Fun with Bokeh

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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...

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

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

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!

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

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

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.