clickmom

Jan 31, 2015

Today I am beset with first world problems.

I'm tired. Not because I had an 18 hour double shift day of manual labor, because my cell phone rang at 4:45 this morning and thinking it might be a Matt related emergency I kept out of bed and dashed to answer it. The cold warning was going off on the alarm in utopia. I texted the utopian care taker to check on the house. But I think tomorrow I'll have to drive up and check for myself. I don't trust the guy. He just doesn't care enough. Poor me. (Wink wink) I was so angry over being woken up on the one morning when the last thing I said to myself before going to bed was "Hurray! I can sleep in tomorrow!" I've been awake ever since.

My other fabulous problem is that my new Just purchased this fall fat jeans are so loose I can pull them down and up again without unbuttoning them. Also, billowy legs. They do not flatter. I made the mistake of actually checking out my rear view in the mirror. Not a happy sight! I'm sure that somewhere in my chaos there are a size smaller jeans, and to be honest, I don't mind if I only have one pair. (But I probably have more) I can do laundry frequently. I have to dig the next size down out. Then I'm going to give the loose jeans away. Yay me!

Another positive to eating right is that during this painful cold spell I have much more room to layer up under my coat. There is extra space in there too. Yay again!

And here is an interesting observation: when the muscles of my shoulders are in their typical locked up state I can swing my super heavy tripod and camera over my shoulder and take off into the woods. When, on a rare occasion I am not locked up with stress, it hurts like crazy to lie that heavy metal pole on my shoulder. I can't win.

not being cavalier

I'm pretty sure that the reason why I am struggling so incredibly much with this whole process of putting words to my images (I just got told that my photos have no emotional content-again) is because any notion that I had as a young person that I was special or unique or had something valuable to contribute were immediately ridiculed, squashed and obliterated.

I am not saying that to get sympathy or pity.  Just trying so hard to figure out how to do this right and do it well.  I want to get the job done. 

on my mind

I took sweet pea to her first puppy class today.  I really wanted some advice on training and I really wanted sweet pea to be able to romp with some other puppies.  Sweet pea and the two other dogs played very nicely, but the advice was kind of casually strewn about and not the purposeful instruction manual of raising a well behaved super well trained dog I was hoping for.  But it was the first class, so I have high hopes it will get more informative. We got hand outs at the end, and I hate hand outs.  Sweet pea was a real champ and did not pee or poop in the puppy class room.  She scrambled right over to a 4 foot high snow mound in the parking lot and took care of business outside, like the good girl she is.  Shamefully, I left it there, but only because I couldn't spot a trash can and I wasn't going to put one of her stinkers in the car with me.  There are limits to my puppy love. And a person wasn't going to be walking on top of the snow mound anyways.

Tomorrow I have a peer run group critique for school.  I'm pretty pleased with the PDF of images I put together to share with everyone.  Now that I have a better handle on what inspires me (A Frost poem) I am hoping I can more easily stand my ground and answer questions like I mean it.  

Did I tell you the director of the program told me I came off as cavalier when we last got together?  You could have pushed me over with a feather.  No one cares more than I do!  I was so sure that he could not have possibly meant what he said that I looked up the meaning of cavalier to see if there was another meaning that I was not familiar with.  Nope.  He thought I didn't care.  I asked my friend if she thought he was right about that.  She said NO, but still....  that was either a seriously asshole thing to say by someone who knows nothing about me, or he is right, and I don't want to come off as cavalier.  I think he just wanted me to cry, and normally I do cry when I get so angry that I can barely keep a lid on it, but in this case, his goal to make me cry is so transparent (wait, now I think I do remember telling you about this...) that I would rather cut off my shutter button pressing finger than cry during a critique because of anything he says.

Luckily, I don't have to have my critique with him until we meet again for the next session, in mid April.  By then I might have a book dummy prepared, and hopefully he will be excited about it enough to not attempt to make me cry.  How anyone can think that humiliation is a motivator is beyond my comprehension.  

The big things on my mind right now are

1. Can I successfully mix black and white with color images in my book and

2. Can I mix single frame images with tryptics- and do it well.

3. WIll I make it to graduation with out a nervous breakdown

In other news, I have been sticking to my new year's resolution of taking care of myself.  On the most basic level, I have been eating clean and predominantly grain free.  I feel so much better it is crazy.  Also crazy was how I was eating over the holidays, because every night I went to bed feeling sick and in pain.  But, I am back on the wagon, and results are happening.  For the last few years every attempt at cleaning up my diet were met with weight that would not budge, but that does not seem to be an issue now.  Thank goodness.  Because when my weight gets high like it is right now I feel practically suffocated by it.  One goal I have is to be a regular (not fat woman) size by next fall so that I can buy myself a good solid winter coat.  There is very paltry choices in the fat woman's department, and I really want a solid coat that I can bake in while braving the elements with sweet pea.  Right now my coat is so flimsy that I have to wear about three layers, one if which is an outer layer fleece, under it when the temps go down.  I do need to find a way around the permanent cheek apple frostbite I have going on this winter too.  I think a warm coat and a robber's ski mask is in order.  I got a mask, but the hole is too big and my cheeks are still exposed.  And seriously, once you frost those babies too much they don't want to know the winter anymore!  

It's supposed to snow tonight, so before I go to sleep I am going to make sure my fleece is out and ready for some photographing tomorrow morning.  Hopefully I will be able to get an hour or so in before I have to come home so a trainer can make sure sweet pea knows what the electric fence is- so she can be safe and sound outside our house on this busy street. 

roll on

This morning I got to see a most magnificent sunrise.  The sky was covered with a thin bowl of clouds, so when the sun came up there was an orabge and pink band that just lit up the eastern rim.  While I stood on my lawn waiting for sweet pea to find her own special kind of inspiration a flock of birds flew from south to north and as they passed through some of the pink sky sun rays they would light up from the pink light and flash some pink off of their wings.  It was so delicate and pretty, like an airy thin lace hankerchief.  And in an instant the sky went gray and the birds were gone and sweet pea and I were back in the house and I was mixing up her morning meal.

I love her so but the loose stools are getting tiresome.  Poor thing does not have an iron gut. Ss evidenced by the dog bed in the trash can right now.  It was not salvagable.  Not even close.  I have limits.

On the positive side, I am not sleeping on the couch anymore. Sweet pea is mostly sleeping through the night, so I moved the night time operation up to my room and the amount of happiness I have to sleep in my comfy bed again is beyond words.  My back is grateful too.

We are expecting possibly 3 feet of snow here begining tomorrow and getting heavy tomorrow afternoon.   I have so much food ready that I made two lists.  There is currently a list of snack options and a list of meal options posted to my kitchen cabinets because I got so much stuff I knew I would forget something if I didn't make a list.  Bring it on mother nature!  Even if we get snowed in until next Sunday we are going to have meals!!  And snacks!  Happily though, I tried to avoid buying food I am likely to binge on.  I gotta keep my new year resolution going strong!  I am on a roll.

 

crunching

I pretty much never go out at night in the dead of winter unless I have to, which means picking up a kid or something like that, so I am usually in a car and not in the yard.  These days I am in the yard, suggesting to sweet pea that she "go bathroom" or possibly something that would be inappropriate for small children to hear for number twos, but I have to get my giggles soemwhere!  

I totally forgot how beautiful and still a winter night can be.  I forgot how alive the night sky is with stars and how friendly the cold can feel when the air doesn't move at all.  Also, I live on a busy street so it is incredibly nice to be out there without a sound except for my own feet crunching the frozen grass.

 

clickfrost

Took sweet pea to the pet store today where everyone there had to play with her.  She is THAT cute.  I also signed her up for puppy classes at a place where I met a trainer from, so I have a high hopes for this place.  They have swim classes for dogs too!  No worries over sweet pea once the lake melts.  And they go as far as therapy dog training. 

It's been a long week.  Evan, after having a mysterious fever without much of else for over a week finally got a nasty sore throat and after they couldn't figure it out at the clinic here, I put in a call to good doc and he said to get Evan a mono test.  It's mono.  Poor baby doesn't want to admit that he is sick, or tired, or anyway unable to do everything that he normally does.  Tough guy.

At the same time, the husband couldn't get off his office couch so I had to drive to his work with mr. mono and bring the husband home.  Stomach flu.  Didn't really see the guy from Friday until he left the house on Tuesday morning to crawl back to work.

Yet he managed to share his germs with me.  Yes, yesterday I almost swooned while waiting to check out with my dinner groceries, but I refuse to succumb.  I will stay strong despite the occasional heat release and the gnawing pain in my gut and a frequency issue.  I will not be sick!! 

I found a poem that is more me than anything I could have written for myself.  I feel like maybe I was Robert Frost in a previous life, because everything he says or people imagine that he means is everything I am trying to do with my photos.  I'm so psyched.

suck it up, tow the line

The weather is making me INSANE.  Today's forecast was for rain, but it wasn't raining when I got up and strolled my poop bombed lawn with sweet pea, so I figured that I would quickly shower and head out and by then there would be a decent amount of light so I quickly cleanse and then I glanced out the window and WHAM! 

rain

Mother nature is testing me.  

My options are 

1. curl up into a ball and weep

2. meditate and try to unwad my panties

3. come up with some sort of clever way to keep my already vulnerable splitting camera dry while walking through the rain, setting up the tripod and then shooting a tryptic.

4. stomp my feet, raise my fists and curse at the skies which keep giving me blasted weather extremes except for the fog I so desperately desire.

5. pig out from frustration

6. sit around and scrath myself all day while watching the kind of mind numbing programming which lowers my IQ.

7. manage to play fetch with sweet pea and walk her every two hours inbetween numbers 1-6.

My frustration level is through the roof right now.  I feel like if I could just have some solid hazy foggy days with marathon shooting sessions I could even compile enough work to call it a day! I already have a sweet amount of solid images, I just need a little chunk more.  

And I need to break through my resistance to talking about my work.  I think the reason I have so much trouble is a vulnerability issue.  Also, I was trained as a kid to suck it up and tow the line and not whine about my own needs, so there is that too.  

Update: Decided YES!! I was going to brave the elements with my camera as soon as I took sweet pea into the poop field (back yard) for another opporunity at elimination.  I skidded across the driveway like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, shuffled back into the house and saw that there is a severe weather warning because it isn't raining it is icing and I am encoraged by my town official to stay indoors.   I watched Sunday Morning instead.  At least I salvaged my IQ.  The bright side is a warming trend is on the horizon for the rest of the day, so even though the chance of rain is 100 percent, I'm thinking maybe I will get that fog I want so much when the sheet of ice that is otherwise known as the ground melts.

Update II: I could tell by the lack of glisten the driveway had melted, so I ran out with sweet pea for another chance at elimination before I ditched her to photograph in the drizzle.  It's pouring.  Can't chance it with the camera.  Thinking about going to a couple of places I scoped out on the internet this morning to see if they are deserving of a repeat trip some day in the future when mother nature is my friend again.  The good news is that I haven't pigged out yet, but a day in the house might push me over the edge. Gotta make plans.

Update III: went to the woods and photographed for two hours from underneath an umbrella, keeping my camera dry with a trash bag.  Worked like a charm until the umbrella became saturated and started to leak.  It rained all the way back to the house. I grabed sweet pea, took her outside and within a minute the rain tapered off and thick heavy fog obscured everything.  Tempted to go back out, but too wet cold and lazy.

I got Bob today

My love for sweet pea knows no bounds, even when she thinks my precious rug is a giant pee pee pad.  I just love her to pieces.  There is one small beloved rug I didn't roll up on the main floor of the house.  She found it twice today.

But I wasn't home for over 9 hours, and I didn't really think the boys (Evan has an excuse being sick for an entire week!) were going to hawk watch her like I am likely to do, so I'm just glad she didn't poop in the house.  Because poop is triple icky.  Especially hers.  She has a delicate stomache.

Where I was for such a long time today was picking up Bob's ashes.  It turns out that one of Bob's childhhod besties lives 15 minutes from me and agreed to take the drive with me and show me around Bob's old town.  First we went to the house of the girlfriend of Bob's dad, who died three weeks after Bob, and she was the most adorable little thing.  I'm not sure what I was expecting (a little evil shrew maybe?) but I for sure was not expecting a sweet old lady with a cute little house and a polite clean cut eagle scout grandson who just happened to stop by to help his grandma take down her artifical christmas tree.  It was so wierd because Bob had so much anger towards his dad and I expected to meet someone who deserved Bob's venom be transference but this lady was a doll.  Crazy right?  I kept telling Bob's friend, there is two sides to every story and then there is the truth.  I feel bad for my friend Bob because I see his dad, later in life created a whole happy family that would have probably invited and accepted Bob into it if only Bob had been able to let go of past hurts and be a part of this family.  This family looks like everything Bob longed for but didn't have.  Heart breaking.

After we left the girlfriend's, Bob's bestie took me on a car tour of the town and places where Bob lived or hung out.  I got out to photograph Bob's grandmother's house and realized as I ran back to the car it was colder than cold.  the temperature?  12!!!!  My camera is rated to be useable down to 15.  I didn't want to push it.  I love that new camera too much to mess it up.  Also, that kind of cold hurts, so I will go back for the photos I want.  It was snow covered there and that didn't feel right to me.   I'm thinking of going back in the fall on the first anniversary of Bob's passing.  Maybe we can have a memorial for him.  The more I find out about Bob the more of a mystery he becomes to me.  So many contradictions.  We all see our lives through our own filters, I am struggling to figure out what filter he was looking through.  I can't tell if the version Bob felt is pure fiction,  tragedy or just enigma.  

But in the end, Bob's ashes came home with me, we saw a rainbow fragment in the sky, despite no rain anywhere and I took that as a sign from Bob that coming home with me was a good thing and even that he was smiling over a budding friendship between me and his childhood bestie.  We got along great!  We are having lunch next weekend.

Jan 15, 2015

Today she snuggled up on the little corner of my coat that was touching the floor. Earlier, in the car, she practically choked herself trying to lay her face on my scarf which I tossed on the empty seat. I'm not sure I have ever been loved this much before.

I contemplated murder...

on a Yorkie.

If sweet pea had a baby book Saturday's entry would say "Bark changing, has more depth and body than it did a week ago" and Sunday's entry would say "Bad day, got attacked by a Yorkie.  Mom almost took the Yorkie out."

I took sweet pea to the dog park where she frolicked with a great big labrador named Milo.  It was adorable.  Milo was there with his mom kid and the kid was so taken by sweet pea's sweetness that she told me if I ever went on vacation that sweet pea could stay at their house.  At the end, just as I was trying to make my way back to the car we walked through the field where the lazy people who don't walk their dogs (but instead stand there and hope their dogs run around on their own) stay.  There was Yorkie who took one look at sweet pea walking by and went for her jugular.  Sweet pea was screaming in terror and the Yorkie was growling this tiny fierce homicidal growl, so I bent over and swatted the Yorkie away.  Before I could pick sweet pea up that freaking Yorkie was back on her.  I opened my hand, planted it on the Yorkie's scruff, considered snapping her neck, but instead lifted her up and out to the side.  I'm not sure what I would I would have done with her next (chuck her as far as I could throw her?) if her irresponsible old lady owner hadn't been standing right there.  What I did do was smoosh her into her owner's chest until her owner (who was a bit shocked herself) pulled herself together and closed her own hands around her piece of shit attack dog and then I ran to get sweet pea who was taking off for what she must have thought was the safety of the parking lot.  A good samaritan bystander stepped on sweet pea's leash and she didn't get very far.  But she was shaking like a leaf!!!  

Not sure who was more phased by the entire ordeal, me or sweet pea.  I went to this particular park a couple of times when we first moved to new town and didn't like it then either.  Too bad though, because Milo and his family were super nice and I wouldn't mind hanging out with them.  For now I will be sticking to the fields, where somehow the people are more responsible and the dogs are nicer.  And also the woods where bear bait and I used to trek and I am now photographing, but that isn't right near where I live.

I took sweet pea home, got her settled and went off to see the second show of Josh starring in Guys and Dolls.  My little (lead role!) Josh/Sky was brilliant.  It's such a heart swelling with pride moment to sit there in the audience  watching my baby, my 13 year old baby, pretend to be a slick 1940's gambler falling in love with a missionary.  He was good.  I'm so proud, he's so humble.  He won't talk to me about anything (other than mind numbing computer games) these days.  He thinks teens don't talk to their parents about a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g.  I explained that teens don't want to talk to their parents about crushes and friends and puberty but are willing to talk to them about other things like what the rumor is around why their teacher got fired.  But nope, Josh is Mr. Tight Lipped.  I hope his kids ice him out when they hit puberty.  Payback.

Almost a year later I got Josh's bar mitzvah photos back!!!  Very exciting.  I was kind of worried that there was some kind of technical difficulty and maybe it was taking so long because all the photos sucked or something, but they are great!  And for me to look at these and not feel all cringy when I am in them since I'm at maximum weight these days is saying a lot.  I'm pretty psyched.  There are so many good shots of my boys and my boys together, which is all I need to make my day.

I was counting on today being a photo day but it's raining and I want to cry.  I'd be more tempted to take my camera out in the rain if it didn't have a crack that was slowly opening up on it's side.  It's not broken, the crack is where two pieces come together, but the repair place wants to keep it for 5 business days and foolishly I did not send it in to be repaired over the holidays when I should have because I figured I'd use it until next summer and then get it fixed, but now the crack is widening and I think I better send it in.  BUMMER!!!