I have become really intrigued with old scrapbooks and pictures. Not necessarily of my own family, either.

Of total strangers.

I’ve been hunting old book stores and antique stores for them, have even picked up some online at auctions.

I think it’s all connected to liking to read diaries and true stories and thinking about the lives of these people. Some of the scrapbooks are just collections of cards, poems and ads, others are celebrity pictures, and some are keepsakes from trips. I find them all fascinating.

I even got one that’s all clippings about the royal family.

Some are elegant (one that has poems and all sorts of other inspirational type clippings and pictures, some are haphazard, and some are sentimental.

I have no idea why I want these things or what I’m going to do with them, but I find them fascinating.

I also found a totally empty old scrapbook that has a Japanese design on the front, and that also plays music. I sort of want to find a special reason to use it. It’s quite pretty and deserves to be displayed somewhere.

Now if I could just figure out why I like these pictures and collections put together by total strangers.

I used to make really nice scrapbooks myself – long before scrapbooking became the craze that it now seems to be. Way back in the 70’s and 80’s I’d make books for any trip I took, or for the musicals that I directed. I’d find captions from magazines to go with the pictures, and even made some pop up pages in them.

I don’t do much with scrapbooking now that it’s popular and easy to find things to use. But that’s probably a good thing, I need another obsessive hobby like I need a hole in the head.

Besides I don’t have any more room for "stuff" and scrapbooking requires lots and lots of "stuff".

But I do wonder why I like all these scrapbooks and pictures call to me. I don’t know any of these people, but I wonder why they took the pictures, went on the trips, or saved the clippings that they did.

I also am fascinated with tintypes.

I have one of my grandmother and her sisters and I’ve always loved it.

I have a bunch of old (really old sepia tone) family pictures that I love to look at. I’ve made my mother try to identify who all these folks are, and record them for me.

That, though, all goes along with the genealogy search that I continue to dabble with. I keep going back and forth with it, but I don’t seem to get too far. It takes up so much time that I just can’t get it all together and keep going with it the way that I want to.

It’s really a summer project for me.

Happily, I have tomorrow off due to Good Friday. I have lots of things to do around here, but I have the feeling that I’ll be out running errands for my mother. I also have to go to get some things that I’ll need for competition.

One of my bigger quests is going to be for shoes. I bought a pair of Easy Spirit in January and they have literally disintegrated, due to shabby construction and materials. (At least according to a guy in a local shoe store.) I tried to return them to the store where I got them (an Easy Spirit store) and they told me they were discontinued and that they wouldn’t do anything to help me.

Now I wasn’t looking for a full refund or credit, but a little token of concern might have gone a long way. So I told them that my purchasing their product is now discontinues.

I was really irritated.

I hate shopping for shoes, anyways, and with this foot of mine that’s been swollen since I injured it on February 8 is going to make it even more difficult than usual. But I’ve gotta find something, it’s too cold to start wearing the sandals!