Clump #271: Fifteen minutes of picture-sorting; day twenty-nine of National Blog Posting Month.

The gentlemen above are some of our 42 Founding Fathers, immortalized in life-size bronze statues at Signer’s Hall at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.  I always get chills walking amongst them.

My niece and her mom are still here, thus the trips to places we usually only make time to visit with company.  Invariably, one of us will utter, “Why don’t we go here more often?”

Our day went from sublime to ridiculous; from high-brow to low; from lofty to silly … or grumpy.  Yes, we whiplashed from touring Independence Hall and the Constitution Center to watching Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, the Lifetime movie starring the internet sensation.  Truly a yin-yang day, but thoroughly enjoyable, nonetheless.

With all the holiday festivities and fun with guests, clumping and posting have been a bit of a stretch.  I was determined to get my older sister (on the right in the photo, in October at a rented cottage) to tackle a job left over from our last get together.  As you can see, we were plied with a few alcoholic beverages; we were also soaking our feet in the bath salts.  I had brought two very heavy bags of family photos that had been cleared out of a desk belonging to my parents.

Unfortunately, the sister on the left was not interested in taking any of the photos.  Also unfortunately, the sister on the right wanted to keep almost all of the photos.  This huge bag remained, and has been an albatross around my neck for too long. Confront!  De-Clump!

I experienced a rare moment of victory over my older sister.  When I reminded her that we needed to do this clump, she recoiled at thought. So I asked her, “Why would you want to keep all these photos if the idea of going through them is so repulsive?” Photos are so difficult to throw away, but there has got to be a limit.  And if they’re deemed keepable, we should find some way to honor them for the future.

The only way we could face the job was by setting the timer for fifteen minutes and really stopping when it went off.  I had to check that I set it right, since it was a very looong fifteen minutes.

Now I have an idea of how to continue organizing the pictures on my own, so we can finish the job when we’re together again at Christmastime.  My Christmas wish!  And look, our own slightly grumpy cat gave her begrudging approval, before trying to bat them around.