I want to share something that made me smile yesterday. It's a silly thing, but hey, these days, I take my smiles where I can grab them.

First a picture. (I'm so excited that I think I figured out how to put a picture where I want it instead of at the top of the page. I won't tell you just how long it has taken me to figure this out).



What is this a picture OF you may be wondering?

This is a picture of boxes of books in the huge dumpster that is sitting in Share's backyard. 36 boxes of books to be exact. This book, called Bittersweet...hellogoodbye is a project I have been working on for nearly 3 years now. Or rather the revision of this book is a project I have been working on for 3 years now. For the past few months, it's about all I've been working on. It is a book that was originally created by Sr. Jane Marie Lamb, the founder of Share. It is a guide for planning funerals and memorial services for babies who have died. It was written in the 1980's, and was in desperate need of updating as it is very Catholic based with a few things for those who are Jewish mixed in. My boss decided to update it many years ago, and it was handed to me to take on. The main goal was for it to be more inclusive of other religions, and I decided that I also wanted it to have a few new things added. I won't bore you with all the details, but has been quite the project. If you want to know anything about Buddhist or Hindu funerals, I'm the one to ask! It sounds like a depressing project, but I have pretty much loved every minute of it. Well, there are a few minutes or hours I haven't loved...times when I would have preferred banging my head against the brick wall in my office, but for the most part, it has been a joy to work on. I've collected lots of stories and pictures from parents, and it always gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling when complete strangers share such a precious and important piece of their lives with me.

So back to my point of why this picture made me smile. The new book is almost finished, and I'm so excited that I can't hardly stand it. There have been many of those "I'd rather bang my head against my brick wall moments" in the past few weeks. But,it is a week or two away from being ready for editing. It should be at the printer by mid-September. I am just tying up a lot of loose ends and filling in some gaps. I have been working non-stop on it for weeks. So yesterday morning, when I arrived at Share and saw the piles of boxes of the old books in that rusty old dumpster filling up fast with debris, I had to take a picture. That picture was a visual reminder that I am almost finished with a huge project, and it gave me such a great feeling.

I think I'm going to blow that picture up and hang it above my desk. At home and at my office. I'm sure my husband will enjoy looking at it as it can be a visual reminder to him that our dining room will soon be back to normal and not an obstacle course and mess of books papers, etc. If I were really brave, I'd take a picture of my dining room right now and post it, but I won't. I'm not that brave.

I will even be nice and make a copy for Megan...she is my coworker/designer who is taking all of the things I have written/collected and putting it into the book format. Hopefully, the picture will serve as a reminder to her that her days of wishing she was in my office banging her own head against that brick wall will soon come to an end.

For your viewing pleasure, I'll leave you today with a picture of that brick wall so that from now on, if I ever write about wanting to bang my head against it, you can visualize that if you want to. And no, my desk isn't always that messy...I took this picture after I had tried to get my office ready for it's makeover. I'm hoping and praying that when I go to Share later today that the ugly pea green trim is no more and it will instead be a pristine white.