LaurieWrites

Moira

I was lucky to have the new experience recently of taking pictures of a brand-new baby.

I'm very excited about babies lately. Two great friends of mine -- who are not yet ready to share their little girl photographically with the world at large - welcomed a daughter this month. And also! My sister is pregnant. 

I'm so excited. 

I'M SO EXCITED. I am going to be an aunt. I may be a better aunt than I would have been a mom, I'm thinking, although I still have my emotional issues about not being a mom, but that's just how it shook out. Life. It happens. It gives what it gives, takes what it takes. I'm 41 and almost 42. What are the chances, right? So, we march on. This isn't about me anyway. This is about the best baby who will ever be, so let's move on. 

I haven't specifically discussed my sister here that much, but she is my only sibling, crucial to my daily life, my conscience, my gift, my favorite person. She knows my gold and my trash. She has forgiven me unforgivable things. She is resilient and funny and fun and intelligent and driven. I'd step in front of a train for her. 

She has, also, scrapped and worked for everything she has ever had. I know this. She is the most impressive person I know. 

I love my brother-in-law, too. He is a person I respect above most other human beings I've met in my life, mostly because I know he'd step in front of that train, too. I am so grateful for him. So, overall I'm just really lucky to have them, as individuals and as a family unit, in my life, and they are going to have a stellar child. 

I like them. 

Prior to taking endless photos of my sister's baby, my sister's sister-in-law trusted me to take the first formal portraits of her new little girl. I was very excited, but also very nervous. I had never done an infant photo shoot before, and I really believe that these first portraits are important. This compounds my belief that asking anyone to take pictures of you and/or your family on milestone occasions is an investment, as well as a statement of trust, and I so much wanted to capture what this family wanted. 

I think we ended up doing okay, mostly because this infant girl, like most babies, is just precious. I will be ever grateful to her mom and dad for allowing me to take her first portraits. 

Baby in a pumpkin hat!

Pea pod baby! 

(This is my favorite, because she's winking at me, kinda.) 

Eating my hand, hanging out, whatever.

Baby's foot and Mommy's finger. 

Miss Thing just hanging in her seat in her ballet slipper onesie. 

Mama so LOVES me.

I feel really lucky to have gotten to share these images of this brand new person with the world. Until I have a proper online portfolio, of which she is most deserving, this will have to do. Welcome, Moira. You are a gem. 

Mighty Fundraising for Charity:Water

I fly to Palm Springs tomorrow to attend Camp Mighty, and I'm so excited. I went last year, and it was a wonderful, transformational experience for me, and not just because I acted out a little.

(This year I can't even make a little ponytail, that's how short this hair has gotten. What's up, 2012?) 

This year, I've been working with the teams prior to Camp, and that, too, has been so good for me. I may have mentioned a time or two on here in the past year that online community -- particularly involving creative people who write, take pictures, design (websites, illustrations, homes, or lives), teach, and basically shake things up and make them happen, every day -- is turning out to be where it's at for me. It's a slightly less manic preferance than what Jack Kerouac said, that "the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles, exploding like spiders across the stars." 

Jack talked a lot of crap, and I'm not a fan of spiders, but he got that one mostly right. 

This year I'm going back to Camp Mighty pretty much in an entirely different life circumstance and mental state than I did last year. And even though so much is more uncertain, and I've been through some really weird business this past 12 months, some of it more than I wanted to bear or handle or even entertain for five minutes much less longer, I can say upon reflection that I am a better version of myself, in almost all ways, than I was when I went there before. 

So I'm going to make some Twitter handle cross-stitch ornaments, and offer some photos, if you want to kick in some money for charity:water. 

This is the Twitter handle ornament I made for Jen, aka @dell0717, a couple of years ago. She liked it. In fact, she just tweeted the other day that she'd just hung it up to start getting in the holiday spirit, and she called me a witch because I mentioned it and her just minutes later. I don't know that I'm one of those, at least not in the supernatural sense of the term, and I'm a little concerned that Jen is a holiday overachiever this early in the year, but she's really funny and nice, so I'm going to let her slide on both counts. 

I threw in a little 4x6 print of one of my pictures with her ornament. You may also be so lucky. 

There will likely be some variation in canvas and floss color, and if Christmas is not your bag, I am of course open to other holidays and non-holiday options, as well. I'd like to stick to Twitter handles, just to keep some sense of organization going here. You know how I am. These will go for a minimum $20, because they take a lot of time, mostly, and mama's hands are getting older and tireder from all of the typing, you see. 

And there's another option! Two, actually. Your options cup runneth over. 

My website, which will display my photographs beautifully, is not complete. I do have a portfolio of sorts in the works at my LauriePhotography Flickr account. If you would like a print of any shot in this "Favorites" set, it can be yours for the low, low price of $15 for a 4x6, $25 for a 5x7, and $30 for an 8x10. (My Ritz Camera that produced awesome prints for relatively cheap shut down, so I can't go as low as I'd like.)

My favorites are this one: 

And this one.

You may like other ones better. That is okay, too. 

I'm warming up to sell my stuff just for me in the new year, along with the portrait work I'm doing. These are life list goals, people, so your support can make a difference in my confidence and personal growth, too! Don't you love that? I KNOW YOU DO. 

And finally! If you'd like to pick a shot from my Instagram album, or my main feed, I will send you a Postagram  (yes, like a real postcard from Instagram. Isn't the future fun and insane?) of said shot, for the low, low price of $15. I will also send you a very nice message on that Postagram, if you email me your address. There's more information about the Instagram business here. 

So that's it. If I cannot scare up $200 to help my people dig a well from this PLETHORA of visual and crafty options, I am going to hand in my internet fundraising card. If you want to do any of these awesome things, go here. Pick your dollar amount poison, and what you would like to receive. Put my name in the notes. Comment here and tell me what you want. (Make sure you include an email, so that I can get back to you.) If you cannot comment because sometimes TypePad doesn't like to let people comment, @me on Twitter @lauriewrites, or email me at lauriesays@gmail.com, and I will hook you up. 

Whew. Okay. I'm ready to go now. 

*Date and processing/shipping time information: I will be in California until Monday, so no picture-making or stitching can happen until at least Tuesday, when I am emerging from jet lag hell. I aim to have ornaments done by the second week in December, pictures before that, probably. Just so you know. 

Instagram Online (Finally) and Ramping Up for Charity:Water and Sandy Relief

Since last I failed NaBloPoMo, President Barack Obama was re-elected decisively, and the marriage equality initiatives in four states -- Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington -- passed. I slept very little for 48 hours because I was nervous, and I wasn't really sure what to say, other than "please please please" and finally, thank you. Tonight I came up for air, and found out that I have access to the legit Instagram web viewer for my account. 

This is like Instagram Christmas for a mobile photo dork like me. 

I am (really) active on Twitter. I am on Facebook a lot. I care about Pinterest and FourSquare, Yelp and FoodSpotting and all of the other food and travel apps that populate my iPhone. 

But I really love Instagram. 

My profile is here if you'd like to follow me.

I also really, really need to raise some money for Charity:Water, because I have a big event coming up next week and my team needs help. I'll be telling you more about that tomorrow or this weekend, but in the meantime, if you'd like to pitch in $20 for my campaign, I will happily make you a print of one of my Instagram shots.

What, some of them are pretty!

I'll be expanding this to some of my DSLR photos when I talk to you next, and splitting any proceeds over and above the $200 I need to raise (not a lot, right?) with a vetted Hurricane Sandy relief source.

Too much water or not enough, there is so much need in the world. It's been weighing on me hard, mostly because I don't feel like my access to funds and my lack of proximity to New York/New Jersey is enough to help anyone at all.

But I can still pitch in to get a big well dug in Rwanda, and some more to help my neighbors to the North, who are on my mind day and night. I know it's tough times for everyone, but I still feel compelled to spread the word. I'd Kickstarter everyone, if I could. 

Middle of Somewhere -- the NaBloPoMo Series

So it's day three, and I'm already falling down on the NaBloPoMo job here. This meansit's better than other years, when I've screwed up on day two, so I'm calling that progress. 

What can I tell you in ten minutes? Not a lot, I guess. Maybe I can cash in the extra daylight savings hour? 

Nah. 

The thing is, I seem to be doing a lot better with pictures than words right now, except for editing, other people's words. I'm doing a lot of that.

I'm also working my way through my set of pictures from the trip to and from California, and one thing I'd like to do this month is write about and share pictures of some of the places I saw and shot.

Let's start with West Texas.

It was really beautiful.

And big.

And dry.

I'd tell you more, but I've only got a minute. So: lots of highway. Gigantic grocery store tortilla sections. Beer. Friends. Sun. Sky. Repeat.

I'll try again tomorrow. 

On Stilts and Fire and Walking Through It and On Them

Here I am with a man on stilts:

This is my last week at work forever, and I'm doing things like crying through a two-hour Glee doubleheader, so I've come to this as my visual touchstone.

(Thanks to Deb Rox for the photo of me and my pretend carny husband. All that background needs is a clown pushing a hoop with a stick and maybe a miserable elephant or two, to go with the seaside vehicle. Also, blown up bigger it looks like I'm in danger of snapping his stilts-twig leg, what with my stance there. Later on he made me almost eat fire in front of an entire beach lounge full of people, so maybe I did hurt him. CAH-RAFTY, CARNY MAN.

(Seriously? The guy on stilts was very nice. We were instant friends, in my mind, which is obvious because I look entirely comfortable with him, no?)

You know what, this story is freaking me out in the retelling. I am super not into being on fire and I was really close to his fire sticks and it appears almost happy about it from the pictures. (I go to Florida and lose my fool mind.)

Oh. My. God. I just said all of those things and they are true. HELLO NARNIA, I'M HOME.

Anyway, so yes, I quit my job in March, not with the stated goal of joining a resort carnival, but life is funny. Back then, it felt like May was forever away and would therefore never come, and I'd sit there in my sensible chair in my windowless office pondering the decision I'd made, lalala, I'm a decision maker, forever, looky here at me, but nothing will happen because la. 

Well, hello, calendar and reality-challenged people, i.e., me: May is here. Friday is almost here. Here is almost here. And I'm putting the talents I took to South Beach to use by posting photos of myself with stilts man, because how else would I remember that I almost ate fire unless I did this instead of other productive things?

I don't know what is going to happen, which in some ways I'm totally fine with and in others? Well, we do not want to talk to those others, because they are crazy banshees with snakes for hair who want my heart on a mismatched Pier One plate.

I'm ready to give something else to the space I occupy. I'm ready to let other, so much better, stuff in. If I could tell you, y'all, all that has happened to me within the past six months without boring you to tears and you charging me a co-pay? It's been a lot, inside and out. And it's weird and it's hard and it's making me cry what may seem to be an unhealthy amount at Glee because I think it's supposed to. Transformation that requires slashing through years of settling and rationalizing and denial with a cup of coffee and a keyboard and my own flawed interpersonal skills instead of with a sharp machete? Not easy.

 And yet I believe that all of it -- ALL OF THE ALL OF IT -- has happened in this way over the past two years to manifest what my meditation teacher used to say was the power I had that I refused to acknowledge, that I didn't know how to channel or let out of its size-14 cage. She used to make me put both my feet flat on the floor to try to feel it, not to fidget, to swing one leg up over the other and disconnect, which is my usual posture. She told me to feel it in a way that should have creeped me out but didn't. You are solid. You have to sit in it. You don't even know. Put your feet on the ground and feel it.

I couldn't manage it yet, because my brain is a complicated system of roadblocks and puffy clouds, so it had to show up in an ER this past December in the form of almost stroke-level scary vital signs, and a kind and directive nurse who along with an apparent solid grasp of needles and math told me that fear and stress that deep probably had come out in pressure that high. We can kill ourselves with our own minds, I believe this now.

It's not like I buy it all yet, or even most of it. Power looks very different to me than this way that I feel. I just finally came to a point where I knew I had to change, and so I've been putting one foot and one word in front of the other for six months like I have a plan, when really I'm just a walking, talking Mad Lib, with a sense of humor and a constant willingness to try new things as my fill-in-the-blanks.

This has been a particularly challenging week inside of my skull, as I let the ending of something big into my mind, as I go through the process of shutting it down (while trying not to starve the concurrent growing things, the good, the new.)

Old patterns, electrical currents in my emotional grid, are rising up from beneath my skin, and I'm pissed off about that. I haven't been my best self, at all, and I have felt badly about that in the way I always do when extra stressed, when instead of letting it just wash over me and out the door, as I'm learning, I've been gathering it in subconsciously, stoking it with worry, the ultimate waste of time.

But I can learn. I know what to do when I'm at the end of the particular rope. I had the good sense to talk through a lot of it with people I trust last night, and then I peeking at my shamrocks that I have somehow managed not to kill for more than a year now. Even when they're sleeping you can see a tiny one shooting up now that I've given them a much bigger pot and a space by the door with sun, and that thrilled me more than anything in recent memory. It's always a mystery, what you find to keep you going, what makes you feel competent, after years of telling yourself you kill every green thing you touch so don't bother.

I hate when metaphors happen accidentally. Like hammers to the head, they are.

 I still wonder who in the hell I think I am, walking into an unknown with a questionable net. But what I do know is that I have lived for three years in a state of constant panic, low-grade mostly, but still. I have spent days convinced that this was all there is, my performance declining, my attitude getting ever worse. 

It just  didn't work for me anymore, so it had to change. I wouldn't be sitting here without the patience of friends who have helped me see the other, less self-loathing side, that said maybe the space I was in wasn't working for me as much as I wasn't working for it. It's a lot simpler when you stop insisting it's so complicated.

And what's the worry? That I'll starve now? I have been starving for a long, long time. There are other ways to be broke. There are other ways to die. I didn't want the way it was happening to me to be the final story, for me. And I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't made that decision way back in March, and had what even I'll acknowledge took enormous courage to follow through on? I wouldn't have answered the query that took me on the trip to a place with a blazing sun and a super moon, where I totally almost ate fire.

I'm kind of glad I didn't miss this. I'm looking forward to the rest.

 

*Sarah or Deb took this picture on my camera. I don't remember which. Thanks for catching it, and me.

**Also! I don't want to forget to thank Honda for bringing the amazing -- and for me, life-changing, because this picture will hang on my office wall forever as a symbol of when everything changed for me -- white party to life.  I am a very happy CRV owner with a beloved Civic in my past. I really appreciate it when cool brands I can support without reservation support what we're doing as writers and photographers online to change our own worlds, and hopefully our larger one.

Let Me Take Your Picture for Charity Water

Some of you who know me in real life know that this is turning out to be quite the year of change and transition for me. I turned 40 last December, which means I'm staring down the crazy barrel of 41 in just a few short weeks. (Oh my hell.) I have a lot of different ideas and plans and goals taking shape, as well as a lot of obviously more challenging things to go through on a daily basis, as I wrote about earlier this week.

Speaking of that, I am so grateful to the people who came and read here this week -- for the support, for the feedback and for what felt like a hundred awesome hugs, I swear. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you, if you are back again. I really didn't know what to do or where to go with a lot of stuff that was in my head, and I'm very happy that I chose to come here. The morning I wrote that post I woke up and I thought, immediately, that I'd said too much and felt too much and I was going to go put that baby back in draft where it belonged. But by the time I did that, Tracey had written me the kindest comment and a person I'd never met had shared a story of great pain in response, so I had to leave it alone. 

And thank God, really. I really believe that the responses deepened my own understanding of what I was writing about. How much I love my family and my friends -- how I'd gone to the edge of disposing of a friendship for absolutely no reason, how I hadn't considered anything good about myself in the context of all I had convinced myself was bad. I got dms and emails and comments telling me things that I don't think people had ever felt they had a place to share. And people, themselves, wrote in response to the post on their own sites. I couldn't believe it. Tracey expanded on her comment and so did Schmutzie and I swear I felt like maybe it made a lot of this worth it? (Although I never want to go through anything like that again, make no mistake.) 

My blog is a virtual place that's given me a lot and I guess that continues to be so. I guess no matter what I think I've got all figured out, life still has the remarkable capacity to surprise me, every day. 

Anyway! In the interest of all of these goals and dreams and new things, and the good people I've had the fortune to meet in my on and now offline travels, I am going to Camp Mighty, which is, oh goodness, next week. Time is getting short. 

I am part of a team for this event that has committed to raising a certain amount of money for a very worthy cause -- Charity Water. Their mission is to bring clean and drinkable water to places around the world where that is not a given. 

Easy cause to support, right? 

Well, as part of my contribution, I need to raise at least $200 to support water conservation efforts in the places where Charity Water is currently working. Here is Eden's list of what some other people are doing. 

There are a few ways I can do this. 

I can take your picture. I have taken the pictures of many people and they didn't hate it. In fact, I think it's kind of fun to have me take your pictures, because I'm sort of a fool for the whole process, especially if you're the type who doesn't like having her picture taken. I really enjoy working with you and making you laugh so you forget you're supposed to hate it. I shoot: 

Grown-ups. (This one doesn't mind having her picture taken at all, but I've still taken some pretty good ones of her, I'll just go ahead and say it.) 

Little people. (This is Meghan. We are buddies. She doesn't have a blog. Yet.) 

Musicians who have no idea what I was doing. I mean, how weird is it that I have a picture of John Taylor's hands in my possession and he has no idea who in the hell I am? 

RELATED: JOHN TAYLOR'S HANDS. I was that close. Yes. I was. 

Not-people who think they are people. (This is my niece. She is very photogenic.) 

I can do a headshot or more casual portrait session anywhere in the DC metro area -- this includes Baltimore, Northern Virginia and pretty much anywhere else I can drive within an hour. I will happily work with pets and children, and also John Taylor, if you can scrounge him up for me again. I'd ask for a $50 donation to the cause for this, and that includes post-processing of your portraits, a cd of all useable images, and three prints. 

I can also send you a picture that is not of yourself, but is instead a print of any image in my collection. I will share a nicely-printed and perhaps even frame-accentuated print in your choice of size, for a donation of $20. (I'd do $15 but I'm eating some printing costs there because I don't bother doing it at home. Because, the agony.) 

Maybe you love San Francisco. 

Or the sun and the ocean. 

Or maybe, baby, you're a firework. (Or a sparkler, like Tarrant and Rebecca.) 

Or more the Lewis Carroll type. I'm sure there are some of you out there. 

I am in the process of trying to put some things on Etsy, but the uploading feature isn't cooperating with me and I really want to get this out there before I leave on a short trip this weekend. So I can provide you with a Flickr gallery that may include something you'd like. (I'm new at selling my stuff, so bear with me. I'm pretty easy to work with, I think.) 

NOTE: Since I wrote this below I've since gotten a clue that there is a direct Charity: Water donation page here. Super easy. 

Other things I can do for you, if photos aren't your thing? Well, we've got this little NaBloPoMo deal going on. If you're doing it and running out of ideas, I'd be happy to write a guest post on yours, also for a $20 donation. Sound cool? I think so. Writing this November is reminding me again how much better this blogging place is when we all hang out and write and read together. If that's something you'd be interested in, let me know and I'll work out a theme with you. 

With whatever I send you, you're guaranteed some surprises in the package -- a mix cd, most likely, or maybe...oh, I don't know. I guess you'll have to give it a shot. 

Sound cool? Great. Drop me a line at lauriesays@gmail.com, and we'll work out the details. 

From the Flickr Archives

I miss Flickr. I miss when people commented and posted their own stuff and I commented on it, which now I rarely do, I admit, because I'm part of the problem. sure. I'm all up in Instagram, honestly, yes, and since I lost my conversational grip on Flickr I've been much less apt to comment on photos, knowing I probably won't hear anything back. But I have faithfully uploaded my photos there for six years and I do miss it,  yes. It's been an excellent backup drive and filing system for my photos, among other things, because it's so easy to find the stuff I've taken the time to tag. 

Anyway, this one made me laugh tonight, mostly the caption. It's for everyone who thinks that self-portraits are exercises in self-love and narcissism. Nah.

I was at a counseling conference in Amish country, where just up the road I found just about the best sushi restaurant I've ever eaten at in my life. 

First night keynote. She was allegedly there to help us weave humor into our work. Why this ALWAYS involves a clown nose at counseling conferences is one of the mysteries of the ages. Case in point: I despise clowns. I don't think clowns are funny. I think they're creepy. Like, in this nose? I only look funny in that I look stupid, and marginally humiliated. Weak. Also this nose does not stay on easily.

Some Saturdays Are Better

The weather is way better than average for your weirdo weather town. 

Lunch is good. 

You, uh, have a few conversations with cats. 

And try out your new iPhone camera toys on them. (Because really, what are they going to do about it?) 

Sarah wore lion glasses for a minute. 

Kids. 

Everything doesn't work for days, DAYS, in the worst kinds of ways, but then you take your story back again (because you can, because you have to) and the not working part doesn't matter anymore. That's the best part. That's the part that makes it work. 

Green

The theme for this month of NaBloPoMo is "green." Green is one of my favorite colors -- the color I started jokingly calling my power color several years ago until I actually realized it was true. 

 

I'm going to try to post every day. We'll see how it goes. 

Insane and Rising

When you wake up sort of agitated in a spot like this, among people and places that you love almost the most, that is when it becomes most clear that there is something wrong. 

It's not wrong in a way I even really want to blurt out to the internet, even in this space that still after all these years feels oddly personal, where comments remain a minor shock. I'm sure someone doing their Ph.D in the communal nature of online journaling can explain to me why this is so, but I don't want to talk about it on that level right now. It's not wrong in a foot-stomping, door-slamming sort of way either, because no one listens to that shit anymore anyway. 

It's just inherently not-right in a way that I seem to suddenly feel compelled to document in order to listen more closely to the call of how to fix it, maybe? I don't know. I don't know how to move forward if I don't do something different in this space or anywhere else. My writing muscles are as tight as my shoulders. I'm not currently using them to serve my own needs at all, not my real ones anyway, and I don't know that I'm using them for anyone else either. 

**************

I went out in the water yesterday, the most gorgeous day of this trip by far which is usually how it is on the last one, and I looked southward praying the tar balls would never make it here and then I felt guilty. We're as connected to Louisiana and Florida and Mississippi waters here as we are to all of the rest of them. This isn't my ocean any more than it is that guy's, and in that sense it's everyone's who cares to love the water. 

Except it is my ocean, or at least that's how I feel, as I feel as myself in it as I feel anywhere, even though who that is is somehow maddeningly no more clear than it's ever been. It's fuzzy in general. There are motions to be gone through and racing thoughts to think, daily shifting priorities and never more of a sense of instability. 

I don't give a crap about SEO in this context. I think that's clear. 

Anyway, I was bobbing around and singing "Santa Monica" to myself like I tend to in the ocean, the best song ever recorded by a band named after grain alcohol. 

We can live beside the ocean

Leave the fire behind

Swim out past the breakers 

Watch the world die.

Yes, you could. 

There were some beautiful moments this week and there were some tense ones. It's tough to watch human fragility and the passage of time when it's right in your face, especially when it involves people by whom you've set your watch for decades. 

It's difficult to sit next to a young person you love and want to make the way smoother even though that's not at all what he's asking for and you have no direct responsibility for him anyway. And more to the point, you can still barely take care of yourself. So you just turn up the music and derive some satisfaction when he says that he thinks it's cool that you have the same taste and can you go watch a band sometime? 

And how to tell him that you would move heaven and earth to do that because he asked, without sounding weird? So I don't, I just nod. 

It is still really hard, the missing of people who aren't here anymore, by choice or death. 

I just want to feel some sunshine. 

I just want to find some place to be alone. 

Right? It shouldn't be that difficult. If it doesn't happen here I don't think that it can happen anywhere. 

There is something to be said for swimming past the breakers metaphorically speaking although taking it to that level on this sunny Carolina morning kind of makes me want to punch myself in the face, especially since I'm looking at the ocean from a 12th floor balcony as I type. 

When my uncle -- a man diametrically opposed to me, ideologically speaking, in so many ways but who nonetheless shares the passion for life and people that is in my DNA -- walked out the door the other night to drive back to North Carolina he stubbed out his cigarette. He looked at me sitting there at the table, thinking the jumbled thoughts that he couldn't identify specifically but nonetheless knows full well that I think.

"Take it easy, Laurie," he said. "No matter what happens, take it easy. Because you can't change a goddamned thing." 

You don't choose your true south, as I take the liberty of calling it --  not your people or your places. At least I didn't. And of all the things I know that I can't change I know that I can't change those the most, not when it's beautiful or when it breaks my heart.