sometimes i do this thing where i look through my old photos or blog entries searching for something that happened this day last year, or at least around the same time. i ponder what we were doing, and remember the good times we had.

it's hard tho - especially with the photos. as i scroll closer and closer to August, my stomach starts to knot up, as if somehow if i stopped scrolling, time would pause, and we wouldn't get to the last photo - the last week, the last moments.

it's the photos from the summer that start the tension. first grant's farm, then national night out, then the zoo... by the time we get to our last (first!) "date night" and the photos by the river, it's really awful. then, there it is, the last picture i took - karl holding a cranky, squirming elliot.

then he's gone.

as we draw close to a year, i look back now at moments without karl - times that i cherish, but that were bittersweet - my vacation in florida, the one we never took together; elliot learning to walk; decorating for the holidays; visiting friends and family... life going on.

we went out tonight to 'let them eat art' in maplewood. it's a little art event in honor of bastille day. karl's and my first date, a strange and tangled day, included a stop at the soulard bastille day flea market, and ended in the bottleworks parking lot with our first kiss.

our niece sarah is visiting this week. we may head down to soulard in the morning for knicknacks and memories.

i need to remember to take my camera.