I’m going to use this space to throw some thoughts around. My Grandma Alberts is nearly 92. She had a stroke early last year that just about did her in. Since then, it’s been a series of setbacks that have left her almost completely immobile and lacking the ability to communicate in any way that makes sense. She’s recently had another “episode” as they call it which has now left her unresponsive. It’s hard to say but it could be that only moments remain. Each way you look at this, it’s sad… even objectively. Subjectively, it’s worse. On the surface, it’s a life but I can’t help but become overwhelmed as my thoughts race further. It’s just how I am. I’ll sit at red lights and watch people… walking, in their cars, talking on phones. I think about how I don’t know them and have never seen them. Then I’ll think about all the people they are important to and how I probably don’t know them either. Hundreds, maybe thousands. This is one street corner, in one city, in a big country. It’s heartbreaking to think of all those eventual lost connections. And it’s certainly more heartbreaking to consider those lost connections when I am intertwined so tightly in them.

It’s hard to think about losing my Grandma. I can’t help but think of her as a teenager, living on a farm in rural Ohio. She worked hard because she had to. She watched her brothers move off, some to war, others for work. One all the way to California. Was that hard to see him move away and never return? He helped pay her way through nursing school. I would’ve missed him. She was tough, resilient. Maybe she didn’t think about her brother in California or the one in Boston. She had four kids to raise. She lost the oldest one 14 years ago. My Grandma understood a lot more than she let on but I know she never understood that. I heard her say it as his casket waited to be lowered into the ground. I wonder if she had regrets. When she was most proud. Or vulnerable.

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And now I can ask none of those questions because she’s gone. Clarabel Eleyet Alberts died early this morning in a nursing home in Englewood, OH. She was 91. And while she might’ve reluctantly called herself many things… wife, mother, sister, aunt, nurse, volunteer, master of all things thread, etc etc… above all else, I believe, she was a teacher and her life was the instrument with which she taught. I will miss her and I will miss the generation she epitomized.

Me and my Bud Light were out last night watching Erica take care of her flowers. It was a very nice evening to sit on the steps, lean back and listen to the robins fight it out. Those are some seriously rambunctious birds come sundown. I had my camera and tried to open it up as much as possible… which isn’t much. I’m getting closer and closer to the moment when I say “To hell with it,” and go out and snag me a f2.8 17-55mm lens. But that would put me back some dollar bills. However, it would make a huge difference when shooting in low light which I prefer because I think it’s easier to see where the light is, point your camera at said light and pull the trigger.

I love opening a new jar of jelly. There’s something about it.

My family (in a roundabout way) runs a tavern in my hometown that has been serving up food and drinks for a long long time now. Nearly 100 years. That same hometown happens to lie on Interstate 75 which makes its exits particularly valuable for chain restaurants… and as evidence would indicate makes hole-in-the-wall local joints fall to the wayside. But a few years back, the great-grandson of the guy that started it all would head home on the weekends, make up a bunch of dough and bake up some pretty extraordinary pizzas on Monday night. It was inspiring what this one contribution had accomplished so I felt compelled to mock up some t-shirts so they could put them on hangers and possibly make a little extra money in the process.

I took this picture tonight… somewhat ceremoniously. Erica and I got the girls to bed, everything was cleaned up and no sooner had I sat down than I jumped up and was out the door to take a predetermined picture in the garden.

I threw that garden together for my wife around Mother’s Day of 2011. She had talked and talked about wanting a garden and I planned and plotted and went about it all wrong. It was three weeks behind schedule and a couple hundred dollars over budget but we’re certainly enjoying it in 2012. The twins had fresh strawberries all spring… as did the squirrels. We’ll have green beans, tomatoes, peas, lettuce and zucchini shortly. I like watching it all grow. Now that cell phones have killed the answering machine, there has to be something to look forward when coming home.

So I embark once again on a personal photo project that I’ve attempted several times over. A picture a day for a month. And just like that garden, I’ll finish it some day, look at it and it will make me happy.