I haven’t been writing anything, anywhere. And it isn’t because I’m not motivated, I tell myself, smirking as I think it each time I see my notebooks stacked just to the left of my keyboard. It’s the photos of our recent trip I’ve been working through, trying to learn new Photoshop techniques to make them stand out in some way, worthy of what I remember seeing when my eye wasn’t peering through the viewfinder of my camera.
Tag: Photography
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Cool August Mornings and a Mother’s Worries
It’s about that time. The heat of August has come like it always does and with it damp mornings that will always remind me of getting ready for a new school year to begin. As soon as the MoH is off to work, I putz around the pots and planters on my patio, snipping away the spent blossoms and sweeping the leaves that have dropped over the past day. The orb weavers have been out for a week now and trying to jockey for best web position for the season, their little orange bodies not quite adjusted to those of us who forget it’s their time in the garden now, and we crash into their hard work a couple of times before they teach us to remember, and look.
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Sometimes you feel like a dork…sometimes you don’t.
This would be one of those times. You know. Where you realize it seems like you were pandering. Not you. Me. I was pandering.Pandering for attention.
But I wasn’t. And now I feel like it seems as if I was even though I’m one to pay attention to myself, so have never really needed anyone else to, and if that doesn’t convince you I’m a piece of work, nothing will.
I said I was wondering about those things that I was mulling over yesterday when it was grey and chilly out (like about 65 degrees?) and….well, sometimes, that’s enough.
I used to like grey days, so who knew?
I’d not delete my words. There are too many and they count for something. And in the past, when I’ve done that, I’ve regretted it, because part of my life has gone with whatever I’d erased. Even if it was the flowery writing of a teenager, or the wistful thoughts of a young woman.
I’ll never quite remember who I was when I put those words down.
So, no deleting. Just figuring things out, which is something I’m quite familiar with.
Like my new camera. I’m trying to figure that out and I’m thinking I need an adult beverage right now, because the software’s loaded, and well, it’s yet another new thing.
I swear. Just another thing to be thankful for. That my brain works. It’s kind of nice on most days.
Yanno?
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Sunshine and Big Surf
This morning when I popped out of bed… *wait, that was yesterday*
This morning, after I listened to the guy who rants each morning on the radio station the alarm is set on, I got up a bit more slowly than yesterday and went right to the window. I always do this. It’s a strange habit that helps me think about what kind of day it will be, thereby informing me about the attire I might don for the day. How sad is that?
But I’d opened the window about an inch last night just to hold the flashing demons at bay. Hot flash demons. Not demons who flash. Well, unless they’re menopausal demons, and then I supposed they’d flash. And if they were creative demons they could do that more than one way.
Moving right along…
Because the window was open, I could hear the sound it took us a while to adjust to when we first moved here. That distant roar when the wind is just right, or there’s been a storm in the Pacific. It was very loud this morning, and I could smell the salt in the air.
Of course I had to go outside and listen. I had to stand in my driveway and enjoy it, weather related phenomenon starved human that I am.
I went back in the house and had to tell the MoH, so I turned off the radio to his moaned, “Nooooooo…” and threw open the window. “Listen! Can you hear it? Cool, huh?” Although he was less than enthused, he didn’t throw anything at me, because he’s a weather sap, too.
I knew I’d be down oogling the waves before the day was out. But the MoH couldn’t wait. He drove down to the beach before work this morning.
Can’t you just smell the salt?
The air was misty blocks away, and the sidewalks damp.
The surfers were out in clusters, just waiting for that perfect wave.
And lifeguards were just waiting for that surfer who couldn’t quite make that perfect wave.
Spectators lined the coast to watch the show. There were so many people in business attire mixed in the crowd, the productivity level must have been non-existent in nearby offices.
The sea wall near the Children’s Pool was closed.
The seals were thoroughly uninterested, however, and basked as they normally do in the early afternoon sun.
Just another day in Paradise.
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Go ahead. Lock me up.
I spent half of yesterday thinking it was today.
Pathetic. Does that mean I’m wishing my life away, that I’m becoming forgetful, or that time flies when I’m having so much fun I can hardly see straight?
I vote for the last one.
So much loveliness.
I could be under house arrest and be thoroughly entertained.
You know.
Like Martha.
She probably loved it.
But I’ll bet her house was shiny.
Organized.
And had labels on shelves.
A crudless keyboard.
But I have an azalea that blooms all year long.
Amazing, isn’t it?
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Not so Scarlett nitty gritty
I guess October 8th is as good a day as any to decree that I’m back in the getting healthy and looking great saddle I fell off of after summer ended. Without a lot of fanfare, I’ve created another page up at the top called Daily Nitty Gritty so I can hold my Rubenesque self accountable for how much I eat, drink, and exercise. For some reason I’m simple-minded enough to comply with the rule that if I eat it or drink it, I write it down. I guess I must believe that I’m my own worst enemy, or that my conscience is anyway.The way this simple tactic works is that I will avoid doing anything that I’m not ready to fess up about. No, I’m never compelled to cheat. And I’m not messing with goals that are related to pounds lost, either, because the frame of mind I’m in, I’d prefer to consider that I’m working on eating more vegetables, less meat and saturated fat, more fish, more whole grains, drink less wine, drink more water, and combine cardio with weights. Sound reasonable?
I’ve gotten on that damn scale just to note where I’ve begun (yes, back to square one). And I will get on it to track the pounds I do lose once every week on Tuesday like I was before. There has to be some reason to look forward to Tuesday since it’s the sorriest day on the calendar to me and always has been.
So no more procrastination. Just call me Scarlett. Well, maybe not… okay. Beulah.*Dang, girl. Them are some eyebrows…*
Okay, so my face doesn’t look quite right on Scarlett’s body since I had to cut off my cheeks and darken the brows, but I sure as hell know a lot more about the Photoshop CS3 present my niece gave me than I did when I started. And Jen at Absolutely Bananas who seems to be able to do the Photoshop cut and paste thing in her sleep gave far better directions than my Photoshop book. Thanks!
So, how’d I do, teach? Well, outside of my face being fatter than Vivien Leigh’s, the photos not quite being the same size (I did try…), and not taking a new photo to cut and paste because I’m butt ugly today on a bad hair day scale of 1-10 with mine being a -3.5.
Let’s see. Does that quite cover all the excuses?
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Ahhh…moisture.
Yes, another Nearly Wordless Wednesday has arrived. Where does time go? I can tell you it seriously left while I was “working” yesterday because I achieved very little and have now successfully blamed it on Bach and Brahms who were more for meditating and gardening, not grind-stoning. They contributed to my delinquency.
Not today. It’s 8:42 am and I’m raring to go by celebrating something I’ve been waiting for.
See it? You aren’t sure what it is? 
 Oh come on. How many clues do you need? Or is it just glasses? It’s condensation! 
Yes, that bit of atmospheric wonder that lets me know officially that the weather has changed. The plumeria that took so long to bloom will soon drop its last flowers, its leaves, and return to what the MoH refers to as “The Stick.”
 Our windows will soon need to be closed during the night. The precious moisture in the air will help us breathe more easily, and keep me from feeling like a prune.Okay, so I’ll be a juicy prune. Plump and juicy.
9:09
Gotta go. But with no Bach or Brahms.
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Thoughts, Clouds, & Billy Collins
I’m not very good at “Wordless Wednesday” because I’ve never been wordless at any point in my life. As an infant, I most likely had the noisiest brain, making observations and collecting ideas and opinions for a lifetime of blathering. Therefore, I propose Thoughtful Thursday instead, and offer a bit of Billy Collins on the English artist, John Constable and being a “Student of Clouds” from his book of poems Questions About Angels which I truly enjoy.
The emotion is to be found in the clouds,
not in the green solids of the sloping hills
or even in the gray signatures of rivers,
according to Constable, who was a student of clouds
and filled shelves of sketchbooks with their motion,
their lofty gesturing and sudden implication of weather.
Outdoors, he must have looked up thousands of times,
his pencil trying to keep pace with their high voyaging
and the silent commotion of their eddying and flow.
Clouds would move beyond the outlines he would draw
as they moved within themselves, tumbling into their centers
and swirling off at the burning edges in vapors
to dissipate into the universal blue of the sky.
In photographs we can stop all this movement now
long enough to tag them with their Latin names.
Cirrus, nimbus, stratocumulus —
dizzying, romantic, authoritarian —
they bear their titles over the schoolhouses below
where their shapes and meanings are memorized.
High on the soft blue canvases of Constable
they are stuck in pigment but his clouds appear
to be moving still in the wind of his brush,
inching out of England and the nineteenth century
and sailing over these meadows where I am walking,
bareheaded beneath this cupola of motion,
my thoughts arranged like paint on a high blue ceiling.
The photographs here were taken today at different points between 6am and noon.
Add a soundtrack of “Blue and White” by Beth Waters, “Storm” by Lifehouse, and “Ocean Size Love” by Leigh Nash, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a Thursday morning after working on my patio trimming and repotting. Nice.
