Scrapbooking

I did something totally out of character last night. I attended an all-night "crop" at the local scrapbooking store. This is an event where you take your photos and all your scrapbooking supplies and show up to hang out with a bunch of ladies doing the same thing. The beauty of these events is that if you run out of something or need something, it's all right there in the store. It's also a way to get new and fresh ideas and designs. And you get all your photos catalogued and presented in a nice photo album to share with others. I do love artsy things so I like the whole idea of scrapbooking I'm just not fond of hanging out with others.

I'm not comfortable in these settings with all the small talk about stuff I don't really care about. Hanging out with old ladies whose idea of a good time is spending weekends at their "cabin" where they can get away from it all by living with dead deer heads hanging on the wall and taking photos of their family members sitting at a picnic table in the yard. 30 years of photos at the same cabin and the same yard. I guess I just prefer the adventures found in new and interesting places that I've never been to before even though I do have a small collection of those same cabin photos. I just don't want to be defined by them.

The young women aren't much better, having to run to the bathroom to use their breast pumps. When they aren't in the bathroom they are comparing stories about playgroups and husbands who don't always help with the kids. All their photos involve the birthing process or some phase of drooling, squirming, cutesey, big eyed babies framed in pink or blue accordingly. I have some of these photos too, but not enough to be able to make an entire photo album about a 6-month old child. Maybe I was just a bad mom for not carrying a camera everywhere I went.

I have absolutely nothing in common with these people.

To me, the old ladies are boring, and the young ones are, well, boring. Where are the women who travel, have more than one decade worth of kid photos, and enjoy more in life than Christmas dinners and watching the grandchildren? I really want to put all my travel photos in albums but I think from now on, I'm on my own. The people I interacted with were nice (well, the young ones were) but I can't get into it as I'd hoped I would.

Maybe I will try again before I totally write this off. I did learn some cool things.