144. Tantrum

At what age does one stop throwing tantrums? I have never responded to my daughters pitching a fit in any way that has given them a reason to think tantrums are effective. At the age of two years it would be difficult for a child to stop and rethink her strategy.  But certainly by the age of eight a child would have to know that tantrums just don't yield much in terms of results. She certainly wouldn't throw one if her friends were around - so at least social pressure from peers is key to the tantrums instinction. 

143. Opposite

A bright, cheery, and festive photograph that reminds me of my youth rolling skating to Oliva Newton John's Xanadu. Those were good times, but tonight I am not feeling so peppy. Miles, our dog, is dying from cancer. May be Chelsea senses it because she bit him today for no apparent reason. I spent the last 2.5 hours applying pressure to the wound. Spending several hundred dollars for the emergency vet just didn't seem appropriate given his diagnosis. Feeling guilty...exhausted...bleeding stopped...going to sleep.

- excuse the typos...posted via Windo's iPhone

142. Survey

Sometimes I can sit in one place and take several decent photographs. Just sometimes...

141. Quiet

I grew up on a really busy street, in a house with a raised foundation and four brothers. It was always noisy and I taught myself to sleep through all the ruckus.  When I was a teenager I could stay up half the night and sleep well past noon. When I met Curtis and we visited his childhood home I finally understood true silence.  I ended up sleeping clear until dinner time. I think his parents must have thought there was something wrong with me. But there was never a noise to wake me up. The house was built on a concrete slab in a cul-de-sac and there were no longer kids to make any sounds.

Last night I was up clear past one o'clock cleaning up and winding down from our big party and I was dead tired when my head hit the pillow.  I slept soundly for a couple hours until Abbey woke me up 3:00 - and then again at 6:00.  The girls were up for good at 6:00 am. With my training you think I would be able to sleep though it all, but I can no longer seem to sleep through noise. I so miss sleeping in.

140. And then there was one....

Today, well actually yesterday, was our annual chili cook-off. We ask friends to bring chili and vote on who's in the best. It is a bit nuts, but a lot of fun for all. We have been having the shindig on and off for 11 years. Every year I make a chili and I have never placed in the top three. This year I was sure I had the winning recipe, but alas, I didn't come close... until next year! It is well after midnight and the backyard is a mess. My crock-pot emptied of the losing chili sits alone on the serving table. I will clean it up tomorrow - it will still be there.

139. Span

Some old friends are in town to visit this weekend and we had dinner with them. After dinner our girls and their daughter went swimming at the hotel. As we were sitting there, watching them, my mind couldn't help but wander. Dave and I have now known each other for more than half our lifes. When we met I was a sophomore in college and Curtis & Dave played in a rock band. We were 19 years old and so young in so many ways.

When you meet someone for the first time you don't know if you will ever see each other again much less become friends. When we met in a hallway in Hollywood I had no idea that this would be someone that I would continue to know for decades to come. I had no idea that Dave would introduce me to my future friend, turned boy friend, husband and eventual father of my kids. And it was completely surreal sitting there as full blown adults watching our girls swim and swapping parenting tips.

138. Illuminate

I had an interesting conversation with my friend Kathy a few months back. She had a medical history built from her own DNA sample. She never knew her father and wanted to know what health risks possibly lie ahead. As we discussed the idea further I asked her an interesting hypothetical question... if you could, would you want to know exactly how and when you are going to die. She answered, "Yes." She felt it would give her the opportunity to plan for every she wanted to accomplish in our one chance at life. But I wouldn't want to know. I think I would be so consumed by the anticipation of the event I would stop living.

I had forgot about the conversation until tonight when Curtis asked me about our dog Miles' diagnosis of incurable cancer. He asked how I felt knowing that Miles was sick and didn't have much longer to live. Of course I am overwhelmed with sadness knowing that a member of family is going to leave us, but I am relieved that we know its happening. With a heads up I can spend extra time with him, spoil him with ground beef dinners, and love him up.

137. Quantity

I feel that once again it has become quantity over quality in order to abide by my rule of a posting a day. It is simply not possible to take an interesting image every day.

I brought Abbey with me to school today and loaded a camera up with film. Five minutes later she had shot 36 exposures and wondered why the camera stopped working. I had to explain the difference between digital and film and reminded her to be a bit more selective when making images. The second roll went almost as fast. Abbey was also following the quantity over quality working method today. Two rolls was my budget limit, so we moved onto to developing film.

Recently the days are longer. Free of school the kids are not married to an early bedtime. We have been enjoying the beautiful evenings out on the patio everyday. To fill up the time the girls come up with one crazy idea after another. By dessert we were eating ice cream with a vampire and a hippie. You have to love summer.

136. No excuse

I have no excuses... I am just too busy this week. It is too late to be articulate, but I like the photograph.

135. Why?

As it rolls around to 11 o'clock and I have not even given the blog an ounce of thought all day I get a bit worried. I start flipping through all the photographs on my iPhone hoping to find something that I am not embarrassed to share. If I can't find anything I putter around the house hoping something, anything, will stand out.

I thought as summer rolled around I would have more time to work on the blog and hence it would be easier to meet my daily deadline. But honestly I can't remember why I am doing this and I just want a vacation! More sick on the blog than ever.

134. Visit

Last Father's Day we celebrated my step-dad's birthday. It was his 78th birthday and more people came than were expected. Not only was it Ken's birthday, but he was dying from cancer. It had been months of decline, but that weekend he slipped into a non-responsive state. The day was sad but wonderful as more and more friends stopped by my parents house to bid their farewells to a generous and larger than life individual. He died at home the next day.

Today, near the one year anniversary of his death, on his birthday, and Father's Day we met at his grave site to gather for a few words. He would have loved to see all the grandkids running up the hill and laughing. It was a beautiful day and one that he would have really treasured... "Another day in which to excel."

133. Best Friend

I took this photograph of my best friend Miles just days ago. He appears happy and healthy except today we discovered it's not true. He couldn't stand well so we brought him to the vet and now know that his body is riddled with cancer. It's not months or weeks but possibly a couple of days if we are lucky. He is 12 and honestly that is close to the life expectancy of a dog his size but that doesn't make it easier. So sad.

- excuse the typos...posted via Windo's iPhone

132. Product

I was provided a wonderful opportunity to complete a faculty externship this summer. Basically I receive some compensation for job shadowing a working professional in photography. The idea is I get to brush up on my skills while comparing our curriculum to the industry's needs and make sure they are in line with each other. I had the pleasure of working with Jerry Garns today. We worked on several product shots for Ross Discount stores.

I was trained as a fine artist, and not much attention was paid to the technical skill demonstrated in my art work as a student. I started teaching and continue to teach as my main source of income, so working in a commercial environment with clients is something I have never done.

My favorite part of today was watching Jerry light the products. He is great at it because he has done it for a long time and he has an eye for it. He pointed out things I just didn't see at first. In the end the shot looks so simple, so clean - but if you back up... craziness. I wish I could just download everything in his head into my own.

131. Rich

After teaching today I picked Katie up at a year-end class swim party and then we went to get her sister at her fine art water color class. The three of us went to purchase some last minute Father's day presents. We returned home and the girls played for several hours in the warm sun making water ballons and throwing them at each other. I sat on the patio, read my book, drank a bit of wine, and thought about tonight's posting.

The other day my daughter asked me why we are not rich. The answer to her question was not simple. I think she was asking simply about monetary value. Do we have a lot of money? Even that is not a simple answer. In America are we rich? No, middle class. In the world? Our pets live better than many people in the world. How do you explain this to a ten year old?

As a child, her developmental age only allows for concrete, black and white thinking. We are rich or poor, smart or stupid, happy or sad, etc. She isn't mature enough to understand the subtly of life. But watching the girls tonight playing in the sun, laughing and throwing water balloons at each other it is hard not to think we are rich. My girls are healthy. Growing up in America they are as free from prejudice, harm, and risk as they can be. They have access to a wonderful free education (even with bad budget problems.) Likely they can grow up to become whatever they choose. I hope one day she will understand how truly rich her life is.

I came from a family of doctors and lawyers, but choose to be a community college educator. I choose to work less and therefore have less, but hoping I can teach my daughters often less is more.

130. Too Much

This week is the last week of school and it seems crazier than past years. Within nine days (along with attending the last week of school) this under stimulated and lonely child will have gone to a ballet recital, participated in a book club, had a piano lesson, played in gym class, attended a year-end party for her class, had two after school play-dates, painted in art class, dropped by three birthday parties, visited her Papa's grave on the one year anniversary of his death and celebrated Father's Day. Mom's not smiling either.

129. TA-DA!

I ran to the bank this evening to make a quick deposit and as I drove by my neighbor Mytra's house. She is a wonderfully nice lady, but her yard is always unkept and her trash cans, always out front, are the first thing I see as I drive down the road. Today, for the first time I was taken back not by the trash cans, but by the fantastic jacaranda tree that graces her front yard.

I was in a rush and didn't stop to take the shot - the missed photograph started to eat at me instantly. I drove as swiftly to the bank as I could. Silently cursed the people in line in front of me for not being smart enough to operate an ATM and raced back to our neighborhood. Every red light got a second round of cursing for good measure. When I returned for the second drive by Mytra's house the light was still just right. I got so lucky.

I took the shot with my iPhone... I really need to start carrying a decent camera in the car for just these occasions. My friend Frank asked me how I take such great shots with a camera phone. Some of it is just basic composition. Good composition is possible with any camera  - even a point and shoot. The rest? Is a little magic with PhotoShop. A magician should never reveal her tricks... but I will provide a before and after.

128. Breeze

It is almost impossible to focus on the two things I need to do tonight - prepare my syllabus for my summer school class that begins tomorrow and write my blog post. What is distracting me? The absolutely beautiful evening outside. I picked the girls up from school and we went on a quest for a large size kiddie pool. Four stores later we found one and returned close to dinner time to find some good friends waiting on our porch. The next several hours included the girls splashing in the pool, dinner on the patio, and cold beer and ice cream. We ended the impromptu gathering early because the kids still have school in the morning. They are having trouble settling down for bed and I am having trouble focusing on work with the great breeze that keeps blowing in through our french doors.  Ah summer is here - too bad I have to work.

127. Slick

Not sure what to write tonight. I took this photograph, a swing back to the abstract. It reminds me of oil floating on top of water... possibly current events working their way into my artistic psyche?

126. Latent Image

Photography was first invented in the 1820's. The phenomenon of a camera had been known for thousands of years earlier. A camera is a simple black box with one small hole at one end that will create a projection of light. The recording of that projection of light (photography) was met will some difficulty. There are several men who ended up contributing to what solved the puzzle.  Initially, early experiments required exposures of several hours before an image appeared on light sensitive material. An enormous break through came with the idea of the latent image. William Henry Fox Talbot with the help of Sir John Herschel, discovered an image was recorded long before it was visible to the naked eye and with the help of chemistry this image could be developed. This image was a negative recorded on paper - the calotype.

Fast forward over 150 years and photography has made obvious technical advances. Out of necessity for this blog (at least a photograph a day) I have relied heavily on my iPhone for convenience and portability. Do you think Talbot would have ever imagined that his time consuming, complicated, and expensive process would have ever come so far? During a movie today, I looked over at my girls and their friend and with my naked eye saw an image I wanted to record. I didn't have a manual camera with adjustable exposure controls, just the iPhone. Determined I took a several photographs that were totally dark, no detail was revealed on the screen. Tonight when I got home PhotoShop helped me develop the latent images. The end result is far from perfect or clear, but recognizable.

125. Mistake

Many good photographs are complete accidents. 

124. R-E-S-P-E-C-T

There have been so many studies that show learning music helps children's understanding of reading and math. My kids are lucky to have piano lessons, but a lot of kids don't have that experience. Remo has a free drum circle for children in Studio City every Saturday morning but they were generous enough to come to the girls' school and provide the program to the whole second grade. I was lucky enough to help out.

As we were setting up I thought, "This is crazy." We are handing 125 kids drums and hoping that they may listen to instructions. I have spent enough time with 8 year olds... but I was so amazed to see most of the children focused and engaged in the event. The leader of the circle taught the kids hand signals so they would follow the rhythms, speed up, slow down, pound louder, and so on.

There were only two children not paying attention and both of them I know well. They are two girls infamous for their lack of focus and constant chatter in the classroom, gym class, dance class, and girl scout meetings. Both are generally nice kids, but annoying to others trying to learn. At the drum circle I refocused the girls on the lesson and event several times and eventually separated them when my suggestions were ignored. They continued to wave and laugh at each other across the yard and sadly could not bring themselves to participate in the event. But at least they were not disrupting the other children after I separated them.

The separation didn't last long. The mother of one of the children, and a friend of mine, decided they should be together. I explain what the problem was (like I have so many times before) and the mother's response was, "They are just having fun!" That is always her response. Yes, the drum circle was fun. Yes, kids should have fun. But they also need to be able to focus long enough that they can learn and not bother other children. To laugh off her child's bad behavior and dismiss it as "fun" is hugely problematic. The child is way behind in school and no where near the level of her peers socially. As the child grows, the problem grows - she has now learned to manipulate her mother into getting anything she wants and does little for herself.

I think there is nothing that can be done to fix the situation. This mother just won't listen to others' advice and the child loses more friends each year. I really feel sorry for the child... when she is finally on her own she will have so much to learn.

123. Decade

Last week, Katie wanted to know exactly what time she was born. My response was, "sometime after lunch." This was not precise enough for her. In order to better answer her question we cracked out the baby book and box full of things that I have been saving for her. I had no idea what opening that box would do to my sense of time...

My daughter just turned ten... that means that I have had children for a quarter of my life. I remember my parent's friends coming to visit just after her birth and they all would shake their heads and say, "Cherish these moments. It goes so fast." A colleague came over with his 8 and 10 year old daughters to see my new baby and I thought wow, his kids are really old. The future seemed so far away at that moment and now all of a sudden it is here and I didn't even realize it. Having kids is a lot of work. So much so that you are just jumping from task to task with them... get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to school, pick up from school, go to music lessons, get homework done, eat dinner, take bath, go to bed. It is like jumping from one stepping-stone to another, but forgetting to look up and see where you are headed.

When Katie opened that box it was like looking up for the first time in 10 years. One of the first things she handed me was a note from my grandmother, we call her Bayto. It was written in her own hand and was addressed to me. The letter was thanking me for a Mother's Day gift and stating her predictions for the gender of my first child - she guessed Katie was going to be a boy. Bayto mentioned my grandfather and his frustration about his failing eyesight.

So much has changed. My grandfather had a stroke weeks after that letter was written, ironically on the same day Katie was born. He died about a year later. Bayto is still alive and just turned 100 in April. But she can no longer write beautiful letters, a stroke took her speech several years ago, and I am not sure she knows who I am.

In the last decade, I lost 3 grandparents. I lost my step-dad. I lost my mother-in-law. I went from 30 and able to stay up all night, to 40 and generally exhausted. My car went from 2-door sports car with manual transmission to 8 passenger SUV. I went from two loads of laundry per week and a perfectly clean home to a daily living environment that resembles the aftermath of an explosion. I went from feeding myself when I was hungry to prepping three squares meals a day for four people - everyday! I went from having my own time to having no time.

I could go on-and-on but it is beginning to sound like I am complaining - I don't mean to. I just didn't realize how much has changed and how fast the past 10 years went. I am feeling both awakened and shell shocked at the same time.

122. Character

My sister Sarah wrote a screen play for a short, found friends to help her get it shot, and is now in the process of final editing. Unbelievable! In order to submit the short to film festivals, she needed "cast" photos done and asked me to help out. I have no idea what cast photos are, but I was game.

The short is called He Loves Me Not... I would hate to provide an inaccurate description since I haven't read the final draft, but basically it is about a girl desperate to be loved and falling for the wrong guy --again. Chip plays the stoner roommate and Patrick the good looking trust fund player.  We spent a chunk of the day together recording them in and out of character and of course having a blast.

For years I had a portrait business and spent a lot of weekends taking photographs of people that paid me to take their photographs, but didn't like having their photos taken. I always felt like people were hiring me to torture them. Today was so different. I was working with three actors and even though they may have occasionally felt self conscious, it was obvious they really enjoyed the process.

Possible summer project?

121. Bread

I have officially lost a slipper, had my gown turn to rags, and my coach is back to a pumpkin. It's well after midnight but I was just too busy to get to the blog any earlier this evening.

Abbey has a heritage project culminating on Wednesday and we have to bring in an Irish meal to share with 23 other 8 year olds and their parents. One thing I learned about our Irish ancestors is their food choices were tasteless and limited. We finally decided on Soda Bread. Deceptively simple recipe. The first crack at it wasn't a total loss but I see an additional 2-3 more practice loafs in my very near future. If I get a loaf that at all looks decent you can guarantee I will blog it tomorrow (well technically tonight).

- excuse the typos...posted via Windo's iPhone

120. Have to, Want to

119. Sleepover

Katie's birthday week is finally coming to an end. That is what kids get now-a-days... birthday weeks, not days. We had a little family only shindig on her actual birthday, and then we brought cupcakes to her school another day, and tonight it was a movie and sleepover with her 5 closes BFFs. It's after 11 p.m. and they are finally settling down after 3 hours of karaoke and main lining sugar. I can hardly keep my eyes open - they have to be tired, right?

118. Talent

Talent - not everyone has it. And it is more than obvious at an elementary school performance. But at least all the kids are having fun and the families are enjoying it.

There is the saying, "Everyone is good at something." Eventually you will find your callng. It might not have anything to do with music, acting, art, or sports- it may be a talent for numbers. But audiences don't get excited for accountants and bankers typically don't have passionate followers.

117. Headache...

There is a self portrait by Ann Hamilton that always reminds me of what it feels like to have a headache. I think the photograph is technically untitled, but I like to call it "Haystack Head." A reproduction of the image hangs in our living room.

Every time I get a migraine the portrait comes into my head. It has been on my mind all day. Oddly enough the above photograph I took at the Getty a couple weeks ago is strikingly similar - minus the body of course!

Ann Hamilton

116. Happy Birthday

Tonight we celebrated Katie's 10th birthday. It is hard to believe that my baby's age is now in the double digits and it has been a whole decade since her birth. It's late...so until tomorrow.

115. Random

I am up to my ears in grading final projects, papers, and exams this week and unfortunately it will have to be blog-lite this week. So in attempt to go to bed at a reasonable hour... here is a shot I took a couple weeks ago during a meeting. Random and odd, but cool composition.