I spent last night working at a friend’s awesome cabin.  We rallied the extra help and James shouldered more than his load so you were well cared for.

When I came home today, you cried, holding out your arms,

“Mama.”

I had three more hours of email and projects ahead of me, so there was no nuzzling my face in that perfect spot between your ear and your neck.

Nearing the end of that time, I was irritated and grumpy that I didn’t have all my work at the place I wanted it.  Damn it, I wanted to have more done.  How could I scheme to sneak more time out of the sitter so I could tick off my to-do list?

Thankfully, eighty year old Helen Jane flicked me right between my eyes.

“Don’t miss this,” she said, “there is enough regret as there is.”

So I shut it down.
Delayed it until tomorrow.
Told them no.

Eighty year old Helen Jane always knows what’s important.  For babies and mamas.

But especially for mamas.

But a photo tagging party?
Sounds awful, right?
Why not share the load?

But I’m pretty sure no one but Kottke has all his photos properly tagged and titled. And you’ve probably been meaning to get to that, but it’s just that you have hair to wash and Moms to call. And this doesn’t only have to be online photo organization, but offline photo organization can work too. Bring your photo albums and loose pictures from that college vacation.

The Breakdown

Invitation: Via email, Facebook or Evite. No need for fancy paper invites and stamps. Let the invitees know they’ll either need to bring a computer or those pesky unfilled, untitled photo albums.

Time of week: This could be a good weeknight party. You wouldn’t want this to last more than two or three hours as tedium or drunkenness could wreck your plan.

Preparation: Make sure you have oodles of outlets for the laptops.

Food and drink: One handed food. Panini, appetizers and dips, soup in cups. Keep the food part away from the computer/photo album part. Since this is a weeknight party, offer a fun non-alcoholic beverage that could be punched up (so to speak) with a liquor.

Helen Jane’s Photo Tagging Punch
Ingredients:
1 quart lemon sherbert.
1 2 liter bottle of ginger ale.
2 cups of pineapple juice.
1 quart cranberry juice cocktail.

Scoop the lemon sherbert into the punch bowl by spoonfuls, add the ginger ale, pineapple juice and cranberry juice. Put out bottles of vodka, Limoncello or Tequilla in case your guests would like to doctor their own punches.