Take a little scrap of my heart now, baby

There is a lovely feeling of peace that comes over you when you finish a big project, a sense of accomplishment, a kind of release.  At least, I imagine that’s the case.  I can’t say I have experienced it first-hand lately.  The end of my big project seems to have the same properties as a mirage in the desert- it appears tantalizingly close but I never actually seem to get there.
I have been working on a scrapbook.  I literally started from scratch by buying an unfinished wood album cover and painting and decoupaging it myself.  It looks pretty good, if I say so myself.  I managed to give the wood a pickled look using acrylic paint and the effect is not too shabby.
I have painstakingly compiled photos, memorabilia, embellishments, papers and supplies, layed out almost thirty pages, cropped, pasted… I have put roughly four-five hours a day for the last two weeks into this book and last night, I thought I was finished.
I assembled all the pages and put the album cover together.  It was gorgeous.  Only one problem.  It was so thick that after turning the first couple of pages it became almost impossible to turn the rest.  So, I added extenders, and it did get marginally easier to turn the pages.  Marginally.  So today I will go and buy more extenders.  And if that doesn’t work, I will buy a traditional album cover, put the pages in it, and frame the wooden one I made.  Why not?  It’s art.  In either case, I have to invest yet another day on this “finished” project.
I have been making “this is your life (so far)” scrapbooks as birthday presents since March of 2005.  The first one I ever made was for my granddaughter Kendall, who, it appears, promptly lost it.  So much for sentimental value.  Delaney’s was next (she was six in May).  I made a mini-album for Dave in June, which, touchingly, he carries with him when he travels without me.   I assembled an album roughly the size of “War and Peace” for my son Jake, and looked forward to going through it with him, which never happened- that was August.  I made one for Haley in October and a very abbreviated one for Emily in November. Well, she is only two, after all.  The plan is to add pages at every birthday.
They are a lot of fun to make, but they are also a lot of work.  Scrapbooking is not easy.  It requires thought, planning, a rudimentary sense of design, patience, imagination and time.  Fortunately, I have lots of time.  Each scrapbook has been better than the last as my experience has grown.  I am proud of them.
I have one more to assemble, hard on the heels of this last finished/unfinished project.  It is for my daughter-in-law Becca whose birthday is next month.  I know Becca will appreciate it as she is a scrapbooker, too.  As for the others…  I fear I may just be amusing myself with this latest craft.  I really meant them to be acts of love as much as works of art, but then, they are just scrapbooks after all.  
I sometimes feel that everything I do these days is inherently trivial and pointless.  I enjoy myself, don’t get me wrong, but I used to be integral, I used to have an impact, make a difference.  I got a call a couple of weeks ago from students who were in my very first Anatomy and Physiology class, just wanting to touch base and say hello.  That happens a lot, and it means a lot to me.  I miss teaching.  I don’t miss all the bull-shit attendant upon academe, but I do miss TEACHING.  
So… maybe I will teach a class on scrapbooking.  Who knows?