edge of my universe

Pool or Ocean?

2011-06-30T17:26:00.001-07:00

Curvature
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Swimming

Do you prefer to swim in the ocean, or in a swimming pool? I think most people will say, “swimming pool!” and list many reasons to support that choice.

I prefer to swim in the ocean. And I have many reasons why that is the case.

Yesterday, I spent more time in a swimming pool than I generally spend in one in years. There were the grandkids who needed to get wet. So, there was a lot of bobbing and floating and splashing mixed in with some whining, etc.

Then, last night, I thought it might be a good idea for Mark and I to take a swim, because he recently had knee surgery, and needs to exercise.

So, we dressed for a swim and wrapped up in towels and such to make our way to the pool in the rather cool breeze. The water in the pool was probably warmer than the air, but still, there was something difficult about fully plunging. I was cold and my every instinct told me, in every cell of my body, that to be wet would be colder.

While some might say, “I want my mommy!” I was saying, “I want my wetsuit!”

But no one wears a wetsuit in the pool. It was probably freakish enough that I was wearing a tank top and board shorts. Hey, if guys can do that, who says that I am required to wear the female equivalent of a speedo anyway? Especially after 60. I just want to be comfortable. And in any case, the tomboy in me totally favors the comfort of a pair of board shorts.

Mark simply jumped in feet first, which is usually the best choice. But it’s a shallow pool. It only goes as deep as 5 feet. I can stand in the deep end and my hair can remain dry on top, which makes me feel absurdly tall, as if at a pool at Legoland.

So, Mark’s feet hit the bottom, hard, when he jumps in and that sets his knee rehabilitation back about six weeks. So he goes and gets into the Jacuzzi.

Meanwhile, I am still getting used to feeling cold, and still determined that I will swim laps. Or something.

While Mark is saying, “Ahhhh….” I am doing a sidestroke across the pool. Then I do a backstroke. Then I do a dog paddle. I am feeling strangely winded, and that is quickly followed by intense boredom.

I try getting across the pool in any kinds of strokes that I can invent. I would like to just do a deadman’s float and lightly kick my feet until I reach the other side, but I don’t want that much chlorine in my soft contacts. Then I realize that it is the chlorine that is making me feel winded. I am allergic to chlorine. Duh. I try to limit my exposure to it. We have filters on our showers to eliminate it so that I can go all year long without a breathing treatment. As a kid, I would get asthma after a swim in someone’s pool, every time.

Okay, so now what? I float on my back. I try to see stars in spite of the intensely bright pool lights.

I finally get out, feeling like a popsicle and sink into the Jacuzzi with Mark. In the Jacuzzi, I continue to swim, albeit, with much less room, because, unless I am reading, I am not that good at just sitting there. Soon another couple joins us, and then another, so it’s rub-a-tub-tub, three couples in the tub. And I am no longer even remotely swimming, but just sitting and trying to act like a grownup and stop playing with the bubbles.

Not exactly my idea of getting exercise: doing a slow roast in a Jacuzzi while talking for hours about the HOA, and politics, etc.

So, here are the reasons why I prefer to swim in the ocean:

I can wear a wetsuit and not look like a dork, unless the water temp is 75 and the air is 113, but in that case, I would probably be lying on the kitchen floor with a wet towel placed over my head and shoulders. The wetsuit, after the initial plunge which is usually taken care of at the first powerful wave, keeps my body temp better regulated. And the wetsuit helps keep me from getting sunburned.

I am a native of Cali, and have lived in Huntington Beach for about 35 years (and Newport Beach before that, and Seal Beach in between), but my ancestors come from places not known for getting tans.

My dad’s Scottish ancestors intermarried with the Norse invaders, and so that line is Scandinavian/Scottish from way back. Add to that that an Irish woman married one of these norse/scots and you get pale skin that freckles for all who come from this line.

My mother’s ancestry is Dutch, Danish, Scottish. I got my blondish/light brownish hair from her, but my skin from my dad. I can tan, if I am willing to make it a full time job. It takes at least three months of daily hours holding still on the beach to get one. And in two days of not doing that, it fades in a hurry. And for the first month, it will mostly be peeling and increasing the freckle count.

When I swim in a pool, I am dressed differently and parts of me that are not used to sun instantly burn, sunblock or not. And I think all that reflection there just increases the entire effect. So, in order to swim in a pool, I either need to wear a wetsuit, put on prescription strength sunblock that looks like clown white face, all over exposed skin. Or work on getting a protective tan.

None of those are all that enticing, so, board shorts, rash guard, etc. Anyway, what do you do in a pool? Especially one that is only 5 feet deep? Back stroke, side stroke, dead man’s float?

I prefer to swim in the ocean because there are always things you can do there. You can swim, paddle, or, run like mad toward a fresh set that is coming in. You can dive under a wave. You can float on your back up the slope of a slick wave, and down the other side. You can be pummeled to the point that you are eating sand and telling yourself that you WILL find the surface again if you just relax.

You can watch dolphin swim by. You can dodge a surfer. You can catch a wave that takes you on a long and exciting, or long and pleasant ride. You can share a wave with your buddy, or a seal, or both.

You can stay out as long as you are not turning blue, and you don’t get winded from breathing chlorine fumes. You can burn a lot more calories than you will doing a half-hearted sidestroke in still water.

My parents loved to swim in the ocean, and we did it often. I can’t recall the first time they took me into the Pacific. And I do recall my infancy (see a previous blog). It had to be when I was just a baby. I do have some memories of being held in their arms while they rose up over waves and down the other side, and their responses to these experiences were positive, so, I am certain that I began to love being in the ocean as a baby.

As children, we would often stay in the water for 8 hours at a time. We were blue prunes! As a teen, I would borrow surfboards, until I had my own, and ride waves for as long as I could.

So, what can you do in a pool anyway? To me, with my expansive experience in the vast pacific, a pool seems like a bathtub.

I guess I’ll just take a good book the next time I go to the pool. That is what I do in a bathtub.

Either that, or I will wear a wetsuit to the pool, bring a body board, and yell KOWABUNGA as I throw myself into the water. Acting like a grown-up is so overrated, anyway.

Mocassins

2011-05-22T17:43:00.001-07:00

Gather 'round
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Moccasins

We’ve all heard the saying about not judging another human being until we have walked a mile in his or her moccasins. It is so very true.

Recently I was at a social event where a group of people were labeling a woman as being crazy. I patiently heard them out, and they all got a good laugh out of it, but inside I was experiencing turmoil.

You see, I have known this woman for quite some time. So, on the one hand, I was experiencing some pain because I know what is good about her and hated to hear her being judged so harshly.

And on the other hand, I also wondered how many times I have been with a group of people who were dissing someone that I did not know, or barely knew and I accepted what they were saying as being unbiased truth.

All too often, we judge people on the most superficial things, such as appearance, mannerisms, etc. And we also judge too quickly based upon gossip, rumor, and distortion.

Don’t we also harshly judge those who wrong us? The ultimate in compassion is to strive to understand those who are unkind to us, and to forgive them.

As a photographer, I do a lot of editing. I look at a lot of faces up close. Sometimes I edit a photo wherein a smiling, seemingly happy person, is not looking that happy up close. Sometimes I see the sadness, rough experiences, disappointments in people’s faces, when I see them much closer.

My daughter and I, from as far back as I can remember, have shared heart pangs with each other. For us, heart pangs are when we see a human being, usually a stranger, who is experiencing loss, confusion, humiliation, pain, or any of the human emotions and plights that make us feel vulnerable: the experiences and situations that we usually keep to ourselves.

When we see something like this, we call it a heart pang. Our hearts are tugged. We experience compassion and the pathos of being a human being.

Every human being has had, or will have some really rough experiences, things that will bring us to our knees, things that will test us, make us sob, make us feel abandoned, alone, hurt. We all experience harshness, adversity, troubles. We are all vulnerable.

Every human being has a story to tell. Stories that break our hearts. We need to pay more attention. We need to look more closely. Behind every smile there is a sad face. We pick ourselves up, and we move on, and we keep trying. We smile ‘though our hearts are breaking.”

As for that conversation about the woman deemed to be crazy. Sure, she might be a little bit. But I stuck my neck out and told them what I knew about her. About her triumphs and her sorrows. And afterward, there was a quiet moment. The laughter ceased. I think and I hope that they understood her a bit more, and have some compassion for her now.

I know that I am determined to withhold judgment more often and to have compassion more often, and to want to hear others’ stories more readily. Knowing people’s stories is a way to walk in their moccasins. And once we have, we will have compassion and love for them.

And isn’t that what it is all about?

The Joys of Being Sick!

2011-01-28T16:56:00.001-08:00

Leah2
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Mark's son came down with something evil about a week ago. It may be a flu, but he is sick, sick, sick, and coughing non-stop.

I was down to only getting sick twice a year. It would happen in the fall-winter, and in the spring. That was it. Twice a year. It would be just a minor cold, a lot of the time, but sometimes as much as pneumonia, occasionally. Rarely.

But since Mark's son moved in a bit over three years ago, I have gotten sick about every other month. It's not all that surprising. Kids are often carriers of germs, and I need to wash my hands more often, clearly.

But, I have only been getting colds. They just slow me down for a day or two, more or less, and then I get over them. Knock on wood. But, I do have to be careful, because I am allergic to antibiotics, and due to other respiratory allergies, I am at risk for lung infections with any cold. If it gets worse, it can turn into bronchitis or pneumonia.

Also, I have no medical insurance.

So, any cold, even a mild one, has to be treated as if it is a bad, BAD case of the flu.

Which means that if my cold is not making me terribly miserable, just tired, a bit achy, a bit stuffy, I get the bonus of found time.

I love found time. It gives me a chance to catch up on emails, figure out how to do techno things that I might be in too much of a hurry to figure out during regular kinds of days, and work on my photos.

Also been creating some new promos for my business and thinking about ways to retool my business model to make it work better for my clients some areas.

Mark says that is when I find the time to think, ponder, write, and be creative. He is right.

If I were coughing as much as his son is even as I write this, I would not be able to do any of that so much. But being mildly sick makes it possible.

(Don't worry, he has been taken to the doctor, has meds, and I even went out and bought him orange and apple juice, so he is taken care of.)

And in a couple of days, when I have my sea legs again, I can dive into the fray once more (was that a kind of mixed metaphor oxymoron?), refreshed and ready to take it all on.

Well, maybe not all of it. My downtime often makes me rethink the quantity of things that I always seem to try to do, and revise that, too.

Less is more.

Time for another nap.

I have to learn all of THIS?

2010-09-12T18:04:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by katzeye

It’s been a while since I went back to school.

I started college in the fall of 1967. Yes, this was before computers (well, at least the personal kind, before cell phones, before ipods, before mp3s and digital cameras.

I had two majors: Art and Psychology. There were some who, when they heard that I was an art student, chided me by saying that I must just be there to get my “MRS.” Luckily, I was able to throw out my other major at times like that. Yes, two majors, one is considered to be the more academic of the two. But which?

To most, it was the Psych major. Perhaps that was technically true. But the reality is that my art studio classes took a lot out of me. They were two hours long, every time. Many a day I was in art studio classes for 4-6 hours at a stretch. Art professors are very exacting. If your work is not up to their expectations, you suffer the wrath of the critique. Those classes were grueling. And it wasn’t just studio, it was lots and lots of art history classes, too. And theory, and all kinds of painting, every kind, and sculpting, and, well, I would come out of those studios with paint on my clothes, and under my nails, and stumble into a psych class, actually feel relieved to be in a class where I could take in information, ponder and formulate it, and reproduce it. It was so simple. It was a relief to have academic stuff, so cut and dried.

Since graduating from college, I have continued college on and off in many ways and forms. I’ve been in grad school a few times. I’ve taken classes here and there. I’ve continued studies in psychology, humanities, literature, etc. I love to learn.

And so, I decided that I had reached a point, artistically, where I might be stagnating. Since I was an art student, last, we hand painted, hand lettered, hand-everything, laboriously, tediously, critically. In a sense, I have jumped back in to my starting point, as an art student. Only look how much it has changed!

And look at how much technical experience I need to put in and learn. The learning curve is astounding.

But I have to say, that with all of the many changes, there are things that have not changed.

The desire to be artistic, to be creative, has never faded. Immersion in art sharpens one’s eye, so that all that is seen is seen with all of the glories of color, light, composition.

For my clients (those who hire me to do photography for them, draw and paint for them, etc.), be prepared for a fresh infusion of new light in my work.

I just looked out the window and was amazed at the colors and the way the late afternoon light is warming up the contours of all that I am seeing.

It totally reminds me of when I was 18, and would step out of an interpretive drawing class, or an oils class, and would nearly be overwhelmed by the colors, patterns and light outside, on campus.

And I remember what my parents said, “Do what you love.”

And I will, as soon as I figure out how to do all this stuff! Again.

Christmas Wish

2009-12-27T13:04:00.001-08:00

Christmas Wish
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Christmas Wish: Pneumonia for Christmas

What did you get for Christmas? Warm and fragrant gingerbread men? New Toys? Sweaters?

I got pneumonia for Christmas.

It’s not the first time. The first time I got pneumonia for Christmas, it was so bad that I was unable to do ANYTHING. I was sucked into feverish delirium each day around 3 PM, and before that, it was feverish coughing and lying around like a pale rag doll with half the stuffing missing.

When I was not delirious, I worried that there would be no Christmas without me. I had four kids and needed to get busy creating Christmas for them. That Christmas, my daughter, who was just a girl at the time, pretty much took over and did all my wrapping and quite a few other Christmas chores.

Somehow Christmas happened even with my minimal feeble attempts. I was amazed at my daughter and amazed that it happened and on schedule, and no one was disappointed.

That was about 18 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed many Christmases without pneumonia. I’ve had some occasional colds, but nothing to knock me off track entirely. Up until this Christmas, that is.

Let me begin with here I am and go back in time a bit. Where I am presently is mostly stopped. Mostly coughing as if my lungs themselves have gone bad and must be eradicated. Not much else. I sit around and cough, that seems to be what I am good for these days. Last week was even worse. I did attend some family events and sat like a lump, just trying to survive and breathe.

The week before that, I knew it was coming, so I was mostly slowed down.

The week before that, I started to feel like I was coming down with something, so I ran around even faster to try to get stuff done before I was no longer able to.

The weeks before that I was burning the candle at both ends, working a lot, too much. I knew I was working too much. Six days a week until midnight or 1 AM sometimes. But I felt impervious. I had had a run of many years of pretty good health, so, perhaps I could just keep meeting deadlines and catch up on sleep when I could.

So, I was running around, working long hours, not getting enough sleep, not getting enough exercise, and thinking of myself as practically infallible and strong like some kind of super hero.

Pride goeth before the fall. And the bigger the pride, the more one is so involved in doing and doing, the greater the fall.

So, all Christmas preparations on my part, came to a halt, along with dishes and laundry. My focus became just getting through another night with, hopefully, a few little naps in between coughing-up-a-lung episodes.

I had a Christmas Grid that I had made for my desktop. It was so fantastic because, at a glance, I could see what still needed to be done. And there were still a lot of things that needed to be done.

Sigh.

I thought that I was strong enough, if I just do a lot of vitamin C, and fluids, and stuff, that in a couple of days, I could be off and running again, and to the store to get ingredients for Christmas cookies. YES! I would be back in action in no time, just you watch and see.

But I was wrong. And I was still being prideful, and committing hubris. I needed to let go and surrender to pneumonia. I had to pry my fingers, one by one, from their tight grip on my Christmas Grid.

I had to surrender and watch Christmas happen all around me.

Ordinarily, I have a pretty good idea about what I am getting for Christmas, but this time, I had no clue. And really, there was only one thing that I wanted for Christmas, and that was to breathe through the night, and during the day, and, if it were possible for one more thing, to be able to have my health restored.

That’s all.

Pneumonia for Christmas was very humbling for me some 18 years ago. I must have remembered that lesson for 17 years. I guess it was time for a strong reminder of a few things. For instance, Christmas, and life, is not about running around and doing so many things that there is no time to breathe. It’s not about being perpetually busy.

If one gets too busy to breathe, one might get pneumonia and suddenly not be so busy and not be able to breathe.

Christmas, and life, is about giving the best gifts, time with loved ones, savoring moments that will become memories, listening to one another, caring for one another.

Hurriedness will squeeze the life out of, well, life.

I knew that.

I guess I just forgot.

I will admit, that in my stage of being slowed down, I found some peace in what I could do. I broke out the watercolors and did a painting as a Christmas gift. I knitted some scarves for people. One can still be useful, even when holding still. And there is a great deal of peace to be found in such quiet activities.

So, for next Christmas, who wants a scarf? Who wants a watercolor? I will be building in time for quiet things even if I am fully capable of running about like a crazed creator-of-Christmas, a title that I cannot assume in any case. Whatsoever.

Reading IS Fundamental

2009-07-02T12:19:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by katzeye

Reading IS Fundamental

We had company the other night, and my sister-in-law was telling me about a school district with which she is familiar (I think she said that one of her kids are in this district, and I am hoping that my memory is inaccurate on this detail), that has decided to eliminate all literature classes because the kids need to be taught the basic skills of spelling and grammar instead.

Now, I would be the first to agree that such basics as spelling and grammar have totally slid into a black hole and that it appears that illiteracy is experiencing a revival. I suspect that TV was the first hit on literacy. Some people began to watch more and read less. Computers took a hit, as they provided additional entertainment and encouraged less reading. Instant messaging and text messaging seem to have delivered grave blows to literacy.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a passion for technology, and don’t know where I’d be without texting, but I am concerned that we are losing something.

All around me, even in professionally printed signs, and professionally designed websites, I see the following:

“Your really gonna love this.” I am somewhat okay with “gonna” because it is just slang, and as long as it doesn’t start to appear in scholarly essays, I will just accept that. But “Your” is a possessive so it means, “your dog,” “your hat,” “your husband”, “your illiteracy.” It can never mean, “Your invited,” or “your so funny!” Your so funny what? Your so funny dog, hat, husband, or illiteracy?

It’s YOU’RE invited, which means, YOU ARE invited!! You are likely to appreciate this (your really gonna love this)!

Also, “each other” are two words, not “eachother,” and “a lot” are two words and not “alot,” and it’s “we were supposed to…” and not “suppose to,” and it’s we went “across the street,” not “acrossed the street,” or “acrosst,” It’s “I’m not used to this,” not
I’m not use to this,” and, “this just makes things worse,” not “worst,” etc.

Oh, and these ones really get me, “Me and him went to the park,” “Her and I had an argument,” “His and I’s website.” What the hey? What’s with that? I am starting to think that there is a new, emerging sub language of illiteracy.

And while I am at it, an apostrophe is not required before every “s” and quotation marks are only used for quotations or for “supposedlies.” Yes, it is okay, rarely, to make up words, and I just made that one up to describe itself. I was a teenager in the 1960s. Notice, there is no apostrophe. I buy a lot of blank CDs and DVDs. NO APROSTROPHE!!! Are these Sheila’s CDs? Notice where the apostrophe goes. It is used for possessives, contractions, and, in pairs, for a quote within a quote.

So, yes, illiteracy is on the rise. And yes, something has to be done about it. I have gone to forums online to learn how to do some technical thing, or to get some kind of information and found people writing as if they are adults who stopped learning to write in the 1st grade. I do not have the patience to try to decipher someone’s inability to write a clear sentence.

I used to work for an English professor at CSULB. He was working with seniors in the teacher ed. program, and gave me their essays to evaluate and grade. It was the most depressing job I ever had. These were students about to graduate, get their teaching credentials, and teach our children how to write. 80% of these students had trouble constructing a clear sentence. Terrifying!

So, it is true that students need to learn the basics of writing clearly and intelligibly. But do we go about that by eliminating lit classes?

As a very young child, I was surrounded by a plethora of endless books. There were floor to ceiling bookshelves, but, in addition, there were bookshelves in every room of the house, and I do not exaggerate. I grew up with the idea that books were important, that they lined the walls of homes, and that they were worth reading, regularly. My parents read daily, and they read to us daily. My dad read us Shakespeare, Milton, Carroll and The Wind in the Willows from the time we could sit on his lap. Those are among my favorite memories.

I recall longing to learn to read, and before long, I was. Fortunately, my reading habit was fairly well established prior to first grade, when suddenly I was confronted with Dick and Jane. Such a contrast to Shakespeare!

When I got to HS, I was fortunate to attend a savvy school that had majors. They saw that while my math skills might be lacking (largely due to a lack of interest), (no pun intended), that my literary skills were big and wide, and so, I was able to skip the basic English classes where they studied grammar, punctuation, and sentence diagramming (remember that?). I was declared an English Lit major and I was put into all the best, most interesting literature classes and so, throughout HS, I was able to learn Middle English, analyze poetry, write all kinds of stuff, and read a very amazingly wide gamut of literature from around the world and from many centuries.

So, one might ask. How did I learn enough basic grammar skills to be able to be a freelance editor today?

I learned it from reading. I can skim a work of text and my head and my eye, instantly spot the punctuation error, the sentence that is poorly constructed, the descriptive word that, due to its position in a sentence, is describing the wrong word, and the ungrammatical usage. It’s not because I am some kind of idiot savant, it is not because I use my computer’s spell check or grammar check (and those can be inaccurate) and it is definitely not because I have studied these basics. It is because I have been read to since birth, and because of that, learned to read at age 4, and because of that, have had a passion for books, and because of that, I have an inherent knowledge of how things are to be written.

I have never had a basic English class. Never.

I have a friend who has taught them, though, at the college level. She is very smart and has written books on Shakespeare for kids. She wrote her dissertation on how language skills affect thinking skills. Often, people think that the words that we use are a result of our thoughts. This is true at a simplistic level. But her theory is that the better our literary skills; the better we can think.

Anyone who has learned another language knows how it opens you up to the nuances of the human experience. There are words in French, for instance, for feelings, that do not translate into English. So, if you only know English, you could even be limiting your emotional experiences!

So, I wish to declare that the way to increase literacy is not through memorizing rules of grammar, it is through loving to read, continuing to love to read, and in reading as much as possible, always! It’s just that simple! And that, wonderfully complex!

what a nut!

2009-06-18T16:10:00.001-07:00

what a nut!
Originally uploaded by katzeye

I wrote about this photo on my blog at www.kcpetersen.com.

It's about how a child in a photo shoot is a fleeting thing, and, in real life, too.

Soak up your kids, immerse yourself in them, while you've got them.

In a sigh, they are grown up and moving all over the world!

iMac or Macbook Pro?

2009-05-25T11:49:00.001-07:00

Kiera in my office
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Time for a new computer, looking at iMac or Macbook Pro. Any suggestions?

Altruism

2009-04-08T22:56:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by katzeye

Altruism

Someone used to argue to me that there is no such thing as altruism. Every good deed has some kind of selfish motivation, whether overt or covert, subtle or transparent, large or small.

Perhaps he was right, although I am not ready to let go of the idea that altruism can exist, does exist, and has existed.

Nevertheless, we must examine our motivations for good deeds, service, charity, etc. I did just that recently. I participated in “Project Easter Basket.” It’s a service project wherein an individual or an organization shops for and creates an Easter Basket for a needy kid.

When the project was presented to me, I only had a moment to consider and to indicate the gender and age of the recipient, among several choices ranging from age 2 to age 14. I chose a girl around age 10.

The day before the Easter basket was due, I did the shopping. I hadn’t had time to look at what was on the list until I was on my way to the store. It was much more involved than I had anticipated, as it included such things as “4 hygiene items,” “4 school supplies,” “4 items of essential clothing,” etc. and there were listed suggestions for the several categories. Also included were toy and candy categories, of course.

It wasn’t until I began to shop that it started to become evident why I had chosen that category. I’d had three sons and then a daughter. The sons were adventurous, challenging, exhausting, loving, and a lot of fun. I’d enjoyed adventures with my brothers, while growing up, so I was prepared to be the mother of equally adventurous sons.

My daughter was also adventurous, and was able to fit right in with her brothers, but we had a special mother-daughter bond that was emphasized by our being the only girls in the family.

And when she was 10 years of age, that bond was even more important, in ways that she could not have realized.

It was around then that doctors found an angioma in my brain. They said that it was about ten years old, and probably occurred during childbirth. It was a cluster of abnormal blood vessels in the brain, that may have happened due to a birthing injury, such as possibly pushing too hard during childbirth ten years earlier. They weren’t sure what degree of angioma it was, but they felt certain that it was causing some serious problems, and that I would probably die of a brain hemorrhage in about two weeks.

I’d tuck my daughter into bed at night, and I was unable to avoid remembering that I had her in my mid-thirties, which, at that time in medical history, made me an older, at-risk mom, and, yes, well, it was a natural childbirth and it was difficult to get me to temper the consuming desire to push.

The complexities of loving my daughter and considering that my birth experience with her might make it impossible to raise her were nearly overwhelming. But, eventually, I was able to find a calm and peaceful place that was not only delicious to the soul, but it made every second of my life precious and expanded with vitality.

It was probably three weeks later that a special team of doctors researching my case came back with a revised prognosis that extended my life span.

But during that time, when my daughter was ten, my relationships were extra special, and more important than much else.

So, I went into the store to shop for a ten-year-old girl, and it was so easy, because I picked out the things that my daughter would have loved. And as I did this, it felt cathartic in some way. It was a time of revisiting that bittersweet time, that time when time stood still and became so expanded and so precious.

I picked out special and precious things. And they were not over budget. It was if the universe was assisting as I found wonderful things that a ten-year-old girl would love, and each item was marked down. I couldn’t believe it. I never do that well when shopping for myself!

I brought the items home and showed them to Mark as I prepared them and wrapped them up in an Easter basket lined with cellophane.

It sat in our living room all the next day, and as I passed it, I remembered the experience of shopping for the unknown girl, and my experience with my own daughter at that pivotal time, and I thought of each item and how the unknown girl might like them.

I wished that I could give it to her myself, and see her expressions when she took out each item. I wondered if her eyes would grow large when she saw the pretty summer dress I put in the basket, or the glowing flower pen. I wondered if she would immediately eat the jelly beans or save them to savor later.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought about how we receive pleasure in seeing someone’s response to our gifts. So perhaps it is more altruistic to give blindly like this. I won’t know the girl who will receive my basket. I won’t see her receive it.

As it turned out, my husband even delivered the basket to the collection location, so I never even got to see my basket join the others.

I just had to let go. I just had to simply send my good deed out into the universe, anonymously.

I think that there is a certain degree of altruism to that.

But, when I think about it, my contentious debater was right to a degree. No matter how altruistic we may be, we can not even get close to being as altruistic as He for whom Easter is celebrated.

But the example is there for us, and we can at least attempt to follow it.

soar

2009-03-19T20:18:00.001-07:00

soar
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Is it time to soar yet?

Sometimes I think I am so tied down with so many things that I can’t get off the ground. But a lot of it is stuff that I want to do/choose to do.

But as I approach my “golden years,” not sure if this is referring to the sunset time of our lives or if it means jaundice, or that we should now, suddenly wear a lot of golden jewelry, I find myself in a quandary:

I don’t like to waste time. I like to waste time.

Okay, so I don’t like meetings, I get restless in them, and if they are not accomplishing something really superb then they are a waste of time. I wonder to how many hours of meetings have I been subjected in this lifetime so far? Can’t I get a pass on them from now on?

I like to dilly dally and lolly gag and think and ponder, and explore.

But, uh, there is still so much I want to do and who knows how many years are left. Granted, when I was young there were no guarantees there, but at least then, I could consider that I had 50 or 60 very likely. Now I have to consider that I have between six months and twenty years. 20, that’s not much. Especially if you consider that the possibility of disability (ew, that rhymes) is pretty high and getting higher.

That makes time precious and so, the people who mess up an order and I have to call them daily to either get what was ordered or my money back, and the person who corners me to tell me all about his or her ill-fated love life, or the traffic jam because about 150 cars must drive into the school parking lot to deliver their kids and so they back up traffic off campus for two long blocks, or a movie that is so lame, so predictable, so boring; out with them!

Our beloved computers, meant to save us time, can be like traffic jams, too. I am finding myself starting to eliminate internet “friends,” “contacts,” etc. who are more inclined to detract than to enhance. Same with clothes, products, books and mags, and situations.

I want to write in my journals/family and personal histories, do genealogy, help people, write a collection of short stories, write a novel, take the perfect photograph, get my business running smoothly (as if), lose weight, see the lands of my ancestors, learn to use photoshop, organize all my photos (like about a trillion of them, okay, a billion, but for sure no fewer), spend time with family and friends, but life gets in the way, always, daily.

Life has to be more than doing laundry, loading/unloading the dishwasher, cooking, cleaning, errand running, appointments and meetings, right? What do you say?

Traditional and Crazy Christmas Traditions

2008-12-22T10:28:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by katzeye

homemade tamales. my dad worked downtown, near the music center, and on Christmas Eve, he had more time off, and he would go to the music center and listen to music and go to the local places he knew so well for authentic, homemade tamales. He'd get a bunch of them. I don't remember if we had them on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Maybe that depended. But we had them.

wooden shoes and clogs. Dutch tradition. Sinter Klas would appear in the area starting December 6th. I think his sidekick was Black Pete, but there was a Dutch name for him, that translated to something like that. So, sometimes on that date, we'd line up wooden shoes (they had a dutch name too, trying to remember that, z something), or clogs, or any roomy shoe if one did not possess a wooden one (I had wooden clogs up until recently, actually). We'd put carrots and straw in the shoes for the reindeer. In the morning (the 7th or the 25th, depending), there would be a small surprise in each shoe to replace the carrot or straw.

Cookies and Milk for Santa. We'd leave notes for Santa, usually notes of thanks and instruction and information about his cookies and milk. In the morning, the milk would be half gone and there'd be at least one half-eaten cookie left on the plate.

Angel hair pasta (usually on Christmas eve)

Crackers. British Isles tradition, usually in the morning at Christmas breakfast, which would include such things as hot, spicy cider, egg nog, croissants, eggs, bagels, home made cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate.

Stockings (these were usually filled with oranges, walnuts, candy canes, and a few little surprises)

Frosted cookies. We'd make them ourselves from scratch. I can do without this one, as they are very buttery rich.

Pajamas. On Christmas eve, Santa would sneak into each of our rooms to place a soft, wrapped gift at the end of each of our beds. In the morning, we'd wake up, rub our eyes, and put on the new pajamas that we found in those packages.

Christmas morning. We'd usually wake before our parents, and we learned to not go into the living room yet. We'd put on our new pajamas and find much of our breakfast on the table, ready for us. When our parents got up, they'd make the eggs, the hot chocolate, the spiced cider, etc. We'd wait for our Grandma to arrive. Then, we'd line up in order of age, the youngest first, and file into the living room that was brightly lit by my dad's bank of lights so he could film us. Our films show us blinking, squinting and shielding our eyes!

Gift Opening. We'd start with the stockings. We'd all dig into those at the same time. Then, we'd take our seats in the living room and one gift at a time would be handed to us. One person at a time would open. It took most of the day! After that, we'd play with our toys while the Christmas feast was prepared (Tamales if they weren't enjoyed on Christmas Eve).

Thank you notes. My mom would spread newspaper on the dining room table, usually on NY's day, and we'd gather around the paper, paints, and pens and create Thank You cards and art to send to relatives and even brothers and sisters who gave us gifts. There'd be music playing and we'd immerse ourselves in the creativity of it.

Later "traditions." When we were all teenagers, we added a few new traditions such as the Tree Decorating: Our parents would leave the room to watch TV while we threw tinsel all over the tree. We loved the randomness of how it fell.

Also, we would sneak things out of each others' rooms to put on the tree, for instance, I remember that a wallet-sized photo of a girl none of us had ever seen before had appeared on the tree. On the back, it said, "To Mike, love Cindy xxxoo." That was a real find since Mike, our youngest brother, had never mentioned this Cindy to any of us. That HAD to go on the tree, along with someone's hidden report card, or a really garish necklace that someone had given our mother and she was too polite to give it away, and someone's speeding ticket, and the Barbie doll that my sister still kept in her underwear drawer, the one that had lost most of its hair.

Gift Wrapping: If it was too big to fit on the tree, it was wrapped and put UNDER the tree. Jeff's old stuffed animal that he had when he was four, and the fur was all rubbed off? Wrapped and put under the tree with his name on the tag. Mike's car keys? Wrapped and put under the tree! My favorite record album? Wrapped and put under the tree! The object was to fill up that space with as many shiny gifts as we could! But we tried not to be too cruel about it, so, for instance, my brother was only looking for his car keys for two days, and was borrowing his brother's car in the meantime, the brother who had put his keys under the tree, of course. However, one year, a week before Christmas, I took my sister's electric razor, the one she counted on daily for smooth legs, wrapped it in a shoebox-sized box and put it under the tree. We'd be wandering around all week, wondering where we'd misplaced our stuff, all the while looking for more things to wrap.

I'm not sure how my parents survived all of us, but they seemed to manage by telling each other that one day this would all pass.

But I will never forget the look of relief on my sister's face when she opened that gift and found her beloved, long-lost electric razor, which she immediately hid under her long lost sweater.

It was a great tradition, as it made us appreciate what we had. (Each other!)

What about you?

There Are Times When I Am Ashamed to be a Member of Humanity

2008-11-28T09:47:00.001-08:00

There Are Times When I Am Ashamed to be a Member of Humanity
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Mankind does so many evils against its own kind. This just makes me sick. I can't help but imagine that this young man, with, perhaps, a young family, sat at Thanksgiving dinner the day before with parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, etc. Perhaps he mentioned that he had to go to work very early the next morning. Perhaps they joked about it. Someone may have even said something about the craziness of Black Friday.

And he died, first thing the next morning.

Not due to natural causes, not while protecting or defending. He died from being stampeded by greedy shoppers wanting to be the first into the cavernous temple of discount shopping.

So, we all pause for a day to reflect and give thanks for all of our blessings. And the moment the next day breaks, we stampede a store employee to death in our reckless need to get more.

I am sickened.

Surfs with Seals

2008-10-30T19:27:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by katzeye

While this is a photo of a young seal that washed up on the beach, there was a very lively one on the beach this morning.

Leslie and I went out this morning to ride some waves. When we arrived, there was a seal body surfing and having a good time riding the waves.

We went into the water and paddled out and started to catch waves right away. The waves were gentle but yet strong enough to give us some good rides.

But the highlight of the day for me was this:

I had just caught a wave and was turning around. I looked just in time to see a beautiful, green, translucent wave rising. Leslie was at the south end of it where it was starting to break, and she was just catching it when I saw a beautiful sight. The seal had also caught the wave and was inside it, beautiful and brown, sliding down sleekly alongside Leslie. My jaw dropped and I pointed, hoping she would see the beautiful creature sharing her wave.

A lifeguard pulled up just then and saw the same thing I was seeing. Somehow that made it more real to me that a lifeguard also watched the dual ride. It wasn't just my imagination!

When the wave broke, the seal shot out from behind and was gone in a nano-second.

I will never forget that sight of green wave, shining and transparent with two riders: Leslie and the sleek, brown seal, sharing an experience together.

We Have New Neighbors

2008-09-07T16:35:00.001-07:00

neighbors.jpg
Originally uploaded by katzeye

We have new neighbors. The lady friends moved out and Malibu Ken and Barbie moved in. This wouldn’t be a problem, really, except that their deck is directly alongside Mark’s office slider and my office window. Here, at the beach, we really mean it when we say their deck is right directly alongside, as in, we could reach out and touch the railing of their deck from the edge of our miniscule balcony.

So, by now you are probably thinking, “Oh, and they like to party, right?”

Well, yeah. But we’re not talking about every Friday and/or Saturday night there is a raucous and noisy party right there by our offices. They’ve actually, so far, been pretty considerate about not doing partying late into the night.

How do I explain this? It’s as if they are on permanent vacation and wanting to make every moment vacation worthy.

So, they wander out onto their deck, (which, by the way, IS their living room, dining room and rec room all rolled into one), in the late mornings, stretching and yawning and emptying the coolers of water and clearing out the beer and wine bottles from the day/night before. And it is this deck that is so prominent in our lives these days. It is our view from all south facing windows (all but one of our windows!). Then they go shopping, or to the beach, or to get more food and beer, or, most likely, they stretch out in their various deck furniture in her bikini and his swim shorts, and read their mags, or play some game where they lean over and make little clicking sounds for hours on end (Backgammon? Checkers?)

She has high-maintenance chunky blonde highlights, always artfully arranged, and he just sits around with his hair slicked back like it’s Miami. He may have a diamond pinky ring, but I haven’t looked that closely. I don’t think I have ever seen him in anything but a swimsuit. I see her in her bikini all day long, day after day. She slips on a little shift to go get food and beer. I don’t think I would recognize them clothed.

So, they mostly just hang out there on the deck, ALL THE TIME. From the time they wake up, until the sun is long gone, and sometimes later.

I am pretty sure that they are Malibu Ken and Barbie. I think there may be a pink convertible down on the street somewhere.

I don’t think either of them has a job.

Maybe they are on a two-week vacation. I know they are not honeymooning because we heard the downstairs neighbor telling us that a guy in his thirties rented the place. She didn’t say a couple rented it. Maybe in another few days they will both go back to jobs.

I sure hope so, because so far, it has been nothing but lounging around in swim attire, wine glasses in hand. They have outfitted the deck with a rattan bar, and various drinking stations. There are tropical plant and skulls leaning menacingly toward Mark’s office window. There are many red candle lanterns and every night, seriously, every night , around 5 PM, those get lit and start to flicker just to make the evening lounging around more special than the daily lounging around.

As I pass a window, I see them there. Her hair upswept, her bikini accenting her tan, daintily holding a wine glass. I see him leaning over and wolfing down food, that seems to mysteriously appear.

Friends come to see them at all hours of the day and night, and they come up the stairs and say, “wassup?” and “washappenin, man?” And they always, each, are carrying a 12 pack.

Their music is generic rock, and so close to what one might hear in an elevator that my ears nearly bleed, and I have to turn on my itunes to drown out their sounds before that happens. They are considerate in that they don’t play it loud, but sometimes what really makes you insane is hearing a constant buzz of low volume generic rock. Background music. Save me.

Then there are their conversations which seem to be limited to what do you want to do today, or, “you can’t do that!” when there is an illegal board game move. I did hear one friend talk about how her boyfriend had to start paying the rent for someone in their apartment who was being a slacker.

As the evening approaches, I see them sitting again, leaning into the candlelight. They don’t talk much, unless friends visit. Left alone, she mostly looks at him and poses. Yes, poses. I see her lean this way and that, and one night, when the candles were flickering, I saw her arrange a kind of shawl wrap about her bare shoulders, and make the kind of expression that one might make if it was the end of the movie when the protagonist is remembering what she learned from her bad experience with the guy who wasn’t right for her.

I am hoping with all my heart that eventually they will have jobs to go to, and that they will eventually begin to lead more normal kinds of lives; lives that require actual attire.

If that doesn’t ever happen, I will have to find a way to cope:

1-I could just pretend that it really is Malibu Barbie and Ken, and just try to deal with having that show going on at my window when I am trying to work.

2-I could move.

3-I could decide that maybe Mark and I could be more like Malibu Barbie and Ken, take some time off, and sit around all day in swim attire, sipping cold beverages and playing board games while posing by flickering candlelight.

4-I could pretend that I am in a Twilight Zone episode, and as soon as I figure out what the theme is, maybe everything will return to normal.

5- I could hope that they will start to fight and throw things at each other. Hey, if they are going to seem like they are in the next room couldn’t they at least be entertaining? And besides, if they break up, they may move.

It would totally be another thing, entirely, if they just got into their swimsuits once a day, and sat on their deck for an hour or so, per day, while leading normal lives. But it’s that they are ALWAYS on their deck. LIVING on their deck. And their deck is a resort and bar and they are on vacation, ALWAYS.

It’s just that this is in our faces, 24x7.

I know it may sound like I am making too big of a deal out of this, but their voices and their “music” fills my office, daily, all day long, and the window, right there, in my office nearly fills the entire wall. This is as if I have Ken and Barbie and their friends (Skipper? Tad?) right here, in my office, where I am trying to work, laughing and sipping beer and wine in bikinis and shorts, in my office.

Mark says that eventually it will get cold and they will have to go inside. I suspect that they will still be out there, being Ken and Barbie, every day, they will just put some stylish cover-ups on over their swim attire. They’ll add a palm frond cover to the deck to keep the rain from putting out the candles.

But, I may not notice since I will have been admitted to the asylum by then!

Bring on the Cherries!

2008-07-10T20:01:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by katzeye

It's the middle of the summer, right? Have I had a summer yet?

I did go to the fireworks display in HB on the 4th, that felt like summer.

I did have some cherries from the HB farmer's market, that tasted like summer.

One day, Mark and I went for a swim in the ocean, that was summer.

But really, that has been about it.

Here we are living in Seal Beach and we've been in the ocean once in 10 months!!!

What is wrong with us?

Okay, we've been working a lot. We have many obligations. We support a lot of people.

But really, I think we would for sure, spend more time at the beach in a year if we lived in the midwest. We'd save up, get tix to the coast, find a nice place to stay at the beach for a week or two, and then we would spend every day on the beach, in the water, eating cherries and watermelon, and putting aloe vera on our sunburns.

What is wrong with this picture?

Anyone want to come visit us at the beach and distract us from working and invite us into the water or onto a towel?

weeds

2008-04-06T21:25:00.001-07:00

weeds
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Recently, my daughter Kiera came out for a visit. It’s always fun to have her because she is a person who is nearly larger than life. By that, I mean she is full of personality and energy, and she is colorful, and sweet, and well, she fills up a room (no, Kiera, I am not saying you are fat!).

She has been a force to be dealt with since birth. Actually, even at birth. Once she was ready to enter the world, she was coming in a hurry. (I am talking about the delivery stage, here, she was one of my quickest deliveries, arriving after about 13- hours of labor, but once the delivery stage began, she was in a huge hurry to get out and see the world!!! I was in an alternative birth center, and I remember the staff running around trying to prepare for her once they realized she wasn’t going to wait any longer.

Then, she surprised me at how she could be so content, and so motivated, and so loving, even as an infant. I could put her to bed at night, wide awake, and she didn’t cry! (after the three boys, this was a very strange, new experience!). In the mornings, she would wake up and begin to sing to herself until I came to get her. And everyone got love from her, from infancy on.

As a toddler, she liked to go into her room, and change her clothes a few times a day. She’d come out in some truly creative get-ups, often borrowing from my closet!

She would sing, dance, coo, all day long. She took ballet as a pudgy pre-schooler, and danced on stage. She liked to create stories and draw pictures all day long.

When she was four, she asked me to teach her to read. I got out some books with repetitive patterns, and in a little while, she was reading everything she could get her hands on.

She liked to take the dog and pretend she was her baby. She’d bathe her and wrap her in a towel and rock her. I am pretty sure the dog really believed that was her mother.

Anyway, this is about our visit. When she is here, I notice the ways that we are different. She likes to be very busy, and always fills up her time with many activities, and talks to a lot of people, and is very extroverted. I, on the other hand, like to be not busy, not fill up my time, and not talk so much, and I am more introverted.

But I also noticed the ways in which we are the same. As we took a walk on the beach, over the sand dunes, we were talking, but we both kind of stopped talking and I realized that we were both being distracted by the weeds.

Yes, weeds.

We both had our cameras and soon we were photographing the weeds.

Now, keep in mind, at first glance, these were just ordinary weeds. At first glance, they seemed to all be a kind of dull shade of brown. Most people would have just passed them by. But not us.

I was really enjoying that there was someone else in the world who would find beauty in the weeds, and to know that it was my own daughter.

What a precious gift to have in common the ability to see beauty in the world around us.

I love you, Kiera!

At Six Weeks

2008-04-04T22:04:00.001-07:00

At Six Weeks
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Today I walked a little bit, wearing just a neoprene support on the ankle/foot, and, imagine this, a pair of matching hiking sandals!

Healing is a miraculous thing! It's not just that over the past six weeks the foot went through all those stages starting out as a big, purple box, and gradually, very gradually, changing ever so slightly. I went from having to crawl, to walking with crutches, to limping and then finally, to being able to bear weight.

It's not just that torn ligaments and tendons began to slowly, and carefully, heal and grow every so slightly stronger a little bit at a time.

It's a whole lot more than that.

I know it was just a sprained ankle, and even if it's a third degree one, the worst kind, in the whole scheme of things, I realize it's just a minor and temporary injury.

But it has been six weeks of my not being able to do what I am used to doing. It has been six weeks of often feeling frustrated, and sometimes depressed, and feeling as if for the rest of my life I will be limping in unmatched footwear.

It was six weeks to slow down, be humble, be teachable, and to think about what I could learn from this enforced period of such.

It was people praying for me, including random surfers on the beach, kind people checking on me and my progress, people with experience with such things giving me much appreciated advice, and it was kind of amazing.

Faith, our connections to each other, love, and all those good things were the silver lining.

One neighbor has seen me walk to the beach nearly each day, at first, in a giant boot, and then in a little white inflatable one, and then my hinged sports model, and he has acknowledged my progress each time I have passed his house and been greeted by his dog.

I am grateful for all of those kinds of things. I probably have a few more weeks before I actually move "normally" again, and a few months before things are totally healed, but for now, I am just so very grateful for the things I have learned and experienced while being the "gimp."

Thank you people,
kc

beach walk

2008-03-16T22:35:00.001-07:00

beach walk
Originally uploaded by katzeye

So, I was walking along the beach one morning, and three surfers were coming out of the water near the pier.

Yeah, I was limping along, doing my sand physical therapy which consists of walking up and down the slopes to strengthen my sprained ankle, while wearing one of my ankle supports.

They were asking me what happened and how. Mark says I should have said, "You should have seen it! There were these monster sets a few weeks ago, and...."

I told the truth, I said I was rock hopping on the jetty when it started to rain, and well, anyway. Some say I should start to act my age, and then maybe I wouldn't get hurt so often. But, it's not easy. I grew up with so many opportunities to be a tomboy. Yeah, I may be pushing 60, but I really don't want to become an old lady any time soon.

So, anyway, back to the surfers.

After they talked to me a while about the ankle, they asked if I would be okay with them praying for me.

I responded that they were welcome to do so, I wouldn't mind at all.

I didn't realize that they meant right then and there, on the spot. They meant right then and there. On the spot.

They gathered around me, still dripping with sea water, holding their boards in one arm (I was as if enclosed inside a flower petal), and with their free arms, they joined hands and one placed his hand on my ankle and one held my hand, and they prayed, aloud, on the beach, near the SB pier, that my ankle would heal, and be stronger than ever, and they prayed about how much Jesus loves KC, etc.

I thought many things:

1-I am standing near the pier surrounded by three random surfers who have decided to pray for my sprained ankle!

2-How random is this?

3-How sweet is this?

After our amens, they began to head for the shower, but they continued to converse with me as they walked up the shore, and as I began to head back in the other direction.

How random was that? How sweet was that?

my (stupid) left foot

2008-02-29T10:57:00.001-08:00

my (stupid) left foot
Originally uploaded by katzeye

I have had an intimate relationship with this foot now, for about five days. Prior to that, this foot was simply one of a pair that I occasionally treated with new shoes or socks, but mostly it was meant to work in tandem with it's twin to get me wherever I wanted to go, which was a lot of places.

If you saw them both at the same time, you would notice that the right twin looks nothing at all like its sister. First of all, the right twin has a pretty little silver toe ring. (which probably would have had to be cut off, if it had been on this left foot). Also, the right twin, in comparison, looks totally skinny and bony when next to her puffy and colorful sister.

I have noticed that I have gone through some stages in this healing process.

stage one-SHOCK

Omigosh, did my trail runners grip the rock so well that when I went to slide down my ankle totally bent like folded paper, and then got wedged against an adjoining rock, while I sit here in shock and can't feel my foot, ankle or leg? Did I just break my ankle in two?

stage two-CODDLING

Poor ankle, here, have some more ice, have another epsom salt soak, here rest on this pillow while I watch another silly, insipid movie.

stage three-CABIN FEVER

Arrrgggghhh, it's a beautiful day outside and I am lucky to be able to go from this room to the bathroom. I will never walk again. I will make people crazy asking them to describe what it looks like, just outside my door and down the stairs! I long to see the ocean.

stage four-FOOT ANGER

stupid extremity! why'd you have to go and do this? Were you jealous because you had no toe ring??? Now I can hardly do anything at all and it's all YOUR fault! Hah, no epsom salt soaks for you today!

Thank goodness for sunglasses, quiet moments, and quilts

2008-01-21T21:45:00.001-08:00

the much-requested quilt portrait
Originally uploaded by katzeye

It seems like life is never really smooth, or even all that peaceful. Between us we have ten kids, four grandkids, and several jobs.

There are certain aspects of our lives that are especially stressful, things that I have not mentioned thus far, and probably won't. Hardly a day goes by without some kind of extreme stuff going on in the corners of our world.

And we have a great many financial obligations (definitely related to the first two paragraphs) and so we are often left to do without.

Mark gets up well before the sun rises to take care of business, and is exhausted after working a long, long day, usually until 10 or 11 each night, Monday-Saturday.

I juggle many things, too, work-wise and otherwise.

But the thing is that here, in the center of our little apartment, there is peace. In the center of this relationship, there is peace.

And that makes all the difference!

Does Panda Inn Use MSG?

2008-01-17T14:40:00.001-08:00

Girls' Night OUT!
Originally uploaded by katzeye

I am suspecting that they do. Here are my reasons why I suspect this:

1-I had a neurological virus a few years back that nearly crippled me in more ways than one. Doctors are actually pretty amazed that I pulled through with as much capability as I enjoy. But it left me with a few glitches.

One of them is a sensitivity to certain chemicals that affect the central nervous system-such as caffeine, aspartame (and a few other artificial sweeteners), and MSG.

This is how I react to MSG. I lie awake all night, exhausted, not ruminating, not tense, not going over and over something, not worried, just awake. AWAKE, AWAKE, AWAKE.

MSG and a few other things, are excitotoxins, in that they stimulate the central nervous system in unpleasant ways. If you have a "normal" CNS, you may not notice any reaction at all to MSG, or you may get a headache, or some insomnia, or a flushing, or discomfort, or, you may be sensitive and have an anaphylactic shock experience, complete with a ride in an ambulance!

Or you may just be awake for about two days, like me.

2-I was awake most of the night last night (slept maybe an hour and a half), after eating at Panda Inn, and today, exhausted, tried to nap, but only managed to get about 15 minutes of sleep with about two hours of trying to sleep, and incapable of much else.

3-Because those who like to use MSG in foods, also like to disguise it, due to the fact that some people are not very happy with that additive, a restaurant could say, MSG-free, but the chemical may still appear in some broths or bases that they purchase, or it may appear with one of its AKAs such as “natural flavorings,” “hydrolyzed yeast extract,” “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” etc. So, even though I have contacted Panda Inn to see if they ever use MSG in their foods, and even though they have not responded yet, the fact remains, they could be using it and not really realize they are, or hope that they are fooling us, or any variation of the above.

4-MSG is in just about everything processed, and it is difficult to keep up with all of its AKAs.

Why, if it causes problems to a large enough segment of the population, and is known to do so, and many food manufacturers try to disguise that they use it, is it used at all?

Because it makes food taste better than normal, but that is an illusion. It causes your central nervous system to think that what you are eating tastes better than it really does, and it causes you to eat more.

http://www.drnorthrup.com/news/msg.php

So then, what is it anyway, a drug? There are some who would like to classify it as such. And many who would classify it as a harmful drug. Anyone who is sensitive to it would agree with that.

Those of us who react to MSG might be considered to be the canaries in the mine. Just because you don’t have a reaction to it (and you don’t get hungry again immediately or eat too much, or have a headache, at least), doesn’t mean that you are free from any and all harm from consuming MSG.

I don’t know about you, but I think I would rather eat food that actually tastes good than eat food that has been laced with a chemical to make me think it tastes good. There’s just something smarmy and brave-new-world-ish about that.

Still waiting to hear from Panda Inn and see what it is that they use in their food. If they are able to convince me that they never use MSG in any form whatsoever, I will report back here (and wonder where I got the neuroexcitin, maybe chewing gum?)

The States I Have Visited

2008-01-15T11:55:00.001-08:00

statemap.jpg
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Kiera posted on her blog (see Jeremy and Kiera link below to the right) a states map indicating all the states that she and Jeremy have visited together. This is my version of the states I have visited. Granted, some of them were simply drive-through states, but most were visited for more than a day or two. I guess I have a few more to go.

If you want to make one of your own, take a look at her blog. She has the link there.

Remembering Our Trip to the Dominican Republic

2008-01-10T20:18:00.001-08:00

Boats to Repair
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Okay, so one of you told me to write a bit more about the Dominican Republic since what I’ve written so far has only touched on trying to get back home again. So, even though it was a year ago now (a fact that is so startling to me that I cannot even be startled!), to recap:

We went to the DR to visit Mark’s parents. His parents were presiding over the Santo Domingo temple. We also went there to bring some humanitarian aid supplies. So, shortly after Christmas, we packed and headed for the airport. I had one bag and a backpack. Mark had one bag and there was one more, very huge, red rolling bag that contained the supplies. It was difficult to make our way to and through the airport with all of that luggage. Mark was pushing/pulling two large rolling bags, and we were convinced that the big red one (the one with the supplies) would likely be:

1-totally inspected, as in throw the stuff all over the place and ask, “What is this? Why are you transporting so many diapers out of the country?”

2-weighed and found to be so much over the limit that we would be charged about $89.73 for the extra weight and one of those stickers would be slapped on it to warn the baggage handlers that it was a back destroyer.

3-laughed at.

4-seen as being a bomb, and blown up.

Well, it went right through, and we even found it again in Miami, where we had to leave it in one of the most casual baggage collection locations I’ve ever seen. I was convinced that some thieves just came into the airport and roped off an area with twine and called out to people on their way to board the flight to Santo Domingo to leave all of their valuables with them. I was certain we would never see the red bag or our own bags ever again.

We arrived in Santo Domingo that night, and sure enough, the bags were missing. I remember being exhausted, watching the same bags go around and around, over and over again. When the trolley stopped, Mark ran to the counter to put in the lost luggage claim (apparently he has experienced this before. And yes, it happened more than once after this experience.)

As an aside, I recall asking my mother if her luggage had ever been lost in any of her travels. She said that when she went to Italy, her luggage was lost, and it was NEVER recovered. That was encouraging.

So, we went a few days without our luggage, which, in my case, meant borrowing things like contact lens solutions, and underwear. I wore the same things for three days. There I was, in a tropical climate, and for three days I wore a tee-shirt, jeans, and trail runners. My feet were begging to be set free. I did find, though, that if one washes clothes the night before, and they are not all that dry the next day, they are still okay to wear in a tropical climate. Damp clothes actually work in such a climate.

Well, we called day and night for our lost luggage. We went to the airport a few times, too. Again and again we told that they were not there. On our last visit, we brought the temple president. We were determined to find our luggage. We spent about four hours standing around in jeans and trail runners, and the temple president (okay, my father-in-law, FIL for short), and my husband, were both talking to anyone who wore a uniform (thank goodness they are both pretty good with Spanish. I was only understanding words like please, lost, and three days ago.

Let me backtrack for a moment. When we first entered the airport that night, we stood near the entrance and spoke to a few officials. Near where we stood is also where the passengers exit after finding, or not finding, their luggage. Our luggage was finally found to be just inside that area. But we couldn’t see it because there is a passageway there. We had described our luggage to these officials, and they said they would take a look, and they left and came back empty handed. And that was only the first of about a dozen requested and promised searches.

The airport nearly closed by the time we found our luggage, but we had no plans to leave until we found it. Someone had told us it was, finally, for sure, really, at the Santo Domingo airport, so we persisted. We spread out. I was on the top floor where a very official man had promised to bring our luggage to us and he took off with an empty luggage cart. My FIL was downstairs somewhere, and Mark hovered in between trying his best to get some action.

After what seemed like about 6 hours of standing around on the top floor, and after there were no more passengers appearing there, I saw Mark bounding up some stairs, and he motioned for me to come. I was reluctant to leave my official, promising man with his luggage cart, but went to see what Mark had to say. The luggage had been right there, in that passage way, and my FIL was loading it into the car as we spoke.

I was sooooo happy to see my bag again, and sooooo happy to change my clothes, put on some sandals, and some lighter weight pants, oh, and my little down pillow, at last!

And then, we spent the rest of our time in the cities, and in the jungles, where we saw that the manhole covers were missing because people used them to create other things that they needed, and some people lived in shacks constructed from corrugated sheet metal that they had collected from roadsides, and there were cooking fires along all the highways and freeways, and about ten people per run-down taxi, and many of them carrying a live hen for dinner, or a stack of plantains, and a baby wrapped in a shawl.

We saw a lot of very poor people in this third-world country. But everywhere we went, we saw happy and friendly people. In the Dominican Republic, when you go to church you are greeted with a kiss. If you look at someone they look right back at you (with gorgeous, big, brown eyes) and they smile. There are colors everywhere. There are pigs everywhere.

They have hardly anything. They have everything. They are happy in the jungles.

When we got back to the USA (which was another post, down below), finally, everything seemed so sterile and new, and almost even somber in comparison. And every so often, I kind of envy those people.

If Only I Could Just...

2008-01-08T21:03:00.001-08:00

heavenly light on surfers with seagull
Originally uploaded by katzeye

...do photography all day long, every day. Sigh. (I guess I should get back to editing that math book.)

What would you do all day long if you had the choice?

It's beginning to look a lot like warp speed stress time!

2007-12-01T20:09:00.001-08:00

We wish you a Merry Christmas!
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Why is it that the year can seem like it is moving along at a regular, if slightly-above-speed limit, and then, along comes December, and it is suddenly WARP SPEED!!!!

I'm Bound to Thank You...

2007-11-06T19:47:00.001-08:00

berries
Originally uploaded by katzeye

I was just thinking today, how grateful I am for my husband, Mark. He works so hard so I can live in the comfortable place where we are living and so I can have my internet, and all the things that he provides. Yeah, I work, too, but he is the reason why we have this cozy place. I'm grateful for how hard he works, and how he puts up with me, and how he supports me emotionally and spiritually, and all of that.

He listens to me, he encourages me, he is the best husband there is!

And he brought me these berries today!

For what more could I ask?

A Wave Called Me Today (and that is not a poetic statement, it is a literal statement!) see blog to find out what I am saying.

2007-11-02T11:03:00.001-07:00

A Wave Called Me Today (and that is not a poetic statement, it is a literal statement!) see blog to find out what I am saying.
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Here is how it happened, and other than what I can say, I have no other explanation!

My cell phone got trippy on me and stopped taking my messages. Oh, it would take them, and indicate that I had them, many important ones, of course, but it wouldn't let me hear them. No way, not happening, nada!

So, I called T-mobile and a very nice tech-girl straightened it out for me and left me a message to test it. It worked again! I had a message, I could hear it! It was from the tech-girl, but she was kind enough to leave a funny, fun, pleasant message. (Don't you love it when service people go the extra mile and are fun, friendly and nice?)

Now we're coming to the wave part.

I got another message after the tech-girl message. I listened, and all I heard was the sound of one wave breaking.

That's it. A wave, it starts with the sound of the swelling, then there is the cresting, and then the crash of the wave, and the bubbly sound after it crashes and spreads out on the beach.

That's it. End of message.

I looked at my missed calls, and there were none, the last call that came in was from the tech-girl. I looked to see if Mark went and stood on the beach to send me a wave sound, but there were no calls from him since a while back, and those were all of his voice.

Hmmmm.

I have no idea how this happened. But it happened. If anyone has an explanation, feel free, but I like to think that a wave called me.

Firestorms; Southern California

2007-10-22T10:20:00.001-07:00

Edge of the fire
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

When Santa Anas (the shift in wind patterns that bring hot, desert air from the east, to the west) are predicted, as they are several times per year here in SoCal, I groan. I dislike them for obvious reasons, which I will list:

1. they kick up allergies, and sometimes even send me to the emergency room for a breathing treatment.

2. they make my photographs curl.

3. they make my skin dry and itchy.

4. they give us hot temps, sometimes even into the 90s and 100s in the middle of the winter!

5. the wind is blowing hard and hot, knocking things over and down (trees, branches, power lines, myself)

6. they often last for an entire week, and one recently lasted for two weeks, making us miserable.

7. they bring fire storms.

Presently, we are not in danger of any of them, however, during my lifetime of living in SoCal, I have had experiences of needing to prepare to evacuate more than once, so I know what that is like.

We are, at a safe distance thus far, surrounded by them, and our county and the neighboring counties are declared to be in a state of emergency.

When we have firestorms, I try to be aware of their locations. In particular, I try to be aware of them in relation to the homestead, the house where I grew up. A few years ago, when my elderly mother was living there, a fire was burning in the canyon just below her, and I was up all night keeping my eye on that one, as the winds were sending that fire north and it had jumped a freeway in its path.

Fortunately, they got that one under control before it reached any homes. When we went up to see her shortly after the fire, it gave me a chill to see how much had been burned and how close the fire got to homes.

The homestead is empty now, but it is on the market, so I watch for fire locations now to hope they stay away until we can sell the home.

But who would want to buy a home in a wildfire area? You may be asking that. Or who would want to buy a home where mudslides occur, and earthquakes for that matter?

(okay, and how about flooding and tornadoes and tsunamis?)

Well, first of all, there is no place to live here on this planet where one can be safe from all forces of nature or man (the fire closest to us at the present was started by an arsonist-taking advantage of the help of the Santa Anas, and it is 3500 acres so far and only 5% contained).

But, those crazy Californians. They build homes right on the beach and right on the edges of mountain ridges, and they fill up the canyons and the foothills with their homes, and then watch their homes slide down the hills into the ocean, or crumble in earthquakes or burn in forest fires.

First of all, the people who can afford to build homes in danger zones also afford great insurance policies, right?

Secondly, and I speak for many native Californians, as I have lived here since birth in the late 1940s, so I have seen this land since before it became populated by housing tracts in valleys, and I have seen forest fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. We live here because we love it, and we are used to the personality quirks, as it were, of this area.

I have memories of being home from college in the summer, and with an out-of-state boyfriend present, hearing of a forest fire breaking out up the street from us, and calmly going outside to spot it myself, and getting the hoses going to soak the property, while the boyfriend watched with fascinated puzzlement. I explained later.

I have walked home from school, along foothill blvd. with a fire in sight in the canyon below me and a fire in sight in the hills above me and have stopped to call home before going up the hill, to be sure we hadn't been evacuated before I went to the trouble to trudge up the steep hill with my books.

I am used to not putting anything in a room or on a wall above or in proximity to a bed, lest an earthquake knock it loose and it falls on the person sleeping there. We recently moved, and on my mental to-do list is to get things to wedge bookshelves so that they don't tip over. I am used to thinking of any place where I live being a mobile home, as it were, one that can move at any time, without warning.

I would avoid a lot of that if I were to move to the middle of the flat part of the country, but then, there are those pesky tornadoes and all that energy sapping humidity!

On a cross country trip one time, I had a strange kind of disorienting homesickness after being in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa for a while. No offense to those who live there, but it is sooooo FLAT there. Perhaps I wouldn't be as nearsighted as I am if I had grown up there! I had the strangest, almost like seasickness there. I began to see endless fields of waving grains as the sea, and the silos as ships. I began to so need to see a hill, let alone a mountain, that it felt like I would truly go insane if I didn't see a rise in the earth somewhere.

When I got back to Cali, and saw the Sierra Nevadas, I felt a surge of relief. I don't know what that was about, maybe it's just what I am used to.

Well, I am going to go take a little walk to see what kinds of waves the Santa Anas are kicking up today. And, this evening, with all those fires, there will be a spectacular sunset.

And then I will say a prayer for those who have been displaced and suffered losses from the recent fires, as they get their courage back to rebuild and start anew, once again, in their beloved canyons, and their beach fronts, and their ridges and foothills.

Moving is LIke Being in an Alternate Universe For Two Months

2007-10-15T22:01:00.001-07:00

moving
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Maybe it was more painful than usual due to the fact that we just had to go through the house in which I grew up, in its entirety for pretty much the entire month of August. The dust, the history, the agonies, the allergies!

Then, to move out of a very large, two story home, to try to fit into a beach apartment again, what agony!

I feel like I have spent every waking moment of my life for the past 8 weeks in putting things into or taking them out of boxes, bins, baskets.

I have cuts, bruises, scrapes, and one badly dinged thumb to show for all of this constant motion.

I think we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but before I forget the agony of this all, I want to remember that moving is painful in so many ways:

1-even though we only moved 11 miles, there is the agony of leaving behind what is familiar (friends, routines, and walk-in closets!).

2-there is the actual physical parts of attempting to haul things up and down stairs, and into and out of vehicles, and, well, just always hauling until you dream of hauling and wake up in the morning as sore as you would be had you really had a tough work-out at the gym run by the merciless marine!

3-there is the emotional part of feeling displaced, wondering where things are, seeing favorite pieces of furniture with new moving dings and scrapes, and wondering if you will ever feel settled in the new place.

4-the wanting to do things like, well, live one's life, work, answer emails, take a walk, go to the library, post on flickr, see a movie, but you can't because all you can keep doing is finding things, putting things away, giving things away!

5- To be continued, I have just run out of time, again!!!

Are you left-handed or right-handed or in between?

2007-08-13T13:07:00.001-07:00

Reading His Book in the Car
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Seeing as it's left-handers' day today, I thought I would pose that question.

I was told that I was ambidextrous when I was a kid. This doesn't surprise me for a number of reasons.

One is that my eldest son was that way, too, until mid-childhood.

Another is that when I've had physicals, they note and tell me that I have equal strength on both sides of my body, which is very unusual, and then they usually ask if I am ambidextrous.

I thought I had been left-handed. I surfed and skateboarded goofy foot.

I remember being in around 3rd grade when I decided that I no longer wanted to write left-handed. The reason was that the desks slanted the wrong way for lefties. Also, I was tired of smearing ink and getting dents in my hand from the metal spirals in the middle of the notebook. I went home and practiced my right-handed penmanship for many nights until it got to be comfortable.

I just forgot to change everything else.

I bowled, ironed, ate, used a mouse, knitted, caught, and carried left-handed. I even drew left-handed.

When I had a college ceramics class, and being about 98 lbs. at the time, and always slipping off the kick wheel, the professor took pity on me and put me on an electric wheel. But then all my pots kept falling.

He decided to watch me to see what I was doing wrong. What I was doing wrong was that I was throwing my pots left-handed! I had no idea that there was a right- or left-handed way to throw pots. I think my left hand was inside the pot, shaping it, and the right hand was outside the pot. He said it would never work because I was on a right-handed wheel.

A right-handed wheel? So potters' wheels spin in a particular direction depending on whether you are throwing your pots left-handed or right?

What a through-the-looking glass world I had fallen into!

I had to be moved from throwing pots to simply building them, even with all that practice (until my fingers were bloody!).

Since then, I have had only a few issues, like when trying to iron something, and keeping the cord out of the way, or eating next to a right-handed person.

It can be confusing, because I have become right handed at teeth brushing for instance, but when someone throws a ball to me, I can't be sure which hand will catch it. It's a toss up.

Once, in HS, I was wearing a mitt on my right hand, and caught a high fly ball with my bare left hand. That stung for a very long time. After that, I tried to get the mitt marked with an "L."

Some say that lefties are more creative. On creativity tests I score off the charts. But I can't help but wonder if I might be more productively creative if I could choose one side or the other.

I have discovered one thing, though. I have a terrible time sitting through a meeting or a class. I get restless, my mind wanders every two seconds, and I just want to get up and move. I learned a long time ago that if I knit (left-handed), I can endure holding still longer, and I can hear what is being said better.

Now I've discovered that if I doodle and write left-handed while sitting in a meeting or a class, I can concentrate on what is being said better. I am not sure why this is, but it works for me.

At least, maybe it will work until I become reconverted to proficiently writing left-handed.

After that, I may need to try doodling and writing right handed.

Which Has More Memories for You? Summertime or the School Year?

2007-06-29T10:56:00.001-07:00

Summer is now open!
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

I was reading, recently, a collection of the summer memories of many people and was struck with the detail: "I remember riding my bike and it was so hot that my popsicle ran down my elbows." Or, "I remember the smell of the ocean all night long."

I was thinking that while I do have many very specific memories of school, the smell of the library paste, the sound of the bells, the crunch of the gravel underfoot on the playground, it seems that I have many more memories of summer.

Summer is only three months, and yet, it seems to be what dominates my memories.

I remember my sister, only about two at the time, suddenly floating out on a rip current at Belmont Shores, and the look on my mother's face (that indicated to me that this was serious and not that my sister had suddenly decided to swim out to the center of the bay) as she rose from her towel and dove into the water to swim out to my sister, the floatie.

I remember the myriad times that I stubbed my toe on the rough driveway while running barefooted.

I remember walking along the bay to the library in Belmont Shores to get arms' full of books, my cheeks stinging a bit in the evening air due to their being sunburned, and the smell of those wonderful, delicious books as we trudged back to pile them on our beds and read them all night.

I remember playing outside until 9 PM, and climbing trees and skinned knees, and traveling, all of us, crammed into a station wagon with no air conditioning, the windows all opened and the flapping echo-y sound of that and the heat as we crossed the desert, and the deviled eggs, and falling asleep in the car.

I remember eating the apricots off our trees, and sparklers, and lemonade, and sand in our swimsuits, and diving under waves, and drawing and writing all day long.

I remember swimming in pools until I couldn't breathe anymore due to the chlorine, and swimming in the ocean until we were wrinkled and shriveled and shivering and our lips were blue and our fingernails, too, and saying, "please, can't we stay out longer?"

I remember watermelon seed fights, and water balloons and not wearing shoes except when totally necessary, and utterly required.

And what do I remember about school?

Um, I think I would like to go back to thinking about summer for a while.

What about you?

Black Widow Spider!

2007-05-30T10:24:00.001-07:00

Black Widow
Originally uploaded by RussellChowning.

So, I went to get my bike out of the garage. I hadn't bicycled for at least a month, due to traveling, working, etc.

I did the customary thing, I wheeled it out into the light for inspection, and as I did, I noticed that it was tearing it away from some cobwebs, which is not surprising, often happens.

I parked the bike in front of the house and went in to get a rag and the tire pump. As I did, I was remembering how one time I had picked up a friend and her two little kids to take them to the beach. After she loaded her cobwebby paraphernalia into the back of my car and hopped in, she explained that they had cobwebs and stuff on them because she just grabbed the beach chairs, boogie boards, etc. from the garage.

All the way to the beach, I considered that there could be black widow spider families making their way along the floor of the car, headed for my bare ankles to deliver their fatal bites.

Fortunately, I didn't die that day. But I couldn't help but remember that creepy, crawly story as I headed back out to my bike to clean it up and add air to the tires. It added a kind of cautious mood to my task; a sense of impending doom.

I spent a fair amount of time, wiping at the cobwebs with the rag and my bare fingers, hardly paying any attention to the fact that the webs seemed rather sticky. I was almost finished, but there was one place, in the frame of the bike, that I hadn't gotten yet. It was a narrow, finger-wide space, and so I figured I'd just take the rag and poke my finger into the space.

Let me just add that ordinarily, I would have been simply taking care of the webs with bare hands. I was a tomboy when young, and climbed many trees as far as they would take me, jumped from many of them, surfed waves 2-3 times my size, rode toboggans down slopes, across streets and down the other sides at crazy speeds, and camped amongst rattling snakes and rode every roller coaster I could. I am not quite that way anymore, as time and age sobers us significantly, but I am not as squeamish as most females that I know.

Nevertheless, before I poked my finger into that one crevice that looked a bit cobwebby, I decided to look into it.

What I saw made me shudder. I saw what appeared to be a rather large shiny, black M&M sitting there. But instead of the M&M, it was a bright, bright, intense red hour glass shape, as crisply clear and straight-edged as if someone had drawn it using a straight-edge and painted it with red enamel.

I stepped back. I went inside and called to my husband, telling him that I "thought" there was a black widow on my bike.

He came bounding out, eager to see such a marvel. He peered into the space and began exclaiming with great enthusiasm. The words I recall that I can repeat were, "Wow!" "BIG one!" "Perfect hourglass!" "Perfect example!" "The epitome of a black widow spider!" (By the way, this photo is not of "my" black widow. "My" black widow did have a very, almost fake-looking, distinctive hour glass, with very crisp edges. It's just that she wasn't so "pretty" when we finished with her.)

So. He ran back into the house to get a screw driver and a can of insecticide (his answer for anything of the arach-persuasion). He sprayed my bike, and then poked the sinister widow out of her hiding place. And then told me to take a macro photo of her. So there I was down on the bricks, creeping myself out as I got close enough to her curled up body.

After I got the air in the tires, I put my bike in the back of my car, and all the way to the beach, I felt things crawling on me!

That was yesterday, and my bike is still in the car.

Generally, if I face my fears, and become informed, I am usually better able to handle things. And that monstrous black window making her home in my bike has creeped me out. So I went on the internet to learn that:

"Eating a black widow will normally kill a small predator (birds, et cetera) One can eat male widows without adverse effect, and so only avoid female spiders."

Alrighty then, I will only eat male widows!

"The venom of the female black widow spider is 15 times as toxic as the venom of the Prairie Rattlesnake."

And I was about to poke my finger into that little hole where she was waiting for me!

"The bite itself is often not painful and may go unnoticed. But the poison injected by the the Black Widow bite can cause abdominal pain similar to appendicitis as well as pain to muscles or the soles of the feet. Other symptoms include alternating salivation and dry-mouth, paralysis of the diaphragm, profuse sweating and swollen eyelids."

Uhhhhh....

"Persons with heart conditions or other health problems may require a hospital stay. (Heart and lung failure may result in death.) A physician can evaluate the severity of the bite, and give specific antivenin or calcium gluconate to relieve pain if necessary. Healthy people recover rapidly in two to five days."

Uhhh....

"First aid measures: Apply an ice pack over the bite location and keep the affected limb elevated to about heart level. Try to collect the spider specimen in a small jar or plastic bag for examination by a spider expert, even if you have crushed it. Treatment in a medical facility may be necessary. Call the Poison Center for additional information. Poison Centers across the country now have a new national emergency phone number - 1-800-222-1222"

(I am remembering how one of my brothers nearly died from a black widow spider bite. He was cleaning out a shed. His finger was bitten, and it turned black, and he was very, very sick. His finger always looked as if it had been attacked by a shark after that.)

"Be very careful when working around areas where black widow spiders may be established. Take proper precautions - wear gloves and pay attention to where you are working. The reaction to a Black Widow bite can be painful. The victim should go to the doctor immediately for treatment."

Note to self: get gloves that cover my entire body.

"To control the black widow, carefully remove all materials where they might hide. They can be cleaned out of an area simply by knocking down the webs, spiders, and round, tan egg sacs with a stick and crushing them underfoot. Removal or destruction of the egg sacks may help control the population. This spider is resistant to many insecticides."

Why is this not making me feel better?

Okay, after finding out more, and seeing photos of them, I have officially ended my tomboy period and any latent leftover, clingy cobwebby vestiges. If anything, I am even more creeped out! Oh, and get this, some sources say to look for them at NIGHT because they are nocturnal!

Not putting my bike back there, not going into that garage for any reason! Getting someone brave to go look for those, um, ugh (turning away) egg sacks.

Mark? I think there are black widows in the garage (soon to invade the bedroom and crawl around in the dark!)

The Dumbing Down of American Citizens?

2007-03-15T10:55:00.001-07:00

Edge of the fire
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

It is a sad realization that citizens of the USA are not getting the same education as their European counterparts, nor are they getting the same education as their parents and grandparents. To me, this is just another example of why home schooling can be a very good thing, and why we should not pay more taxes for more government control, because, clearly, the government is not that good at providing programs to the masses. But that is another story; another time.

I am here only to report something I heard stated on the news recently. The NEWS. This is that thing that so many people depend upon to be informed (as misguided as that may be).

A woman anchor was saying thusly (about how it is that when SoCal has Santa Anas, the winds that come across the desert and raise the temps by 20 degrees and cause allergies, dry skin, and fires?):

"I was interviewing a scientist about why it is that we have so many fires during the Santa Anas and he explained it to me like this: If you take a paper napkin and get it soaking wet, and then strike a match and try to light it on fire, probably nothing will happen. However, if you take a paper napkin, and put it in the oven at 350 degrees until it is dry and hot, and then strike a match, it will be a whole different story!"

So, ladies and gentlemen, this is what is constituted as news.

Are anchor people supposed to be educated or not?

Just wondering.

The Travails of Travel

2007-01-31T21:16:00.001-08:00

Running an Errand
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

The Travails of Travel

In John Steinbeck’s novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, there is a character who, when asked how he is, responds with, “Can’t complain, but I will.”

It is human nature to complain, to find the fly in the ointment; the trouble in paradise.

But sometimes, it seems like our complaints are pretty petty, don’t you think? And so, having said that, now I will tell of our adventures in the Dominican Republic.

We got up at the crack of dawn on the 14th and rushed to LAX. As we were taking our bags to x-ray, a guy with a cart came by and said he’d take them for us so we wouldn’t need to stand in line. As he wheeled them toward the x-ray line, I thought to myself facetiously, “if I ever see my bag again, I will kiss it!”

I had one checked rolling bag, not a huge one, just a bit over the limit for carry on. Mark had a bigger rolling bag, and he was dragging one more bigger rolling bag which was full of things requested by his parents. His parents have been living in Santo Domingo where, as temple president and wife, they are not weary in well doing. They are serving and befriending the people. Some of the things in the extra bag were full of items for the people, including things to go into humanitarian aide kits being made.

Our flight was on time, and we flew to Miami. I pretty much looked out the window the entire time because, as much as I have flown, even my stint working for an airline a long time ago, I do not ever become jaded about that view! In Miami, we rushed to our next gate and immediately boarded our flight for Hispaniola.

As I was getting on the plane, I realized that I hadn’t taken out my quart-size zip lock bag for inspection. Mark said, they don’t care when you are going to Santo Domingo. But if you don’t take it out on the way back into the states you could be in big trouble. (Somehow that wasn’t all that reassuring.)

As soon as we got on the plane, we were in a foreign country. It wasn’t just that all but a very few of us were speaking rapid Spanish, it was much more than that. There were exotic smells, exotic colors, exotic people, and the plane was pretty much in disrepair. My seat pocket was hanging by a thread, and the plastic thingie that is supposed to be on the floor to cover a seam was not there, but it was on the side of my seat, etc. I removed the plastic thing in order to seat myself and said a little prayer that the mechanical parts were in better shape than the aesthetic and practical parts.

We arrived in Santo Domingo without incident, and went through the tourist card/immigration process, customs, passport, etc. And then we wearily stood around the carousel waiting for our bags. Around and around they go, whose bags are these? No one knows!

The carousel stopped and all we had was Mark’s big bag, and I watched it as he rushed over to fill in the forms to track our lost bags.

Okay, so I used to only travel with carry on only. I loved the convenience of walking right out of the airport from the plane and getting on with life and not waiting around for or losing luggage. But until I can find some sterile contact lens solutions in 3 oz. containers, it’s kind of hard to do that. And so, of course, my contact lens solutions, and pretty much everything else was in that bag. I had only the clothes on my back, the lenses in my eyes, my camera and lenses, a book, and a water bottle.

So, I spent the first day or so, borrowing clothes, borrowing lens solution (not the one that my doctor wants me to use, of course, but what can I do?). I did discover, though, that if you wear slightly damp, just washed underwear when traveling in the tropics, it does keep you cool like built-in air conditioning.

We called the airport frequently to track our lost bags. They’d be on the next flight from Miami, we’d be told. I’d get my hopes up, and then they wouldn’t arrive and then we’d be told, next flight, next flight, there’s a flight tomorrow, etc.

Finally, they arrived one evening. We rushed off to the airport to get them. We went to the exit where people come out after getting their bags, and going through customs. We spoke to the guy standing there, or rather, Mark did, and I strained myself to try to understand their rapid Spanish. The translation: we were to go to the lost luggage office at the other end of the airport. So Mark, his dad, and I marched off to that office, only to find it closed about an hour earlier than its indicated closing time. (Later we heard, “but it sometimes closes earlier.”) We marched back, tried again. The guy guarding the exit had a guy on the other side bring out a trolley or two of lost luggage being kept there, none was ours and he said that was the extent of his abilities to help us. We could come back tomorrow.

We went upstairs to the airline’s ticketing desk. Couldn’t help us there either. Mark’s dad spoke to a supervisor and she had some sympathy and started the wheels rolling toward our obtaining our wheeled luggage. Supposedly. It still wasn’t showing up. By now, we’d been standing around in the airport for an hour. Maybe we should fly back to Miami and get it? Mark and his dad alternated in speaking to more and more people who seemed to know what they were doing and eventually, after many said they would get our luggage brought up to us, and never did, one big guy in a blazer (meaning he is powerful, Mark’s dad said), told us to go with him and he would get our luggage. The men went with him, and I stayed upstairs, just standing there, tired of wearing the same clothes and trail runners everyday. I was not totally trusting that if I went with them, someone wouldn’t finally show up there, as promised, with the two bags, and seeing no one there to claim them, take them to yet some other dusty corner where bags go to die.

After what seemed like roughly two weeks, Mark appeared in the distance, waving to me to come. Still, I wondered what next. He said we had the bags, and they were being loaded into the car. Still I didn’t believe it. When we got to the car, Mark’s dad was sensitive enough to know exactly what I would be wanting to do. He stood there with the trunk open so I could inspect my bag and make sure all was intact. Thanks. Finally, I could sigh a sigh of relief and offer a prayer of gratitude. That night, I showered and washed my hair and used all of my toiletries and put on clean clothes and flipflops!

Oh, and by the way, you may ask where were our bags all that time? They were just inside that exit where the guy was standing, you know, that first guy we talked to?

Then our days were filled with being immersed in Dominican Republic traffic, which is an entity in and of itself, perhaps another blog entry, and the colors, and the smells, and the sounds of it all! It’s a cluttered, colorful, and busy place, with people all over the streets and on motorbikes and motorcycles and crawling into taxis that were transporting 8 people already, and little buses and big buses, people everywhere carrying bundles of sugar cane, chickens, pigs, guinea hens, coconuts, eggs, beach toys, etc.

The people are beautiful, with big brown eyes and they look you right in the eye with a great deal of friendliness and humor. They speak rapid Spanish, and many also speak French, and some English, too. The children, shy, at first, are eventually also friendly, as are the many dogs that wander about, seemingly beholden to no one.

There are vendors with pushcarts or on burros selling massive amounts of plump fruits and vegetables, there are shoe shiners (who even tried to sell a show shine to Mark when he was wearing flipflops), sellers of cell phone time, windshield washes, and art.

The signs of poverty are abundant amongst the colors and sounds of Caribbean music, which seems omnipresent. There are homes without plumbing, electricity, doors, or windows, homes with corrugated metal for roofs, meat markets swarming with flies, people walking everywhere. It’s a beautiful country, with beautiful beaches that are almost too difficult to fully enjoy because one has in one’s head the hauntingly poor living in tiny spaces, and breaking their backs in the rice paddies.

We gave out a fair amount of pesos. Sometimes to some who were in need, sitting on a sidewalk, often to those who were shining shoes, or watching a parked car, filling in potholes (children), or washing windshields. We patronized vendors of crafts and fruits and foods. I wished that I had a big sack full of pesos and could buy from as many crafters and parking space watchers as I could. I’d have bought from the people painting and carving and creating art from hub caps and manhole covers. I would have bought squawking chickens and carts full of sugar cane. These people were finding all kinds of ways to earn a peso, and I would have liked to have more fully supported their industry.

The people in the hills of the jungles had their clean clothes hanging on lines, and chickens ran lose through the undergrowth. Children played and rode on the backs of motorbikes, chewing on sugar cane. Adults sold fruit, roots, meats (yikes, those pig heads!), and played dominoes. They’d wave and smile as we passed by, they’d cut up fruit for us to taste, they seemed, well, happy. Could they actually be, happy? Certainly, if one of us tried to live there, we might have some complaints, like, wouldn’t it be nice to have a bathroom? Or a front door? They might have some complaints, too, like, “Who let the chickens in?” Or “The roof is leaking!” Or, “We have run out of pesos and so we can’t all get on the motorbike and go down to the baseball game tonight!” Or, “There is nothing to eat tonight.”

There are people living in mansions who complain more than people who live in one-room cinder block homes with dried palm fronds for roofs.

And so, I felt rather silly for complaining about not having my bag.

And then we got the sickness. That horrid intestinal thing that happens when travelers go to third world countries. Complain, complain, complain!

We got better pretty quickly, thanks to modern medicine and how readily available it is to tourists. And then, off on our adventures again, in the cities, in the jungles, in the cathedrals, and in the home built for the Columbus family.

We met and conversed with several Dominicans and found most to be happy with their lives, despite the challenges they each faced.

Eventually, it was time to go, and we packed our bags and got up early last Wednesday morning. We left at 8:30 in the morning for an 11:00 AM flight to Miami. Arriving at the airport at 9, we did the customs things and the bag checking things and the getting water and food things, and went to our gate.

We sat and waited, as one must do when flying internationally. Hurry up and wait. Complain. Finally, we boarded. This plan was even worst than the last one, and while we had requested a window seat when we got the ticket, there was no window! It was a seat next to the outside of the plane but there was just a wall there and no window. We managed to trade with a woman seated behind us because she wanted to sleep and didn’t care if she had a window or not. So, settled into our seats (no seat pocket in front for me, it had been torn off) we prepared to take off.

After a while the pilot came on, in Spanish, and said that some valve was missing from the cargo hold and they were going to need an hour to replace it. We were to remain on the plane and they would show us a movie. Mark predicted it would be two hours.

After an hour, they invited us to leave the plane, if we wished, to walk around, eat, shop, or whatever and that we should just keep our boarding passes to get back on. About 95% of the passengers quickly vacated. Mark took a nap and I walked up and down the aisles, brushed my teeth, etc.

Soon there was a frantic message in rapid Spanish. Mark was dozing with headphones so he didn’t hear it. I saw the remaining people on the plane quickly gathering their things and vacating. I saw a woman, with a sleeping child, and all of the family’s luggage (her husband got off the plane when they announced that one could leave and come back after the repairs were made) struggling to handle it all alone.

I woke Mark in time for the English announcement: “We are ready to install the part but the plane must be empty before we can do that, everyone leave the plane!”

We gathered our things, and I hung around to see if the mom needed an extra hand or two. She made it, but she looked a little annoyed that they announced such a thing after her family had left.

Off the plane, we sat, with all the other passengers, near the gate, waiting to get back on. Some passengers, who had gone to other parts of the airport, were let on to get their stuff.

“We leave at 2 PM,” they said. Mark hung around the desk to keep up on updates. When he got the impression that it wouldn’t be 2 PM either, he booked us on another flight, 4 PM.

Next they cancelled the flight, and all of the passengers were crowding around the desk, trying to get the 4 PM flight.

I looked at their faces, and they looked stressed and worried. Many had little children in tow. Some were elderly. The 4 PM flight was filling up. Having gotten our ticket turned over, we went and sat where we could see them taking luggage off our disabled plane. We saw our bags! Hey, they were really on the plane! They put them in the back of a blue pick-up truck. We hoped that it was an official airport truck with no markings of any kind and not just some guy’s truck, and he was driving away with our bags.

After about half of the harried and weary travelers had booked on the 4 PM, they announced that it was time to board (it was around 2:45 by then). Oh, okay, we went to get in line, but we had the wrong tickets. They were boarding the original plane! The half of the passengers who hadn’t booked for the 4:00 PM flight could get back on the plane, and they did. Crazy!

So, Mark went to speak to the agent about how we had been in the airport since 9 AM, waiting, and getting on and off the plane for a flight that was delayed, cancelled and then reinstated. They gave him a voucher to get some food, but we had to hurry since the 4 PM would be boarding soon!

We rushed past the duty-free shops and got some food, and some bottles of Perrier, and hurried back to board the 4 PM. The 11 AM flight to Miami, meanwhile, was getting ready to take off, finally, and we would have been on it, had we been at the back of the line.

But, soon enough, we were back on another plane and ready, at last, to take off. We had, of course, missed our 3 PM connection out of Miami to LAX, even with the extra hour for the time change.

When we arrived in Miami, we had to get rid of most of the food that we got with our voucher, in order to clear customs, and get our bags, yay, they were there, and take them to send them on to LAX. It was kind of a casual area, with string to mark it off, and we slid our bags under the string and a lady asked, “Where are these going?” Hmmm, that seemed a bit too casual. We asked if the tags were clear enough, etc.

When we went to show our passports and get them stamped, who would be in the line ahead of us but the lady who willingly traded seats with us so she could sleep and we could have a window seat on the plan that never took off with us in it. The agent was not very kind to her because she didn’t know any English and she was a resident of the USA. He explained to us, after she left, that he was from another country, too, but that he was an American citizen now, and spoke English, and expected her to also. He refused to deal with her, and sent her to another agent. I wanted to say, “But she changed seats with us!” But I have learned to say very little when dealing with passport and customs agents. They have a lot of power.

So cleared, and secured, and checked, we went to our gate to, oh yeah, wait again. We got water, again, and food again, and waited. I saw the female, redheaded pilot enter with her luggage, and then the fight attendants, too. We waited some more.

Later, I saw the pilot come back out again, with her luggage. Huh? Did she change her mind? Shortly after that, it’s announced that the windshield wipers weren’t working and because it is a federal regulation that they work, they needed to be repaired. Mark went to the desk and asked if there were any other flights to LAX that night.

We had the 7 PM flight, which was a switch from the 3 PM originally booked. We rebooked on an 8 PM flight to LAX, and then moved swiftly, pretty much the entire length of the humongous airport to get to the other gate. (Mostly, we ran!) When we got there, they said that it was a wide open flight. Good, we requested a window seat and she said, sure.

Then, we sat to wait for the flight, Mark was on his laptop and making business calls since it was still the work day PST. I looked at the ticket to see what our boarding group would be. Number 1? Huh? And what was our row? I showed it to Mark, it was confusing, it was, it was, hey! It was the front emergency exit, and the window was about 2 inches square and way up on the wall, more like a peep hole than a window and one would need to be standing to see out of it.

Complaint!!! The plane was wide open, we asked for a window seat, and of all the window seats available, she gives us this! I tried to look old and weak so that they would take me away from the emergency doors and put me by a real window. It didn’t work. I scrutinized the passengers getting on. I said to Mark, “There’s an athletic looking couple, why don’t you see if they would like extra leg room?” He didn’t ask. We were stuck there all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast.

We were soo tired. We arrived at LAX just around midnight, PST. We were directed to carousel one for our bags. In a replay of our arrival in Santo Domingo, the bags went around and around and no one from our flight was claiming them and we never saw ours and there were no new bags coming. Then, after Mark had already started to wander toward other carousels, an announcement came, our bags were arriving at the carousel farthest away, of course, from the one that they originally assigned us to.

I struggled through the crowds, with Mark’s computer bag, and my backpack and joined him in time to find our bags arriving. Imagine that!

Then, after a wait and a call to get a shuttle to our parking lot, we finally got to our car, around 1 AM PST. We’d been awake and traveling for 24 hours. We were really, really tired and so glad to see my car. But what’s this?

Mark turned the ignition and the alarm went off and the car would not start. The parking lot guy tried and couldn’t and the alarm kept going off. I didn’t get it. I hadn’t set the alarm and hadn’t used it in years. I sat in the car with my ears plugged each time it went off. We had to call Auto club. I didn’t have my card and Mark’s was no good because his kids had already used it too much, so Mark had to explain to them that I was there but, well, anyway, they agreed to be there by 1:30 AM. We sat there, shivering in the cold. It has been really cold, and even snowing in SoCal, and that is probably part of why my car was dead. Auto club called with delays, lots of people with dead batteries in the wee hours of a Thursday morning. We might have fallen asleep if we weren’t so busy shivering in a parking lot near LAX at 1:30 in the morning.

At 2 AM, they arrived, disabled the alarm system and got the car started. YAY. We got home at 3 AM and fell into bed and didn’t wake up until 7 AM!!!

We wandered around with horrid jet lag all of Thursday, grateful to be home, and haunted by our memories of the people of the DR with so little and yet able to smile and be happy and uncomplaining.

We can’t complain, but that trip home was grueling, Soon it will fade and we will only remember the good parts.

The Kerry Controversy

2006-11-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

The Kerry Controversy
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Just wondering about a couple of things. First of all, I am not a big fan of George W. Bush. However, I AM a big fan of seeking unbiased truth wherever I can.

Kerry said, to students at PCC (one of the places where my dad taught psychology, by the way), that if they study hard, do their homework, and be smart, that they will do well in life, etc. And he said that if they didn’t, they might end up stuck in Iraq. Yadda yadda, we’ve all heard it over and over again.

Okay, so, at first it was taken as an insult to the soldiers in Iraq. Which made me think, “Huh?” I mean, after all, these are not soldiers being drafted because they have dropped out of school or are getting bad grades. But anyway….

Then, he tried to explain that he wasn’t trying to insult the soldiers, but Bush for getting us stuck in Iraq. Okay, that may be what he really meant, that’s feasible.

But, that makes one wonder. So, what he is saying is do well in school, go to Yale, and get better grades than he (Kerry) got (who also attended Yale, but with lower grade averages than Bush), and be smarter than the average Yale student, and…get stuck in Iraq?

Huh?

Okay and one other one that is not making complete sense to me.

Clinton rapes a woman (okay, allegedly, but if you saw her interview, how much room for doubt can there actually be?), and he has many immoral escapades with a young intern in the Oval Office. What happens when that all comes out? Nothing much. People say that his private life has nothing to do with it.

Contrast that with the Mark Foley “Scandal.” Is what he did more or less evil than what Clinton did? Does his private life have nothing to do with it? He was out of there the moment his behaviors were discovered. Gone, kaput! His own party had him removed, and he resigned.

Clinton’s party did not have him removed, and he did not resign.

Hmmmmm….

How Do You Feel About Privacy w/re: Your Home?

2006-10-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

Yellow House
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Okay, finally found a moment to repost this one:

What is your comfort level about visitors in your home?

A:
As far as you're concerned, your home is an open book, er home, and in fact, you don't even lock your doors. You have a sign out front that reads, "Mi Casa es Su Casa." You often come home to find that your home is full of visitors and it makes you happy. The more the merrier. And you often give up your bed, and belongings to your visitors, whoever they may be.

B:
Sure, friends and family can stay with you, anytime. You create a wonderful space for them, adding new sheets and candles and stock the 'fridge with yummy snack foods, and you clear your schedule so you take take them around to see the sites.

C:
Family need to stay for a few months? No problem! Come on in. You move out of the den, where you were doing all of your scrapbooking, sewing, movie editing, bill paying, napping, model airplane designing, and welcome them wholeheartedly and never ask how much longer before they find their own place.

D:
Okay. Family or friends can stay for a limited amount of time, with advanced warning, and a clear cut arrival and departure time. You will put clean sheets in the room, and move out your welding equipment. You'll clear a space in the refrigerator, and a drawer in the bathroom. And you'll have fun with them while they are with you.

E.
Short term visitors, okay. Long term crashing, no way.

Where do you draw the line on your privacy? Can visitors go in and out at will, including in and out of your bedroom/bathroom?

At what point do you feel there is intrusion or invasion?

Art Teacher Fired Over Nude Sculpture

2006-09-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

La Venus de Milo
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Here is the story that is in the news:

"FRISCO, Texas (AP) -- A Texas art teacher who was reprimanded after one of her fifth-grade students saw a nude sculpture during a trip to a museum has lost her job.

The school board in Frisco has voted not to renew Sydney McGee's contract after 28 years. She has been on administrative leave.

McGee says her troubles started after a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art last April. McGee's lawyer says the principal at Fisher Elementary School later admonished her after a parent complained that a student had seen nude art.

McGee says the principal had urged her to take the students to the museum.

School officials deny they were reacting to the field trip but say there have been problems with McGee's work."

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!

Grrrrrrr!!!

2006-09-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Sneer
Originally uploaded by elbow donkey.

This sneering post of my grandson is to express my frustration. Below you will find two identical posts, the only difference being that one is grammatically correct in having a question mark at the question and one is not since the punctuation is missing.

The site posted the blog entry twice, and when I tried to delete one, it would have neither of them listed as even existing, so I can't delete or edit what does not exist.

Bummer!

By the time this explanation is posted, one or both will likely disappear and you will wonder what the heck I am talking about.

the title of the errant twin posts is: How Do You Feel About the Privacy of Your Home?

So, if they both disappear, I will try to add one once more. If they are both there, you needn't feel that you must comment in duplicate.

If only the one missing the question mark in the title is there, know that I haven't been able to do anything about that.

Just a little more chaos in my chaotic world of late.

thanks for your patience!

The Myth (?) of the Starving Artist

2006-09-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

Neighbor's Art
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

When I was an art student, we often reminded each other not to “prostitute” our art. What we meant by that, was that we would promise each other not to go out into the world to create kitsch or sell out, or work for a corporation while our artistic talents dwindled away until they were only a sad memory.

I was relating, recently, the story about how my dad and his friend, Eric Larson, were approached by Walt Disney, way back when he only had a storefront in Burbank, to be on his first team of animators. Eric accepted the offer and went on to create Bambi, Thumper, Flower, etc. I am sure my dad agonized over the offer, and in the end, he turned it down. He thought it was too risky. My dad was a pretty good artist, and we grew up seeing our likenesses turned into cartoons on many occasions. As a teen, and an artist, myself, I felt angry at my dad for turning down that offer, (especially when I was at Disneyland).

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that he made the sacrifice for us. I am sure he would have preferred to have an animator for Disney. Instead, he finished grad school to be a psychologist, and worked hard to support his family.

No matter what business Disney was starting back then in Burbank, it would have been a risky endeavor. A business in the arts, even riskier.

I spoke to my next-door neighbor yesterday because I saw him installing a wrought metal gate. I knew that he worked in metals and was trying to make a living at it. Mark has said to me, “He’s an artist. Like you.”

I took a few photos of his gate and he was telling me about how he was probably going to have to close his business; just do it on the side. He was doing well, but the costs of materials was getting to be too much. And when he priced his work to reflect the costs of his better materials, the business went elsewhere.

When it comes to the arts, people tend to want what is cheap and mass produced. There is certainly more of a trend for people to expect free or very low cost digital photos these days because they know they can take a photo and it will only cost them the price of the paper to print it.

Too often it is forgotten that it is much more than the cost of the materials. I’ve often heard the story of the woman in France who asked for a watercolor of a street artist. He whipped up a watercolor for her with a flourish and when she asked how much, he told her his price. She was astounded at the price. She complained that the paper was cheap and that it only took him ten minutes to create the painting. “No, Madame,” he responded, “it took 35 years!”

Recently someone approached me with a similar question. She was admiring my photos and complaining that she wasn’t able to take photos “like that.” She asked what equipment I was using, and if that was what made the difference. I responded that it was probably about 40 years that made the difference

When I was an art student, computers were not even a thought in any of our minds. In commercial art and design classes, we had to learn to hand-letter advertisements, which would then be reduced. We had to work hard to learn the elements of design, and to work with a variety of medium. But even then, the idea of craftsmanship was in peril as the masses were already buying “sofa-sized” mass produced paintings in colors to match their décor.

Throughout history, artists have been under-appreciated, at least while alive, and confined to a loft somewhere, to spend food money on a particular, expensive shade of rare, red pigment.

I told the metal crafter that he should not give up. He agreed that he would continue to produce his art, even if only on the side.

As I walked back to my front door, camera in hand, I thought of how, in college, I had a second major in psychology (just in case?) and I thought of the stack of manuscripts waiting for me to edit and told him that, yes, I have a day job, too. But hey, at least I am not creating kitsch, and I am not doing school portraits for a company that only knows how to line them up and shoot them like pinned down specimens. I have not sold out, and I will not give up.

Support your local starving artist! Crave beauty!

How Far Back Can You Remember?

2006-09-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Sleeping Emerson
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

I was talking to friends tonight about back-to-school. One friend’s daughter was starting third grade. I said, “I remember third grade.”

Boy do I remember third grade. I remember what my teacher looked like, what she wore, and the boy who told everyone he would kiss me before the year was over (a thought that terrorized me the entire year. And true to his promise, on the last day of school, I was waiting to get on the bus, and he appeared out of nowhere, planted a wet one on my cheek and disappeared into the cheering cacophony of his buddies! Ewwwww, yuck!).

But when I said that I could remember third grade, the others were astonished. Some said that they could only remember back as far as fourth grade. Some said that junior high was their limit. I was even more astonished than they were!

I told them, and it is the absolute truth, that I could remember being a baby. I can remember being held horizontally, all wrapped up, I remember my grandmother’s lace curtains making me sneeze. I remember getting my diapers changed. I remember gnawing on zwieback when I was teething and how my gums felt. I remember breastfeeding. I remember the feel of soggy cloth diapers, being in a crib, crying on my dad’s shoulder and the feel of his whiskers. I remember when my brother was born when I was two, I remember my sister’s birth and my next brother’s birth. I remember being a toddler. I remember what scared me and what comforted me. I remember everything about being five and the first day of kindergarten. I remember the scratchy, fussy dress my grandmother made me for kindergarten, and I remember how relieved I was to change into “dungarees” after I got home again.

I remember first grade. I remember everything about my classmates, my teachers, my room, my toys, my books, and what my siblings said and did and what got us into trouble, and how we got out of trouble. I remember my childhood shoes, my toys, and what I liked to eat and what I didn’t like to eat (I hated cheese around age 5-9, and have been making up for that lapse ever since). I remember the first time I saw television when I was around age one (which was also around the time that most people first saw television). It was a huge piece of furniture with a tiny little black and white screen.

I remember hiding under the bed in my room when I was very young. It was a trundle bed so it was a very nice place for hiding from brothers. Really, there is very little that I DON’T remember. I was as surprised at how little my friends could remember as they were at how much I could remember.

They suggested that I survey people to find out how much they can remember. So here it is. How far back can you remember?

Forget Diet, Exercise, and Pills

2006-08-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

Sheila and Jonas
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Forget Diets, Exercise and Pills!

This is the new era of cyberspace! We shop online, we communicate online, we send files online. There is virtually no need to ever go anywhere anymore! We can just stay home and utilize our windows to the universe for all of our needs, including the need to shed a few pounds and look MAH-volous!

A recent “news” item is all about how Katie Couric shed 20 pounds thanks to modern technology. Yep. Apparently an enthused photo editor thought she could use some slimming and so he used his mouse, and voila! 20 pounds gone, just like that! Who would ever know? I certainly will never see her in person, will you?

Let’s see, if I just never go out in public, and why would I need to, other than to get groceries and work out, I could just maintain a certain look, via software. I can get my groceries online, and if there is no need to work out, why should I?

Of course, her response to the controversy (and to me, the controversy is, and ought to be, how far should photo editors go to alter images? But that is an entirely other topic), was that she liked the original photo better because there was “more of me to love!” Hmm…imagine being narcissistic enough to…well, never mind, that is also a different topic. It’s just that my irony alarms seem to be going off here.

So, we no longer need to worry about such things as love handles or double chins, because they can be removed in seconds thanks to modern photo editing software.

Okay.

(I am wondering if there is any kind of elongating tool, I have always wanted to be around 5’7” to 5’8”, I’d only need 2-3 inches added.)

PS-I used this photo of my grandson and my sister, who is about an inch or two taller than me and in no need of digital lipo-suction because that way no one could accuse me of altering the photo, or of using someone in need of alteration.

New Online Photography Workshop

2006-08-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Winged Guest
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

For those of you who have been waiting, and you know who you are, or for those of you who are interested, I finally started the online photography workshop. Find it here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/kczphotoclass/

child denied her childhood

2006-08-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

child denied her childhood
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Have we actually found the man who murdered this poor little girl? I have heard that he said such things as that he kidnapped her from school, and that he drugged her. Well, if this happened the day after Christmas, what was she doing in school? No one has school the day after Christmas. And the autopsy showed not a trace of any drug in her body. So, right there, two lies.

I also heard that his ex-wife stated, basically: what the heck is he talking about? he was with me in Alabama that day! (not her exact words). Ex-wives are not necessarily known for their loyalty to their ex-husbands, so why would she offer him an alibi? She wouldn’t. But she’d probably be eager to speak up immediately if he said something totally wrong. Lie number three?

It has also been stated that there is NO evidence, anywhere, ever, of his ever having been in Colorado, ever. Okay, hmmmm. Lie number four?

So, it appears that he might be a liar. But a murderer?

It has come out that he was obsessed with the Jon-Benet case, and that he was emailing Patsy, the mom, quite a bit, throughout the case. And now he is confessing to kidnapping her from school the day after Christmas, etc.

Maybe he is mostly a nutcase. A nutcase who likes to spend time in the pit of depravity. Maybe he gets a thrill from imagining himself as the murderer. Maybe all along, he has been attracted to the case and wanting some notoriety. Maybe he just wants to attach himself to something he finds to be thrillingly wicked.

And maybe the investigators are just happy to have someone so willing to confess that the facts can be bent a little.

I don’t know. And I suppose I have no right to speculate, not having the facts, all of the facts, and just the facts. It will be interesting to see if the truth comes out.

I do know this. This little girl was murdered, in spirit, a long time before she was physically murdered. She was denied the right to have a normal childhood, to be accepted as she was, and to be able to grow up climbing trees, not caring about what she looked like. She had a lifestyle foisted upon her that was not normal. For the sake of their own pride, her parents stole her life from her. She was sexualized by her parents long before someone molested her. She was used. She was made into a symbol and denied the right to be a real girl.

It takes a village to murder one little, innocent girl!

War. What Is it Good For?

2006-08-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

we are flying to kansas here
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

WAR. What is it good for?

I hate war. When I was a kid at the movies, war scenes always terrified me far more than any horror flick ever could! Even as an adult, war scenes make me cry, cause me to lose sleep, terrorize me. I cannot even stand to read about war. From a very early age, I sensed that war was the ultimate evil.

And yeah, I don’t like violence, in general, and I don’t like guns (even though I have a really good aim, my dad taught us to shoot at tin cans in the desert when we were young), and I don’t like mean people, and I don’t even like anger!

One might say that I am a pacifist through and through.

Would I like it if we were not at war right now? Absolutely!

Imagine if you would, that you live on a street in a make-believe neighborhood. You are living your life to the best of your ability. You have friendly neighbors on this street, and sometimes you socialize at each other’s homes. Down the street, though, there is this one family that hates you. And, in fact it hates you so much that it wants to kill you and your family. And, in fact, it believes that if its members were to rape your daughters, torture and maim your sons, and kill you, that they would be doing a noble thing. They don’t care about laws or the land, morality, what’s right and wrong, or anything like that. To them, the only thing that is right is to destroy you.

There are other neighbors who feel the same way. They fight amongst themselves, and often you see patrol cars pulling up at their homes to try to settle some dispute or to arrest someone who kills or harms one of the others. But, they are unified in their hatred for you, and have secret meetings and plots.

As time goes on, the threats against you and your family grow, and there are even attempts to destroy you. There have been assaults on your home and family, and upon your neighbors. Oh, and by the way, you cannot move.

So, what do you do? Do you go have a chat with these people? Do you see if you can work out your differences? You tried that a long time ago, and they made it clear that they do not want to hear anything you have to say, and they have no desire to compromise or reason. They intend to destroy you, and that is all there is to it.

Sometimes there is no avoiding war. Sometimes one must defend oneself and one’s own. And when war cannot be avoided, we must be vigilant about protecting and defending.

So, the neighborhood forms a kind of group to protect and defend those being attacked. The group may need to use weapons and it may need to use force, and it may even need to spy a little to stay on top of the actions and plans of those who wish to destroy you.

Amazingly enough, there will be some who will be more angry at that little band trying to protect us than they are at the ones who would destroy us.

Throughout history, the story has been told and retold.

War is evil. It will be with us until the end of time. I hate war. But I realize that without war there would be many countries that would not be enjoying the freedoms they do today. Without war, Nazism would likely still be a major force, as one example among many (and thank goodness for the brave men and women of WWII who took on that evil!). Sometimes war is necessary.

As much of a Pacifist and violence-hater that I am, you can bet that if a rapist had invaded my home and attempted to assault my daughter, I would have used whatever force necessary to protect her. I would have risked my life. I would have called upon my good aim, if necessary.

I support our troops who are defending us. I support our leaders who are working hard to protect us. I am grateful that they prevented the deaths of innocent citizens flying from London in the last 24 hours.

War. What is it good for? For freeing the oppressed, for protecting the innocent, for preserving our freedoms.

babytalk

2006-08-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

babytalk
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Oh Brother!!!! Is this a shockingly, disgusting, and gross photograph. Not at all!!!

I am one of those people who is not immersed in popular culture that much. I do not subscribe to PEOPLE, I think the tabloids are sources of amusement during waits in supermarket lines, on those rare occasions when I actually go into a supermarket (I usually shop where there are no magazines and no toyfoods). I am not much of a TV watcher. I seem to live in an alternate dimension. Perhaps this makes me qualified to speak on this issue because I am not brain-washed as to current societal norms.

And so, when I see certain immoral and immodest types being role models to pre-teens, to me that IS shocking. When I see pseudo stars gaining popularity by accidentally producing and selling sex videos featuring themselves as accidental porn stars, that to me is disgusting.

When I hear people explaining why they had five children, each by different fathers (or mothers), to whom they were not married, at the time, and, in fact, when all were actually elsewhere committed, to me that is gross. (“It just happened!” They say as an explanation as to why they screwed up their lives and those of a trail of innocent victims. Or “I fell in love” to explain why they abandoned family and/or destroyed another family. When feelings and impulses rule us, the society is doomed!)

When I read of people who destroy or even murder for gain or power, I feel discouraged and I feel contempt for such acts.

So, read the article and come back and tell me what you think:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060804/od_afp/afplifestyleussocialbreastfeeding

Shocking? Disgusting? Gross?

What is happening in our world where what is pure and beautiful can be seen by some as being ugly and unspeakable, and what is ugly and unspeakable is seen as being worth our attention and focus?

Some people have it turned all around backwards and inside out.

To me, this is a truly beautiful photograph! This is a loving moment that is pure and inspiring. Look at the baby’s expression! This is what mothering is all about and this is what produces a human being who will be kind, moral, and decent.

I applaud BABYTALK.

Is it Just Me, or Is My Frustration with Adobe Photoshop Justified?

2006-08-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

Number Nine
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Here's the thing. I've been wanting photoshop elements for some time, because I've heard it's a good, basic, photo editing software with some of the tools that I like to use.

Mark got it for me for Mother's Day, last May. Cool!

I didn't install it until sometime in late June, due to travel, etc.

I finally installed it, loved it, used it 2-3 times, tops. (Lots of travel in between.)

Home again, went to open it, and it went to a window that appears to be an attempt to upgrade it. Okay. I have several programs that like to upgrade themselves from time to time, I'll just wait for it to do that.

It never finishes. N E V E R. I can let it upgrade for the rest of my life and it will just be in the process of trying to upgrade, so eventually I have to force quit.

I contact the adobe people. They're really helpful until I say that I am using adobe photoshop elements 2.0. They can no longer register or support that because it is considered, by them, but not by a lot of photographers, to be obsolete. I can, if I wish, upgrade through them, for the huge editing program, that I never wanted in the first place, using my current softwared, for a mere 170.00 bucks.

I guess that is a startling bargain because, I am told, that if I were to buy it outright, it would cost something like 800.00.

But, I only wanted elements.

So, why would amazon.com sell software that is considered to be obsolete? Or, why would they not tell their customers that it is, so that they can know that before they purchase it?

So, I got to have the thrill of using it no more than three times? So my husband purchased a very short term trial software at the cost of regular software?

Is any of this making any sense whatsoever?

So now, I have to either upgrade to the whole enchilada, or write to amazon and see if they will take it back, and shop, all over again for suitable photo editing software.

Bleh! Any commentary, advice, suggestions are totally welcome!

I Just Want to Know!

2006-07-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

Stepford Avril
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Is there like some kind of secret society, maybe run by the devil,
that insists that if you are young, female, have a little bit of
talent, or an inclination, you can achieve stardom if and only if, you
become blonde and get a boob job so that you fit the mold of the
young, female star (and all look the same)?

It's just so annoying that all female singers, for instance, seem to
go to this secret society, some kind of stepford stars soceity, and
sell their souls, which are sucked out of their bodies with some kind
of wierd sci-fi vacuum, and then they are left empty, but blonde and
buxom.

Britney, Jessica, Christina, Paris, Nicole, the list goes on and on.
Brunettes entering the machine and coming out all looking exactly the
same!

What's the deal anyway?

So along comes Avril, and she is different! She is skinny, flat,
scrawny, angry, with her dark hair parted down the middle, almost
hiding her face. She's a little bit punk and a lot individual (well,
at least more so than the the stepford stars).

So, look at the photo, and tell me.

She's gone and done it, too, hasn't she? She got sucked into the
stepford star machine and spit out the other end, looking like every
other young, female star, and lacking the soul that was just traded in
for her new star-making looks.

It's just so tiresome!

Female Photographers

2006-07-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Mother and Daughter
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

This morning my husband pointed me in the direction of some other female photograhers who are shooting much as I did when my kids were young, in a journalistic style along with the writing that accompanies it.

I recall, even before I became a mom, and in fact, probably even before my first day of Kindergarten, thinking that I was an observer. I liked (like) to observe people and anything visual. I would be really quiet, a lot of the time, mostly deep in observation (when not climbing trees, exploring canyons, or riding waves, all of which, in a sense, for me, are other forms of observing).

When I looked at a couple of their blogs, I was entranced to find fellow observers. It brought me right back to my center. It is akin to the feeling one might have when, after being a stranger in a strange land for some time, returning home, and immediately recalling all that one values.

Thank you Mark. And thank you ladies. If you wander over here and see this, you will know who you are. And perhaps in the very near future, if it agrees with you, I will link this blog to you because you are creating beautiful photographs of childhood, and a beautiful history. And you are being wonderful, gentle moms, that is very evident.

{note on the photo that accompanies this blog: I took this about five years ago. It is my daughter-in-law with my first grandchild, who was supposed to be napping. Clearly, mom is tired, as all moms are at this stage. The photo is actually a film photo, and I copied it with my digital, and plan, one day, soon, I hope, to rephotograph it on a stand, with a tripod to make a more crisp copy. In the meantime, I am savoring this soft, dream-like copy, because that is like my memories of my children at this age.}

Attack Beagle

2006-07-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

Attack Beagle
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Things are not always as we might expect. I was taking a brisk walk in downtown Huntington Beach, and passed by this house with a Beagle at the window.

He had his chin on the sill and he peacefully watched me walk by. I thought, Awwwww. But I didn't take my camera out (being so recently victimized by the mean camera thief, and also not having all my stuff replaced yet, I have tended to not take out my camera as often as I used to. I am still paranoid that someone will take what I do have, and then I will really be despondent and hopeless).

I rounded the corner, and my inner muse kept nagging at me to go back and take that photo, because I would regret letting it pass by.

I was nearly to the next corner, but I decided that my muse was right, and so I turned around.

As I walked back, I thought all about how cute this photo would be. I used to have a Beagle and he was so smart and sweet. This would be the best photo. I was remembering how sweetly he was basking in the sun on the window sill, watching me go by, docile and peaceful.

I got to the location and he was still there, thank goodness. Still peacefull basking. I pulled out my camera, and he immediately reared up and began to bark at me.

He barked the bark of a threatened dog in need of protecting his territory. I snapped and I went on my way.

It was a completely different photo than what I had imagined. But then, c'est la vie, n'est pas?

Non-Existent Words that People Use Anyway

2006-07-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

Why?
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Would this woodie go quicker than present day cars? Did you know that there is no such word as "quicker"?

It does not exist. You won't find it in the dictionary.

There is quick, quickly, quicken, but there is no "quicker."

It's probably Ogden Nash's fault, because, a little while ago, he wrote:

Candy
is dandy
But liquor
is quicker.

He was just bending the rules to be funny. Or "funner"?

What other words are there that we use as if they were real words when they really aren't? Can you think of any?

Just curious!

What Lies Within

2006-07-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Jonas as a Robot
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

What is your interpretation of this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote? I mean, yes, it's pretty simple, in many ways, but what is your personal take, and what kind of person meaning do you attach to it? And/or, what do you think he meant by it? Feel free to wax philosophic!

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."

Where Does One Get Itty Bitty Blindfolds and Who Would Be Dexterous Enough to Put Them on Ants?

2006-06-29T23:38:00.000-07:00

Cousins
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

The latest research (did we pay for this with our tax dollars by the way? Just curious), is that ants count their steps, and that is how they know how far to go to find their homes (after they leave mine with whatever it is that was so important).

That sounded pretty bizarre to me, imagining the ants counting, two million, thirty-five thousand, and...drat, I forgot where I was!

But it gets better. It seems that there have been many theories over the years, here are some:

"One is that they do it like honeybees and remember visual cues, but experiments revealed ants can navigate in the dark and even blindfolded."

I just want to know who blindfolded a bunch of ants, and how they did it!

"Next, the researchers performed a little cosmetic surgery.
They glued stilt-like extensions to the legs of some ants to lengthen stride. The researchers shortened other ants' stride length by cutting off the critters' feet and lower legs, reducing their legs to stumps."

Just where is Peta anyway???

"The ants on stilts took the right number of steps, but because of their increased stride length, marched past their goal. Stump-legged ants, meanwhile, fell short of the goal."

I am just imagining all these ants, their "feet and lower legs" cut off, unable to get home again. This is truly heart-breaking. And then those ants on stilts.

Who answered the ad to put stilts on ant legs anyway? What was the going rate for that task and what kind of people showed up to apply for the job? And what about all those ants on stilts who marched right past their home?

At least I know where they are, they are marching into my kitchen! Ants on stilts!

Can a Newspaper be Tried for Treason?

2006-06-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

Lemons
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

And should it? What say you?

Died Tragically While Rescuing His Family From the Deck of a Sinking Battleship

2006-06-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

Sky frame
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

I often see little snippets of films. It's because I will haul some laundry in front of the TV, and just turn it on. I find things like sorting laundry to be tedious, so I like the distraction, and sometimes the little snippet is pretty interesting. Sometimes it's just a bunch of commercials for equipment guaranteed to, at last, get one totally in shape in just 15 minutes a day, and it folds down compactly to store under the bed, too!

Recently I was matching up socks and saw the end of "The Royal Tannenbaums." There is a visit to the grave and it is revealed what has been inscribed on the marker, "Died Tragically While Rescuing His Family From the Deck of a Sinking Battleship."

It is a comic moment that is also tinged with pathos. How many of us lead very ordinary, very safe lives? How many of us are Walter Mittys, imagining heroic acts?

And how many of us would just like to have the sense of humor to arrange to have such a thing engraved on our own headstone, knowing that no one would actually believe it and just chalk it up to one last attempt to break away from the mundane?

What say you?

Happiness and Gratitude!

2006-06-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Daffodil
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

I went into my flickr files to find one of my favorite macro shots, one to portray the sense of gratitude and joy that I feel, knowing that soon I will be back to taking photos like this and whatever else moves me.

For those who are waiting for me to do their family photos, just hold on a bit longer. For those who are taking the photog class, I will demonstrate primarily with your equipment and the ability to demonstrate (with my own stuff) ought to expand along with your ability to comprehend. For the rest of you, watch out, because soon I will be back in the game.

I feel like I am anticipating Christmas, birth, a wedding, a trip to Europe, or all of the above, or whatever is exciting, and taking too long to get here.

It has been an interesting journey as I have experienced various ways of being, from the initial shock and loss, and how much it felt like something important had been amputated from my soul, to the ways of getting around it:

sorting photos, going through and uploading the ancestral photos that my sister copied with a digital point and shoot, seeing what my p&s could do, trying various devices (close-up filters, telextenders, etc.), and generally getting out of my own way to keep the creative juices flowing, in little streams, around the massive dam of the missing equipment.

I am OVERWHELMED and AMAZED at the generosity of others. It is such a healing balm for the wounds I suffered at the greed of a thief.

You people have so restored my faith in humankind, for this, and for many other misdeeds commited, not just against myself, but against all people. I know that sounds like a political speech or something, but I mean it. I can get bogged down with how much hate and violence there is in the world, but hey, there are still kind and generous people everywhere. That makes me happy to know this.

THANK YOU...THANK YOU...THANK YOU!

I am most humbly and gratefully indebted to so many of you. I will find a way to thank you each in a meaningful way.

I can't say thank you enough. While I am still rather paranoid about the thieves amongst us, I feel like the sun is starting to shine again. I feel like soon I can come out and play again, only with a new appreciation for what I can do and an immense gratitude for the ability to do it, and for the tools that make it possible.

Thank you with all of my heart!

Teaching Photog Class Soon

2006-06-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Reaching for the sky
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Starts the end of the month. Haven't taught photography in a while. I will begin, at first session, by assessing student levels and what they want to learn. It's a really casual class, obviously.

Was starting to think, though, of a way to share the class with any online friends.

Any suggestions?

My Grandma Was a Photographer!

2006-06-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

My Grandma was a Photographer!
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Last night we uploaded the photos that my sister took while staying at our mom's. She took a bunch of photos of old photos, so the quality was not always good (faded, wrinkled photos, etc.)

In this photo, my grandmother is taking a portrait of my mom, the little girl sitting in the chair.

My grandmother has the marcelled bob of a flapper, and the newly shorter skirts. She kneels to get a good shot of my mother, in her bob haircut, seated in the rattan chair. This was taken somewhere in southern CA, possibly in Santa Monica or Long Beach, where they had been living at the time.

The date on this would be around 1925-27.

What I discovered, as I looked through the hundreds of photos that my sister copied, was that there were a considerable number of good photographs. Typically, the photos that people have of their ancestors are stitled, posed, lined up in bright sun, etc. But my sister found many, many wonderful photos of people riding in model-Ts, playing on the beach in swimsuits to their knees, etc.

We also discovered that the photos that our grandmother took were, pretty much without exception, well composed, creative, and compellingly wonderful. (The photos she was in were never quite as good!)

What a delight to discover that my beloved grandmother, who was capable of sewing anything that I could conjure in my mind and sketch on paper, was also a gifted photographer.

It makes me feel as if some of her is in me, and that perhaps, she watches me and takes some joy in watching me compose creative photographs.

What a wonderful discovery!

Politics, as Usual...

2006-06-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

Mother and Child Portrait
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

About a week ago, I wrote to my senators about an item about which they were about to vote. It was an issue of great import to me. When I got to Barbara Boxer's (aka Sachez) site, there was a form for those of us wishing to communicate with her about such issues.

In order to send one's commentaries to her, one was REQUIRED to choose a topic for the commentary from among the ones that she listed.

There were quite a few topics, and I scrolled through them at least three times in an attempt to see if any of the topics listed was related in any way at all to my commentary, and none of them was even remotely related.

My topic was related to families, and her topics were the war, immigration, civil rights, illegal aliens, taxes, etc. None of her choices fit.

I tried to send my topic as "other" or with no topic chosen, but the commentary would not send until a topic was chosen.

So, I just chose the very first topic which was the "War in Iraq." I wrote my commentary and I even apologized for choosing the first topic on her list, randomly, in order to be able to send my commentary. I explained that I wasn't writing to that topic, but another that did not fit into any of her categories.

I just got a reply from Senator Boxer today.

She writes, "Thank you for sharing your views on the War in Iraq." Then there are several paragraphs which elaborate on her personal opinions on this topic.

I suppose I should not be surprised in the least, but it is as if I got to the end of the yellow brick road and discovered that the wizard is just a little man behind a curtain.

So, she has all of her commentaries already written, to go with each of her topics, and when her constituents write her, she just has the hired help fire off the form response to match the topic.

So good to know that our elected officials actually want to know what we think about things.

The Internet as a great source of entertainment...(or Duck X-Ray Reveals Alien Head)

2006-06-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Shallow
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Maybe we should call it the Enternet, or Intertainment.

I was looking up the filter size for a particular lens that I need to replace, eventually, and somehow found the pathway to some bizarre hoaxes and well, whatever. In any case, I came across this:

Duck X-Ray Reveals Alien Head

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2006/06/01/238983-duck-x-ray-reveals-alien-head

I admit that I clicked on it, and immediately started laughing the moment I saw the picture.

In today's world, we all need a good laugh at least once a day. That was mine.

We are also entertained by the hollywood, gossipy, petty, shallow magazine that I accidentally subscribed to.

It all began when we ordered a pair of shoes for a teen boy whose mother recently died. They say no good deed goes unpunished.

Just as I was clicking on the "send order" button, I saw, too late, that the box was checked that we would receive a free subscription to Star magazine. Agggghhhh!

Oh well, it has been entertaining to keep up on the petty details of the lives of people we don't know and don't care about. The writing and the photos reveal more about the writers and photo editors of the subjects, anyway.

So, we have that source of entertainment until the free subscription, thankfully, runs out, at which time we will likely be bombarded with special deals on renewal along with subscriptions to national enquirer and whatever that one is in the supermarket that always has peoples' (or aliens') heads pasted onto the bodies of sumo wrestlers.

Which leads us back to the alien head found in the duck. Have you had your laugh today?

Film or Digital?

2006-06-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

Dusted it off
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

I was a dyed in the wool film fanatic until I tried digital SLR. I still see the value of film. It has a certain warmth and depth that is not always captured with digital. It's like the difference between listening to a vinyl record and a CD. But the differences are subtle.

Film has a certain, um, sense of permanence, in that every image that you take is on a negative and/or a print. You can hold that in your hand, hold it up to the light, and say, "Ah yes, here is the photo that I took of Uncle Bob doing the Marenga." The only things that can make that image go away would be: fading over time, fire or flood, or having the negative fall out of a box on the freeway while you are moving.

Digital images need to be backed up on the computer, on CDs, on an external hard drive, made into prints on paper that doesn't fade too rapidly, etc. And when one is shooting digital, one is making more images than one can possibly have the time to back-up adequately! I often have the sense that my digital images are not much more permanent than my thoughts. And often enough, I have lost images one way or another, through computer melt-downs, through corrupted files, and theft. I have easily lost far more digital images than film.

But all of these points, and more, have been argued by many. Here is my own take, as a lover of film and manual cameras, and the victim of the theft of my digital SLR.

About a week ago, I got out an old, refurbished manual SLR and loaded it with B&W film. I decided that without my D-SLR, I would return to my roots and shoot film and choose my settings manually. I expected some kind of glorious epiphany, some kind of back-to-the-land kind of simple joy.

While it has been an interesting experience (the smell of film was a fond memory, and I enjoyed the winding of the film around the spool, and then there is that wonderful click that occurs with the mirror), it has also felt like returning to a horse and buggy. While that may be fun, and a kind of novelty when on vacation, it doesn't fit in so well with our present-day lifestyles.

I found myself taking fewer and fewer photos because the joy of seeing what I had just taken, and trying again until I got it the way I wanted it was entirely missing. I was less experimental, relying upon tried and true (from several decades of photographing) compositions, lighting, etc. I was inclined to be more conservative because I couldn't take the risks I could with digital. I had only a set number of exposures on the roll of film, and would need to pay for every one of them when I got to the end of the roll.

It feels like I am simply sketching some ideas, and then, filing them away. With the digital SLR, the idea was there, and then there was the execution of the idea, and the immediate feedback, and the response, "Oh, that won't do at all! Delete that and try it this way," or, "Hey, look at how that one turned out, that is not what I expected, but I like it! Let me try pushing the envelope a bit more in that direction and see how that looks."

With the D-SLR, when I approached my subject, the camera and my eye experienced a kind of merging and they became a team. There was the seeing, the adjusting, the capturing, the editing, etc.

It seems that with digital SLR, my eye and my mind are working in a different, more creative, more energetic way. There is more synergy and more serendipity. There is more exploration, and more enthusiasm for risk.

So, what do you think? Do you prefer digital or film, and why?

Man Buys His Own Stolen Camera on Ebay

2006-05-30T16:58:00.000-07:00

Huh?

I will admit to having had that fantasy in the last week.

Man buys his own stolen camera on eBay.
submitted by ThisGeek 152 days ago (via http://today.reuters.co.uk/new...)

A German businessman whose camera was stolen was relieved to find the same model for sale on eBay. When it arrived after he bought it however, he discovered it was his OWN, stolen camera!

Camera flips

2006-05-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

Camera flips
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Tonight we looked at the promotional DVD that we got from the hot air balloon people. It pretty much showed the usual aspects of the usual ride. In some ways it was good to see it, and in some ways, it was really sad, because I saw the things that I photographed, and how I photographed them.

There are many people in the world who have had their cameras stolen, and along with them, their photos, their precious memories, their ways of seeing life, an experience, an event, the world, etc.

Perhaps there is a special torture place for those who steal people's film and memory cards.

Going without my SLR this long is way harder than I thought it would be.

Keeping on keeping on....

ANTZZZZZ

2006-05-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

Huh?

Ants have invaded my office. It all began with one or two ant spottings, one crossing behind the keyboard, and then one on the light. (Yes, the light, go figure). Today, as I was typing, they were congregating behind my back. I turned around and, (insert PSYCHO muisc here), there they were, a big black stream across the window sill, down the wall, and all over the chair. The Horror!

I've been battling them all day, their bodies are strewn over the window sill, and yet, they keep coming to the battlefield.

I want to know why. But even more so, I want to know why, if ants are so smart, and if they communicate with each other so well, why do they not communicate that the window sill and wall of my office is a death trap, strewn with their comrades that came before them? Why do they not retreat in terror? Why do they still keep coming, to their fateful demise? Why?

Just wondering...

2006-05-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

Huh?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

Seeing Without a Camera

2006-05-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Dancing Brake LIghts
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

I got this in an email this morning:

"This is a tragedy, it may take awhile but I'm sure we can all pull together to help you. In the meantime use your 'eye' to analyze subjects, see deeper. Often when I'm on trips and can't play music I listen with a composers ear to know the parts, to find the hidden harmonies and rhythms.You will photograph soon, but you didn't lose the joy of seeing the beauty."

Thank you for that. As I was listing the "Silver Lining" aspects (see below), I was kind of trying to say this. I think that the musical metaphor helps, not only to explain it to others, but to myself as well.

We do, sometimes, have to stop creating, and we need to be quietly observing. Our eyes, our ears are more sensitive when we are quiet and paying attention. The muse sometimes needs to regroup.

Thanks for putting it so well.

Cell Phone Wars

2006-05-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Huh?
Early this morning, Mark and I were sitting in a doctor's office. Mark HAS to work, pretty much all of the time, except for Sundays, and I was grateful to have him be there, since I was a little nervous (lifelong, fair, blue-eyed, former surfer, California Girl finally goes in for her first skin cancer screening, EVer while experiencing a turn in luck!). He was on his cell conducting his work. He wasn't being super loud or annoying or anything, but an older couple, across the room was. Mark was concentrating on his work, so he didn't notice them, but the rest of us did. The couple was complaining loudly and vocally, rudely, and with great disdain. They said things like: "Some people just can't set their personal lives aside for a few moments!" "He just wants everyone to think he's really important." "He is just such a bigshot that he has to be chatting on his phone right now." etc. And they were glaring at us.

Ordinarily, I might have passed Mark a note to take it out to the hallway, because he was disturbing other people. And if they had asked me nicely for him to do that, I would have but:

a-I was so grateful to have him be there, as my support, that I didn't want him to leave, and I knew that he would have to be working at the same time. and...

b-they were being so rude about it that I didn't feel like doing the polite thing. I didn't want to be intimidated by their loud, rude remarks.

(And besides, I just had $2500. of camera equipment that took decades to acquire stolen. Don't mess with me!)

So, I just watched them having their loud and nasty hissy fits. It seemed like they were enjoying themselves as they tried to outdo each other in rudeness.

Then Mark finished his call. Put away his phone, picked up PEOPLE magazine, and I heard a phone ring.

Then I saw Rude Dude, fumble around in his pockets and pull out his phone. He then had a loud, and very personal conversation that went on until we got called by the nurse.

I did manage to catch his eye just before that happened, and I gave him a friendly little glare.

Oh, and I was declared skin cancer free. YAY!!!

Letting Go

2006-05-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Emerson's Eyelashes
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

It can't be ALL ABOUT ME much longer. I promise, I am getting out of the pitty pot, and soon, this blog will be turned back over to you. I am already considering the next controversial or strange topic.

I will say, though, that today I was feeling a bit discouraged. I really think it is just that reality is sinking in and I am facing the facts that my beloved camera equipment is gone. I will admit, though, that I did look under the bed once more this morning, just for good measure, even though I KNOW, that it isn't there (from looking four times already), and I KNOW that the last place the bag was seen was in Phoenix, AZ.

(Oh, no, am I becoming obssessive-compulsive?)

I wonder if I will ever again be able to eat a veggie sandwich from Subway.

So, I am facing reality. BLEH.

BUT, there is a silver lining to every cloud.

I see that I have been self-absorbed and obsessed with this for four days, and that is enough. I'd turn on the radio and realize I was not even listening to it, so I'd turn it off, and so forth. OBSESSED. DEMENTED.

Okay, the silver linings:

First and foremost, the kindness, empathy, sympathy of family, friends, strangers. How utterly amazing.

How humbling and overwhelming. I am so grateful.

Secondly, this has given me pause to consider what is truly valuable to me and what is not.

Thirdly, not taking so many pix, gives me a chance to review what I have taken thus far.

And, this has given me a chance to evaluate what my talents, gifts and interests are and to fortify that this IS my passion.

My son says that by next week, thanks to so many of you, we will be able to replace the camera body and one of the lenses, at least. That makes me happy.

If you helped me in this, and would like more than just a spammish thank you, let me know, and I will make you a print of your favorite photo from my flickr photostream, and send it to you, or take your portrait, or a portrait of one of your loved ones, if you are nearby. Do let me know, I want to express my thanks through actions whenever I can.

thank you so much!

Today's Update on the Stolen Camera

2006-05-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

The canopy overhead
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Today Mark managed to find the number for the owner of the particular Subway franchise that has my camera (or employs the thief). Again, he calls, and gets no response. He will allow the owner a bit more time to respond and then we go to the police. We no longer have hope to recover my camera equipment or the memory card. But, we are not going to just let it go. Even if nothing can be done, and even if the thief has already pawned it, sold it on ebay, whatever, we plan to make a certain amount of stink about it.

Think about it. You own the Subway franchise at 610 Baseline Rd E
Ste C2
Phoenix AZ 85040-6536
602-243-0234

A customer accidentally leaves a camera case under the table there, and when she calls to report that she left it there, it has already been hidden away, and people lie about it. Would you want to know that you have dishonest employees? Are you okay with them operating your cash registers?

Up until now, I have felt sad and helpless about it all. Now I am starting to feel angry.

But, I have had many other thoughts and feelings, too. It has been difficult for me to not have my camera because I am always seeing pictures, and can't take them the way I want to without my camera, so I have been telling myself to stop seeing pictures, but when I try to do that, I feel like I am shutting down a major part of my soul.

Anyway, as some have said, what goes around comes around. I have even thought that maybe the person who has/had my camera and lenses was a person struggling to feed little children and now she has a couple of month's worth of rent paid up so she can buy more food. Honestly, I have thought that, and tried to send her vibes to at least turn in the memory card so we could have our pictures!

But then, I think that a crackhead probably already pawned it, so I go from my generous involuntary contribution helping a poor mother, to my involuntary contribution aiding a crackhead's habit.

Mark said, when we first realized the loss, that "there are still more honest people in the world than dishonest." And I totally thought that it would be a simple thing: we would call the Subway, and they would say, "Oh, yeah, the camera case is right here, you can come and get it." I totally thought that.

We have found some of the dishonest ones, but the care, support, kindness of so many others is making me think that Mark is right, there are still more kind, generous, compassionate, and honest people in the world than mean, greedy, unfeeling, and dishonest types.

Thank you to everyone who has shown me compassion. It has been amazingly helpful!

Lost My Camera (and today is my birthday)

2006-05-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hi
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

How ironic that this would be the next post after posting about my PASSION.

The camera is almost a year old. It has been my "baby" for 11 months. I got it with tax refund money, which I set aside as I eagerly anticipated the camera coming onto the market. Once it was in my hands, I was in love. It became an extension of my eye, my hands, my heart, my soul.

I took it everywhere and kept it safe, and on me, always.

Here is what happened: Mark had business in Phoenix last Monday and yesterday. He decided that we would celebrate my birthday in AZ. So, he worked there Monday, and then we went to Sedona for three days of hiking, exploring, culminating in a hot air balloon ride. I was so excited that I had trouble falling asleep, and our wake-up call was for 3:30 AM. I saved most of my card for that experience and took about a hundred photos then.

Friday, after work in the morning, we met up with my son, who is living in Phoenix, and did a few errands with him. Each time we got out of the car, I took out a small messenger bag, and put that on, and then added my camera bag, because the temps were in the triple digits and I didn't want to fry my camera by leaving it the car.

I think I made two mistakes: 1-I put the camera and the lenses in the camera case. I usually only do that when traveling a long distance in the car. When not doing that, the camera is usually in my backpack or a messenger bag that goes with me. That is what I am used to. Because we made a few stops, I was taking TWO bags with me, instead of the usual ONE (not taking the time to remove the camera and put it in the one bag-not wanting to slow down the process). 2-When we went in to get a sandwich, I had the small messenger on my person, and set the camera bag at my feet. That was a mistake, but not a biggie, because I am also in the habit of looking around me as I get up to leave a place, lest I Ieave something behind. This time, for some reason, I was distracted from doing that. I recall there were several distractions.

Nevertheless-I am beside myself with grief and suffering at my loss. I am kicking myself all over, bursting into tears at odd moments, and generally feeling like my best friend died and I had a limb amputated. I literally feel physically ill.

Having packed the camera for the trip home, it contained not only the camera body, but my most beloved macro lens, a zoom 80-200 telephoto, my lensbaby, a spare battery, and a card containing thousands of photos of hikes and the much-anticipated balloon ride (which was on my list of 43 things to do).

My husband has contacted the manager of the Subway in Phoenix where we ate, and no one has told her of a left-behind camera bag. She is in the process of contacting two more employees, but our guess is that someone was thrilled at the find and not likely to turn it in.

My loss pains me immensely, and this is the most depressing birthday EVER, as a result. It's not like we can just go and replace the equipment that took decades to accumulate. And, of course, we cannot EVER replace the hundreds of photos that were on the memory card.

I think of my much-loved camera in the hands of a stranger who would only care for its monetary value. I think of the dishonest stranger looking at photos of my husband and myself, our balloon ride, and erasing the card without a second thought. I think of the loss of the one material possession that meant the most to me in this world, and I am depressed beyond belief or relief.

I am in mourning. Happy birthday to me.

What Is Your Passion?

2006-05-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Here
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

I'm talking about the passion that you probably discovered while very young.

Mine was photography. I always had funky little cameras, like a Brownie, or an Instamatic. I took lots and lots of B&W photos.

Even as a little kid, I remember watching adults line us up in rows, against a wall or whatever, our faces squinting in the bright sun, in order to shoot us firing squad style-and I remember thinking, "Is this the only way that it can be done?"

I recall trying, often with great frustration, to record things differently, because, I guess, I saw things differently. I would get down on the grass and shoot up, or climb up into a tree and shoot down. I would get up close to an anthill or my brothers' ears or the stitching on my beloved jeans (called dungarees by most in the 50s but I called them blue jeans even then and they were my favorite thing to wear).

I tried to photograph the lemon I had just picked from the tree and cut in half because I thought it was beautiful.

The equipment was limited, but it did not deter me. In college, I majored in fine arts and psychology, and spent five years there completing the requirements for a double major. THEN, when I had my first baby, put away the oil paints (all those dangerous oils and things sitting around). My husband got me my first 35 mm SLR, and I am forever grateful! It was completely manual, and I read the little instruction book from cover to cover one afternoon in the bathtub (not sure how I found the time, since I had a hungry newborn).

My first shoot was walking around the Rose Parade grounds the day before the parade. I was feeling a little clueless, not sure if I was getting all of my aperture and shutter speed settings right, but I pressed forward with courage.

The first photo I ever sold to a magazine came from that first roll of film. The next three or four money-making shots came from the roll after that. I am certain it was my five years learning to draw and paint that assisted in my eye, but it was also, for sure, my PASSION.

I worked in photography from then on: child portraiture, weddings, magazines and newspapers, and documented my kids as they grew.

In the 90s and early 00s I let it take a back seat a bit. It was largely due to the high costs of film and processing. I did not quit entirely, and always had two cameras loaded and ready to go at all times, and processed a roll or two about once every two months (eesh, at about the same rate that I give in and get a hair cut---see hair cut entry below, if you are so inclined). BUT, it became more of a hobby or avocation, on the side, after work, etc.

Now that my kids are grown, the stirrings have been coming back. Not the hobby-ish stirrings, but the passion stirrings.

Last year, Mark gave me a portion of the tax refund and told me to use it where I wanted. I set it aside to wait for a particular digital SLR that would come out in June. Happy was the day that I uploaded my first set of photos from that camera. I was back in the game. And, indeed, the very next month I was on assignment to cover a major event over the period of nearly three months. Photos from that will come out next month in a magazine.

All of the time I was not photographing as a passion, I was writing as a passion (and published several books, and presently work as a writer and editor for some publishing companies). I still like to write, and have story ideas all of the time. I guess for me the primary passion is to be able to observe life from different angles and to create what I see into a form wherein I can show others. I often have a big camera in my bag, and wish I had a keychain camera, a botton camera, a phone camera, a credit-card camera, a camera sugically placed in my eye, and If I should go blind, I will spend the remainder of my days as a teller of stories, and paint pictures with words. But I hope and pray to always have my eyes because my ultimate passion is with all things visual.

SOooooo...what is YOUR passion? Feel free to wax poetic! Ramble on to your heart's content! I can't wait to hear!

Who Said These Things?

2006-05-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

Huh?

Here are two quotes, the same person said both of them. Do you know who?

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

Is Graffiti Vandalism or Art?

2006-05-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

Ancient civilizations
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Go for it! What do you think?

This is not stuff from MY bag, but what's in YOUR bag?

2006-05-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

IMAGE_00031
Originally uploaded by GarotaDeIpanema.

As a photographer, I am slightly addicted to bags of various sizes in order to schelp not only my normal stuff (lip balm, gum, hankie, contact lens case, book, pen, paper, ipod), but also my photog stuff, sometimes just an SLR with a lens attached, sometimes one or two other lenses, sometimes a flash, sometimes a lensbaby, battery, etc.

I am also slightly addicted to Flickr. (Mark will say I need intervention.) Flickr has a group titled, "What's in Your Bag?" where people not only discuss bags, and what's in them, but they also photograph the contents. It's kind of fun if you have a moment in between other stuff that you HAVE to do.

Go here to explore: http://www.flickr.com/groups/52241283780@N01/

This group has over two thousand members, so it must be interesting to others, too!

Britney Spears Is Pregnant Again?

2006-05-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

Huh?

I dunno, maybe it's me, but I'm concerned. The 8 month old baby she already has got a fractured skull from falling out of his highchair and she drives with him in her lap. I just wonder.

Should Exit Exams be Required for Graduating HS Seniors?

2006-05-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

HS Soccer Game
Originally uploaded by Huh?Pix.

That is a major controversy in CA today.

Just What Is a Monkey Wrench, Anyway?

2006-05-09T14:34:00.000-07:00

Grumpy Monkey
Originally uploaded by Huh?Pix.

If no one knows, I might just have to look into this!

Are Carbs Really the Problem?

2006-05-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Love bread
Originally uploaded by Huh?Pix.

I love carbs, I eat carbs all day long.

Are you a CAT PERSON or a DOG PERSON?

2006-05-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Katz
Originally uploaded by Huh?Pix.

Do you prefer dogs or cats? AND are you more like a dog or like a cat?

What IS it about High Heels?

2006-05-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

Heels
Originally uploaded by Huh?Pix.

Yeah, yeah, I know, they make the legs look longer, and the wearer look cuter and sexier. BUT, when I am at one of those mega-walking places like Disneyland, or a mall the size of a major metropolitan city, and I see a woman mincing by in sky-high heels, I just want to know: "How much pain are you in, and is it worth it?"

Gloves or Mittens?

2006-05-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

Drying in the Sun
Originally uploaded by Huh?Pix.

Most adults prefer gloves, but they say that mittens keep our fingers warmer. What do you say?

How Fast Does Your Hair Grow?

2006-05-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

They say that hair grows about a half an inch per month, give or take. Does yours grow faster than that or slower?

Leftie or Rightie?

2006-05-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Let the Shower Begin
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

stick shift or automatic?
beach or mountains?
innie or outie?
soup or salad?
book or movie?
paper or plastic?
bus or train?
tall or short?
night owl or morning lark?
backpack or messenger bag?
shower or bath?
contacts or glasses?
dance or skate?
active or sedentary?
city or country?
carnivore or vegetarian?
plaid or stripes?
oxfords or sandals?
long hair or short hair?
b&w or color?
gourmet or fast food?
drive or ride?
fast or slow?
yoga or kick-boxing?
big or small?
TV or read?
brown rice or white?
in or out?
abstract or realistic?
natural or enhanced?
foreign or domestic?

Do You Believe in Extra-Terrestrials?

2006-05-08T23:20:00.000-07:00

Suddenly he moved in really close!
Originally uploaded by katzeye.

Why or why not?

If you could take a pill that would...

2006-05-08T23:11:00.000-07:00

...make you ten years younger. Would you?