news and notes from jess and dan

january

Am I the only one who finds the beginning of a new year really disorganized and stressful?  It's not just the expectation to set resolutions (which I don't do on Jan 1, I'm an idealist 24/7/365) or looming tax dates, there's something about the sense of a new opportunity, the holiday decorations to be put away, the lack of light and vitamin D, the list of things to plan (spring activities, summer vacation, school events), and this nesting feeling I get once the tree is down.  Ugh.  I mean, exciting, but UGH. 

So, sorry to go without updating for a while.  I decided to undertake a 365 project - which is a creative project you do every day for a year - and Griff joins me on it most days.  Finding time for it has been difficult. That is complicated further by a big career thing that I'll get to later.

First, January catch-up! (the links lead to 365 posts)

The kids and I finished up their winter break in a real do-nothing, go-nowhere mood. I guess that's good in some ways?  I wouldn't mind it so much, except that I didn't cook enough breakfasts and read enough stories.  Things to remember for next time. I'd like to remember stay-at-home days as snuggly instead of driving-eachother-crazy.

 

Oh, except we did do something productive.  Griff and I hand-delivered birthday party invitations again this year.  Part of me wants to swear that I'll be ahead of the game next year and mail them two weeks in advance, but I actually enjoy driving around and seeing where all of his friends live, maybe getting to say hello to a friend or two.  (Hi, Pache!)

Xander shocked me by being the only one of my children ever to voluntarily wear a knit cap as a toddler.  He's SO cute in it.  He stopped wearing it two days later, though. Ah, well, at least he was warm for those two days.

 

Reese continues to want to wear no outerwear or only his grey jacket.  He HATES wearing a coat.  Our surprising compromise: grey jacket over coat.  I dont' understand what part of this arrangement makes the coat acceptable to him, it looks awfully bulky to me, but hey, this is one winter during which I never have to worry about him being warm enough outdoors.  He wears two shirts every day, too.

 

Occasionally I took a freezing-cold walk around the back alleys in our neighborhood, toting my new telephoto zoom lens and stalking hawks.  I was lucky enough to find this one with a fresh kill.

We visited New York Deli at least once.  We always bring a stack of quarters.

We started a family painting.  This mostly-abstract / color study work will eventually be hung over the fireplace in our living room. 

Luke spent a few Thursday mornings with me and Xander.

I learned how to do some really cool long exposure tricks.

A 1920s typewriter followed me home from a local antique shop and sparked much interest among the kids.  How does it work? Why is there no #1?

 

We celebrated Griff's 7th birthday with a bowling party for him and his friends. Seven seven-year-olds are the perfect number and age for this kind of party!

I learned some PhotoShop tricks - textures and vignetting.

I also had a "Mom's Night Out" at the home of one of the NAP mamas, who is also one of the first friends I made after moving to Richmond.

We had some pajama days and a lot of screen time. Reese and Xander played better together than ever before. 

 

We had an impromptu after-school playdate with Jack and Josiah, during which Dan took ALL FIVE KIDS to the grocery store.  Voluntarily.  Hokey Smokes!  They had a great time, Josiah taught Griff some new jokes, and we all ate fabulous junk food (mmm, onion dip).  I love these kids, they're so sweet and fun and polite and adorable! My boys all love them, too.

I learned yet more long-exposure tricks and ways to use texture. 

I got really, really stressed out.

I taught Griff how to play Chinese Checkers again.  This time he was ready.

 

Griff had his first school dance and his first "date".  You know those stories you hear about childhood sweethearts who fall in love when they're five years old and eventually marry each other and have this precious storybook romance?  Those stories sound eerily like what's going on here.  Griff and Mia have been sweethearts for a year or thereabouts.  Not to jump the gun or anything...but the in-laws are awesome.

 

Ok, so back to the stressed-Jess thing.  I was asked to be a photographer for the Sabot auction this year, which involves working with two lovely Sabot artists who are putting together a gallery of children's art.  I count this as an honor.  Then a friend referred me to friends of hers who were looking for a wedding photographer. I've been researching and deep-thinking and planning ever since.  I'm arranging a meeting with the couple and there's a chance they may hire me (I believe they're also looking at one other photographer, maybe more).  This would be an INCREDIBLE opportunity and honor, but it's also incredibly stressful.  I had planned to take at least one paying client this year, but not until the fall and only for children's or family portraiture.  This ups the stakes considerably and steps up my time frame for things like figuring out rates, contracts, insurance, model releases, and acquiring some new equipment, too.  I would have four months between now and the wedding, and I need to spend that four months PERFECTING my photojournalistic event/human connection skills as well as learning flash.  Yikes.  This couple knows that this would be a first for me, and they have seen my Flickr; I need to address expectations with them even more before signing anything. 

Scary, but sometimes you have to leap!

Phew.  Writing out all of January (thus far) makes me feel like we've been far more productive than I had considered before!  Here's to all the learning and living we'll do in the weeks and months to come.  

little people

The two most diminutive members of our family, the morning after the party. 

1) Xander likes to borrow Griff's necklace and looks fairly adorable and surfer-kid-ish while doing so.
2) Aberfeldy as I discovered him this morning, looking a bit partied out in his new beer-label hat, next to a half-eaten carrot cake muffin.  Apparently some of our guests led the wee fellow in a bit o' debauchery.

roaming gnome

I see this little guy tucked up in a tree on Patterson every day on my way to Sabot. 

2 really cool things about today

1. Oz molted and is now a chrysalid!    I missed the grand transformation this morning - Oz was looking all shrivelly and grey and I knew today would be the day, but expected the molt to take hours.  At 7:55ish AM he was a pale caterpillary looking thing.  At 8:35 AM I looked again and there was his skin in a heap on the ground, and a chrysalis hung from the stick!

His sibling, Billy Joe (named for Green Day front man), has settled in on the roof of the habitat and will probably shed his (or her) skin tonight or tomorrow morning.

I've been reading about metamorphosis in general and Lepidoptera metamorphosis in particular.  Amazing stuff.  I am particularly interested in the way that the caterpillar undergoes major cell death (apoptosis), during which many of its internal structures are eliminated.  The 'net isn't a perfect place for research and the various sites, created by biologists or hobbyists, differ in their description of what structures are left behind.  From what I'm piecing together, it would seem that at least some neural tissue is spared (albeit reorganized during the change), possibly some vasculature and musculature, and a series of imaginal discs which become the wings, legs, antennae, and other structures of the adult. 

2. You may have noticed that the photos above have greater clarity and magnification than my previous 'pillar pics.  My new lens arrived and I'm in love!  (side note: isn't it ridiculous how when UPS has a package that requires signature, they call to tell you that they'll be coming...between the hours of 8 AM and 7 PM? Good grief!) 

I wandered the back yard with my camera this evening.  The light isn't great and I didn't use a tripod, so these aren't perfect, but I'm psyched about what this lens can do that my old zoom can't.   All photos are uncropped originals except the crop of the Japanese beetle.

Basil in my porch planters / Basil the gnome, who lives under the same

Zinnias

Japanese beetle and crop of the same - horrible pests, I'm kissing my roses goodbye until Sept/Oct, but goodness, are these bugs ever gorgeous

I also took a series of pics of a dead/mummified frog that I found on our front walk.  It's a bit gruesome so I'm not posting them here where people might be taken unawares, but if you're a geek like me and want to see, you can head to my Photobucket account to see them: 1, 2, 3, 4.

useful and pretty things

Aberfeldy hasn't been to the garden lately (he is, after all, a retired garden gnome) but decided to take the air today, tempted by the appearance of several planter boxes on the porch.  They appear to be populated by kitchen herbs and lavender.  We shall see if the mistress of the house remembers to water them, or not.

*subject from Hattie Whitney, A Little Dutch Garden

seeds

"I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become, I will always plant a large garden in the spring.  Who can resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from participating in nature's rebirth?"
- Edward Giobbi

Griff and I are starting to plan our garden.  Some changes from previous years:

• pole beans instead of bush beans
• some spray to (hopefully) keep the bunnies out of the beans
• slightly raised beds with covers for lettuces, radishes, carrots
• no watermelon!
• (knock wood) an earlier planting time

Weeding has begun, as has a project to rip out the grass underneath the fort/slide part of the swingset so that we can put in a Tonka truck quarry of pea gravel and some other rocks. 

Resident gnome Aberfeldy will, of course, oversee the project.

oh, no!

Poor Aberfeldy took a tumble.  As any gnome of the 21st century would do, he blogged it.

have you seen this gnome?

Oh, Flout.  *tsk*

sullen gnomes will learn to sport

Aberfeldy had a visit this weekend from his older and less-genteel brother, Flout the Stinker, who is currently in residence with two co-eds at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  Much merriment ensued.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The humans had fun, too. :)

   

(title from William Wordsworth, "On Seeing a Needlecase in the Form of a Harp")

gnome at home

I know, it's lame to rhyme "gnome" with "home", but I did it anyway. 

Just wanted to say that I think he finally has a name, thanks to a few fellow dorks who noodled through it with me. 

I give you...

ALASTAIR ABERFELDY, homunculus extraordinaire

You can reach him at gnomeathome@comcast.net, and he is developing his new MySpace profile. 

october robes the weeds in purple gowns

Every month should be October in Virginia.  I've got the first stanza of Keats' "To Autumn" stuck in my head...

    Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
         Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 
    Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
          With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 
    To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,         
          And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
              To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 
          And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
          Until they think warm days will never cease,       
              For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

The entry title, by the way, is not Keats.  It's Walter Malone, from "October in Tennessee".

A couple of disconnected thoughts:

1. I need to remember to go to Carytown sometime in the next couple of weeks.  The sweetgum trees will be shedding their leaves and the ground will be gorgeous with them. 

2. I think it's probably too late to make acorn bread.  I had found this site and this one about acorns and acorn bread and had hoped to collect them with Griff, process them, and bake bread, but our acorns are small, the kids in the house behind us have already picked up most of them (they beg to be collected), and the task seemed a little much for right now.  I did taste an acorn while out with my dad yesterday.  Bitter.  I felt pleased that I knew this meant it was probably a red or black oak. 

My friend Lynz asked people on our message board to post a few things that make them happy on a thread there.  Here's a near-carbon-copy of my response:

Ok, a few cool things here that make me smile:

My dad found a praying mantis at our house yesterday and I caught it for Dan and Griff to see. Griff and I are having a blast catching bugs for it to eat and Dan is having a blast watching it hunt the bugs.

Dad and I had a nice day of battlefielding yesterday. Turns out that touring battlefields means having pleasant chitchat while driving around in the car and then having pleasant chitchat while taking nature walks through woods, occasionally stopping to read plaques. It was a gorgeous day. (edit: and I really enjoyed the time with Dad, and learned a lot, too...more on that later)

And speaking of gorgeous days, I love love love October.  Love it. (edit: Woody Allen moment: "Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent...")

Cait and Todd paid me an unexpected visit on Saturday and we just hung out for a couple of hours.

Dan and I are still really enjoying Lost, 1-2 episodes a night when we can swing it.

Reese keeps telling us "thank you" (dachoo) for things we give him or accept from him. He's also infatuated with my garden gnome. Bliss.

Did I mention that I love October?  I made this mosaic today of pics from the past week:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather is just too glorious.  First the rains come and take all the humidity out of the air and pump it back into the soil, reviving scorched grass and beetle-eaten plants so that everything becomes lush again.  All sorts of mushrooms suddenly appear wherever there is a bit of shade.  Then the crispness sets in, so while the roses and zinnias and fungi are having their final hurrah, the leaves are starting to turn and the acorns start changing from green to blush to brown and plummetting through the branches of the oaks and thwacking the ground.  Above it all is the clearest, bluest sky, and a warm slanting light that you don't get the rest of the year. 

(It's all so beautiful that I'm willing to forgive the angle of the light for my migraines and the flourishing ragweed for my persistent post-nasal drip.)

Throw in my birthday (yup, just turned 31) and Halloween (mmm, candy corn), and another holiday whose awkward combination of jingoism and political incorrectness is perfect for an overthinker like me (thanks, Columbus), and you have what is quite possibly THE PERFECT MONTH.

gname that gnome

Say hello to my little friend.

This diminutive guy surprise-landed on my doorstep yesterday, courtesy of my younger sister, who owns his twin, gifted by me last year.  Cait's buddy is now known as Flout the Stinker, and enjoys the high life on a college campus.  So far my nameless homunculus prefers a quieter life, and resides in the suburban jungle (i.e., kitchen counter potted plants) until such time as he possesses a proper apellation.  While a name may not be  hand, nor foot, nor any other part that makes a man, one does *not* go travelling if one is an unnamed gnome.

August is give-your-sister-a-gnome month.  You have 23 days left, get to shopping!

To suggest a name, click on "comments" under this post.  Until then, sign me...

Rollin' with my Gnomies,
Jess