The Curious Question of Is: pt. 3

Posted on January 12, 2011 by K

Okay, so you are going to be very impressed and entertained by this set of slick charts I’ve made up for you.  Really.  You will be.

Our hero is SAM.  No, Sam, not specifically you.  Just—Sam.  We pass by all his child-life and here we are, in his Real Person period.  He’s a grown up.  In this chart, he is.

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The path he stands on is himself.  It is independent of the scenes on either side.  Like a moving sidewalk except opposite – the path doesn’t move, but the ground on either side of it is always moving, always in one direction.  Right to left, the wind against his face.  And the speed of the movement of the scenes is the speed of time.  Whatever that is.

So Sam is standing on the path.  He’s been a kid, gone to school, made choices – and some of that growing was part of the inevitable movement of time – like, he’s taller, and his endocrine systems kicked in automatically at some point, and his brain was re-wired between the ages of 11 and 24.

But the rest of the path, Sam covered all by himself.  By choosing one thing instead of another.  By learning to read and think and drive and all those things.

In this first chart, he is standing there firmly on the path of his life, while the world goes on, moving past him in time.

I guess one of the questions I’m going to ask is this: is the Sam who is so confident and firmly planted in Chart #1—having groomed himself to fit into this nice world with the mountains and the clear sky and the crops growing in the background—

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is he the same Sam in the second chart, with the sea raging to his left and the desert at his right?

He still stands on his path.  His favorite color is still blue.  He still really likes chocolate with mint in it.  And science fiction movies.  And watching football.  He still tries to be honest in his dealings with his fellow man and works hard and loves his family.

But time has changed the world around him.  And some of his assumptions don’t work anymore.  And some – if not a great deal – of his actual worldly knowledge (like how to change the needle in his record player or how to make computer punch cards or how to cut ice in the local lake to fill his ice-house for the summer) no longer applies to anything.  Even his sense of the rhythm of life may be completely out of synch with the dynamic world around him.

His little kids who thought he was Santa Clause, God and Walt Disney all rolled into one—they’re taller now, and he has now become, somehow, their nemesis.

So who is he?  Because, like I say – he’s standing on that same solid path.

But is he still Sam?

Here is the heart of it.

Sam is.   He’s standing there right in front of us.

Let there be no question about this.  He lives.  He breathes.

But does he still fit?

Should he have to fit?

And if he should—do we mean always?  Or just sometimes?

How important is that?  Is fitting a measure of who we are?

I think that one of the key bits to this is that Sam can move on his own path.  Things happen all around him.  Things can happen to him.  But the path has to do with what he feeds into his own mind, how he learns, what he chooses.

The Sam who knows how to deal with mountains may not translate into a broader statement: Sam knows how to deal with the world.  Because maybe he can’t swim.  Or couldn’t swim before.

Maybe who Sam is has a lot to do with whether or not he can learn to swim.  Or whether he’s willing to or capable of recognizing the need for swimming.  And that he subsequently has the energy, courage and willingness to learn.

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Is the real Sam the fat Sam?  Or the skinny Sam?  My answer?  Whatever Sam stands here on the path before us is the real one, because I believe that we are our choices.  We are all at once what we want, and whether we choose to pursue that desire actively – to the good or the bad.  Which is all to say that we can change what we are.  Even allowing for genetic characteristics – which we may or may not be able to change behaviorally (I have no science about this – and I doubt that a sweeping statement can cover all genetic characteristics), we can decide to start choosing differently.  And then decide to do it.  Whatever it takes.  And what happens next all figures into the definition of our selves.  Does this make sense?  Captain of our fate and all that.

A friend of mine asked me once this hard question: which Meg is real – the one with anxiety and depression and anorexia, or the one that controls all of those things by medication.  My tendency is to say that the real Meg is the one who decided to fight for her balance instead of letting things go on.

On the Biggest Loser, a huge man talked about the shocking journey of analyzing his own life, his choices up to the present.  And in the present, he, being offered an education about nutrition and how the body functions and about the extreme consequences of the choices he had been making, had turned his back on those choices, only looking forward.  But he had built a life around those choices.  And now that he was choosing different things, it was like he was cutting off the old life—and having no idea what the new life was going to be.  “I’ve realized, I don’t know myself at all,” he said.  And I think what he meant was, take away the old things that were me, and I don’t know what’s left.  I don’t know even what I have to work with.

Fortunately for him, over the next many weeks, there will be people there to point out bits of him to himself. See?  You thought you couldn’t do that, and you DID.  Look at the choice you just made – that shows strength of mind. These are things he might not, after so many years of taking another path, recognize at all in himself without help.  And not recognizing them, might back out of starting a new way, looking for the comfort of the old self he knew.

And one more thing – I have never understood why people “look for their roots” in the past.  I’m a genealogist, but I look for my ancestors because I want to know who THEY were, not who I am.  Just because my gggg uncle was a horse thief from Lithuania doesn’t really tell me a thing about myself.  Or if he turned about to be a hard-working entrepreneur who made bank, that doesn’t mean I have those same gifts.  I am me.  Now. The question is, if I have legitimate gripes about the me I am (if I let people down, if I am destroying my body with bad habits, if I can’t handle money, if I’m weak with my kids or unkind or gossipy, or pick fights – ), can I change to a new me.  A new self.  An edited me that pares down the weak parts and plays up the strengths in the basic program?

I think that learning allows Sam to move up and down the path.  Maybe not so much down the path – unless that’s where you look for playfulness and eagerness of mind.  But I’m thinking that if he wants to, Sam can run to meet what’s coming if he wants to.

And maybe that is the very thing I’m writing about.

only ONE more part to come  . . .
Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, IMENHO (Evidently not humble), Just life, Just talk | Tagged , | 6 Comments

The Curious Question of Is: pt. 2

Posted on January 12, 2011 by K

So in one of the comments to that woeful empty nest piece I did the other day, a young friend of mine (as long as you haven’t gotten married or had kids, I would consider you young if you were ninety – which has something to do with the concept of freedom) said, “Time keeps on going for all of us, doesn’t it?” And as I read that, I felt like I was standing in the midst of a constant wind, blowing against my face.

Once, I was a child.  A kind of difficult-to-deal-with child, I think: too smart, too mouthy, too worried about being left behind.  Never sure of my place.

Our first house: Kansas City.   There was snow. TV had just been invented.  (We had one.  With a two inch square screen.  I wanted to be Spin and Marty. Yeah – and how many of you have a clue what I’m talking about?).  Before I was four, the second house: Los Angeles.  No snow. A completely different planet.

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Then school, where I was lost.  All those strangers.  Different teachers every year.  (Mr. Koenershield in 5th grade, a navy man; the class was orderly and creative.  He was a tough guy – you didn’t want to disappoint him.  I did a couple of times.  And cried afterwards.  He’s the one I remember.)

Third house: back to the Kansas City planet again, rented.  It had stairs.  A new school. SO not L.A.

Fourth house, about a year later.  Still in Kansas City.  We built this one.  I loved it.  Almost had my own room. Another new school, or maybe two.  6th (grammar school) and 7th grade (junior high).

About a year later: the fifth house—totally different solar system (why did they bother to build the last one if they were just going to leave it?): New York.  Junior High again, but worlds different—worlds.  Two years later, high school – which was fed by three junior highs.

I was blundering through all of this – the classes, the social stuff.

Four years later: turning left at Alpha Centauri: the sixth house.  In Texas, where they were still doing ratted hair.  My senior year.  Oy.

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Less than a year later: I left for University.  To Utah, where I’d never been.  There were mountains.  Really, really big ones.  I had turned 17 the May before I left.  I thought I was old enough to go.  Now I think about it, I was only three and a half months past being 16 years old.

The dorms.  Then home for the summer and my first job: Six Flags Over Texas.

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Back to school. An apartment

Home to work for the summer.

Back to school.  A rented house.  No more summers at home. Shakespeare in the Park (I was Puck).  A different rented house.  Graduation.  A job at the mall.  A job with my dentist.  Graduate school. A different house.  Teaching.  Two years later, a house bought and a different school.  Then marriage.  A house built.

Over the following thirty years: 4 kids.  My real life.  Same house.

( And thank you very much for your patient attention through all of this.)

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The only unchanging elements of this me-child’s life were my immediate family and my grandmother Jeanne’s house—and Jeanne herself.  Like rocks in a stream.

My parents were eternal.  My sibs were in flux.  My father—a smart, hard working, creative guy with tons of drive—had high expectations of me; I let him down a lot.  That was part of the unchanging truth.  My mother was actually the structure of the universe – the ground under our feet, the color of the sky, gravity—always working in the background, steady, willing, kind and again, very, very smart.  So we were our own planet, every so often shooting off across the universe.

Till I left home.  Out on my own.  Floating in space.

The point of this story is—did I ever really have a solid idea of who I was through all of this?  Or was I just all along a morphing ME, while the world changed around us?  Who was I, then?  And what does the word “was” mean?

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Ice changes its shape constantly and in response to the air and water around it.  But ice has an absolute nature that makes it predictable.  These shapes, I pulled out of the watering trough over a couple of mornings.  I was taken with that round, knobby thing and wondered how the devil it came to be shaped that way.

Let’s say you have a piece of fabric, and you can’t really tell what color it is.  Is it blue or green?  Is it black or dark blue?  Red or more magenta?  So you start holding it up to other things – against this, the fabric is really pretty blue.  But up to that, it’s more green.

Where is the truth?

Can the fabric be absolutely defined? Is there some universal law by which its color can be measured?  Or is its color actually only established in relationship to the surroundings?  Or maybe just functionally established.  Maybe a true green wouldn’t be as green against that background as this not really quite green color?

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An interesting pattern of wind-blown snow and frost.  It was so real when I shot this with my phone (I’m learning to remember that the phone can record images).  But the pattern was gone by afternoon.  Again, it’s very existence is determined by temporary conditions of air and water.

That, my dears, is my thesis for the day.  Who are any of us?  And how do we recognize ourselves?  And maybe – how do we legitimately define ourselves?

to be continued again, next time with fancy charts . . .


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Stopping by the barn on a snowing morning.  Dreary, huh?  But wait – do you see the surprises in all that gray?

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You can see them better now.

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Ah – there they are.  Out of nowhere – a flock of, something.  I don’t think they’re swallows.  We see them in spring.

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But joyful anyway.  You say, “An exaltation of larks.”  An ascension of skylarks.  A flight of sparrows.  But I will call this a dance of winged things.  Or a celebration, or a rejoicing or a bravery – of whatever hunting, dancing, swooping kind of feathered creature this might be.

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OOOOO – more of them.  But – then –

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Ahhhhhh – glorious.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, IMENHO (Evidently not humble), Just life, Just talk | Tagged | 8 Comments

The Curious Question of Is: pt.1

Posted on January 11, 2011 by K

Strange and mystical verb that: to be.

Is.

There really is no hard and fast definition for this verb, and yet we use it a million times a day.  We live on the edge of a mystery, but manage to forget that fact often enough, we can stay functional.  Or reasonably so.

Gordon, I will try to stick enough pictures in this to keep you happy; but I hope you read the words, too, because I’d like your thoughts on the matters I am about to flog to death.  Dick, don’t worry, no dogs or horses and not too many pictures.  I write for an audience that bounces all over the place in age and interest; it’s astounding that any of you stick around at all.  But how I love it that you do.

So what I want to write about, because I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last year, is being.  I am.  You are.  We are – what?  Caveat: I’m not going to go wandering into religion here.  I’m just talking about this earth, because I’ve lived here all my life, after-all.

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What other reason would we have for taking pictures,  even when the taker (read:hat) is more interesting than the taken – but that we want to look at our images later, when we have time to think, hoping to figure out what we and our lives are like from the outside?

I found myself asking Kris, as he drove me to his house from the airport, “Do you get it that now you’re an actual grown-up?”  He gave me a sidelong glance.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Too much, sometimes.”  I mean, he owns his own dental practice, lives far from the rest of us, has a beautiful, capable wife who pays actual bills out of an actual bank account, and two kids.

“You are the real people now,” I told him.  And only understood it as the words came out of my mouth.  The real people: the ones in the trenches – the ones bringing up kids, dealing with school and jobs and trying to balance everything for everybody’s good all day long.

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Dad, liking Lorri.

I used to be one of them.  But now, I’m  – like – really not.  I’m one of the peripheral people now—the frame around the real picture.  Like I was when I was a kid. And I guess that’s what got me thinking.

Are you still here?

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Here is one thing I know about myself: that I would bring home an odd sea-creature of a ball to give to an almost two year old person just for fun.  The ball has a complex nature: it lights up and

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expands like a puffer fish.  Weird, huh?

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But not as weird as Laura, who is stuffing it up Scooter’s shirt.

to be continued (which is litotes on steroids):

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Just life, Just talk | Tagged | 4 Comments

~:: Sometimes, a little magic ::~

Posted on January 10, 2011 by K
May I tell you that when I went out to the barn this morning it was 16 degrees?  I was working in the stalls, putting things to rights when I looked down and there, perched on the ground level rung of one of the panels, I found a neat little hawk.  She was all packaged up, one eye wide, the other a little narrow, almost oval with her wings all tucked in.  And I wondered if she were injured, just sitting there like that as I worked around her.

Our eyes met, and I leaned in closer.  “And what are you doing here?” I asked her.  It never occurred to me to haul out the phone, struggle with my gloves and take a picture of her.  Now I wish I had, she was so lovely, wings striped with browns, neat little head slick and all sky-business.  I was only a foot or so away from her.

She didn’t move.  She didn’t even seem afraid. She just watched me, eye to eye. I turned to go on about my business, still talking to her, afraid she’d broken her wing and that I wouldn’t know how to deal with it.  When I glanced back to see if she was still watching me, she was gone.  Just gone.  Not even a whisper of wing had I heard, and she’d had to take off from an awkward perch.  She was an artist, a dancer, a memory.

The only thing left of her was the hole she left in the air.

Posted in Just life | Tagged , | 17 Comments

~:: Perpetual Motion ::~

Posted on January 8, 2011 by K

Once again, M is gone.  This time for 5 months.  But at least, in the states.  We took him to the airport this morning—G, Laura and I—through fog, over ice.  Got there in good time.  And after he had gone through security and had re-gathered up shoes and jacket and luggage, we strained and peered, watching as he went up the far-away escalator to the gates.  I thought finally that he had disappeared, but no – there he was, hardly more than a speck up there on the causeway, scrunching way down to look for us—if we were, indeed  still down here, not gone off home ourselves.

He saw me seeing him, and brightened.  We waved crazily and blew kisses.  To the last possible moment, he had remembered we were there.  And then he was gone for real.

To understand this, you have to take a long look at your baby.  Then picture him a man—a man off on his way to a life’s dream adventure. Going away. And you are left on the shore.  The best you can do when that time comes is smile and wave and blow him just one more kiss.

Oh, how do we bear it?

I don’t have a picture of last night, but I want so badly to remember it.  Our little family launch party for M—sandwiches around the dining room table.  Scooter, sitting light and upright in my lap with his ski hat over that downy hair.  Andy, inoculation-sore, pink and round and a little cranky.  Most of Christmas put away, but bright boxes of chocolate still on the table, gleaming green and red.  And the little strings of lights still up (because I refuse to douse them until the day after dark January), bright in the windows, bouncing from window to window in clear reflection till all the windows blaze with points of color as though they were each filled to the brim with the lights.

And the faces of my children and husband, just as bright.  Lacking only Gin’s branch, but enriched by Laura’s smile and humor – all of us around the table, eating exotic and useless chips and submarine sandwiches.

It was like every one of us, every thing on the table or in the hutch—as if every thing was hung with lights, joyful and gleaming with warmth and humor and the brilliance of love.

Scooter and I both sat very still.  And watched.  Me, the family.  Scooter, the very last chip sitting on my plate.

Now the house is silent.  Even the pups are asleep. I weigh a million pounds.  Maybe I’ll sleep for three days.  Maybe.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Family, Journeys, The g-kids, The kids | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments

~:: Unresolved ::~

Posted on January 6, 2011 by K

I don’t make New Years’ resolutions.  Not to sound all broomstick-up-the-back about it, but my Faith pretty much demands that I constantly keep a weather-eye out on myself.  I mean, you know – not in an unhealthily obsessed way.  Just in the watch-your-mouth-and-your-attitude-and-you-better-be-honest-and-selfless sort of way.  So from day to day, in those moments when I go off course – which would be pretty much most of the moments in my life – I’m supposed to immediately feel that, then jerk myself back on track and fly right.

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This photograph has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m writing about unless you can see the snow as a metaphor for the dampening character of snow which not only freezes your face off, but makes you wear thick hats so you can hardly hear anything clearly.

So I can’t afford to do life reviews on an annual basis.  It’s more like the way Murphy’s industry handles this kind of thing: in “dailies.” (M’s industry: animated film.  Dailies: when you get together at the end of the day to look at all the footage you shot during the day, rough cut together.  That’s when you can finally tell if it was a disaster or not.  So you know what to fix.  Now.  Before it’s too late and you lose all your investment.)

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This is the vehicle that has made seat flopping my primary mode of exercise in the morning.  Early.  In the cold.

Because of that, my resolutions tend to be kind of small: I will not eat chocolate in the next ten minutes.  Or: I will not say bad words the next time Tucker jumps the fence.

Last year, my friend Megan came up with a new tradition: choose ONE word to be your banner slogan for the new year.  It was a cool idea, so I chose one. One word to nail on the nose of my ship.

Then I wrote a blog about my word.  Which was read by one of my dear friends who then picked her own word.  Then inspired a couple of her good friends to pick one for themselves.  I think we became a Movement.

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And these stars are just absolutely cool.

Anyway, my last year’s word was “awake.”  Because I didn’t feel like I ever was.  More like I was always half asleep, and things were just happening to me.  But as I thought about it all last year, I realized that this wasn’t really true.

My trouble is not that I’m dozy, but that I get lost in doing one thing, like editing pages for my family photo books or messing around with blogs, until I wake up one day, spitting sand on some beach somewhere, wondering how I got there and realizing that I never did get the checkbook reconciled, or that the summer is suddenly over and I never had one barbecue, or that I still haven’t gotten around to recording my reading of The Only Alien, which I really sort of needed to do before the book is totally dead.

Making things happen.  I haven’t been making things happen.  I’ve just been drifting with the current.

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This is an alligator.  Or dragon.  Not an alligator. Smothered with all the stuff the world has dumped on him.

So I tried on five or six new words for this year.  Like “deliberate.”  Or “aware.”  But nothing felt right. Till today.  When light finally hit my brain.

So I will share it with you:

the word for 2011 is:

Swim

Not float.

Not drift.

Not skim along.

But – swim.

Think it’ll work?  Yeah?  Well – don’t hold your breath.

(snicker)

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HOME!!  Yipee!!
Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Seasons | Tagged , | 22 Comments

~:: Catchin’ up ::~

Posted on January 5, 2011 by K

Okay, first of all I have a link for you.  A link to a person who is so witty and so creative and so full of astonishing energy, that next to her I feel like—like an old person who’s missed too many dang busses, that’s what.

Then all I wanna do is show you these four little guys I finally finished up.  Because I like them, flaws and all.  I have things to write about.  And family images to share.  But M leaves for Pixar Saturday, and all I can do till then is fret about losing him again so soon.  (Get used to it, lady.)  Did I tell you about that?  About the fact that the kid was slurped up by Pixar for a five month internship?  The up-side (I mean, aside from the obvious): he thinks he might be able to get us into Disneyland for free.  At some point in the future.  Which would be swell.  But not unless he comes with.

The little guys:

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Chaz’s little red horse, outside.

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Chaz’s little red horse, inside.  (His outside version is covered with box elder sticks, and is, therefore, sportier.) He has a mane and tail out of unspeakably un-granola orlon (or something).  But it’s SO soft.

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The little paint pony.  He’s an older guy.  My design has changed.  But he is finished now, with hair and eyes and hooves—the brave little pony.
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He carries a secret.

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The ransom camel.  I made him to trade him to Jeannie Gomm, who won my first little camel at the party.  He’s actually better than the first one.  But the heart goes its own way.

And finally, in my quest to learn about the shapes and tricks of toy-making (how do the real artists do this?  And do it to sell?  Too much work to part with) I found Fuzzy Mitten.  I bought some of her charming patterns and gave it a go.  This guy is the Pupster.  And I love him, flaws and all.  Julie’s beautiful boys are very kind to him.

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His sweater is way too big – because somehow I lost my #6 needles. (How do I do these things????) And the heart on his sweater is dorky because I did the wind over wrong.  Backwards.  “Why?” you may ask.  Because I’m stubborn, and the right way seemed like the wrong way, so I did it wrong, and that’s the way it turned out.

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But it was all for learning, so that’s okay.  He has a pretty sweet face.

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And tail.  A sweet tail.  I’m going to make him smaller next time.  Maybe teeny.  I can always do things big later.  When my eyes really go.

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So, if I haven’t said it yet – here are four little guys saying to you,

“Happy New Year!!!”

Posted in Knit Stuff, Making Things, Pics of Made Things, The kids | Tagged , , , , , | 25 Comments

~:: Christmas Morning 2010 ::~

Posted on December 30, 2010 by K

Christmas Eve at my brother’s  beautiful house.  For decades, we were alone up here, all of both our families states and states away.  But then G’s sister and brother moved here, and my brother.  Suddenly – family!  My brother explained to my father, way back down there in Texas, that it was time Dad came up here – an offer that could not be refused.  So here he is.  And with him, the beautiful M (who will be leaving for a five month internship at Pixar in another week) and his lovely friend Laura (who will be left behind just like the rest of us).  Oh, and Mike’s wee dog.

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The beautiful Lorena, whose this year’s accomplishment was the losing of – was it 89 pounds?  More?  She looks fab.  And she still cooks like a dream.

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The dog.  On the back of the couch.  She (he) was almost stolen by my brother-in-law earlier this year.  Wouldn’t have been hard to smuggle her (him) out in a pocket.

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Laura and Chaz

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Chaz, a little blurry, but beautiful.

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Dad.  Not blurry, not beautiful, but downright handsome.  And still a rascal at 88.

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Every Christmas morning, we’d have the kids sit on the stairs until we were all set up downstairs.  Only two kids left now.  One wearing plaids and stripes, the other pink owls.  There may be reasons why they’re still with us.

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Exploring the stockings.  The poor, not very full stockings.  (At this age, it’s hard to come up with fifty cent stocking stuffers.)

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Eating those healthful Christmas breakfast treats – like sugared walnuts or chocolate truffles.  The table looks like it holds a feast, but really it’s all gifts from friends and neighbors, ribbons, small boxes, jars of jam, baskets of tiny treats.

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The tree.

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The father prepares an actual breakfast.  Not our traditional one with round, crisply fried potatoes and sweet rolls, but an abbreviated one with cracked wheat cereal and sausage and eggs.

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Cam and L come with the kids.  We push the furniture, circling the tree.  We open their presents first, as they have tiny time bombs, and only a little while till naps.

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The wonderful present Rachel made me – beads, felt, embroidery, birds with wild tails – does it get any better?

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Bad dogs.  They broke into a vicious sibling war over a bone and scared the baby and worried Scooter and resulted in a half hour of kennel time – then this.  Leashes on Christmas morning.

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Someone left the room.  Maybe they will drop raw steaks on the floor and not notice.  Dang leashes.

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Scooter, with his magic wand and his horsie.

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Magic wands are so –  magic.

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And last of all, Andy engages M in conversation.  But something is askew.

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She really wants them to meet each other eye to eye.

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Which is harder than it looks.

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plop.

After the small ones were bundled off home to nap, the rest of our day was quiet and simple.  Quiet and happy and full of surprises and gratitude.  And really, really naughty food.

I hope your Christmas morning was sweet.  Every time ours is, I’m amazed and grateful.  Bless you all, and happy New Year!!

Posted in Christmas, Family, holidays, Seasons, Texas, The g-kids, The kids, Visits | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

~:: The Iceman Cometh ::~

Posted on December 30, 2010 by K

Once upon a time, it snowed.  Remember this cute little snow?

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Then it snowed again.  This time with far more serious intent.

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This was only the beginning – it continued to snow for another several hours.

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Four hours later,  rain started falling, taking down most of almost a foot and a half of snow.  The arena turned into a swamp (don’t believe me?  Try wearing boots and walking across it.  HA!).  Then, two nights ago, another storm swept in.  The sky glowed amber all night, and our room was as bright as early morning, all night long as the stuff fell hard and fast.

Yesterday, it sleeted all day, heavy, water laden snow.  It was 36 degrees F. Miserable.  Frozen but not frozen.  Tucker jumped the fence and by the time Chaz and I found him, we were both soaked to the skin.  But at least, when I walked the perimeter of the yard (shivering, and with a wary eye on the strained branches of the trees), I tracked Tucker, looking for disturbed snow on fence ridges and paw prints so we could plug the puppy-leak.

Then it was last night.  Below freezing.  This morning, the suburban was utterly iced shut.  I was afraid the battery was gone; one of the doors had been ajar all night and the wireless key wouldn’t work.  Normal  manual keys wouldn’t turn in the door locks.  Murphy jammed the frozen-adjar door closed again, but we still couldn’t work the key in it.

I ended up using the wireless to open the very back.  Then I (in mucky boots, lined over-alls and heavy barn coat) had to clamber over both (tall) back seats into the front and force the driver’s side door open from the inside.  After that, I got out and tried to de-ice the glass (impossible).  I drove through empty streets peering through one small clear bit of windshield.  Four wheel drive.

The storm had blown into the barn from the open south west.  South.  West.  Both supposed to be warm directions.  Hay stack covered with snow.  As were gloves and tools and buckets.  The water is frozen solid.  The bale I opened was one of the few that had been packed wet in the summer and was full of mold.  Luckily, moldy hay is great to bind the mud and give grit to tires on frozen drives.

The horses were frozen – wet, mad, impatient.  Zion kept popping up and kicking randomly with both back feet, just out of misery (horse swearing and whining).  My hands were aching and stinging after ten minutes of shoveling and swiping snow from hay bales.  I had to keep my eyes on those unhappy flying hooves.

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Depressed horse.  If I could take him home and let him warm up in front of the fire, I would.

M spent the morning digging out neighbors.  When I got home, he went back to the barn with me to re-stock the empty grain bins.  Then we tried futilely to dig out the water.  Once again home, we tried futilely to dig out his car.

May I just say that my Toyota Highlander with the on-demand four wheel is a FABULOUS little car?  Handles the half frozen snow like it’s nothing.  The Suburban is a monster, too.  But the small cars are trapped.

Have I even mentioned how much I hate winter?  It’s supposed to snow more over the next two days. Tonight, the low will be 12 degrees F.  Tomorrow the high is 18.  Tomorrow night will be 2 degrees.  Which is good news; last night, they predicted -6 degrees for Friday night.  South Africa, I dream of you.

And it’s not even January yet.

The big question is—what will happen to us when all of this finally thaws out?

Posted in Seasons, snow, whining | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

~:: Ring, Christmas Lights ::~

Posted on December 27, 2010 by K

Ginna put up this cool header.  It’s still there.  Or it was this afternoon.  And I found myself enviously wondering how the heck she did it.  So I got out my camera and thought about it.

Palm against forehead – of COURSE!!

Her stuff is still more magical than mine, but here is what I figured out:

You take Christmas lights:

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Then you disengage your auto focus.  Then, manually, you step back your focus.

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And you get this.

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Slightly out of focus.

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More out of focus.

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Way more out of focus.

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Out of focus.

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Bigger bubbles.

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Lovely, grand, overlapping bubbles.

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Fun.

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Very fun.

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I found this Santa shape hiding in the corner of one of the windows, a trick of reflection.

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And as I was shooting this, I remembered a little light painting that I had done in college.  So I decided to try some more.

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A quick scoop to the right.

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A short over hand loop.

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A wild fling upwards.

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And then I really got going.

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Open up the focus a little more.

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Notice a change?

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Cooler colors.  Short packets of light = LEDs.

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A combination of regular tungsten lights and LED lights.

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Tungsten.

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I moved from window to window, perspective to perspective, changing the shape of the light and negative space.

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These were shot in the craft room – very few lights, little ambient light.  The darker the room, the longer the shutter will remain open.  The longer it’s open, the more scope for line drawing.

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Fun, huh?  Quick – before you take down our lights, try some of these.  Put them up and link to them in a comment.  I’d love to see.

Posted in Fun Stuff, holidays, Images, Light, Seasons | Tagged , , | 28 Comments