If you had asked me two weeks ago if I had ever owned a red raincoat — or indeed, if I had ever worn a red anything, anytime in my life — I would have laughed and said no. Red is not my color. I never wear red, I’ve never worn red.
I would have been wrong. Apparently sometime in my long-forgotten past, I DID own a red raincoat, and I was super cute in it, if I do say so myself.
The picture is part of a collection that my brother sent me — several hundred incredibly small jpgs, most about 150K, that my mom had probably scanned sometime decades ago. The vast majority of the images were what you’d expect: snapshots, blurry, unposed, with scattered artifacts like dust and even the occasional hair from the scanning process, often too dark or too bright. But they were also the record of a childhood I mostly don’t remember — picnics, pony rides, petting zoos. Swimming in Lake George, visiting Niagara Falls, Easters at my grandparents. I had fun browsing them, and then I spent a probably ridiculous amount of time trying to enhance some of them to make my dad a Father’s Day movie with highlights of the past.
Along the way, I discovered the fun of using apps inside Canva to turn photographs into drawings. Of course I’d done that before, many years ago. Wow, that technology has come a long way.
Behold, anime me:
And sketched me, looking far more solemn than original me, with the addition of a city backdrop quite unlikely in my own childhood:
And another sketched me, this time with people and cars in the background, and honestly, just crying out to become a kids picture book somehow. There is clearly a story that goes with that cute little pudgy-faced girl in the rain. I suspect a puppy should be involved.
I justified all that playing with Canva as learning, of course — figuring out how to make presentations and graphics so that I can use them as I work on developing my Choosing Happiness site and course and other products. I keep reminding myself that it’s okay to be in a building/learning stage, as long as someday I move on to a creating/sharing stage, and I will. Soon. Someday. Eventually. Really.
Meanwhile, I have far too many goals for this week. Update this, work on that, finish the library books I’m reading, organize my notes, create a link tree, write the damn content for the landing page on the other site so that I can start blogging over there, design a pretty infographic, decide on the image style…
But the actual goal on my to-do list for the day? Have fun with Sophie. She was alone for a big chunk of the past two days, on Sunday while I had a lovely Father’s Day brunch with my dad and stepmom, and yesterday while I had an entertaining summer day at Epcot with friends. While I don’t feel like I’ve neglected her — believe me, my dog is not neglected! — I do want to make sure she gets some entertainment in her days, too. Does she care? Probably less than I do, tbh — more than once recently, when we’ve been playing ball in the backyard, she has let me know that hanging out in the air-conditioning would be fine by her — but still. Goal for the day: do many useful things AND have fun with Sophie.
Liz has red rain boots. She likes fancy flats like Hot Chocolate & cute sneakers like Rocket Docs or Dogs not sure.
I’m a Birkenstock fan. I do have a cute umbrella, though. It is blue sky & clouds.
You do look cute in your red coat with your umbrella.
I need to get a cute umbrella! Not that I would ever remember to use it, but it would be fun!
I remember now — you had those beautiful high cheekbones even when you’re were a little girl.
🙂 I showed my dad’s birthday slideshow to a friend and his response to one of the picnic photos was, “That’s so weird! That’s not you? That can’t be you…” I think maybe that one was 14-year old you!
Oops. even when you were….
Comment typos are like texting typos — invisible!
That is one mischievous smile and amazing blue eyes, and as much as the AI images are cool both elements seem to be missing from the AI versions. Love the original image, but the AI versions have a particular sense to them as well.
Yeah, isn’t that funny? I love it because of the smile — I think I’m just radiating delight in my umbrella. But the AI missed the emotional context entirely. They’re cute images, but they lose something in translation.