On Sunday, Mother’s Day, I woke up, stretched, and looked out the window. It was dark. Gloomy. And raining.
This is not a common occurrence around here. We are actually at the north end of a desert that stretches from here to California. Yes, I have complained about SNOW, but in actuality, we do not get a lot of the white stuff. Especially compared to those who live in the prairies, and have to deal with snow up to the roof line.
I. Would. Die.
Our snow pack is almost non-existent and we are on very strict water restrictions.
We need the rain. I get that.
I, however, need the SUN. A cold and dreary day can put me in a funk in the skip of a heartbeat. But a sunny day? No grumpiness allowed. Or even POSSIBLE. Sun = Happy.
So my Mother’s Day started off on the wrong foot. Or wrong weather pattern. Whatever. I did not get breakfast in bed, but I did not expect as much. I am a woman who loves routine, and who loves her daily breakfast of oatmeal and a latte. Honey could have made it for me but he would likely bung it up. That would have thrown my entire day into a terrifying tailspin. I made my own breakfast to save us all from the aftermath of the drama.
After I ate, I was handed a card (That Honey MADE! With my stamping stuff! Creative…or frugal? YOU DECIDE.), and then he headed outside to “get my present”. Soon after, I was presented with some wildflowers from the hill behind our house, a “flower” that Graham had made at school, a gift certificate for a manicure and a pedicure (Woo!), and a postcard that G’s Kindergarten class had sent last week during their trip to the Post Office.
It reads, “Mommy, I love you like the Planet Earth“. Good thing he did not say I looked like the Planet Earth.
It was time to get ready for church and I was grumpy. I had visualized a warm, sunny day. I would wear a pretty pink skirt with a white top and white strappy heels. I would skip and frolic through the wildflowers (Go ahead and visualize it. I am. It’s pretty funny.). The hoopla about Mother’s Day makes it to be this grand event, with sunshine and tulips and leaping. Reality was nothing like the TV. Shocking, I know.
Instead of frolicking through the tulips, I thought I should “spring clean” my closet. Hence, my “fat day“. Bah. (Thanks, though, for your sweet comments and emails.)
Monday morning was more of the same. Grey, cold, and damp. I dislike that word, but not as much as I hate “moist“. Ewww.
Graham woke up with a hacking cough and a nose full of snot, to complement the snot pouring from his siblings’ noses. I kept him home from school, despite the fact that the dude was far more energetic than I have been in about ten years. I don’t like to infect other peoples’ children. By mid-morning the hacking had ceased so I took all three kids to the grocery store, which helped my mood. That is if by “helped” you mean “made me want to tear out my hair”.
Ahem.
(I’m exaggerating. The kids are always good, they just don’t. Stop. MOVING.)
I worked for couple of hours and got caught up on my contract work. I wanted desperately to give Honey a break from Daddy Daycare. Between Accounting work and Photography gigs, he has been pulling overtime. He needed a break. I also needed a break from the blasted weather. Turns out? We BOTH won.
The sun started to peek between some puffy white clouds and I thought a walk would be fun. Except I had all three kids to deal with. We tried to see if they could all fit in the jogging stroller.
Yeah, NOT SO MUCH.
We opted to go to the park at the lake instead. It was early afternoon and in direct sunlight, which is not the best for photos. I did not have my external flash with me, but I tried to do the best I could by manipulating the the metering and the built-in flash (Hmmm…a future Foto Friday post?).
Do you see that long line of drool hanging from her lip? BLASTED EYETEETH.
On the water.
On the monkey bars.
Climbing.
On top of the jungle gym.
While at boot camp last night I reflected (Between shouts of “Right Basic! Left Basic! Repeater Knee!“) on the pensive mood I had been in. Part of was due to the weather, yes, but then I counted backwards in my head. Every twenty-eight to thirty-five days my body does this cyclical thing, if you know what I am saying. It has been almost thirty-five days. The cycle is imminent. Talk about an Aha! moment.
I surveyed the women in my class. There are a wide array of shapes and body types that belong to the women who were jumping, kicking, and crunching right along with me. Every single one of them is beautiful because they have chosen to work hard to make their body the best that it can be.
Which is what both Matthew and I are doing, and what we want to teach all three of our kids to do. We feed them home-cooked meals, we exercise with them, we tell them all day long how beautiful they are. We want to teach them health, as well as balance, which includes the occasional ice cream cone on a sunny day.
I think we are on the right track.
That about sums up my life and, I feel, my posts these days. I am not asking you to shout out, “But you are not boring!” like some of you did on my last post.
I am actually quite happy in my boring life. That month or so after we returned from Mexico was so very, very hard. Emotional dung, physical illness, craptastic everything. It seemed as though every day brought drama or an ear infection. This past month has been quiet in the drama department (FINALLY) and pretty low on the illnesses (Unless you count teething, or more specifically EMILY’S BLASTED EYETEETH). I find that stress and drama usually bring out the creativity in me, but when everything is swimming along nicely I am bland and boring. Which is fine by me. A girl can only handle so much drama and snot.
The photography stuff has been a real blessing to this girl’s fragile heart. I have SO MUCH to learn, yet I have had compliments given to me by those who have real talent and experience in the field. It truly makes my heart sing. People seem to like what I shoot, and are even willing to pay me for it. Bonus. I will never give up accounting as I like it (REALLY) and the pay is phenomenal. Matthew’s industry is in the pooper right now, so I am earning the bread and butter. This is a good thing, as I like to eat.
In photography news, after publishing that last post the phone rang again. Would I be able to take some outdoor shots? On Friday afternoon? Of three young men who wanted to give their Mom a photo of themselves for Mother’s Day? And get paid for it?
You don’t have to ask me twice. They were great kids, it went really well, and I got “The Shot”. Perfect! I would share it, except I did not ask them if I could. Plus, I keep finding out that more and more people in my small town read my site. Heaven forbid that their Mom does and I ruin the surprise.
But if it’s pictures of boys you want, pictures of boys I HAVE! They are much younger, but infinitely cuter, in my humble opinion. Here they are playing the game, “It’s all fun and games until SOMEBODY BREAKS A LEG”.
Getting some sweet air.
If these photo had sound bytes you would hear me yelling, “BEND YOUR KNEES! BEND YOUR KNEES!”
Graham’s technique was of the stepping-off variety.
Nathan? He leapt.
And leapt.
Crazy kids.
After supper yesterday I had my second photo shoot of the day. I got to assist on my very first studio session and it was SO MUCH FUN. It was three girls in their twenties who wanted to give their Mom a photo of themselves for Mother’s Day. Included in the group was the sweet three-month-old baby girl that belonged to one of them. She was SO CUTE. And COMPLETELY EDIBLE. It was a fun shoot to be a part of. I mostly helped with ideas for poses, and while the photographer was changing the lighting I grabbed his camera and got some SWEET photos of the baby girl looking over her Mama’s shoulder. They were not taken with my camera, so I cannot share them.
But I do have a sweet baby girl of my own.
I know I am biased, but I think she is pretty special.
I nibble on her all. day. long.
So that’s where I am at. Drama and sickness-free. Busy, but good busy. Loving life. Perfectly boring.
I like it that way.
***Edited to add***
Happy Mothers Day to all of the Moms out there. I think that the following women qualify as “Moms”: Women with kids, women with pets and women with, um, husbands. Heh. Have a great day!
Getting Jiggy With It
Date: Thursday May 8, 2008Posted in: Blogging, Emily, Family, Graham, Nathan, Workin' It, me
I *think* most of my computer issues have been resolved. One of the drawbacks to living in the sticks is that the only high-speed Internet you can get out here is via satellite. While it is a billion times faster than dial-up, it usually hesitates a second or five two before loading a page. Matthew called our ISP yesterday, and we decided to upgrade to the next level of service. I do not know the technical term, but it’s SUPER FAST. Wheeee!
As of this morning, gmail is working. Woo! My work website is easily accessible. Yes! I can procrastinate by surfing the Internet get my work done even faster. Huzzah!
I was trying to use the crisis as a means of convincing Honey that this would be the perfect time for me to switch to Mac. He was not convinced. I see his point. If I am using the “But it’s better for photography!” argument, then I really should not spend money on a new laptop until I start making more from my photography gigs. Want to hire me and support my cause?
As for the whole “work” thing in general, I just started a seven-week contract. Those of you have been around for a while will remember that last year at this time I started a seven-week contract. With thirty-five students. I was working fifty to sixty hours a week and ALMOST DIED was a little burnt out by the end. This time around, I only took on eighteen students. That’s exactly half (with one left out for rounding), and should keep me busy a mere thirty hours or so a week. I won’t even have to pull the up-until-midnight shift to meet deadlines. Hooray!
This means that I will have time to do the photography gigs that come my way. Last weekend I was asked to go to a couple of the local wineries that were participating in the Spring Wine Festival and take some photos.
It was a tough gig. I sure hope I don’t have to do another one of those. Ha! It was too much fun to be considered “work”.
In addition to work and “work”, I plan on having time to hang out with the kidlets and Honey. Last year we managed to keep doing a lot of family stuff, but the whole time I would be thinking about all of the work that I knew was piling up in my inbox. Some people are good at compartmentalizing. Me? Not so much.
I should be able to get my work done in a reasonable amount of time, which will leave me to play with wild abandon. With the arrival of spring (FINALLY!), we spend the bulk of our days outdoors when we are not at school/swim class/boot camp. After dinner we usually head back outside to play some games.
The dudes have been loving “baseball”. Basically, they just take turns hitting the ball. I do not have any photos of this game we play, as they like the way I pitch. I cannot pitch and take photos at the same time. I may be a fantastic multi-tasker, but even I have my limits.
I did manage to get some photos of them playing frisbee with Daddy. Here they are waiting to catch it.
Every night after supper, Matthew and the kids have “ice cream”. I use quotes because Honey is the only one who eats real vanilla ice cream. (Topped with cookies, extra chocolate chips, and corn syrup (!))(I think he adds the syrup so I won’t take a bite.)(He does not like to share his food with me.) The kids get “ice cream”, which is low fat yogurt blended with fruit and frozen into a popsicle. They love them, and do not know that they are eating something that is good for them. Shhhhh.
We were out of Honey’s ice cream so we thought we would treat everyone to the real deal at the ice cream parlour in town. It was a beautiful day, as you can see.
The dudes cracked me up because they did not choose their ice cream based on the flavour. Nope. They chose it based on the colour. Graham’s favourite colour is red, so he got Strawberry. Strawberry is an ice cream flavour that I strongly dislike, but Graham was diggin’ it.
Nathan’s favourite colour is green, so he got mint chocolate chip.
I plan on posting random photos from yesterday amidst my points. Just in case you were wondering what on Earth is going on with the photos that do not have anything to do with the content.
1. More?
Back when I learned the manual settings on my camera, I was so! very! excited! I wanted to share my photos in all of their glory. I was posting them at full resolution. Yes, they looked great, but once you clicked on my link you had ample time to grab a coffee before my site would load. To combat this, I started using the “More” tag, and leaving only the first paragraph or so showing.
I soon smartened up and started sizing my photos for the web, like so.
It is not high resolution, but you get the idea. If you want to see full resolution photos, you can see them on Flickr.
I have still been in the habit of using the “More” tag out of habit. Yesterday, LVGurl linked to this article titled “Why I Cannot Stand Your Blog“. It was funny, and made me realize that maybe it was time for the “More” tag to go. That way all of you feed readers can read without clicking through, and the rest of you are saved an extra click.
Thoughts?
