{Kiwi}

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
― Charles Dickens

{Micro-ball}

“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out  I'm getting back into the habit of trying to take photographs daily. It's good for me and my work. My favorite subject is my children and I have a lot of catching up to do. They are at the age now where it's more challenging, although both have said to me "Mom, I am used to this now..." so I feel like I have conditioned them long enough where such documentation is normal. I still try to be cognizant of not embarrassing them though since they are at the age where everything I do embarrasses them. Such is normal adolescent child development I suppose. Sigh.
 I'm trying to work on action photography but I am not equipped with the right lenses and also not very good at it yet. There will be lot's of opportunity for practice. And I'll make do until I can upgrade lens wise. However, in all the sports pictures my children look like lego figurine micro-people. Somewhat, frustrating. Increasingly more frustrating when I watch another parent role into the game with my much coveted Hubble sized,  zoom lens in town.  Alas I put envy aside and I document on. I'm just blessed and thankful to be back in the position to photograph my children regularly. Maybe this can be my niche.
 On a different note, I believe this game was my son's first win of the season.  The boys were very proud of themselves and worked hard. In the last few games, it seems they really took what their coach said to them during their post game huddle and worked on building their skills. That's pretty neat to see. His coaches are great with the boys and very energetic. In fact, most of the MFAC teams and their coaches are pleasant and not too intense. The coach from the other team last night was particularly entertaining. I was convinced he must have had minimum 5 pre-game Energy drinks as with a spring in his step, he spoke loudly and rapid like a machine gun the entire two hours. All his syllables were punctuated. Enthusiastically he coached his team of boys and I found it amusing at one point when he instructed a boy to not concentrate on the velocity of the ball, as opposed to usual choice word of speed. Must be a physics teacher. Just a guess.
All and all,  It was a beautiful, almost perfect Minnesota Summer evening of Micro-ball.  Filled with young and old boys with big hearts, large vocabulary and red bull sized energy.

{Over The Hedge}

The ants go marching one by one, Hurrah!! Hurrah!!
The ants go marching one by one, Hurrah!! Hurrah!!
The ants go marching one by one, 
The little one stopped to suck his thumb,
And they all go marching down, around, and up-side down.

I've been taking the time to do runs around my new neighborhood to get acquainted with the area.  Today, there was a light sprinkle that turned into a misty drizzle. I love to run in this type of weather and look at the coat of water that adorns everything around me, including myself.  

This leads me to the Peonies that are abundantly present in the yards and businesses I run past.  Today, I found these pink peonies and post run stepped outside to take some pictures.

I've always loved Peonies even when I didn't have a clue what they were. It takes me to my favorite Peony story of all time.  It dates to right after my son was born  8 years and some months ago. We were living in an older city home and it seemed very popular with the ants in the neighborhood.  Having a newborn, a young toddler and just a general disgust with bugs crawling on my couch and up the wall I was going crazy trying to get rid of these ants who made our home...their home.  

This is where one of the funniest encounters I have had with a person comes in. I called an exterminator finally after failing miserably to evict the ants.  This man was exactly like the exterminator in the movie Over the Hedge. He LOVED his job and I mean loved it. He spoke deeply, passionately and was full of extreme physical hand gestures as we discussed ants.  He had a brochure and explained the different types of ants.  There are a lot of types of ants, I knew this now as I got a full National Geographic lecture courtesy of this fascinating Angie's list referred exterminator. 

 He looked intensely into my eyes and in a rather aggressive tone asked if we had Peonies Bushes?! Without having a chance to answer, he proceeded to educate me on how much ants love Peonies and if these bushes were around our home he was going to rip them out immediately. This was not a question. It was more a statement of fact. I was shocked by this bold and rather boundary violating statement. But he was so funny and I believed him so if we would have had Peonies bushes, by all means, I would have let him remove them immediately. 

There was no Peonies around the home and the ant's were successfully removed. And I always have a small laugh when I see the lovely Peonies of Summer.

{All Good Down Here}

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut

{Pathway of the Clouds}

“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.” 
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just in the mood tonight for some good ole inspirational Emerson

{New Horizons}

“When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.” 

― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration


I'm in the midst of packing for the move back to Minnesota and true to form I all sorts of a UPS brown box surrounded hot mess. I have three egg boxes that I am "packing"  that seem to have nothing in them despite being moved 20 or so times around my bedroom. This is when I appreciate my sister who has to be the expert organizer and probably the most in control person I ever met. She has provided moving interventions through the years by literally holding up pieces of clothing or other household articles and decisively telling me what box to pack it in or what donation bag to add it to.  I follow like a diligent Kindergarten student on the way to the water fountain. Marching to her orders. I follow in awe, humility and much appreciation.  It's not that I can't do this, just under certain chaos filled circumstances ,  I often resort to immature coping mechanisms involving such as
obsessive baking or hiding out in my room, behind the boxes, and playing 6,000 games of Ruzzle.

It is not my intention to sound whiney, I'm working SOOOOO hard on this ,but I'm just ready for my life not to have a million high stress things converging at once.  And that just what it has been like the last few years. It's frustrating but I'm past the point now where I keep rewinding the moments analyzing every last move and mistake to figure out how not to have all that shit happen again. That sounds type A insane reading what I just wrote, as if I haven't learned the ultimate lesson. Which when I remember,  keeps me able to make calm and collected decisions such as how to pack a brown UPS moving box.

For me that  big lesson is, to always remember that most of the things I worry about do not come to pass. It is those unexpected moments that I never in my active crazy imagination head thought would happen, did happen. And I made it, sometimes crawling and eating crow but I made it. It gave me muscles and some much needed backbone. And lots of other lessons I'm sure I see in hindsight. I have to get back to packing and enjoying the day. Set a to do list, that just might have some baking involved.  Mainly I write this now so I can re-read it and remember and keep moving forward.

{Binded and Shelved}

“If you think you can grasp me, think again:
my story flows in more than one direction
a delta springing from the riverbed
with its five fingers spread” 

― Adrienne Rich, Time's Power

I'm not sure what this tree is called, but the contrast of color and texture again the stormy sky made a picture taking a must today...