Merry Christmas

Bonny blue een

The girl is putting together a paper and a diorama for her poetry class. She and I had a lot of fun making a rice-stuffed doll. She did the rest entirely herself (although as a surprise, I'm going to make a shield for her fallen knight tonight.) We may have reached new lows, or highs, depending, of family weirdness as we both really like the doll. Even though it has no legs. And looks wounded. And is creepy.

She has ravens, a nest, and everything. We used corn silk for the hair, and painted two buttons with blue nail polish (doesn't everyone have blue nail polish just laying around the house?) for the eyes.

Her subject:

  Twa Corbies! (Anonymous, from bartleby.com)

AS I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane:
The tane unto the tither did say,
'Whar sall we gang and dine the day?'
'—In behint yon auld fail dyke	5
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.
'His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,	10
His lady 's ta'en anither mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
'Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue e'en:
Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair	15
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.
'Mony a one for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane:
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.'

Whether the doll is weirdly, creepy-cute, or just plain wrong, that was about the best quality time the girl and I have had to spend together in quite awhile.

Carey

The beloved Fluff, Carey, is missing.  We're looking but we don't have as much hope as I'd like to have.  Between the weasel and the huge number of coyotes (more than I've ever heard since we've moved here) ... yeah.  She's not on the side of the road.  We called our local veterinarians to see if anyone brought in an injured cat matching her description.  Today we'll go to the shelters with 8 1/2x11 pictures of her.  I miss her very, very much.  While eating fried chicken, her favorite, I wanted nothing more than to see her waiting patiently by my feet, expecting her share.  The other cats don't mooch for food, so it felt like I was eating dinner alone.  I had a terrible, empty feeling that my daughter (Carey is her cat) felt the same emptiness, though we sat in the same room together.

The other kitties are being forced to stay indoors much more.  They were out for only a few short hours yesterday.  The whining and wheedling first thing in the morning was amazing to behold.  They expect to be let out before we do anything else--before going to the bathroom, breakfast, coffee--preferably before we're awake enough to do anything except stumble to the sliding door and open it.  They'll get used to it, eventually, I think.

The other thing I miss is seeing Carey on the driveway, watching Chase race the cars driving by.  If it was a coyote, that's probably where he grabbed her.  She never goes out of sight of the house except to go next door to our down-the-hill neighbors, where I suspect she has a kitty friend.  Our neighbor takes in strays too.  He was the first one we talked to when she went missing, to see if she might not be there.

Living in a rural area is wonderful, except ...

Of course, in town, there's the traffic issue, and stray dogs, and raccoons, and people using rat poison ...

The world isn't a safe place.  I won't lock up all our animals 24/7 to keep them safer.  Might as well keep our chickens in tiny cages and the goats locked up under artificial lights, etc.  If I could go back and do things over, I wonder if it might not have been better to keep Carey an indoor cat.  She's a long-haired kitty and they do better indoors full time anyway.  But she loved to sit on the driveway, and sleep on the deck, and walk out to the barn and to the veggie garden while we did our chores.  I wonder why she's the one that's missing, when the other kitties go so much farther afield and don't spend as much time close to us when we're out.  Just one of those things, I guess.

Veronica, aka the Poop, sleeps where Carey used to sleep inside the house.  She's been crying by the sliding door most of the night the past few nights.  It's hard to say if she wants us to help her look for Carey, or just wants out.

There's a chance, of course, but hope is fading fast.

Carey with her best friend, Veronica

On A Lighter Note ...

I'm not sure what this cat is doing, but whatever it's doing, it negates all my thoughts and makes my head kinda cock to the side and then I want to take even more pictures.

And no matter how many pictures I take, even though I use the flash every time ...

freakishly ...

... it just keeps doing it.

And her eyes follow me around the room.

Weird.

Proud to be a Mom

Wow.  It's a whole new month!  

Here, at last, are pics of the girl just before she went to the prom.  The extra string by her neck is from her purse--I couldn't get her to hang out for pics very long because she was in quite a hurry to get out the door.  I think I may have overdone it in the fussing department.  

She had a wonderful time, and even danced with a boy.

I don't know who will look back on this night more fondly--the girl, or me. 

The boy is visiting for Mother's Day.  I sure miss having him home.  I love having him here on Mom's day, and I feel totally pampered.  He helped me a ton around the garden.  The girl helped too, but not much.  Rain and thunder drove her off and she never came back.

Peas are in, artichokes and cardoon (hardened off seedlings that are under a protective cover until things nice'n up) and the onion sets which couldn't wait any longer.  I think the onion sets will be fine, since some onions that overwintered have plenty of green on them.

Cake, gardening, crystalline gifts, and a good talk with my mom this morning.  Awesome day.  It'll be hard to go back to work tomorrow after being spoiled rotten all day.  I'm so proud of my kids, and spending time with them was a huge treat.  

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  I hope you had a good one.

Springtime Pics

The garden, she is blooming! We won't be in full awesome mode until summer, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying some much-needed color outside my window.

Red currant (with my house in the background.)

I love my daffodils. I have a couple hundred of various colors.

#escapefail

(BTW she got out of there fine on her own--she went in head first and turned around into this position before leaving.)

More Sweet Kittehs

In honor of Moody Minstrel's potential future litter, we haz more kitteh pics starring Carey and Veronica, aka the Fluff and the Little Bird Poop (affectionately, mostly due to her colors but partially because she's still a little stinky thing.)

Snap, Crackle, Pop, Click

Still no chocolate for me.  I haven't made as much progress as I'd wanted to on the ms, and today won't push my word count as much as I'd like--I have some photos I need to take for another book project (not mine.)  

Photography is a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work and can take huge blocks of time.  The digital advances have made it tons easier both to learn (you see your mistakes almost immediately) and to execute, but it's still a difficult art.  

My challenge is to try to take non-cheesy martial arts photos.  The favorite options for setting are dojo/gym, studio and urban.  Lighting is always an issue, with each setting having its own particular problems.  Fortunately most of the images I'll be taking, if not all, will be converted to b&w so I don't have to obsess about things like skin looking too yellow or orange with the influence of indoor lights.  It's also not terribly sunny today, so I won't have to worry as much about over-exposure/glare or sharp shadows interfering with the subject.  But overall light quality is an ongoing problem, especially indoors since I don't have any umbrellas.  Even if I did, I would solve some problems but then create others--I would probably have to reposition the lights for each series, and that would extend the shooting time.  

We need four specific images today.  That'll probably translate into 60-80 pics taken.  I'll also look through the selection from the previous shoot and see if any sets are thin due to a high number of out-of-focus shots or shots with weird lighting, etc.  I'll add to those while we're there, and maybe take some artsy mood stuff while the guys play.  The editor will want a wide selection to choose from.  BTW they want uncropped, undoctored stuff--that's for the art director to mess with, not me.  Which makes me nervous.  I look at what I've done and I know what I was aiming for, so I have a feeling for what direction to go with a particular image.  I bet the art director has a much better eye than I do and will do wonders with them, but I have this little voice inside my head that says he'll take one look at the sets and think my gawd, these are a mess!  I can't do anything with this.  What a crappy photographer.  But I don't have time to wait for more so I'll just polish this turd as best I can ...

So I'm all insecure and I want to take more pics in different locations ... the issue, as it almost always is, is time.  And resources.  Not everyone wants to have their mug in a book for all to see.

Ah, the joys of martial arts photography.  At least the guys will have some fun.

Snap.  Crackle.  Pop.  Click click click click.

Image Meme

From karindira: a meme of ten pictures.  Hers are here.  

• Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.
• No captions. It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.
• They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.
• You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

Sightseeing

Attempts began to salvage a recent wreck near Tofino, Vancouver Island B.C.

View from our deck of a Christmas parade of ships in Victoria, Vancouver Island, B.C.

Magical

Indoor and outdoor lights combine at a waterfront restaurant

Not completely floored. Yet.

The contractors left about ten minutes ago.  They put in a very good day and got a ton done.  The family room isn't completely finished, but it will be tomorrow, and then they'll start putting in trim.  

I spent the past couple of days painting the trim. 

 Here it is, stacked all neatly along the side of the part of the room that isn't done yet.  It-Runs-In-Front-of-Me was shut in A's room for most of the work day, but toward the end we let her out so she could supervise.  She kept the contractors entertained by allowing them to entertain her.

Dakota is taking a well-deserved rest after being moved about ten feet to complete the last stretch of flooring laid before calling it a day.  I'm taking a break too, but not for long.  There's too much to do, and I'm hoping to get some writing done tonight.

I can't wait until it's all done!

Just a pic

Two finished stencils

Snapshots

The downstairs is nearly cleared out.  Time to paint the walls.  No, we're not set up for Halloween.  Those are real cobwebs.  And yes, we haven't vacuumed in a while.  I'll never go hungry, er, I mean, vacuum the downstairs again!

Carey is still settling in.  She feels crummy today, I'm sure, recovering from her distemper and upper respiratory battery inoculation and her gigantic shot to get the microchip in place.  That thing was almost the size of a drinking straw.  I kid you not.

Catching up on meme stuff.  Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the photo I took on the night I found the meme on Yeff's blog (it really was an accident!) but to make up for it I found a rare pic of me with glasses that I took to test Photo Booth when I got this computer back from the shop.  BTW, they did end up replacing the logic board.  So I wasn't going crazy.  Or, at least that doesn't provide ample evidence if I am.  Everything is working swimmingly now.  Finally!  Anyway, here's the meme instructions:  Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes. Don’t fix your hair. Just take a picture. Post that picture with no editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable. Don’t go posting an eight megapixel image.) Include these instructions.

I'll have writing news some time next week if not earlier.  In the meantime, I'm working on finishing my submission for WotF.  Once that's done then yay! I can finally work on editing Masks.  This will be the best edit evah thanks to the Lucky Labs and INK.

Me Aminals

Here we are toward the end of August and, surprisingly, all the animals appear to be healthy and happy. 

Dakota, all of a sudden, has decided to develop arthritis, but it's not too bad.  The vet checked her out and everything.  She's getting around pretty well for a twelve year old--at least I think so.

Huntress, Lucky, Kat and Wiz are all shiny and pesky.  They've invented

 all kinds of fun new games revolving around my bed and waking me up several times during the early morning until I give up on sleep and play with them.  Some faves are race across the bed, walk on mommy's hair, king/queen of the bed (which involves hissing,) chase the feet, make a tunnel in the blankets, and paper bag dash at the foot of the bed.  

The Wiz-dom has his own special game that makes tv time interesting.  He chooses the lap of the person who wants him the least.  The rest of us can make Gne-gne-gne noises all we want--he will not be swayed by promises of face scrubs, deep massage or belly rubs.  

The livestock is in good shape too.  I didn't get a good pic of the Smartest Chicken in the World, but the goats all posed nicely for me.  Spike is looking particularly handsome.  Here he's wearing pure white Boer-Saanan wool with designer horns and matching hooves.  He always looks smashing on the catwalk.  Beard by Beastie Nature.

The puppies and Beastie are ready for some diversion, but alas the Nissan is still stuck in the grass, and I'm not taking the hairy army in my nice new(ish) Corolla.  So, we're going to start walking around the neighborhood.  I know, that's not nearly as fun as going to the river and getting all wet and muddy, but it'll just have to do.  It's either walkies or a rebellion at this point.  When I'm so foolish as to jingle keys, they think that's their leashes and they go bananas.  Poor things.

That's all for the animal update.  Next on animal update--September vet trips.  Yay, a trip to the pet to get some tots!

Buzy Daze

After running around for what seems like forever we're all ready for some down time around here.  But for other local families life is gearing up.  The baby swallows are out and about today.  They can fly quite well and one of them was even hunting earlier, but they'd rather sit on our clothesline and get fed.  I was able to get quite close, but not as close as I'd like outside and not at a good angle, so sorry about the cruddy quality of the pics.

There are at least five little birds.  The fifth one is sitting apart from the others and it seems more interested than the others in hunting for itself, at least sometimes.

They're adorable and I'm glad they graced us today.

Laundry Day

Laundry Day.  Bummer.

Beautiful Day

Another beautiful day.

Birds, Plants, Catching Up and Poop

Today I began the process of catching up.  Hopefully I'll complete that process by the end of this weekend.

Why, Kami, what in the world would you have to catch up on?

Glad you asked.

(Dangit!  I know better than that!)  Please, go on.

Writing/Marketing

Laundry

Tiling

Gardening stuff

Vacuuming/dusting

Barn modifications (always a hoot)

Paperwork/filing

Notice, dishes are not on the list.  I'm all caught up.  Yay!

I had to put up two more bird feeders to handle the overflow, and I'm glad I did because we had a beautiful visitor today.  We've seen him before (last year, and for some reason I didn't mention him in this blog,) just one visit but it was memorable.  I hope he sticks around this time and maybe brings his black-headed grosbeak friends.  Why they call them black-headed grosbeaks is beyond me, btw.  I mean c'mon, what's the first color that strikes you when you see this bird?  Is it his black head?  I think not.  How about flaming orange grosbeak?  Or maybe safety first grosbeak.  

If you read the cool facts portion of the link, you'll see that the female of this species is particularly sneaky.  I prefer a relationship based on honesty, but hey, if the guy grosbeak won't sit on the eggs, I guess a girl grobeak's gotta do what a girl grosbeak's gotta do.  

In the sad news category, my poopyhead camera which had healed itself has unhealed and once again won't focus on anything except when I resign myself to point and shoot.  This means no flower closeups and no bird zooms until either A. I can teach myself how to focus the camera by eye (not easy with the digital interface) B. the camera heals itself again C. I can figure out why the camera focus mechanism keeps going out and fix it myself D. get the camera repaired ($ouchie$) E. replace the camera ($$$ouchie$$$) or F. some extremely clever option that will come to me any day in which no time, money or cursing will be expended in the operation of this camera ever again.  I'm particularly annoyed that it decided to stop working because I've had so many great opportunities to snap some stunning pics of our many birdie visitors and the hundreds of flowers that are in bloom in the garden.  Poop, I say, poop.

Loyal, Honorable, Brave and True

Loyal, Honorable, Brave and True--They create a safer place for everyone to live in with unflagging service and noble sacrifice.  Let's celebrate the dogs that help keep the wolves from preying on our communities, even though we dress them up funny.

Write your own caption!