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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Books for July
- Body Surfing -- Anita Shreve -- 3
- This was very readable, and yet somehow also unsatisfying. The main character, whose name I can't remember because I read this approximately thirty days ago and hey, I'm getting older here -- anyway. She is a widow and a divorcee and she's only like 29, and she works as a tutor in a wealthy family, one summer at their summer house in I think... New Hampshire. Was it New Hampshire? It was someplace that I thought was Martha's Vineyard at first, and it was in New England, and it had an ocean. (See how memorable this book was?) And of course she ends up in a relationship with one of the sons of the house, or both, kinda, the sons, of course, being much older than her tutee (I swear that's a word), who is only seventeen. The thing is, this starts out as a literary-feeling kind of chick book, and it winds up as just a chick book about a relationship that fails and the one that takes its place. There's some very strong imagery and some memorable moments, and a few memorable characters and relationships, and I didn't hate reading this, but it wasn't anything that moved me or made me say Wow.
- Harry Potter and Something or Other -- JK Rowling (duh) -- eh, 3.
- So I finally decided to give this series a try. At least I don't have to summarize the book, right? Honestly, I found it to be nowhere near the level of the awesome kidlit I love, but it wasn't terrible either. It felt kind of like a hopped-up school story with magic stuff thrown in, whose movie (which I've never seen, so who knows, maybe it IS like this) should look more like the food-fight scene from Hook than anything from The Lord of the Rings.
- An Artist of the Floating World -- Kazuo Ishiguro -- 4.5
- I'm too tired as I write this to do justice in a review to an Ishiguro book. If you've read Ishiguro, you know to expect brilliance: delicate story-un-telling, surprising twists that are laid out a phrase here and a phrase there until you figure them out on your own with more of an "ohhhhh..." than an "oh!", and endings that don't settle anything much. This early Ishiguro, a historical fiction piece about a retired artist in post-WWII Japan with a dubious past, does not disappoint. Of course. It didn't grab me like Never Let You Go, and it wasn't as hair-raisingly sublime in its subtlety as Remains of the Day, but it's still several cuts above most anything else you'll ever read, and it'll ruin you for ordinary novels for at least a day or two. If you're like me, anyway.
- On Chesil Beach -- Ian McEwan -- 3.5
- This readable little literary novella is, on the surface, entirely about a virginal 1940's couple's sexual anxieties on their wedding night. Beneath the surface, it's a strong character treatment (two strong character treatments, actually) and an incisive study of human sexuality, human frailty, human morality, and the tragic results of the failure to communicate. I can't say much more without giving stuff away. The heavy sexual emphasis was a bit of a negative for me, but (duh) it's what the whole story is about; there's not a gratuitous, tittery moment in the text. You might try it, if you've an afternoon free and an interest in this sort of literature. Jenn, I think you'd really like it.
- Outlander -- Diana Gabaldon -- 4
- My only reread this month -- I just kind of got a hankering for it, not sure why. As much as I think Gabaldon went wrong later in the series, I really do enjoy this first book in it. It pales a bit after several readings -- one notices the infodump much more readily, for example -- but overall reading it is still a rippingly decent way to spend lots of hours.
- Harry Potter and Something Else -- JK Rowling -- 3.5
- More of the same, but with an extra half-point because I actually laughed out loud twice. I can't remember what about, now.
- The Railway Children -- Edith Nesbit, read by Karen Savage -- 4.5 for story, 5 for recording
- Talk about brilliant kidlit. LOVE. THIS. STORY. Plucky Edwardian kids move to the country, win friends, overcome daunting odds, have a happy life, etc. It's recorded for Librivox by a WONDERFUL reader with a British accent that suits the story perfectly. Seriously, I've heard professional audiobooks that were far, far, far less appealing than this gem. Download This Now. This Means You. (as long as you or someone in your household loves a touching, funny, timeless, ageless children's story, that is.)
- The Story of the Treasure Seekers -- Edith Nesbit, read by Karen Savage -- 5 for story, 5 for recording
- Also a brilliant story. This one also involves plucky Edwardian children -- this time there's slightly less pathos, and even more humor. Same Librivox reader, also, here.
- Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X -- Victor Appleton II -- 4 for story, 5 for recording
- Tom Swift and Tom Swift Jr. feature in stories that are basically a sci-fi version of the Hardy Boys (indeed "Victor Appleton" and his fictitious son "Victor Appleton II" are pseudonyms for the same publishing syndicate who produced the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew). It's rather interesting, actually, that instead of revising the original texts of the 1930's Tom Swift books to reflect more modern sensitivities in the 50's, as the Stratemeyer Syndicate did with Frank, Joe, and Nancy, they simply created a new character (Tom Swift, Jr.-- whose dad, the original Tom Swift, continues as a character), a new pseudonymous "author", and new stories. I've read some from each era -- this whole book and parts of an original one that I volunteered for at Librivox -- and I do genuinely prefer the Tom Swift Jr series, and not just because the authors eliminated the hair-raising dialectized "Negro"isms of one of the supporting characters in the original books. This particular story is a nostalgic trip to the 1950's (which, let's face it, can't be nostalgic for me because I was born about twenty years too late for them, but whatever), when space exploration was deliciously full of possibilities, most of which involved shiny metallic suits. The details of the story are not terribly important (are they ever in this kind of book?) but this was a pleasant "read" -- made more so by the Librivox reader who truly went above and beyond with sound effects and such. The Ts and I listened to this on the way to and from the observatory, and it made an already-pleasant trip that much more memorable.
- Wives and Daughters -- Elizabeth Gaskell -- 5
- Mrs. Gaskell, where have you been all my life? This book has almost all the pleasure of an Austen novel -- maybe a WEE bit less biting satire, but it makes up for it in warmhearted affection between its characters -- with the bonus of being roughly twice or three times as long. I had never heard of it until I volunteered to help with it at LV (it's not done yet); can you imagine the joy of coming across something like this by surprise? BLISS. It was so pleasant to have a lovely, thick, long, engrossing, beautiful story to read that was completely new to me. I heartily recommend it to any Austen fans who haven't discovered Gaskell yet.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
day 28 - barn rafters
This is the view from a storage room in the loft of the barn on the ranch where I spent most of my childhood, one way or another. My grandfather and his father built the barn in the very early 50's with their four hands and a Ford tractor. It was constructed to house a commercial egg ranch operation, which it did for a decade and a half or so, before my grandfather's heart condition required him to "slow down" (this was the advice they gave you in the 60's, none of this new-fangled 'go out and get some exercise' stuff), so he sold off the chickens and took up teaching school.
Anyway. This barn, aside from being a veritable breeding ground for the Hanta virus and possibly a rather unsound structure (see above re: built in 1950 with four hands and a Ford tractor; did I mention that they mixed the concrete foundation themselves with sand dredged from the creek, sand which you could scrape off of the bottoms of the walls with your bare hand even when I was a kid twenty years ago?), was one of the preferred play areas for my dozen maternal cousins and myself when we were children. This storage room was our playroom -- mice-infested mattresses and all -- and many was the hour we spent there, inhaling all manner of dust and organisms while playing House or War or whatever else popped into our heads. (It is my theory that these many hours of hanging out in such an unsanitary environment are the reason why my immune system is so robust today. Maybe I should open a spa there.) When I was a little older and I lived at the ranch, it was sometimes one of my jobs to come down and feed the (drastically reduced flock of) chickens and gather their eggs in the morning and evening; in the winter this meant it was dark, and even at the ripe, mature ages of eleven and twelve, tough country girl that I am and all, I had a phobia about the barn in the dark. So many shadows. So many creaky, unidentifiable sounds. The moment when I had to reach my arm in through the door and throw the massive switch that turned on all the lights in the place was sheer terror. One time my brother was with me -- here's the part that ties in with this picture -- and he wickedly whispered that I had better check the rafters before I went in, in such fear-instilling tones as only a big brother can master.
Confession: I'm thirty-two years old and, thanks to my darling big brother's words so many years ago, I still get a shiver if I have to be in the barn after dark, especially when the light from the flashlight bobs around these rafters from the feed room below.
Photographically speaking, this is far from perfect, and it's not square, but oh well. Maybe I'll reshoot it someday. If I can bring myself to go in the barn again after reliving all this, that is.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
day 26 - fire extinguisher
We were loading the truck with more auto parts this evening, in preparation for taking them to my parents' for storage tomorrow. One of the things we pulled out of the garage, which I had forgotten we owned, was this antique fire extinguisher. As far as I can tell, it's just a canister that would have been filled with fire-extinguishing powder, and you'd unscrew the top and pour it on the fire.
Hey, it's a lot more interesting-looking than the box full of MoPar power-steering pumps. I don't know how many power-steering pumps a guy really needs, but apparently, according to my beloved husband, it's a lot.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
day 25 - air conditioned
I LOVE THIS OLD SIGN.
This sign, which I've wanted to photograph for a long time and finally did today when I was in the valley, has always made me a little bit sad. It's a relic from the days when Highway 99 was a two-lane highway and not an eight-lane freeway -- when a trip through California from north to south necessitated an overnight stay, or three or four overnight stays. To imagine it in its 1950's heyday, and then to see the motel in its current state (as a drug-addled "studio apartment" complex)... sigh. (Ask me if I liked the movie Cars.) There are similarly depressing leftovers from a bygone era in a lot of locations along 99. Sometime I'll take a photography trip, and get some more of them, before they're all gone.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
in which I am decidedly un-heroic
I have been noticing that I may be mildly depressed right now. Nothing so dramatic as crying fits or wanting to throw myself off bridges or seething inside with rage at the loss of the life I might have lived if I hadn't been such a loser... just this faint whiff of, well, mostly, laziness. I'm faced with the monumental task of having to move all of our belongings from the place I have lived for essentially my entire adult life, into another house that may never, for all we know, emerge intact from the ethereal mists of home-buying confusion. Here are the ways my heroes would handle this situation.
My eighty-year-old spunky grandmother would work herself into a coma.
My mother would make an organized list, divide it into days, and have the whole job done efficiently and promptly within three weeks.
My dad would build a new house with his own two scarred hard-working hands, multiple sclerosis be damned, on land someone gave him as a prize for being the best man in the world.
Jesus would speak kindly and rationally to everyone around him, and they would miraculously and willingly do things his way. Except for the ones who wouldn't, but that would all be part of God's plan.
T would just power through and get it done. Well, he is powering through his (much larger than mine) part of the job, and he is getting it done, one truckload at a time.
Mary Poppins would snap her fingers a few times, and poof.
This last one -- how do-able do you think that might be? really? Because that's about all the energy I have to expend on any of this nowadays. I'm so drained from the waiting, so frustrated with the fact that this big THING that has such a huge impact on the rest of our lives is just one more piece of paper to get lost on the desk of some person at an office who thought he'd already faxed it to some other person at some other office but who really hadn't, that all I seem to have is enough energy to kind of ooze through my day, loading the dishwasher here, packing a box from an unused cupboard there, folding a load of laundry now and then, and spending a whole lot of time reading Wives and Daughters, wishing I could justify a four-hour nap each day. Or maybe two. I don't feel overwhelmed by catastrophe; I just feel by turns angry at the delays and apathetic about the entire situation. T reminds me that it's all in God's hands, but I seem to be having a crisis of unbelief right now and there's no way I can feel that. And it's harder every day to pretend that I do.
And on that cheery note, I'm taking the kids to the town pool, 'bodily emissions' and all. It's too hot to do any energetic playing outside, and we're all three of us getting a layer of winter fat, except it's July. I don't feel like doing this any more than I feel like doing anything. Maybe, though, if I just keep on doing, the ability to feel will return eventually. It's been known to happen before. Here's hoping.
Monday, July 23, 2007
day 23 - goodbye
LT built this fort entirely with his own hands, mostly when he was about 9, although he's added bits to it since then. Now that we have to move, he's been taking it apart very slowly; this was taken right before we did a pretty intense demolition session that left only the one main part of the platform standing. He's pretty philosophical about it -- he says when we get our own house, he can build a better one. Maybe even one that won't make Mom worry for his life and limbs every time he's on it. :)
Sunday, July 22, 2007
day 22 - turkey
We went out to my parents' today, to put some of our larger need-to-move items (read: car parts) in storage in their barn. They "have" a flock of wild turkeys on their ranch -- meaning the turkeys have chosen a tree in their backyard for roosting -- and Dad has taken to scattering chicken feed for them. Watching the whole crowd of them peck around the birdfeeders and bird baths meant for much smaller birds is quite funny. This particular hen was checking me out, making sure that neither I nor the black thing that seemed to frequently be attached to my face were going to harm her or her family, or -- heaven forbid -- take away any of their food.
Just basic normal processing on this, except that I cropped out a bright green (and hence very distracting) garden hose.
I should not be so perky right now.
This afternoon (well, yesterday afternoon) we went to Lick Observatory (you know, why couldn't the guy have been named, say, Thompson? Yay for the guy and all, thank you for your contributions to science, but Lick Observatory just sounds... wrong). It was a lovely drive, and looking through the ginormous telescopes, which I had never done before, was sublime. We stayed until almost eleven. The observatory is three and a half hours from home going the quick way -- which we did not use. We got home, with a brief stop to eat (1:00 AM, we were at this place off the freeway with like ten fast-food joints per square foot, and every drive-thru was busy. It was ... surreal) and a stop to get gas, at 3:20-ish. All I can say about that is that T has reason to be glad that I have my strange up-till-the-wee-small-hours sleep habits, because I drove home with nary a yawn, singing along to the iPod, while he and LT both snored. Next time he gives me a hard time when I come to bed at three AM, I'll ask if it's worth saving an $80 night in a hotel for him to leave me alone about it.
(Oh, did I say I was going to start going to bed at a normal hour? Har! hee hee! ha!)
Poor T, though. He was off looking at some astronomy-related thing, maybe Jupiter or something, while I was setting up my tripod to take some post-sunset city lights pictures and watching the sun go down. As the sun set, the last little bitty remnant of it flashed green. I didn't know this was anything special, although the guy next to me kind of freaked out about it, until T came over asking if it had really happened because the aforementioned excited guy was telling everyone about it and they didn't believe him. Apparently this is something T has wanted to see, oh, his entire life, and he missed it, and I couldn't have cared less while I stood there and watched it happen before my very eyes. (Also, I went in a tank at an airshow when I was like seven, and didn't care a hoot about it, whereas T, who has been a tank freak since he was in diapers, did not have a similar opportunity until he was past thirty; add to this the fact that my bank-assigned ATM PIN is pretty much his favorite number -- it's a car thang -- and means nothing at all to me, and I suppose I should really start to feel pretty bad for the guy.)
Saturday, July 21, 2007
day 21 - 36-inch
Today we traveled to the Lick Observatory, which we do at least twice most years. This time it was for the Summer Visitors' Program (read: we got to look through some of the telescopes instead of just looking AT them). It was my first time doing this, although the Ts have gone to this event three or four times. We had a lot of fun -- it was a lovely long drive (and when you can drive across California's central valley in July without A/C and still enjoy it, you KNOW it's a nice drive) and the viewing through the telescopes was just wonderful.
This is the observatory's 36-inch refractor (note: the measurement is the diameter of the lens, not the length -- it's more like 60 feet long). When it was built in the 1880's, it was the largest telescope in the world. In 1610 Galileo discovered four of Jupiter's moons; in 1892, scientists found the fifth one with this telescope.
Grainy, noisy photo, because it was very dim in the building.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
day 19 - fence and tree
Nothing spectacular today (as if there's ever anything spectacular... anyway). We stopped off at a friend's house really quickly and I liked the way the setting sun hit their fence and oak tree. I wish the distant oak tree wasn't there but I didn't have time to whip out the chainsaw and Take Care Of It. Also, this looks way better without the square crop but I already broke that rule once and I didn't want to push my luck. ;-)
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
day 18 - moon
Just a quick throwaway shot of the moon. Yay for square crop -- at least it gave me the opportunity to make this a little bit more interesting. :).
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
day 17 - eighty
Today we celebrated my grandmother's eightieth birthday (although the day itself isn't for a while yet). Grandma's truly lived every one of those eighty years, and I admire her a lot for her tenaciously plucky, matter-of-fact attitude about life. Many happy returns of the day, Grandma.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
day 15 - birds
I had to dash out to the store this evening (after a nice quiet day at home), and when I did, I saw that the 'bird gang' was out in full force. There's this one area at the bottom of our street where these blackbirds congregate in really large groups on the TV cable lines. They sit there making a lot of noise, harrassing each other and passers-by and especially other birds (woodpeckers must be Crips to their Bloods or something, I swear), until it gets fully dark and then they go home.
(The things that go through my head sometimes. You have no idea.)
Anyway. There were more birds there tonight than I ever remember seeing before, and I stopped to take a few pictures, since I was in no hurry (and since I hadn't shot anything for this project yet). This square crop is a tiny sampling -- they were packed along the wire like this for sixty yards or so.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
day 14 - scouts
They were heading out for an overnight Scout hike when I asked them to pose. LT was up about three hours earlier than his usual time, in addition to both of them having been up late the night before. Also, I had hauled myself out of bed and gone out on the lawn barefoot in my jammies to take their picture. So none of us was at our best. They had a fantastic time, though.
Friday, July 13, 2007
day 13 - weathervane
I decided to give everyone a break from the family pictures today. Today's been kind of quiet -- nothing out of the ordinary except that my husband and son are gone doing Boy Scout-related stuff, so it's just my daughter and me. We went for a walk, and as usual we passed my Favorite House. It's a 100-year-old Victorian, and it's really not my favorite house anymore, but when I was a little girl it was the fanciest house I had ever seen and I coveted it so, so badly.
Anyway. The Favorite House has a tower with a weathervane on top, which I must confess to have photographed at least two or three times before. Today's shot showcases the ancientness of it as well as the blue, blue, blue summer sky.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
day 12 - helicopter man
Part of T's job as a telecom tech involves maintaining and repairing radio signal repeaters; sometimes this requires being flown out via helicopter to remote mountaintops in the Sierras. Today was one of those times, and we thought it would be fun for the kids and myself to get up early and drive an hour and a half to the Crane Flat helipad to watch him take off. We had a great time.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
day 11 - chasing
This is a very quick and dirty edit (twelve layers of quick and dirty, but oh well), and there's a major error front and center. Also, focus is baaad; I usually get pretty good DOF even at relatively wide apertures with my Tokina 19-35mm -- just, apparently, not THIS good when it's THIS wide. It doesn't help that I hadn't actually intended to do this when I started shooting; I didn't have a tripod or anything (maybe next time). We were just playing at the school playground, and the kids were playing a game we like to do, where you run around the circle and wherever you stop (when Mom makes a screeching-brakes sound effect, of course), you have to come up with the name of a book character or something you wear or the title of a movie or the name of an African animal -- or whatever the person who's It decides, but you get the idea -- that starts with the letter where you are. Anyway. They started running around, and I had the camera on burst mode like I always do, and ... well, this happened.
a little help?
No news on the house thing. I think I should make a T-shirt to that effect, or have it tattooed on my forehead.
This post is, once more, about something completely different and un-house-related. It's -- a little strange. Bear with me. There's this guy named Howard Schatz who did/does this project called "In Character" with actors and actresses where he gives them a situation and tells them to pose accordingly. You may have seen his work in Vanity Fair (which, I'm sorry, but what a nervy title for a magazine about the entertainment scene, really. How terribly apt. At least they're honest) or in book form. Some examples (these are actually Mr. Schatz's and I am not going to use them):
1) You are a dedicated father who, with your wife, has just sat down to dinner with your 15-year-old daughter, who is defiantly announcing that she's pregnant.
2) You are a fashion designer on the morning of your big runway show, and you've just realized that nothing in your collection is ready or fabulous.
Et cetera.
What I'm wanting my Vast Blogging Public to do for me, if you all (3! there are 3 of you! woo hoo!) would be so kind, is to provide me with more of these sorts of scenarios, for a project I want to do. (Gee, I bet you could never in a million years guess the nature of this project.) Be creative. If I get a whole lot I won't use all of them, necessarily, but the odds of getting a whole lot are rather slim, so feel free to come up with as many as you want. Please? Pretty please? I can't offer a trendy prize or anything, but I will smile in your general direction and be very grateful. Also, you might just get to see me embarrass myself with your very own idea, and wouldn't that be cool? Oh, you know it would.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
day 10 - look mom, no hands
"Enjoy these days when they're small; they grow up so fast."
It's probably the number-one most-repeated cliché connected with parenting -- and the reason for that is that it is completely, 100%, undoubtedly true. Each time a more experienced parent says it to a younger one, the intensity of the truth is there behind the words, completely inexpressible. It's something you can't fully understand until you've been there yourself -- that bittersweet, near-panicky feeling of it's going by too fast oh please slow down oh please.
So. I present to you my boy, who has been transformed in such a breathlessly short time from the needy, squeaky-voiced, boisterous, exuberant five-year-old who discovered by accident that he didn't need his training wheels anymore, into this great hulking man-child who rides his fifteen-speed confidently with no hands, slipping away a little closer to manhood with every turn of the pedals.
Monday, July 09, 2007
day 9 - unraveling
I have a tendency to hang onto objects that have sentimental value long after I should have let them go.
This sweater, for example, is one that I bought in the first year of my marriage, when I was 19 or maybe 20. It's (uh, it was) a very heavy maroon cotton cabled hip-length behemoth of a sweater, and I think it went out of fashion about five minutes after I first put it on (because that's just how I roll). I wore it for several years anyway (again with the how I roll), through three pregnancies and sundry other events, until about five years ago when I got tired of it. It has(d) a really big, ugly run in the back. Yet, because it dates from that early period of my marriage, I have been unable to make myself get rid of it.
However, now that we face the very real possibility of having to move everything we own (which is... a lot), suddenly the value of things changes a bit. I was going to throw the sweater away, but I decided to try my hand at reclaiming the yarn, to make dishcloths from it. There may well be a time in the near future, thanks to a Mortgage Payment -- pardon me while I run around and scream like this -- when I won't have the money to support my yarn habit, and I'd be glad to be able to pull out something free and make something useful out of it.
See how far I've come? Now, instead of moving a five-pound sweater, I'll be moving... five pounds of yarn. (Don't ask about the cropped-length ivy-green crewneck sweater that T bought me on our first date, though...)
Sunday, July 08, 2007
day 8 - PIT bell
I had just kind of an off day today. I woke up cranky, had a cranky time getting ready for church, then moved into a cranky afternoon of folding laundry and self-loathing before having a cranky evening. (I have been just lovely to be around. Don't you wish YOU were married to me.) My wonderful husband thought it might help if we spent the evening together doing fun stuff, which generally does make me feel better. And it did -- a little. We played PIT; here's a shot of the bell with some of us reflected in it.
And now I'm going to bed, where perhaps I should have simply stayed this morning.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
day 7 - I don't love this view at all.
day 7 - view from the maybe house
Originally uploaded by Mrs Rachel
(click to view it larger)
This is part of the view from the front door of the house we hope we can buy, but are sternly forbidding ourselves to love (hence the title). It's uuuugly right now -- July is that way in the foothills, and the place is unoccupied so the lawn is, um, not a lawn at this point in time.
Square crop is an odd choice for a landscape, but the 50-day project I'm doing has a square-crop rule. I already broke it yesterday, and didn't want to do it again today. :)
the 50-day thing
Since this place isn't exactly hopping with posts these days, and since the 50-day photo project has really turned into an interesting kind of blogging experience and I'm actually writing more than I have in a long time for it, I've decided to go ahead and post it straight to this blog each day, via flickr's "blog this" thingamabob. yippee! posts! (all two of you who are left, rejoice. Or... not.)
Friday, July 06, 2007
day 6 - crime scene
day 6 - crime scene
Originally uploaded by Mrs Rachel
(click to view it larger
Today we went to help a friend of ours. She has a rental property, and the tenants had been giving her trouble. Latest antics: trashing the place, vandalizing a bunch of her belongings, and throwing bleach everywhere in the rental, including on this mirror.
The person in the background is T, standing on the porch waiting for the sheriff's deputy who was on the way. All very exciting for the kids, who thought they were inside a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys collaboration. We were just glad to get the mess cleaned up, get a report taken by the sheriff's department, and come home.
la la la no news la la
This will be a post about a few things that are completely not house-related because there is nothing house-related to discuss. Me tired of waiting? nah. Take your time, universe. yeah.
ha.
I am doing another DPChallenge side thing (like the 30-day self-portrait thing). This one is themed "50 days in the life of ______", except instead of the blank you would, you know, put my name. (Oh, man, why do I ever write in this thing in the wee small hours? I always, always regret it later...). I have not set up a photo blog for this one (although who knows why not, because a girl just can't have too many photo blogs). I am instead doing the sort-of-blogging at DPChallenge. I post the pictures at flickr, but don't blog there. Um. I think, if you cared, you could go... um, let me find it (cut to cartoon image of person digging through trunk, throwing out a series of humorous objects over shoulders)... here, and sort of follow along.
Also, T! My awesome husband, T! Do you know what he did? He lost THIRTY-SEVEN POUNDS from January till now. THIRTY SEVEN. That is very nearly the weight of one of my larger nephews. Gone! Awesome, no? He didn't do any fancy diets, he just ate less and moved a little bit more. The reason he didn't move a LOT more is that this was a competition that a few guys at work put together (leave it to men to make weight loss into a competition. Can you see a bunch of women doing that? We'd end up crying and/or scratching each other's eyes out), and it was purely weight-based, and he didn't want to gain too much muscle weight. He won the contest. He. Looks. Amazing. (like he didn't already). He weighs less than he did when we got married. I am so proud of him. And maybe a little insecure, now that I am the one with the higher-than-I-wished-it-was BMI. Don't bother asking if that stops me from digging into the ice cream or the Kung Pau chicken, though. Sigh.
And I said "a few things", which implies three-ish or more, but that is all I can think of right now, unless you wanted to hear about my grocery-shopping solo trip to the city tonight, or the fact that it was a hundred degrees at 8:35 this evening, or about how appallingly easy it is to spend $200 on food and household sundries, or about how glad I am that my car runs nicely again, or about how I stopped on the way home at 10:00 to let a man whose car was broken down use my cell phone and I didn't get mauled or kidnapped or anything. Or about how the stars were gorgeous. But you didn't want to hear about any of that stuff. Oops.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
day 5 - in the shade
day 5 - in the shade
Originally uploaded by Mrs Rachel
(click the picture to view it larger)
I think the picture pretty much says it all.
This was taken on my front porch at around 4:45 pm today. At 12 percent humidity, you can feel your skin parching. Fuel temperatures are in the 120s, which means a stray breeze and a wayward cigarette could team up to set the whole countryside on fire at any moment. Fun fun fun. I miss winter.
I can neither confirm nor deny the report that I bought a thermometer today with this shot in mind.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
day 4 - fireworks tree
day 4 - fireworks tree
Originally uploaded by Mrs Rachel
Today we went to a swim party/potluck/prayer meeting at the home of some friends. I took pictures during the swimming portion of the festivities, but we have a no-posting-pictures-of-our-kids-in-swimsuits-on-the-Internet rule, so you won't be seeing any of those. The fireworks display was pretty much an afterthought -- the Ts were too tired out from all the swimming, eating, and praying we'd already done, so it was just C and me, driving out just before they started and finding a place to park and a vantage point that might be decent. The vantage point turned out to not be quite as decent as I thought, since a telephone pole that I had thought would be well out of my shots ended up being very near the middle of most of them. But we had a good time watching the fireworks, anyway.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Day 3 - C and shadows
Day 3 - Claire and shadows
Originally uploaded by Mrs Rachel
C has been working all spring on the horizontal bars. She can do them all the way across now. Whenever we go to the school playground (which we did tonight while the boys were at Boy Scouts), she heads right for them. Yay C!
Monday, July 02, 2007
books for June
The trouble is, I can't remember most of them, I don't think.
I know I read Three Junes on vacation, and didn't like it much.
I know I finished To Kill a Mockingbird earlier in the month (reread) and, as usual, loved it. Perhaps even more than I have before, as my children are the ages of Jem and Scout nowadays.
Oh, and I read Vanishing Acts, by Jodi Picoult. Ehh. It was OK. I'm getting a wee bit tired of even the good parts of Jodi P right now. I think I'll take a substantial break before I read anything more of hers.
I'm pretty sure there were more, but apparently I need to start writing these down; I'm getting more and more forgetful in my old age.
day 2 - Mary
day 2 - Mary
Originally uploaded by Mrs Rachel
This evening, T was at a meeting and the kids got invited over to a friend's house to swim, so I found myself faced with something that is rare enough in the life of a homeschooling mom to be an event: time alone. I had a hard time deciding whether to walk or knit, and decided to start with the walk and see what happened after that.
This photo is of my cat, Mary, who greeted me with an appropriate air of feline superiority when I came back.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Day 1 - C, berry-picking
Day 1 - C, berry-picking
Originally uploaded by Mrs Rachel
There's a creek through the town where I live, and all up and down it it is a wilderness of blackberry brambles. Much of the creek is on public property -- road easements, parks, the like -- and so the berries are, as far as anyone has ever been told, free for the taking. Not many people bother, really, and there are so many that are completely inaccessible (see above re: wilderness of brambles) that there are plenty left for birds and what have you. Anyway. We went on a berry-picking walk this afternoon, and the light was lovely. This is C, contemplating her next move.
still waiting.
Just wanted to update everyone.
Also, I just realized that I forgot my book post. Maybe later.
