A Perfect Afternoon

Jun 27, 2009 | This Life

Hanging out at our favorite coffee place, catching up with childhood friends, and gushing over the most beautiful baby on the planet. It’s a recipe for a perfect afternoon.  What did you do this fine summer day?

(I don’t know how his parents would feel about this adorable child making an appearance on my blog, so you get toes only. I am sure, however, that our friends are tired of hearing me gush over how beautiful their boy is. But seriously, he is. I mean, just look at those toes!)

A Summer Project

Jun 23, 2009 | This Life

Photos always tell a different story than what I see in real time. It never ceases to amaze me the details I over look until I snap a photo. Then, in the still proof of a moment captured, I notice. 

This is mostly true with product shots. It’s only after a couple hundred frames are loaded into the computer to edit that I notice the stray string in every shot. Or the random rake left on the porch that appears to be floating in the background.  If you take product shots then you know, backgrounds count as much as foregrounds. A messy kitchen doesn’t sell your wok! It’s all about image manipulation. Create a wonderful environment for your product and people linger. In fact, it’s the number one bit of feedback I get on Mireio, “Your store is so inviting. I want to live there!”  

Yeah, ME TOO! Truth is, a great product shot is about staging the environment in just such a way as to eliminate the distractions and highlight how fantastic your creation is! Right! Because it is fantastic and you want the world to see that. This is why, no matter how “real” my mounds of laundry might be, they won’t be taking center stage. Clean up those spaces, pare down the backgrounds, and let your light shine.

These details matter, in business anyway. But in real life, laundry does happen and random rakes do float in the background. And staging my life or the photographs of it is just a bit more neurotic than I have time to be!  Which is why I’m always amazed at what I see in a photograph. 

Take the images above. These were shot last week. Boy Wonder and I have decided to plant a container garden on our dilapidated deck off the laundry room. It gets lots of sun and is pointless otherwise. Because it’s off the ground by a floor, we’re not worried about vermin munching on our veg—so it seemed the perfect spot to claim “Victory” and plant away. (Plus, I’m kinda making up for the fact that I took the kid’s “plot” of land in the front yard and planted roses. That was a bad mommy  moment. Ahem. )

But until I started editing  the photos, I hadn’t noticed that the back deck was missed 2 years ago when we painted the house. How did that happen? I mean, it’s this awful moldy earth-to-terracotta flaking mess out there. It should have been the first thing they painted.  Seriously? How did I not notice this disasterpiece before now? 

What I did notice was that we miraculously had just enough old planters left over from the Marin garden to house all our new plants. And I noticed that my child, while totally enthusiastic at the nursery picking out plants, tends to bite off more than he can chew.  Like his mother. He pooped out planting after 3 containers and left the rest to me. But he loves watering and so that’s all good. Every morning he’s out there crowing over the growth. Mostly, I noticed how much he loved just being together.

I suppose that’s the real mystery of life. We see what we want to see. Naysayers and photographs might tell us differently, but the lens we don to see life through is very much a choice. Not that the back deck doesn’t need painting. It does.  It’s just not the most important thing in the picture.

Nineteen

Jun 16, 2009 | This Life

Tonight marks our 19th wedding anniversary. It has become my custom on this blog to write on the subject each year — it’s always a glimpse into my understanding of this thing we call marriage as well as a love letter to the man the universe brought into my life. However, tonight, I am having difficulty finding words.  They are there, bubbling just below the surface, waiting but not ready to be written. It might be, in part, because we aren’t actually celebrating until the weekend—so this milestone doesn’t seem quite real yet. I will write, I promise. After nineteen years I have some words to say. Just not tonight. 

But, I didn’t want to let the evening go without some acknowledgment. Despite our plans for the weekend, IZ still proffered a beloved bottle of champagne this evening.  And as we sat on the porch drinking in the view and marveling over this amazing journey we call marriage, I remembered a post I wrote several years ago on the subject.  It’s not the same as writing something new—but I think, if you read it, you’ll understand why I consider these words the truest I’ve ever written. They were true then. They are true tonight, perhaps even more so. 

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At Last

Jun 2, 2009 | This Life

Playing Catch-Up

Jun 1, 2009 | This Life

Cedar Trees in Portland Heights

 

I’ve been painfully out of touch for the past 10 days.  So, I’m not going to even attempt to artfully craft this post. Instead, I think I’ll just give you a straight forward update. I’d like to start back at this as if I’d never been gone. But, that feels like leaving open a door needing closing—drafts of unfinished business tend to make me cold. And you know I’m not a fan of cold.

Almost 2 weeks ago we set about to put in a lawn. That was a Thursday. The Tuesday before my child informed me that he was “coming down with something.” That’s code for, “Hey mom, I’m sick. You’re going to be sick too!” And sure enough, we rolled the green and 12 short hours later I succumbed. 

If I hadn’t gotten so sick, I would have described the intricacies of our putting in a lawn. It was a feat of scheduling genius—between rentals of trucks and equipment to the timing of purchasing sod. And then you would have been compelled to leave witty remarks about lawn. Yeah, I’d say you’d dodged a bullet.

Instead, I got sick and set up camp on the couch. I watched a LOT of television. I discovered that Bill Curtis has a very soothing voice. He does. I slept through numerous episodes of something he narrates. What it is, I’m not quite sure, because, um, I was sleeping. And  can I just say, Jon and Kate + 8 makes me sad?  Very, very sad. TLC was nice enough to run a mega marathon of all the seasons while I was sick. I didn’t see them all, but I saw enough. Even hopped up on cold/flu meds that show screams TRAINWRECK. With eight tiny souls at stake, well, that’s just sad.

Anyhow, the couch and I communed all through the holiday weekend. The sunny holiday weekend. The elegantly formed schedule for the yard, the schedule I was keeping, slipped. I’m now 2 weeks behind and gradually scraping energy together to tackle bits and pieces. Symptomatically (that’s code for SNOT!) I’m free and clear, but I’ve not rebounded. I find that by 3 in the afternoon I’m spent. I fall exhausted onto the couch, a strawberry flavored jello puddle, channel hop until I find  Bill Curtis so I can sleep. Needless to say, it’s not just the yard schedule that’s suffering. I’m behind on every front.

Everyone dreads getting sick, but I dread it for really odd reasons. Getting sick means work stoppage. I know that if we don’t  keep moving we will stall out. Ever so subtly we will drift into doldrums. Paralysis of analysis sets in and the necessary wind required to make decisions and act on them disappears. So, even sick, I’ve found myself outside tackling odd projects between blowing my nose. Eventually, IZ comes outside and chides, “You’re a woman on a mission, crack that whip.” He can mock all he wants. But I’ve seen my studio space and I know what stopping looks like. Not pretty, Bueller. Not pretty.

So that’s about it. I put in a lawn, I got sick, and I’m now desperately behind schedule. Lucky for me, though, I’m not above rewriting the schedule so it looks like I’m on target. History is flexible like that.