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.
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