Point, shoot, uhhh decide

A is for ANGEL
I'm starting the alphabet photographic challenge, forwarding across the pond todays photo of something that starts with the letter A. Seems like a creative and crafty framework for shooting a photograph. Good thing I just checked on the time zone difference because it appears that at 11PM there, its 3Pm here. That means that those of us on the west coast need to shoot off our submissions for tommorrow before 4PM today. Click here for the current post of submissions from everyone posted on his blog.
Since the funkadelic weather coupled with my achy breaky toothache has me mainly indoors these days, and and theres plenty of material around the ranch, I decided to just shoot what I got around here. In fact between the house and my barn theres prolly enough material for three or four rounds of this. I really have difficulty at times with making decisions. Acorns or angels, staged or simple. Scheesh, at the very least it will pull me through the month of February, and be so interesting to see the various submissions. One or three of my friends have signed on too, fun fun fun.
I'll use my blog here to post each days snaps, question my submission decisions, try to add some relevant dialogue and not get too carried away.
The angel above was hand carved and purchased from an artisan in Sante Fe, New Mexico about 7 years ago.
I remember he had a pillow case filled with these beauties, and I paid him 10 dollars for it. I love the way he left her skirt uncarved. I collect angel stuff and these are two of the three that hang over my bed.

No Pain no Gain?

"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

Abraham Lincoln

This is one of my very favorite quotes, that is of course unless you have a mind numbing toothache...
I was supposed to get a tooth yanked about three years ago.
It was really bad. A problem had developed no thanks to a poorly capped tooth, but due to my phobia of dentists and lack of insurance, once the infection healed, I shined it.
A couple of trail bars last Saturday started this weeks recent round of pain and found me this morning reclining in the dentists chair at the crack of dawn and gratefully leaving with a packet of penicillin.
I tried to take my mind off things by starting to shoot a few photos for the Alphabet Photo challenge that starts this Sunday, so I'm not running around in a state of creative panic on Saturday... uhhh tomorrow, going ... A, what can I shoot that starts with the letter A.
I was over at Daves' after my dental appointment- (for some sympathy and breakfast) when seeing a cool broom (the letter B) hanging on the wall, I decided maybe I should get a jump on things.
I love staging photos, and hopefully there's plenty of material to work with between our respective abodes.
My goal is to post each days photo, starting Sunday, through the month of February, (and the runner uppers), God I hate to make decisions, this one or that...
Please sign on with me, either to post (a photo) or 2 follow mine that I will be posting on my blog!

Gloom, Doom and Glory Days

Exciting things have happened since my last post. THE most over the top thrill being the inauguration of our 44th President. I had a joyous day watching the news... for a change. I wished I was there, I felt like I was there. It was so cold in Oregon, and in my house, watching it on TV that morning I felt like I was there. I somehow managed to tear myself away for the 20 minute ride over to Daves where there was a fire, and someone to share it with.
After 8 painful years of George W. Bush, I feel like we have turned a whole new page. The unprecedented elation that was shared around the world is a breath of fresh air despite the fact that our economy is circling the drain. Our collective tears of joy emphasized the three words, Yes We Can.
The news in general these days is so unsettling, it seems that no matter if you are listening to NPR, the network news or Coast to Coast, its nothing but doom and gloom. I'm welcoming the new mindset, I have faith we can surface and rise from fear to hope and gain the respect we have lost around the globe.
I've started working with a new publication and as well as designing display ads, I'm also working on marketing materials for The Senior Fair they are putting on in June at RCC.
On the homefront, Dave has adopted a dog and Maggie has a new best friend. Pepper was found through an ad in the local paper, from a young couple that just had a baby. She is 5 years old and does all kinds of tricks. They are so similar in some ways, and yesterday after a few rounds of growling at each other around food issues, I watched them standing side by side looking out the window, their tails wagging in perfect unison.
I'm thinking, maybe they should be making a non-partisan training video for those Washington politicians....?

I Have a Dream

I can hardly listen to the Reverend Kings' speech without choking up, and wish he were still alive to witness tomorrows inauguration. I'm glued to the tube watching all the hoopla in Washington. If I were still living on the East Coast no doubt I would be there to be part of this historical and monumental event. But I'm not, and reporting from this neck of the woods where we woke to freezing fog, I'm reminded that in retrospect it was on Martin Luther King Day in 1996 that I started my hunt for the move that would take me out of the Bay Area in search of my casa in the country.
My dream started its way up the coast of California, stopped in Mendocino, poked around Sebastapol and Sonoma county, where it could not afford to settle and ended up here in Southern Oregon all because of a classified ad in the Sierra Club newsletter.
7 months later I was packing up the moving van and whistling Green Acres.
This August will mark 15 years and today I am considering a new dream and it involves living in a place that is sunny and warm more days out of the year than not.
Yesterday we headed out to the Illinois Valley once again to find some sunshine. This time I kept Maggie on a short leash and out of the brush. Stopping for a latte on the way I snapped the picture above. I'd like to think that this might be where Dr King will be looking down on the festivities from tomorrow. And I sure hope its warm, sunny and he has plenty of milk and sugar.
Amen!

Beauty & The Beast

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi, from "Let the Beauty we Love"

My trip in search of sunshine and splendor left me with an unwelcome souvenir when I woke the following morning to a tick working its way into my neck. It had piggybacked either on Maggie the mothership, (or myself) lending a practical and ironic reflection on the quote above.
I have been a total pain in the neck and its been a difficult three days. No doubt the tender neck/collarbone location being a primary factor. How something so small can inflict such pain in such a short amount of time is a mystery I set out to solve and thought I would share. I started researching and reading on Google ...yikes the pictures alone were enough to inspire horror and panic, in spite of the fact that the tick had just begun to make himself at home. I learned that they emit a super glue like substance (and numbing agent) that combined with their barbed legs make removing even before they have burrowed, difficult at best. Each new fact and image convinced me this was not how I wanted to be spending my quiet Saturday night, and shut down mr computer. I will be so much more cautious if not paranoid the next time I head out into the great outdoors for my next dose of beauty.

Fogged IN

The weather these days has been vaguely reminiscent of life in the Bay Area at its worst, fugly and cold. Its been a totally depressing two days and the burning desire to head out of the fog became the voice of reason and motivated a picturesque drive to the Illinois valley. I could have skipped the insanely narrow road that zigzags down the side of the mountain to the river, with a suicide drop off the side that takes your breath away, were you not holding it in, praying another vehicle is not coming around the curve in the other direction. Each time we head down that road I swear its my last... and fear its my last.
No matter how you turn this kaleidoscope it can take your breath away.
At the top of the mountain, in the midst of some solid sunshine, we discussed the fact that this weather picture plays out every year around this time, and then, in no time at all its 110 in the shade and we're floating down the river.
Time flys wheter your having fun or not, and its all relative to something I just can't get a handle on. Like, fourteen years since I moved here, a year since I started at the hospital ( I got my one year certificate this past Monday), I still struggle to remember how old I am, and still wonder what I will be, if and when I grow up. And the seasons turn turn turn around it all.
There is a distinctly serene advantage to the change of seasons, but as I get older, the reason I appreciate that fact becomes dimmer and is eventually off the radar entirely. I find myself longing for the kind of blissful warmth that makes me turn my face to the sun and melt, ahhh....year round. Each winter more than the last, I long to head somewhere, anywhere south, kind of like some of my body parts these days...
I tell myself, THIS is my last winter here, and then, here I am again, a year later, wondering where the past twelve months have gone. Its like one of my very favorite movies, Groundhog Day, except its not hysterically funny. There is snow, I have one of those generic clock radios, I am from Pennsylvania, but can we cut to the Hollywood ending complete with romantic music? And can I rewrite the ending to be on a beach with a Margarita in hand?
Reality check. Maybe its time for a new life plan complete with a geographic, a creatively and financially rewarding job, or maybe just a few days escaping cabin fever here in paradise.