Last week I started my 4th College class in photography.  I have successfully completed “An Introduction to Photography”, “Camera Techniques” and “Basic Studio”.  This latest course is all about Photoshop.  I was a little nervous about signing up for it because the course title is ”Advanced Photoshop for Photographers”.  I have come to terms with calling myself a photographer now and I almost don’t choke on the words “professional photographer” when they tumble out my mouth… but anything with the word “advanced” used as an adjective in the same title as photographer is just scary.  In the last year, I have done 20 photo shoots, and if you use ‘remueration’ to determine the definition of whether it was a ‘professional shoot’ or not.. then 18 were professional shoots. 

Most of these shoots came to me… so to speak.  I haven’t gone out and sought any business.  Yet.  But I feel I am at the stage now where I am ready to go out and look for business.  Yesterday I chapped the door of 2 private nurseries, showed them a brief slideshow of my wonderfulness, handed them a business card and… they are going to phone me.  Scary stuff!!

Anyway, I totally loved my class last week and am excited about the next 9 weeks!  In the end, I needed not to worry about the “Advanced” bit in the course title as my mad PS skillz were good enough to keep up.  Last week was all about showing us what we will be able to do by the end of the course.  My remark at the end of the evening was… “Man, you are going to save me hours every month!!” His reply was… “No, I am going to save you weeks every month!!”

Wow, what a weekend!!  I have just returned Nicholas, my friend’s little boy, to his house.  His mommy and daddy had a weekend away in Rome and he and his sisters were farmed out for sleepovers with friends.  He was an incredibly good little boy, all weekend, but one more child really DOES add that much more chaos to a home!  We also had another friend over Saturday night with her kids (8 little bodies tearing through the house)… and then she returned today (8 little bodies tearing through the house) to watch a movie with me.  For some reason, it looks like there were 8 little bodies tearing through the house all weekend, but you know, we’re all happy.

Three weeks from now I will hopefully have my children’s cases packed ready to fly to Mammy’s house.  Our tickets are booked for the 12th June.  I will stay overnight in Scotland then return to Belgium the next day.  I will have the afternoon and evening of the 13th June to make sure everthing is ready for the movers to arrive on the morning of Wednesday 14th.  Len and I will be staying with our friends (Nicholas’ parents) until the 22nd June and I will use those 10 day to finish clearing/cleaning the house and tying up loose ends here.

I am wired!!  My friend Susan keeps telling me “but you’ve done so much already, it will all come together"… but when I look around me I just can’t see it.  I have removed much of the structure of the house… beds, couches, shelves, wardrobes, tables… gone. Things I didn’t want to move with us… gone.  But so much of the paraphernalia that used to sit, lie and hide in these things is still here, cluttering… tripping me up. I feel like my life is like a pile of stones, stacked one by one on top of each other, somehow holding together with no mortar, amazingly creating a fortified wall… I am just waiting for, but hoping that “the big wind” doesn’t blow. 

I am at the place where none of this seems real - and I can’t really even fathom that my life is ever going to be different than it is right now.  I can’t see myself walking through a new front door or imagine what the water of a different shower will feel like.  Where will be my favourite grocery store be? Will I find another quiet corner in my new world to steal away to for 5 minutes?  What is the impact of this change and upheaval going to be?  Is this really happening? 

Big Wind blow, but please wait, I’m not quite ready…

It was a strange dream.  It should have been a scary dream, or even a bad dream, but it wasn’t… it was more, well, adventurous.  We (I’ll just say we because it was such a melange of people I know, knew and have never really met before, but know) were at some sort of fair or carnival or huge outdoor market.  The mood was festive and we were all around 22-25 years old again, single and carefree.  It was evening and the fair seemed to be both open air and multi-storey at the same time.  We laughed, chatted and joked as we coursed then trickled then pushed our way through the crowds who ebbed and flowed from one ride, stall or attraction to the next. 

We would be appoached by someone punting their wares or trying to coax us onto their ride, but for the most part we would brush them off without missing a beat in the conversations we were having.  We seemed to be headed somewhere in particular… but we were in no hurry to get there.  After some time, I realised that there was a pattern in the people that were approaching me.  They all seemed to be of middle eastern origin and bizzarely, they weren’t selling anything.  The first, I don’t know how many - maybe 3, were completely ignored and then somewhere in my subconscience I realised they all held a xeroxed peice of paper.  As the next one appoached with his paper I realise he was trying to get me to follow him into one of the ‘exits’, which were similar to the exit ramps you would find in a multi-storey parking lot.  I smiled politely and said ‘no thanks’, knowing there was NO way I would follow a stranger away from ‘my crowd’.  He wasn’t pushy and I just assumed he had some knock-off designer watches he wanted to sell.

We lived in a little green house just down from the High School in small town America.  I must have only been eight and I will never forget the first time I wore them; glasses flipped a switch on for me.  I sat on our neighbour’s porch swing marvelling at the lines in the brick wall of the school.  Swaying on the swing, I tipped my head back and look into the trees.  No one had ever told me you could make out the individual leaves on the branches from that far away… Who would have known!!  I think the world had been blurry for me since the day I was born but I hadn’t realised it until that moment.  I can still remember how excited I was that day, and how happy I was.  It was like I had been freed from some sort of blur-bubble.  My world had grown by at least 20 fold. The headaches stopped that day too.  I could actually make it through the Lawrence Welk Show AND Hee Haw (Where, oh where, are you tonight?), sitting way back on the couch with my Grandpa and not have to go to bed crying with a headache. I actually knew what Mrs Crawford was talking about when she was pointing and tapping her stick on the chalk board, and it didn’t even bother me when the boys called me 4-eyes!  I could see!!!

Other kids I knew had glasses.  Other kids had cheated on their school eye test to get them.  Other kids had worn their glasses for about a week before the novelty wore off.  Other kids mothers had to nag them to wear their glasses.  But not this astigmatism-afflicted child!  No.  Not me.  I never once had to be reminded to wear my glasses.  I could SEE!!

From the day I got them, my first waking reflex was to reach for my specs, pop them on my nose and face my world.  A wonderful crisply-sharp world that was now alive with spectrum of colour.  I could see!!

In the seventh grade I was told by Chuck McCauley that I was the only girl in the school that wore glasses that was cute… I was relieved that the most popular boy in our class thought I was cute, but to be honest, I was of the mind that even if no one thought I was cute, I still wouldn’t give up my specs!  I could see!!

In the 9th grade I tried contacts.  I persevered for at least six months but the only contacts available for my wonky-shaped eyeballs were hard gas-permeable lens.  They were a blue colour and when I wore them my normally hazel-flecked green eyes went an remarkable green shade, which was nice, but the whites of my eyes went just as bright red.  I eventually abandoned them and stuck to my ever progressive, style changing glasses. 

I’ve worn the large eye shadow-tinted lenses (with my initials on them) that had frames with the leg that took the angled dip and joined the glasses at the bottom of the lens circle.  I’ve worn the little round gold-rimmed John Denver type frame.  I’ve had the Clark Kent preppy frames.  Then moved on to the next and the next and the next.  Never has a day gone by where I forgot my glasses; I have never lost them and almost never had them broken worse than a screw falling out.  I could see!!

But…

I don’t know if it was the sun, the tension in my neck, the shouting kids (or was that me shouting?), or straining to see my computer screen in the bright outdoors, but the headache I have right now has just reduced me to tears… The paracetamol didn’t touch it, the ibroprofen didn’t touch it, but the vile.tasting.perscription.only.drops.of.wonder seem to be making a dent on it… Gah!!! 

The bottle says something about not operating machinery - I guess loading the dishwasher and changing over the laundry are out of the question tonight.  Oh no!!  I’d better stop typing!!!!

Len brought me a lovely, brioche scented candle from Fragonard, in Paris when he was there last weekend.  True to a time honoured family tradition, this morning after the kitchen was clean I lit it.  I am working around the rest of the house today but I am drawn back to the kitchen, over and over, like a moth to a flame.  The scent is driving me absolutely crazy!  It smells as if I have been baking all morning, but there is nothing… not one ounce of anything even remotely “briochey” to nibble on in this house. 

This is torture to a woman who has decided to address her stress in other ways than eating!!!

They say to make hay while the sun shines, but as there was no hay to make, I decided to start on the outdoor furniture.  We bought our teak table and chairs a few summers ago but it has never been stored under cover in the winter and I have only ever made stabs at oiling in the past.  It was looking so sad and dejected and certainly more mossy-green than tantalising-teak that I had to do it properly this year.  I spent the day sanding and cleaning the table with white spirits and I managed to get two coats of stain/oil on.  In between three trips for birthday party pick-ups and drop-offs, and making picnics and general mommying of 5 kids (only five today because hubby went to Paris for the day) I also got one chair done.  The house went to pot, but I didn’t care.  The sun was warm on my back and I have a sense of accomplishment tonight. 

Wanna see?

Deary, deary me!  What a moany-faced wee so-n-so I can be.  I should delete that last post, but it goes against the grain for me to delete things from here.  So I will leave it there to punishremind myself why I should be the eternal optimist that I normally am.

So, on a much lighter note, I give you the contents of my lovely ’The Bridge‘ leather handbag:

1) Belgian ID card, my children’s passports and mine
2) Stack of crumpled papers - some important some just used for padding the bag
3) Glasses case - containing my sunglasses and my glasses
4) Two cameras - Only one pictured because I was using the other to take the picture (duh!)
5) Camera user guide for the camera not in the picture
6) Two contact cases
7) Make up case
8) Deodorant, two bottles of eye drops, a couple chap sticks, Neosporin + pain relief, compact mirror
9) 2 hair clips and a sparkly pink hair band
10) Handful of loose change - 3.06 euro
11) Half a packet of Kleenex
12) Tiny porcelain angel with my name on it
13) 5 pens - 2 blue, one black, one green and one sparkly purple
14) Trash - broken McDonalds toys, receipts & empty gum packets
15) Cell phone - not my cute little one that is in for repairs.
16) A little yellow flower shaped button and plenty of crumbs.

Waftew a weawy, weawy cawazy weekend in va wand of Bambwaboo va childawen went back to schoow twoday. We had daze of widing ho’ses, a wazy wafternoon weading a nwovle, a deprwessive eposide, a kewl and wacky-fun bwarbeqwu, an outbrweak of headwice, twips to va dwoctor fow wittle piwls to make the scawries go away… And it would appeawr, I have devewloped a wisp.

My fwavorwite quote of va weekend?

Me:  Daniel, its bedtime.
Daniel:  UH!! But!!! The air is STILL white!!

*loses the lisp* - So tonight after some of the scary-crazies Len was going through gave way to medication and some TLC and the kids were safely tucked into bed, it was bubble bath and to bed with the laptop, a book, a cup of coffee and some chocolate… the healer of my soul. 

My husband snores peacefully beside me.

Michele wanted to know if we have ever done anything silly in the kitchen.  Well, yes I have!

Most tragically...I lost a wonderfully, lovely boyfriend due to my kitchen failures.  He may have kept me - but my pride won out…

I was young.  I went on vacation with a guy I was dating and my friend, who was newly married to his brother. 

My friend was like a goddess in the kitchen. She had us all whipped into shape. After dinner, we would all clean up, and prepare the table for breakfast. After breakfast, under her orders, we would do all the prep work for lunch.  Then at lunchtime, we would peel the potatoes, set the table etc. for dinner.  Every meal was perfectly organised and cooked… I was in awe. My mere 18 years had not prepared me for this level of efficiency.  Then, towards the end of the week, she snapped.  She was no older than I was, and it was all taking a toll on her.  She needed me to take over the evening meal; it was *gasp* roast beef!!

I had never made a roast, but I wasn’t about to reveal that fact to the ‘goddess’.  I winged it… and LOST!!  I basically boiled the roast in the oven for about… oh, 10 hours, and it tasted like sh*tty rubber.  I totally lost face, although they were all very kind and teased me gently, I was mortified… After that vacation, I never spoke to the guy again. 

I made it a quest in life to learn how to roast meat.  Now… I am pretty damn good at it!! 

I have googled this guy’s name on occasion (oh, don’t look at me like that!  You’ve googled names before!!) to try and apologise for my wounded pride and my abrupt dumping of him… but I never found him.  So, Alan Henderson of Mull - I am truly sorry…