clickmom

possible new photo story

I spent the last two days with my BIL.  I did not intend to spend the entire two days with him, but yesterday, when he was all goofy and silly from pain killers he kept saying "You don't have to leave" every time I tried to leave so I stayed until I was so tired I was ready to cry (which makes me wonder how sitting around a hospital room making chit chat can be so incredibly exhausting) and today when I went in to the ICU with my camera gear and announced that I had to leave befoe the end of the day because I had to get some photo work done before my next session he said "Why don't you make me your project?"  I almost fainted at that!!  

But I was a little worried that it might not be the best thing for him, I figured he likes me to be around, so if he was my project he would have lots of company, and that would be a good thing for him.  Also, my last project was on the husband so having his brother as my next project seems logical in a way.......  But I didn't want to get too excited because my BIL is having a rough emotional time, so when I saw his hospital psychologist in the hallway I asked her if she thought it would be a good thing for him or not and she said she thought it would be a very good thing for him!  Yippee!!!!

I hope I am not making a sick guy niche for myself here! 

But seriously, heart transplant.

It blows my mind every time I think about it.

Job 1. figuring out how to make photos that say HEART TRANSPLANT as opposed to any other reason why they'd saw your chest in half.  

chomping

Holy mother of all 2 week periods.

Matt left, boo hoo, the rest of us took turns with the stomach flu, the husband got it so bad he was hospitalized, and the husband's brother, my beloved BIL, got a heart transplant.

I know right.  A freaking heart transplant.  

It's like something I thought I would only see other people getting on the learning channel.  It's incredible though to imagine that this man who has been so compromised for so long might be normal soon.  I'm so incredibly in awe of the people who donated their son's organs (others were saved as well) that I can barely think of them without bawling my eyes out.  Peanut and I talked about what they must have gone through and decided that if were in the same position we would do the same thing and that it would be the only thing that might make life bearable after losing a child.  (he was a very young man, not a little kid) 

Evan leaves for his summer adventure tomorrow and then Josh the next day and I am chomping at the bit to get my own summer mission started.  It's going to be all photos all the time for me this summer, at least every day until my summer school session in the end of July.  Yesterday I went to a lecture on the history of utopia and met some really exciting people, which is terrific since the bad news is that the sentry just put her house on the market and also my other close by friend and my third friend decided she prefers her snow mobiling house in new hampshire to utopia and is going to barely be in utopia from now on.  

At least I'll always have my camera!! 

 

 

 

channeling

Every morning when I come down the stairs I sitll fight the impulse to turn the corner and take bear bait out of her crate.  

It saddens and frustrates me.

In the mean time Evan has a single day of school left and then we are FREE for the summer. Oh baby yeah!  Part of me wants to set my alarm clock and wake up early every day and the other part of me wants to sleep for 12 hours a night.   I'll probably mix it up.  And binge watch something in between too. 

I've been seriously slacking in the photo taking department, so as soon as the kids are off I am focusing on one thing only:  MAKING WORK.  Hopefully good work.  I'm pretty excited abotu my utopia project and feeling more enthusiastic about lake guy now that I just completed a paper on some photographers, one of whom is Bruce Davidson.  Davidson managed to photograph people withotu the people feeling taken advantage of , so I am going to read and watch everything I can about him and channel that good energy.

All I can think about these days is getting to work, which is a good dictraction since one of my two new town friends is moving away.  It's going to be lonely around here next year.  And I told the one remaining friend that she can expect to find me just dropping in at her house, frequently.

 

6/8/2014

Last weekend was a glorious weekend, weather wise, here in utopia.  I came up for the weekend with Josh and have managed to run out without him or drag him to a couple of locations, and get a tiny bit of photographing done for my new utopia projet.  One big wonderful thing I managed to accomplish is to find a willing person who had explored this area already and is willing to show me spots that have the utopian allure I am trying to capture.  I think what will be most challenging in this project is getting the portraits of the utopians that I am hoping for.  I didn't have the bravery to dare speak with anyone while I was dragging Josh along with me today (Oh, how MORTIFIED my kids are if I dare speak about my photography in front of them, so strange!!) and there is definitely an us/them vibe happening in town, so photos of the lake population won't be hard, but photos of the town dwellers might prove more challenging.  I missed a great opportunity this afternoon, when I pointed my camera towards a spot and glanced someone illegally fishing in the river which runs through town, except he turned and fled before I could get my bearings.  Such disappointment!!  I might have to hire someone to reenact it for me.

When I'm really looking around here I see all sorts of oddball things, like someone unloading a severly handicaped person off of a handicap van to some guys who appeared to be waiting besides their bicycles behind some abandoned factories.  What the hell, right?  I should probaby watch the news now and make sure no one has been reported missing from their care facility.  I have the license plate number of the van because I grabbed a shot before they started yelling NO PHOTOS and since there were more of them than there were of me I hightailed it out of there.  I would be much braver if I had a body guard.   Too bad lake guy doesn't pose much of a threat , with his cane and all.  If only they could see his arsenal!  I wonder if a short limping man with a cross bow would guarantee my safety or if he'd have to up it something bigger or even automatic.  Yeah, he's prepared for armageddon.

 

thanks Dr. Ruth

Dammit I have a paper to write, and my words do not shoot out of my finger tips when I am writing a paper!  I have to compare three books all taken in the NYC subways.  One was shot in the 30's, one in the 70's and one in 2009.  It's an easy game and I would love to sit around and chat about it forever and a day long but writing about it is a whole other kind of torture for me.  I realized early in that I was about to binge snack eat to dull the pain if committing to academic words on paper.  Unfortunately I had not planned this one out so I have a tip for you.  Do not under any circumstances mix the following snacks:  raspberries, then a slice of goat cheese, then stale corn chips with spicy salsa and then a tropical flavored ice pop.  You need both hands to type so scratch ice pops off the list of paper writing snacks anyways, and spicy salso at 8 AM?  Not when 50 is around the corner!  I wish I had a roll of rolaids in the house.  

Great I just introduced two new ear worms to my procrastinating brain.  I have the rolaids and the tums jingles banging around in my brain now.

Doh!! 

Anyway, I hate the sound of whistling and my mother taught Matt to whistle when he was about 6.  I thought I might have to kill them both.  But whistling in the house is worse than outdoor whistling.  I turn into a dolphin when someone whistles indoors and I swear I can hear that horrific sound bouncing off of every surface with my mad dolphin echo location skills.

Last night I tried to tell Evan the story of my mother giving me the sex talk.  He ran from the room despite my cries of "This is not inappropriate!" but I am fairly certain he just used that as an excuse to leave the room, because he likes to flee from time to time.  Let me set the scene for you:  My parents brought me to college, I was 17 1/2 because I skipped a grade and I was also completely inexperienced and naive.  There was a three day "orientation" for me and them, though it was all done separately.  On the last night my parents took me to a nice restaurant and half way through the meal my mother put her hand on my arm, leaned in and quietly asked "Do we need to have the sex talk?" I said "No" and she said THANK GOD and that was the one and only time she ever tried to initiate that conversation.  Thank god for Dr. Ruth.

 

dead germ gloves

Normally I stay away from antibacterial hand sanitizers.  I just don't trust them and suspect that with enough use there will be some kind of freaky consequence.  I'd rather saunter into a bathroom and use good old soap and water.  Besides, I wouldn't eat the stuff and you know if it is on my hands then I am bound to eat some.  Also, after thoroughly dousing my hands with the goodness of antibacterial hand sanitizer I feel as if I am wearing dead germ gloves and that makes me want to wash my hands.  Give me a sink any day.

Until I am in a hospital.

And then I am outraged when I have to take more than three steps to reach out and get a germ killing squirt.

Anyone recall when I went to visit grandma, who was dying from MRSA, and she kept touching my face and I wiped antibacterial hand sanitizer across my cheeks on the way out of the old folks home, got temporarily blind and almost fainted due to the fumes?  Those were the days.

The husband was in the hospital last night.  Josh, Evan and me all had a one day stomach thing and I thought that was what the husband had until he started to run a fever and moan with every breath.  I knew it was time for the ER but the husband was poo pooing me so I called the doctor, put him on speaker phone and let the husband hear it from him.  The bottom line is that they don't know what was/is wrong with him, though his fever did go as high as 103.1 before they gave him tylenol.  It was too soon to have any blood cultures back and the husband definitely perked up after 5 or so bags of IV fluids and a whopping dose of the medicine that makes you stop wretching up bile, so they sent him home.  Go hospital!  Like I have the ability to cure him?  Pretty much as soon as he got home his fever started to climb and I dosed him up with more tylenol, and put a middle of the night dose on the night stand for him, and have crossed my fingers and toes that he makes it through the night without a medical emergency.  I will not hesitate to call 911.  I feel like what he has is completely out of my (LEAGUE) mothering cure experience where I can make things better with tummy rubs and chicken soup.

 

fleeing friends

When I moved to new town I made three friends fast and it was great.  The four of us had coffee, girl's dinners and laughs together.  Then one friend moved away.  We were down to a threesome.  Just got the news today that the glue of our group is fleeing the nutmeg state too.  One one hand I am quite happy for her because my instincts say she is going to be much happier in her new home, 2,000 miles away, on the other hand JEEZUS!  I ONLY HAVE TWO FRIENDS HERE AND YOU CAN'T LEAVE.  THINK OF ME!!  

When the one person I spent all of my time with in high school turned his back on me, I realized what was happening and make the conscious effort to make plans with all the people I was school-friends but not weekend frinds with.  I figured I had learned my lesson.  Now here I sit, almost down to a single friend and the sad news is that I don't know scores of other women I want to spend time with.  

I am selfishly sad sad sad over this one.

In the mean time, Josh, Evan and me seem to be sharing some kind of intestinal distress illness.  Holy holy.  I am on my knees asking the universe to stop this one.  It's pre-summer, which is technically the last few weeks of school when I can not stand the reality that school still exists, and I have one foot out the door, and order a ton of pizza because cooking is so school year behavior, and all I want is v a c a t i o n.   

Except, I don't want to be glued to the bathroom during my v a c a t i o n  I want to be running around carefree with my camera making sweet sweet work that will go over like gangbusters during my summer session at school this summer.  (Cue the Koolaid guy to come crashing through the wall right now) Oh yeah.  

Speaking of taking photographs, I went to utopia because I had to meet the audio guy there to show him how some jerk tried to steal the outdoor speaker from our patio and broke and left it there.  But I went early to photograph, and ended up spending over two hours chatting with the sentry instead of photographing.  The good thing that came of it was some super ideas for photographing, and I didn't have a polarizing lens (it arrived this afternoon!  Yay UPS) anyway, so since it was blazing sunny today I figured I would just go see things and maybe take some rehearsal photos to retake when my polarizing filter showed up.  I am going back this weekend and unfortunately I will be dragging Josh around, but that's the price he's going to have to pay to have a famous photographer mother!  I have no sympathy.  Shall we discuss his labor?  I think he can handle it.  

The sentry was talking some kind of nonsnse shit about putting her house on the market, but I am blocking that all out.  Can't deal.

thinking thoughts

I'm kind of mad at myself for not buying a house that has a pool in the back yard.    If I had a pool I'd warm it up to bath water temperatures and be in it every day the sun is out.   It feels like everyone around here has a pool and I took some solace in the fact that none of my backyard neighbors have a pool either, so I wasn't directly hearing anyone's pleasure, but now the backyard of the neighbor directly behind me is in the process of getting a pool.  If they get a jacuzzi too it might do me in.  sniff sniff sniff

Even the deer that skip down the side of our yard every night have been mocking me by sashaying directly across the yard ten feet away from me sitting at my kitchen table.   And then today, one of them was lying in front of our house dead on the side of the road.  The strange thing is that one of it's legs is completely gone.   I called the police who said they would check it out and probably remove it tomorrow.  Then I realized that whenever a deer was hit back in Stepford the cops would come and shoot it in the head twice just to make sure it wasn't lying there suffering.  I guess they don't do that here in new town.  No bullet holes in his head, but he is most definitely dead.  You can see it in his eyes.    I hope he didn't suffer.  I'm quite sure I heard him get hit last night.  I was sitting here watching television with the family when I heard a loud bump sound from outside.  It wasn't followed by a crash or anything, and I figured that it was going to end up being a mystery sound.  Until I looked right out of the driveway this morning.  

I've been driving myself crazy (and YES I overthink things) trying to figure out what direction I am going to go with the utopia photo project.  My latest thoughts will be to concentrate on utopia being an ex-industrial town.  But I am still going to photograph everything and everyone else I can along the way.  I feel like I need to talk to some old timers and hear stories.  I think I am going to ask the newstand dude to introduce me to some of the people he knows.   It's so tempting to make a list of all the little spots I have seen before and thought "I should photograph that"  I think I will.