• 15 minute posts,  coffee!coffee!coffee!,  Slow News Day,  the dogs

    Ball. Ball. Ball.

    spreckles-5

    You know what this whole “blogging daily” experience has taught me? That I don’t need to blog every day. I know. Sad but true. Hear me out.

    Before I tried this, I was making myself feel so guilty for not blogging everyday. I thought that if I just put the effort in I could have a booming website.  I would beat myself up daily for being such a failure and not even trying. Meanwhile, days and days would go by and this site would get dustier and dustier. BUT! While it was getting dustier I was focusing on other things, like working-out every day or writing books or creating really unique photoshoots for my clients or walking my damn dogs all over the planet. (I do a lot of dog walking…)

    I decided to shut that inner nagging voice up with this blogging-everyday exercise and guess what I figured out?!! I suck at blogging every day! I actually don’t have that much that is interesting to say! Who knew?!! (Probably everyone.)

    Maybe it’s okay not to blog every day. I mean, how much can I ramble and be entertaining? Not that much! Sure, I was entertaining back in the day when there weren’t a million bloggers creating amazing content but now there are and here I am just blowing raspberries into the wind. I have my loyal buddies (Hello guys! I love you!) who love every single sentence I ever write but you gotta admit I wasn’t really showing up with my A-game. Sigh.

    So I might call it off. I know you understand. I think I’m just going to keep doing what I was doing and showing up here when I actually have something interesting to share. But maybe at least try to show up once a week. Even a week round-up post could be fun. Like a list or something.

    All of this is very navel-gazing and meta. So let’s move on to more important things:

    spreckles-4

    SPRECKLES! Having three dogs has pushed us over the limit of sane dog owners. It’s a circus around here. Have you ever tried petting three jealous dogs at the same time? You have to use two hands and a foot. And if you don’t, one dog will paw at you with her extremely long dog toenails and give you bruises on your legs. The other will bark so loudly it will wake up the whole house and the other will jump up on your lap, lick your nose OR worse, growl at the other dogs, which can be a little scary.

    I know it’s my own fault for spoiling them rotten with petting sessions but I can’t not spoil them! My heart doesn’t work the way a disciplinarian’s should. (Have you seen my kid?) I am the pied piper of the dogs. They follow me everywhere because they know I’m a sucker with a big, fat softie-dog-loving heart. I can be counted on to give them snacks, play with them and have three-limbed petting sessions at all hours of the day.

    I try to play ball with Spreckles, because she is the crazy ball-loving type, but the other dogs do not play ball and insist on interrupting our games rudely. It’s mayhem.

    spreckles-3

    How could you ignore that face?

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    Here, Mom, I haz ball. You can haz ball.

    spreckles-1

    See ball. It there. Stop all this drinking coffee and focus on ball. I has razor focus on ball.

    Ball. Ball. Ball.

  • 15 minute posts

    Big Fat Worrier

    golden-hour-coffee

    Sometimes I catch golden hour. This shot is from yesterday. I’m shooting a coffee product for a client so I get to take pictures of myself drinking coffee and sell them. Win, win! It’s not this easy but it’s not that hard either.

    Yesterday was pretty uneventful. The biggest thing that happened was Bug wore a politically charged t-shirt to school. It was a gift from her dad. I was so worried that she’d get labeled something controversial. That her teachers might pull her aside or worse put something in her file. I worried needlessly. She told me I was more of a problem in my uneducated worrying than her shirt could ever be. “It’s just middle school, mom.” she said. “Most kids don’t even know what you are talking about.” Apparently she’s right because nothing happened except me worrying.

    I had to come to see her after school was over to buy her a new violin string. She broke a string while tuning her violin in class. The school is super nice and replaced it for free but I had to show up. There she was standing on the front lawn of her school, chatting away with her orchestra teacher while wearing that shirt. No one said anything. No one even looked at me funny. I guess I’m just a big fat chicken worrier!

    But what else is new? We all knew that.

    I’m still working on painting my baby shark costumes. It’s coming along, slowly. I’ve been procrastinating on the space costumes and the photoshoot is looming. I hope I can pull it off. I need to sew a cat head and I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I’ll figure something out. I’ve been pondering it constantly. I think I do my most intense work while in the shower. Nothing like warm water running down your back to put you in a deeply thoughtful mood.

    I’ve also been working on my puzzle. More than I should. Payam always rolls his eyes when I complain about not having enough time to get anything done but I’m willing to waste twenty minutes looking for pieces to match up. I don’t know what to say. It’s therapy maybe? It is very calming to sit and work on a puzzle. I work on it while I wait for paint to dry.

    Yesterday while I was puzzling, Joon offered to make dinner. She wasn’t too keen on what I had planned to cook so she took it into her own hands to make her favorite: Spaghetti Tahdig. It’s kind of awesome having kids this age who will just up and cook dinner or bake a cake if they feel like it.

    Peace out!