Photo-Off Challenge: Eyes

The eyes are the windows of the soul, goes the adage -- and lucky me, my preferred models (Uno, Dos, and Tres) all have lovely eyes to photograph. Uno's have become a beautiful deep brown; Dos's are a rich green; Tres's eyes are dark bright blue. And they all lucked out with their father's long out-to-here dark eyelashes. Not that I'm at all biased or anything, but geez, I've got some beautiful children. :-)

Anyway! So I tried to capture some of this crazy beauty for my Photo-Off challenge. I sat them each down next to a lamp in an otherwise darkened room (more dramatic that way, you see) with a ghetto reflector in their laps (cardboard covered with reflective silver duct tape) to make up for the light that didn't quite make it to the far side of their faces. I took a few shots and then noticed that the side closest to the lamp was getting waaaay too blown out; the light was so bright on that side that the camera didn't register any detail but whiteness. So I used another of my ghetto, DIY tricks: I draped a piece of tulle over the lamp to diffuse the light.

Dos loved the look of the tulle and wanted to try it on herself. I acquiesced. Imagine my surprise when the best photo of the bunch -- in my opinion, the one that draws you most to her eyes and is most emotionally evocative -- turned out to be one in which her face is veiled. Huh!


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So there you have it. Mary, your next challenge is Landscape -- whether that means a horizontal photo, one without people, or something really naturey is up to you, of course. Have fun! :-)


~RCH~

No more things after this, I swear!

Even if I don't get to 25, I promise this is the last of the evil Facebook meme! If I'm sick of it by now, I'm sure you are too.

18. I've never been a big Kid Rock fan, but I like him even less after last year's ubiquitous single, "All Summer Long." Every time I heard its opening notes (practically any time I turned on the radio) I'd get excited, thinking I was about to hear Warren Zevon sing "The Werewolves of London" (from which ASL samples). But no. Instead of Lon Cheney walking with the Queen -- his hair perrrrfect! -- I'd get tired clichés about drinking beer out at the lake. Boo. No thank you.

19. I don't believe in the Estrogen Conspiracy -- you know, the world view which holds that women are catty and/or manipulative and want to tear each other down. That perspective never even occurred to me (who grew up with 5 sisters, who always had female friends, who attended a women's college -- which is to say, I've got a fairly large sample of women from which to draw my conclusions) until my early 20s when a female colleague confessed she preferred working with men because they didn't "play games." Games? Like Scrabble? I had no idea what she meant. I've heard the same sentiment expressed since then from other people, and still I think it's hooey. Yes, I've had the occasional problem with women, but also with men; overall, the women I've known have been much more about building each other up and supporting each other than about playing weirdo head games. And that's why I'm all about the sisterhood, baby.

20. My favorite guilty fast food pleasure is McDonald's french fries dipped in their sweet and sour sauce (technically intended for their chicken nuggets). The flavors blend perfectly together -- but only at Old McDonald's! I've tried the same combination at Burger King and elsewhere and have always been disappointed and/or disgusted. Go figure. (And go try some.)

21. I am incredibly gullible. I'd make a terrible police officer; when the detectives question suspects on [insert tv crime procedural here], I always believe their stories and think, "Phew, then he couldn't have done it." And then of course it turns out that the suspect (*gasp!*) lied, and he really is guilty, and don't I feel like a schmuck? The other day one of my children stole my wallet out of my purse. Tres had a rock solid alibi, so I interrogated the other two: Both looked me straight in the eye and very convincingly denied any knowledge of the crime. I knew one of them was lying, but I had no idea which one. Shouldn't parents be able to tell? Shouldn't I be able to outsmart a four and a six-year-old? (It was easier when they blamed things on sharks.) I did eventually discover the culprit after telling them that we could never go anywhere ever again because my drivers license was in the missing wallet. "Hmmm," Dos said. "I'm just going to think: If I were a wallet, where would I be?" And then -- magically -- it turned up in the very first place she looked: Under the couch in the basement. But without her suspicious flash of inspiration and based only on my questioning of them, I'd never have known which kid took it in the first place. :-p

22. I think I'm a bit of a prosopagnosiac -- probably not to any diagnosable degree, but I do have trouble recognizing or remembering faces (which, along with other factors like my inability to remember names, contributes to a general social awkwardness -- yay me, lol). I've probably always been this way, but the first time I remember feeling frustrated by it was in the 5th grade: Two girls in my class were approximately the same height and had the same shade of brown hair and, unless they were standing side by side, I could never remember which one was which. I saw them five days a week from September to May or June and was no better at distinguishing them by the end of the school year than I had been at the beginning. I'm sure if I had gotten to know either of them better, I'd be able to tell them apart; I recognize my friends and family with no problems. But acquaintances? Even frequently encountered acquaintances? Yeeps. The info just doesn't register or stick.

23. It is now time to get the girls from school, so I hereby conclude my 25 Random Things About Me list at number 23. Tough luck.


~RCH~

The stories

Uno wants to know the stories of my youth. "Tell me about when you were a baby," she asked me last night. I told her I didn't remember much of being a baby because I was so little at the time. I like that she's asking, though. I've always loved hearing stories of my parents' lives:

About how, growing up in California, my mom used to babysit for celebrities (Grizzly Adams, for one, and a neighbor who won a game show -- Queen for a Day -- because her life was the most pitifully sad among that day's group of contestants). About her first kiss, behind the San Gabriel JB's Big Boy hamburger place, with a guy who swore his dad worked for the CIA and/or wrote famous pop songs. About her college semester abroad in Salzburg, Austria and her travels all over Europe -- about the time she and a friend accidentally got locked in a museum when it closed for the afternoon siesta. About the letter she wrote home to her mother when she met the man she'd eventually marry: "He's nice, but he's sure not Jim" (her other boyfriend, lol).

Or about my dad's childhood in Oregon and Idaho -- how he nearly drowned in a creek as a toddler, but at the critical moment his brother grabbed him by the toe, thinking he was a fish, and pulled him out of the water. Or that his family lived without indoor plumbing until he was 10 years old (that was 1959, folks -- doesn't that seem kind of late?). Or how he raised his hand in school once, so proud to know the answer to a difficult science question because one of his older brothers had told him all about it, only to find out that his brother was a big fat liar, lol. Or about how my dad, the most conscientious and responsible man I know, rammed the Dairy Queen delivery truck straight into the brick wall of the Nampa Dairy Queen (mistaking Drive for Reverse, apparently) at his first after-school job.

And not just my parents, but the ones before them: The apocryphal tale of my mom's mom meeting her dad as a Navy nurse during WWII (my grandpa was in the Navy, but my grandma was not; they actually met in college after the war). The true story of my dad's mom upstaging her sister's wedding and how the two of them didn't speak for something like 20 years after. A great great grandmother who, on one of her first evenings as a servant in a fancy house, accidentally spilled hot gravy on Lady So-and-So (who, the gggma recalled in her memoirs, was very gracious about the whole thing, phew).

"So tell me about when you were in first grade," my future first grader asked me.

I told her about how I was among three winners (Bobby Thompson was another, and I can't remember the third) of a reading contest. I didn't read the most books, but I read the most pages. Our prize was to go to dinner and a movie with our teacher (I'm sure that wouldn't be allowed anymore -- crazy liability issues there). I wanted to see Savannah Smiles, but the others had already seen it so they chose that movie about an East German family escaping to the West in a hot air balloon (which seems like a weird choice for six-year-olds, but whatever) instead. They let me choose the restaurant: Annabelle's. I'd been there once with my dad; it was the fanciest place I knew. I wore a new blue dress, and promptly stained it with a squirt from a cherry tomato.

I told her about how I had the best handwriting my teacher had ever seen. My lines were perfectly straight, the short ones not too tall, the tall ones not too short. My rounded letters were perfectly rounded. Everyone fawned over my beautiful letters, their proportion and spacing. Instead of As, Bs, and Cs, we were graded on a 1-3 scale (with one being equivalent to an A); I earned an unprecedented 1+ in penmanship.

I told her about having hula hoop races with my friends Jenny Gardner and Sarah Thornell at recess. We used to stand them up and race down the field, spurring the hoops along with us, in our very own Hula Hoop Olympics. ("We did that once in gym!" Uno said.)

I have lots more stories to tell Uno. Some day (when she's older) she'll hear the story of my first kiss; of my adventures in Europe as an unaccompanied minor and how I missed my flight home, leaving poor 16yo me stranded in London all by myself with £20 to my name; of my life as the lone Mormon (or student from west of Tennessee, for that matter) at a Presbyterian women's college in North Carolina; of my swinging single days in Kansas City and the heady days of courtship with their sexy Southern-accented father (at which the girls will roll their eyes or stick out their tongues, I'm sure).

We'll keep telling the tales and some day the girls will have their own to add to mine and DH's, to my parents' and his parents', when they share stories with their own children. :-)


~RCH~

Photo-Off Challenge: Taking a stab at the surreal

When Mary issued me her challenge -- things are not always as they seem -- a surrealist portrait immediately crystallized in my mind. I had the key ingredients already and picked up the rest over the weekend at a thrift store.

This shot is almost what I had in mind -- but it was cold and the animals had little patience for posing.


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If I'd had more time, I would have switched the tiger and bear.... The light was coming in from the left side of the frame, which meant that the white whiskers were getting blown out more often than not and the brown of the bear's fur was getting lost in shadow. If I had made them switch places, I think we could have balanced out that problem. Oh well. Live and learn.

Here's another one from that shoot. Simple girl-boy cross dressing, especially in our modern world, is hardly enough to qualify for the theme of this challenge, but I like it anyway. I'm having fun post-processing it (and will probably post that result on my plog later, if anyone cares).


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Which brings us now to my actual submission for this week's Photo-Off Challenge! I took this shot this morning. The pose isn't at all what I pictured when I began, but I like it better than what I pictured. Uno the Bear looks like she means business, lol, and the wide angle lens (which I used on all of these instead of my customary 85mm prime) distorts the size of the head / snout in just the right way. I could wish away the clutter in the lower left corner, but overall I'm very happy with my results. :-)


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On the off chance that I didn't get anything workable from my animals-in-suits idea, I did troll the web a bit for inspiration. Check out this link for a fabulous collection of optical illusions and trick photography.

Mary, your next challenge is ... Beauty in Chaos! Have fun with it. :-)


~RCH~

Odd conversation overheard

UNO: Stop kissing Tres!
DOS: She likes it! She wants me to!
UNO: But I'm your husband and we're on a date. I demand you to stop kissing another woman!
DOS: This is not a fun date.


~RCH~

12. I am the Grim Reaper of Vacuums

Continuing the 25 Random Things meme again (some day I'll finish, I promise).

12. In the eight years I've been married, I've gone through something like five vacuum cleaners. I can't seem to keep them operational. We've bought cheapy off-brands (because we were poor) and supposed brand leaders (you can use Hoover as a verb; you'd think the product would last longer than a summer). Some vacuums' belts have broken with nearly every use. Some get clogged and overheat too easily. Some have worked great for a while, lulling me into a false sense of security, before suddenly letting out a grinding shriek and collapsing in a puff of acrid smoke. I won't ask for brand recommendations, as I've already broken almost every brand, but I am open to advice! Anyone familiar with zen and the art of vacuum cleaner maintenance? Is there some specific prayer or incantation I should utter before each use? How often should I be cleaning out the brushes and/or hoses? How often do most people go through belts? Am I a hopeless cause? (If you saw the general state of my housekeeping, you would say yes. Without even considering the vacuum question.)

13. DH has rubbed off on me: I've become weirdly superstitious since knowing him. On one of our first dates, a black cat crossed the road in front of us and he drew in a sharp breath. "Bad luck," he muttered. I thought he was kidding. The man -- having spent 14 years in higher education (longer than his public school career, from preschool through high school, geez) -- is clearly over-educated; surely he knows enough not to worry about black cats or ladders or broken mirrors.... Yeah, not so much. He's got all sorts of random superstitions passed down from his old-world grandfather. And now lately I find myself wary of the number 13 and warning the girls about opening umbrellas indoors. I feel compelled to eat at least one bite of cake at all celebratory events (well, that one isn't so much a superstition as a love of cake, but you get the idea). It's all his fault, I tell you.

14. The non-committal filler phrase if you will ("Tres reminds me of a monkey -- a diapered baby chimpanzee, if you will") always makes me want to ask, "What if I won't?"

15. I used to love having leg waxing parties with my sisters, because there is no better way to bond than by simultaneously ripping off your leg hairs together, your screams mingling melodiously with the screams of three or four others. (I know we had at least one hold out -- *cough*AnnaJo*cough* -- and possibly two. I don't remember whether or not Becca ever waxed with us.) Those days may be long gone, but I recently purchased the Braun 5270 epilator system and it is freaking awesome. It yanks out those leg hairs as quick as can be, with no mercy whatsoever, and it hurts -- oh my goodness, it kills! -- but in such a good way. Even better is going over the same bit of skin a day or two later to catch the new growth and noticing how much less it hurts because there are fewer hairs to pull. Soon my legs will be smooth like buttah for a month or more at a time! I love it! I'm up for a party, seesters! Who's with me?

16. I have four empty Diet Dr. Pepper cans and a large bag of Reece's Pieces sitting on my desk. I don't even really like Reece's that much (I have an on-again, off-again relationship with peanut butter) but I have them because they are one type of chocolate candy that the girls will not steal from me. I don't eat them very often; it'll probably take me a few months to get through the bag. Of course in that time I will accumulate many, many more Diet Dr. Pepper cans (which I will hopefully clear off the desk more promptly so as not to highlight my soda pop gluttony).

17. I have an occasionally recurring dream that I am enrolled in a math class I never attend. I've been to it once or twice, then decided it was not worth my time. In the dream, a test or the end of the semester (some kind of important deadline) is coming up and I realize that it's been so long since I attended, I don't even know which classroom it's in or who teaches it. Gripped by very slight panic, I wonder if maybe I should find those things out. But then I shrug -- eh, whatever -- and figure I'll just accept the consequences that come of my absence. It's not a nightmare so much as a repeated reminder of my lack of ambition. And/or my dislike of math.

Time to put the girlies to bed. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of 25 things about me! :-)


~RCH~