why is my hair so long?

Stick with me here.  This isn’t as frivolous as it sounds.  Here are how things go with me and my hair:  I get it cut kind of short (chin-length) and think it’s fun and cute…for about three weeks.  Then I decide I’m going to grow it long so it will be more versatile.  That lasts about six months, until one day it starts to bug me.  I can sort of put it in a ponytail, but it’s not a great look.  One or two bad hair days in a row, and I give up.  Back to the salon.  I get it cut short again.  And the cycle repeats itself.  

That’s kind of how I do things in a lot of areas in my life.  I start something with a lot of momentum, but when I hit a rough patch I give up too easily.  Oh yes, I often come at the problem or goal again, sometimes from a different angle, but there is always another rough patch.  I never seem to push through when things get tough. 

What does this have to do with anything?  Well, it’s almost 2010 and everyone is starting to talk about making resolutions.  I don’t remember making one at the beginning of 2009.  But somewhere around the end of January/early February, I do recall making a decision that changed the course of my year.  I decided that 2009 would be the year I stopped giving up on things. 

I did a lot of things this year that frankly scared the crap out of me.  A triathlon?  Really?  I was so nervous I thought I would throw up.  I sent out my first ever article query…to Writer’s Digest no less.  And they hired me to write an article.  I recall sending my husband an email that simply said, “OMG!  What have I done?”  And covering football for the newspaper?  Well, if you read my post I Can Conjure Lightning, you’ll know just how terrified I was at the beginning.  But I pushed through, and by the middle of the season I was having the time of my life. 

I’ve had more than a few bad hair days this year too, but my hair is now below my shoulders and still growing.  Why?  I don’t know.  It’s just kind of symbolic to me.  I felt like if I gave up on my hair, that might set off some sort of domino effect of quitting and everything else would just fall apart.  I don’t want to quit.  I’m finding that if I push through the rough spots, there are great rewards and experiences to be found on the other side.  Okay, long hair might not offer up any real rewards, but it sure does make for a cute ponytail. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  So, what is *your* resolution this year?  

EPILOGUE:  I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking, but Laura, you gave up on photography.  You shut down your business for a while.  Well, there might be some truth to that, but mostly I looked at that as a strategic retreat away from something that was making me miserable.  But that’s really a story for another post.  =)

project 13

As I mentioned in my previous entry, during the month of December my church participates in an alternative gift market through Alternative Gifts International (www.alternativegifts.org).  It gives people the opportunity to give a gift of hope to anyone on their Christmas list, and spread help around the world by choosing to donate to any of 40 different projects. 

Many of the projects involve charities that help women and girls in particular.  Because of history, politics, and societal customs, females are often oppressed in the developing parts of the world.  They live in conditions that I cannot fathom, and face futures that would make any one of us despondent.  As a female who was raised in a safe, supportive environment, these causes are close to my heart.  No woman…no girl…should be treated so savagely.  It is possible to help, even if it sometimes seems futile.

Project 13:  Rescuing Girls from Forced Prostitution in India & Southeast Asia

According to the UNICEF, more than 2 million children are exploited in the global commercial sex trade. Traffickers often deceive girls through the promise of legitimate jobs and then force them into brothels instead.

INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION’s (IJM) anti-trafficking casework rescues victims of forced prostitution in India and Southeast Asia. The agency gathers and documents undercover evidence of trafficking and sexual exploitation, then works with local authorities to rescue victims from forced prostitution, and places them in aftercare homes to meet their vital needs.  IJM lawyers work to secure the conviction and sentencing of traffickers and other perpetrators in an effort to deter future crimes. By freeing victims and prosecuting their perpetrators, IJM operations increase the risk and decrease the profitability of trafficking.

 The agency works to combat sex trafficking in India, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines. In the 12 years since the organization’s founding, IJM investigations have resulted in freedom for hundreds of girls and women held by force in the commercial sex trade.

$70 – One day of advocacy to bring sex traffickers to justice

$50 – One day of legal work to find girls trapped in forced prostitution

the human fund

Whew!  Busy month.

One of the things that I’m heavily involved in this time of year – thus unable to blog very much – is our church’s Alternative Gift Market.  How many people do you have on your Christmas list for whom you struggle to find a gift?  There just isn’t anything they really need.  And anything they want, you can’t afford.

Alternative Gifts International (www.alternativegifts.org) provides the option of designating charitable gifts through carefully selected agencies in the name of relatives, friends, and associates.  Instead of buying someone a tie they won’t wear or more smelly body lotion they don’t have time to use, you could help prevent disease among orphans in Vietnam, or reduce maternity mortality rates in The Congo. 

AGI has 40 projects you can choose from, including some in the USA and Canada if you prefer to help closer to home.  Over the next few weeks I will be highlighting some of the various projects, including information on how much help even a small donation can provide. 

Project #8:  Providing a Future for Nomadic & Street Children in Kenya

Some cultural traditions regard children who become fatherless through either death or divorce orphans.  Considered burdens to their extended families who must now take care of them, many are at risk of being homeless.  Other children in rural communities must leave their families, disrupting a way of life that depends on every member to maintain livestock, the family’s main source of financial security.  Education is perceived as a ‘luxury’ when survival is the highest priority.  Without private, charitable resources, continuing their education would be impossible.

These organizations will share project proceeds:  EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES (EO) and NOMADIC KENYAN CHILDREN’S EDUCATION FUND (NKCEF) bring hope through education.  They recruit, select and provide financial and emotional support for students – especially girls – who are motivated to complete their secondary education.  A $550 scholarship may include locating appropriate boarding schools for each student as well as tuition, lodging, food, fees, books, and uniforms.  Perhaps most importantly, surrogate parents give these children a family that cares.  Each year, the agencies’ combined efforts impact thousands of students and families. 

A simple gift of $25 can purchase one share of tuition/support for a student.  Even a $4 donation provides a day of support for one student.

good intentions

This was going to be the year that I finally painted the advent calendar.  How’s that going for me? 

It has been suggested…

…that perhaps I could post some actual useful information on my blog, rather than just babbling about myself.  The problem is, I don’t have a lot of useful informtion.  But  I get a lot of photography questions, and my friend Jillian asked about the picture of the mug that I posted, as in “how did you take that picture?”

It’s not entirely possible to answer that without using some photography techno-babble, but I will do my best to explain it a little.  I’m going to re-post the picture, followed by what we call a pull-back shot, to show the setup.   DISCLAIMER:  I am not a product photographer, so I am not making any claims about industry-standard product photography practices.  This is just how I took this particular shot. 

Here’s the original picture:

And here’s the pull-back:

As you can see, it’s not a very sophisticated setup.  In fact, it’s just my dining room table.  Why did I pick this spot?  Well, you can’t completely see it from this picture, but this room has a lot of windows, which means a lot of available light, so I wouldn’t have to use a flash.  (On-camera flash is not your friend.)  Also, I thought the texture of the wood of the table would give the picture more visual interest and contrast with the white of the mug.  <shrug>  Just a personal choice.  I did have to take the reflective surface of the mug into consideration – and you can see that there is some glare, especially on the right side of the mug – but I really wasn’t too picky.   

When you look at the photograph of the mug, does it feel like you’re looking at it eye-to-eye?  That’s because you are.  I didn’t go stand over the mug and shoot down at it.  I got down on its level.

Looking at the metadata (the record of the camera’s settings for this file) I see that I had the ISO set to 800.  The ISO setting is the sensitivity to light.  The higher the number, the higher the sensitivity.  So outside in bright sunshine you can use ISO 100.  Most digital cameras will allow you to set this number when the camera is on manual.  I used my 28-70 mm lens at 50mm, with an aperture of 2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/125 secs.     

 

 

this is what i’m up against.

My youngest son, Riley, actually seems to be outgrowing some of his more trying behaviors.  He is warmer, friendlier, and simply less argumentative these days.  It’s been a nice transition, and we are all enjoying the feeling of not always living on the edge with him.  He is still overly dramatic about a lot of things, but it’s mostly just humorous now, like he’s doing a comedy routine.  Still, Riley has an innate orneriness about him that will no doubt keep life interesting for many years.  The picture below was taken by a friend of mine last night at a church function.  This is the power of photographs – the ability to freeze a moment.  I cuddled up next to him thinking that we were having such a great evening, and we were.  But just look at the expression on his face.  I can almost see the wheels of mischief turning.

tis the season…

…for turkey handprint crafts. 

Last November, with both boys going to a babysitter and both of them in school environments that emphasized a lot of arts and crafts, the number of turkey pictures that I collected got to be comical.  The babysitter and I started referring to them as my daily turkeys, and I had a turkey wall in my house where I hung them all up.  After a while, the boys started to get more inventive with their turkey handprint art, and one day Braden came home with a Star Wars-themed drawing, complete with a light saber duel.  I saved it, and will likely keep it forever; I thought I’d share it here.  If this doesn’t put you in the holiday spirit, nothing will.  =)

I present to you – “Jedi Turkeys”

would somebody please be afraid?

Here’s the problem with the remake of V as I see it.  Where’s the fear?  Where’s the horror?  Where’s the doubt and the sense of “oh my God.  We’re really not alone?”  To be fair, the one young male character did actually say, “my God,” when he first saw the ship, but he has quickly moved on to picking himself up an alien girlfriend.  Are we really so superficial that we will only fear aliens if they’re not attractive?  (Okay, probably yes to that, but still…)  It’s like they used the Jedi mind trick on the planet.  “We are of peace, always,” said the hot alien leader.  “Sweet,” said Earth.

Even the old-guy priest is simply way too accepting.  If we do encounter other intelligent life, I think my faith and view of humanity’s place in the universe will be rattled at least a little bit.  But the characters in the new V are just sort of continuing on with life – worrying about homework and careers.  Doesn’t anyone need a few days for a mental time-out to process the arrival of…hello….ALIENS???  

Yes, some people are protesting, but even that seems weird to me.  Don’t you have to assume that at least one of those ships is equipped with a DESTROY PLANET button, and that in the blink of an eye we could go the way of Alderaan.  I’m not sure I would have the stones to openly protest.

And the rebels that are emerging are far too competent to inspire enough doubt to make it interesting.  In the original V we had Marc Singer’s character, who seemed capable of nothing, plus Faye Grant’s Dr. Juliet Parrish, who emerged as a bright, caring, but eminently vulnerable leader.  Now we have a hard-nosed FBI agent who seems likely to be arresting her own son at any moment, a hot priest who’s good with his fists, and an alien traitor (who was revealed way too soon) who seems like he’s probably a bad-ass in his alien world.  And about the alien traitor – one can also assume that he knows what the V are up to, and yet he went ahead with his engagement to a human.  What the what??  Does he think she’ll never find out?  What if she gets pregnant and gives birth to a lizard-shaped hand puppet? 

Granted, I was much younger when the original mini-series V came out, but I remember being afraid for the characters…because *they* were afraid.  It was summed up best by the annoying teenage girl character who sat on a hillside with her arms clutched around her legs and said, “I don’t want to die a virgin.”  THAT’s the kind of fear I’m looking for in my alien invasion television series.  That sense of imminent doom.  The new series hasn’t evoked that emotion yet. 

I’ll keep watching of course, because I have no life and because there is the promise of a giant battle looming.  But I think it needs to get grittier and uglier fast.

takin’ a giraffe to the head.

My father made a comment on my post yesterday that I should start a comic strip called “Life with Riley.”  Riley is my younger, ornerier son, and the general concensus is that he is much like a cartoon character but in real life.  I have been working on a few cartoons that illustrate some of his shenanigans (ha!) that I wasn’t fast enough to catch on camera.  This is one that has been buried for a couple years.  Riley just saw it for the first time, and he loves it!  He had me make him a copy so he could color it.  This drawing has a lot of issues, of course (I’m strictly an amateur), but I like it because it is a very accurate snapshot of life in our household…”Life with Riley.”  =)

 

this should be good for a laugh.

The hard part about writing – for me at least – is that after a while it really makes my brain hurt.  I’ve learned a lot from other writers I’ve met, and one thing that many of them do to recharge their writing batteries is to take a time out and explore a different creative outlet.  I really don’t do that enough.  So yesterday, when a dreary, boring Tuesday was starting to wear me down, I decided to flex some different ‘artistic’ muscles.  I love to draw, although I don’t do it much and am not particularly good at it, but that’s okay because my drawings are for me. 

Lately I have been trying to get better at using my Wacom tablet and pen instead of a mouse.  I don’t know why.  I just challenge myself to do stuff sometimes.  Plus it will make photo editing easier, for the little bit of photography that I still do.  So I decided to combine my shaky tablet skills with my even shakier figure-drawing skills and see what would happen.  Mostly I was just trying to see if I could actually draw anything that resembled a human, which for me is particularly difficult if I don’t have a model to draw.  I’m not sure who this is supposed to be, although I think it looks a little like Tony Stark from Iron Man: Armored Adventures, but with Danny Phantom’s hair.  (And yes, I know I watch too many cartoons.)  At any rate, the process was fun, and I feel rejuvenated from the effort – maybe because I realize I should give up on art and get back to writing.  =)