If you want to destroy my sweater...

...pull this thread as I walk away! Do you ever have one of those days? Those days where nothing goes right, your achy, grumpy, tired, life is sucking your will to live and you feel like you are barely keeping your head above water and your comfy sweater of life is slowly unraveling? Has that day ever turned into a week?

Mine did! Some voices have been raised (mine) and some tears have been shed (mine, also) but the weekend is so close I can taste it. It tastes good.

For no particular reason, this week has been a 10 on the suck-i-tude scale and I am so happy that it is over, I can hardly stand it. This morning as Ross was getting ready to leave for work I asked him if he would take a sick day - for me. He said no. Bummer. He did let me know though that he's using all his vacation days for the year (like we went on vacation this year! ha!) during the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'll take it. He's going to make me work my butt off doing home improvement projects but I'll gladly tile and paint just to have another adult in the house to help with the monkey. Elliott hasn't flung poo at me, like monkey's tend to do, but I think he's been close.

In addition to being frantic in life, work, cub scouts, ceiling repairs, holiday prep, stuffy noses, upset stomachs, baby puke, burning paper, etc. Ross gave me an assignment to tape Elliott doing all his tricks. Yeah, right. Like I don't have anything else to do! Like the kid does his tricks when a camera is on! So, not only have I been trying to do everything else this week, I've been following my poor baby around with a stupid camera to catch him in action. It hasn't gone well. He wants to eat the camera, not do tricks for it.

However, I did get one gem this week. Pay close attention to the "aaahhhh" after the drink. We've been working on that one for a month or more.



And, what is good for fixing a bad week? A really good dinner on Friday night. Tonight, we're celebrating dad's birthday with a family dinner at Robintino's. I love that place and haven't been since my parents took me last October when Ross was out of town and I asked them to take me there (how's that for a run-on sentence?). It's a wonderful family haunt that we've been going to since I was a kid. I'm so excited for bread sticks, pepperoni and sausage pizza, brown colored glass, dinky little candles on the table, watching my brother inhale his food. It's all good and I'm happy.

Happy Birthday, Dad-e-o

My dad has had a mustache as long as I've been alive, if not longer. Once, when I was very young he shaved it off. My sister and I were gone, playing at a friends house and as we walked home we saw my mom on her usual perch, the front porch, with some guy. I remember being a little apprehensive approaching the house (didn't do well with strangers) and just talked to and looked at my mom. Whomever the guy sitting next to her was, I didn't know. After who knows how long, it was finally brought to the attention of Haley and myself that this "stranger" was our dad...sans mustache! It was strange. Very strange.

Though the first concert I ever went to in my life was NKOTB (New kids on the block) and I cried as I watched Jordan dance around the stage (12 years old, cut me some slack), it was not the concert that epitomized concert going for me. For my 13th birthday (8th grade), my dad took me to see Sting at what was then known as Park West. It was an outdoors concert extravaganza. The first time I saw people making out en mass, dancing ridiculously, and smoking pot (yes, a little sheltered was I) all to the sounds of the Stigner. I was in heaven. Since that time, my dad and I have seen Sting together many times.

My dad is new to the e-mail age. I think it scares him a bit, but he's getting better. He knows how to send attachments! His e-mails are usually very humorous and sarcastic and IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. YES, WE'VE TOLD HIM THAT MEANS HE'S YELLING AT US THROUGH THE INTERNET BUT HE DOESN'T CARE. HE DOES IT ANYWAY. PROBABLY JUST TO ANNOY US. He did learn how to simpsonize himself a few months ago when the movie came out. I was impressed.

My dad is a good dad and a good grandpa. Elliott loves him. Sometimes, Elliott pics him over my mom. That's funny.



We all have different names for my dad. I call him dad-e-o. Willie calls him Father Time (my mom is "mother nature"). I think Haley calls him something too, but I can't remember (Haley, what do you call him?). Regardless, it's his birthday and I hope he has a good one.

Post 402

I've been blogging since the fall of 2005. Today is post 402. I don't know that it means anything, but that's a lot of time spent on the Internet, for sure.

Yesterday, vouchers were defeated in good old Utah. Yeah! Sigh of relief. Being a former public school teacher, I was terrified that it would pas and am happy that Utah sported a 33% voter turnout in an off year election to squash any hopes of the elitist fools who wanted my tax dollars to pay for their kids to go to charter schools with unqualified teachers! Enough of that.

Moving on...Ross and I have been married for a little over 4 years. In the first 3.5 years of our marriage, Ross fixed dinner every single night. No matter where we lived, or what time he came home, he fixed dinner. The summer we lived in P00-vo (also known, for various reasons, as the worst 3 months of my entire life) I think that maybe I prepared dinner a handful of times, but most of the time I waited (starving) for Ross to come home and cook, or order a Pizza and salad from the Brick Oven. We ate pizza every week I think.

Baking has always been my forte and I love to do it. Give me a challenging recipe for a chocolate cake and I'm golden. I love to eat batter, and dough, and make messes that Ross usually cleans up for me later. Baking is good. Cooking on the other hand - not so good. I can do it, and am not too shabby, but it's not really my thing.

Anyway, dinner is now on my plate (pun. aren't puns great?) and it's starting to grow on me. We don't have too varied a menu these days but I look forward to the 30 minutes of alone time each day way more than I should. You see, I start cooking as soon as Ross gets home from work. By 4 pm everyday, Elliott and I are done with each other and are usually in separate corners. Ross sweeps in around 5 takes the monkey upstairs, feeds him some kind of happy pill, and they re-emerge when it's time to eat.

My private, personal alone time in the kitchen is so valuable to me. So valuable in fact that I don't even mind cooking dinner anymore. Initially, back in January, February, March...it was a chore. Something I had to do if I wanted to eat. But now, almost 10 months later, I think I'm getting pretty good at it and we have a "real" dinner every night. In fact, largely because Elliott turns into a pumpkin around 6:30, we don't even eat out that much anymore, preferring to eat at home.

Why all the talk about food? Because last nights dinner was tasty. Here's the menu:

Salad with ranch dressing and craisins

Green beans with crispy bacon crumbles and brown sugar caramelized shallots

Rosemary, balsamic vinegar and garlic marinated flank steak

Ross at a piece of bread and drank milk, while sitting (and eating) on the living room floor. I ate my meal at the bar in the kitchen. I drank water with a shot of chocolate milk afterwards.

Delish!

What's on the menu tonight you're asking yourself? Thin crust frozen CPK pizza and garlic bread. Ross has church meetings and I didn't plan very well. Tomorrow night? Pork roast with red potatoes. Yum!

I love...

...crisp clean sheets on the bed...

...this camera (Christmas gift anyone?)...or this camera

...husbands who vacuum up their messes...

...these red shoes...

...seeing my baby learn new tricks...

...the stickers and postcards I can get from this website...

...walking into my house and being overwhelmed by cinnamon scented pine cones...

shutterbugosity

Photography is something that I love and the habit has become more addictive in recent years. Rarely, it seems, do I take pictures of anything but Elliott and little league football these days, but when I do have the change to shoot other stuff, I take it.

A dream of mine is to make money taking pictures. I'm not a professional, but I've got a good eye. I know all about aperture and shutter speed even though I choose to leave my camera on program mode. I struggle a bit with lighting and the flash, but who doesn't. Though I'm self taught, I definitely think that I could do really well taking pictures on a very part-time basis. Just today as I was walking a teacher through an online problem she said to me, "I took the digital camera class from UEN over the summer and the instructor showed a bunch of your photographs. They were really beautiful." That's nice AND unsolicited. Maybe there is a market for a girl like me taking pictures.

I think that my most favorite picture ever is this one

I love the composition, the color, and the fierce tightness of the British guards fingers. He could twist your head off with that thumb and forefinger. I took this in England in 2005. I should find a place in my house to hang it on the wall.

And yes, I take a lot of pictures of Elliott around the house like this one:

but there is just something about his excitement that is so addictive.

Now, let me stop rambling and get to the point. I'd love to take pictures for a living but I'm too untrained, un-marketed, and unprepared. And, I'm a big fat chicken unwilling to go out on a limb. Though I've been collecting my pictures in a "portfolio" folder of sorts on my computer for years, it's basically just for me to look at. The mail we got over the weekend though is making me have second thoughts about my fear to be a photographer.

We got a flyer for THIS local photographer and studio over the weekend. It's the second one we've got in as many months. The guy can advertise. I don't want to be mean (and hope he doesn't know how to check to see who links to his webstie), but look at his gallery (especially the one where the girls are sitting in the grass and there are a ton of people milling around in the background). Please tell me that all my pictures on flickr and in photo books are better than this guys. As I looked at his site last night I began to wonder if he's making any money. And, if he is, how much? And, can't I do better taking a picture in someones front yard than he's doing in a studio with rent? How can he have a business and I can't? Um, because I'm a chicken and he's not! Ba-ak!

What to do, what to do, what to do? I'll do what I always do, nothing. Just pine over a silly dream and move on.

If you want me to take pictures of you or your kids "on location", I'll do it.