Playing Ketchup by Myself

When did I become so disorganized? Is it an age-related issue? A busier-than-ever conundrum? Or am I simply working on too many projects at once?

Here's a perfect example. One of the items on my Success Team to-do list is to create a rough draft list of the ancestors I know are buried in Oakwoods Cemetery. Seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it? And I know it will be easy because when I enter places of burial in Family Tree Maker, I put the cemetery name, address, and phone number in the place field.

So I confidently open FTM, click on Places and scroll to Oakwoods. Nine names are listed. Seven of them have dates of burial. Both of the names missing the burial date are collateral ancestors. To my credit they each have a date of death gleaned from their obituaries. Sounds like a check mark looms in my future, doesn't it?

Then I look closer at the names on my list. Conspicuously absent is my second great-grandfather Jacob K. Mueller. I know he is buried at Oakwoods because I have a copy of his obituary and his death certificate.

Of course these documents would be attached to Jacob on Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com, right? Not so much, no.

But that shouldn't be a problem. I can simply click on My Pictures and add the images to Jacob's file. My Pictures has a Family Tree folder inside with a Mueller folder inside that. The Mueller folder contains 19 objects, none of which is Jacob's death certificate. Drat.

Oh, I remember now! I changed the way I label my photo files. I'll have to look in the "old" Family Tree picture folder and then the Mueller file there.

57 objects are patiently waiting inside this folder. Thankfully Jacob's death certificate is here. Named DC Jacob K Mueller.pdf. And here, named DCJacobKMueller.pdf. And here again, this time named Jacob Mueller DC.jpg.

I think what happened was...well...you know...I'm really not sure what happened. But it looks like I already have a goal for the July 9th Success Team meeting. Does this make me an overachiever?