Say Cheese!

I'm sitting in the living room, perched on my chaise and trying to keep my mind focused. I have my faithful cat sleeping and hogging all of the space around my feet. Well, one foot on the chaise is about all I can manage right now. The old Piriformis nerve block is still a problem but I will see the doctor next week and I hope to get an early appointment for the new block. In the meantime I take far too many pain meds. But I used those meds this morning to make it possible for me to get in half an hour of deep water jogging at the gym. Walking was painful but the water and the meds combined to make it possible, and pleasant, to get in some much needed cardio.

Memory. Why is it going? And when will it all be gone? My short term memory loss is becoming a problem for me. I can't begin to recount all the episodes of memory loss I deal with every day. So far it's all lightweight stuff; nothing life threatening...yet. I keep telling myself that it's all normal and I will know when to ask for help. But will I? I have couple of lightweight pocket recorders; maybe it's time to put new batteries in one and start carrying it with me. I could record my name and address on it and then use it to record any memory joggers I might need during the day. "Buy gas for the car" or "Take your library books back".

Long term memory seems to be functioning quite well. My mind spends a lot of time 'back in the day'. I'm helping with that by cataloging the many photos we have. I'm scanning all the photos I consider worthy of being included in the digital photo album. And every photo brings a flood of memories with it. I've been working on this cataloging for years and I doubt that I will finish before I die. Sorry, kids, I tried.

I have thousands of photo that are digital and thousands more that need to be scanned and become digital. And I am the kind of collector that needs to collect everything. It's my ASD and that is also the reason for the 20,000 plus music files that I have collected. On the plus side, it does keep me out of trouble. Also on the plus side is the fact that Amazon Prime members can store as many image files as they want in the Amazon 'cloud' and all for free. I'm up to 73,127 image files and there will be more for sure.

Just to be clear; I don't have 73,127 photographs. a good portion of that number is taken up by my collection of the works of many artists. Those images are usually JPG files and Amazon treats them the same as any other JPG file. Thank you, Amazon.

I may have mentioned that I enjoy talking with a retired architect when I'm in the pool at the gym. We have common interests and memories of the construction of buildings, both large and small. After each conversation I regret not being able to find any photographs of the construction projects I hd been talking about. Cameras were not commonly seen on construction sites back in the last quarter of the past century. Cameras were only used to gather evidence of some wrongdoing on the part of the contractor or the subcontractors. Naturally, someone with a camera was suspect. It was only after I became a superintendent that I was free to take photographs wherever I wanted.

I certainly regret not having a camera with me during the first decade of my career as that seems (to me) to have been the most exciting part of career. That might have been because safety standards were mostly non-existent at the time. Hard hats were for sissies and don't even think about wearing a safety belt!

During my cataloging I have found a few photographs of my time in the Navy. Certainly not as many photographs as I would have liked. It's the same for the high school and junior high years. Imagine having an iPhone back in the 50's! Now imagine two of them...you have to have someone to call.