Photography 101

I had a hard time wrapping my head around the collegiate process this summer and decided to feed my inner creative genius instead (hah!). When a friend asked me to take a photography class with her at a local art studio I thought, yes, this is my way in! I'll get back in the mode of attending a class regularly while I learn more about something I truly enjoy.

During my newspaper reporter days many many moons ago, we were frequently responsible for taking our own photos to accompany our stories. This was back before the advent of digital photography and even before color photos were de rigueur in most newspapers. We would shoot whole rolls of film of people and events and then, upon developing, discover that we had maybe one or two pictures that would actually help tell the story and print well. I never considered myself to be a "good" photographer; perhaps, "adequate for the task at hand" is more appropriate. Occasionally I would luck upon a Really! Amazing! Photo! and this would excite me enough to believe I was a good photographer... until the next roll of film was developed and found to contain the usual not-so-great.

My husband actually studied photography and has an awesome, hidden portfolio of beautiful work. He would occasionally offer tidbits of knowledge to attempt to help me improve but it was usually easier to simply drag him along with me and point out the things I needed him to photograph. This early habit has evolved over the years of photographing our kids and their lives along the way. This also leads to lots of irritation on my part when I can envision a certain shot but can't communicate to him exactly what I want.  "Honey, get a shot of Kennedy skating. No, not there, over there... no, I want her mid-spin, not mid-jump... no, I want to see her skates, not just a blur..." and on and on and on.

So for the past six weeks I've made my way to Crealde Art Studio in Winter Park to learn how to use the expensive digital camera we bought two years ago and to remind myself of the joy in doing it myself. And to experiment with photography for art's sake.

The first thing I've learned is that I still excel in finding ways to be late to class. Fortunately, this is the kind of arena where you don't get marked off for being tardy. I'll have to rein that in when I go back to school "for reals."

Another wake-up call was made when I tried to carve out the time to do my "homework." I can tell that when I take more challenging coursework that I'll have to find a better system to be more organized about this process. We have an entire week between classes and yet I still find myself running out the day before class to find something to photograph and complete my assignment. It makes it hard to yell at my kids about procrastination when I'm downloading my shots at midnight the night before class.

On the more exciting side, I think I'm discovering a tiny little creative niche for myself through photography. Ansel Adams I am not. But I've included a few of my favorite photos for you to see how I'm spending my time. Maybe one of them will spark a creative moment for you!

Hugs & God Bless,
Beverly

Just call me Dobby

Once again, it has taken me 10 days to write the next post. Sorry friends, the days are getting away from me! I'm trying to keep this to a weekly thing, hoping that's enough to keep people interested but not too much to be annoying.

So, this was one of those mornings that every parent in the universe (except all the perfect parents of course!) experiences with their children. Nobody wanted to get out of bed, including me. Had to battle with Little Missy over getting dressed. Argued with son over actually eating the lunch I've packed for him versus leaving it to rot so he can buy lunch everyday. Discussed the fact that while Toaster Strudel is yummy, if you're still hungry after eating one, that is a pretty good sign it's not a good breakfast and that we should add a banana or apple to that breakfast plate (why do I even buy the dang things, I wonder!)

This led to two things:

1. A strong twinge of nostalgia for the days when we had just small children at home, who didn't need to be to preschool till 9. I truly miss the days of snuggling on the couch with them as they could take the time to wake up slowly while watching Little Bear and eating whatever breakfast I'd made that morning. They'd get dressed in the family room, and I might grumble a bit about the left-behind jammies, but all in all it was a pleasant way to start the day.

2. The realization that it's that time of year when the "Mom is not the House Elf" speech has to be dusted off and put into play.

Here's what happens every school year: School starts. I'm alternately sad (because inevitably we didn't do everything we wanted to do over the summer and I hate homework more than the kids) and giddy (because, well, four kids, do the math). In order to combat the new-school-year-blues and try to make the morning transition as painless as possible, we start out with mom showing the love and making it all good...  lunches are made, complete with mushy note in the lunchbox;  everyone gets the breakfast of their choice; I make sure snacks and water bottles are parked in the back packs; in short, I don my Dobby cloak and if a sock of gratitude should fall my way, I'm a happy camper.

My goal here is to help them get started on a great year, but eventually be able to do all these things on their own with just a mild amount of supervision. Model the behavior, point out what they need to be doing, eventually nudge them along to doing it themselves. Clearly, all my children are old enough to pour themselves a bowl of cereal-and-moo for breakfast, just as they are all old enough to make their own lunches (with varying degrees of healthiness) and pack their own backpacks. The problem is recognizing the point when the kids start to expect mom to do all these things rather than appreciating the fact that mom is trying to help them out. Thus, the nudging is now going to become the outright pushing. I still want to be able to do all these things for them, but I know that for them to become confident, self-sufficient children, teens and eventually adults, they have to learn to juggle the morning madness with just a little bit of back-up from mom & dad.

My feeling is this: I am the MOM, and a stay-at-home mom at that. My job (and currently ONLY job) is take care of the troops. Sometimes this means showing them how to do something, allowing them to do and, if necessary, to fail, and providing some meaningful support when necessary. This does not mean doing everything for them and/or picking up all the pieces when they don't do something right. However, kids should be able to make mistakes with some subconscious expectation that someone has their backs. I'm pretty sure that's written somewhere in my job description (somewhere before lighting the fires and after mopping the floors). So, I'll keep reminding and prodding, and hoping that eventually I will get nostalgic twinges for the days when the kids let me make their lunches.

Now that I think about it, maybe House Elf IS a good title. After all,  "Dobby did it for the best."

Hugs & God Bless,
Beverly

P.S. Have had so many wonderful people asking about Kylie and how she is recovering after her concussion. So far, so good. Initial round of blood tests have come back negative for any sort of blood disorders that might have been responsible for the clotted vein, so that's a good thing. Visiting the neurologist on Monday and praying that he clears her for "active duty." The lack of physical play is starting to wear on us all! Thank you all for your kind thoughts and prayers! They make a difference!

Life goes on!

Warning: Long Post

Last Tuesday morning I was sitting on my couch, drinking my Coke Zero, watching Regis and Kelly while I typed up my blog entry. It was an entry about our crazy Labor Day weekend, how busy we'd been, how we packed in so much stuff, blah blah blah. I'd gone walking earlier in the morning and was feeling very smug about the fact that I had my exercise out of the way, but was trying to decide if I should finish my blog entry or go shower. Blogging won (although I never did publish the entry!)

A few minutes later my phone rang and I recognized the number as my kids' school. Kylie had a tummy ache, which I figured was related to one of two things: either the stomach virus Blaine had endured Sunday night; or the bump on the head Kylie took Sunday afternoon when she fell on our hateful stone fireplace. I jumped into the shower for a quick scrub and hauled it to the school within 20 minutes of the call. While en route I called the pediatrician's office, who insisted we go straight to the hospital. I was certain she was fine and they were over-reacting (don't judge unless you have four kids!)

Forty-five minutes later we arrived at the world-renowned children's hospital and jumped out to hand the car keys to the valet. This was about when Kylie realized she'd left her very important carsick bag in, well, the car, so it was easier to puke on the ground and my shoes instead of getting the baggie. While everyone stared at us, I remember thinking - this is a hospital - you can't tell me my kid is the first to puke in the parking lot!

So that was how I found myself in the Emergency Department (ER is so passe' these days) with a sick kid, sweaty ponytail hair and puke on my shoes.  We were quickly shown to a fast-track room, where the PA (physician's assistant) pronounced immediately that she was absolutely fine, he didn't think she had a concussion, but he would need a CT Scan to confirm it. Right-o. Two hours later he came back in with the ED attending physician in tow and they informed me that my daughter not only had a concussion, but had a small bruise on her brain. Huh. We had gone from a slightly-mocking "She's fine" to "She'll need to stay at least overnight and possibly longer for observation."

What followed was a whirlwind two days of tests, blood draws, tears (Kylie's and mine), text messages, phone calls and attempts at deep, calming breathing. Kylie was attached to all the fancy monitors, and as I tried to explain to her what each thing was for, why she was getting an MRI, what was happening when the nurse was putting in her IV, I kept thinking, "Seriously? This isn't really happening, is it?" And then I would catch a whiff of the puke on my shoes (yes, it took me forever to get it all off) and I would know that yes, it was happening. 

As always, God is Good. Eventually the neurologist determined that the "bruise" on her brain was not, in fact, a bruise, but instead a blocked vein around the outside of her brain. Still slightly freaky, but we've been assured that although rare, sometimes this kind of thing does happen due to trauma. The hope is that other veins will eventually form to take the place of the one that is blocked. There are still some concerns about how and why the vein became blocked, but essentially, once she recovers from the concussion, she will be fine.

It has been almost a week since the hospital visit and we're still working through the symptoms of post-concussion syndrome. Fatigue, nausea and vomiting are the norm, although it still floors me to see my daughter puking her guts out and then five minutes later have her ask for a fruit roll-up.

Once again I've been shown that we are oh-so-blessed by not only our family (thank you Stacey for coming over to help with only the clothes on your back!) but also the many "friends who are family" here in our adopted hometown.  Sunday I was driving home from church and realized I didn't have to make my usual stop at the gas station as I still had a half tank of gas left after a full week. It made me take stock of all the people who had picked up my kids from school, sports activities and other events, and the many other people who had offered to help and of course, said a pray for Kylie.

I don't really know how we would've handled all of this without them.

Hugs & God Bless,
Beverly

What just happened?

Hello my dear readers! I'm not sure how it's already Sunday night, more than a week after I last posted. It has been one of those weeks... four kids in three different schools, sports practices, parent nights, rained-out sports practices, music lessons, homework battles, birthday parties, room renovations, the list goes on and on. What? Sounds like your life? Pull up a chair and let's commiserate!

I think my week was best summed up by the picture I'm sharing in this post. Those of you with elementary-age daughters and beyond probably know exactly who that dolly is. Those of you uninitiated into the American Girl club, let me tell you all about it... First, they suck you in by sending uninvited catalogs to your house. Once daughter sees the catalog, it's all over. Daughter sees the beautiful dollies, and reads the lovely, creative stories about the dollies, and see the awesome accessories which can be purchased with the dollies, and next thing you know you've spent more money on a doll and accessories than you spent on your first car. The thing they don't share with you in the spiffy catalog is that the dolly's hair is very, very fragile. If you rub your hand over dolly's hair it tangles and frizzes. If you actually play with dolly her hair ends up in a big, nasty knot. If you try to brush out the knot (with the special brush you spent an extra $7.95 on, natch), the dolly's hair falls out like a middle-aged man's.

But this post isn't actually about the doll, I just felt the need to explain :-)

What I'm trying to say here is that this week I have felt like that doll looks. Half of me has been presented to the world as a reasonably well-coiffed, pulled-together mama. Hiding on the other side of me is a crazy lady with thinning, tangled hair, going in 10 directions at once and thinking to herself "and just how in the hell are you going to fit school and/or a job in all of this??"

I know I can make it work, I'm just not sure how. But I dropped off a resume at the Hallmark store anyways this week. We'll see if I can score an interview for holiday staff. The last time I worked at a Hallmark store I had an 8-week-old infant at home, one child in preschool, and two kids in elementary school. I loved every minute of it!

But as I look at the weekly schedule I've created for myself and my family, the obligations I've committed to, and the expectations my family has of me, I wonder what's going to "go" should I actually manage to get a part-time job. Borrowing trouble? Perhaps. So, I pray. I pray that God will lead me to what I need to be doing at this point in my life and that maybe, it will turn out that a simple part-time job is a good place to start.

And I'll keep trying to tame that hair.

Hugs & God Bless,
Bev

SPWH

Been doing the SPWH thing for the last few days.

Single Parent with Husband. That's the phrase a friend coined a few years ago when we were commiserating over our traveling husbands who seemed to be gone every time a toilet clogged, a tire went flat and a kid was barfing over my shoulder. We knew we were blessed to have great husbands who worked so hard to support us and missed us when they were gone...  but sometimes that's hard to remember when you're knee deep in puke!

The Hub has been up in the great state of New York (Utica, specifically) for work and was expected to be home tomorrow. While currently he doesn't travel quite as much as he has at other times in our marriage, I really miss him when he's gone! His travel schedule was one of the first things we considered when I quit my last job - and I can laugh now about how hard I thought it was to manage ONE kid on my own! As I always say, it's all about perspective, and my perspective with four school-age kids is a bit different these days. 

When Blaine left home on Wednesday we were pretty confident Hurricane Irene had veered away from Florida and we would be just fine. Neither of us really believed she was heading towards New York! Fortunately, he's in the middle of the state, riding out the storm in an oh-so-glamorous Best Western and hoping to get a flight out on Sunday morning. If he doesn't make it out on Sunday this will mark the longest we've been apart since the earliest days of our marriage. (Ever hear the one about the married fraternity boy who lived in a fraternity house? I'll tell ya about it someday.)

Now, I don't know about other spouses of travelers, but when Blaine is gone there is a certain of amount of, shall we say, laxness that tends to come over me. Not relaxation, because I miss him, the kids miss him, and the effort to be The Responsible One all the time is hard. But I do tend to let some things go - the laundry piles up, dinner might come from a blue-and-yellow box (or a delivery guy), and I might let one of the kids sleep in my bed. Aww, who am I kidding, that happens when he's here too! Maybe I just don't feel as guilty about it? I don't know. In any event, when he's gone just a few days at a time it's manageable. 

Five days (or more) stinks. 

Hugs & God Bless,

Bev

P.S. I'm praying for all the people who are in Irene's path. May you all stay safe, dry, and together while she does her business. 

No Easy Button

One of the first things I realized when I decided to make some life changes was that I'd made some mistakes over the years.

Coloring my own hair (oh, the pictures!). Carpeting the living room (owners of little dogs understand why). Tequila shots (always a mistake. Always.) My four kids? Always and forever, never a mistake! I LOVE my life and have enjoyed every minute of momhood (well, maybe not the ones that involved poopy diapers!)

But looking back, I did use my children as an excuse to avoid keeping up with my "outside" education. In fact, I made lots of excuses for not taking the classes that would have kept me up-to-date in my field. I think the biggest issue here was that by the time I quit working, I was so over my chosen field that I had no desire to ever go back to it. I realized that when I was in college, I'd probably made a mistake choosing journalism as a major. I  loved to write, but I enjoyed creative writing more than any kind of hard-hitting journalistic endeavors, and I found there wasn't a lot of money to be made writing poetry (amazing, huh?). For me, journalism was the "easy" major - the writing and editing came naturally to me but wasn't what I loved to do (and it wasn't exactly lucrative either!) 

I was fortunate that raising children became a career in and of itself. By the time I had my third child I figured this parenting thing was my true calling. When I did go back to work - as a teacher's assistant at my children's preschool - it was in a field that was a natural extension of raising children. Please know - I am not saying that only moms make good preschool teachers. I'm saying that for me, working with little kids was second nature... I understood the art of making playdough. I valued the chaos-to-stillness of resttime. I loved being "home base" when the kiddies played tag on the playground. Mom to "Mrs. Johnson" was an easy, easy transition. Nowadays I realize that while the little guys are fun, I'm not sure if it's something that will lend itself to a lifelong career. Easy? For me, probably more so than picking something else. 

But these days, I'm starting to figure out that maybe it's time to stop looking for the "easy button."

Your Feedback
One of the things I've discovered since starting this whole project is there are many, many people out there looking to be something different when They Grow Up. I don't think this is a phenomenon limited to stay-at-home moms or any other population, but that there are lots of people in my age category and beyond (40+ thank you!) who are realizing that maybe the job they've been doing for the last 10-15-20 years is not paying the bills and/or allowing them to save towards retirement. Some are being forced to enter other career areas because their jobs have been outsourced to other countries. Some are watching their children grow up and thinking that maybe, just maybe, it's time to do what they "always wanted to do" instead of slogging away at a job that pays the financial bills but is taking a mental/emotional toll in return.

Whatever the reason, we're going to explore some of the options out there for continuing education, for changing jobs entirely, and for just adding in some hobbies that maybe make the rest of life a bit more palatable. Along the way I hope you will feel compelled to share your journey and tell us what's making your life a little more interesting or enjoyable, whether it's a class, reading a great book, starting a new job, or just something awesome that your kids or grandkids might say or accomplish. 

When I Grow Up....

After months and months of kicking this around in the privacy of my own brain (which is scary enough), I'm taking the big leap to blogging. Out loud. In public. For anyone to see.

I'm a little nervous. Be nice, please.

A little about me... my name is Beverly, and I'm the wife of a great guy and the mother of four incredible kids. I "stopped working" about 12 years ago to stay home and raise our children. I put the phrase "stopped working" in quotes because being a stay-at-home mom is definitely not for the faint of heart. Of course you don't ever stop working when you're a mom  -- employed outside the home or not -- but having four little mini-yous as your sole employer adds a whole new dimension  is to the term "job security." Although my husband and I did not take this decision to go to a one-income life lightly, I'm not sure either of us ever expected this season of our lives to last as long as it has. Around this time last year I started realizing that maybe it was time to make a change. Our youngest child was in kindergarten and I knew I needed to consider that maybe it was time to go back to work. Outside the home.

I started my adult career life as a newspaper reporter and ended it as a PR wonk for a senior services agency, but haven't really kept up any kinds of certifications or skills that would help me go back to either of those careers. Not that I really want to spend my days back in the PR field. I'd had enough of that in 1998, I can't imagine it would be more fun now.

So in an effort to ease my transition back into the world of the worker, we decided I would take Kylie's kindergarten year as a kind-of last hurrah as a stay-at-home mom. I would volunteer. Take classes. Do. Stuff.

Figure out What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.

Huh. A year later and I'm still at a loss about that last thing. I think I've done a fair amount of volunteering, although I wouldn't consider myself an overachiever in that way ;) Haven't done a lot in terms of the "take classes" area either. Rather,  I've spent hours doing "center time" activities with the kindergarteners in my daughter's class. And going over math problems and doing busy work for my third-grader's teacher. Sometimes, if I'm really lucky, I get to chaperone a field trip. I've also taught sixth-graders Catholic catechism, attended room mom meetings, and organized a fledgling, foundering Bunco group. In short, I've done a lot of "stuff" but haven't really worked on figuring out the career thing.

So. I'm wondering now if this is a situation unique to me, or if there are other moms, dads, whomever out there in this season of life, wondering exactly what they're going to do next. Please don't misunderstand - I wouldn't change a bit of what I've done over the past 13 years. I have been blessed with an awesome life, I love my family desperately and would do anything for them. I am a happy mom. But I know that at some point, being a mom may no longer be enough to define me. So rather than wait for that happen, I figure it would be a good idea to really explore what I want to be When I Grow Up. I'm hoping you come along on this journey with me as I work toward this goal. I may study for a certification as a pharmacy technician. Or continue some long-abandoned plans to teach preschool. Maybe I'll just end up working at the Hallmark Store (gosh I love the Hallmark Store.)

It may not be easy but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Come along with me and feel free to let me know what you're thinking. But like I said before... be nice!