Prologue

Ok - I am five posts in and writing a prologue, but you'll see why in a moment.

I run a couple of other blogs, mostly my Coffee Blog 'Cafe Grendel' keeps my writing skills tuned up and lets me blather on about my own hobby (Hey Mrs Grendel you could blog about MY hobby!), but for some reason I had never got around to putting much in my blogger profile, including a photo.

So imagine my surprise today when all of a sudden a photo appears in my profile. Now this particular photo had been the subject of some discussion after Mrs Grendel made a scrap page with it, and to be frank, it is not the way I hoped to be immortalised in the family archive.

I am instructed however that all photo opportunities must be approached with the scrapbook in mind, and thus I must not make faces to the camera lest they be scrapped.

As I mentioned in my last post, Mrs grendel does a great job scrapbooking and I am proud of what she has done, but at the beginning, oh dread, dread thoughts ran through my mind.

Mrs Grendel was/is a web designer - and a good one, but with the birth of our first child she was far too busy to work, what with the lactation, nappy changes, comforting and scrapbooking.

Waaaaaait a minute here. I read all the books, 'What to Expect when You are Expecting', 'So you're having a baby?', 'Fatherhood', 'Raising Boys' (gotta love that ultrasound), 'Raising Girls' (Can't trust that ultrasound!), I really read the lot, and NOT ONCE DID I SEE A MENTION OF SCRAPBOOKING!

Yet here it was, apparently arriving in the same bundle as the baby.

Now I know that for a scrapbooker, that very first layout has a very special place in your hearts. It is the first time you've preserved that special moment in time, it is the first step on that wonderful meander through the product laden forest that is your new art.

But (and this is very delicate), that very first 'LO' might appear (to the totally uneducated and incompetent eyes of your partner) as, well, somewhatlackingtechnicallyorsomethingbutgorgeousdearabsolutelygorgeous.

Yes, that phrase has to come out in a rush for safety, however, I know how reading online can be difficult for some so if you had difficulty reading that here it is again a little slower: "somewhat lacking technically or something but gorgeous dear, absolutely gorgeous".

See the thing is you CAN'T just start scrapping with whatever is lying around. You actually have to go and buy stuff, expensive LSD and ligament free stuff, and in some cases quite a lot of stuff in order to make that very first page. And any budget conscious partner is naturally going to worry just a little (I have since become much wiser - money is diverted directly from my pay that I never ever need to see or hear anything about ever again).

So after this initial rush of blood, your beloved arrives home from her very first scrapbooking class with:

You ooh and ahh and it is lovely - very sweet, but somewhere in the back of your mind Ebenezer Scrooge is cackling loudly at the sheer expense of that single page.

Such was my frame of mind at the time, but I am a calm and rational being and let the moment of terror pass me by, and naturally today I am glad I did.

My advice to partners of scrappers - set them up their own scrapbooking account ASAP, it'll take a load off your mind and you won't even notice the cost (until the end of the month anyway when you can mentally bury it in the myriad of other expenses).