Homeschool, Spanish Inquisition Style June 17, 2013

Boy10 went to Karate Day Camp this week.

Whose idea was it to give the kids karate lessons anyway?  That was probably the dumbest parenting decision we’ve ever made.   The benefit of children being smaller than you is that you can fling them around and pin them down and tickle them.

But now, because of dumb old karate, they can defend themselves.  Now when I try to tickle them all I get for my trouble is a poke in the kneecap.

Pennsylvania homeschool laws state that we have to teach our kids physiology, which is:

phys·i·ol·o·gy

/ˌfizēˈäləjē/

The branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts. The way in which a living organism or bodily part functions.

As part of my end of year portfolio I’m going to include a video of the kids demonstrating their knowledge of physiology.  They could show exactly how body parts function when you bend back a person’s finger or poke your fingertips between their ribs.  Karate teaches physiology, Spanish Inquisition style.  Did you know it takes the same amount of pressure to snap a person’s finger as it takes to snap a carrot in half?  I’m sure that knowing how much pressure it takes to snap a person’s finger is not what they meant when they wrote “must learn physiology” into homeschool law.

Or maybe it was.  I’ve told you before that they close the schools on the first day of hunting season and I personally know children who have driven tractors to school on Drive Your Tractor to School Day.

Back to karate camp.

Boy8 didn’t want to go to karate camp so I took him to visit with a new friend while Boy10 was at camp.

And oh, the stress.

Friend8’s mom invited me to stay while the boys played since we don’t know each other.  The problem? Friend8’s mom is sweet.  Truly sweet.  Not fake out your coworkers sweet to aggravate Mike, but a genuinely gentle soul.  And, oh, the pressure!  Boy8 really likes her son and I didn’t want her pegging me as a Bad Influence, so we had to be on our best behavior.  It was rough, people.  I was afraid that at any moment I’d temporarily lose control and bark out a disgusting snot joke and that would be the end of the friendship.  I was exhausted by the time I got home and had to lie down and play Candy Crush on the ipad.

And what made it worse was that Friend8’s mom is clean.  Noooo!  Not both sweet and clean.  Her sweetness compounded with her cleanliness was Stressing Me Out.  I’m going to show you why but if you are easily frightened you should stop reading now and most certainly do not scroll down to the picture.

You’ve seen blog posts in the past making fun of my dust, but you’ve never, and I mean you’ve never, seen dust like this.  This is dust to make one’s mother proud. This is the sort of dust that is so thick you can pick it up with chopsticks and put into glass cases to show as a Wonder of the World in the local traveling circus.

The other day I moved a long row of books that have been on top of a bookcase for a number of years, well above my eye level.  I don’t dust anything above my eye level so the dust has been accumulating, as dust does.

But this dust was different.  This went well beyond your normal dust accumulation into something spectacular.  There comes a tipping point when the sheer volume of dust brings a tear to your eye, and not just because of all the pollen.

Here it is:

On that first The Magic of Oz book, you can see that there’s something stamped on the pages but it fades away into the murky depths of the dust and you can’t make out all the words.

Here’s another part of the stack at different angle with different lighting.  It’s slightly blurry.  It’s hard to focus on dust.

So, there I was in my new friend’s house and it’s spotless.  Just neat as a pin.  And she apologized for the mess.  Why do neat as a pin people always apologize for the mess when there is none?  Neat people have super laser vision, because I never see all the dirt they see.  All I could think about was my lovely dust and how proud I am of it and how sorry I was for her that she didn’t have a dust collection like I do.

And no, I didn’t keep the dust.  I took the books outside and used the leaf blower to clean them off.

Parents Fight at Soccerpalooza June 12, 2013

The following is written by Guest Blogger, Jeff Moffatt.

SOCCERPALOOZA

Last weekend I attended the 2013 Antietam Cup youth soccer tournament, which I like to call Soccerpalooza.  Over two days, kids aged 9 to 19 who were spread across 5 age brackets played a total of almost 150 soccer games.  That amounted to about 24 total hours of chasing white balls across neatly cut grass.  Wait, that’s golf.  What I mean to say is, that amounted to about 24 total hours of kids chasing soccer balls; referees randomly blowing whistles; and parents yelling at their kids, the referees, and each other.

Of course, each team had a brightly colored uniform to distinguish itself from every other team’s brightly colored uniforms.  The only other way to see this many different colors jumbled together in one place is if a bomb went off in a Sherwin-Williams store.  My own son’s team wore nuclear green, a hue so piercingly bright that you risked retina damage by staring at it too long.  Perhaps that was the coach’s strategy – blind the opposition.

In the midst of these prizmatic athletic endeavors, I happened to observe a classic bad-sports-parent moment.  We hear about out-of-control sports parents from time to time, but they always seem to live in far off places like Peoria or Sacramento.  Well, not any more.

I was watching a match between under-16 teams from Littlesville, Pennsylvania and Biglertown, Pennsylvania (town names changed to protect the guilty).  The weather was sunny and hot, so I sat by a group of Littlesville fans under the shade of a tree on a small rise near the field.  At the edge of the field was a line of parents and fans, mostly seated in folding lawn chairs.  There were a few fans standing, including one woman who was shading herself with a large umbrella.  She was a Biglertown fan and, as it happened, she stood mainly between the Littlesville fans and the field with her umbrella blocking the view from under the tree.  She had chosen a spot near midfield, so it appeared to me that her goal was to find a prime vantage point from which to watch all of the action.

The Littlesville fans, who very much wanted to remain in the shade, thought umbrella woman’s conduct was a rude affront to their right to view the match from the shady spot where they had chosen to sit.  Part way through the first half, one of them went to her, tugged on the edge of the umbrella, and brusquely asked her to put it down.  Before I go further, I need to explain that the Littlesville fans in question were all Caucasian and the Biglertown fans in question were all Hispanic.  I mention that only because Littlesville man spoke to umbrella woman in that loud halting tone people use when they think the listener can’t understand.  Whether umbrella woman understood or not, she ignored him and left her umbrella up.

The game proceeded through the first half and into the second with Biglertown dominating the action despite a valiant effort from an overmatched Littlesville squad.  The Littlesville fans under the tree, however, were largely ignoring the game they ostensibly wanted to see.  Instead, they were focused on the Biglertown woman and her umbrella.  They muttered amongst themselves about her rude behavior, and they carefully analyzed U.S. immigration policy.  Umbrella woman appeared not to hear and instead closely followed the game.  Frequently, she either cheered for her child or yelled at the referee.  I can’t be sure which because she was speaking Spanish.

During the second half, the Littlesville fans had had enough.  The same man marched down to umbrella woman, tugged on the umbrella, and began berating her for blocking peoples’ views.  This got the attention of several other Biglertown fans, including an Hispanic woman who said, in perfectly good English, “maybe if you asked nicely she would do what you ask.”  (That reminded me of the scene in A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson answers Tom Cruise’s request for a copy of a transfer order by saying, “Of course you can have the transfer order, Danny, but you have to ask me nicely.”)  It also drew the attention of an Hispanic man, possibly umbrella woman’s husband, who gallantly came and stood next to her, and another Hispanic man who looked like he could play linebacker for most college football teams.

Unfortunately, Littlesville man was beyond asking nicely.  As he confronted umbrella woman and the surrounding group of Biglertown fans confronted him, another male Littlesville fan, who was still standing in the shade, began yelling challenges at the Biglertown fans.  This man had forearms as big as my thighs and was, overall, the size of a polar bear.  If you had put him in front of the soccer goal, there may not have been enough room for the ball to pass by into the net.  He happened to be standing next to his daughter, who was maybe five years old.  Anyway, polar bear man, who had not been involved up to this point except to suggest immigration policy changes, focused his attention on the linebacker from Biglertown and shouted, with all the logic his meathead brain could probably muster, “why are you talking, you got no part in this” and then, “you wanna go, big boy, come on let’s go.”  This witty repartee was not an invitation to leave, of course, but rather to fight.

By this point none of these people had seen at least the last five minutes of the action on the field.  The head of INS could’ve taken over as referee and none of them would’ve noticed.  Thankfully, reason or perhaps fear of a headline in the Gettysburg Times newspaper (“Parents Fight at Soccerpalooza”) prevailed.  There was no fight, but neither was there an actual resolution.  Umbrella woman went back to watching the game with her umbrella up thereby obstructing the view of the Littlesville fans who continued to grumble and critique immigration policy under the shade of the tree.

Why am I sharing this tale?  To point out that with a modicum of thought a simple compromise could’ve been reached.  What if Littlesville man had gone to umbrella woman with his chair in hand and, in a calm, friendly and gracious tone, said, “Hi, my name is Joe.  It’s really hot, isn’t it?  I can understand why you’re using an umbrella today.  It’s the same reason I’m sitting under that tree.  The thing is, your umbrella makes it hard for me to see the field.  I’d like to offer you my chair.  If you wouldn’t mind sitting, then your umbrella would be lower and we could all see the field and all be in the shade.”  As an alternative, she could’ve just stood in the shade cast by polar bear man.

I have no idea whether umbrella woman would’ve accepted the chair, of course.  Maybe she was trying to block the Littlesville fans’ views after all.  Maybe there was bad blood dating back to a 2012 under-14 match.  Maybe umbrella woman supports current U.S. immigration policy.  Who knows?  The point is that this irrational dispute over an umbrella – not a blown call or controversial play in the soccer game, mind you, but an umbrella – nearly led to fisticuffs.  Soccerpalooza indeed!

But Daddy, there’s an alligator in the stream! June 11, 2013

Sooooo….this is my friend, John.

As you can tell from the picture, John is an excellent storyteller.  And no, he doesn’t read The Blog, so he’ll never know I posted this goofy picture.  Nobody tell him!

I took this picture of John at a party last Saturday.  Obviously, he’s in the middle of telling a story.  John is the sort of storyteller who will act out his stories.  If there’s an angry part of the story he’ll frown angrily.  If there’s a funny part he’ll pause to laugh.  If it’s sad he’ll shake his head and look down.  No, he won’t cry.  He’s a Marine.

This is Shelley, John’s wife.

She’s 39 ½ years old and I’ve known her since she was 6.  This picture was taken at the moment when we all yelled, “Surprise!” for her 40^th birthday party.  We wanted to be sure she’d be surprised so we had the party 6 months before her birthday.  She was pretty surprised!

Shelley also is an excellent storyteller.  But when Shelley tells a story, she stays deadpan.  Her stories will have you falling off your chair in helpless laughter, but she’ll keep a straight face through the whole telling.  How can she tell such hilarious stories with a straight face?  It’s a gift.

At the party I overheard John telling one of Shelley’s Birth Stories.  Men usually recoil in horror when a gaggle of women start the Telling of the Birth Stories.  But this story had a lot of drama with John in a leading role so he tells it whenever he has a fresh audience.  It involved an incompetent ambulance service, an airlift via helicopter, a total blood transfusion, and an army of doctors booking it up and down the hallway drenched in Shelley’s blood.

Let me amend that bit about Marines not crying.  They do cry, sometimes.  When he originally told me the story a couple of years ago he admitted to some tears.   He had to stay outside of Shelley’s hospital room during the drama and for a few minutes he was sure his wife was dead.  There was a lot of blood on those doctors.

John always ends the tale with the thrilling $250,000 bill that wasn’t covered by insurance because the hospital didn’t get preauthorization and how he told them, “I’m not paying this bill!” just like the old commercial: “I’m not going to pay a lot for this muffler!”

Wait.  Wait, wait, wait.  That commercial was from 1986?  I swear, that commercial was from 2010, I’m sure of it.  1986?  No…it’s just not possible…

John’s current stories involved the turkey family that lived in their backyard, the bear family that passed through a few times, the solitary cougar stalking in the hills around their house, and the alligator in the stream where the neighborhood kids play.

The alligator escaped from a local zoo.  Apparently, the first to spot him was a small child playing in the stream.  He said, “Daddy!  Look at the alligator!”  His dad murmured, “Billy, don’t make things up.”  “But Daddy!  There’s an alligator in the stream!”

The dad looked up to see a 6 foot alligator waddling through the stream.  SNAP!

The third time the alligator escaped (by making a ramp out of dirt and climbing over the fence), someone “took care” of the problem.  There are a lot of hunters up in the foothills of Pennsylvania.

A lot of hunters.

‘Gator hunters.

—————

At the party I terrorized all of the guests by taking their portraits.

Here are Shelley’s kids.  Isn’t my new lens pretty amazing?  These pictures turned out so nice that I’m having them printed and giving them to Shelley as a little gift.  I haven’t talked to Shelley in about a year and she has no idea that I’m a budding photographer.  I think she’ll be happily surprised with these.

A Good Laugh and a Good Fight June 8, 2013

You know when I said in the last post that no one walks up to me and says, “And you’re not sweet at all”?  That’s not entirely true.

See, I used to work with Mike.

I loved working with Mike.  I judge how much I like someone by how much they make me laugh.  Mike could make me laugh until I couldn’t breathe.

One time we went on a three week business trip to New Jersey.  We each drove our own car.  I drove my car, Mike drove his car, and Emily drove her car.  Emily?  Yes.  Mike lived in Baltimore but his girlfriend, Emily, lived in New York, so they met in New Jersey for a few days.

The drive to New Jersey was the worst drive I’ve ever driven.  The details would take an entire blog, so let’s just say that I got completely and thoroughly lost.  All I remember is driving on Route 1-9 in the dark, in the pouring rain and passing the same huge neon Budweiser sign over and over and over and over.  After stopping at a few gas stations where no one spoke a word of English and passing a number of scary looking gangs on corners, I finally made it to the hotel where I collapsed.

In the lobby I recognized Emily from pictures and we chatted for a few minutes and she told me that she, too, got completely and thoroughly lost and kept passing the huge neon Budweiser sign over and over and over.  I called Mike to warn him to be sure he didn’t miss the turn.  Because if he missed the turn and saw the huge neon Budweiser sign, that meant he’d be stuck in an endless loop passing that huge neon Budweiser sign for a good hour.

Of course he didn’t believe us women drivers and said, “I’ll be fine.  I don’t get lost.”  Uh huh.  Sure, Mike.

Obviously, Mike missed the turn, got completely and thoroughly lost and had the pleasure of viewing the huge neon Budweiser sign over and over and over.

The next day, we carpooled to the office and saw some poor Indian man driving on Route 1-9 with a map crumpled in his hand and a hopeless frown on his face.  Mike went into a routine right on the spot, in the worst Indian accent ever, of the thoughts of the Indian man as he passed the Budweiser sign over and over and over.  It’s probably the funniest comedy routine I’ve ever heard.  I’m sure a few brain cells died that day from lack of oxygen.  I could not inhale.  Could not.

But we also used to fight.  A lot.  I mean, we fought so much in our shared office that the person in the next office over had to bang on the walls to get us to stop screaming at each other.  Kinda like throwing a tin can at howling cats.

Our first fight was on that same New Jersey business trip.

Mike and I had looked over the hotels on the recommended list provided by our company.  Mike wanted to stay in the most expensive hotel on the list at the company’s expense, just because we could.  Another coworker had taken the same trip and stayed in a cheaper hotel.  She told me about walking through a charming little town with flowers in all the yards and eating at quaint restaurants with delicious food.

If the cheaper hotel was so good, can you just imagine the expensive hotel?

Turns out the only reason the hotel we picked was more expensive is because it was closer to the airport.  It was right on the side of some sort of freeway in the middle of an industrial park.   Thousands of cars screamed by at 70 mph on their way to sightsee the Budweiser sign.  The entire hotel was surrounded by a chain link fence with barbed wire at the top.  To exit the hotel, you had to swipe your room card so that the gate thing (like at a toll booth) would rise and the spikes would lower into the cement.

Yes, you read that right.  Spikes, to puncture your tires, had to lower into the ground in order for you to leave the hotel.

What sort of hotel is surrounded by barbed wire, gates, and spikes in the ground?  I didn’t feel particularly safe.

A couple of days into the trip Mike and I were on lunchbreak at the office.  As we waited for the elevator, I told Mike I was thinking of transferring to a new hotel.  Mike didn’t want to move.  It’s all a bit of a blur and I don’t know how it happened, but somehow or other everything spiraled out of control and by the time we reached the first floor, we were in a flat out brawl.  There was yelling and spit flying and hands gesticulating.  The elevator was packed and the other occupants of the elevator were pressed against the walls in horrified disbelief.

Right at the end, Mike sneered out, “You know what?  You’re just like X.”  Oooooo.   X is a coworker that he knew I couldn’t stand.  Could Not Stand.  And he knew it.  That was fighting dirty.  I was so furious that I’m pretty sure Mike would  be dead right now except that the door opened and he got away.

The thing with Mike is that he’s the only person where we’ve both been absolutely furious at each other, but never offended.  We could argue and yell and tell each other how amazingly stupid the other person was being, but we would actually resolve the issue that way.  One or the other of us would realize, “Oh no!  S/he’s right!  I am being amazingly stupid!” and we would fix the problem, stop the argument, and walk away friends.

And I’ll tell you, it felt great to be able to tell someone exactly what I thought of them without hurting their feelings.  Maybe the rest of you do that all the time, but I’ve never been able to.  People’s feelings get hurt pretty much any time I try it, so I’m careful.

Now maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, they were attracted to each other.”  Nope.  There’s no way to convince you otherwise if you think that’s the case, but we weren’t.  Mike was like my cousin.  I was the goody-two-shoes cousin and he was the smoking behind the 7-11 cousin who would meet for summer vacation at the lake and have the Best Summer Vacations Ever.  But once vacation was over and we went back to our real lives we’d have nothing in common and would never have run in the same circles.

Outside of work we had nothing in common.  Nothing.  But while we were thrown together in that office with a job to do, it was magical.

All this is leading up to Mike’s pronouncement that, “and you’re not sweet at all!”

All our coworkers thought I was sweet.  Don’t know why.  I don’t particularly try to be sweet.  I don’t consider myself sweet.  But they thought I was.

Only Mike knew the truth.  In the middle of one of our milder arguments (I’m pretty sure I was winning that one), Mike looked at me with irritated frustration and said, “You know, everyone thinks you’re so sweet.  And you’re not sweet at all!”

From time to time, someone would pop their head in our office and ask me a question.  I’d answer it, and (I’m not kidding this happened over and over) the person would then say, “Oh, thank you!  That’s so helpful!  You’re so sweet!”

It was all I could do to keep a straight face when they said that.  Man, I should have won some sort of acting award for my performance.  The sweet smile, the blinky eyelashes.  I’d hear Mike in his corner exhaling a pained sigh.

When the office door would close, I’d give Mike the cheekiest grin I could.  Didn’t need to say a word.  He’d glare at me, shake his head, and go back to work.  Sometimes he’d say, “And the worst part of it is that if I try to tell anyone you’re not sweet, they’ll think I’m being a jerk.  No one will ever believe the truth.”

And that’s exactly what made it so much fun.

Here are some pictures of Mike.  We used to write newsletters for our company and we’d put badly photoshopped pictures of ourselves in the newsletter.  Here’s Mike as an ape in Planet of the Apes.

And as a musketeer:

Facing Fears June 7, 2013

I have a bunch of people inadvertently fooled on a few of things about me.  First, most people that I meet think I’m sweet.  Second, they don’t think I’m funny.

When I first started writing the blog, people who read it made a point of walking up to me and saying, “I never knew you were funny!” in tones of happy disbelief.  I wasn’t sure how to react.  I mean, I pride myself on my sense of humor and to find out it wasn’t readily apparent to all was distressing.  But at the same time, having people finally acknowledge my great wit was gratifying.  You can see the emotional conflict.

After reading The Blog I’m pretty sure they also figured out I’m not very sweet, but so far no one has ever walked up to me and said, “I never knew you were funny!  And you’re not sweet at all!”  They’re very polite like that around here.

In case I still had you fooled, I’m not particularly sweet.  I’m fair and do my best to understand other people’s points of view, but I’ve never claimed to be sweet.

While people have misjudged me as unfunny and sweet, I’m not sure whether or not I’m managing to fool anyone about my confidence at photography.  If you think I’m confident about photography—ha!  I’m not.   Especially people pictures.

Still lifes are ok.  A still life is patient.  People?  Not so much.  Unless they’re over 50, pretty much everyone you know has attention span issues.   That’s hyperbole…don’t be arguing with me about your endless attention span.  And if you try to prove to me that you have a long attention span I’m sure I’ll get bored and wander off before you’re done.  Come on now.  You know that if someone posts a youtube video longer than 45 seconds you are so not clicking on it.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.

And nobody under 50 wants to hang around while the photographer takes forever to snap a photo.

The only way not to take forever to snap a photo is to practice.  And not on just friends.  No, you have to take it a step further.

So, as you know, Ada told me I could practice taking portraits of her daughter before her 8^th grade dance.  That was scary to me.  I barely know Ada, there was a strict time constraint, and while I made it clear to them I might not get a good picture, you know they hoped that I would.

All that is called pressure.  I don’t like pressure.

I was a nervous wreck for an hour before taking the pictures.  Why?  Because I hate to fail.  We all hate to fail.

And then the youth pastor at my church asked me if I’d like to be the photographer who takes pictures of the teenagers doing Leisure Dives (Leisure Dives?  See this website.  It’ll take less than 45 seconds, I promise.)  After the Leisure Dive they’d post all the pictures on a website so everyone could vote on the best dive.

Obviously, I told him no.  Not no way.  Not no how.  What a great opportunity to mess up a whole lotta pictures of a whole lotta people.  Not gonna do it.

No, I didn’t really tell him no.  Since I’m a grown up, (roll of eyes and long-suffering sigh) I chose to be mature about it.  If I ever want to get past this fear of failure then I have to face it and toss myself into the deep end.  What better way than by taking pictures of people tossing themselves into the deep end?

I told him I’d take the pictures.  I’m sure I’ll be wracked with nerves right before taking the pictures, and yes, I might fail miserably and every shot will be a big blur or too dark or overexposed or I’ll miss them and get an endless round of splashes and no divers…but I’m going to do it anyway.

Aw, man.  I wish I hadn’t written that last paragraph.  Blech.

—————–

Pictures

Speaking of still lifes and taking pictures quickly, on his way to Photo Club, Scott picked some weeds flowers.  Our assignment was to set a timer for 10 minutes and try to get a great shot of the weeds flowers.  The person with the best shot won accolades from fellow Photo Club members.

Here’s my great shot of the weeds flowers.  What makes it great is that I was in a sunny room, but it looks like I’m in a completely black room.*

Katie, before her 8^th grade Farewell dance.

Yes, this one is overexposed with lots of shadows on her face, but that’s what I like about it:

*How did you make the flower picture look so dark if you were in a sunny room?

Put the flowers in a patch of sunlight.  Set the camera to spot metering.  Set your little red dot on a sunny spot so that the camera meters for the bright spot.  The camera will compensate for all that bright light by darkening the entire picture, which creates the black in the background.

Free Pictures for All! No, make that: Free Pictures for Ada June 2, 2013

Note to self:  do not go two three oh, fine four months without exercising and then hop on the treadmill and run for half an hour.  Then do not congratulate yourself on how good of shape you stayed in because you could run for half an hour without too much effort.  Then most certainly do not lie around on the couch the day after exercising playing games on the ipad for two hours.  Because if you haven’t exercised in two three four months and then lie around the next day…you can’t get up.  No, seriously.  Boy8 had to pull me up off the couch and roll me into the kitchen so I could reach the fortifying taco salad and leftover chocolate bolacha.

Oh, sorry Halls—yes, there was leftover chocolate bolacha after we left your house last night, but we didn’t leave any for you.  It was totally Darling Husband’s fault.  I asked him on the way home, “Did you leave any Bolacha for the Halls?”  He said, in a puzzled tone, “No…?”  Obviously the thought that he would willingly hand over the bolacha never even crossed his mind.

Ok—enough of my exercising and chocolate woes:

Remember my new camera lens?  I posted on Facebook warning my friends that I’d be trolling for subjects to practice on.

Ada wrote back that her daughter was attending an 8^th grade dance and I could practice taking pictures of her daughter.  I thought, “No way!  She just wants free pictures!”

(Ada is on the right in orange)

And then I re-thought…well, duh, I kinda offered free pictures.  Of course she wants free pictures.  If I was offered free pictures, I would take the free pictures.

I started writing back to clear up the misunderstanding and renege on the offer.  But then I dimly realized that this is exactly the sort of practice that I need.

See, I took those lovely prom pictures three weeks ago but it wasn’t easy for me.  There were two couples which adds up to, let’s see…. 75 people.   And 82 of them were taller than me.  Well, maybe Tori wasn’t really taller.  Maybe it was just those heels she wore:

Anyway, people taller than me are intimidating and I had no clue how to pose 75 taller-than-me people.  Think if over, if you were taking nice portraits of 75 people, would you have any clue how to have them stand?  Where to look? What to do with their hands?  Really? Would you know how to direct them if they just stood at you slumped over Expecting The Photographer To Know What She’s Doing?  No you wouldn’t, admit it.  And neither did I.

To prepare, I looked up a bazillion prom pictures on Pinterest for ideas and practiced on my mother.  My mother hates having her picture taken, but she was a good sport.

Here she is pretending to pin on a boutonniere.  Don’t let her unhappy look fool you.  That’s her, “I know I look silly and I’m going to go with it and deadpan that I’m not happy about it” look.  This is a favorite look of hers.

Walking through the grass:

Pretending to have a tall date.

But practicing with my mother isn’t the same as actually taking the Official Pictures For Paying Customers.  (Yes, they paid me—gulp, even more pressure.)

I managed to get a number of very nice prom pictures but I also didn’t get a number of very nice prom pictures.  What I mean is that I took a number of pictures that were completely messed up.

My biggest mistake was letting it rain on my outdoor photoshoot.  I’m going to have to have a serious talk with the weather.  This is getting out of hand.  In the above picture of my mother with her tall date, you can see that I had an indoor location lined up.  About half an hour before the shoot, I checked the weather and it promised sunny skies for the rest of the day, so I told them to lock up the church–I wouldn’t need it after all.

Three minutes–I swear three minutes–after all 97 couples arrived, it started to rain.  I am not kidding.  And the church was locked.  ARGH!

The second biggest mistake was forgetting to turn off the flash when the sun finally came out.  White tuxedos, sunshine, and a flash.  Yup—just a big white blob in the middle of the picture.  (No, I didn’t remember to check the histogram, for you photography types out there.)

The third biggest mistake was letting all those tall people intimidate me so that I ended up forgetting a number of fun poses I’d meant to use with them.  Ugh.  I even wrote them down, but in the end said, “Well we’re done…” wondering why I had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind.

And that is why I need practice.   It’s one thing to take pictures of my friends on the fly just because.  It’s a whole ‘nother thing to take pictures of people dressed up for an event who Have Expectations.  You can’t control the weather, but you can remember to check your histogram and don’t get too flustered to check your notes.

So, instead of turning Ada down, I told her I’d take her daughter’s pictures.  I also warned her that it’s possible none of them would turn out, so she’d better have a backup camera ready just in case.

I’m pretty sure it’ll go well because I’m at least 2 inches taller than Ada’s daughter.

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Here are the final versions of the pictures my mother helped me with:

Boutonniere (standing under a pavillion):

Walking across the grass (between rain showers):

Tall date (under the pavilion):

And this one just because she’s so pretty:

P.S.  Don’t be asking me for free pictures.  Special offer for Ada only.  First come, only served.

Tuesday? Nooooo, not Tuesday! Anything but Tuesday! May 28, 2013

Well, will you look at that.  Is that what I think it is?  Oh, yes it is.  It’s a Razzleberry pie.  Creepy old chef with the rheumy eyes from The Shining came through.  Or maybe Darling Husband came through.  Either way, by the time I’m done writing this blog it will be baked and ready to serve.

I suppose those of you who know me might have wondered what possessed me (excuse the pun) to watch The Shining.

I’m kinda wondering what possessed me to watch The Shining as well.  I don’t do so well with scary movies.  In fact, they tend to torment me for years afterward.  I’ve written about it before so I won’t bother writing about it again.

What happened was that a friend mentioned something along the lines of how watching The Shining as a parent was different from watching before having children.  I asked what he meant being that I’ve never seen it.  He said, “Just watch it and see.”

So I did.

In silence.

No, I wasn’t the one being silent.  I watched the movie with the volume turned almost completely down.  We all know that scary movies aren’t scary without their soundtrack.  Consider this:

There’s little Danny riding his big wheel around and around the corners of the hallways in the empty hotel.  You know, you just know, that the ghosty girls are going to show up around the next corner asking for their playdate.  Then, just when you can hardly stand the suspense, the music lets out a big screech, the screen goes completely black and the word TUESDAY appears in big white letters and I swear, it makes you squawk in horror:  No, not Tuesday!  Anything but Tuesday!  Ahhhhh!

And then again on THURSDAY.  Oh, just stop!  My poor frayed nerves just can’t handle this.  That’s when I turned down the volume.

The thing is, nothing was happening.  Nothing at all.  Just this little kid riding around on his big wheel or some guy typing at a typewriter.  It’s all about the suspenseful music and loud crescendos.

But I understand what Victor meant.  As a parent you wanted to scoop little Danny up in your arms and say, “There, there, it’ll be ok.”  And they put him in the most adorable little outfits.  Mickey Mouse sweaters with little plaid shirts and red sneakers.  Oh, those red sneakers.  Adorable.  I even felt sorry for the creepy ghosty girls.  Poor little dead things.

Anyway, now I finally understand why Scott took one look at the typewriter in my living room and gleefully typed, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over and over.  And if he does it again, I’m kicking him out immediately.  Don’t be making my innocent typewriter act all creepy like that.

Maybe it’s because I don’t watch many scary movies but this one has stuck with me and not just because I can’t walk around the house alone anymore.  Mostly I’m just trying to figure out what it all meant.  Apparently, no one can figure out what it all meant, because Victor then told me to watch the documentary which tries to figure out what it all meant.

But I’m not taking Victor’s recommendations for movies anymore, so I guess I’ll never know.

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Practicing with my new lens: