clickmom

I won

I've been photographing all summer long on one very large memory card. Risky, I know. However, everything worked out fine. I got back to new town today and pretty much raced to download and see the images I've been getting more and more excited about. You can never really tell from looking at the screen on the back of the camera.

Because the summer is still so fresh, having just happened ... yesterday, I am sitting here somewhat fascinated as I can see my work taking shape as I honed my purpose for shooting. Mostly I photographed what I was aiming for in the last two weeks, or in simpler terms, once the husband was released from his third hospital incarceration on August 13th. Not a surprise.

I'm really happy with this work, and also really happy that I got to make it in utopia- while not being eaten by a bear etc... 

Again, middle finger raised.. FU summer, you sucked, but HAHAHA I managed to make some kick ass work! So I win summer! I WIN!! 

(Now, please stop kicking me when I'm already down) 

just by being

I know I love sweet pea just a little too publicly.  One day I was getting off the phone with my friend. I had mentioned that I was going to take sweet pea out after our call. My friend said (in that faux patient tone usually reserved for talking to young children) something along the lines of "Okay, I'll let you go so you can take the best dog ever out..." it was then that I knew I had to tone down my sweet pea adoration unless I was around people who totally get it. And by people who totally get it I mean people who feel the same way about their dogs and also recognize that everyone thinks their own dog is the absolute top dog best.

I can do it.

But if you heard the things I think to myself you might think I was incapable of relating to humans. I love the way sweet pea behaves when she thinks we are about to go out. I am a creature of habit and our normal routine is to come downstairs, go out for her to have a quick pee, come in, feed her breakfast, do a couple of things and then go for our big walk of the day. During the school year what I do is make Josh's breakfast and lunch. During the summer what I do between feeding her and taking her out on her big walk of the day is wait out the post dawn period where I am most likely to run into big scary animals. I always use the bathroom before heading out and when I open the bathroom door sweet pea is silently lying across the bathroom threshold. I am so thankful that I no longer have a dog who whines day in and out. (RIP bear bait) It's the same thing when she is outside and wants to come back in with us. If the door is closed she just silently stands in front of it staring at us through the glass. I don't know, maybe you have to have a dog who whines as much bear bait used to in order to appreciate how incredible it is to have a mostly silent dog. 

Here is another endearing sweet pea behavior.  She sleeps on my bed. I keep a rolled up blanket between us so she doesn't press up against me (it hurts my back) and in the morning when I get out of the shower she often has stretched herself out so that her head is draped over the dividing roll and lying on my pillow. I don't know what it means, but I hope it means she misses me when I'm in the bathroom. Please don't tell me if it means she is planning my demise.

I'm pretty sad that summer is over. I feel totally gypped out of my normal carefree summer. I can't even remember the last time I had a normal carefree summer.  I think it was 2012. I'm not kidding. 2013 I was starting school and voraciously reading about 9 different books they asked us to read before school and did not discuss. 2014 and 2015 I was in school and 2016 and 2017 were the summers of health crisis for the husband.  That is 5 not ideal summers in row now. I deserve a break, or at least a lottery jackpot winner! 

I made a joke with the woman who wheeled the husband out of the hospital yesterday. Something about the bitch who stole my 700 million dollar lottery jackpot.  We had a good laugh over that one. 

But anyway, back to the topic of the best dog ever, in all of this sadness and stress I have sweet pea, who lifts me up just by cocking her head and looking at me, or lying outside the bathroom and best of all gets me out of the house and into the woods where I can walk and be with nature and make art.  I thank god every day all day long for sweet pea. I'm pretty sure that without her next to me through this ordeal I would be motionless in bed, curled into a ball.  I wouldn't move and I wouldn't be making photographs. She is saving my life and my sanity just by being.

potentially interesting

Did I ever tell you that when I was a kid my parents shipped me off to sleep away camp every summer for 8 weeks starting when I was 8 years old?  I kind of hated it there. It was a sports camp for spoiled kids. I totally didn't fit in. Every year I was in the bunk of non-princess outcasts which would have been fine with me, I loved those other regular girls, except for the camp made us do shit with the princesses over the course of the day and they were kind of really horrid little children as a whole. I'm sure one on one they were probably human, but I wasn't interested.  The first year was bearable because our bunk counselors were also regular people but the second summer (when I was 9) I had one counselor who probably won the "most likely to enslave children in her basement workshop" award in high school and then matured into a angry/hateful/lonely cashier with a full mustache who fed all the feral cats in the neighborhood because they were the only ones who understood her pain.  Her name was Shelley and I hated her. I hated Shelley so much that I did everything in my power not to talk to her. I curled under my blanket crying every day during rest period and wrote my parents long painful letters telling them how miserable I was and how desperately I wanted to go home. My parents called the camp and the camp, in turn, called in my counselor (Shelley) and then to make matters worser than worse, Shelley took me into the cubby room, feigning concern as if she had a human bone in her body, to have a heart to heart with me so she could find out why I hated camp so much and help me. Stupidest adults ever.

This summer was worse.

Wanna hear a joke? I thought last summer sucked! HAHAHA.

So, I got the husband out of his fourth (since June) hospital stay this morning. It was a complete waste of time. Except for one test for a genetic disease, (no results yet)  which seems to fit the husband's plethora of problems, except when I look at his family tree I can see that either it runs in different branches of the tree or it can't fit. I don't think fathers can give it to sons and there is one definite father son connection and one possible father son connection. But, by no means am I even an amateur geneticist so I will keep my mouth shut until results are in and also I won't cancel the appointment he has with the real one in october.

On Friday, in the early morning light, I snapped a photo with so much potential on my iphone. Yesterday I hurriedly went back, couldn't find the same spot, realized I was too late and gave up. Today, bravely pushing aside my all consuming fear of bears, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and moose, I went back to the same place earlier than the time I went Friday with my real camera to see it happen again (a light streak) and waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing. I started to google how many minutes a day we were losing to see if perhaps I had miscalculated the timing. Nope. I stood in the spot where I had stood a mere two days ago, under the exact same cloud conditions and waited for the same thing to happen and NOTHING happened. I got there 20 minutes before the first sighting and stayed for 25 minutes past. Not even a hint of what had happened two days ago. I was so bummed. In two days the sun had moved so much that it was completely different.

Then a friend and I engaged in a texting debate. She thinks one should always have their camera with them. I said I shoot medium format and would not be hauling 5 pounds of camera around with me every day. That would be unreasonable, said I. She asked what Ansel Adams would say, which is kind of hilarious since he photographed using a HUGE camera, and I told her that Ansel was either shooting or not shooting and did not carry his 8 x 10 camera around with him every day. This is a modern affliction, wherein we feel it is necessary to grab every single potentially interesting moment.

Say cheese!

Let It Be?

So, I'm drinking cheap warm red wine which sat opened on the counter for maybe 5 days (after I used half of it in a recipe) at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on an empty stomach because I never had lunch today. Because I was in the hospital.

That pretty much says it all.

I've got a nice buzz on, so Yay for me! Guess who is in the hospital AGAIN. Fourth time is a charm or what? (as in 4th time since June!) Thank god (and you know who's ex boss) for providing us with excellent insurance. That is all I have to say about that, other then even though I was dissed two years in a row by the losers at Yale Art school who did not think I was good enough for their graduate program, I have to say I am nothing but impressed by their doctors and hospital staff.  

That being said I went on a campaign yesterday whose bottom line could be summed by asking "Could this be something other than flat out heart disease, like another disease which causes heart disease as a symptom (along with his whole other myriad of symptoms) and I was pushing for a neurologist, geneticist and any one else I could think of to come and assess him. Then on the way home I heard Let It Be on the radio and broke down crying wondering if that song was a sign. 

Today I went in to the hospital with a list of diseases which I found on the internet (am I trying to make the doctors hate me or what?) which all have the same impact as all of his weird seemingly unrelated medical problems to plead my cause for different specialists to see him and then on my way home they play Let It Be AGAIN on the radio. I almost had to pull over I was crying so hard.

I mean, is there any way that was not a sign from above? 

less waste

I'm searching for the right way to describe this strange place my head is in right now because I really need to know for myself. Purgatory just didn't seem quite right, since I'm not dead, however I am waiting . But then I looked it up and I only had the first definition, a place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven, in mind.  Am I a sinner?  Don't I wish!  Life would be so much more fun!  

But, according to the dictionary on the dashboard it also means "mental anguish or suffering" so I suppose it's kind of a perfect word to describe where I am right now except I really do not want to be melodramatic about this. So, maybe a low key purgatory? Purgatory at a simmer? You know what I am saying here? I know there are worse things. For example, I could be held captive and tortured.

I could have no hope at all. There you go. That's way way worse.

I'm clinging to hope here. I have hope that I will get through this intact, pick up the pieces, and go on with some different kind of life that I haven't imagined yet. I have hope. So, I manage to get out of bed (eventually) every day and do the things I am required to do. Thank goodness for sweet pea who gets me out of the house and into the woods. And because if nothing else I am not a quitter I bring my camera to the woods and make images. Also, I love to accomplish two things at once.

I suppose that contributing to this sense of purgatory is that I am still mourning my brother in law. He's been gone for 5 months now and he spent so much time with me in utopia (especially last summer after the husband was diagnosed with one of the many diagnosis they tried on for size before giving up on diagnosing his brain disease) that I keep thinking I should call him to come over. Seriously, it's a beautiful day, I think about calling him and I get all sad again and then I start thinking how the husband will join his brother in the beyond sooner rather than later and how I am going to have to be the rock for the kids and handle the financial disaster he'll leave for me and bla bla blah.....

(Tangent alert) Did I tell you that I stopped by the gallery reception for the people who just now graduated from my MFA program a couple of weeks ago? In a perfect world I would have been able to freeze time for everyone except the one woman I really wanted to see and just been able to speak with her for a few minutes but we all know that the world isn't perfect, so I came face to face with the program director, and both my first year advisor (love the guy) and my second year advisor (not so much) and had to say something to them all. I decided to go the route of making everyone super uncomfortable and I actually hugged my second year advisor. Have you ever hugged a plank of wood? It was similar, if wood could make little pain noises. I got some mileage out of telling that story. 

I told the program director I had been making a lot of work just not marketing it and he (who seems to be always struggling with life) said he knew how that felt.  The first year advisor suggested I come see him when he has office hours at school. I might just do that. I really do like the guy and I really do need someone to talk shop with. Too bad the school is just a little too freaking far away from where I live to make it an easy drive.

These days, with my new MFA perspective, I spend a lot of time trying to suss out my motivation for making the kind of images I am making. Today as sweet pea and I hiked around an abandoned camp ground (it's so lovely there!) I was thinking how my work had evolved in the past 3-4 years. Almost all of it has been in the woods and yet I seem to change from one personality to another. There is some common thread because I definitely have my own style- or as I think of it, a consistent vision for composing/balancing light and dark, ins and outs texture and noise- so if someone were to know my work they would potentially recognize it as mine, however what changes as time marches on is not the subject but the mood. I guess I'm in a very different (ya think?!?!) place than I was in school- or even right after school or even a year ago.

I am anxious to get back to new town just because I didn't bring my computer to utopia this summer and I can't wait to see my images on the big screen. Somehow getting back and discovering some captures I can be proud of  just might have to power to make this summer seem like less of a waste of time.

Today was the big eclipse and I couldn't muster the energy to care. But then I bumped into the sentry who told me she might be going to an event not too far away. I got Josh to shower thinking we might go too and then decided to make our own eclipse viewing pin hole cameras out of some boxes which never made it all of the way into the recycling truck. Josh was afraid the place the sentry told me about would be crawling with kids, so we decided to stay here in utopia with our coolio super awesome pinhole eclipse viewing boxes. I duct taped my box to my tripod and in the end we all took turns peeking into mine since it was set up and stable. We saw the little horn shaped sun spots through the tree leaves and admired the bizarre gray light that happened right at the maximum coverage for the north east. I also tried to make some images of the eclipse on some super old paper which has a light sensitive emulsion on it, but that didn't work so well.  It's fine, I feel like I got to experience it and I got Josh (Oh my god, reluctant teenage Josh) into it, so all good.

It's funny.  Some of my favorite memories from this place have nothing to do with the house and everything to do with either doing stuff with the kids or watching them do stuff. I know that is the way it should be. 

in the ring with life

I've reached the point of tiredness where I spontaneously cry. Most of the time it's while driving, and behind sunglasses, so I'm ok. I let it in, and let it pass through me. But, sometimes not and I have become expert expert at quickly announcing "Oh now I'm gonna get emotional" before the tears arrive and leave me unable to speak. Pretty much if you meet me for 10 minutes these days you'll see me well up at least once. I can well up at the most charming and sweet story. It does not matter, cute toddler? I can cry over that. Humorous road rage story? Oh the lack of humanity! Tears. Don't even ask me what happens if it's a bad story. Dog gets bit by a snake? Forget it. I'm gone. Full out blubbering.

Evan came up for the day yesterday and forgot to bring me sweet peas dog food. I was so angry I cried. To myself, where no one could see me because you know, it's dog food.  Today I had to trek down to a big box store near lil sis to get new dog food so lil sis met me. Then we sat down for some lunch and just chatted and chatted. When I said goodbye I could barely say it was nice chatting with her. I was choking back the tears. I also feel like there a very good chance I look as if I have been dragged behind a truck for a few miles. Life is really beating me down these days.

It doesn't help that I have become totally phobic about spending time in the woods. My salvation has become a source of anxiety. I am so afraid of animals, not into the bug bites (I currently have one below my eye and another on my forehead) or the bug spray (which doesn't do a thing to these utopian bugs!), kind of on the tired side for walking, did I mention the animals? I have started to play music as a warning to the bears under the theory that they will leave if they hear me coming because they aren't actually interested in getting into it with me. Except I am afraid the music will affect my perception of what I am seeing. I know it will so I try to play the same music every time and then I ask myself if it's possible that bears like Neil Young too. I just don't know. But the sound of Rust Never Sleeps seems to fit the content of my work this summer.

Speaking of my work this summer, I didn't shoot for much of the summer, with the husband in and out of the hospital and also tons of doctor appointments. But I am trying very hard to make work through this latest round in the ring with life. I was thinking how even though the place I want to go and photograph is the woods (the summertime terrifying woods) my images, especially this summer have not been about the woods at all. The images from this summer are technically, and in a very basic fine art way, about light and darkness, shape and form and conceptually about darkness as a mindset. I see something along the lines of searching for light from within the darkness or emerging from the darkness or discovering hope from within the darkness. So I spend a lot of time (in between slapping the bugs from my face) just squinting across the landscape looking to see what the light is doing and asking myself if it is saying anything and what it is saying to me. 

on a road

Up here in utopia there is a bridge which has been closed for years now, making the road on either end of it into a dead end. I like to go to that bridge and take a nice relaxing less buggy (since I'm not all the way in the woods) walk on the far side of the bridge because it's pretty much deserted over there except for the rare trash truck or poor driver following their out of date GPS directions. It's kind of funny to see those drivers go down the street and immediately back the other way. There are houses on that street but they are few and far between with lots of woods between for me to photograph. Earlier this week I was strolling down the center of the road with sweet pea when I saw her notice a sweet looking old lady clipping hedges along the side of her driveway. I knew I wasn't going to be able to stop sweet pea from greeting her so I called to the lady "My dog is super friendly! She wants to say HELLO!" Sweet pea ran over and the old lady greeted sweet pea like the sweet old lady she appeared to be. So did the sweet old lady's sweet old husband. I chatted with them for a few minutes before continuing on. 

This morning I saw the sweet old couple again. This time I was climbing out of the woods with my tripod over my shoulder (here in this small town  I did have some concern that my big black tripod might be mistaken for some kind of rifle or shoulder fired missile. I swear to god, people here in utopia are gun happy like you wouldn't believe) so I quickly repositioned it to make it obvious there was a camera perched on top. And the sweet old man saw my camera and told me how he used to take photos of the great adventurous vacations the couple went on, sharing stories about a 6 week trip to Alaska and another one to Yosemite. I gotta tell you that I totally fell in love with this couple and came ever so close to asking them if they'd like to adopt me.

I think that once I get home I might just print up my favorite of the photos I took in the woods off their street and leave it in their mailbox.

They just brought the love and adorable so much that when another deserted road resident snapped at me to put sweet pea on a leash (more precisely she said There is a leash law here, you know!! like a shrill witch deep in the throws of menopausal hot flash) I was able to let her anger and bitterness slide right off and keep on smiling for the rest of my morning hike (on a road).

middle finger up

I knew I had reached the pinnacle of wasting time this evening when I was watching a 20 minute compilation video of people throwing up on amusement park rides. I guess it's more relaxing than anything on the news these days. I don't even know what to say about what is happening in our country and how we have been betrayed by the people in government positions who are supposed to lift us up and keep us safe.  I am holding onto this scenario where we are hitting rock bottom and things will be so undeniably insane that the only thing to do is to come back from this scourge better and smarter, kinder and gentler with the compassion for humanity that we all need. I just hope the bottom is here now. The thought that everything could get worse is overwhelming. I mean, Nazi's marched in Virginia this weekend. That is just disgraceful.  My head is hanging in shame to be American right now. 

In other news, I am trying so hard to make myself photograph. I went out with my camera today and started to get really into the zone when my cell phone rings and it is the heart failure nurse. The husband did a blood test yesterday to prepare for his appointment on Friday and the results came back. Not such good news for his kidneys. Now he has to take some kind of special order hard to get medication. The pharmacy has it ordered.

Kind of killed my shooting session. Not to worry though, I did manage to capture the one thing I set out to capture before the call. Also, the woods aren't going anywhere, they'll be here. I can only lose my mind over one thing at a time and right now the husband has that covered for me. Everything else gets to slide.

I  have to remind myself to breathe lately and when I do I'm always kind of amazed at how shallow my breathing has become. Stress. 

Some guy from work reached out to the husband today and the husband admitted to him that he has heart failure. The guy said his father had congestive heart failure for 30 years before dying at 84. I had to break it to the husband that the guy's father was probably in better shape in his mid 50's than the husband is. Then I felt awful, as if I had screamed YOU ARE DYING SOON out loud or something and I apologized for being mean. I just can not hop onto that denial train with him, I paid the discount price for my obsessive worrying ticket and everyone knows you can not change your reservation if you've paid the discount fare. (Middle finger up for delta- who will be my dead last choice for any and all future airline travel) 

 

f-ed up

After nearly two weeks in the hospital the husband is out. I really felt like this time they were going to figure out something (anything, dammit!) they could do to make him less dizzy and stop him from falling, because they already got one black mark on their record for him being readmitted only 4 days after they discharged him.... but it was not to be. 

I don't know what I thought was going to happen, like maybe there was a special medicine that they had been previously keeping from him and now they were finally going to whip it out in a glowing golden box and voila! He would be whole again! 

Yeah, No.

So, he is in utopia with me, totally unsteady on his feet, exhausted from merely sitting in a chair for a few hours today (he was in the bed 24/7 in the hospital)  Let the games begin!

Games? You ask yourself. Yes! The games! I say, the games where I insist he is in grave condition and he blows me off insisting nothing is really wrong with him.  Also, the game where I question why he is not wearing the defibrillator vest which will shock him and save his life should he have the inevitable electrical storm in his heart the doctors keep talking about and he looks at me as if I am out of my mind. Like nothing could possibly hurt the man, the legend, the 56 year old who just had a second (since June) 2 week stint on the cardiac ward with all the great grandparents of this geographical region.  Am I out of mind? He's gonna live forever! 

Speaking of the cardiac ward, there were two noteworthy exciting events which happened that I got to witness.  One was when a patient went rogue, and put on her street clothes over her bloodied hospital gown and stole some belongings from the nurses desk. I saw this go down on my way back from the bathroom and all the nurses were strategically standing by each exit to the floor shifting back and forth from right to left foot as if they were volley ball players awaiting to jump at the other team's star player's power serve. Then security showed up and everything got boring again. The second exciting event happened when security went dashing past the husband's room in hot pursuit of some dude who refused (for reasons I do not know) to leave the hospital grounds and just decided to make a run for it... to the cardiac wing.

The husband had one roommate who was a sweet old guy. Before he left for rehab after the a week together he told me he thought that I was very nice but that the husband did not like him. I told him the husband was just unfriendly to everyone. The next roomie I thought for sure was a mobster as he made call after call on speaker phone and told guys he was on the hospital, and how no one should know so his deals don't fall through and how they don't have any clue he is working, and how his name is not on anything so the paper work will never give it away (Insurance fraud? Social security fraud?) And then a lot of stuff about cars. Turns out he sells used cars, and was not in fact italian and maybe there is the possibility I confused mobster with shady used car salesman. Six in one half dozen in the other.

Totally not true, we bought our stepford house from a genuine italian guy I was convinced was a mobster (panic alarms in every room, smoke detectors over the windows most likely to get tossed a molotov cocktail, a hole drilled into the portuguese tiled dining room so that he could have a phone jack and a land line next to him while he entertained on his 20 foot long dining room table. (the actual room had been extended onto a three season porch and was 35 feet long) and also he showed me where in the basement to hide "the cash".) But I loved that little mobster. He and his tiny little wife were so cute. I wanted them to adopt me. Proof that some people who I suspect to be mobsters are adorable and just lovely people.

I took my camera out and photographed today.  Have not been doing enough of that this summer. Been kind of busy and kind of down. Its hard not to be down these days. Everything is so fucked up.

like a branch

I'm pretty terrified over what I see in the hospital. I mean, they are doing what ever they can but it looks like the husband is spiraling pretty fast. It's crazy how old he looks, sounds and even smells.

His roommate is 90 and I have the feeling that his roommate is more with it than he is. I will have some notes to discuss with the heart failure specialist tomorrow. I already made a list. Normally I would assume that a doctor with a list making patient spouse would pretty much hate me, but last week the doctor turned to the husband as I checked off each of my questions and told the husband that he was lucky to be so loved. I think he was being real and not sarcastic. Frankly, I don't actually care if the dude likes me or hates me, I only care how smart he is and if he can patch up the wreck of my husband and keep him running for just a little while longer. The husband told me he would really like to be around long enough to see Evan graduate from college and Josh from high school. Also, he added after some thought, to see Matt be actually settled in his own life. That's a whole other story- Matt not appearing to have direction yet. I thought parenting was supposed to get less worrisome once they were out of college. hahahaha. Joke's on me! 

The thing I don't like to admit out loud so much is that I would not want to be medicated if I reached the point of the husband's level of disability. I would much rather be slid into a white water raft to die from a heart attack caused by the excitement or something. I'm not joking at all when I say If I can't do this (and then mime myself taking a photograph) then strip me naked and send me off into the woods to be wolf food. And I am getting tired of hearing myself say that! 

I have to take Evan to his college orientation next week (Did I name the new college/university which he is transferring to? I cannot recall, stress has destroyed my memory. damn stress) and I have my fingers crossed that the husband is still hospitalized for my trip. 

Facebook showed me a video from 2 years ago today this morning. It was a wee hour of the morning video of the smoke detector beeping in my room in the wee hours of the morning before I went up in front of the committee for my thesis defense! I'm laughing now, and even that day I knew I was running on pure adrenaline and would be fine with the few hours of sleep I actually had before the thing started to chime every 7 seconds. I had a fabulous time with the committee. It was almost a love fest, and I had a great response to everyone of their questions and in the end my classmates (at least the female ones- I wasn't popular among the young men) came to me and said they all hoped their reviews would go down like mine did. Oh yeah, the good old days.

Speaking of photography, I had a bit of a breakthrough this morning when I realized I should approach photographing the husband (yes, I took that back up again, in an attempt to put some emotional space between me and his physical self) the way I photograph the woods, looking at him like he was a tree or a branch or something. hard to explain what I mean, we shall see if I can create some images which illustrate this.