if only you were new again.

there was a fleeting moment in our past when this amazing piece of harnessed beauty and brains was the newest of new. the hottest of the hip. it's sleek and slender pod inspired technology was in every magazine and movie. the iconic imac was born and we had one.

newly married in the summer of 2003, our first goal was to make a fun purchase to celebrate our newly betrothed status. walking into a store and picking the funnest mac was just the ticket.
after 2 years we moved to china, and the imac moved to storage. upon our return, we shuffled around and didn't settle down in a place of our own until 5 years had passed since our most delicious purchase. we had 2 kids by this time and hardly remembered our freshly married days until we unearthed a peice of our past.
our imac.

we were quite disheartened, and more than a little irritated to find that our most endearing purchase was so clearly outdated in it's capabilities that it could hardly support even the simplest web pages and it's memory couldn't even comprehend how to facilitate our backup drive.

so now, here it sits. among the wreckage of our laundry/storage space. another casualty to years gone by now downgraded to storage indefinitely.

sometimes i get it out and let the boys pound on the keyboard in funny fonts...they think they have the coolest computer around...and they do. what 2 and 3 year olds have their very own imac? what is wrong with technology that an amazing computer is trashed in a few small years? i have vowed to never spend that much for a computer again....in fact, not even a 5th of what we paid for our delicious bite of loveliness.

for now, i'll just let the kids be cool with their cool cool computer and their elbow key pounding with a few round-house type maneuvers thrown in, and i'll look back and remember our newly married status and our first and favorite purchase when we became who we are :)

pardon me, but you are quite amazing

our party favorite...rowan's rendition of "away in a manger"





(excuse my horrible singing voice and the fact that i was so overcome with his cuteness that i totally forgot what verse we were on....that is, until foster corrected me :)

oldy-moldy-minolta meets new-and-nifty-nikon

while attacking the horrible mess that is our laundry/storage area last night, i came upon a once familiar friend.
her name: minolta 33mm
this particular lady set me back $500 big ones in her prime, oh-around 1998
as a poor college student at the time, the purchase was quite monumental.
i took her everywhere....even to china several times, where i shot more 33mm pictures than one could even hope to have developed.
her picture quality was stunning, and, according to my memory, her shudder speed was lightning fast.


as i unearthed her, i reminisced our times together...the film changes and smiles captured. i was shocked to discover that there was a bit of battery life still lingering, though it has been nearly 6 or 7 years since her last use. i happened upon some unexposed film, and somehow managed to remember how to load it, much to my surprise.
i focused in on an unsuspecting pile of old toys and prepared to be amazed as i once was with her skill set. much to my dismay, it felt difficult, laborious, even. like i was asking a bit too much of her capabilities. my eyes instinctively shot to the back of the camera to check what i had just captured. the black back of the camera stared blankly back at me. there was no playback screen. no way to know if the shot was in focus, or if the lighting was too dark. i didn't even think to check the settings, as i am so accustomed to shooting 10 or 20 pictures to get a feel for mood lighting. there was no way to know anything.

suddenly it hit me...

i have lost something in all of my digital this and that. a sense of patience. carefully selecting each shot, instead of shooting in machine gun approach. a sense of the beauty and anticipation of film. only having a short lived 24 or 36 pictures to a roll. the drive to the photo shop. the wait for the developer to carefully prepare each print. the glory of finally looking through each shot and the disappointment when a favorite was out of focus.

oh the days of old.

i think i'll shoot a roll or two or even give it to foster to play with...after all, what good is it now? i can't go back. there's no way. i just can't handle the unknown. but she is too beautiful and special to discard or sell (not that she is worth anything anyhow). so back to storage she will go.
although she does make me appreciate the splendor that is my d200 even more than i already do. :)

energy everlasting

There are several things I don't understand. Ok, lots and lots of things that are beyond my comprehension ability...but one remains foremost in my daily wonderings. Right nextdoor to "why can't someone discover calorie free cheese curls" is my question of all questions: "how in the world do kids have such an energy abundance??? more than enough energy to race full sprint ahead wearing dinosaur goloshes, carrying 2 hands packed full of bulldozers, a trailing scratchy monkey, a pull along wagon, several tons of pretzel sticks being munched and still manage to maneuver over a stack of large couch cushions, a dangerous assortment of matchbox cars, and an overturned basket of books."
Yes I know. Long, overwritten sentence. But the scariest part is I could keep going. The energy ability is quite mind bogging. All. Day. Long. 12. Hours. Every. Single. Day.

Today, the question was finally solved.
Behold my conversation with foster moments ago:

(while spinning in micro circles and flailing his arms)

Me: "wow, someone has a LOT of energy today!"

Foster: "mom, can you ask me questions for where I get my energy from? Who gave it to me?"

Me: "sure buddy! Where do you get so much energy? I would love to know! Who gave it to you?"

Foster: "from Jesus!"
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

kids these days

although we dream daily of their wonderfulness, neither clint, nor i, have an iphone.
we're not that cool.
so it was quite surprising to hear the following unfold.

yesterday afternoon.
while holding the tv remote with both hands and pressing the buttons with intention,

foster: "yeah, i just got an iphone. it's pretty cool. excuse me mom, i'm on a video chat with westley. he's on my phone. he likes to talk to me. see, here's my video chat. i like iphones."


i have an idea where he picked up his savvy techno talk...
they are very much cooler than us,
and very much my favorite people.
they have iphones.
they have beauty beyond expression.
they have a spirit of love that is contagious.
they have the love of 2 little nephews who watch their every move.

little black book

no one had seen it in a few months.
the drawers and cupboards had been searched.
the deskdrawers had been sifted.
years upon years of dates and deaths and purchases and events recorded
now lost.
we all felt a sense of our history in those notes hand written over so many years.
so many dates that no one else knows and would never be known if it wasn't for the little black book.
my granny kept saying she knew where it was.
after all, it's her book.
she took the time after each grandchild was born...
after grandpa bought a new computer...
after her brothers and sisters died one by one...
after grandpa put new tires on the car...
to write it all down.

so during our visit the week before thanksgiving,
we gave it one more try.
one more look-see

after a few moments of drawer-opening and a quick prayer that we might catch a glimpse of it...
in the very back of her china closet drawer...

the very back on the left, under some old bank reciepts, there it was.

small. old. tattered.
the little black book.
as i picked it up, it felt treasured.
i felt special getting to look through it's yellowed pages.
like i was looking into my heritage to see who was there.
i started at the begining.
it was filled with life.
happy things, times, dates.
marriages. births.

new microwaves and new furniture.

but as the pages continue,
the theme shifts.
pain. sickness. death.
the loss of ones so very loved fill the pages.
her friends. her family.

her husband.

almost all have passed.
my granny and her sister and her sister in law are all that are living.
a special group.
the things they have seen and known and lived are beyond what we will know.

i treasure her little black book because it means so much to her that these things are remembered.

it's important to her that the important things are not forgotten.

i treasure her.

(not sure when this picture was taken, but my granny is 2nd from the right.)

we no longer exist

in christmas cards.

i came to a sad realization last week as i perused my millions of backup drives for just the right shots to display on our christmas cards. i could not find a single picture of clint and i together in the last 6 months except for this one....which foster took as i was walking out the door to go to work on a saturday (hence the keys and manditory coffee :) sometime oh-around august.

i gotta say, his photography skills are quite advanced. i could post a birrage of the adorable pics he snaps...mostly of toy cars, rowan eating, and random clutter but they are so perfect as taken from his little boy viewpoint. there are also quite a few of me in very unflattering poses, unaware that i am being photographed and therefore not sucking in my non-flattening abdominal areas :)



but that's it. nothing else. nada. we literally do not exist on film together. i have managed to document every other detail except ourselves. kind of strange, if you think about it.



and then there are these...UPS was kind enough to deliver them today, much to my excitement...
which follow up the point that clint and i don't exist, but also shows that we would greatly inhibit the ultra cuteness that is donning this year's christmas cards.

i'm quite extatic about their amazingness.


thanks to peartree, they are just what i was looking for: inexpensive :)


i must also add that the 2 best pics (the closeups) were taken by my dear friend linds this past fall...they are 2 of my most fav pics of all time.

so there you have it. a really long post. i guess i could have just said: "look, our christmas cards are here!" and ended there. but now i've written all of this nonsense...might as well post it.

wow. i'm beyond wordy.
:)

on the to do list today...

raz pinwheels for our upcoming christmas party this saturday. able to be frozen in advance and baked pre-party time, i'm hoping these sweets taste as cute as they look!

you know you're a bit too geeky when...

you start sporting hot pink fingerless gloves
to endure the sub-lethal-artic-cold of your sewing factory.
i must say, i kinda like them.
geeky and 80's throwback as it may be,
i think they are quite fetching,
and my camera feels cool when i press the shutter with my newly warmed apendages :)