Out with the Old, In with the New

Yesterday marked the New Moon, so today, everything is starting over, at least from a lunar standpoint, which is just fine with me. This entire last month has been punctuated by a collection of stupid mistakes, uncomfortable moments, missteps, misunderstandings, and several regrettable episodes of utter dorkiness on my part. Well, more than usual, I should add. But, we all have them, and this too, shall pass. I stand with Anne Shirley (of Green Gables fame) and these words:

"...Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

The good news is that the world is full of good and loving people who go out of their way to help dry tears and bring on the laughter and perspective. My heart is full and tender as I consider how fortunate I am on that score. Some of these tough times have yielded some of the most treasured moments of friendship in my recent memory. You have to fall down before someone can lift you up. I have experienced that this month.

So, I am officially moving on...What's going on in my life? I'm sure you are sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for the answer to that question. It is a somewhat quiet week during the days, but I do have to start getting ready for my conference next week-printing handouts, checking class notes, etc.

Volleyball is done, but Cross Country is in the post-season so Sam still has practice. He'll be running in Regionals tomorrow. Soccer goes for a couple more weeks. There is a lull this week in the seemingly endless round of dental appointments that my family has to endure because they inherited my poor teeth. All my kids have email accounts now, so we are trying out google calendar. We'll see how it works. It is interesting to actually see how the time gets blocked out, and I like that every kid can be in a different color and such. Someday when I get my iPhone, I can just have the calendar with me, either as a download or on the web. For now, I still make notes in my little book with my little pencil and it seems to work out.

Sam's Eagle Scout Project is this weekend. He and a fellow-scout are organizing the planting of 220 trees in a local neighborhood. It has been a huge challenge but a great learning experience. People have been great about helping out and being supportive of the huge amount of work it is to organize a team of volunteers. I'm just so grateful for the people in my life this week. I am, seriously, so blessed.

I am in the final stages of finishing up the knitting project I've been working on. Delivery is next week. Last week's movies were two different adaptations of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Both had their merits. I love the story and am about halfway through the book. I like other authors of this era, but I've just never got around to reading Thomas Hardy. I'm glad to be so now. This week I have a film called On a Clear Day about a Channel swimmer (as in the English Channel-big body of water there between England and France. My kids thought I was talking about a new television channel) and a film with Colin Firth called My Life So Far. If you've seen these films and I need to be saved from either one of them, let me know soon because tomorrow is the knitting day. I also got the classic film How Green Was My Valley, adapted from a favorite book, but I already know that one's good.

So there you go. Life always goes on and lucky for me, most of the time it really is good. I think I'll go change into one of my t-shirts.

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Saved by the Meme

Once again, I was having trouble figuring out what to write about , when Melissa over at Book Nut, a talented writer and also my pal from the Nook, came to the rescue and tagged me for a meme. This is a fun one for me.

The rules: go to your pictures folder and select the 4th folder. Within that folder, you select the 4th picture and post it online:


This is from my folder labeled Portfolio, which actually is the 4th folder in iPhoto, and it is from a wedding I shot in 2003. It was maybe the 2nd one I ever did for money. This is film, then scanned in, so it is not the greatest image ever, but I still like it well enough to keep in in my portfolio. It is so amazing to think back to that wedding and compare what I know now with what I knew then. Some things I would definitely do differently, of course, but some things, I'm happy to say, actually are my "style" and reflect my aesthetic sensibilities. That is kind of satisfying to see.

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The Best Thing About Being a Married Man is...

When, after your wife cooks you a delicious dinner, you sit down with your son and play board games, while the smiling wife and daughter clean up the dishes.















I don't usually get email forwards worth sharing, but this was rich. At least we can be grateful that times have changed somewhat.

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More Election Silliness

Now, in the final days, the election funnies are just flooding my inbox. So, I present for your enjoyment, in case you haven't seen this yet, the lastest contestants on Dancing with the Stars.

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From a knitting pal-make your own president!

From my darling, fun friend, comes this bit of political activism I can get my hooks into. Budump bah!

Hold Your Own Debate With Presidential Finger Puppets

These are serious times and we have a serious choice to make, but that doesn't mean we can't have a little fun! Who do yarn lovers choose for president? Tell us who your presidential pick is and we'll publish the results! Click here to vote!

Free Pattern: Crochet Barack Obama Free Pattern: Crochet John McCain

Make one or both of the candidates and make someone smile! Cross-posted to knittinginspiration.com

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8 Things

I got tagged by Christie, relieving me from the task of trying to find something to write about since all I want to do is complain about my painful nose. The bridge of my nose is mysteriously swollen, feels like someone hit it, and it really hurts to move my face in any way. Oh wait, I wasn't going to complain. On to the meme...

8 TV Shows I love to watch:
1. Survivorman

2. Mythbusters
3. The Office
4. How Clean is Your House (BBC America)
5. Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (ditto)
6. You are What You Eat (ditto)
7. Dirty Jobs
8. Dave Ramsey Show (no relation to Gordon Ramsay above)

8 Favorite Restaurants:
1. Tersiguel's (Super Splurge French)
2. Jordan's Steakhouse (Super Splurge Amazing Steaks)
3. Victoria Gastro Pub (New, kinda different and quite reasonable)
4. Bombay Grill (our fave sit-down Indian place)
5. La Tasca (Tapas overlooking Baltimore Harbor)
6. Eggspectation (My old reliable-I always find something I like there)
7. La Madelaine (Many fond memories and fun lunches with pals)
8. Akbar (our fave takeout Indian place)

8 Things That Happened Yesterday:
1. I made it through my 6 mile run in spite of waking up with a headache (no nose-ache yet)
2. Got rid of 5 or 6 boxes of utter junk from our storage unit
3. Watched Dan in Real Life while working on the above
4. Talked Sam into mowing the lawn
5. Threw the football with Evan
6. Made little Caprese Crostini after watching Giada DiLaurentis make them. They were really, really good and really, really easy.
7. Drove to the temple for a meeting, got there way too late because of traffic, felt sad because I didn't have my camera with me, sat and wrote in my journal for a few minutes and looked at the temple, glorious in the setting sun, then drove home.
8. Went to Evan' 8:30 pm soccer game and felt really cold for the first time this season.

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:
1. The holidays
2. Paying off the cars and house
3. Getting letters from Chile
4. getting rid of the storage unit so I'll have that much more money available for #2
5. Running another half marathon next year
6. Going to England, then Europe in the next 3 years.
7. sitting around our little fireplace in the yard
8. Going to the cabin for my girls' weekend in January

8 Things On My WishList:
This is in no particular order.
1. photoshop cs3 or 4
2. Macbook Pro and separate monitor
3. Cabin in some fun spot for my family to gather to
4. This awesome pair of pants from the title9 catalog
5. Time to knit all the socks I want to knit
6. To learn to surf and relearn to ski before I completely lose my nerve
7. To decide what I want to be when I grow up
8. Time to read all the books I want to read

8 People I'm tagging:
1. Mandi
2. Holly
3. Heather
4. Krista
5. Julia
6. Erin
7. Mendy
8. Tracy

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What I Love About America: A Stubbornly Positive, Non-Partisan Salute

The election is almost here. There is bad news all around. The campaign managers on both sides are getting desperate. It is hazardous to one's blood pressure to turn on any media outlet. I choose to transcend rather than submit. No matter what happens on Nov. 4th, America will endure. That is a big deal. I'm shamelessly proud to be an American, no matter who is president, because dang it, America works-and even if governments and state-run news agencies all over the world hate us, all their people want to come live here. So here is what I thought about today that I love about America:

As I drove around, I saw lots of signs supporting one candidate or another. All of them are elegant and pretty simple. Just a name and maybe a logo. I love that in America, we have no freakish, painted portraits of our leaders staring down at us from public buildings everywhere. I love that it is not mandatory to put up statues of the sitting president in every town square.

I love that, even though it is imperfect and gets abused, there is an election system that mostly works. Americans are decent people who like to live by the rules, and even though the wacky few on both sides who don't are the ones who make the news, most of us, regardless of our political party, still take turns at 4-way stop signs and vote honestly.

I love that the lady who checks me in at our polling place is my neighbor Wendy, and she is not guarded by a soldier with a sub-machine gun in his hand. It reminds me that no matter what is happening down there inside the beltway, most of the real work of America is done in homes and schools and churches and county council meetings and soccer games and that We the People will carry on doing good and helping each other. Really-no matter what!

I even love (in principle) the yelling back and forth in the news. I'll take freedom of speech and an ugly ad any day because I can also have Jon Stewart and The Capitol Steps to make me laugh about it later. We are passionate because we can be, and it is amazing and awesome to me that we can express our opinions and even shout at each other all we want and feel pretty sure that nobody is going to pull a gun on their opponent, and no government official is going to pull the plug on the broadcast. I love that Tina Fey's family doesn't have to worry about her disappearing in the middle of the night and that a candidate can publicly take the high road and refuse to suborn bigotry in one of his supporters. I love that in America, after a long day of political posturing, we get into our jammies, laugh at ourselves on late-night tv and then get up in the morning and get on with life.

I love America and the elegance of our Constitutional Republic. If Obama wins, whether you agree with him or not, I believe it is appropriate to respect the office and acknowledge his victory as yet another amazing, peaceful, bloodless change of government. That is a miracle in this crazy world. It actually is. I am grateful that though we are dealing with difficult times, I am not in fear that a civil war is going to break out on November 5th. I pray for all the mothers in the world who are not so lucky.

The Real America is found in the strength, the persistance and the muleheaded determination of her people to be free. Freedom will always come at a price, whether it is a revolution or a contentious election, and I believe that freedom to be worth the price. So bring it on America! Take a stand! Shout it to the rooftops because you can! In the end, we're all on the same side and America will endure.

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I See the Moon and the Moon Sees Me

Canon 70-200 zoom lens, f2.8, 1/30 sec.

Tonight is one of those great skies that happen when the seasons start to change. The perfect, full moon is still out there, drifting in and out of beautiful clouds, making the most interesting, moody night. It is calling to me, but I'm calling it a night instead and remembering that there will be another full moon in about 4 weeks. I haven't yet been successful, in all my years of photographing the moon, at underexposing it just enough to get it in the shot but have the surface details actually show up. My moon-face is always blown out. But now I have my super-duper lens, so I'll be trying, probably every month, to get some cool new effects. I do love the skies.

Tonight, the photography was what it used to be for me-a refuge, an escape from the normal business of my life. Everything is good and happy, and everyone is well, I just needed a break. To think, to dream a bit. To look on beauty instead of a pile of mail to be sorted or yet another load of laundry. Other than wondering if I was freaking out the neighbors, it was really restorative to stand out in the road, aiming my camera, changing the settings in a precise pattern, then capturing an image that was, for the most part, under my control. I love nature photography because of the chance to be quiet, to slow down, to really look. Plus, I'm left with evidence of my effort, something that is often frustratingly absent from a mother's day.

Canon 70-200 zoom lens, f32, 15 sec.

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Vampire Night

The fact that Eric is gone overnight has combined with the fact that I fell asleep in the car for a 90 minute evening nap at Evan's soccer practice to completely mess up my sleep cycle. So, in the spirit of productive sleeplessness, I got completely through all my google reader new items, actually commented on a few blogs and now I'm enjoying some toasted homemade bread and contemplating a cup of cocoa. I really craving grits with butter. Yes, that is one of my favorite foods. It is not at all vampirish, but it is so good. I'm not going to go to all the trouble to make it now, but definitely tomorrow for breakfast or lunch.
Actually, I have groceries to put away, yes at this ridiculous hour, because I was supposed to go get groceries during the aforementioned soccer practice. Obviously that didn't happen. Then I was going to go after family night festivities, but Sara has been weirdly sick for a week and I figured I'd better go see what's going on, so she and I went to Nighttime Pediatrics. It was worthwhile to find out what it's not (not mono, not strep, not flu) and just tuck in to ride out the virus. So that was handled.
THEN, because breakfast looms, I went to the Grocery Store. Harris Teeter was open, but only the self-checkout lanes were available. I had a whole cartful and of course the self-checkout takes forever under those circumstances. Or maybe it's just me that can't seem to work the scanner, bag the stuff without making the very persnickety talking lady inside the computer mad and do it all with people staring at me. It probably is just me, but there you go. There were two customers in the store and 6 workers standing there watching us take forever to check out. But no, they could not open a regular checkout lane that late at night. Note to Future-Kellie: Don't go to Harris Teeter after 10 pm if you are buying more than 3 things. Just don't do it. So, after all that, we got home around 11 and I thought I'd just fall gratefully into bed after making my rounds of putting the house to sleep. Yet here I am...
Now I think I'm done being distracted by the computer and I'm back round to the 12 bags of groceries waiting patiently on the floor of my house. There are no perishables, so it is tempting to let them sit, but knowing I have 14 guests coming at 5:50 am is a powerful motivator. So, I will go do it and maybe it will make me tired enough to finally have that grateful fall into blissful slumber.

'Night.

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Photo Tips

I just wrote up some of my top tips from the Photography Retreat here. I'll try to share more as I accumulate images that reflect the techniques.

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Back from CPR

Creative Photography Retreat, not Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. It was held in Connecticut, hosted by the folks who publish all those Creating Keepsakes Magazines. My wonderful pal and I got to spend 3 lovely days together learning so much about our beloved obsession with cameras that my brain is about to burst. I can't wait to go over my notes and digest all the good stuff I got to hear about and try.

Without going into technical detail (I'll save that for the photo blogs), here are the reasons this weekend was important and worth both the expense and the time away from my family:

• I'm excited about photography in a way that has eluded me for a while.
• I know more than I thought I did about photography and Photoshop.
• There is still a lot more for me to learn.
• There are many different definitions of expert, with many different approaches and levels of expertise. It was so interesting to have one teacher teach one thing, then have the next teacher teach the total opposite of the first teacher's ideas. To quote another one of my instructors, my mind is BLOWN!
  
• I have apparently been living in a cave because I had never heard of Scott Kelby. Well, I knew some of his work, I just didn't know his name. I'll be sharing even more links as I dig back to the surface through the avalanche of great new info under which I am currently buried.
• My pal and I have not seen each other in months and it was absolute bliss to have this time to just be together. Every moment was truly enjoyable.

It is so good to be home, though, as it always is these days. I could not drive fast enough to get back to my family.

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Catching up on the Family

Here is the latest on what everyone is up to. Pardon the odd mix of complete sentences and weird fragments.

Jeff, at Brigham Young University: Found a job-started today-really likes it. Cooked his first crock-pot roast yesterday-it was a bit dry, but he had fun with the process. According to his facebook profile, he officially has a girlfriend. She is lovely, but I don't want to jinx it or anything.

Johnathan, also in Provo, Utah but installed at the Missionary Training Center there: We've had two letters from the MTC-all is well. He needs more socks and a sweatshirt, but sounds happy and fully engaged in what he's doing. He says the food is good and the Spanish is challenging.

Sam: Doing well in cross-country. Working on a boy scout Eagle Project. Doing well in school-had a ton of fun with Spirit week before Homecoming. Looking forward to wrestling season. Should have driver's license very soon.

Sara: Her volleyball team won today against Wilde Lake High. She actually got some playing time in the third game. Loves high school but lost her phone and is bereft but I'm proud of how she handled the situation.

Evan: Swamped by the famous Middle School Homework Load of Howard County. Seriously, there is more homework in 7th grade than there is in 11th grade. Go figure. Enjoying soccer. Practice and games are his only respite from his Napoleon Bonaparte Project. He did not laugh when I told him he should have chosen to study Napoleon Dynamite instead.



Tonight, we waited until 8:30 when everyone finally got home and had an actual dinner together around the table. I was determined. Because I am on a fall decorating kick, we even had a tablecloth. It was lovely. It is such a pleasure to gather the family around and see them interact. It is still very strange to get down only 5 plates for dinner and have no leaves in our dining room table. Very strange. That feeling is tempered by knowing that everyone is well and still part of our family circle as we pray for them, include them in the conversation and enjoy their accomplishments. It is a good time of life.

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Simplifying

One of the fall instincts is nesting, so I've been putting a fair amount of regular effort into lightening up. Seashells have always been powerful symbols for me-they are beautiful just as they are, even when they are broken, and I like to look to them for a little inspiration toward natural perfection.

To that end, I've listed books on Amazon Marketplace as well as Bookmooch. I'm working at using what I have for gifts and crafts. I'm trying to cook from the pantry and get out of some of the wild and crazy habits of the Summer of Celebrating Sons when we ate out like, once a week. It is good and satisfying to be creative in this way, to sort of get back to basics. It brings a kind of focus, an almost meditative quality to my daily tasks. We also had the Summer of Sending Sons off to Places and pretty much bled money from every pore. So, my bank account is breathing a sigh of relief that I've cut the budget by, like a half to two thirds for some line items. It is good to remember that I can live simply and make do. I can have an abundance mentality: Right now, in this moment, I have enough.

My goal is to maintain a sort of equilibrium wherein I have the right amount of stuff and when I get new stuff, old stuff goes away to make room for it. I've always made a habit of this-my kids automatically start a goodwill bag whenever they get new things, but I'm trying to get the set-point down-I want the equilibrium to be smaller. I want the house to have a cleaner, emptier feel. I mean, I like my cottagy little nest, with all it's interesting piles of books and knick-knacks and memories everywhere, and I'm not comparing my cozy little home to anyone else's but there are places that need to be open and restful for the eyes. That's what I'm after-not bare, just less busy. I think small homes can seem spacious and I want mine to seem that way.

It will continue to be a lifelong process because just this morning, I had to use a lot of self-discipline to throw away a stray shoelace I found wadded up on the ground. I'm a natural packrat and I just couldn't exorcise that nagging phantom in my head telling me, "This might come in handy someday." Well, I have a whole basement of stuff waiting for its fifteen minutes of fame, and most of it has never seen the light of day, let alone the limelight. It's time to trust that even if I don't store it, when the time comes, I'll have what I need. Or better yet, maybe I'll discover that I didn't really need it at all.

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The Secret of Roan Inish

I have a real, important knitting deadline (test knitting for a soon-to-be-published book), so I've been queuing up movies to watch and audio books to listen to while I race to get something done quickly and in a focused manner (not my usual method). Yesterday at the library I picked up this old favorite. It combines so many things that I love: Ireland, mythology, music, magic and, of course, the sea. Ah, it's a lovely story and a lovely film. I spent a cozy afternoon knitting and watching with a cup of cocoa nearby and I'll probably watch it again tomorrow. I'm such a sap. Well, and after all, I do have that deadline.

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