i love reading through the previous hobby posts by my fellow o+u ladies. no surprise that we share so many similar likes in hobbies.
knitting. i too loved knitting, but i have come to realize what i really love is all the squishy delicious colorful yarn. the actual act of knitting left me a bit frustrated, and so my needles sit idle.
sewing. YES! i do love my little hand-me-down sewing machine and adequate sewing skills, but once the weather breaks (like now) it too collects a lot of dust. sewing is more of a winter thing for me.
biking.  this is on my to do list. i always loved bike riding, but for the past few years i have been bikeless. that is all about to change very soon. now that both my young ones are at the riding age momma needs a bike too!
gardening. sigh. we rent, this means no garden. because of this, i have been making a concerted effort on houseplants this past year. i am happy to report i have only killed one. 1 out of 6, i am calling that a win.

right now i have not been very active in a lot of hobbies except that last one jessica mentioned, reading. reading used to put me right to sleep. i am NOT joking. if i needed to fall asleep all i needed to do was crack open a book and goodnight world! i was out like a light. this went on for years.my husband is an avid reader and it made him sad that i just couldn’t get through a book. eventually i stopped trying. magazines i could do, but any big books i suddenly became a narcoleptic. last year i decided to try again. i was visiting the library more and more since both my kids became independent readers. they LOVE bringing home stacks of books. so i tried again, and i have no explanation as to why, but this time it stuck. now i get to catch up on SO many great books that most everyone else has read and re-read long before me. i even joined a bookclub in my neighborhood. non reader me! i like it because each month a new book is chosen by a different member of the club. this has exposed me to books i would never have picked for myself. plus we get to gather and have some wine, snacks and laughs. that’s always good.

some of my recent reads:

Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed (though i have to admit, i loved her memoir Wild even more)
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
The Bean Trees (another Kingsolver book)

i started, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, just last night.  already over 100 pages in.  LOVE it.

have you heard of Goodreads? i am probably the last one to know. i am forever the last one to the party. seems like the happening place for all book lovers. like i need another site to become a habit. LOL

most nights this is where you’ll find me, in bed, tucked in under my covers, with a book.

what are you reading these days?

“if we don’t change we don’t grow. if we don’t grow, we aren’t really living” -gail sheehy

i admit, i am a lover of routine. i snuggle up in predictability. there are many reasons why i think i have become this person, but really we do not have the time for that psychoanalysis in this post. 🙂
one thing is certain, change can be a difficult for me to embrace.

having kids provides an ever constant state of change. “in your face!”, “take that!”, kinds of changes that can be shocking to someone like me. they force me to face the discomfort of change without even trying.

they go from swaddled – to crawling – to running – to driving a car  in lightning speed.
they grow hair, inches, and new teeth seemingly overnight.

we are having that sort of big change right now. our youngest fell flat on her face at the age of one.  no hands to break the fall, instead her face stopped her fall and her little baby chicklet front tooth broke in 2.  the remaining piece eventually abscessed and needed to be pulled.  she has been our gap-toothed, pirate smile, girl for 6 years now.  that missing tooth has been a constant in our every day life. her gap toothed grin and wrinkled up nose was just so “her”. i knew eventually a big tooth would grow in and fill that hole we all came to love so much, but time kept passing and the gap remained.  a few weeks ago her gum became swollen, the tooth was coming. she walks around singing, “all i want for my birthday is my big front tooth.” (sung to the tune of “all i want for christmas is my 2 front teeth”)

this coming monday she turns 7. will she get her wish? …

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

right this moment,
same wrinkled up nose,
brand new tooth.
change.
BOOM.

happy soon-to-be-7 to my april fool baby, whose smile lights up my every day.

i’m a list maker. rather, i’m a to-do list maker. i would forget half of the things i need to get done in a day if i didn’t write them down.
however, i’ve never really sat down and made a list of my goals before. mental checklist, sure. pen and paper, not so much. i know that i am terrible at planning and working on that isn’t going to end up on any list of goals (it isn’t high on the priority list of things i’m concerned about with myself). so, when i learned that the topic for the month was going to be ‘goals’ i wasn’t sure what i would write about. i suppose that many of my goals aren’t that unusual or even interesting (be patient, eat healthier, get off my ass more, spend less time on social media, blah blah blah, et cetera).  but, i did come up with a few goals that might sit a little more comfortably under the title “notes to self”.

1. be more of a hard ass & less of a sissy.
i let things bother me when they shouldn’t. i internalize things (for long, far too long periods of time), this is a message to myself to stand up and have the courage to deal with things as they come at me.

2. trust myself.

lately i find my self second guessing everything i do and being in a state of constant doubt. the internalizing plays a big part in this, i’m sure. time for that shit to stop.

3. get organized.
just kidding. that’ll never happen.
some things in my life are just going to be a mess (like my closet and my desk). if those things get organized it means somewhere else more important things have fallen into serious disarray. i’m fine with this arrangement.

4. experiment more with photography.
i leveled off with my photography sometime last year. it’s time to shake things up, try new things,  step up my game and grow as a photographer. my goal with this years 365 is to come up with different ways to push/improve myself each month. whether it’s trying new edits, finding new subjects, using camera settings i’m not comfortable or familiar with or just giving myself a theme to work within.
also, repairing the shutter on this girl falls into the “experiment” category since i’ve never attempted to repair a camera on my own. internets, please be good to me with your how-to advice.

5. be someone who doesn’t take everything so seriously.

I’m not going to lie – I love Christmas. Here’s the thing though, I really only love it in July when I catch a glimpse of a Christmas scene in a movie and I think “I can’t wait for Christmas!” Cut to me in December and I’m left feeling like something is missing, and wondering how I can fix it.

On the outside we go all out. The lights are up, candles are in every window, the tree is trimmed. Hell, we’ve even been listening to Christmas music since the day after Thanksgiving. Every year I try a little something different- we’ll do our shopping early, we’ll do it late, we’ll get more decorations, we’ll hit all of the Christmas parties, we’ll stay home. Truth be told though, I know what’s missing, it’s magic.

We just returned from Disney World where we had a surprisingly good time. Seeing the world through a 5 year olds eye’s in a place like that is payoff for parents’ sleepless nights, struggles at dinner, and all-out battles at bedtime. I’m not altogether sure those payoffs outweigh the tradeoffs so I’m going to count them where I can get them.

The most poignant and memorable part of the whole trip was easily inside Belle’s castle. We had just finished watching Beauty and the Beast in the rental van and Wyatt was most excited to see the Beast’s castle. Inside, a talking mirror transformed into a door as we were “magically” transported to the castle. Behind us the voice of a girl no more than 7 exclaimed “Guess what? It IS real.” Those five words sound so simple but they were loaded with joy, and wonder, and a belief in the magic that doesn’t extend beyond childhood. I instantly teared up. That’s the elusive feeling of Christmas that no matter how hard I try, I just can’t access. It’s the magic.

The magic for a 5 year old being surrounded by his favorite characters.

The magic of being able to dance with Belle in her own castle.

The magic of watching a parade, and fireworks, and staying up past midnight, and waiting for Santa until you’re so exhausted you can’t stay awake any longer.

And it’s this magic that leaves me torn – do I feed into the belief in santa, filling the stocking and wrapping the gifts with different paper? Do I let him believe in magic knowing how fast it could, and one day will get ripped away? Knowing how small this window is for this kind of wonder do I encourage it? Or am I setting him up for a lifetime of Christmasses that no matter how hard he tries, just aren’t quite right?  How do you handle santa in your house, and how have you come to grips with it?

12/12/12 @12:12

a bedroom in maine

a kitchen in georgia.

a living room in Indiana

So me. About ME. My about me link has sat vacant for over a year now. I have clicked on that link and tried to write about me. And I am left tapping the keyboard. What do people REALLY want to know?

I am deathly afraid of sounding cliche. Or sappy.

So do people REALLY want to know who I am? Do you want to know that my one year old just emptied the trash can into the toilet? Or that that my son dumped an entire bag of pretzels in my car last week and I still haven’t cleaned it up? Or how about that I pulled the cleanest pair of dirty pants from my three year old’s hamper this morning. hmm…probably not.

I feel like I have to sell myself in my about me. And it has to be grand and spectacular. I have to tell you how great I am at catching that “moment”. And how I have this undying love affair with my camera. When it’s not about that. Really it’s not. I mean I love my camera but really I am in love with the people I photograph. When I was a senior in high school I had a girl tell me I was “nosy”. Well you know what, I am. I want to be all up on your business with my camera. Like one of my favorite photographers Erika Ray says, “Lifestyle photography is like classy reality tv.” I think she’s right.

So again I am left tapping the keyboard. What do people want to know?

by jess lewis

with a ginormous thank you to laura  –  for the inspiration, the friendship, and for essentially holding my hand and giving me courage while i gave street shooting a try. i wish we could do this together every single day.

When we figured out this month was all about women, I was thrilled. “I’ve got this” I thought. I’ve crafted a half a dozen posts in my head and wondered how in the hell I would ever narrow it down. I figured the words would be pouring out- celebrating our power, lamenting the ways we fail to claim it, demanding that we do better. As the time got closer for me to actually write I came up with at least a half a dozen different topics- breastfeeding and wage gaps, and feminism, and having it all, and the war on women. Cue to me sitting in front of the computer in the final hour, with so much to say I’m silent.

The truth of the matter is this. There is SO much to celebrate about being women. Despite the many (many) ways we are oppressed, I’d still argue that we get more space on the gender continuum to be both masculine and feminine. Don’t believe me? Try sending a boy to school in a dress. I love being a woman, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I will say this- ladies, we need to get our shit together.

Every semester I get the chance to teach young women about feminism and gender stereotyping, and underrepresentation in politics, women’s representation in media, the list goes on and on. And every semester I get blank stares, and papers stating we’re all equal now (hooray!). It’s a tough sell to them to make them feel oppressed which in its own way is good, I suppose. I remember what it’s like to be 18, 19…feeling like I could take on the world, and nothing, not even my gender, was a barrier to that. The only problem with that is that it takes away the fight, and we NEED the fight, desperately.

 
Instead the fight all goes toward each other. We’re back here bickering about who’s mom enough, and meanwhile women are earning $.77 on the dollar for men. I don’t know how exactly, but I vow to take up that fight just a little more. When I was pregnant in both instances I wanted a girl so that I could teach her how to take on the world, but more and more I’m realizing it’s equally important to raise men who appreciate and expect that strength and fire in women. In this way I do my feminist work every day, but today I’ll try a little harder- for us, for them.