Scrapbooking

I got to spend all day (9AM - 8PM) at a crop. There were about 700 women at the state fairgrounds, all working on their scrapbooks. I managed to put together 14 pages. Definitely a lot for me. At 6PM there was a door-prize drawing, available to all who had completed 25 pages! That will never be me. When I put a page together, I spend lots of time reminiscing, and then time thinking about a layout, then what colors to use, then searching my supplies for those colors and matching stickers. Then I have to 'journal' which requires some thought. I often hand draw embellishments. Companies make packets with papers that have spaces marked to show where you are to put your pictures and come with all the stickers and extras you need. I have a hard time using those pages. Inevitably, there is something about the packet that doesn't seem like me. I feel compelled to change it. I do the same thing cooking; rarely following a recipe exactly as written. I guess, if I'm making it, I want it to reflect me. And back to scrapping, I also spend time talking. No surprise there. But that is part of the appeal of getting together to crop: the community aspect. I really think crops provide a social outlet similar to quilting bees of old. I got to see a friend I hadn't seen for over a year. We spent a good 40 minutes just catching up. And I'm so glad we had that chance. The whole day was great. The only negative, and it's true of most crops, was the chairs. They were old, bent folding chairs. I'm short and am often too low when sitting in a folding chair at a table. Throw in some bent legs and I'm really too low. If I sit on a pillow to put me higher, my feet don't touch the ground (my toes may, but not my whole foot). All this puts great strain on my back, and my lower back is still recovering.
The Imp came home from crew practice last night with blisters on her hands from rowing. I innocently asked if she'd like me to get her some workout gloves. I was quickly told that was a huge negative. The blisters/callouses are badges of honor and gloves are not 'cool'. Silly me. She seems to be settling into a routine with school and crew.

I've been trying to get myself on the same sleep schedule as Hubby and the Imp. I've been getting up with them in the morning and have avoided naps so I could go to sleep at night. But I'm still having a hard time falling asleep as early as they do. I feel like my internal clock is hard-wired for late-to-bed, late-to-rise. I lay in bed with thoughts swirling around. And they are indeed swirling with no real productivity in my thoughts at night. I've been waking up slowly with my alarm set to the local Christian radio station. Today, I must've snoozed a little too much because Hubby came to kiss me good-bye and I was still in bed. And the conversations the DJs were having on the radio had been woven into my dreams. I'll keep trying and hopefully within another week, I'll have reset my internal clock. To my defense, Hubby did leave 10 minutes early today. It's the first day of public school, so the roads will be packed with all those parents who drive their kids to school on the first day, plus the hundreds of school buses. Hubby loves the summer when driving to work takes him 15 minutes less than during the school year.
Last year, the public school system had quite the fiasco with bus routes and schedules. Supposedly, that is all fixed. I'm waiting to hear. When you're the 8th largest school district in the country, everything is big and logistics involving the whole county are nightmarish. Hillsborough County school district doesn't just have a lot of students (right around 120,000) but also is a large land area (1,266 square miles) with lots of schools (243 schools grades K-12).