This past week, I have probably slept more than in a few weeks combined. I have had so many headaches that I have had three days where I have slept over 12 hours! I wish that I could say that I wake up super perky but it just isn't true.
I never take anything stronger than Tylenol and Pseudaphed for my headaches along with lots of Coke but the meds don't last all night long and I find myself having a horrible sleep with a headache keeping me just awake enough to feel like I didn't sleep. With all of that going on, I got really stuck on one subject of my mothers history. She had a notebook / scrap book of her school years through college before her big year as a national beauty queen. After that, all bets were off as to any organization in her stuff.
One would think I would get stuck with the stuff after she stopped organizing but the scrapbook along with tons of copies of the same articles with no date included cut out of papers kept me working for three days on her high school and college activities.
The scrapbook had fallen apart many years before and was stuck into a binder I actually made her many years back but they weren't in order. So, I went through the book and stuck what I could in order. I then went through the newspapers and cut out articles and added dates where possible and was able to then put the play programs with the articles with the tickets etc.
I wouldn't have thought that she would have so many and I had no idea that she was a lead in every play in high school and college and there were several plays every year. Along with that, she had the radio club and their programs, along with madrigals and choirs and their programs and also in speech and debate. This on top of church programs, and community events and all her beauty pageants. It seriously did take me three days to organize one binder of her education. As you can imagine, I was very excited to finish that part of her life and get moved on to the "after school" part. I had already done the pageants for the most part and have the year she was a national Beauty Queen done by month but it needs refining before scanning as I keep finding things to add and have chosen to sort it a bit differently now that I have pondered on it a bit more.
I had planned on sorting it by year and had all the items in folder by year as you can see, I emptied the folders and have a pile of them. If we don't know what year something happened, we would have to sort through many years of things to find it.
After praying and thinking about it, I have chosen to sort it by event or category so we can just sort that folder. The two piles above are her career and volunteering on the left and church and church volunteering and speaking engagements on the right. Her singing career and singing events are all combined together with the choirs and choruses she was in and or led and all the acting things are together and then modeling. The one thing I have chosen to change is letters. I had included all the letters of her pageant year in with the monthly items but then when I brought in the stuff I sorted in 2008ish, I found that I had put all the letters into clear sheet protectors by date. I didn't remember that so when I finalize the pageant year, I will pull out the letters and just have the binder of letters as it is more like a journal and I think it would be read better in a book format rather than in with all the tickets, programs etc. that the pageant year holds. You can see the letter binder at the top.
I have been watching "Burn Notice" while I work as I need something to listen too while organizing and it keeps me awake having a story line to listen too. I watched it years ago so I don't feel the need to pay super close attention but just to have something to keep my mind active. I truly do feel like things are getting more organized and eventually hope to have the organized papers to two larger bins and then insert the pictures where they fit into the files. The pictures are all now organized so it will be easy to put them in where they fit into the files once I am done with the sorting. I still have probably a few weeks left of the sorting but I have some family events coming up soon that may take me away from getting much done but I will do my best to get this finished and out of my living room.
Once I have them all sorted, I will be able to scan them and distribute them and get them out of my world! I have purchased sheet protectors and 2 binders for each of my siblings and hope to be able to distribute them before the end of the summer. I may be aiming high to be able to get all that done by then but who knows! I also want to give all my siblings a back up drive with all the scans. I typed up the two histories I found for my dad and asked him to combine them and gave him some thoughts on stories I would appreciate him telling or typing up but he is still busy volunteering his time and has some projects in the work but he did say something about retiring from all the committees he is one at some point this year so perhaps he will be able to get to it soon, if not, I may have to kidnap him for a week and force it upon him! ;-)
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