snowflakes...

....are falling in my back yard. Without a sound.

This makes me very happy.

InsOmNIa! $#@&*

...it's been kicking me about a little bit. I know why, it's wintertime and I'm more cooped up. A passage I read long ago (from a now-forgotten novel) has stayed with me: "My stomach is empty and my mind is full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep." Okay, that might explain the banana and peanut butter snack at 2:00 AM last week, shivering barefoot in the kitchen, which did seem to send me happily back to bed and 4 hours of blissful sleep before the next workday. But the times when my brain feels blank and the belly well sated belies the easy banana-trick.

Ah, well. It passes.

Today is another birthday. I have celebrated by chopping off my long hair. A new bio-photo will eventually follow, but since photos of me are scarce it may be awhile. For now, I'm still enjoying reaching for the back of my neck and encountering the blunted ends.

Happy birthday to me. I like growing old. I like feeling the passage of time, looking back, looking forward. One nice thing about having a January birthday is that it goes so well with looking ahead - planning the year, planning my life.

My favorite piece from last year:





This year, I want to continue the trend of reading more. Reading, and spending more time in the darkroom - I've missed it terribly over the holidays, which were screamingly busy between work and home. The above lith print reminds me how much I love this technique - another reason to go play in the darkroom!

Over the past several years, I've put myself out there quite a lot - both personally and professionally. 2008 is the year I am pulling in. I've been doing it almost unconsciously for the last several months, and have noticed how happy it makes me - contracting my life into a little circle between home, work, with only a few excursions on the side involving close friends or family. It feels really good.

Note to self: hang in there, old girl. It wasn't nearly as important as you thought it was. You know?? You're doing just fine!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had some time off from work, school, or whatever it is that keeps you from play-time.... ;)

Here's to a wonderful 2008! (I was going to say, an interesting 2008...but interesting doesn't always = wonderful, so I skipped it.) heh!

all moved in, and feeling tingly....

So, as long as I have to work at a "serious" kind of day job, it's nice to have pleasant surroundings in which to do so. My new office is not only the largest one I've ever had as a manager, it's also the only one I've been able to design. Well, re-design, as it was more than a little bit used when I first walked through it several months ago. I walked through and started a list of everything I wanted to see done to it, and plotted the course. This kind of thing is entertaining for me. I liked knocking out walls (on paper of course), picking out floor tiles and carpet and paint schemes. It's all come together quite beautifully and my own office, as I've said, is BIG - with 2 windows that actually open, with old-style hand cranks! yowza. So I've lined the faux marble windowsills with plants and unabashedly hung eight of my own pieces of framed artwork along the walls. (Some of my stuff that's not straightforward photography confuses people - another source of entertainment. I explain my processes much more thoroughly than the inquirer really wants me to.)

Work is work, and I really do yearn for the day when the alarm clock goes off only because I have an early class or maybe an early flight to someplace fun. But as long as it goes off every morning, forcing me out the door to work in health care management, I can think of worse places I've hung my coat. I like it here. No, really.

Busy, crazy times - on more levels than work, of course. Life is suddenly interesting in many new ways. I'm digging it, along with some of the new people I've met.

Shine on, you crazy diamond

I met him when he walked into the doctor's office where I was working as a medical assistant. Later, we both would swear to recognizing the phenomena of love at first sight; those first few meetings, however, were all business - and the business at hand was ridding him of his abdominal ailment. We were both in our mid-20's and each of us had already accumulated some baggage. He was recently divorced and meeting me apparently shot to hell his resolve to never marry again. I was married at the time we first met - 2 years in and, already realizing I had made a terrible mistake, I was in the process of getting pep talks from my friends while casting about for the cheapest apartment I could find, so I could move out. Needless to say, neither of us needed the automatic complication of having laid eyes on each other at this particular point in time; suddenly, all bets were off.

Though it took a couple of years, which were full of angst and distasteful drama that doesn't belong in this post, we eventually found our way to a small, non-denominational chapel - very old, with a gray stone exterior and a bright red door. We liked the door. It looked good in the wedding pictures, too.

It's been 22 years since then. Today (well, Friday, November 30th) is another anniversary marking a long romance that we periodically marvel over - knowing we're among the few who really are living "happily ever after". We've been through many highs, many lows. One of the high points is taking place on this very day, as he is officially retiring from the GA state DOT, where he has worn many hats over the years. He was a young, hot photographer when I met him. He didn't make much money, which seemed to matter to him more than it did me, since he seemed to want to impress upon me that he did have a good retirement plan, and how he could arrange it so his pension would take care of me for life - should I follow my heart and go with him. The pension didn't matter, or course. For me, it was more the realization that I had somehow met this person who was sincerely offering to give all he had - and this, while I was fresh from leaving a marriage that had come to seem more like a joint venture, where each party kept his own bank account and expenses were shared fifty/fifty (each month I was presented a list, detailing what I owed). To be presented with this tender, giving heart, with this simple "but of course" attitude towards sharing everything we had - maybe I wasn't so bright in my twenties, but I did recognize my soul mate.

It's been a long journey, getting to this day. There were times we were scared his job would vanish - being the aerial photographer for the state's Office of Location was quite the tiny niche, subject to repeated scrutiny by each new governor looking for ways to say he had slashed state expenses by outsourcing anything that seemed frivolous. However, the aerial photo lab performed such a variety of functions that somehow it escaped the red line; term after term, it proved its relevance. So my husband Brad is retiring now, in a management position, as someone who can turn and look back over a long, fruitful career with the same outfit - a growing rarity in these shifting times.

I couldn't be more proud of and happy for him. He's one of those people who should have good things come his way. I've been disappointed in many people over the years - people I thought I knew, who ultimately proved my judgment wrong. That's never a good feeling, of course. Brad has never been among them.

I wanted this to be some kind of tribute, but listing his good qualities seems so trite. I'd rather just say: animals instinctively gravitate to him. That tells a lot, you know. Our horse used to follow him around like an oversized hound dog; Brad rarely needed a lead rope with old Dana. And when I would periodically bring home feral kittens, rescued from a drainage ditch by my office that was inhabited by a cat colony, he was always up for the challenge of helping me foster them until they were ready for adoption. Peering into the cardboard boxes I had swept the tiny demons into, he was met with baleful stares from tiny eyes, accompanied by much hissing and spitting. None of them could have been more than 6 weeks old, which probably accounts for why I was able to snatch them. When Brad decided to befriend them, within hours they went from five ounces of feline ferocity to purring under his gentle touch, secure in their new knowledge that human hands could be kind. Our adopted pug, Odin, was inherited from his former owners through a broken relationship that led to separate moves to places animals weren't allowed. He was a frightened little dog the first night he came to us. We tried to relax with him out on the patio, giving him the run of his new back yard. Feeling the acute anxiety of the newly separated, Odin wasn't interested in exploring. He was unable to relax until he decided to crawl up Brad's chair and settle his fat little body square on Brad's chest, where he remained for the next couple of hours. He wasn't exactly the type of puppy you'd want to cuddle - he was crawling with fleas, sorely in need of a bath and we still couldn't quite believe our eyes when we looked at that tongue. But Brad welcomed him as if he were a prize, did not shoo him away but scratched his ears and talked to him - and Odin has worshipped him ever since.

See, this is just part of who Brad is.

Now, Brad - if you ever read this - you should know, babe, that I'm very aware of the excess of wine you have stashed in that cellar. I know who your mistress is, and we actually get along just fine. I accept her presence in every bottle you think you've smuggled in. I just wanted to say: it's okay, baby. I like wine. Just, maybe ease up on the French stuff now, will ya? I happen to like what's coming out of Tuscany right now. Just a suggestion.

This is a picture I took of Brad with Odin (aka: the O-dog) last summer, when I was testing a new lens. I decided to hand color it, since I will probably always remember our patio and back yard like this, in high summer.

Happy retirement, my love - and happy anniversary!

Quick update....

It appears all the information for the March 2008 workshop has now been added to the Spruill website.

This means the supply list is now available to view!

Hope to see you there.

Ye Olde Thanksgiving holiday

Being one of those tiresome sorts of people who are always acutely aware of how lucky we are in life, I don’t become particularly misty-eyed around the holidays. However, this IS a blog – as such, it would seem an oversight of sorts not to comment on a holiday that, at its very soul, was inspired only as an occasion for people to pause and reflect on all of life’s goodness – even when it might seem that the good stuff is outweighed by the bad.

The news is always full of stories about horrific things that happen around the globe. There is never a shortage of war, famine, floods, drought, stupid politicians, animal cruelty and basic human injustice on a wide scale. When you catch yourself thinking, “The world’s gone mad”, that’s as good a time as any to clutch closer the nearness of beloved things or people that keep us sane. It should be a daily event.

My best friend is my amazing husband – who I really think of more as a boyfriend, even after 21 years of marriage. I am still humbly grateful for the combined circumstances that led to my crossing the country during my 20’s to land in the same town he grew up in, so I could meet him, marry him, and have this amazing relationship. Those were some very long odds that I beat - I don’t see myself taking that lightly. That’s the main thing I’m grateful for.

I can roll out of my bed every day with two feet to hit the floor, and I have a job to go to every day. Okay, sometimes my aging legs feel tired, my back hurts, I’m grumpy, sleepy, and feeling the hate of working full time – but it’s a momentary indulgence to what are actually minor annoyances, since if any of that were to be lost, I’d be one sad sack.

So, hurray for everything that’s good in my life, feel the bliss of knowing my family and friends are alive and well - and I have nothing more pressing to do today than start mixing the dough for my delicious crescent rolls. I made the cherry pie last night at 11:30 – late start because I remembered at 9:00 PM that I was out of shortening, so my best friend made a little store run to help out. After finally settling the top crust over the cherries, I thought about making my vent slits into a giant smiley face, but instead made a little round center hole and slashed sunrays all around it. Yeah, I’m living in Georgia during a 100-year drought, but what the hell. It’s actually raining at the moment. So hurray for the sun, too.

Hope you all have a lot to feel thankful for, too. Enjoy the day.