big, and I mean BIGGGGG thankyou to the “W’s” who trusted a stranger wannabe photographer to come into their backyard and create what was on my heart.
Archive for August, 2009
30
Aug
09
Sunday Photo essay~in awe of her
29
Aug
09
The meaning of meaningless days
Friday, not per usual.
I have an early shoot tommorrow. But beyond that, I can’t say that there was a whole lot of any meaning to today. It’s strange to write that, really.
It’s strange to say that this comes from a person with a full time job, who’s a mother with kids still in school and pets, and yet there are days that go by when the whole meaning of being and doing escapes you.
usually I just think that those days were meant for you to be enriching someone else’s life if nothings really happening in yours, reach out to someone else.
Those kind of days or weeks tend to make the week go by fast. You look around and bam! it’s the weekend again, and you could have sworn you were just starting another work week over! But here it is Friday.
The amount of paperwork I managed to push today could keep a fire lit for a long time I bet.
I was focused, though kept “unfocusing” on little things.
Like taking mental note of how many people come in and absentmindedly play with our 3 hole punch machine lever.
They come in, stand by it, start off talking to us with their request, “I need…” and they raise and lower the lever up and down, up and down,… as they are standing there, for nothing. Isn’t that funny/weird?
I told my co-worker, and we have a little non-written list of who does it. funny. People are hilarious
Also, there’s a certain reference notebook I keep needing to look at sitting on our bookshelves.
The books on the shelf are all black and white colored notebooks and some blue ones. But because the bindings are all labled rather boring and generically, I always have to hunt for this one book I want.
I fixed that problem.
With a little hot pink highlighter on a white notebook binder! now I could see that sucker from down the hall if I was so inclined.
(What! I did TOO do some work today!)
I’m just saying.
It was one of those days where you just catch up on doing all the little things you notice from day to day.
Maybe I’m focusing more because I’m resting better at night (M- a- y- b- e)
I went to Wally world last night fed up finally with not getting sleep, which apparently is the biggest thing going at 10:00 at night in this town!
So I bought a new mattress pad, new egg crate mattress and new memory foam pillow. It’s more comfortable for sure.
But I’m still saving for the day when i waltz into the furniture store, cash in hand and buy my 5000 temperpedic deluxe back saver mattress.
You know? the kind you can jump up and down on but not spill the glass of wine? hehe.
Maybe if I just drank enough wine before bed I could save my 5 grand!
*the above picture for MOOD and COLOR.
* I like the below picture for EMOTION VALUE, SPONTANAEITY
*GRAPHICS, EFFECTS AND COLOR (Riveting focus from the ball, almost hypnotic)
*EMOTIONAL value, warm fuzzies, REFLECTION in water
*GRAPHICS value and peaceful emotion
COLOR and “wow” factor.
PLEASING EFFECT of light and shadow
She had a hundred creases and sagging bits if she had a one of them.
Among the roadmap of her life written on her skin, were worry lines, crows feet, adipose, stretchmarks, scars, warts, hairy warts, crusty cold sores, pressure marks, bed sores, and thick yellow toenails, she hadn’t been able to reach in a decade.
So someone cut them for her, as she sat on a plastic chair with wheels in the shower, with a hole in the middle of the seat, lest she have a bathroom accident whilst bathing.
It happened daily to someone, or so she’d heard them talking about. The daily loss of control of some part of the body depressed them severely.
The aides only degraded them more by talking about her or her neighbors in the home as if they were deaf and could not respond at all.
The night aides were at their worst the nights that sleep was her enemy.
Though she’d struggle to fall and stay asleep, which was her nightly battle, there were those nights where she wet herself, or where she lay in her dirty diaper til morning waiting…waiting for one of them to stop being so damn lazy and change her.
She’d lost control over everything years ago.
Her bones crackled with resentment if she even dared try to find a comfortable spot on the pillow.
Tissue paper thin skin tore upon barely brushing up against some minute rough corner of her wheel chair, the bed, the door…and underneath the white flap of skin, a new more painful burning skin exposed. There were nights when her lips cracked and bled she was so
thirsty, and she watched in the dark, her plastic water pitcher, it’s beads of condensation almost gone now. She wished her arthritic fingers could lift the pitcher and pour it.
She fairly balked at turning on her call light, because she’d never be able to get the word water out without tripping on her own tongue.
She tried. Oh she tried to say a lot of things. Among them:
she was tired,
she felt like shit.
She was tired of lying in bed all day.
She wanted her family.
She wanted to look at the few photographs that managed to make it inside her small shoebox in her bedside table.
But she was weak. Someone would have to hold them up to her dimming eyes.
Someone would have to read the Holy Bible to her, someone had to dress her every morning, wash her face, run a comb through her hair.
They never got it right it seemed.
Part on the left, small barrette in front. Indeed, some of them never combed her hair at all. She’d spend the rest of the day with horrid, crackling hair half in her eyes.
No one noticed except her family, who only came on Sundays after church.
*Photo taken in the Carousel museum, miniatures from the toy train set up
on display.
Oh yah, well at least he’s cool with those Oakley’s on ,right? And yes, just so you know…the feet are actually his. lol. just kidding.
1) random: My boss, is a *&%#!!
2) random: I made good meatball stroganoff tonight
ground beef, Mrs. Dash garlic and herb blend, seasoning salt, cornbread crumbs, parmesean cheese, egg, milk. bake meatballs in 400 degree oven. make chicken stock gravy, stir in can of mushroom soup, heat and pour over meatballs and penne pasta.
3) Iwatched “white noise” which was creepy. okay I never saw it before, I know it’s old. The girlz watched it with me and we had popcorn and for once no one argued.
4) It’ s pouring and Doug and I are up discussing the friggin work again. I’m so tired of hearing about the ARMY.
I just want to retreat into the night, into the darkness, into the claps of loud thunder. Yes, I can take lightning and thunder, but I can’t take people sometimes.
Once in Fort Campbell, KY, I was sitting in my living room and happened to look outside just in time to see a ball of fire (lightning) hit the aluminum siding on someone’s house.
Needless to say, there was no few second delay in the noise vs light thing. It sounded like a bomb went off. The spot where the lightning hit was on fire for like 10 seconds.
It wasn’t my only brush with close lightning. I had an even closer brush in ‘95 with it, tell you later. right now, I prefer this storm over talking about work, and thinking about the crappy day I had at work.
5. Yay, it’s officially payday today. Yay, half of my check was spent a week and a half ago.
6. Sugar got out of the gate tonight and ran directly over to the 2 other yards where her siblings are owned.
There was her sister (the squeaky barker) Her brother Dakota, and her other brother who looks like the mother of Sugar.
I felt like a dirt bag picking up Sugar in my arms and carrying her home and over my shoulder her whole doggy family is barking at her. Prolly saying, “Come baaaack. we miss you”
7. I’m trying to think I own my own thoughts tonight, but they keep taking me back to work today, where i had the crap afternoon of my life, got literally sick to my stomach, and left early to go home and sleep.
8. I lost a couple more pounds. (yay) I skipped working out today because of number 7, but oh well. doing well this week on not eating certain bad things.
9. The storm is going, going and almost gone. the rain running down the gutters right outside my bedroom window sounds peaceful like a river, or a creek and soothing me, finally.
and HE is done talking about work. Now I must get up and fix the blinking red numbers on my alarm clock. i am thinking about sleeping on the couch tonight.
Since our mattress seems to have become a torture device with it’s limp disfiguration of wilting innersprings. I realize now that we’ve had this thing since 2002.
10. good night. thank you for all your cool posts.
It’s sooo hard to get these little things on camera. They flutter from flower to flower and just when they land, and you start to approach, wheeeee! they’re off again. I had to pull out my 300mm for this guy, so he wouldn’t leave before I got him.
Ditto for dragonflies
I noticed this shot earlier in the week when we ate at the mexican restaurant(which is one of these doorways in the picture) I liked the mood of this shot.
A fun angle on our local bridge. It’s artsy and strange almost like a sculpture.
roses are red and violets are….bee yooty ful
One of the shop windows downtown was apparently under siege at one time.
In one window, a nice “window kitty” lounged. Psst. Her eyes aren’t really that bewitching, I love the contrast of her whiskers on her black fur tho.
We visited a local carosell museum and I got a purty shot of one of the inhabitants. He looks wild Yeee ha!
I liked the jewels on this one!
Catching a tender moment between father and son. I lOVE candid photos.
And sisters were sisters by virtue of more than just being born into the same blood line. I’ll never understand a sister, because i never had a sister. i had rough and tumble brothers, where just hanging out with them produced scratches, and dirt, and dares, and double dares.
When I am particularly needy, like tonight, and I’m “needing” for my family to stop looking like Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. So I jerked out the box of pictures from it’s high place on the shelf.
Yes, even tho I am a picture freak, most of mine are NOT in albums, and even that in itself is a reminder of when i left Doug in 2006 and ripped them all out of their albums so we could divide them.
But i look at my kids and i see them as they were and it helps me.
Suddenly Big A’s already plummeting grades don’t seem so bad.
Suddenly, their gurly fights are just silly spats. Sister love.
Suddenly, seeing my son only every few years is manageable, and my 21 year old’s love for me means more.
Suddenly, I wish that playful side of Doug would emerge again and the love he had for Big A would blossom.
Seriously, I love seeing this picture. It was a time when they didn’t call each other ‘crackhead’ or ‘period gurl’ or tell each other to ’shut up’ every 5 seconds. They didn’t mind hugging each other either:
Doug plays with his first born child here. No inhibitions. No worries about work. No PTSD. He didn’t yell at her.
And HE…now 24, didn’t mind holding his little sister. He was the proudest big brother ever.
Back when sitting on a blankie in a field of flowers was such a simple act that produced so much bliss.
And Big A didn’t care what kind of bathing suit she wore to the pool.
and when Charity…(then, 12 months, now 21 years) only just wanted to climb the stairs and not worry about College and paying bills.
*sigh*
21
Aug
09
Assume the position
Does she know how lucky she is not having to work out everyday? That look of utter contentment on her face? I think every human being needs to find that in life… All she wants from me is a meal and a cuddle. I can do that. I can.
Post workout is fast becoming my favorite time of the day. There’s nothing all those endorphins, a good meal, a hot shower and your favorite TV show won’t do for your mood.
Aren’t these two just the most spoiled creatures you have ever seen? I laugh at how they jockey for the “good” position, just behind the bend in my knees, there’s room. Room for only ONE doggie. lol.
Today was fairly docile at both work and home. I only did a half day at work and then I had to come home to oversee the installation of a brand new a/c unit into our house. all I can say is: thank God, the Army paid for that sucker!
Estimates for a NEW A/C unit central air and heat is between 5000 and 7000 dollars! but hey, it was their call. and they’d been out 4 or 5 times to our house fixing stuff. I guess they got tired of fixing it. lol.
I was tickled at how the engineers called me to look at it after. “Ma’am would you like to take a look at your brand new a/c unit?” and then they did a little “ta-da!” thing with their arms. Awesome. they were here about 5 and a half hours! I’d be proud of my work too. I’ll have to write a nice letter to thank them.
So yeah, working out. Uggh! But I feel an energy boost. I guess the real reward is looking fab and fit. I feel very whupped right now, like something bigger than myself kicked my ass. Doug is watching his “fake” thursday night wrestling on T.V. Shhh! Don’t tell him pre season football is on the other channel. LOL.
__________________________________________________
I need a sign to let me know you’re here
All of these lines are being crossed over the atmosphere
I need to know that things are gonna look up
‘Cause I feel us drowning in a sea spilled from a cup
~TRAIN/CALLING ALL YOU ANGELS
Things cool people say.....