The field trip, pt.1

So pt. 1 would imply there is going to be a pt 2, right? Well, that is certainly the idea. Except that I'll let you in on a dirty little secret of mine... I hate editing. Actually hate might not be a strong enough adjective, loathe and despise might be more like it. And really, there's no excuse for it because I've been shooting manual for over a decade and exposure and focus aren't big problem areas for me. I think my problem area is envy. That's right, envy.

I see these amazing pictures that have been photoshopped into oblivion and I often wonder what the originals look like. I imagine to myself that they must be pretty crappy, you know, in order to make myself feel better. ;) Then I take one of my pictures and literally play with it for an absurd amount of time only to revert back to my original processing, which take 5.3 seconds per photo. I suppose I should be happy with that but really, I'm not. I'd love to take my pictures to that next level. Without any effort on my part. That's not too much to ask, I think.

Anyway, these are just a few from my field trip last weekend (note it's taken me a full week to edit 4 pictures) with Rachy and Meg. Rach was ever so kind as to let me borrow her camera for the day so that I didn't fling mine into the nearest snowbank or against a brick wall. Because I'm fairly certain that may have been a tad counterproductive. These were taken at Saint Malo's right outside of Estes Park, CO. The photo gods gifted us with gorgeous weather and full sun for most of the day. The latter part of that was sarcasm, in case I didn't get that across effectively.

Orrrrr maybe some black & white love?

As we walked around we spotted this cute little pond which due it being winter and all, was frozen over and serving as a skating rink for these boys. We tried to be a little less than obvious as we were shooting them but I fully expected them to run off screaming and a mob of angry villagers to descend upon us with flaming torches. Obviously, this did not happen but I feel pretty confident in saying they thought we were crazy. And they wouldn't be wrong.

P.S. If anyone else is surprised that I didn't get hit by lightning considering my close proximity to a Catholic church, well you wouldn't be the only one.

P.P.S. I think everyone should leave Rach and Meg hatemail on their blogs so they start posting again. Just sayin.

I'm that Mom.

Every once in a great while I feed them a breakfast that they absolutely shouldn't have. And yet they absolutely should. Sometimes.

Shortly after this picture was taken the boy pulled out the swiffer thingie, stepped on top of it and started bouncing around the kitchen like he was on a pogo stick. Good thing I dropped them off at school a few minutes later. ;)

P.S. That's not dust on the table, that's the noise I get when I shoot at 1600 even when perfectly exposed (as this was). Bleh. I need a new camera. Want to buy me one? Pretty please? These children need to be saved from the noise! Can you imagine growing up and thinking you had spots all over your body? Think of their precious, fragile self esteem!

More on that later.

I had the BEST day yesterday. And I needed it, badly. I went on a little photo field trip with two awesome friends to the Estes Park area and the day was filled with food, inappropriate jokes and gorgeous Colorado scenery. It doesn't get much better than that. As much as I loved the joking and teasing, I adored that we could be completely silent; doing our own thing, lost in our thoughts and have that be just as comfortable. 

I thought a lot about 2009 and how unkind it was to me. Full of disappointment and heartache, stress and anger. I lost my way. But out there in the cold, with my friends and the mountains, I felt hopeful. So instead of dwelling on the unhappy, I decided to think about some of the things that made me happy in 2009, because that's what I want to remember. So here is a small sampling, some random bests: 

• This man. And his incredible voice. I've been a fan for a few years (I even got lyrics tattooed on my leg!) but "Sometimes" got me through a lot. Just amazing.
• My littles were accepted into a new charter school geared toward gifted children. The change in their attitude toward school, especially in the boy, has been nothing short of a miracle. 
• The Denver get together:  A group of photographers from a photo message board I frequent came to Denver in August for a weekend of shooting. I got to see an old friend I grew up with and made fantastic new ones that get it.
• Going back to school. Which really meant major sleep deprivation but it's something I've been "planning" on for years. One of my big check marks on life's to do list.

It doesn't look like much but it's enough. For now.

Speaking of now, I've been avoiding paying tuition for this semester and ordering books for a few weeks. Painful, but it needs to be done. Today. Before I get dropped from classes and wonder what in the hell I was thinking! :)

P.S. That photo was taken inside the Stanley yesterday, I was walking out of the music room and it just caught my eye. It's my favorite from the entire day, and I took a TON of photos. 

Prentzels.

That's boyspeak for pretzels. 

I got the brilliant idea to have the littles make homemade pretzels to occupy some of their time today. BRILLIANT, I tell you. Because I forgot one teeny, tiny little detail. And that teeny, tiny detail would be that the smell of yeast makes me sick. And not just a little sick, like break out in a sweat and feel nauseous for the rest of the day sick. It was all I could do not to lose it when they opened up the yeast packet and mixed with water. The picture taking didn't last long after that and even after I opened all the windows and got far away from that vile liquid, I was still trying not to heave.

So now I cannot eat a single one of those pretzels, or probably anything else for the rest of the day. It's like morning sickness on steroids. Except I'm not pregnant, not even close. Ugh.

I did manage a good laugh at this though:

The boy: Momma! Look! I made a worm.

Me: A worm?

The boy: Yeah, can't you tell?

Me: Uhhhh. Yup. A worm. That's what it looks like, for sure.

Steady as she goes...

2010.

Yes, it's true. It's 2010. January 1, 2010 to be exact. 

I am not a believer in resolutions, at least not for me because that would just be setting myself up for failure and why in the heck would I want to do that? So no resolutions here, but more a goal. Or not even a goal, more like a path. And that path is keep on following the one I started back in August because I've wanted this change for so long and I am finally doing something about it. It feels like a small victory, even when I am so exhausted that I want to lock myself in a closet and just cry. Even when I miss the important people in my life so much that it physically hurts me. Even when I miss MYSELF so much that I wonder if I'll get back. And really, even when my littles are disappointed when I leave every night to go to work, as horrible as that might sound. Because this is for all of us. And it's just for me too. 

I do miss taking pictures though. I miss the sound of the shutter and that glee I feel when I know I've caught something special. I miss the blogworld and looking at pictures that make me feel happy. Or sad. Or whatever. It's just a small piece of my world and I'm taking it back. So maybe I do have a resolution, even though I am not defining it in any way at all.

So there. 

Where in the world is...

Yes, I have fallen off the map.

I am in the midst of my pre-midlife crisis. And it's bad. But also really, really awesome. I decided some time ago to go back to school because I wasn't happy with my career. I hit the ceiling at 28 years old and it was a sobering realization that I had no place to go unless someone died. I'm not exactly the type of person to sit around with my fingers crossed whenever someone had chest pain only to be discouraged when it turned out to be indigestion.

10 years filled with the Army, school and just plain working my ass off and this was it. How could this be IT? I should have been happy, I should have been proud. I was one of the youngest Lab Managers in the industry but that also meant I sometimes wasn't taken seriously. I could overcome that, what I couldn't overcome was that this was IT. No, this was not how it was supposed to be.

So I decided to go back to school and in order to do that I needed to find a night job so I could go back to school full time during the day. And I did it, well I guess I am doing it, but it's carried quite the price so far. It will get better, once this semester is over I will have a better understanding of when to schedule my classes so that I don't walk around like a flesh eating zombie. Soon. 

Anyway, I have thousands of pictures sitting on my hard drive unloved so I decided to just pull some easy ones off and work on them before class today. This is the girl's soccer team during a car wash fundraiser last month, I think September 9th if you want to be specific. Aren't they friggen adorable?! Lovelovelove those girls!

Play time.

This afternoon I noticed the girl coming down the stairs with a handful of Barbies and the following conversation took place.

Me: Whatchya got there?

The girl: Some of my Barbies.

Me: Oh, reaaaally? You're finally going to play with some of them?

The girl: Yeah.

Me: Well, that's good. I guess the 1.56 million dollars we've spent on them over the years wasn't a complete waste.

The girl: Yeah! We're going to pretend they're drowning in the dog's water bowl.

Me: Oh.

I'm not sure that's what Mattel had in mind when they designed Holiday Barbie.

P.S. You might have noticed something a little different about my blog in the last 24 hours... My photos are now watermarked, something I've long resisted because they detract from photos. Yesterday I got an email that alerted me to a certain flickr account. Someone had set up an account with a similar first name and my last name and had stolen pics/blog content from here and posted them as THEIRS on flickr. Very creepy, very disturbing and fortunately Yahoo has deleted that account. Anyway, stealing photos from someone else is not only ILLEGAL it is also a very douchebag thing to do. So, "Jen McKee", if you're reading this: You are a douchebag. Over and out.

17 more days.

Until school starts. I can't even believe it.

__________________________________________________________________

The boy: Mom, do we have to wash her hindquarters?

Me: Uh, yeah dude. You wash your hindquarters, don't you?

The boy: But... that's her BUSINESS!!!

Me: I know. And, you wash your butt right?

The boy: Mom! You're membarrassing me!

Me: Just making sure. That's my job.

The boy: Membarrassing me? Or making sure I wash?

Me: Both. It's my reward for 13 hours of labor.

Cananaloupe.*

I remember when I first started shooting with an SLR, waaaay before dSLR's were the rage, and how preoccupied I was with taking perfect pictures. I was obsessed with finding the light, uncluttered backgrounds and happy expressions. Then in 2003, I bought a dSLR and I really started to push what I knew about photography and realized, I really didn't know anything at all. It's SO true when people say, the more you know the more you realize how much you don't know. That goes for pretty much everything in life really.

Here it is 6 years later and my kids are that much older and I've found in the past few years that I don't care about those "perfect" pictures anymore. The most I might do is have them move a little into better light, no posing, no directing, just THEM. Doing what they do, because that's what it's really about. And you know what? They're happier and I'm happier. Images like the ones above might not mean anything to anyone else, but to me, they're perfect. THIS is why I got into photography, it just took me a few years to figure it out. 

In other news, some of you may already know that the boy was bitten by a neighbor's dog yesterday. It was not a horrible bite when you take into account that people get their faces ripped off by dogs but it was bad enough that he had to go to the doctor. Were it any other injury he would have gotten some stitches but since it was a dog bite it was left to close on it's own. The idea is not to sew up any germs under the skin making the risk of infection much higher. He was also put on antibiotics, and since he is allergic to cillin drugs he was put on Bactrim.

I called animal control because this particular dog has bit before and was required to wear a muzzle, which he obviously wasn't. I feel pretty guilty about the whole situation because I should have checked to make sure the dog was muzzled before I let the kids go play with them in their yard and I didn't. Bad Momma moment, for sure. :( Anyway, the boy is fine. Not that I had any doubt because he's such a champ. 

P.S. We're protected by Brinks, in case you didn't know. ;) 

*Boyspeak for cantaloupe.

For the love of... limes.

I have found a new obsession. It's a good one though, unlike some of my others that aren't exactly... healthy. You know like, counting steps when I walk and re-organizing every binder at work every.single.morning so that they were lined up just so. Okay, okay those aren't that bad. I'll keep the bad ones to myself, cause really, you don't want to know. Or maybe you do? Wellll too bad for you!

I digress. New obsession. 

Food blogs! Holy hell, where have I been for the last, oh 100 years?! Oh man, oh man. I'm in new obsession nirvana and I don't ever want to leave. I discovered this blog the other day and I can't get enough. And by discovered I don't mean strapped on a space suit and planted a white flag discovered but more like blindly stumbled upon in a 2 am insomniac state of sheer boredom discovered. Great photos and yum food that doesn't require a culinary degree just so you can feel superior when you can pronounce the ingredients and no one else knows what you're saying. Blank stares all around.

I am making this tonight and I swear the boy has a nose akin to a pack of wolves. Within 2.57 seconds of slicing open a lime, there he was. Standing at the edge of the kitchen staring holes in my back. He was showing remarkable restraint by keeping his distance because he knows he's usually not allowed in the kitchen when I'm cooking. I can't STAND the whole kids underfoot thing.  Can't freaking stand it. The hovering, the staring. Ugh. I do let them help a few times a week but sometimes I want to poke forks in my eyes. Seriously. Did I mention I can't stand it? I did? Okay, well I just can't stand it. 

He's lucky that watching him eat a lime provides me with great pleasure otherwise the internets wouldn't be getting treated to the pictures above. You're welcome.