clickmom

this post is too lame for a title

I was just reading some old posts from June 2007 and June 2008.  I was looking to see if I ever posted a photo of the shirt I wore to the relay for life walk.  Our team was called Got Wine? (like the milk commercial) and people had their panties in a wad that I made shirts for the kids to wear too. Oh people!  Don't they know that kids drink beer?  pshaw.  I was hoping for a photos of the shirts, but no such luck.  I didn't even mention it in 2008 because it was right after mom's funeral. I did do a nice little photo spread in 2007 if anyone feels like going back and looking. 

Yesterday, despite Evan's dripping with condescension remark "photographer" I allowed him to escort me to the woods and help me out by holding  a white backdrop (otherwise known as old white sheet) behind some stuff I wanted to photograph.  It's basically gnarly old tree roots and the interesting thing is that both Matt and my school friend upon receiving the photos without explanation thought I was photographing bats, though Matt who knows me better thought I had photographed a bat corpse. (I do have one, I just haven't photographed it)  It's so interesting how when you remove something from it's environment it becomes unrecognizable. I'm excited about this experiment.  I think it's a keeper.

Poor sweet Josh baby is sick as a dog.  He has a fever and I stupidly did not think it might be strep throat, even though strep throat seems to be the one thing he is susceptible to.  I will take him tomorrow for a test.  In the mean time I am just babying the poor guy.  It's kind of strange when Josh gets sick because he has such a lovely disposition that he doesn't seem sick even though he is burning up and looks like he hasn't slept in a month.  I love that kid.

The people who haven't graduated yet from my alma matter are in Germany for their spring session right now.  Since I forgot how miserable the spring weather can be in Berlin this time of year I am kind of fantasizing that I have the kind of life where I can hop on a plane and show up and say HI to everyone and then do the fun touristy stuff and not be sitting a room and be psychologically torn to shreds by the sadistic program director and his lackey.  Also, last year they made us stay in a dumpy hotel and I see that they are staying there again this year.  Poor students! But the lackey put a photo of something from his mini bar on Instagram, so you know there are at least legitimate mini bar type hotels close enough.  I will not miss those hotels they made us stay in!! 

Since I am mostly incoherent after my day of complete inactivity and total worry, I will thank you for reading this far and release you from your misery. Go read something funny!  

smack it out

As I begin to type this post it is 7:34 PM.  All I want to do is go to bed.  Partly because I am tired, I was up at 5:20 this morning for no good reason other than sometimes I just seem to wake up early, and because I drove back to step ford, spent some time with the editor, went to the chiropractor, spent some time with wild mom, got a long overdue (it's been about 8 months since my last one) haircut, spent some time peanut and another old friend and drove back.  My 90 minute drive back took 2.5 hours, which I did not anticipate so the coffee I sipped during the first 45 minutes of the drive wanted out-big time.  I managed to complete the drive with out a bathroom break by vigorously seat dancing my way along in the bumper to bumper traffic to Mariah Carey's greatest hits album, which I was blasting even though the moon roof and windows had to be open since the hair dresser, in an attempt to flatten all of my newly hatched upon Evan's fall disaster gray hair, sprayed my head with forbidden stinky hairspray and I thought the hair spray fumes were going to make me pass out. Now I'm going to have to shower and wash my hair before bed, even though it's already been washed twice today. 

Evan wants out so bad!  He is bored out of his mind here and I can't blame him.  At his age living with my parents was torture, but a different kind of torture than living with me since my parents were not me,(obviously) and my mother made no attempt to even pretend that she had any interest what so ever in being a parent as opposed to me who bends over backwards in dedication to these children, so torture nonetheless.  And tonight in an attempt to illustrate the fact that living in this house sucks Evan referred to the husband and myself as "the cripple and the photographer", his words dripping with disgust and disdain.  WTF??  How can you have the same reaction to being a photographer as to maiming yourself with a self destructive 20 year eating binge diabetic suicide leading to physical and mental disability??  How??  This makes no sense at all!! 

My feelings are hurt and Evan is banned from any shows I might be involved with for the near future.

Except I was going to pay the little brat to help me out with some photography stuff because I need an assistant to hold a backdrop in the woods for me and now I want to ask someone else if they want the job. Except that the weather tomorrow looks like it is going to be the perfect overcast day for doing this.  I don't really have time to ask someone else.  I'll tell you one thing, I am not going to be generous like I was planning on being and the little brat is going to have to negotiate with me for every penny I pay him. That is, if I pay him.  I wish I could smack some attitude right out of him.

Also, I wish I'll get totally famous and celebrated and can rub it into his immature face. 

Yeah, I do.

Wow, when I don't post for a while it is pretty obvious that I have gone off the deep end in the food department.  The good news is I am reeling myself back in.  I am giving much thought to exactly how it is possible for me to irrationally think that something like chocolate (or more specifically milky way bars) will some how magically make my problems disappear and me feel good, like any other addict I hear myself telling myself, bargaining with myself in my mind, before a binge, how if I only have ONE of anything, or ONE meal or ONE pint of ice cream then I will feel better/stable/calm and be able to recoup. The truth is that one slip leads to another slip which leads to me eating like I have a death wish for days on end until I make myself completely ill.  This time it ended after a dairy and gluten binge which has me feeling like every one of my bones are grinding against each other and everything digestive is aching like I have been eating ground glass.

Also, the worst part of falling off the wagon is not enjoying the feeling of feeling sane.  My thoughts and head were so zen there for a few weeks.  Now I'm all static and non stop noise again.  It's a bummer.  I feel as if the entire world is sand paper rubbing on my very last raw and exposed nerve and it's because of eating foods that I should treat like poison.  I'm disappointed in myself and I am sad about the set back.  

I had a scheduled doctor appointment yesterday, and even though I wanted so badly to call and reschedule so that I could get a week of food sobriety under my belt I made myself go.  And the doctor, who magically knows the supportive thing to say to me every single time I see her, upon hearing this admission congratulated me on my desire to be healthy.  She said that coming in to "face the music" (as I put it) was proof that I do want to change and be healthy.  Yeah, I do. I just wish there was less struggle involved.  This is so tough for me (this being reclaiming my heath and not binging on foods which make me sick) that I am convinced there is an organic reason for the insane eating behavior and insane thought patterns.  I wish I knew where to go or who to talk to to find a cure.  There is crazy all over my family tree, so no surprise here.  

 

three wishes

I could say I know "certain things" because I am the mother of boys, but the truth is that the real reason I know most "certain things" is because I am the mother of Evan, who I adore, no matter how much trouble he gets himself into. He better stay out of trouble! 

That being said ..... If the average bowel movement weighs a pound (give or take/thanks Evan) I lost three pounds today! Yippee.  Now I know why the scale was stuck on the same number this week.  Not sure where it is all coming from, but I am sure am glad to see it going! 

I've been doing some other thinking about my new enemy caffeine and I realized that caffeine was not the only change.  I had just finished the UTI antibiotics when the cravings struck.  How much would you like to bet I racked up some candida during that antibiotic episode?  I need a spa. I need a spa that will house me until all my symptoms are gone gone gone.  Like maybe three years? I could fall on the floor just imagining a world where someone cooked healthy food for me and my job was to attend yoga classes and deep tissue massages for three years.  I really do need to win the lottery. I wish! 

I am probably the only (other than maybe someone with an unfortunate allergy to the sun) person who wants to cry because the long term forecast is all sunshine. The first not all sunshine day is next Tuesday, and let's be honest here.  They can not forecast weather that far in advance!! It would make me super happy if the forecast was all clouds and fog as far as they were willing to make their guesses. I wish! I know, I am so alone in this!  I will get out there during one of these annoyingly brilliant days, it is just that I am waiting for there to be some (any!!) foliage on the trees to break up the monotony of vertical lines everywhere. 

But maybe I need to embrace the vertical lines.  You know I do!  Now I will obsess all night over how to embrace the vertical-ness of everything.  I am trying to work out the kinks on a series I would like to create.  I might have to hire Evan to come with me to the woods and move some heavy stuff.  This series would involve cutting dead wood which is already on the ground and placing it on a backdrop for me to photograph.  I don't want to get in trouble for cutting wood, so I am kind of in a bind because if I ask someone at town hall if I can do it and they say NO then I can't feign ignorance if I get busted.  You know I am just going to do it! Not that I really think anyone is going to bust me.  The only people I ever see are other dog walkers and I am pretty sure no one would care and probably only walk away whispering "I told you she is weird! She is the one who has "relationships" with trees!" to their friends and promptly move on with their lives.  Like they should.  Unless they are gallery owners or art collectors and then they should take my number and offer me money for the final product.  Yup.  That's how my life should work! I wish! 

at least it was a short walk to the opening

Did tell you about the "gallery" that accepted a piece of mine into it's show and it turned out to be an actual gallery/office space in a parking garage?  The opening was tonight.  It was an interesting mixture of hobbyists and more serious people.  There were many multimedia pieces on the wall too.  I heard they are looking for a curator, and am going to shoot the woman in charge an email.  My one big concern is that they are going to have parameters like "you have to accept a piece from everyone who sends in an application"  I am hoping that if they want me and this position becomes a reality, I get to be judge and jury and bring the level of choice to a different place, where there might be shows just for amateurs!! (Like during the summer months when no one wants to be indoors anyways)  Also, there were was too many pieces on the wall tonight, and I would like to class it up by making it look more gallery like.  Can you image asking an artist for three different pieces and then sprinkling them around the "gallery" and not grouping them together?  Seemed so odd to me.

So, here is where I do the old V8 head slap.  I somehow missed the fact that the theme of this show was WATER  and only happened to unintentionally send in one image with water in it, which is naturally the one they asked for.  DOH!! 

I'll tell you people, due to the amount of stress I feel every single minute of every single second of every single day I think I am walking around in a bit of a haze.

But not so much of a haze that my knees didn't almost buckle every time the caterer walked past me with a tray of unbelievably delicious smelling food to put out on the table during the event.  Best food at a faux gallery opening ever.

The one woman I do happen to know is the woman who is the current curator, and she didn't show up, which meant I knew exactly zero people there tonight.  I so completely didn't know anyone that there wasn't even a slightly familiar looking face in the crowd.  I did meet the director of parking lot galleries, so that was a good thing and I also had a nice long chat with another photographer who had such an impressive story to tell of being a nurse, then having four kids and secretly applying to Yale law school and getting in and going to Yale to have a second career as an environmental lawyer.  Women are fabulous, don't you think?  We are so freaking incredible.

 

MF caffeine is not my friend

When I went to check in with the doctor after the month of "cleansing" she asked me what I wanted to do moving forward.  I told her I felt like I was on a good roll and wanted to stay with the program.  She asked me if there was anything I missed, and I told her that I was really missing caffeine.  She said she didn't see any reason not to drink some tea or coffee, so I left agreeing to stick with the program and allow myself some caffeine.  

This is the part where you remind yourself that being the interesting freak of nature human being that I am I almost always end up with some rare side effect of any drug (caffeine is a drug) that I put in my mouth, which is exactly why I do not take anything, like-ever, unless I think I'm going to die from it (like that last UTI!) 

I didn't drink any loaded beverages right away, but knowing that I would be driving from Philadelphia to new town late in the day after the Philly art book fair, I had a plan to grab a venti iced green tea for the ride.  Conveniently, there is a Bucks right down the block from my sister's apartment.  I was a little afraid to get an actual coffee, and figured I would break myself back in to the happiness of caffeinated energy slowly.  The next day I had coffee, and then I kind of crashed, so I had some iced tea in the afternoon.  And then I mysteriously found myself staring into the open fridge all evening.  The next day I enjoyed even more iced tea and it was the husband's birthday and I nibbled on the ice cream cake while I was secretly pretending to merely put it away.  But that wasn't enough so I went on a desperate search for anything chocolate and found the stash of Polish treats my Polish housekeeper gave me over the holidays.  Did you know that chocolate covered prunes is a thing in Poland, and they are pretty good!? The next day I was worse drinking a whole quart of iced tea and also with the cravings and the inability to think of anything other then satisfying the craving. I went way over board, buying candy, eating more prunes, more ice cream cake, blah blah blah, and then I yelled at myself to figure out what was going on inside my own head because I was out of control- like a fiend on a mission.  In my head, I had completely shut down the rational person I had been since starting this cleanse and was maniacally searching for anything sweet to cram into my own face.  

I wondered, what had changed?  Was I feeling some kind of over the top of my already over the top stress filled life?  No, I told myself, same shit storm as usual going on here.  Was  I imagining something I couldn't cope with without food assistance?  Nope. And feeling like a relatively sane person (despite it all) lately, I just knew this loss of eating direction had nothing to do with my head. My head is on straight guys, I know it is! I wondered, WHAT CHANGED? 

and then it came to me.

Caffeine. 

But, I said to myself, isn't caffeine an appetite suppressant? I sat down with professor google.  Guess what, some people's bodies do a big insulin dump after consuming caffeine and it makes them crave the sugar.

Motherfucking caffeine turned me into a sugar junkie.  So I cut that shit out and now I am back to being a conscientious eating lady on a cleanse, who can think of tons of stuff that has nothing to do with scoring a milky way.  Like how I have a goal of losing the next 20 pounds.

What else am I thinking of these days?  My obsession with the woods, naturally.  Not just any woods either, THE WOODS, as in the woods where I take sweet pea almost every day.  It's a rainy day here today and it is (or was at 7:15AM when I left the house) just a wee bit too heavily to bring the camera along.  I figured I would find some other hearty dog owners and walk with them.  But it was not to be.  I did have a fun singing session alone in the woods, and I also came up with a solution for how to present some work that I have been mulling over in my head.  Someone told me the most prolific artists get noticed.  Hello prolific me!!  I can not believe how much work I have archived that I could possibly put out into the world. I might have to develop an alter ego and release the stuff under a different name just to not overwhelm the world.

In any case, here is a phone photo of a disappointed sweet pea realizing we are indeed the only ones out on a rainy yucky day.

 

show and (not so much) tell

Dammit.  Typed just lost a post in which I discuss the humbling (somewhat complete humiliation) of being accepted into a group show choosing not to really believe it is in a garage and then dropping my work off only to discover that it is a "gallery" which is totally in a garage.  Except somehow during the not-at-all-reader's-digest-version of this story I intended to publish I managed to discuss all sorts of other things like how sweet pea aka: blood thirsty killer was only deterred from chasing squirrels for two walks after the incident which required her nose be glued back together and a rabies a shot.

I can't remember everything else I talked about, probably because even though I thought I slept fine last night I have bags under my eyes and am tired enough to walk into walls. 

Despite my awakening at the Philadelphia Art Book Fair last weekend in which I realized that YES I can photograph on a sunny day, I was thrilled beyond how thrilled I should have been to wake up this morning to 1. not raining yet and 2. overcast skies: so I grabbed my gear on the way out of the door.  And here are some of the highlights of today's 2 hour before the rain actually arrived shooting session. Please keep in mind that because of internet thievery I have photographed my own computer screen and shrunk that crappy image down.  There are two groups of 6 images, this is just a first edit, I am sure to fall out of like with at least 9 or 10 these images in the coming weeks.  Also, they are kind of theme grouped.

 

 

Wow, these look terrible on my typed compose new post window. I hope they look better when you see them! 

task is to listen

Oh my gosh.  It's been so long and so much happened.

In the things that don't really matter ...

I've been waking up every single night with some song on a loop in my mind.  The first song that this happened with was Billy Joel's This Is The Time.  It's the chorus I keep hearing in my sleep and it goes like this....

This is the time to remember
Cause it will not last forever
These are the days
To hold on to
Cause we won't
Although we'll want to
This is the time
But time is gonna change
You've given me the best of you
And now I need the rest of you

And I am thinking there is a message in this song for me.  The other song I recall is the Annie Lenox song (see last post) but only because I wrote it down.

This has happened before and it usually stops when I write the songs down, so you're gonna be getting some lyrics for the next few days.

In other news: UTI.  Pain like I haven't experienced since, forever because I don't recall ever feeling that pain before, but let's just say it hurt so much that I made pain pain noises and also there was blood, which totally freaked me out.  I went to the doctor, I'm better now.

And then there was the day that sweet pea emerged from behind a bush looking like she had stuck her entire face in to a pail of red kook-aide, except it was blood.  I don't know exactly what happened, because she had run off but she was chasing squirrels for over an hour that morning and this is the story I came up with: She managed to get a squirrel, who twisted around and gave her nose a solid swipe with it's razor sharp tree climbing claws before sweet pea ( who might need an add on to her name such as BLOOD THIRSTY KILLER) ripped it open and lapped up it's bright red cherry kool-aide colored guts and then with a nose, tongue and beard full of blood trotted over to me and three shocked women dog friends.  Did you know that even if your dog is up to date on shots it has to get another rabies shot when it rips into a forest creature?  Me neither.  The vet showed me the slice marks on sweet pea/BTK's nose and gave her a rabies shot.  which was great, but kind of a pain because I was trying to get on the road to philadelphia where there was an art book fair this weekend.  

Then I had to go straight to the dentist for some fake tooth finessing and also because everyone thinks I want to sit around and discuss a plan for my teeth instead of just ripping them out once they reach the point of no return.  The actual problem is that I want to rip them out the minute they begin to fail instead of doing 12 procedures to hold onto the little brown tooth nuggets as long as possible.  for some people that works, they get another decade out of their teeth but foe me I just get non stop procedures/pain and suffering until some short time later we all agree to give up on the tooth and then the dentist realizes it was way worse than he could ever imagine but had no idea until he was ripping it out of my skull.  I got a cat scan and I requested that it be read by an actual certified professional cat scan reader rather than just the dentist who struggles to call it quits on my teeth.  I'll call tomorrow for results.

For the first time I have a fake tooth over the latest tooth removal which doesn't hurt, and that was great because I wore it for two days when I sat behind my university's booth to sell some photo books.  Naturally I forgot to pop into my mouth this morning when I left the house, but I'm so tired from this weekend I could pass out over the key board.

And this is how the amazing first day of the art book fair went down.....  At the booth next to us was a book signing for a very famous photographer named John Gossage (google him! He has a Wikipedia page.).  I turned to John Gossage to have my book signed and told him that I, along with some photographer friends, had had some very interesting conversations wondering what the title of his book meant and was humbled by his essay in the front of the book, which I had read earlier in the day.  Then, John began to discuss his philosophy with me.  I was embarrassingly so star struck that I could barely pay attention over the clicking of photographers taking our pictures and also the voice in my head screaming JOHN GOSSAGE IS CHATTING WITH ME!.  He used the words Failures in his title and his essay discussed how as an artist we go out with intent and sometimes do not capture what we have set to capture and whether or not the results are failures or something with value.  I needed to think about that for myself, so I was quite grateful to read Mr. G's words.  

When I turned back to my own booth the kid working the booth with me was showing another famous photographer, Paul Graham, some books. (google him too)  Paul Graham said he would like to buy several books but could only buy one.  He chose a deserving book and headed down to the next booth.  As soon as he was out of ear shot the kid told me that when I was engaged in deep conversation with John Gossage, Paul Graham spent a lot of time looking at my book!  An hour later I went to the booth where Paul Graham was signing books and teased him by saying "I bought your book even though you didn't buy my book"  He looked horrified!  I started to apologize, I told him I was just joking with him and he asked me which booth my book was at.  I told him and he asked "Are you Amy?"  My knees almost buckled.  Then he began to discuss my work with me, and told me that my work reminded him of the work of Jem Southam. (Google) I was flattered!  But he began to back track and said he didn't mean to insult me by insinuating that I had copied Jem Southam, and I reassured him that I was flattered and owned a couple of Jem Southam's books because I am a fan.  It was great that this guy took the time to really look at my book and also to think my work through enough to discuss it with me.  

I floated back to my own booth, when I noticed that there was another signing happening.  This third book signing caught my eye because the title of the book was Forest, my favorite subject.  This photographer is named Stuart Rome (he also has a wikipedia page, like the others, but his is minimal). In any case, I took one look at Stuart Rome's book, knew I had to have it because unlike me, Stuart Rome photographs in bright sunlight (as opposed to my favorite, overcast or rainy days) and photographing on a good weather day is something I need to wrap my mind around doing because there are so many bright and sunny days! I also had a nice discussion with Stuart Rome, and in the end I was totally bowled over that this book fair (or the universe) put three photographers right in my path who were all charming and engaging and had a different message which I needed to hear.  Now my task is to listen.

Earworm

Annie Lenox: walking on walking on broken glass