I have a friend that lives a pretty stressful life. She runs a business and a family and is involved in a couple charities. Her kids are involved in several extra curricular activities that take time and of course, her church requires her time as well.

At night after the rest of the family was in bed and sleeping she found herself sitting on the couch and staring into space. Her health was falling apart; she wasn’t sleeping well and was finding little joy in life. Staring into space did little to relieve the stress so she started to read. That helped at times, but more often than not, she couldn’t get her mind to stop long enough to get into the story at hand.

That’s when she started going through the old boxes of her children’s pictures allowing her mind to wonder back to the many wonderful times their family had shared. She noticed the photos were being worn and beat up piled all together and some were even water damaged and stuck together from sitting on the cement floor of the basement.

One night she remembered an old scrapbook album in a drawer that I had given her when she was in the hospital. I told her at the time she might like to use it to keep a record of her family. To tell you the truth she had never been the arts and crafts type and after she was well, she put the album away and forgot about it.

So, here she was at midnight with a pile of colored card stock, scrapbook paper , adhesive, page protectors and the scrapbook album. She really wasn’t sure what she was doing, after all, she had never gone to any formal scrapbooking classes or hung out with the rest of us when we scrapbooked. But she figured why not give it a shot. Well, that was when she caught the fever and has never looked back.

She is still not the arts and crafts kind of gal and wouldn’t call her scrapbooks artwork like so many scrapbook enthusiasts, but she does savor her hour before bed relaxing and compiling her simple books. My friend has finally found a way to unwind and de-stress her life.

I was standing in line at the store with some nail polish and cotton balls and of course the lines were endless with masses of people, kids running everywhere and babies screeching. The woman behind me had her shopping cart piled high with all kinds of party decorations of some sort. She had all kinds of gadgets and fancy trim and paper. She even had little do-dads that I couldn’t identify. I was relived she was behind me because I had a feeling it was going to take her an hour to check out.

Before long I struck up a conversation with her out of boredom. I asked her if she was decorating for a party. She told me no, she was scrapping.

Scrapping? I thought scrapping was another word for fighting. Here she seemed such a sweet old lady. I didn’t see any signs of bruises or broken ribs. Perhaps she knew of some make-up that did a better job of hiding purple and green than I knew of. And what did brightly colored card stock and trim have to do with fighting?

I didn’t want to show my dismay so I just nodded my head and said, “oh.”

“We have a scrapping convention coming up this weekend and I can’t wait!”

“Oh,” I said again, still confused, but trying not to show it.

“You should come. There are still a couple of openings. If you’re a beginner we have some excellent teachers. It would do you a world of good.”

“I am going to use funny short sayings for the cover this year.”

I broke out in a cold sweat. This lady was a nut case! She was even planning her “cover”!

“Last convention we learned punch art and how to use die cutting machines. We learned to use the corner punch, the border punch, the circle punch, the hand held punch and the heavy-duty punch, but my favorite was the die cutting machines. You can really get hooked on those things I am telling you what! This year we will be using lots of wire and brads for different effects. I love pounding those brads straight through the target!”

“Wow,” I mumbled. How do I always manage to get in line with lunatics?

This group sounded like some kind of military outfit with special code names for their fight techniques and everything. What in the world did they use the wire for? Good grief, maybe they wrapped victims up and tied them to the stake! I wasn’t sure what a brad or die cutting machine was, but I was pretty sure by this point that they were both some medieval torture devises.

“I just love to scrap, don’t you? I could do it 24/7!” There she was grinning up at me as if she was talking about sewing a quilt or something. She was so far gone she didn’t have a clue that this stuff was not normal!

Perhaps she was part of some crazy scrapping cult where they fight until one participant drops dead. She might even be a terrorist! I was sweating in earnest now. My hands began to shake. The line still snaked toward the cash register and there was no end in sight. I couldn’t take it anymore and bolted forward, put my nail polish and cotton balls on the counter, said sorry to the cashier and raced for the door.