Due to an annoying lack of internet connection on the train this blog is being posted from Colorado Springs after being written in word.
Hah! So there Derek! My spirit of adventure is not to be taken lightly! I will not be thwarted! Even as I type, I am whisking…well, more like trundling slowly really, towards Colorado Springs on the 10:39 pm California Zephyr Amtrak, bound for points west. My beloved daughter and granddaughters have declared it long past time for a visit from Nana and I have agreed. The other day on the phone Eden, who is 2 ½ going on 16 asked me if we could have a webcam tea party this week and while I thought this was a lovely idea, I so preferred the thought of a real, in person tea party that I jumped the train and will be in Denver tomorrow morning at 7:30 am. I like traveling by train. People just don’t know what they’re missing. The seats are wider with considerably more leg room than airplanes and you can get up and wander around any time you want without a single sky marshal sizing you up or tackling you in the isle. Not that this has ever happened to me…really. The only downside to the California Zephyr, Omaha to Denver run is that it is always in the middle of the night. 10:39 is actually just a very loose number that they use as a place mark for the real departure time which is never before 11:30 pm. I don’t why they don’t just admit that the train will not be leaving until 11:30, but they don’t. The really interesting thing is that somewhere between Omaha and Denver there is obviously a worm hole because no matter what time the train actually leaves here, it will invariably arrive in Denver at the exact time originally stated on the schedule. This is proof that people in Nebraska are far less punctual than our Coloradan neighbors.
Anyway, I’ve derailed already (I thought you might appreciate the train pun). My point was that though the trip is always accomplished in the middle of the night, I don’t really mind it. Though I love riding the train through the countryside in daylight, seeing pastoral scenery and quaint towns whizz past, the truth is none of these things exist between here and Denver. It is easily the most boring stretch of country anywhere in the United States…well…except Texas…the whole state. Truckers traveling this stretch of countryside have been known to gnaw their own arms off just to keep from being driven mad by the truly boring scenery.
No, what I really enjoy about this night ride is the train itself. There is a rhythmic lull that is incredibly peaceful. It’s like Zen travel. The gentle rocking motion of the train lulls you into a peaceful tranquility. Late at night, the train is dark and quiet…okay, quiet except for the guy snoring raucously in the seat in front of me, waking occasionally just long enough to hock up a good spit wad. He is not quiet. I would like to suggest he seek a doctor’s referral for a sleep study as I’m certain he has sleep apnea. And before I get back to my blissful Zen train ride, can I just mention that the guy in the seat across from me is sleeping half on and half off his seat in an extremely uncomfortable looking position and has carried the ‘half on/half off’ theme all the way to his trousers, which are literally bunched up around his knees. Yes…I mean his knees! And I don’t mean from the bottom. I mean from the top. The waistband. IT’S AROUND HIS KNEES! Praise be, he is wearing boxers, but his trousers themselves are literally off his butt and around his knees. I am officially appalled. I’ve put up with the baggy trousers look for 11 years. Since we first moved back to the states from England as a matter of fact and I’m done. I’m ticked off and I’m not going to take it anymore. I have decided just this moment that whenever I see someone who’s pants are about to fall off I’m going to help them along. Just drop ‘em to the ground right then and there. The pants, not the person. I will probably be arrested and sent to jail for doing it, but at least there, they make everyone wear jumpsuits that completely cover your backside! Where was I? Something about Zen and peaceful quiet. Thanks guy in seat 57 B. The Zen has left the building. Okay. Once I have the picture of his tush hanging out into the isle out of my head and the other guy as stopped coughing stuff up, I will be back to explain about the peace and Zen of train travel. In the meantime I am going to watch a movie so that I can stifle the urge to pull this guys pants off.
Its 3:30 in the morning and the impossible has happened. Snoring guy is fast asleep and quiet. I’ll assume he’s still live, and boxer guy…well, I’m just not looking in that direction. I have finally achieved that train Zen that I began to soliloquize about earlier in my journey. Gazing out the window into the inky dark only yields the occasional light pinpoints of civilization off in the distance. The train sways and bounces along the tracks gently. The sounds are soft and muted and the sound of ours and other train whistles are like a lullaby. It feels like I’m in a library and should be whispering, but it doesn’t matter because it’s already silent. I have slept comfortably for three and a half hours which is about two thirds of my normal night’s sleep anyway. I am excited to see Samantha and Mark and the girls in a few hours. Today Eden has a dentist appointment, but tomorrow we will have a very grand tea party, just Mantha and Eden and Autumn and I.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
A burning in my bosom...no really.
It's been several days since my last entry. I would like to tell you that it's because I've been busy climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or something equally adventurous, but in truth it's because I haven't had anything particularly interesting to write about. My husband tells me that this is perfectly normal. He swears to me that there are people who go for days...even weeks at a time leading singularly uneventful lives and that they are actually okay with it. I say that's nonsense. I actually think that every day is packed with new adventures and insights. It's just that some adventures are more...well, adventurous than others. My adventures this week have centered around getting past pain and trying to learn to deal with my most annoying limitations. I hurt! My neck hurts, my back hurts, my elbow hurts (they say I have golfers elbow which is ridiculous because I don't golf), my shoulder hurts, my knee hurts. My chiropractor said that I have tendinitis. Everywhere. The doctor has suggested that I might have fibromyalgia. This is nonsense. I refuse to have that. It would be entirely too inconvenient. Derek says that I push myself too hard and then I pay the price for the next several days. I say if you give in to pain, it gets the better of you. Okay, there MIGHT be some wiggle room in there for a reasonable level of caution and sensibility. I just haven't found it yet. So my week has been spent trying to find that fine line between reasonable care and total capitulation. I'm not having much success. I thought I was, but Derek tells me that painting the kitchen and steam cleaning the carpets does not fall in line with the concept of "taking it easy". I think he's being unreasonable.
In light of my inability to stand straight without collapsing into a spasming heap, I have instead, taken to reading about adventures instead of living them. I've just finished reading a book called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. As it turns out, if you are prone to accidents, have dyslexia and are ADHD, the chances are good that one of your parents was a Greek God, thereby making you a Demi-God. Apparently the dyslexia is because your brain is actually wired for ancient Greek, so English is a bit confusing The ADHD is because you are, by heritage, a warrior and therefore find the average classroom a bit boring. That explains so much about my childhood! It's true that I don't actually have dyslexia, but the other two are a given, so I still think I have a good shot at being a demi-God.
Do you see what I've been reduced too by my enforced inactivity?? I have tried to make the best of an inactive week, but Derek insists that the definition of an inactive week does not include doing four photo shoots, photo editing, cleaning the carpets, painting the kitchen and cleaning the entire house. I say it does. There was so much more that I wanted to get done!
Anyway, after a very shaky start, today was fully redeemed because I got to go back to Crystal Forge and do some more glass blowing. This time Derek came with me to take pictures and cheer me on. Ed (the owner) had to leave for a while, leaving me to my own devices. This was good for me because it gave me a little time to just refresh my memory and fiddle around a bit. My first endeavor was a nice little paperweight. It promised to be quite lovely until I dropped in on the ground while putting it into the aneeler. It didn't shatter into a million pieces, so I'm going to take that as a good sign and wait 'til tomorrow to see whether it survived. My second project was another little oil lamp that started out quit nice and then suddenly deflated like a flat tire. At that point Ed came back and started working with me on a medium sized vase. The interesting thing about vases, or really any vessel, is that it takes a lot closer contact than a paperweight or a small oil lamp. You have to get your jacks right into the opening of the vessel in order to shape and expand it. Everything was going fine at first and then Ed instructed me to to start jacking the opening. I leaned in to position my jacks and started slowly opening them to broaden the mouth of the vase. I quickly realized that something was not quite right. Though I was definitely not actually touching the rod or the glass (I checked) my right breast was heating up uncomfortably. My hand was quite warm too, but not unbearably so. My breast was definitely the real problem. Ed, my instructor, has been doing glass blowing for over thirty years and I'm convinced he lost all feeling in his extremities a couple of decades ago because he seems completely un-phased by the heat. I couldn't figure out how he managed to lean over his projects and not jump off the bench from the pain. My breast felt like it was on fire. I arched my back upward , trying to pull my chest a few centimeters further from the glass before I spontaneously combusted. Now, some women have to ability to arch their backs and create a concave chest sort of a thing. I am just not one of them. My chest will never be concave. Ever. It got so bad I actually reached up with my left hand to cover my breast which, had I looked, would undoubtedly have been glowing as brightly as the forge. This was taking the phrase "a burning in my bosom" to a ludicrously literal level. It finally ocured to me that the reason Ed wasn't experiencing this discomfort was because Ed apparently doesn't wear a bra. I, however, do and this bra was apparently a different fabric than what I was wearing the last time because the fabric felt like it was ready to melt. In my instructors defense, he does always recommend that people wear only cotton shirts because synthetics do react badly to fire, but in my defense, he never mentioned bras! After finishing my vase mere seconds before my breast actually ignited, I fell back to a new plan wherein my breast would NOT catch fire and swore to go buy a nice ugly, matronly cotton bra before I tried to make any more vases. I actually feel better about my near incineration because I think it firmly qualifies as an adventure, thereby redeeming my otherwise uneventful week.
In light of my inability to stand straight without collapsing into a spasming heap, I have instead, taken to reading about adventures instead of living them. I've just finished reading a book called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. As it turns out, if you are prone to accidents, have dyslexia and are ADHD, the chances are good that one of your parents was a Greek God, thereby making you a Demi-God. Apparently the dyslexia is because your brain is actually wired for ancient Greek, so English is a bit confusing The ADHD is because you are, by heritage, a warrior and therefore find the average classroom a bit boring. That explains so much about my childhood! It's true that I don't actually have dyslexia, but the other two are a given, so I still think I have a good shot at being a demi-God.
Do you see what I've been reduced too by my enforced inactivity?? I have tried to make the best of an inactive week, but Derek insists that the definition of an inactive week does not include doing four photo shoots, photo editing, cleaning the carpets, painting the kitchen and cleaning the entire house. I say it does. There was so much more that I wanted to get done!
Anyway, after a very shaky start, today was fully redeemed because I got to go back to Crystal Forge and do some more glass blowing. This time Derek came with me to take pictures and cheer me on. Ed (the owner) had to leave for a while, leaving me to my own devices. This was good for me because it gave me a little time to just refresh my memory and fiddle around a bit. My first endeavor was a nice little paperweight. It promised to be quite lovely until I dropped in on the ground while putting it into the aneeler. It didn't shatter into a million pieces, so I'm going to take that as a good sign and wait 'til tomorrow to see whether it survived. My second project was another little oil lamp that started out quit nice and then suddenly deflated like a flat tire. At that point Ed came back and started working with me on a medium sized vase. The interesting thing about vases, or really any vessel, is that it takes a lot closer contact than a paperweight or a small oil lamp. You have to get your jacks right into the opening of the vessel in order to shape and expand it. Everything was going fine at first and then Ed instructed me to to start jacking the opening. I leaned in to position my jacks and started slowly opening them to broaden the mouth of the vase. I quickly realized that something was not quite right. Though I was definitely not actually touching the rod or the glass (I checked) my right breast was heating up uncomfortably. My hand was quite warm too, but not unbearably so. My breast was definitely the real problem. Ed, my instructor, has been doing glass blowing for over thirty years and I'm convinced he lost all feeling in his extremities a couple of decades ago because he seems completely un-phased by the heat. I couldn't figure out how he managed to lean over his projects and not jump off the bench from the pain. My breast felt like it was on fire. I arched my back upward , trying to pull my chest a few centimeters further from the glass before I spontaneously combusted. Now, some women have to ability to arch their backs and create a concave chest sort of a thing. I am just not one of them. My chest will never be concave. Ever. It got so bad I actually reached up with my left hand to cover my breast which, had I looked, would undoubtedly have been glowing as brightly as the forge. This was taking the phrase "a burning in my bosom" to a ludicrously literal level. It finally ocured to me that the reason Ed wasn't experiencing this discomfort was because Ed apparently doesn't wear a bra. I, however, do and this bra was apparently a different fabric than what I was wearing the last time because the fabric felt like it was ready to melt. In my instructors defense, he does always recommend that people wear only cotton shirts because synthetics do react badly to fire, but in my defense, he never mentioned bras! After finishing my vase mere seconds before my breast actually ignited, I fell back to a new plan wherein my breast would NOT catch fire and swore to go buy a nice ugly, matronly cotton bra before I tried to make any more vases. I actually feel better about my near incineration because I think it firmly qualifies as an adventure, thereby redeeming my otherwise uneventful week.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
A peaceful end to a hectic day
It seems old habits die hard. Before I had even managed to pry my eyes open this morning, I lay in bed dreading the day...contemplating miserably all that I would have to accomplish and the hours that I would have to work, and then synapsis started firing and I remembered the awesome truth! I quit my job over a month ago effectively terminating my indentureship to corporate America! Don't get me wrong. Corporate America is very nice if you like that sort of thing, but it can be stifling for a right brained, bohemian such as myself (see previous entries for Bohemian references). I am now a self employed professional photographer, with all of the rights and privileges that come part and parcel with such an auspicious title, to include; creative freedom (as long as the client likes it), the ability to work whatever hours I chose (currently all of them...all 24), and I write my own paycheck (after business expenses, roughly the equivalent of minimum wage...in 1975). Okay, maybe it's not perfect but despite everything it's perfect for me! I want to hug Derek every morning for trudging off to that afforementioned corporate America so that I can indulge my creative whims.
Now even the mundane details of running a business seem interesting and fun. At least it's fun watching my sister Jeannie set up all the bookkeeping for me. The really fun part is watching her face get all red and flustered looking as she mutters dire epithets about my accounting skills under her breath. Hey, I'm a photographer, not an accountant.
So once I remembered my newly acquired status as a photographic entrepenuer my mood took a quick upswing. In fact the last vestiges of yesterdays menepausal meltdown even began to fade...unfortunately not before I downed half a bag of mini baby ruth bars, most of a box of rice krispie treats and a third of a box of Lucky charms as a midnight snack last night.
I jumped out of bed now, actually eager to begin my day. I send e-mails, edited photos, returned calls and did all manner of other things that business women do. Then it was off to an appointment at The Pain Clinic. I had been my original understanding that The Pain Clinic was a place of healing and compassion where men and women of science alleviate pain and suffering. I was quickly disabused of this faulty misimpression when Dr. Death grabbed two hypodermic syringes and uttered those infamous and horribly inaccurate words "You'll feel a little sting now". With wicked precision he jabbed the first syringe into my knotted right shoulder muscle, which apparently needed punishing for its sins. Oh sure, the needle was tiny, about the size of an insulin needle but when you fill even the tiniest syringe with acid a little needle is still going to pack a punch. He swears it was only an anesthetic and that there was no acid involved, but of course he's going to say that. Before I could get out more than a whimper he had plunged the other needle into my equally sinful left shoulder muscle. I would have taken him down but the sneakly little bugger was standing behind me, rendering my flailing feet ineffectual.
In Dr. Death's defense within minutes of the injections the rock hard muscles in my shoulders and neck that have tormented me for weeks, began to loosen and relax. I practically floated out of his office, more relaxed than I had been in ages. I had to stop at Westroads mall to look at the display wall for a shoot I'm currently working on, so I called Derek on my way to let him know how my appointment had gone. To my intense delight, he said he would tear himself away from his vendor filled schedule and meet me for lunch. You can't beat the little mid-day stolen moments. After a fantastic lunch I ran a couple of errands and headed home to find Jeannie involved in what, I'm fairly certain, was a voodoo ritual involving my expense receipts. I'm certain there was a chicken head hidden under the desk.
I talked to Samantha on the phone, who informed me that my beautiful eldest grandchild, Eden, had decided to run herself a bath. Please keep in mind that when I say eldest, I mean eldest of the four grandkids. It is really a relative term as she is still less than two and a half years old. Seems that Samantha, for lack of a better place, had temporarily dumped several loads of clean laundry into the bathtub to be folded and put away later in the day. Eden didn't seem at all bothered by the present of the pile of clean clothes and went ahead and started running her bathwater. Samantha suspected that something was up when Eden came in and the first words out of her mouth were "I love you mommy". Grandkids are the coolest. You get all of the cute, funny experiences and none of the cleanup.
In the evening we had a photoshoot. There I was getting to be all creative again. I just love that! A little time spent editing and here I am wrapping up a particularly creative, productive and wholly enjoyable day. Well, except the Dr. Death thing. But even that had a happy ending and now I will toddle off for a good nights sleep with my newly relaxed shoulders.
Now even the mundane details of running a business seem interesting and fun. At least it's fun watching my sister Jeannie set up all the bookkeeping for me. The really fun part is watching her face get all red and flustered looking as she mutters dire epithets about my accounting skills under her breath. Hey, I'm a photographer, not an accountant.
So once I remembered my newly acquired status as a photographic entrepenuer my mood took a quick upswing. In fact the last vestiges of yesterdays menepausal meltdown even began to fade...unfortunately not before I downed half a bag of mini baby ruth bars, most of a box of rice krispie treats and a third of a box of Lucky charms as a midnight snack last night.
I jumped out of bed now, actually eager to begin my day. I send e-mails, edited photos, returned calls and did all manner of other things that business women do. Then it was off to an appointment at The Pain Clinic. I had been my original understanding that The Pain Clinic was a place of healing and compassion where men and women of science alleviate pain and suffering. I was quickly disabused of this faulty misimpression when Dr. Death grabbed two hypodermic syringes and uttered those infamous and horribly inaccurate words "You'll feel a little sting now". With wicked precision he jabbed the first syringe into my knotted right shoulder muscle, which apparently needed punishing for its sins. Oh sure, the needle was tiny, about the size of an insulin needle but when you fill even the tiniest syringe with acid a little needle is still going to pack a punch. He swears it was only an anesthetic and that there was no acid involved, but of course he's going to say that. Before I could get out more than a whimper he had plunged the other needle into my equally sinful left shoulder muscle. I would have taken him down but the sneakly little bugger was standing behind me, rendering my flailing feet ineffectual.
In Dr. Death's defense within minutes of the injections the rock hard muscles in my shoulders and neck that have tormented me for weeks, began to loosen and relax. I practically floated out of his office, more relaxed than I had been in ages. I had to stop at Westroads mall to look at the display wall for a shoot I'm currently working on, so I called Derek on my way to let him know how my appointment had gone. To my intense delight, he said he would tear himself away from his vendor filled schedule and meet me for lunch. You can't beat the little mid-day stolen moments. After a fantastic lunch I ran a couple of errands and headed home to find Jeannie involved in what, I'm fairly certain, was a voodoo ritual involving my expense receipts. I'm certain there was a chicken head hidden under the desk.
I talked to Samantha on the phone, who informed me that my beautiful eldest grandchild, Eden, had decided to run herself a bath. Please keep in mind that when I say eldest, I mean eldest of the four grandkids. It is really a relative term as she is still less than two and a half years old. Seems that Samantha, for lack of a better place, had temporarily dumped several loads of clean laundry into the bathtub to be folded and put away later in the day. Eden didn't seem at all bothered by the present of the pile of clean clothes and went ahead and started running her bathwater. Samantha suspected that something was up when Eden came in and the first words out of her mouth were "I love you mommy". Grandkids are the coolest. You get all of the cute, funny experiences and none of the cleanup.
In the evening we had a photoshoot. There I was getting to be all creative again. I just love that! A little time spent editing and here I am wrapping up a particularly creative, productive and wholly enjoyable day. Well, except the Dr. Death thing. But even that had a happy ending and now I will toddle off for a good nights sleep with my newly relaxed shoulders.
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