clickmom

Oct 30, 2014

I'm in San Francisco for another school session. The SF Giants won the World Series last night and thankfully my room is unlikely to take a stray bullet through the window. You'd have to directly across the hall to get me. I had concerns that there might be some shenanigans in the hotel hallway but since that is about as wide as my rolling luggage I figured you'd also have to be aiming directly for me. Luckily I was pretty quiet during yesterday's critiques, so I made no new enemies.

Speaking of yesterday's critiques.... The technique that my advisors plus one guest have decided to go with could not be farther than the truth that I know is quality teaching. It's very humiliating and left one girl in a puddle of tears in the hallway. So ridiculous to me. During my critique I asked a question and they told me answer it myself. I told them I wasn't being a joker and to please be teachers. They didn't budge and in the end my director set a timer and had me stand in front of five photos I selected off the wall as favorites in silence because I did not understand what he wanted me to say and after the first thirty seconds or so I realized it was a test of wills so I was determined to stand my own silent ground instead of fumbling around for something to say. The director was uncomfortable enough to get up and stick his head in the hallway I just stood there thinking what an idiot thing this was to and how differently I would do things if I were in charge of the program. In the end all the other students were fidgeting in their seats as I stood motionless and hopefully expressionless over the table with my five selected prints all because in that exact moment the director and me both wanted to be the bigger jerk. It was a waste of everyone's time. Nobody benefitted from three and a half minutes of awkward uncomfortable silence.

Right now I have no interest in being part of a photography program, but should life bring me to unexpected places... I am going to use my teaching expertise combined with what I learned in this program and be a kinder gentler teacher all in an effort to make this world a better place. Also, I will TEACH instead of ridiculing.

The most inflammatory moment of the critiques came when the director asked my Chilean friend to remove some images from the wall and he began to bark "Rapido! Rapido!" at my friend. The guest egging him on with looks from across the room and it was everything I could do not to smack him in the back of the head.

Apparently the director was asking around to see if I was okay and how I responded to my critique. Except, not having any clue who I am and what I am about he asked the last person I would have a heart to heart with. No one seems to believe me when I say the critiques could not bring me to tears unless they ask about how much I love my kids or miss bear bait.

In other news flying seems to have irritated my trigeminal neuralgia even more and I have been pounding the OTC painkillers. I'm concerned by the throbbing in the tooth behind the one that was removed. I still have a hot tight ball of numb and pain around my jaw joint. I think I might be in for more surgery on that tooth. I suspect it is a separate thing. Freak.

enough now

Josh fell and broke two of his fingers and got three knee stitches before my first school session, my BIL fell and broke his wrost before last summer's session.  I'm leaving tomorrow for another session and Evan got four stitches in his finger this evening.  I am sure that if I think hard enough I will figure out some other kid of disaster that happened before the fall and spring sessions too.  Bad things come in threes right?  This feels like a bad fall.  

The goddess called me today and when she couldn't speak I knew something had happened.  Her dad passed away.  It wasn't a surprise but still, these things are never easy.  We know that.  So much death this fall.  I hope it's not a trend.  

good people all around

News from the land of trigeminal neuralgia: Ear pain has been reduced by putting colloidal silver soaked cotton ball into the ear.  Infection?  I think so.  Heating pad: My new best friend.  I'm terrified to touch my face as any glancing touch might set off a pain dominoe.  What the hell!!!!  

In other news I had my one on one skype meeting with my new advisor today and I'm feeling better than ever about working with him.  He was asking me editing questions and I realized that he knows that editing is my weakness.  He's good people.  I'm in good hands folks.  Tomorrow is my group critique.  I'm looking forward to some useful input from my peers.  Fingers crossed.

Matt and his new girlfriend had cocktails with the sentry this evening.  I wish my kids had grandparents, but I am so glad we have the sentry.  She put her house up for sale this summer and I am hoping that it doesn't sell.  She is also kind of hoping that it doesn't sell.  I think she feels like it would be responsible to simplify her life because she and her husband aren't getting any younger but doesn't actually want to.  I don't think they are old enough to be worried yet.

 

 

little specks

I fucking hate trigeminal neuralgia.  How it is that there is a situation that causes so many people such intense pain can only be one big you-should-be-fired design flaw?   I'm feeling sorry for myself right now.  I will allow it to go on another 30 seconds and then I am going to get on with my life, with a heating pad around my face.

I'm getting pretty nervous about my next session.  One thing that my new advisor and myself are disagreeing on is if I am creating two separate bodies of work or just one.  I say two, because one is all shot in places where I used to walk bear bait and the other is all shot on utopia.  He says one.  Clearly I am the one here with the emotional investment in both places, but he is the one with all of the make you or break you reputation in the photo world.  As an experiment I have just combined images from each body of work into one document for my group critique tomorrow and we will see how my classmates respond.  Luckily I have some really good, deep thinking people in my group, so what they have to say matters to me.  In addition to wanting to have more bodies of work one reason why I would like to keep the two separate is because next summer I have to defend my work with my thesis and I can't wrap my mind around how I might combine the two stories.  The story of utopia is this reverance for the place, ancestry, and historical mystery and the story of where I walked bear bait is this forest come alive/what lies around the corner/trees do wierd things- thing.  

Last night I went into the basement and sifted through a couple of bags that Bob left in our stepford basement when he left for California 10+ years ago.  There were two bags, a lot of VHS cassettes, but also this microcosm of a life.  He had japanese bowls, a few articles of clothes, photos of himself as a child, sex toys (not sure why he didn't take those!), books, keys, coins, an irish ring of some kind, even some snack food.  Why he stored food, is beyond me, and what it is I cannot tell you because the packaging is in japanese.  But it seemed like there was a tiny speck of every aspect of him.  So very fascinating.  It makes me want to go get a time capsule and put in tiny little specks of my life and leave a mystery behind.  Maybe in my time capsule I will cut my face out of every photo.

I offered to spread Bob's ashes and I think his dad is going to take me up on the offer.  My plan is to take them to Italy, where Bob dreamed of spending his last days.  Bob had a step uncle (or something like that) who was Italian and considered himself Italian by association.  He spoke a little Italian and was the kind of person who would probably learn it fluently after a couple of weeks in Italy.  One of these days I am going to make my way over there and go on some kind of vacation, probably a wandering one, and drop a little speck of Bob in the most beautiful places I can find.  I think he would have liked that plan.  I think I like that plan.  It makes me happy to plan on doing this one last thing for him.

believing

I called the goddess to tell her that Bob had passed and she burst into tears and told me how about 10 days ago while standing in her kitchen she had a vision of a young and strong Bob telling her that was good and he was happy.

I believe.

I also believe in alternative healing.  Yesterday, I went back to the tooth removing dentist AGAIN (I think I've been there once a week for the past two months) to tell him that I was in MORE PAIN than I had been since this odyssey of suffering began.  He referred me to a facial pain specialist and a neurologist witht he suspicion that I am suffering from Trigeminal Neuralgia.  Google it if you like, but in a nut shell, it's a painful nerve condition and the treatment for it is "It can be managed with pain killers."  WTF??  I figure there is a chance I have 40 more decent years left (please give me grandma's genes!) and there is no way I am goign to begin my inevitable pain killer addiction at 49!  

I went to bed a sad pitiful pain riddled girl.  But today I had an appointment with my old magical chiro.  Guess who is feeling relief already!  Yes yes yes!!  Not 100% but I'd say that 15 minutes with him was equal to a prescription strength advil, at least.  And, if things go as they usually do, tomorrow should bring even more improvement.  I'm going back Saturday.  I was so freaking grateful for my chiro's magic that I sent him an email thanking him.  I know it is hard for people to tell how much I am suffering, and I told him how much relief I feel.  I am looking forward to good night's sleep for the first time in weeks today.  

meeting Feathers

Matt's coming home for fall break with his girlfriend tonight.  I wasn't worried at all until a friend asked if Matt was the settle down young type.  Now I can't stop wondering if he is actually bringing her here to meet us because he is SERIOUS.  He already met her family a few weeks ago when they road tripped for a weekend.  

Gulp.

It'll be easy to top the last girlfriend.  I just hope Matt is the kind of guy who learns from his mistakes.  For real!  The last one never even tried to strike up a conversation with me, even when we arranged to do stuff together.  Bitch.

I called the editor to see if she had any advice for me about possibly meeting my son's THE ONE.  I will have to try hard not to be my usual cranky perimenopausal self while she's here.  Also, might have to curb my potty mouth.  Sometime this summer I decided to make Mother f*cker my new favorite  go to word/phrase/expression, and that is one great word for diffusing any situation.  Let me tell you!  I'll try to keep it under control while I am trying to impress though.

I think my name for this girlfriend will be Feathers.  Not because she looks like a bird but because she's got some kind of fuzzy haircut going on.  

RIP Bob

Thursday night my cell phone buzzed just as I was falling to sleep.  Out of curiousity I checked the number to see if it was important (read:Matt) and didn't recognize the number.  It was an out of state area code, and thought it might be someone from school, so I just went to sleep.  In the morning I checked my phone again to find out that my dear friend Bob had died.

I've been thinking about Bob since Friday morning and there are so many stories to tell.  One day I'll tell you the long version of how when I met him during the year I had dropped out of school, and he had just come to the city from upstate New York, I thought "Who is this gay hillbilly with the bad haircut and plaid shirt?"  Then there are the stories that my kids shall never hear.  Or how when I went back to college and embarrassingly lived in my own little world, where the only thing that mattered to me was the the people I was hanging out with that very minute, Bob would call me and remind me that he was my best friend and that I had a life in the city to come back to, or how when I had my first incredibly boring job right out of college Bob was a bar tender in a Japanese restaurant a few blocks away and how I used to take 2 hour lunches, and Bob would slip me free drinks.  I would eat at the bar and get drunk on sake and stumble back to work.  Bob used to babysit our dogs when we went on vacations and once he managed to explode our gas grill causing flames to shoot 2 stories into the air and the fire department came. When we got home we saw that the grill had melted.  Once I called Bob and told him there was a dead mouse on the glue trap in my kitchen and he told me not to touch it and showed up 20 minutes later and took care of it as if I were too delicate to do it myself.  There was that time when Bob assured me that the freezer burned chicken we chipped out of the back of my freezer was fine and we all ended up with food poisoning.  Or how he used to strap Matt into a baby carrier, stick of bottle of expressed milk into his mouth and walk our fabulous dog and Matt for a couple of hours once a week to give me a break when Matt was an infant.  Bob and his menagerie of a rabbit and one eyed bald headed cockatiel lived with us in stepford for almost a year.  It was great fun for me but tough on the husband to find someone else in command of his remote control every evening when he got home from work.  Then Bob ended up in LA.  I only saw him twice in the last decade.  But we still talked all the time.  Late night drives were always a breeze because I knew I could call on Bob, since he was three hours earlier, and no matter how long I was in the car for we could find stuff to chat about.  And we did.  Thank goodness for unlimited minutes! 

Bob always wanted to write his autobiography and I am hoping that I can get a hold of his lap top and see if he started it.  It might make a good project for me.  He had a crazy life.  At least his version of his early life was crazy.  I can vouch for the last 30 years.

I hope my dear friend Bob left all of his bad memories here on earth.  I hope he is surrounded by the love he never thought he had here.  Bob was loved.  Maybe not by his family, but by the many friends he stuck to like glue.  I know this for sure, because we all have a little circle going on on facebook.  It's really regrettable that he was so caught up in what he didn't get from his parents that he never saw what the rest of the world was trying to give him.  

There is a lesson in this for us all.  

two stories:

So, Before some kid whacked Josh's big toe to shreds we had been at the podiatrist for a painful wart on the bottom of his fot.  The jolly podiatrist smiled and chuckled as he told us how he was going to prescribe this fabulous drug for gential warts off label which works wonders on viral foot warts.  I thought Josh was going to faint!!  I am pretty sure that any use of the word genital in front of Josh is more than his 13 year old psyche can stand. He wouldn't come into the pharmacy with me to pick it up!  He slid down in the car seat and hid while I went in alone.  He couldn't believe they put his name on the package and that I had to say his name out loud in the CVS in order to purchase his genital wart cream.  Just hilarious.  

I'm going to channel that thought tomorrow when I am less than happy.  How do I knwo I will be less than happy tomorrow?  Why because I have MFing jury duty.

Sheeeeeeett!! I got the jury duty notice and the standard advice was to just call in the night before and it would probably be cancelled.  NOT CANCELLED!!!! 

wah wah wah

I am going to be the biggest jerk they ever saw.  And I have some herring to bring for snacks while I am waiting.  And nuts, just in case there is an allergy.   (Just kidding!!)  I just printed out my flight tickets for the next session, coming up in 3 weeks.  LEAVE ME ALONE jury administration!!!  

wah wah wah

I do not want to do my civic duty.  I did jury duty once in NY and it was the most ridiculous waste of time ever.  A delusional drug addicted homeless man sold drugs to an undercover cop.  I wasn't even the head juror and I had everyone voting guilty before our lunch order even arrived.  The judge couldn't believe we had all come to agree so fast.  (about 20 minutes after entering the deliberation room and ordering lunch)  They wasted my time with a trial, I wasn't going to waste a second more of my precious life discussing it!!  

wah wah wah

So, now I can't freaking photograph tomorrow, but I will probably throw my camera into my purse just in case I get out early and can shoot on my way to pick Josh up from school.  I bet a big honking camera in your purse goes over well at jury duty!! 

wah wah wah

Well at least I will have time to read the book my advisor suggested I read today.  

Wah! 

thumping

I'm pretty sure that my old phone figured out that I ordered a new phone because suddenly it won't hold a charge if I use it.  The problem is that the new phone is back ordered so I need the old phone to hang on just a wee bit longer.  Like 2 more weeks.

I took zero photos today.  It's so hard to make work between the days that I send my photos in to my advisor and the day of my critique, which is tomorrow.  gulp.  

Did I ever tell you that I went to my senior prom alone?  I didn't agonize over it because I had no idea that everyone else would pair off until I got there and everyone had paired off.  I laugh because I still live in LaLA Land.  I just explanined to someone today that I prefer people to hit me over the head with ideas just to be sure I understand them.   The prom thing didn't matter because I ended up hanging out with a bunch of friends (including my kind of crush) and having a great time anyway.

I'm kind of nervous again about my crit tomorrow.  Not so much because of my new advisor but because this is my final year and I am seriously feeling the pressure.  By pressure I mean low level constant panic, with maybe a dash of terror.  If there was a sound track it would be fast paced and have lots of little thump noises, like when you're expecting something evil around every corner.  

X rays again!!

Plan for the day:

Drop Josh off,  grocery run,  dentist,  toss grocery run into crock pot,  photograph at the fields, pick Josh up.

Actual day:

Josh dropped off,  grocery run, dentist, (you betchya) crock pot prep, (yesiree), get phone call from the dude at Josh's school who calls you when your kid isn't feeling well, pick up Josh, (who got slammed in the toe with a plastic baseball bat during gym) notice how swollen Josh's toe is, go to urgent care, be sad because the worst doctor is the only doctor there, let the worst doctor xray Josh's foot after Josh nearly falls off the table when the worst doctor squeezed his swollen toe, catch my own eye balls when they fall out of their sockets after seeing the giant crack in Josh's distal.  Yeah baby.  We don't do anything half way!  Of course, when I was happily chatting away about the broken fingers garbage can incident of 2013 I noticed the doctor double checking to see that Josh's accident did not occur under my negligent watch.  I think it would be hilarious if someone reported me to a child welfare agency.  Vacation!!  

Totally kidding.  That would be a nightmare.  

Once I got Josh home, OTC pain killer-ed up (though the worst doc did offer him the hard stuff.  WHAT?!?!?) and ice pack placed just so on the elevated broken little piggy, I ran out for a little pre-sunset photographing.  It was a mosquito mightmare.  I spent more time slapping myself and clapping into the air than clicking the shutter.  I hope I captured something worthwhile.  

I'm thinking of mentioning to my advisor that I'm starting to see just about everything in the woods as a sexual reference.  I'm spending too much time alone in the woods!  It's doing something to me!  I see body parts all over the place, too.  I would have been completely comfortable to bring this up with the ex advisor, but not so sure about the new one.  I'll ask my friend, who had the new guy last year how she thinks that will go over. 

It's 7:30 and I'm too tired to download my new photos.  Pffffttt.  Must be due to the thrilling day.