My Inner Crazy

By the Book

2012-01-23T17:07:00.000-06:00

I swear that my kids take after their dad and had I not given birth to them, I wouldn't think that they were mine too.
There is one way in which Keebles is like me. She is a voracious reader. When I was her age (4th grade,) I had just discovered Nancy Drew. I tried to get her to read Nancy Drew, but after a failed AR test, she refuses to read any more of them (I will bite my tongue about that.) Now, she's working her way through the Harry Potter Series. She just finished Order of the Phoenix yesterday and was quite annoyed that I was attempting to take a picture of her as she read.
It's good to be the mom.

2011 Favorites

2012-01-02T22:27:00.001-06:00

I had a hard time choosing my favorite photos from 2011. I started to go through all of the photos on my hard drive, then I realized that would take a month of Sundays, so I just took my favorites from my Project 365.
Without further ado, here are my favorite photos from 2011.

Here is JJ, just after midnight on January 1, 2011. The lighting isn't great, the photo is a little noisy, but I just plain old like it.

I took this one of my son, just after I got my D7000. It was dark so I cranked up the ISO and didn't care about the noise because I love action shots. I was so glad I did because I am in love with this shot. I entered it in one the The Pioneer Woman's contest and she chose it for one of the groups. It wasn't a finalist, but that doesn't matter to me. It also happens to be my son's favorite photo of the year. By the way, the ball did not hit him.

I love my cats. Poor Einstein was left alone after we had to put our other two cats to sleep within five months of each other. We adopted Chester and you can see just how Einstein felt about that at first. I like to imagine he is looking at me, saying, "Seriously?"

We took our kids to Riviera Maya this year. It was their first time in the ocean. We snorkeled every day. I couldn't justify the underwater housing for my D7000, so I took a chance on a Dicapac. It's a Ziploc Baggie on steroids, with an opening for the lens. My little Canon Powershot did a great job. The only issue was that I had NO idea where I was aiming.

Here is my daughter, heading to her first softball tournament. I love her experssion and I think that she has the most beautiful eyes.

In November, we played hooky from school and took the kids to St. Louis. These kids grew up together in playgroup, from the time my daughter was 6 months old. We were so excited to go to the Arch and then it was foggy. Total bummer. We had lots of fun anyway.

I totally fell in love with this car. It was parked at one of my son's baseball games. It was an exercise in composition as there was an UGLY chain link fence off to the left and lots of cars parked around it.

This was photo 365 of my Project 365 and I love love love it. We went out to dinner for my birthday and then ate so much that we decided to walk around the outdoor mall. All of the Christmas lights were up and they were just gorgeous. And, of course, I go NOWHERE without my camera, so while my family shopped, I played with bokeh.

Old-Fashioned Hard Candy

2011-12-21T23:16:00.001-06:00

Another Christmas-time creation, another moment of nostalgia for me.
Twelve years ago, when my husband and I bought our house, my neighbor brought me some home-made hard candy at Christmas. I had one of those moments where you you feel like your life is rewinding at a high rate of speed. Everything around me went blurry. I probably went a little slack-jawed as I whooshed (yes, that's a word in my house) back to when I was about seven years old. I was at my great-aunt Garn's house. (Maybe it was Jane's? or Sal's? My grandmother had a lot of sisters.) I remember being there with lots of cousins that I didn't really know, but we were of course expected to play together nicely, and not be too loud, and for God's sake, don't knock over the damn houseplants. I remember it being late, and being tired, but my mom and gram were not done visiting yet.

Then I discovered Garn's candy jar. It was filled with these beautiful, colorful, irregularly-shaped candies. They reminded me of pieces of stained glass, except more delicious and digestable. In my mind, I was in a dark room, with white Christmas lights in the background that made the candy sparkle. Made the candy irresistable. And I snuck piece after piece, licking the powdered sugar off of my fingers so as to hide the evidence.

Going back to my neighbor: she is a dear woman, and after I had a complete spaz attack because I hadn't seen that candy in 20 years and I was so excited, she agreed to teach me how to make it. And now I share that knowledge with you.

Old-Fashioned Hard Candy

Ingredients:

2 C. Sugar
1 C. Water
3/4 C. light corn syrup
1/2 tsp. flavor oil (I use LorAnn)
food coloring
powdered sugar

Combine sugar, water and corn syrup in a 2 quart heavy saucepan. Stir until sugar is dissolved, then cook without stirring. Once it is boiling well, lower heat and cook more slowly to 300 degrees (hard crack stage.) While it is cooking grease (with margarine) a cookie sheet and cover with powdered sugar. Once it hits 300 degrees, remove pan from heat. Add food coloring and oil flavoring. Stir well and pour onto cookie sheet.. Sprinkle more powdered sugar on top. Allow to cool a bit and then cut with kitchen shears or break apart with your fingers.

Word of warning...do not put your face too close to the mixture as you are pouring in the flavor. Not that my sister ever did that while making the hot cinnamon flavor, nor did she burn her face. Nope.

Perfection in a Cookie

2011-12-15T16:32:00.000-06:00

There isnothing that brings memories of my Grandma Toots rushing back more than baking herorange cookies. Well, maybe the mixed uptelling of an off-color joke, but that’s just not very grandmotherly, now isit? (Sorry, Toots!) She would gush aboutthese cookies and how pretty they are. Also, she was proud of how well they freeze. I’ve never frozen them. My husband makes sure they find a good home.

Anyway, as akid, I remember going to see her in the summer and she’d have a plate of orangecookies out. And I, being the pickylittle turd that I was, refused to eat them because of the orange rind. I was, quite obviously, deranged.

As I gotolder, and less of a spaz about food texture, I realized how yummy theyare. And then when I got even older,married and had my son, I decided I needed to start baking them. Gram sent me the recipe and I still have itin my recipe box, in her handwriting, full of warnings and admonitions. DON’T LET THEM GET TOO BROWN.

There wereseveral Christmases when she was able to help me bake them. She hovered over me, like a disapprovingschool marm, critiquing the size and color of the cookies and the consistencyof my frosting. Gram passed away a fewyears ago, but I still hear her when I make them. I now use a handy little cookie scoop to keepthe size and shape more consistent. Imay let my frosting get a little too runny. But I never, ever let them get too brown.

GrandmaToots’ Orange Cookies(Toots is like foot, not boot.)

Ingredients:

·        2C. sugar
·        2eggs
·        1C. buttermilk or sour cream
·        1C. Crisco
·        2medium oranges
·        2tsp. baking powder
·        1tsp. baking soda
·        Dashof salt
·        4½ C. flour, sifted

Grate rindof oranges. Set aside 1 tbsp. forfrosting. Juice oranges and set juice aside. Mix sugar and Crisco (beat well.) Add eggs,orange juice and rind, beat well. Siftflour, baking powder and baking soda together and add to mixture, alternatingwith sour cream (or buttermilk.) Drop byteaspoon on greased cookie sheet. Bakeat 350 for 10-15 minutes. Makes 7-8dozen. Don’t let the cookies get toobrown!

Frost with OrnamentalFrosting

Ingredients:

·        ¼C. Margarine, softened
·        4C. sifted powdered sugar
·        2egg whites
·        1tsp. vanilla
·        ¼tsp. cream of tartar
·        1-2tsp. milk
·        Orangerind

Mixmargarine and sugar. Beat well. Add unbeaten egg whites, vanilla and cream oftartar. Beat thoroughly. Add milk and beat until it is of spreadingconsistency. Mix in orange rind.

Frost. Try not to lick your fingers. Or lick them and keep it a secret. It's your call. Enjoy!

10 Things about Breaking Dawn

2011-12-01T23:25:00.001-06:00

Beware: There be Spoilers.
1. It's entirely unfair that this didn't come out when I was 15. I could have enjoyed it guilt-free.
2. The CGI seemed much improved. I wanted to pet the wolves.
3. Why weren't the vampires all sparkly at the wedding?
4. How in the hell did no one notice that Emmitt looked like he had clown make-up on? He was only pasty on the face. It was very distracting.
5. Jasper still reminds me of a wooden dummy.
6. The entire wolf-growling-human-voiceover Jacob-decides-to-be-alpha scene was so awful and cringe-worthy that the only words I have for it are not appropriate. And I use lots of inappropriate words.
7. C-section via fang? Wow. I covered my eyes. "Look, there's my baby-daddy covered in my blood because he just gnawed our daughter out of my womb." What a precious family moment.
8. PG-13? I swear I've seen more skin on network tv. Not that I would take my kids to see it.
9. Overheard in the theater: why is he (Jacob) wearing his shirt all of the time? I wonder just how creeped out Taylor Lautner is knowing how many 30-something women just want to see him shirtless. At least he is over 18 now!
10. It was an overly-dramatic, cheeseball pile of puke. And I loved it.

Riddle me this, Batman

2011-11-15T21:49:00.000-06:00

I made a mistake earlier. I lit three yummy apple cider-scented candles to make the house feel warm and cozy. The mistake wasn't in lighting the candles; the mistake was in forgetting about the kitten.

Chester strikes again.

J walked into the dining room to find two candles burning. The third had been flipped over on its top with wax sprayed for a good two feet, all over my dining room table.

Since this is November, the month of Thanksgiving, let's see if I can focus on the positives here

I am thankful that she managed to flip it over upside down and the flame went out. I shudder to think about what would have happened if that flame had kept burning.

I am thankful that she didn't set herself on fire. She is a puffy cat, after all, with a big, puffy, feather-duster of a tail and tufts of hair growing between the pads of her paws. My first cat, Galileo, got too close to a candle one winter and singed his whiskers. The smell brought me running and there he was, blinking and confused. He never got near a candle again. I'm not sure that Chester is that smart.

I am also thankful that I had some of those handy-dandy Pampered Chef scrapers in the kitchen. They made quick work of the wax without scraping my table up. Thank you Pampered Chef. Let me add that it's a good thing it is the winter, so it's cooler in the house. That allowed the wax to come up off the table much easier.

All in all, it wasn't nearly as much of a disaster as it could have been. For that I am grateful. But here's the mystery. I can't find any wax on her. You would think that for all that mess that she made, her fur would be covered in wax. For sure, there has to be some wax on one of her paws, or in all of that tail fur.

There isn't.

Upon closer inspection, which she loved, I found one single drop of wax inside her one ear. ONE DROP. She reeks of Apple Cider Yankee Candle, but all I can find is One. Stinking. Drop. Of. Wax.

How in the world did she manage that?

My Better Half

2011-11-07T21:37:00.001-06:00

I am going to admit something. One of the many things that I love about J is the fact that he is so handy. I don't think that I could have married someone who couldn't do things like fix a faucet, hang drywall, or put some under-cabinets lights in my not-so-new kitchen.
Don't get me wrong. I am not some helpless female. My father made sure of that. I learned how to mow the lawn, how to hammer a nail without smashing my thumb, how to help hold the 2 x 4s that are being cut with a circular saw and still sort-of protect my ears.
I have been taught to appreciate the sheer beauty of a cordless drill (Makita was the early love, but nowadays it's all DeWalt yellow.)
I learned how to check the air pressure in my tires, how to check and add oil, how to drive a stick shift. In fact, I even knew how to find the fuse box and change the fuses on my 1984 Fiero. That came in handy the day a fuse blew and my windshield wipers quit working. I just pulled over to the side of the road, wiggled down under the dashboard (not a lot of room in those Fieros!) changed the fuse and I was on my way. Well, after a triumphant little dance, I was on my way.

It was important to my dad that my sister and I be self-sufficient. As we grew up, my dad did all of the repair projects around the house, teaching us a little here and there. As I got to know J better, and learned that he had many of the skills that were valued in my family, I loved him all the more. He has done the vast majority of the improvement work on our house, with help from my dad and his dad. When something goes wrong, I know he can fix it. And as much as I hate to sound like a wimpy woman, I love knowing that I will be taken care of. I am spoiled by him and his handiness.

I am thankful for traditions

2011-11-06T16:57:00.001-06:00

I am trying really hard to write more this month. I want to focus on the things that I am grateful for. As irreverent as I can be, I do realize that I am surrounded by many wonderful
people and things.
Yesterday, I packaged up the dress that Keebles wore for her baptism back in 2002. I sent it to my sister so that her daughter can wear it for her baptism his month. And I cried.
Sentimental things kill me. I hate to cry, but show me a Kodak commercial about kids growing up and I turn into a sniffling mess. Show me a wedding, of the friends- or soap-opera-type, and I am a weeping wreck. If I read a story about one person sacrificing for the good of others, and I am a blubbering boob. Don't you dare do something kind for me, or I will completely lose it. Yeah, I'm weird.
Back to the dress. My niece will wear it this year. My daughter wore it in 2002. My sister wore it in 1977. I wore it in 1974. My mother wore it in 1951. It is this beautiful, ivory 4-piece affair. I imagine what my grandmother was thinking when she picked it out for my mother, her only daughter. Apparently she didn't like the length of the overcoat, and had it cut shorter than the dress. (See photo.). But, my Gram was like that. She liked things done her way.
I am grateful for this tradition that ties the women in my family together. Even if it made me cry a little.

Playing in the leaves

2011-11-04T17:56:00.001-05:00

I am pushing 38 years old. Pushing very hard. But I still act like a 5-year-old sometimes. Lots of times. More often than I care to admit.
Today, when I got home from school, I found this pile of beautifully colored leaves. And I couldn't resist tossing them up in the air and watching them swirl down. Which, of course, led to me getting out the camera and attempting to photograph them as they fell. You would have done the same thing, right?
This is difficult for several reasons. First, they fall a heck of a lot faster than you'd think. The camera can't focus on them.
Second, in order to actually catch them as they fell, I had to switch to manual focus, pick a focal point and hope that as they fell, *some* of the leaves would actually end up in the focal plane.
Third, it's hard to balance the bright sky against the leaves. I opted for exposing for the leaves, which meant the sky was blown out, but whatever. Your mind is wandering now. :)
Fourth, how in the world do you explain to your neighbors why you are in your backyard, tossing handfuls of leaves into the air (repeatedly) and taking pictures of them. And giggling. Not that I looked up to see someone in their driveway. That would have been embarrassing.
So, here are the pictures. They aren't perfect, but they are fun.

Life Lessons

2011-10-10T23:30:00.000-05:00

Here is my son, on his 9th birthday, putting on his Oakland Raiders Darren McFadden jersey. He loves that jersey with all of his heart.
Some may think it's silly to allow a child to invest that much time and energy into an NFL team (or any professional sports team for that matter) with their bad attitudes, insane salaries and giant egos, but the way I see it, you are only little once. And I kind of think that a life without passion gets pretty boring. I'll take the sports obsession over girls any day.
Fast forward to tonight. He'll be turning 12 this week. I think that this jersey has easily been worn over 100 times in the last three years. McFadden is the leading rusher in the NFL as of this week. The Raiders are competitive this year. KJ is so proud to wear it.
We had a softball game and he was playing football with his buddies while his dad and I played. He took the jersey off because he didn't want it to get dirty. He folded it up and put it in the dugout. When it was time to go home, the jersey had disappeared. Yes, out of our own dugout. He is crushed.
My gut reaction was the be really upset with KJ for not taking better care of his stuff. He had been waving it over his head and celebrating/bragging about McFadden's rushing yards. I am a HUGE believer in personal responsibility, and all of this could have easily been avoided if he had just kept the stupid jersey on. Or put it in the car. He could have prevented this from happening.
But then I started thinking that I am placing all of the blame in him, the victim. Sure, he could have kept the jersey on and he'd still have it. But how sad is it that he couldn't trust that the darn thing wouldn't have disappeared right out of our dugout?
I hope hope hope that there was some misunderstanding and that it's going to show up in someone's bag. But if it doesn't, you had better believe that he'll never be so naive and trusting again.
And that kind of breaks my heart.

The end of an era

2011-10-04T22:20:00.001-05:00

Sigh. My laptop is beginning the death rattle. It makes weird beeps and whistles. Sometimes it just shuts down because it feels like it. Sometimes it turns itself on in the middle of the night (Perhaps I should start calling it "Christine.") I fear we are nearing the end of our time together.
It's been a good laptop. It has edited hundreds of photos and stores thousands more. It has created many a digital scrapbook and written several honked off letters that were never mailed. It has played for hours on Webkinz, Build-a-Bear, Topps Town. It has researched fantasy football stats and how big the biggest snake in the world is, and how to make duct tape purses. It has been witness to more time on Facebook than I would care to admit, being a part of smart-aleck comments and copious over-sharing on my part.
I hope that my husband, fixer of all things technology-related, can squeeze some more life out of it.
But just in case he can't, I'm backing it up right now. I don't want to take any chances.
And the point of all of this is to test out the free Blogger app that I just downloaded to my iPad. It works, I think. :)
And now back to the Laptop. I can't have it getting jealous, you know.

My deep, dark depression

2011-08-17T23:04:00.000-05:00

For the love of God, where has the time gone?

Let me admit something to you: I am not a baby person. I loved my kids when they were babies, I did. I loved to hold them and smell them and just be with them. I loved their sweet little voices and chubby little hands and their fine hair. I loved reading them stories and knowing that I was the one who could comfort them. I loved the way they looked at me.

But, honest to God, I love these years more. They can catch a ball and help me make dinner and talk about Harry Potter. We can go on vacation and I don't have to stake out the diaper-changing stations, or fill my purse full of graham crackers to prevent temper tantrums. They actually go to sleep in hotel rooms.

I can converse with them. And they converse back, using real words and ideas. You are thinking, "Shannon, they talk back now." Sure, they do, on the rare occasion. But I can actually use the voice of reason with them (assuming I haven't gone all psycho-mommy.)

But, here is the killer. As much as I love these years, (and I do, I honestly do) I am fighting off the deep depression that goes hand in hand with the realization of "Holy hell, my kids are in 6th and 4th grades this year." And then I start to miss the snuggles, the baby-bath smell and the sweet little voices.

I kind of miss the 517 times a day that KJ asked me "But, why?" I am sad that Keebles is actually capable of sleeping without Yellowie, her security blanket.

So, please, can I freeze time? I know that's not really possible, but can I at least put on the brakes? I want to savor these years between complete neediness and total independence.

Pretty please? I want to slow life down and experience these last 6-8 years that I have with my babies. Even if they aren't really babies anymore.

For The Love of Ketchup

2011-08-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

We took the kids to Riviera Maya last week. It was our first big family vacation. We were so excited for a week of relaxation in the sun. There were a couple of things that we chose not to tell our kids about beforehand, to keep the anxiety and whining to a minimum.
Number One: Saltwater tastes awful and will likely make you want to puke if you swallow too much. It's funny to me that we can swallow gallons of chemically-treated pool water, but gettting a mouthful of natural saltwater is sheer torture. Especially when you end up with it up your nose. Yikes, that burns like H-E-double-hockey sticks.
Number two: They will have chicken nuggets and french fries and all of those foods you love, but they won't taste quite the same. We let the kids discover this one for themselves. And we acted all suprised when they said, "This doesn't taste right." They finally figured out what foods they could live with: bacon, bacon and more bacon. The fries tasted ok, but weren't crisp. The chicken nuggets were fine. The ice cream was a staple of their diets.
But, the worst, most devastating part of the "The food tastes weird here" debacle? The ketchup. It wasn't thick, red, delicious, Heinz Tomato Ketchup. It was catsup, thin and runny and orange-ish. It was a travesty.
Side note: A little research tells me that there is very little difference between ketchup and catsup; and that people in Latin American countries tend to eat catsup. But don't tell my kids that. They are sure there is a major difference and catsup is the equivalent of skunk pee and was invented to torture kids.
When we got to the Cancun airport to head back home, tired and sunburned, but relaxed, we had lunch at that totally American establishment, TGI Fridays. We had big juicy burgers, crisp, seasoned fries and REAL HEINZ TOMATO KETCHUP.

It was heaven.

I Heart Faces: Props

2011-07-19T10:20:00.002-05:00

How many people can blow bubbles with their own hands? My daughter can! In fact, she's quite good at it. My special, home-made bubble solution helps!

This photo was entered into the I Heart Faces photo challenge. This week's theme: props.

Oh, the humanity!

2011-07-11T14:12:00.000-05:00

Those of you with weak constitutions may want to look away.
The carnage is massive.
As my father would say, "Six dead, nobody hurt."

Yes, that is the headless torso of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Look closely and you'll see a light saber. Perhaps that's how the turtle became a headless torso.

My children rediscovered their Legos this week. It's a million degrees out, with 150% humidity and we are all whiny and short-tempered. So we started watching the Star Wars Trilogy (-ies). Logically, we began with Return of the Jedi (Episode VI.) That led to Attack of the Clones (Episode II, obviously ) which led to "Hey do you remember our Star Wars toys?" Which in turn led to, "Let's get out the Lego bin."

Mind you, the Lego Bin is more like a small bathtub. It holds 8-gallons of Legos and probably weighs at least 25 pounds. Now, imagine with me the sound of 8 gallons of Legos being poured out onto the floor. See Spongebob's legs, parts of Jango Fett's ship, Luke's Speeder, Indiana Jones' motorcycle, the Knight Bus from Harry Potter. Remember the HOURS upon HOURS that you put into building these things that will NEVER again be the same.

And then get over it, because really, what's more awesome than Lego people?

We spent more time than I care to admit sorting through the 8 gallons of Legos looking for body parts. There was such joy when we found things like Luke's hair and Darth Vader's cape and the Emperor's head (who knew that the two K's would remember which specific head belonged to the Emporer?) We nearly had a tragedy when we couldn't find Obi-Wan's hair. Imagine that being lost in an 8-gallon tub of tiny little plastic pieces.
They have spent the last two days just playing with Lego guys, setting up elaborate scenes and taking pictures. I am having one of those triumphant moments where I am grateful for my pack-rat tendencies.

And just in case you were worried that Indy's hat there might not have found the rest of his body, Keebles just came up the stairs, quite pleased with herself. I am happy to report that Lego Indiana Jones is once again whole.

My Boys

2011-06-20T11:39:00.008-05:00

What is it about baseball that keeps us young? That allows men to feel like boys? That creates this bond between father and son? Bryant Gumbel said, "The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love."

I never thought that I would feel that way, but it has this quality of being something bigger, something to be revered. I love going to my son's games, learning the strategy involved, watching these 11-year-old boys turn double plays and steal second and lay down beautiful bunts. I'm afraid it is getting into my blood.

This photo was entered into the I Heart Faces photo challenge

Ink

2011-06-07T09:42:00.002-05:00

I have issues. I am willing to admit it. For as long as I can remember, I have loved pens.
I'll backpedal and admit thatI love handwriting, but that didn't start until later in life. My mother forced my 5th grade teacher to give me a failing grade in handwriting because my writing was so atrocious. Fast forward to the 8th grade, when I had an ecentric teacher who made us practice handwriting everyday. And she marked it wrong if it didn't match hers exactly. So, although she was bizarre and intense (really intense) I credit her with improving my handwriting and helping me to love the art of forming letters.
So, why this picture? I took it for a "Collection" theme. These are bottles of fountain pen ink. Yes, you can still buy that stuff. I absolutely love writing with fountain pens. There is something about the liquid ink, the way that there are variations of depth of color in each stroke of the pen, that seem like artwork to me. I especially love it when I use certain papers and the blue lines repel the ink a little bit, giving even more variations in the pen stroke.
If I didn't know it would be completely insane, I'd have even more bottles of this stuff. Yeah, I get ink all over my hands. Sure, the liquid ink smudges easily. Yes, I have ended up with fountain pen ink on my face. But it's all worth it for the handwriting. In this day and age of email and text, we are losing the personal touch of a nice, handwritten note.
And so I treasure my bottles of old-fashioned, impractical, fountain pen ink.

Surprise!

2011-06-04T00:18:00.001-05:00

Surprise, indeed. The entry didn't post. whoops.

Learning to get along

2011-05-11T22:43:00.000-05:00

Chester has been part of our family for about 10 days now. The introduction of the two cats went much better than I anticipated. We took it slow, over a few days.

At first, there was much hissing (good Lord, cat breath stinks even worse when they hiss.)

Then there were suspicious looks, followed by hissing. But at least it was less hissing.

Then, we moved on to general mistrust and butt-sniffing.

Next, came some not-so-gentle whacks to the head from Einstein. He just needed to remind Chester that this was his house, not Chester's.

Finally, we got to the point, about three days ago, where they were sort-of-playing. We supervised this closely, since Einstein is approximately 7 times Chester's size. There were friendly whacks to the head, hiding and pouncing and more butt-sniffing. I decided it was all going well and left them unsupervised while I got ready for school.

I was alarmed when I heard an unusual noise from Chester. It wasn't pain, it wasn't fear, it was more a cry of indignation. And I found Einstein carrying Chester into the house from the back porch by the scruff.

This is where it stands now. They chase each other and wrestle and play. Einstein tolerates Chester attacking his tail and jumping on his back and kicking him in the face...to a point. Then Einie pins Chester down and bites his scruff. Chester meows a few "Hey! Not fair!" kind of meows and Einstein lets him go and he come right back for more.
The way I figure it, Chester probably deserves what he gets.

But, we are well on our way to friendship. Or at least tolerance.

He's He-ere!

2011-05-01T09:13:00.002-05:00

Chester arrived yesterday and we have survived the first night. Keebles slept with him in the guest room and discovered a few things:

1. He likes to bite toes.
2. He is fearless and will jump down off of the bed.
3. He thinks the litterbox is a fun place to play
4. He can just crash and fall asleep in 0.5 seconds
5. Kitty poo smells really bad.

Ten Lessons Learned on Vacation

2011-04-28T23:19:00.003-05:00

The top 10 lessons learned on our recent family trip to Chicago, told in my long-winded, rambling style.
1. Sometimes it is worth it to just suck it up and buy the family membership. These times include when it is cold, rainy and the line to get into Shedd Aquarium is so long that the volunteers have to continuously re-route it to keep it off of The Field Museum’s walkways, because it would seem that there’s no love lost between those two establishments. Yes, pay the extra $35 (it’s tax-deductible after all) and wait for 45 minutes in the rain rather than 2 hours.

2. The time for teaching your kid a life-lesson is not on an insanely windy April day when you’ll be sitting in the top row at Wrigley Field, in the shade. That, “Fine, don’t wear your sweatshirt if you think you know best,” will end up costing you $49 for a Cubs blanket because you don’t want your kid to die of hypothermia. It might even cost you $132 for two new sweatshirts if you aren’t careful.

3. A bottle of Visine and a toothbrush will cost you $10 at the corner 7-Eleven. This is closely related to “don’t forget the goggles because hotel pool water is brutal on the eyes.”
4. An empty bar and grille presents the perfect opportunity for teaching your kids proper billiards etiquette.

5. Yes, in fact, they can get more people on that elevator. Just when you think it’s full, they’ll ask you to place backpacks and purses on the floor between your feet and step back. And, no, Mr. Claustrophobic Tourist, the next elevator to the top of the Willis Tower isn’t going to be any less crowded. At least you are only packed in like sardines for just over a minute as you fly to the top of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

6. Never, ever underestimate the gall of 20-somethings under the influence. Really, I enjoyed watching you and your girlfriend stand there and soulfully grope each other for 10 minutes (even when you couldn’t quite focus on one-another’s eyes.) But I would have rather watched the game. So, when J asked you to sit down and you got all huffy about it, I wasn’t amused. Nor was I amused when you and your buddies started smoking pot. But hey, you were super-cool.
7. Easter Sunday is a great day for visiting the Field Museum. No lines. Good Friday is not such a good time for visiting Shedd Aquarium. See lesson #1.
8. It never hurts to triple check games times. As of Thursday night, it was a 1:05 game. Double-checked Saturday morning at 11:15: Oh, now game time is 12:05? Holy crap! Good thing the subway was just a couple of blocks away.
9. It’s everyone’s birthday at the Rainforest Café! We were there for an hour, and I would guess that there were at least 8 “birthdays” during that time, when the servers came out with the fiery volcano cake (which is not free, by the way.)

10. Remember what appeals to your kids if you are going to drag them all over the place: Man-eating lions? YES! Ancient American civilizations and the fossil record, not so much.

Have I lost my mind? Short answer: Yes.

2011-04-20T21:51:00.004-05:00

Or is the universe aligning against me (with me?) I don't know. I can't decide.

Keebles will be nine years old on Monday. (sniff, sniff) Last Saturday night, J and I were folding laundry, plotting the events of the upcoming week, when out of the blue, he says to me, "What if we let Keebles pick out a kitten for her birthday?"

Hold the press. Let's backtrack. J doesn't dislike the cats, but he doesn't really like them either. He puts up with them because he loves me. And I love the cats. And I had pretty much decided that we would be a one-cat family, because I love J and I don't want him to feel like his feelings don't count. Clear as mud?

Back to folding: I looked at J kind of funny and thought perhaps he was being controlled by aliens. And then I thought about how busy we are. So I said, "No. Besides, I don't even know anyone who has kittens right now." End of story.

I took my kids up to my mom and dad's the next day. We went over to get a tour of the "Taj Garage" that my dad is helping his neighbor build. As we were admiring the garage-that-is-bigger-than-my-house, my dad's neighbor says, "Have you seen the kittens?"

I stopped dead in my tracks. And I remembered what I said to J about not knowing anyone who had kittens. And I had to wonder if this was divine intervention.

Long story short: we are now getting a kitten. He'll be coming home in about 10 days. Keebles has named him "Chester" for the cat in the Bunnicula books. She has been researching how to take care of a kitten. She is thrilled. And I am so proud of KJ because I know he wanted to pick one out too, but to his credit, there was no whining. Einstein is his cat anyway, but that's a story for another day.

So, we will shortly be back to two cats. And it feels good. Thanks, J, for being such a good sport.

Tell me this isn't the face of sheer joy.

Eleven

2011-04-19T01:25:00.001-05:00

This child, my first-born, eleven years old, lover of sports, speaker of a million words, maker of random noises, is going to be the death of me. I adore him. He is a good boy. He is smart. He has fantastic manners. He is kind-hearted. He is goofy and makes me laugh. He is also competitive. I won't say where that came from. It certainly wasn't from his mother. (Ahem.) Yesterday, we were out in my mom and dad's backyard, playing catch. Now, I'll be honest with you: until a couple of years ago, playing catch was not exactly fun. It consisted of me tossing the ball to KJ and praying that it didn't hit him in the face. And then he would chase it down then throw it back to (nowhere near) me. Lather, rinse, repeat. As he has gotten older, catch has actually become fun. We are able to both throw the ball and catch it. It's a miracle. This year, KJ is playing travel ball for the first time. So, we've ramped up the competitiveness just a bit. Let's go back to the bakyard, where mother and son are enjoying a nice game of catch. I finally feel confident enough in KJ's ability to catch the ball that I don't need to throw nicely with him. So, after we warmed up, I started throwing a little harder. I let loose with one and his eyes got all big and he said, "Mom, I didn't know you could throw the ball hard." What's a mom to do? I started throwing a little harder yet and he kept making these faces at me like he was absolutely amazed. I'll admit, it made me smile. I love the fact that my throwing ability impressed an 11-year-old boy. What more can a mom ask for than to amaze her kids? We kept throwing and it didn't take long for me to get a little wild. KJ thought I was doing it on purpose: throwing risers and curveballs. He kept asking me how I did it. I don't have a clue. I just grab the ball and throw and it does wacky stuff (just ask my sister, who played first base to my shortstop for several years.) But I kept throwing because I was impressing my kid. And that made me happy. And I woke up this morning with a seriously stiff shoulder. All in the name of winning the adulation of my eleven-year-old son. Yes, it was worth it.

TMI: Don't say I didn't warn you.

2011-04-12T12:25:00.004-05:00

Stop reading now if you don't want to read about the perils of being a woman in her mid (late?) 30's.
Warning #2. My name is Shannon and I am a chronic over-sharer. Be grateful this post contains NO photo documentation.
Sigh. Woke up this morning to an abso-smurf-ly gorgeous day. Blue skies, perfect spring temperatures, the sun smiling down on me. Not going into work today. What more could a girl ask for? Then I remembered: today was the dreaded annual exam day. Now, I don't dread this like I dread going to the dentist; I just really don't look forward to it. It is not my idea of fun, but I get it: This is part of taking care of me, so I can grin and bare it. (I purposely misspelled bear/bare. Get it?)
Part of the tragedy of the dreaded annual exam is that my doctor is an attractive man. He's not my type, but I can look at him and say, "Yes, he is a good-looking guy." For some reason, it makes the exam a little more cringe-worthy.
So, I get there today, take a deep breath, give myself a little pep talk and head in. I get weighed and then go into the room and answer some questions for the nurse. Then I put on that gorgeous hospital gown ("Opening in the back, please.") and cover up with the paper "blanket." And I wait. And wait, all the while thinking about how I am going to distract myself and get through it.
My doctor comes in and asks the standard questions. I complain about getting old. He asks what I mean, and I tell him that J and I have talked about how it's harder to recover now, meaning in terms of exercise. My doctor thinks that I am talking about a long night of drinking and explains to me how to modify my diet in order to not feel so hung over. I am sure this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the last two times I ran into him, we were in a bar.
We finish with the small talk and he gets the nurse for the fun part. (Sarcasm font.) The first part of the exam goes off without a hitch, but then it's time to put the feet up in stirrups. I get the heels in the stirrups and then scoot my bottom down to the edge of the table when it hits me: Cramp.
I start babbling, "Cramp, cramp, cramp," and my doctor and the nurse start massaging my calf. But it's not in my calf, it's in my hamstring, and the thought of them massaging my hamstring is just too much to bear. I decide to hop down off of the table to stretch it, and then the other hamstring cramps up too. They are all worried about me falling off the table, and all I want to do is hop down, bend over and touch my freaking toes and stretch those babies out.
And then I remember that there's nothing covering my rear end. So, I hobble past them, over by the closed door, turn my back to the door and bend over and stick my bare butt out in the open and stretch. And it was heaven, except for the awkwardness of my bare arse sticking out.
At no point during this episode did I make eye contact. And that's how I managed to not die of embarrassment.

Mourning my cat, the sequel

2011-04-04T22:22:00.010-05:00

I've now had to put two cats to sleep in the last 5 months. If you know me well, you know that underneath my smart-alecky, nothing-bothers-me exterior, I am the biggest sucker you've ever seen for an animal. I cried reading the dust jacket for Marley and Me. I was nearly inconsolable when I read Charlotte's Web as a fourth-grader. The Secret of Nimh almost put me over the edge. I read the first four pages of the Black Stallion and put that crap back on the shelf. Old Yeller? Won't touch it with a ten-foot pole. So, when I found out a month ago, that Newton had renal cancer, I was pretty upset. And then this past weekend, when a sore on his paw broke open and started oozing, I knew the end was near. None of that made it any easier to make the decision to put him to sleep. My brain understands that it was the right decision. His quality of life was poor. But my heart still hurts. So, if you want to keep reading, here are some of my favorite memories of Newton.

When we first got Newton, he had already been named "Murphy." Another family had adopted him, but for some reason got rid of him, all before he was 10-weeks old. We didn't like the name "Murphy" and wanted to stick with the science theme. We debated naming him "Copernicus" and "Neutron" before settling on Newton. We were pretty sure that he had been stuck out in the garage because he had a black grease spot on his one leg. After a bath (boy, that was fun) we realized that spot was just a black patch of fur. For his entire life, people thought he had some sort of dirt on him.
Not long after we adopted him, he ended up with a cold. And it wasn't just the sniffles. Newton never did anything small. He had a full-blown, boogers-and-snot head cold. He'd sneeze and sneeze and sneeze and then a projectile of boogers would fly across the room. We found crusty boogers on everything. I finally took him for some antibiotics when I woke up one morning coated in kitty boogers. Endearing, huh?

Newton grew into a monster-sized cat. And poor Galileo, who had lived a peaceful existence for an entire year, now had to share his humans and his house. Newton liked Leo. Leo tolerated Newton.

Newton didn't realize he was a cat. He didn't do the normal cat things. He wanted to be around people. If you came to the door, he came to check you out. He especially enjoyed visitors with fake fingernals. (He had a serious case of elevator butt around those with good fingernails.) If you ignored him, he would seek you out. And at 19 pounds, he was hard to ignore. When I would try to take photos of him, he never stayed put. He always walked over and investigated the camera. I got to the point to where I would have to sneak pictures. As soon as he saw me, he came over looking for some love.

Also, he would shed like a fiend, so if you ignored him, you'd end up with a leg full of soft white fur. And he hated kitty treats. What cat hates kitty treats? He just turned his nose up. He was too good for that. He loved to be brushed, but he would only tolerate it for so long. When he'd had enough he would eat the brush.

There are two things that I am going to miss terribly: The first is our afternoon naps. When the kids were babies, I would put them down for a nap and then I would go take one myself. Newton was always waiting for me in my bed. My kids are now 11 and almost 9, yet he never forgot that tradition. I would come home from school and lay down on the couch, and it would take about 30 seconds for him to come find me and plant himself in the middle of my chest. I got to the point to where I napped better with that 19-pound weight one me.

The second thing that I am going to miss is the noise. He was the noisiest damn cat I ever met. He talked back to me. And he purred like a dump truck. His whole body vibrated when he purred. It used to make J absolutely insane. We'd go to bed at night, and a couple of minutes later, the entire bed would shake when he launched that massive body up on the bed. Then he would try to sneak up by my head to sleep. The problem was that he completely lacked a silent mode. It felt like the whole room shook from his purring. And then he'd throw in these random noises that sounded not-of-this-earth. And J would shove him off of the bed. And Newton would wait for J to fall asleep and then crawl right back up by my head. Over the years, I got used to the noise.
Rest in Peace, Newt Patoot. It's going to be a quiet night.

Life Lessons

2011-03-21T22:42:00.001-05:00

See that purple splotch on the inside of KJ's mouth? That's a bruise.
How in the world does one get a bruise on the inside of one's mouth?

The answer:
Be an eleven-and-a-half-year-old boy and start finding that it is hard to control your temper.
Miss a few shots while playing basketball in the backyard.
Get totally hacked off.
Bounce the ball as hard as you can.

Forget to move your face.

To his credit, he hasn't complained once. He knows it was a bone-head move. I'm just glad it didn't get him in the nose.

For your enterainment...

2011-03-20T00:01:00.002-05:00

I was going through old pictures today, trying to delete some so that I don't end up on some "Hoarders: Digital Files" reality show, when I came across this affront to nature.
The setting: Valentine's Day, 2008. I was still a stay-at-home mom at this point in time and thought that I'd follow that old Fifties textbook ideal of how to be a proper wife (but just this once.) I put my hair in curlers while putting on some make up. My hair doesn't take curl very well, so I made sure to put lots of gel on it and leave those curlers in for an extra long time.
When I took those curlers out, I was hoping for long, flowing tresses. What I ended up with was Napoleon Dynamite. Am I wrong? I think that my hair shortened up a good 6" from those "long flowing curls." It's quite fetching, don't you think?
"Why do you still have this photo?" you may wonder. It's a question that is begging to be asked. "Why even take a photo in the first place?" is probably an even better question. I could give you a long philosophical answer about how strongly I feel about documenting my life, as well as the lives of the people I love. But I'll save you the soapbox lecture and say that I took this picture because it's hilarious. And I keep it, honestly, because it's hilarious. I don't ever want to take life too seriously. Life it too short to worry about projecting an image of perfection. If you can't laugh at yourself, well, then, life just can't be very fun.
My favorite part? Check out my shirt: "Defy Gravity" indeed.

The Definition of Excitement at My House

2011-03-13T22:06:00.001-05:00

One day last week, we came home to find that one of JJ's computers had crashed. It was dead. It just made a fun clicking noise when we tried to turn it on. Now, for most families this would be a serious issue, but I am married to King of the Nerds. (He knows I call him that. He was the Scholastic Bowl Team Captain in High School. His degree is in computer science. He embraces his nerdom, as do I.)
After JJ took the computer apart, and discovered that it was completely dead, not "mostly dead," he kind of got excited. He hopped online and ordered a new hard drive and some external storage. Woot! This is serious fun for us (read: him.) He was a little sad when it was supposed to take a whole week to get here. But, it got here sooner than that and totally made his day.
Here it is, in all its glory. This is the external storage unit that will save all of my pictures and music library if (and when) my laptop goes down.

Kind of anti-clamatic, huh? I was expecting something massive, with lots of blinking lights and whirring and whooshing sounds. We affectionately refer to it as "The Toaster." JJ says things like, "The toaster is up and running" or "The toaster is working hard." I smile and nod. I understand getting all excited about things that no one else really cares about (like pens.)
As one last-ditch effort to save some data off of the old hard drive, JJ tried freezing it. Have you ever had a hard drive in your freezer? I hadn't either until this weekend. He did warn me that it was there so I wasn't too confused when I opened the freezer door. Sadly, the effort didn't work, and we lost about a month's worth of data. Lesson learned: Back up more often. And it never hurts to have a "toaster."

Truth in Advertising

2011-03-08T23:24:00.001-06:00

I am not a neat person. Never have been, never will be. When I was in high school, my mom was a stickler for a clean room. I was not allowed to leave the house unless my room was picked up. She always thought she had me: my room would be a DISASTER and then three minutes later I would be out the door. She finally figured out my secret: I had a junk drawer under my bed. I'd just cram everything in there, pray the drawer would close and then magically the room would be spotless. I give her credit. She let me keep that drawer as long as the rest of the room was clean.

As an adult, I have the guest room. I remember one year, I hosted my book club Christmas party. I ran around the house, picking up everything that didn't have a home and shoved it in that room, closed the door and felt pretty proud of myself. I was showing my friends around the house when my dear friend Erin said, "What's this?" and opened the guest room door. My secret was out.

So now I am over it. I have clutter. Let the world know! I'm not a hoarder. (I have another friend who is a personal organizer and sometimes I call her just to double check that I am not hoarding.) My house is lived in and if you come over, feel free to prop your feet up. My house is a home, not a museum.

In celebration on my style of living, here are the things on my dining room table right now:

1. A Nerf basketball for the hoop hanging just round the corner on the coat closet door.
2. A foam hockey puck. Don't ask.
3. A 3-ring binder of my son's drawings.
4. My son's science homework.
5. Two opened boxes of Girl Scout cookies.
6. Various plastic cups. My kids are all about cup-stacking ever since they lost TV and video game privileges.
7. Various pencils and erasers.
8. A Snowman decoration that should have been put away a month ago.
9. A candle that I don't even like the smell of. (That's a terrible sentence. Is it even a sentence?)
10. A 2" stack of papers to go through.
11. Crumbs, cat hair and various random objects.

So there. That's me. And that's clean for that table.

My Favorite February Face

2011-03-06T21:22:00.009-06:00

Because I can't resist, I like to enter photo challenges. I know I still have lots to learn, but I'm having fun.
Any-who, I Heart Faces hosts a weekly challenge and this week's challenge is: Your favorite face from February. As I looked back through my February photos, I realized I hadn't taken many face-shots (note to self, work on that in March.) But then I ran across this gem and was quite pleased.
This was taken on the day Snowmageddon, Snowzilla, Snowpocalypse, Snownado, whatever you want to call it. My husband and son had been out shoveling (we don't believe in snowblowers...we have kids!) and when they came in, they were just covered in snow. I rushed to get the camera and even used the dreaded flash in order to capture the snowflakes on my son's eyelashes before they melted. The bonus was the genuine smile on his face, something that is rarely seen on an 11-year old boy!
I converted this to black and white to minimize the distraction of the purple coat behind KJ. I lost a little of the rosiness in the cheeks that way, but the smile and his eyes are what I was really after.
Think he'll always enjoy shoveling snow?

Rust (I really need to replace my front railing.)

2011-03-06T00:06:00.001-06:00

Rust (I really need to replace my front railing.), originally uploaded by shanleigh1973.

My macro lens is about the closest thing that I am going to get to a stereo microscope at this point in time of my life, so that's kind of how I am using it.
I LOVE the detail that I am able to see with this lens plus macro kit, even if it is the rust on my front porch railing.
When I was in college, taking Genetics, we used to use those stereo microscopes to look at fruit flies and figure out if they were boys or girls, and what their eye color was.
And then I'd get all distracted by my ring and want to look at it under the scope. Sparkly!
Or maybe it was my ball point pen. It was fascinating to be able to see the way that the ink beaded up on that tiny little ball.
Or, I'd start looking at my fingers and fingernails and realize how badly I needed a manicure, or maybe just some lotion.
And then my fruit flies would start to wake up from their short ether-induced nap and I'd have to start counting all over again.
My point is, the world is FULL of things that we miss with the naked eye, either because they are too big to take in, too small to take in, or maybe moving to fast to take in. I love photography because it allows me to really see and appreciate these things.
I love the idea of permanently capturing that split-second that will never exist again and studying it: the lightning strike, the dust coming off of my son's batting gloves, the glow of the sun in my daughter's hair, the rust on the front porch.
Is it any wonder that my husband thinks I am nuts?

Flickr

2011-02-04T16:50:00.001-06:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Early Photography Success

2011-01-25T15:08:00.002-06:00

I have always loved photography, but for the longest time, it was just point, shoot and hope to get lucky. It wasn't until after my sister's wedding, two and a half years ago, that I started to think about deliberately doing things to make photos more interesting.
My sister's wedding photographer was awesome. There were so many fantastic shots that I wanted to get married all over again and have her photographer take my photos. My husband isn't on board, even though I do want to marry him again.
Anyway, my point is that while we were getting ready, the photographer took pictures of Keebles, my daughter, sitting on the floor, admiring her flower girl shoes. In the first one, the focus fell on her fancy shoes, and her awesome hair was slightly out of focus. In the second one, the focus was on her hair, and the fancy shoes were slightly out of focus.
Holy cats, it was an epiphany! You can do that? Choose for one thing to be in focus while the other one is not? Why did I not know this before?
Fast forward to this: my first attempt with blurring my background. Yes, I wanted Keebles to be out-of-focus. I thought it showed what she might just look like to that cicada.
On a side note, the last time I had Keebles get real close to a big bug like this ended in disaster. We were at my grandma's farm (like we are in this photo) and there was a HUGE praying mantis on the side of my grandma's house. Keebles didn't want to get close to it, but me, being the good mom that I am, encouraged her to. And the giant praying mantis jumped on her face. Screaming and tears ensued. So, I am grateful that she was willing to get this close to the cicada.

Oh, the humanity!

2011-01-14T23:20:00.002-06:00

My book club holds our annual Christmas party in January. It's just easier that way. We all have young kids and lots of family and the month of December is a sprint as it is.
This year, I decided to take my birthday present with me: Just Dance II for the wii. I love to dance. I have zero rhythm, no moves, but I sing really loud and smile a lot to make up for it. In my Shannon-logic, I decided that asking for that game for my birthday would help me learn some moves, thereby rendering me awesome at age 37. Have I mentioned that I was once so sure of my moves that I actually tried out for Poms? Oh my gosh, what a ridiculous idea that was. This body was not meant for dancing. I look like an 80-year-old woman with a bad back. On no, that's how I feel...
I digress. As usual.
The first time I played, I cracked poor Keebles in the head three times with my Wii-mote. It's a good thing that she is such a good sport, or she has a really hard head.
When we played at the Christmas party, I didn't hurt anyone (bonus) and I was lucky enough to have friends willing to document my awesomeness in photos. (Please know that this is written fully in sarcasm font.)
So, here I am, rocking out some song at 11:30 at night in my friend's basement. I have no earthly idea what I am doing, but I'll be sure to break this movie out at my cousins wedding in April. I think I'll call it "Monthly Self-Exam."

Fun with Bokeh

2010-12-01T23:16:00.004-06:00

Bokeh. What the heck is that? When I first started this photography obsession, I was clueless (and I still am in many ways.) But I know I love bokeh. Bokeh refers to those out of focus points of light in the background of your photos. Bokeh is the reason I had my monstrous garage sale so I could afford my 50mm/f 1.4 lens with a really shallow depth of field. Bokeh makes me happy.
So, what better time of year to get awesome, out-of-focus points of light than at Christmas? Christmas trees are perfect for this. I walked around my tree, taking more photos than I care to admit of ornaments, so that I could get some awesome bokeh.
And you know what makes this bokeh even better? The creative aperture kit along with my Lensbaby. My aperture opening is in the shape of a star, so rather than having out-of-focus circles, I get stars everywhere. Stars! I especially love the stars on the silver ornament on the right.
I still struggle a bit with the focus on the lensbaby 2.0. But I have stars!
I'm a simple girl, really.

Farm Country

2010-11-28T23:07:00.002-06:00

I know that people think I am crazy, but I love the wide-open spaces of the Midwest. I am thankful for them. They soothe me.
I was born in western PA, spent time growing up in Texas, Michigan, Ohio and finally Illinois. Maybe it's because I have lived here the longest. Perhaps it's just part of my personality. Maybe I shouldn't try to explain it. I just love it here.
Every year, we make a trip back to PA to visit family. It is beautiful. There are trees, and hills, and curvy roads and I can't tell you which way is north, because not a single road goes straight to its destination. There is so much to look at, so much to see.
I find that after I have been there a while I start to feel claustrophobic. There is lots to see, but I can't see very far. I don't know what's over that hill or around that bend in the road.
As we head west to come back home, the hills gradually flatten (and my car is thankful for that.) The highways straighten out. And I can look out the windows and see for miles. And I can breathe again.
When I was got my license, and gas was $0.99 a gallon, I used to drive around in the country to see if I could get lost. I always found my way home. I loved knowing that roads either ran north-south or east-west. I loved driving by all of those farms and imagining the families inside, wondering how long that farm had been in their family, who had built that corn-crib.
So, each Thanksgiving, as we drive from our first meal with DH's family to our second meal with my family, I enjoy watching the November sunset over those empty fields and barns and farm houses and more recently, windmills. I feel a little melancholy. But it's beautiful.

Karma

2010-11-17T22:46:00.003-06:00

Yes. I am sitting here with kleenex shoved up my nostrils. Don't judge. You know you've been there. If I don't, there will be a disgusting and steady "drip drip" sound as...well, you get the picture.

It started as a sneezing fit when I got to work this morning. I thought I was having an allergy attack. I am pretty sure I am allergic to my cats; I ignore this fact.

I kept sneezing and sneezing. And then I went to talk to the school secretary and she said, "Are you sure it's allergies?"

And I stopped.
And thought: J has been sick ever since he got back from Singpore three and a half weeks ago. KJ has had a cough for a month now. Keebles has had a sore throat and a cough for a month. Neither kid has been so sick that they needed to miss school. It's been more of a minor annoyance.
I work in an elementary school.
And the whole time, I've been thinking to myself, "Well, look at me, I'm healthy as a horse. For once it's me with the strong immune system.
"Crap."

And I immediately left school and went straight to the store and bought a box of Cold-Eze and three boxes of kleenex. I spent the rest of the day at work with my two new best friends: Kleenex and Hand Santizer. Both my nose and my hands are now peeling.

I just did a shot of Ny-Quil.

Cold-Eze, work your magic. Cut the duration of this cold in half, like the box promises.

Please?

Bunhuggers and Big Hair

2010-11-10T16:13:00.007-06:00

I looked at the calendar and realized that today, November 20, 2010, is the 20th anniversary of my high school volleyball team winning the State Championship.

20 Years.

Holy cats.

This is freaking me out a little bit. So, I might as well write about it, right?

First of all, let me say this: I still have the shoes I wore when we won state. I am sentimental and I keep weird things (and I call my dear friend Kate, who is a professional organizer, whenever I start to worry that I have hoarding tendencies. She assures me that I do not. But then again, she doesn't know about the shoes.)

On November 10, 1990, I was sixteen, going on seventeen (go ahead, sing it!) and had lived in Princeton for two years. When we moved there, four days before school started my freshman year, I went out for the volleyball team as a way to meet people. I sat the bench the entire year. Sophomore year, I started as a setter.

Junior year was terrifying and intimidating. By then I had realized that Rita Placek had built quite a winning tradition for Princeton Volleyball. I also realized that I was up against some serious talent and had slim hopes of even making the team. I was thrilled when I did make it and then honored to have earned a starting spot.

It was then that it dawned on me that I would be wearing bunhuggers. For those of you who don't know what bunhuggers are, they were the traditional volleyball uniform at the time. They were basically underwear; "granny panties" if you will. We marched into 39 matches that season and played in our underwear. On the plus side, we did draw a crowd.

That's me on the bottom left. My bunhugger barely-covered butt was in a lot of pictures that year because I was surrounded by so much talent that it wasn't even funny. My job was to serve the ball in bounds and play the best defense I could. Oh, and to get low in spike coverage because our outside hitter was going to hit the ball at 90 miles and hour, and if the opponent managed to get a block up, it was coming back just as fast. Or, I would get low in block coverage, because we had two amazing and aggressive middle blockers. I am pretty sure I took at least one off of the face, but 20 years is a long time to remember.

It's really too bad you can't see my hair. In the video, it is glorious. Big and blonde and really big and lots of hairspray. My bangs never moved, but that big old puffy ponytail streamed behind me. And you know what else you can't see? We all had matching hair ties. They were "the sparkly ones." We had 3 or 4 sets of matching hair ties, but in the end "the sparkly ones" were the clear favorites.

We had an amazing season. We went 36-2-1, with our two losses coming to AA teams. We won four tournaments, if memory serves. We acted like complete small-town tourists when we went to Chicago for the Latin Tournament, heads hanging out the bus windows, awed by the skyscrapers. We adored our bus-driver, Max. We made our parents crazy. We came out strong against strong teams and not-so-strong against weaker teams. We carb-loaded and practiced at 6 am the week before the the state tournament to get used to playing in the morning. (Now, that was a tragedy of epic proportions. There was NO WAY I could get my bangs fixed after a 6 am practice and then the newspaper showed up to take our pictures that morning. GASP. I had my picture taken with flat hair. I was 16. It was the end of the world.) We had tremendous community support. We had supportive and loud parents (I think my own father may have been the loudest.) We took 5 busloads of fans to RedBird Arena for the match on Friday. The kids at school who didn't go to the game still got to watch it on tv. We beat Huntley 15-12, 16-14 for the championship. (I think we came from behind in both games, but I'd have to watch the game and I am not going that far.) We had a firetruck parade when we got back to Princeton. We had boys in the stands with their chests painted. They called themselves "The Rowdies" and even sent us flowers.

I haven't though about this season this much in years. I am glad that I am doing it now before I forget even more.

In honor of the 1990 Princeton Tigresses, State Volleyball Champions, wearing bunhuggers and big hair (and by the way, it hurts like hell to kneel on a gym floor.)

Killing my social life

2010-11-05T23:01:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, my son and I were sitting at my daughter's volleyball camp and he was bored with a capital B-O-R-E-D. In a moment of weakness (I usually don't give into such complaints) I pulled out the ipod touch, realized I had a wi-fi connection and looked for popular and cheap apps.
The first thing that came up was this "Angry Birds" app. It was $0.99 and had great reviews, so I dowloaded it.
My life has not been the same.
It's so simple. There are these goofy pigs that steal the birds' eggs (hence the angry birds.) Then the pigs build themselves houses out of various materials. Then you try to knock the houses down by launching the birds, using a slingshot. The houses get progressively more complicated and sturdy as time goes along. As you beat levels, you earn different types of birds. There are dive bombing birds, and egg-bomb dropping birds and just plain old bomb birds.
It's all physics. Trajectory and force. It's not hard, right? Right?
The killer is that when you fail to knock down the pigs' house, they grin and snort at you. They taunt you. How can you turn the other cheek? You get angry, along with the birds. And you play and play and play until your ipod battery dies in the middle of a game, and your eyes are incapable of focusing on anything further than 12" from your face..
See?
It's an addiction, rivaled by the great Sapp Family Tetris Addiction of 1990. But that's another story.
As I brush my teeth at night, I hear my husband giggling in bed, bombing pigs with birds.
I'm not the only one.

Mourning my cat.

2010-11-01T22:53:00.003-05:00

Today I had the gut-wrenching task of taking my cat to be put to sleep. Truth be told, it was time. He had been sick for a couple of months. He had been losing weight, with no explanation, and was down to about 6 pounds. He was no longer able to support himself with his hind legs. It was sad, but I was grateful that it was clear what decision needed to be made.
He was part of our family for nearly 14 ½ years. I still remember clearly the day I got him. Jason and I had just gotten married and I wanted a pet. I went to a shelter to choose one. They highly encouraged me to hold the kittens, so I held 5 or 6, but just didn’t connect with any of them. I was about to leave, near tears because I had my heart set on a kitten, when the owner came in with three new kittens. He put them in a cage and walked away. I peeked in and saw two huddled in the back and one at the front just staring at me. I looked at that cat and told the worker, “That’s my cat.” I didn’t bother to hold him. I just knew from the way he looked at me.

Jason and I put some serious thought into naming him. Jason is the one who came up with the name “Galileo.” I was a science teacher, so I liked the science name. And at Jason’s suggestion, he became “Leo,” like a lion.
Leo was rotten as a kitten. Perhaps rotten is an exaggeration, but certainly a trouble-maker. He had this need to attack, capture and then eat his dry food. He would use his paw to pull a piece of dry food out of the bowl. Then, he’d bat it around a bit, pounce on it, and then eat it. It was super cute, until he would knock over the whole damn bowl. CRASH! One afternoon, Jason beat me home from work and Leo had spilled all of his food. Cute, right? Jason cleaned it up, walked away and 3 seconds later heard the CRASH dry food being scattered all over the kitchen. Jason had a serious “talk” with the cat, and I think that may have been life #1 right there.
Our first Christmas was filled with joy, the joy of broken ornaments and destroyed Christmas Trees. We lived in a ground-floor apartment with giant sliding glass doors. The tree was right next to the doors, filled with beautiful, shiny, glass balls. Being dumb, or perhaps overly optimistic, we didn’t think a thing of hanging those shiny glass balls at the bottom of the tree. And then we’d be lying in bed at night, just drifting off to sleep and we’d hear the playful sounds of a kitten batting something around. And then we’d hear the sound of shattering glass as those pretty glass ornaments hit the sliding glass door.
As if breaking pretty glass ornaments wasn’t enough, Leo had to play jungle kitty in the Christmas tree. I would come home from work to find broken ornaments and the cat hiding in the tree, waiting to stalk whatever may come his way. He liked to get about half-way up and perch there, like a leopard, eyes all big. After a few times, he realized that he was in trouble, so as soon as I would get home, he’d launch himself from the tree to go hide. The worst day was when I came home to find him in the tree, minus the tree top (I have NO idea how he managed to knock that off.) I’ll admit, I may have lost my temper. I may have chased him through the apartment with a branch. I may have swatted him with the branch, hoping it would deter him from further tree escapades. It didn’t. Life #2.
During that Christmas season, we discovered that he wasn’t smart enough to avoid candles. We smelled a funky smell and then Leo came trotting over with decidedly shorter whiskers. Life #3.

Leo always seemed to be at the root of terrifying people in their sleep. One night, Jason and I woke from that space between sleep and wakefulness because we heard this terrifying crashing bashing noise. We discovered Leo, tearing through the apartment, with the string of a mylar balloon clenched between his teeth. Another weekend ,when my sister was staying with us, we were awakened by screams of terror. As in, someone-is-about-to-kill-me-with-a-giant-butcher-knife terror. We ran out into the living room to find my sister crouched under the desk, blanket over her head, sobbing in terror. All she could say was, “Spider. Giant Spider.” We never did find any spider. We are pretty sure the culprit was Leo, sitting on the arm of the couch, looking innocently down at her in her sleep, with his whiskers mimicking spider’s legs.
As Leo matured, he calmed down a bit, but was never what I would consider a typical cat. For one thing, he ate the most bizarre things in the world. He was known to steal black olives off of the relish tray at holiday gatherings. He was insane for string cheese. He loved Jalapeno Cheddar Cheetos. I know humans who can’t handle the heat of Jalapeno Cheddar Cheetos. He would snatch a McDonald’s french fry from your hands in an instant, if you weren’t paying attention. He didn’t like other fast food chains. He was a cat with preferences.
I am not sure that Leo ever understood that he was a cat. For one thing, whenever we sat down at a meal, he joined us at the empty chair.
He’d sit there and watch us eat, unless we were eating something he thought he needed. Then he’d join us on our chairs.
He was also more than willing to be held like a teddy bear.

I slept many a night with my arms wrapped around him. And if I wasn’t holding him, he’d squeeze in tight to me and sleep with his paw across my neck. Jason has a picture of him wrapped up around me one day when I was sick in bed with strep throat. Jason swears he is smiling.
Leo was an awesome cat. He begrudgingly accepted Newton and Einstein into his cat-family. He loved to be around the human family. He loved to bathe his human family. He could be annoyingly persistent in his need to be part of the family. He was under my feet every morning as I packed lunches. Every Christmas Eve, he stole seats so he could see what was going on at the table. Anytime we were heathens and had dinner in front of the TV, he was in someone’s lap. Anytime, I was sitting on the floor, he was next to me.
In fact, I am missing him terribly right now.
He should be wedged between me and my mouse.

He never would lie down on the left side of me.
Always the right, always in the way of my mouse.
I am sad to have lost him.
I know it will get better with time.

Success!

2010-10-21T23:23:00.004-05:00

I have shared many a photo that failed in one way or another. For once, I am sharing one that I am in love with (click on the photo to see it larger.)
My daughter and two dear friends were playing in our backyard Tuesday afternoon. When I went out to check on them, I found that they had raked our pine needles into a Big Bird-style nest and were playing in it. (I had always been a little sad that we had to cut down our big oak tree, but I guess pine needles are fun to play in, too.)
How could I NOT take a photo of this? I ran in to get my camera, and when I came out, they were plucking morning glories to decorate the nest with. That was even better!
And then, when I asked them to pose, they all posed like champs! (I can tell that my friend has worked with her two DDs on their picture posing!)
I decided to make it even better and followed Misti's tutorial http://lovethatshot.com/2010/07/09/controlling-textures-with-layer-masks/ on photo textures and layer masks at Love that Shot. So, now, I have a photo that I am actually proud of. I'll admit it.
Shot with my d3000. 50mm/f1.4 lens. 1/1250. ISO 400. f/2.

You'd think I'd know better

2010-10-20T23:32:00.004-05:00

DH is in Singapore. While I do miss him terribly, I am enjoying my time to myself. Mainly, I am putting the kids to bed and trying to learn photoshop a little better. For the most part, I am stumbling around, figuring things out by sheer dumb luck. But, I've read a few tutorials, downloaded some more actions but I can't help myself. I keep going back to Pioneer Woman's Vintage action and it keeps failing me.

There has to be something about the vintagey tones and my eyes that produce this glowing, terrifying alien look. Maybe this would make a good Halloween shot?

Why all the self-portraits, you may ask? That's because my children are now boycotting my camera. I have resorted to taking photos of myself. It's a sad state of affairs at my house.

Now I get it

2010-10-18T23:17:00.001-05:00

You know that whole "rule" about removing batteries from devices that you don't plan to use for a long time?
Yeah. I get it now.
My sister and nephew were coming for a visit. I needed to clean up the guest/storage/oh-crap-there's-someone-coming-over-and-I-need-to-hide-my-mess room.
I picked up our trusty old radio, the one that's covered in drywall dust and has seen us through many a home-improvement project. The one that's so old, it doesn't have an ipod dock. And I found all kinds of white powdery crystal-ish stuff all over the hardwood floor.

Yep. It was battery acid. Not one, not two, but three of the batteries (that have been in there since the dawn of time) leaked.

This one was so bad that is was misshapen and felt noticeably lighter. (On a side note, the science teacher in me wants to say, "Had noticeably less mass, but I decided that would be way to nerdy and weird. )

Mild fascination aside, I was pleased that the only damage to the hard wood floor was this small, dark spot. It will never be noticed amid the green and purple scuff marks from when this was my son's room and Buzz Lightyear had many an adventure.
And please, don't let this happen to you. Don't put batteries in a radio for a tailgate party and then forget about them for, ummm, let's say, three years.

5th Grade Boys and Cameras

2010-10-05T23:53:00.007-05:00

Today, my son went of a field trip to Springfield, Illinois. The 5th graders visited Lincoln's Tomb, the Lincoln Homestead, The Capitol Building, had lunch at the Governer's mansion with our state rep, Keith Sommers, and finally visited the Lincoln Museum. (I highly recommend it if you haven't been.)

I was a little heartbroken that I didn't get to go (serious photo ops, people!) and since I couldn't go, I twisted poor little KJ's arm until he agreed to take my point and shoot. I hoped that by giving him the camera and the freedom to shoot what he wanted, I would end up with some precious memories. I remember BEGGING my mom to take the camera with me, and I'd get 15 exposures with that Kodak Disk. And have to wait for-ev-er for processing. Painful

Controlling Mom Alert!!! Before he left, I had to set the camera to a mode in which the flash was OFF. I've become a bit of a flash snob in the past few months. Down with flash!

was not disappointed. The kid came home with over 250 shots. Some of them were of the backs of people's heads and his thumb, but all in all, I had a ball looking at them. It was so much fun to see what he thought was important. And to see the 30+ self-portraits he took because he "got bored by the old dudes talking."

My point? Take pictures. Let your kids take pictures, even if they are of Abe Lincoln's outhouse. This is your one chance to record your life, their lives. My husband always makes fun of me and wonders who is going to want all these damn pictures when we are gone. I don't care. I want to have them when I am a 97-year-old-widow, living with my sister, 23 cats and room devoted entirely to pens.

If you want help or inspiration, check this out! 31 days to a better photo. It's fantastic! http://my3boybarians.com/2010/08/31-days/

I amuse myself.

2010-09-29T17:03:00.002-05:00

We went to Great America last weekend. We have the pleasure of going every other year when J's company rents it out for an employee-only bash. It's fantastic, except for the fact that it has spoiled my kids and they have never had the soul-crushing two hour wait to ride a 90-second rollercoaster.

We always get to go as they are setting up for Fright Fest. When you first walk in, you get to walk through the "Seven Sins Cemetery." Oooooooooohhh. Our DD has always had a bit of an anger issue, and humored me enough to let me take her photo in front of the ANGER crypt.

Obviously, I then had to take a photo of DS in front of one of them. Pride sure seemed appropriate for an almost-11-year-old boy who love loves loves sports.

So, then we kept walking and I saw the "Lust" crypt. And I thought it would be HILARIOUS if J and I took a self-portrait in front of that one. Mainly, because with both of us working, two kids involved in multiple sports and activites, an old house that needs lots of work, who has time for lust? Let's be real here.

I darn well couldn't ask the kids to take this one. So, please forgive the bad angle. It was a self-portrait, taken with my P&S, trying to do it as quickly as we could before one of the kids asked, "Hey, what's Lust?"

I am not ready to go there.

Having a moment...

2010-09-20T21:56:00.003-05:00

Being a parent it hard.
Where do you draw the line between comforting a broken heart and taking the hard stance of, "Life lesson, honeybunch."
Especially when you know that a little more hard work might have made all the difference.
But, there's that whole idea of natural consequences. I love natural consequences, as long as they don't cause physical harm, or severe emotional damage.
She'll be over it tomorrow, right?
And maybe try a little harder next time.
Or not.
Because in the grand scheme of things, she's eight and this isn't going to affect her ability to become a contributing member of society.
Ugh. Being a parent is hard.

Ushering in Fall

2010-09-16T21:56:00.000-05:00

All I have to do is get out this candle, and it is fall.

There is something about Yankee Candle's Spiced Pumpkin that soothes me. It takes me back, way back, to when J and I first got married. I think that fall was the first time I bought and burned that particular scent. It's yumminess filled our crummy little apartment in Buffalo Grove. It welcomed me home from teaching school and coaching volleyball games. It was in the background enjoying newleywed life and not running up $400 long distance bills.

It also takes me back to when KJ was just turning one. We'd spend the days out in the grass, playing in the few leaves we had in our yard from our dying, decrepit oak tree. Then we'd come inside, I'd light this candle and enjoy some quiet moments while he napped. It also makes me think of the fall when my daughter, Boo, was 6 months and KJ was 3 and we would sit outside and hit wiffle balls and enjoy the crunchy leaves. Or the fall when Boo was 2 1/2 and wandered away from me at the Apple Orchard so that she could go to the bathroom all by herself. Those were the most terrifying 8 minutes of my life, and highlighted the difference between my independent daughter and my son with the apron strings.

There's something that makes me feel a little melancholy, thinking about all of the falls that have come and gone. I've been married for 14 years. My little boy is now almost 11. My baby girl is 8 1/2. I am back to work. The memories we are making are different now: Pumpkin Festival crazy carnival rides, fall baseball, volleyball camp. I love watching their worlds expand, yet miss the simpler times.

Someone once told me that smell is the sense most closely associated with memory. I can't smell this candle and NOT be trasported to fall. I love fall. I love the crisp mornings and the leaves rustling and football on tv. I love the beginning of school, hooded sweatshirts and weenie roasts. I love this scent.

I'm a little bit messy

2010-09-09T23:25:00.001-05:00

So, I've mentioned that I love fountain pens. The problem with the fountain pens is that they sometimes dry out. And when they dry out, they need to be rinsed with water. Because the inks are waterbased, this works well, except for the fact that one's hands end up covered in ink. See Exhibit A.
This wasn't too bad. There have been times I have ended up with it on my face. Sometimes the pen gets clogged and one must blow through the pen like a straw to clear it. And then one ends up with ink on one's face.
No lie. This is a typical event in my life.

It's Football Season and I am Happy!

2010-09-07T23:05:00.001-05:00

I wish I could explain it. There is something about football season that just makes me happy. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the lazy Sunday afternoons. Maybe it's the regularity of the schedule (Seriously, baseball, 162 games?)
Whatever it is, I am a happy girl right now. I tolerate college football. Too many teams and quickly changing rosters for my little girl brain. Not to mention the bizarre BCS formulas. But the NFL gets under my skin.
I know these guys get paid too much, and have egos the size of Texas.
I know it's ridiculously expensive to go to a game (unless you know someone willing to share some free tickets.)
I know a lot of these guys are terrible role models for kids.
I just can't help it.
When I was growing up, my mom and dad would sit down every Sunday morning with the paper and the point spread and bet (just for fun.) There was such cameraderie there. Now, we have fantasy football. I even got my mom to set up a team this year. My 10-year-old son had to help her set her roster and show her how it works. It was a cute bonding moment.

I love the Steelers. I know that the off-season has not been kind to the organization. I'd be perfectly content to see them dump #7 on his ear and go with Dennis Dixon. I've been told it would be a poor business decision. So, I hope Dennis Dixon takes the first 4 weeks and rocks and then #7 becomes an afterthought.
Pipe dreams?
Perhaps.
And I digress and need to go to bed.
But, again. It's football season and I am happy.

Look Mom, I'm spitting

2010-09-02T22:19:00.002-05:00

At what age do boys start this whole spitting ickiness?

Here's my son, getting ready for baseball practice with a wad of sunflower seeds stored in his cheek. I asked him to pose for me and as I shot this one, I caught the spit flying out of his mouth.

And he was proud. And he wanted me to take more pictures of him spitting. And I did.

But, I must ask again. When do boys start spitting? He certainly didn't learn it from me.

Joy and Pain

2010-09-01T16:33:00.001-05:00

Ahhhh, the joys of raising a daughter.
Don't get me wrong here, I love my daughter. She is smart and funny and is a great helper. She loves animals and loves to read and is starting to love volleyball. She is a great student and is perfectly well-behaved at school and for other people.
Our only struggle is that she is unimaginably strong-willed. Our first glimpse of that was when she was about 10 months old and threw up on her cherished "Yellowie" (the blanket) in the car. I changed her clothes and tried to put her back in the carseat without the barf-soaked blanket. 25 minutes later, we were still walking around the parking lot. I could not physically get her into that car seat. And she was under a year old.
Then there was the day we were shoe shopping. She was a little over two and insisted on getting in the car seat by herself. I forgot about that and tried to put her in. Kicking, back arching and screaming ensued. After about 5 minutes, I got her back out and told her in a less-than-kind manner to climb back in herself. She threw her head back, right into the edge of the door and started crying more. That's when I looked across the parking lot and saw a lady watching me, cell phone in hand. I put DD back in the car and then climbed in myself and counted to 10. My sweet little, 4 1/2 year-old son said, "Mommy, you are scaring me." It took another 10 minutes of "Scary Mommy" plus almost all my weight to get her into that car seat.
Fast forward 6 years. She's beautiful and smart and wonderful and every once in a while, that bull headedness comes out. (She's a Taurus. No surpise there.) Today it was over homework, for no good reason other than she didn't want to do it.
My parents tell me my sister was similarly strong willed, and she grew up just fine. In fact, she's quite awesome.
So, I have faith that DD will do the same. There are just those moments when I feel like a failure as a parent. And then she comes over and gives me a hug out of the blue and it's all better.

Prepare to be underwhelmed

2010-08-21T22:01:00.003-05:00

I simply cannot pass up any new, fancy, fun, cool-colored pens. One evening, this past winter, I dumped my purse and counted the number of pens and pencils floating around in there. 87. Yes, I was carrying 87 pens and pencils on the off-chance that I just might need to write something down. I wanted to have choices. You just never know what kind of writing mood you are going to be. But, my pen habit is a topic for another time.
I am here to talk about the writing instrument that I could not live without about an hour ago at Wal-Mart. (Cue the drumroll.) The SHARPIE LIQUID PENCIL. No more breaking leads! The "liquid graphite" technology eliminates broken leads! It's smooth like a pen, but erases like a pencil. It becomes permanent in about 24 hours. Seriously. Where has this been all my life? Sometimes I just feel like writing with a mechanical pencil, and well, this looks like the Cadillac of mechanical pencils. Plus, it came with extra erasers. EXTRA ERASERS! (Great! More stuff for me to lose in the depths of my purse.)
So, I pulled it out, wrote with it and was transported back to grade school when office supply companies first came out with ERASABLE PENS. Remember those things? The ink clumped up, smeared and smudged, smelled funny, and didn't write smoothly at all. But they were erasable. How awesome was that?
I am pretty sure that the Sharpie Liquid Pencil is nothing more than the 2010 version of the erasable pen, sans funky smell. It looks cooler, that's for sure. The tip is all narrow, kind of like a mechanical pencil. But it's just not very satisfying. That "liquid graphite" doesn't write very vividly or smoothly. And you don't really need that eraser to erase. Smudging with your pinky will do the trick.
Sigh. I was hoping for it to write like a true Sharpie. Because I love me a good Sharpie. Those Sharpie pens make me happy. I am a little sad that the liquid pencil isn't doing the same.

Photoshop Failure, part deux

2010-08-06T17:51:00.001-05:00

So, I have photoshop. I have some free actions. I checked out a book on photoshop. I am taking an online class and have had exactly one tutorial on editing flowers.
That's how I end up with stuff like this.
My favorite action right now is Pioneer Woman's "Old West." I applied it after lightening and sharpening our eyes.
Now we have glowing "I am posessed" eyes.
Straight out of a horror movie, huh? I wish I could remember the name of the movie I am thinking of. It was full of kids, in a school, they all had white-blonde hair and glowing blue eyes. I think we belong in that movie.
Maybe I need more practice.

Photoshop Failure

2010-07-25T22:32:00.001-05:00

So, I downloaded the free 30-day trial of Photoshop. And I kind of hated it until I allowed myself to download some free actions. Dangerous, very dangerous.
I started with this photo of me and my lovely, wonderful, beautiful sister and tried to make us look even better. It's a cute picture of the two of us, taken on a weekend that we spent in the Windy City.
Allow me to rephrase. It WAS a cute picture of the two of us. I have managed to make her look cute and me look like some sort of circus freak.
I started out by using an eye brightener. All of the cool kids are doing it. Then I ran a Pioneer Woman Action called "Lovely and Ethereal." And we were lovely and ethereal.
Could I leave well-enough alone? Is the Pope Methodist? Does the Bear crap on a toilet? I had to try Pioneer Woman's "Vintage" action. While I sat here and waited for it to work its magic, I kept imagining how amazingly awesome and old-fashioned it was going to look. Like, "Frame it and hang it on the wall" awesome.
And then this showed up on my screen, and I nearly busted a gut laughing. It would seem the Vintage Action looks great on pretty, fair skin like my sister has. Not so much on my more tanned face. And boy, so those brightened eyes of mine stand out. Freaskshow!!
Oh well, at least my teeth are pretty and white!

Save the Beetles

2010-07-21T16:39:00.001-05:00

Most people here in the Midwest despise those Green Monsters, the Japanese Beetles. They eat roses and tree leaves and everything green, flowery and beautiful.
But not my daughter. No siree.
She and her friend spent the day at the pool saving the beetles from the pool water and taking care of them.
I am sure the rest of you are thankful.

I should have trusted my nose

2010-06-10T09:06:00.004-05:00

It's like a train wreck or a car accident, right? The carnage is devastating, but you cannot look away.
My grandmother gave me these, her precious Tupperware measuring cups (from nineteen-ought-six) almost 10 years ago. She was moving out of her home as it had gotten to be too much for her. She was nearly 90 at that point. I promptly chucked my Wal-Mart cheapies and got to baking with these lovely Harvest Gold babies.
I've been washing them in the dishwasher for years and never thought anything about it. The day before yesterday, I noticed a funky-burning-plastic smell coming from my dishwasher. Being the trusting individual that I am, I ignored it. When I unloaded the dishwasher yesterday, I found that this little guy had somehow fallen off of the top rack and ended up down near the heating element.
Mystery of the Funky-Burning-Plastic Smell Solved!
Ugh. I have some guilt because these were a hand-me-down from my Grandma. I can hear her now, tsk-tsking because I didn't take better care of them. Or maybe she's looking down on me, saying, "Shannon, they are older than you. Don't worry about it." Either way, no more dishwasher for this little guy. He can still work for me, although I don't think he'll stack as nicely as he used to!

Testing

2010-06-08T17:09:00.001-05:00

I am getting all high tech here. Posting from my email account.

Mostly, I just want to complain because both of my kids' games were cancelled for tonight and now the flipping sun is out. Eight rainouts between my two kids. My son has had more rainouts than games played. This stinks.

<<<<>>>>><<<<<>>>><<<>>>>

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Red Boots

2010-06-07T23:49:00.000-05:00

My husband's grandmother is an absolutely awesome lady with a style all her own. She loves sequins and costume jewelry and bright, vibrant colors. She loves ornate lampshades and antique glass and everything QVC. She recently had this fantastic idea: she wants my daughter to have some professional photos taken in some of her fancy clothes. Grandma gave us a stack of hat boxes almost 4 feet high, containing some real gems, including a hat from the 20's and a full-length sequined dress. But, by far, my favorite item that has been added to my daughter's dress-up bin has to be these red boots. Grandma used to wear these boots to her Red Hat Society meetings. Can you stand it? A 70+ year-old-woman in these red boots?
This makes me smile and gives me hope. When I am an old woman, I too will wear purple and red and frankly, whatever the hell I want. Because, really. Why shouldn't we wear what makes us feel fun and fabulous?

Blood Pressure is up

2010-05-11T22:22:00.002-05:00

I should know better than to react to the stupid things that people say. Seriously. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.
I have a hard time tolerating people who are just plain mean. It's possible to make social commentary without being an ass about it. There's no need to be rude. Maybe I care too much about people's feelings, but that's just me.
Perhaps I am just being sensitive because this "commentary" had to do with fat people. I happen to be on the plump side. I responded to this person because I thought that he should realize how offensive his comments are. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe I just opened myself up to ridicule. We'll see.
Ugh. Time to calm down.

What the crap is this?

2010-05-07T22:37:00.003-05:00

It's May 7. It's Mother's Day weekend. This is the weekend that it's supposed to be safe to plant your flowers. And it's windy and cold and it sucks. Did I mention cold? And windy?
Really. I am usually not one to complain about the weather. I live in Central Illinois. I enjoy the change in the seasons. It keeps life interesting. When I am cranky about 95 degrees and 100 percent humidity, at least I know I have below zero windchills to look forward to.
My son had a baseball game tonight. The moms were wrapped up like cocoons. It feels like football weather, not baseball weather.
Mother Nature, you can take this weather and...well...I won't say. What I want to say is not fit for polite company.
Good night. I am going to go wallow for a while.

Dirty Little Secret.

2010-04-27T23:21:00.002-05:00

Here' a lovely self-portrait of me and three of my buddies at the premiere of New Moon. (I'm middle top.) Yes, we went to the midnight showing. Yes, we are all over 30. Heck, most of us are over 35. And, yes, we have the Edward/Jacob debate. Don't make fun. It's not nice.

The movie is a pile of puke. Really, it is, but I am watching it right now, and I am completely ticked off that Bella and Jacob keep getting interrupted right. before. they kiss. You seem I am Team Jacob. Sure, Edward is prettier than any human should be, but he's just so stinkin' dramatic. And a little bit like a wet rag. Plus, I can't get over the sparkling. Vampires sparkle? Since when?

Jacob is all testosterone and earnest and warm. Why would you choose a cold statue over warm flesh and blood? I just don't get it, Bella.

But, back to ripping apart the movie. Kristen Stewart's acting ability seems to be limited to chewing on her lower lip. Robert Pattinson looks INTENSE and Taylor Lautner may win for best abs and pecs and shoulders, but he's still young and awkward. Jasper looks like someone grabbed his butt. And his hair is awful. The action scenes are completely over-the-top. . Yet, I watch. Why? Because I am a sucker for true love. Even in Hollywood form. And even if I wish true love was with a werewolf instead of a vampire.

Sigh.

Ultimate Bad Hair Day

2010-04-26T14:22:00.003-05:00

That's me, on the right. And my little sister, on the left. She has threatened to kill me in the past for posting this photo. I am taking my life into my own hands by sharing this with you, my nonexistent readers.
This was Easter Sunday, 1986. I remember how I wanted that dress, had to have that dress, thought I was going to die if I didn't have that dress (actually skirt and shirt.) I don't know if I thought I would look a little like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Maybe the mauve plaid was just too tempting. The cute little round collar? And beads to match. I was hot.
But really, am I ignoring the elephant in the room? Holy balls of fire, look at that hair. You see, my sister and I were not allowed to cut our hair. "Little girls have long hair," stated my father. My mother went along with it, but made sure he had to brush the bird's nest snarls we'd get every once in a while. Somewhere along the way, we convinced Dad to let us have bangs. And then those bangs steadily marched backwards until the entire crown of our heads were "bangs." And then mom got tired of curling said bangs (have I mentioned that my sister and I have stick-straight hair?) so we got ourselves some Ogilvie Home Perms. Sweet, huh?
The end result was this. Mega Mullets.
And if my sister ever sees this, I will pay. Love you, Court!

Curiousity killed my productivity

2010-04-25T23:26:00.004-05:00

I feel like the old man on that awesome 90's TV show, "Wings." Do you remember him? The one who asked all of the questions? "I wonder how much this building weighs?"

Point being, I start to wonder about something and then I want an answer NOW. Not in an hour, certainly not later, definitely not tomorrow. I need it NOW. So, I whined until I got myself a smart phone. But, I digress.

Question of the day: What day of the year has the highest percentage of births in the US? The drive behind this question came from logging onto Facebook today and seeing that I have six friends with birthdays today. Add to that two friends who are not on Facebook and my dear daughter, that brings my total to NINE people that I know personally with birthdays on April 25.

I don't know about you, but that seems to be statistically significant. But, I never took stats, so I am just talking out of mybackside now.

Of course, my good friend Google and I started looking for this infomation. I came across several sites that stated that October 5 is the most common birth date in the United States. But, I don't know a single soul born on October 5. How can that be true?

These are the things that keep me up at night.