225/365 Remember

"Remembering Grandmother"

Since Weber and I married late in life and both are only children, we have very little extended family.  My dad and his sister are it.  We have had to rely on stories and photos to share our families with one another.  (In some cases this may be safer than the real thing!)

Here Weber is holding a photo of himself and his grandmother taken many years ago.  He thinks that he looks a lot like her.

224/365 Play

"Serious Play"

It was way too hot here today for any outdoor play.  Even Adidas did not want to go outside and play with his frisbee.  I possibly could have bribed Harley and the cat to engage in a little rough housing, but to photograph just a moment of their antics looks a whole lot more serious than it really is.  I didn't want any calls from the SPCA about the cat abusing the dog.  So, Erin became the lucky target of my camera today.  Lucky for me, she is always photogenic!

The kids played around with Tiddlywinks that we brought back from England.  This is a game that we all associate with children; however, it was actually designed by a group of Cambridge University students as a competitive "sport" to be played between various colleges.  The serious look on Erin's face is a testament to the fact that it is actually harder than it looks.

223/365 Helianthus Annuus

"Sun + Flower"

I love sunflowers both to just look at and to photograph.  Unfortunately, on my limited path today there were no sunflowers to be found.  I had to settle for a picture of a flower, a hibiscus on the patio, in the 100+ degree sun.  I'm not sure how it is managing to stay so fresh looking in these miserable temperatures.

Sorry about no sunflowers, Erin!  

Oh wait . . .here is one from the archives:-)

222/365 Natural

"What You See Is What You Get"

Today is my least favorite day of the Capture Your 365 month - self portrait day.  Not only did the prompt call for a self portrait, but it was to be a self portrait au natural,  no make-up or fancy stuff.  Can this get much more miserable?  We also had friends in town this weekend so I did not have a whole lot of time to give to this.  That may have been a good thing; I couldn't stress to much about the outcome.  So here it is, the eighth one of these self portraits this year.  Four more to go.  2/3 of the way through.  I am trying to look on the bright side.  There is one, right?

221/365 Dress to Impress

"Overdressed?"

I'm so glad that today's prompt of "dress to impress" was not this month's self portrait! Dressing to impress is definitely not my thing. My daughter, however, is always willing to dress or perhaps overdress. Today doing her daily bread baking chore, she was moI'mre "dressed" than I get most days - for anything. I have often said to my girls, "I don't wear outfits; I wear clothes." Dressing is purely functional. Bottom line: I want to be comfortable.

I Sense A Theme Here

On July 10th, exactly a month ago, Weber and I celebrated our third anniversary and I gave my final exam for first summer term.  While I was at school, my beloved husband was doing on his anniversary what most men do, frantically trying to wrap a gift for me.  This involved finding appropriate wrapping paper.  And so the story begins . . .

We don’t have much cause for gift wrapping throughout the year because a) the majority of our family birthday’s are in December b) I have a moral objection to gift wrap and c) we don’t give many wrapped gifts (see “b” above).  All this to say that the gift wrap we do have resides in the closet in our guest room, a room that is kept off limits by a baby gate because of a little dog who likes to leave gifts of her own in there.

As Weber was scaling the gate with wrapping paper in hand, he caught his foot on the gate causing an intimate encounter with the wall in the hall.  Again, I was not home at the time so I missed this daring choreography.  According to Weber, the “thud” elicited a half-conscious “Are you OK?” was his sleeping stepdaughter.  He managed to respond with,  “I think so.”  She went back to sleep and he assessed his various places of pain.

As it turns out, he must have smacked the wall on his way down because when all was said and done, the only real injury was to a finger - his ring finger on his left hand.  By the time I got home, it was swollen quite a bit.  He had not thought to take off his wedding band immediately so at this point it was pretty tight on his hand.  We managed, by slathering it with soap and holding it above his head, to finally get it off.  And, he gave me my still unwrapped anniversary gift.  Here’s to the irony of taking a fall like that and the only think you injure is your left hand ring finger, requiring you to remove and not wear for several weeks, your wedding band, on your anniversary.  So, Weber got to masquerade as an unattached guy for a few weeks.

As we were preparing for our trip to England, we searched to various websites for the hotels where we would be staying to check on the availability of free wi-fi.  We quickly learned that “free” and “wi-fi” are words that the English do not often use in combination.  Our first stay was in Cheltenham at a Holiday Inn Express.  Surely an American chain would offer free wi-fi.  Weber had an email exchange with them and was told that if he became a member of their rewards program, which was free tHeflin, he would then have access to free wi-fi.  That was easy enough.  He then received the following email:

Dear Mr. Baker,
Thank you for your email.  We can update your IHG number and you will be provided free wife.  Please advise us your IHG number
If you need anymore information please do contact me
Kind Regards,
Tugba Ilkbey

Duty Manager (Trainee) 
Holiday Inn Express Cheltenham Town Centre
Dunalley Street
Cheltenham
GL50 4AP

Freudian slip or the wonders of spellcheck?  

Whatever the case, we have gotten many laughs from it.  I told him that it was probably a good thing that he was not wearing his wedding ring.  I wasn't sure how his free wife would feel about the fact that she was getting a “not new” husband.  I also wondered if having two wives was a blessing or a curse.  Oh well, we won’t go there.

As it turned out, the free wi-fi materialized, the free wife did not, at least as far as I know.

Just this week, the following cartoon was in the paper.

The synchronicity of things never ceases to amaze me!

Weber’s finger is no longer swollen so he put his wedding band back on.  He is at home with one wife and all the free wi-fi that he wants.

220/365 Camera Love

"Anam Ca(me)ra"

Though I have a lot of stuff, particularly books, I really am not a materialistic person.  Most of the things that I have I could give away or do without very easily.  Over the past couple of years, however, my camera has become the big exception here.  If I had to give it up, it would be like losing a piece of my soul.  I am passionate about photography and, if I am to be honest, I have to admit that I love my camera.  Obviously this is not the same kind of love that one has for a person, but it is the kind of love that if its object  were gone, would leave a huge hole resident within me.

How many "non-essential" things do you do everyday?  We all have to eat and go to the bathroom each day, but what else do you do every single day?  There was a time when I could say that I practiced clarinet every day; those days are long gone.  I journal almost every day, but that almost every day is not every day.  And when I skip a day, I don't feel guilty about it neither do I find that my day has been lessened in any way.  What I do do every single day is tell my husband that I love him and take a photograph.  Actually these two things are like potato chips - "Nobody can eat just one."  I tell Weber that I love him  every chance I get and most days I take way more than one picture.  The point here ise that these two things happens every single day without fail.  Some people may call this an addiction.  I call it passion - in both instances.

It does feel odd to admit that I love an inanimate object.  As I think about that, I realize that it is not actually the camera itself that I love, but what and how it encourages me to look and see differently, more intentionally, more creatively.  On a very practical level, I see things through my camera lens that physically I cannot see otherwise.  That alone is a real gift.  But what sustains my love affair with my camera is how it helps me to see beauty in the simplest things, how it asks that I view the world from different perspectives, how it compels me to seek ways to create pictures of emotions that often defy words.  Simply stated, taking pictures brings me true joy.