Category
Photos
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04.03.08
Photos, Please Bear with Me, Uncategorized (7)
bathroom, Laurel’s Cuban restaurant, SF, originally uploaded by young@art.
My next bathroom visit of the evening wouldn’t be so pretty. Damon would have the camera and my jacket and my soul outside the warfield ladie’s room while I rejected grilled sole, habanero salsa and mojitos.
The rest of the photos are up on Flickr, even those tights and shoes I promised
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04.02.08the pace of things this week
Chas, Daily, Home, Photos (3)
, originally uploaded by young@art.
I just posted midspring pictures to Flickr so that, later, when the hot dry blasting winds of summer parch the soil, I can look back to all this green. But you see that background there? That fuzzy, blurry background would indicate the speed of things around here. Actually, make that warp speed.
BUT. Tonight is date night. Black Keys in the city! Not so much a pause but at least some glitter in blur. I’m wearing ma GOLD heels like a Roman goddess and I’m going to spend today running around the house looking or my glittery tights. So. I guess, expect more blur.
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02.18.0830 days in the treehouse, day 5
30 Days in the Treehouse, Listening, Photos, Seeing (1)
30 days in the treehouse, day 5, originally uploaded by young@art.
After looking at this for a while, it makes perfect sense why I made this image the say I did: we’ve been feeling totally WOOZY today. All of us ate something *bad* yesterday in Davenport and have been taking turns in the bathroom at all hours every since. This picture really nails how I’ve been feeling.
Plus, the February light is pretty intense, even in the treehouse.
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02.11.08Mustard & Relish
Chas, Daily, Photos (4)
My brand spankin new camera is in the shop. For 6 more weeks. Time to keep playing with the old one! Challenge of the day: Take a picture of Chas in the mustard in the middle of a bright sunshiney day. Can she do it? Did I. I LOVE this picture! Say what you want, but this picture makes me SO happy! It feels hot and cold at the same time, just like spring sunshine on sleepy skin. It will help me remember the mustard in a few weeks, once it’s gone. LOOK at those grubby fingernails! And I froze the moment when Chas handed me two deadheaded mustard blooms, just because. Just because!
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01.10.08
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09.27.07
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03.13.07SPC: Flickr tools #2
Daily, Exploring, Ford, Photos, Self Portrait Tuesday (0)
With little difference to the stiff neck I felt yesterday morning, I drove the kids down to the beach. All the elation that nearly winded me on the drive down to Half Moon Bay fizzled once I started lifting Chas out of deep tide pools and stretching to capture fossils embedded in the rocks. I remember the swirling panorama of beached seals and hungry surf, thinking, This is a very bad place to be with a stiff neck and two exploring preschoolers.
So I let both of the kids clamber their way back to the beach on their own (Chas is getting surprisingly nimble) and then rested in the tent while they bouldered and threw rocks at the incoming tide. This overexposed shot is taken from my little infirmary. I like the way it captures the heat, unforgiving light and pain (although I might be the only one to look at this picture and feel it). It also has a nice retro tint. What’s your impression? I’m obliged to use these flickr tools for SPC’s current challenge but I’m not sure I’d use these tools in my own. It lacks authenticity. Not sure I like that, although it has a home somewhere.
My advice to anyone waking up in the morning with a stiff neck is to traction yourself to a board for the rest of the day and hook yourself up to an IV and catheter. Don’t drive a long, winding road to the beach, set up a tent, wrangle children across the rocks at low tide and then press reverse. That was a recipe for disaster. Damon says it wouldn’t matter; that the muscle would spaz no matter what.
I wonder if he’s right.If you want to learn more about online photoediting tools , check out a gallery exhibiting some at SPC.
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02.19.07Our Third Child
Chas, Daily, Photos, Seti (4)
I read somewhere, ten years ago when we were puppy-surfing, that a Jack Russell Terrier is like having a perpetual three year-old in the house. Well, that’s pretty true. Seti, our dog, is all about the “now” and the “me” and balls and toys. He doesn’t always share; in fact, he’s always hoarded his own ball at the dog park, fending off dumbfounded pit bulls and retrievers five times his size, just by the obnoxious tang in his snarl. And, just like any preschooler, you can distract him off the nasty scent of a dead rat in the backyard just by saying the magic words “where’s your ball?” It’s so easy.
Ball. Ball is life. Well, ball is second to frisbee, but we’re out of frisbees right now. We have two chronically wet tennis balls (you can see why, above) and one racquetball (a far superior choice to all manufactured dog toys for the medium dog set). Seti will carry the ball around the house, right under your feet, hoping you will throw it. When you sit down to talk on the phone, he will drop it at your feet. When you try disapppearning into the bathroom for ten minutes, he’ll unlock the door with his razor sharp Jack Russell perserverence and drop the ball at your feet. And certainly, when you slip into a nice warm bath, ready to erase the day’s grime off your body and soul, Seti will come and drop the dirty ball into the bathwater. Then he’ll sit and stare at you imploringly, his brown eyes now big obsidian orbs, penetrating their voodoo into your weariness, and there’s no way to resist him: you find yourself throwing the ball this way and that, trying to outwit the bastard but damned if he doesn’t catch your every curveball! He’s a machine. He’ll do this all day. And here he is, twisting Chas’ arm in the new bath.
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02.18.0735
Daily, Photos, Thinking (6)
Birthdays. They just keep getting sweeter. Alis and I celebrated our birthdays tonight by having a fondue party up at her place in the Santa Cruz mountains. I think we both might be missing the absence of the yearly Red & Chocolate party, which used to include a few more guests than just the ten of us that were there tonight. It’s normally such a wet, cold time of the year here, especially up in the mountains, where the rain freezes and sometimes turns to snow. But the weather is warmer this year. I cut a quince branch, already in flower, and attached it to the bow on her present. Fruit trees along the Saratoga avenues are white with blossoms, rolling hills at the open space preserve, where I run, are adorned in special corners with tiny pink and white buds, showering petals along the path. It’s already Spring and it’s righteous.
Every time I think it’s a beautiful day down here in the valley, I’m blown away when I step out of my car in her driveway up on Skyline ridge. For starters, there’s the quiet outdoor air there that’s almost deafening, like the sound of nighttime in the suburbs after two fresh feet of snow. After the birds have gone to roost, near dusk, I can almost hear my ears ringing (thanks due in part to Chas and to a lesser extent, Ford, the loudest children I’ve ever known). And then there’s the view. The breathtaking view that, were it not for the fog, would include the Pacific, beyond Santa Cruz.
Birthdays are sweeter and sweeter. I can cook in the same kitchen with my college buddy, smile about where we are right now, and look into the living room to see benchmarks we’ve left over the years since we met: solid ties with men that became important to us along the way; the three beautiful, vibrant children that this love made possible; our two little dogs who are getting older, followed by the ghosts we’ve grieved to tell goodbye, recently: three other dogs, a horse; a mother, a grandfather.
Turning 35 this year is the sweet little nudge in the arm, reminding me about babies and books and other priorities that can’t wait behind my hedonism. But I think this year I might start lying about my age. Alis and I made a deal: it’s not important for anyone to know. Except for the clerks at the grocery store, but I’ll tell them my age any time because they still card me when I buy groceries (which, I now realize, tells me that I buy entirely too much booze). 35 used to be old. But I’ve never carried myself better (thank you, yoga. why didn’t we meet sooner?) and my smile, most often, has a careworn grace to it that I am proud of, suggesting achievement and the attainment of purpose. I think motherhood did it to me.
…The rest of time I think I’m frowning, though, and I can attribute that to motherhood, too
Damon, thanks for the photos! You’re getting gooood!
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02.17.07Available Light
Photos (1)
Ford is poking a sea anemone, again, at Moss Beach, again. Because I can’t get enough of the beach, and after all, it’s a new moon (very very low tide). I’m in heaven here, atop briny algal mats and whirling fogscape, closing in on us at twilight.
We arrived too late in the day, as the fog shut the door on sunset. Quickly yielding to the cold and dark, we left with this one unruffled shot. We’re learning to use available light, so Damon and I swapped the camera back and forth the whole fifteen minutes we were there. One of us would hold Chas (who was freezing) and the other would frantically stand still in the blue light, hoping that Ford would do the same.
recent posts
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