Two steps forward, one step back

First step forward:
Uncovering the stepping stones. When I moved here, there were stepping stones from the driveway back to the shed only. If we wanted to go from the patio to the shed or from the patio to the driveway, especially if rain had turned the backyard swampy, we were S.O.L.

I'd thought about adding more stepping stones years before we did it, but Butch's impending blindness was the motivation I needed to finally get it done. I wanted him to become familiar with them while he still had a little vision, so we rushed the project and completed it mere weeks before his eye surgery.

The stepping stones weren't my idea; I'd read about their usefulness in a book on blind dogs and I can testify to their value. Butch depends on them. If we call him when he's way at the back of the property, he takes off in a trot toward the house. He runs until his feet touch the stepping stones, then follows their path to the patio. Today, thanks to a crew of people with weedeaters and edgers, we reclaimed them from the thick St. Augustine grass that threatened to swallow them.

Second step forward:
This afternoon I spent an hour or so with the ongoing project of scanning all my old photos. This was a baby step, but a step in the right direction nonetheless. I could scan them much faster if I could control my need to study each and every one of them, but then it would be just labor. Doing it this way is a labor of love.

And one step back:
A step in time, that is. Friday night I had the pleasure of a phone call from friends we'd known in 1970 when we lived in Miami. They were good friends for the year and a half we were there, and after we moved away, we stayed in touch through Christmas cards for a few years. Then we moved again...and then they moved...and after a couple more moves for each of us, we lost touch.

Thanks to the Information Age and the excellent memory of the husband in this pair, he tracked my ex to the home of my former mother-in-law, who told him of Hus2's death and gave him a clue that led him to a successful Internet search for me.

It was fun to spend time on the phone catching up with them. We've all lived through a lot since those carefree days, and we've all changed a lot, too--inside and out.

While the inside changes may have been the most profound, the outside are the most obvious. This photo was taken in Miami in 1970. My girls grew into women a long time ago, and I grew, too, expanding my horizons as well as my waistline. I like to think that the free-spirited woman pictured here is still very much a part of who I am, but, much like an old tree, I have a lot more rings beneath my bark than I did 36 years ago. Inside and out.