely a walk down memory lane as I reviewed the oldest binder of pictures that begin with primarily Edward's pictures and then I appear and then our marriage and all the way to include our first child. That was 1965 to 1978 so a good long stretch and being students (although I was working from 1966 on as I completed my degree at night school) but I was busy saving to buy a car and then buy a house and I tend to live by visual memory rather than by printed image. Edward certainly loved the printed image and it does show in those fourty binders. He enjoyed them and would many times go down and select and spend hours reliving that period of his life. In particular the trips overseas, I always made a Powerpoint presentation to show our family and he persuaded me to increase the size of them and include all of the pictures so I did do that as well. I never realized until he was visibly ill that he looked at them so many times. Occasionally we would run one together but I am a workaholic most of the time and I did spend a lot of time working although we always took coffee (tea) breaks and the last few years I watched cooking shows with him on the television when he became less able to get around. COVID 19 played a huge role in his life in many ways. He was used to being with far more people and did miss that.
The plan is slowly evolving and the early pictures will go at the beginning and I will use this older binder that was his original binder to hold them. The next binder will begin in the year our eldest daughter was born. We were married for quite a few years before our first child was born but I did have a miscarriage a couple of years before she was born and then a miscarriage when she was a couple of years old and a suspected miscarriage when my youngest was a few years old. So five pregnancies in total with two live births. I actually think I now know the cause of the miscarriages but it is not really applicable to anything but rather a problem created by a fall I had down the stairs many many years ago. Interesting really how life can become complicated with just a simple happening. The solution was to be off my feet when I was first pregnant which a keen and observant doctor noted early on which I followed in as much as I was able. Once past the fifth month I was good to go.
So today it is cleaning the main floor and I will do the basement tomorrow. I decided my chicken stew lasts four days so might as well clean for the three days since there is food ready at the end of the day with just a quick heating up on the stove with a couple of slices of toast. I love toast with my favourite stew.
I will also carry on now with creating an index as the pictures from 1965 to 1978 are not included in the many Indexes that Edward created although some are from 1972 on but it is random. But then there are not that many pictures so not a big deal. This index is huge and it consists of at least thirty excel files. It is very detailed for every picture right up to 2019. But he did love all those trips. I did say to him on occasion you should have joined the military and traveled the world; you would have loved that. But he was from small town Canada and did not really know very much about the military as his father was a farmer and he died when Edward was just two years of age. Perhaps recruiting stations out in the country would work well to entice those young men looking to travel more. Although his uncles fought in the war; that was a brief period and they came back and went to university and trained to be a doctor and an accountant I think. The doctor is for sure as his father's next eldest brother was a Family Doctor. Again I know very little about his family because I was from the city and unknown to his family at all as far as I know. We met at university.
It is good to see this project on its way as it has been simmering in the back of my brain for a while as I realized the 40 binders of family pictures were not going to float in the future and I would like to see his work be available to his descendants in the future. Although electronically everything does exist and will continue to exist so long as a family member is interested.
I did not do anything on the matches yesterday but I did vacuum the car which is great news. I have not done it for a bit and it really needed that. It still looks like new because it has only 30,000 kilometres on it but it is getting old I am sure as it is now six years old. It will be the first thing to go likely when I move. I do not really need a car as I only drive to the grocery store these days and could have groceries delivered. There are three different companies that deliver. But it is handy to have for sure at the moment.
Breakfast completed and drinking my tea. The day is a bit changed today but a change is as good as a rest is the old acronym. Must do my solitaire puzzles.
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