Saucy Faucet

Hey kids... I am on Skype... finally. So if you want to chat, feel free to add me to your contacts.

Woohoo!

I am having a bummy day... except for one thing: I wrote an artist today, Paul Dipasquale, who spoke at my high school and really inspired me as a teenager. I wanted to tell him thank you-and he wrote back this evening, sending photos of his new work and asked to see some of my photography. How cool is that?

So I have been notified that some of my journals/entries in my blog on blogger are too long to comment on.

I'm cool with that.. the blogging is more for my pleasure than yours anyway.

:)

My stress about the editing is relieved a bit by the bride who is not wigging about the post production time. Of course, i could be doing that now instead of blogging!!

I am happy because WW is today and I think I'm doing just fine.. on target with my goals and normal size looms on the horizon! Woohoooooo!

After today til next week will be CRAZY CRAZY at work. People seem to like our style and business is growing--yeah!

Sadness about another white conservative male on the Supreme Court... but one of my best buddies was telling me last night to have faith that checks and balances will work and we wil be fine. I'm choosing to believe her. It's just easier than getting worked up... Oh! speaking of which... I need to call my congressman about a bill...

Something happy... hmmmm my college roommate is about to have a baby girl, Emily and Sam made it home safe from Alaska where they'd been vacationing, School starts soon in Alabama so the little cousins have been showing me backpacks and are excited about their new teachers and classes, summer rainstorms, kids in bikinis with big bellies, gummy baby grins, cats streched out in the sunshine, hugs from family, the smell of BBQ, the hiss of crickets, lightening bugs bouncing on the evening breeze, the smell of sunscreen and listening to the river... these things have all made me smile this week. Hope you are smiling too!

Yesterday I spent the day with Savannah... something I love to do. We hung out from 6:30 am til 9pm... On the drive home last night, I noticed a full moon which made me flash back to one of the most important moments in our lives... a moment when I was driving her home under a full moon.

She was four, I was twenty-four. He father was dying. We were driving home from Jackson hospital and she was crying. I think she wanted ice cream. Savannah was being coddled at the hospital by ladies from church who were bringing Savannah gifts and candy... I left Randall's room to check on her, and saw her running like a wild child, down the halls shoeless and no one was bothering to reign her in. I looked at the women who were supposed to be watching her in the waiting room.

"She needs to wear shoes." I said sharply.

One woman perked up, "Oh, honey, she doesn't *want* to!"

"I don't care what she wants! She's a child! This is a hospital, she needs shoes and she needs to not be running around causing a disturbance. Please stop bringing her gifts. Next week it will be really hard to return to normal if we let her behave any way she wants because we feel sorry for her."

I could tell the women in the waiting room thought I was mean, and being so direct is unusual in the South... maybe my word stung.. but it was the truth and they weren't doing her any favors.

I struggled to put Savannah's shoes on. My Mom came into the waiting room and said that they wanted me to take Savannah home.

Later, Mom told me it was the only way they knew I would get a break from the hospital, and they were right. I had spent the night before in Randall's room keeping an eye on him and I was tired and needed a shower. Randall's doctor called me the nurse manager because during the course of the week, I dictated more and more what the nurses were allowed to do. Randall was dying and checking his vitals had become increasingly painful and disruptive for him. I finally told them to stip it. Why are we checking his vitals anyway?? I grew to love one nurse who had served in Vietnam. Instead of administering morphine and then anti-nausea medicine, she gave it at the same time... no more dry heaving.. just pain relief.

Randall had moments of clarity and hours of drifting off into nothingness. He was sweet to everyone but really short with me. Once when we were alone in the room he looked at me.

"Help me up!"

I moved his upper body vertical.

"Swing my legs around!"

I did as he asked.

"I need to stand up!"

I thought this was a bad idea, but I helped him... He threw his arm around me and said, "Let's get out of here!"

"Randall, I can't walk you naked out of the hospital!"

He seemed defeated.. and in my head, I wish I could go back and say... OKAY! just like Big Fish... let the orderlies chase us down the hall... let someone else worry that I was doing the worng thing. I wish more than anything I could have done what he asked me.

Instead I helped him back into the last bed he'd ever lie in.

On the way home, Savannah was crying.. she wanted me to stop and get her ice cream.

"Savannah, if you need to cry, that's fine. If you're crying because you think it will change my mind about the ice cream, save your tears... it won't work."

She dried up moments later.

We sang and talked on the way home. As I tucked her into bed she said, "I'm just a little kid. I can't handle this."

Savannah was four.

"if you ever feel like it's too much to handle, just come get me and we'll take a walk... It will be okay, Savannah."

We said our prayers and as always she prayed as she still does today for God to "send angels to protect my family at night and give us all sweet sweet dreams."

The day before he died, as I was fixing something, his pillow or sheets or something he said to noone out loud..

"I love you."

"Who ya talking to?"

"You, wendy. I love you." He popped open one eye and looked at me

"I love you too."

The next day I was with him, counting his breaths per minute, listening to the rattle of phlem and air in his chest.

Aunt Debbie was holding one hand, and I was holding the other. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, he was gone.

I was stunned, "but, I just left for a second!"

Debbie looked at me, "Maybe he was just waiting for you to not be here, Wendy."

I didn't know what to do... so I reached down and gathered him in my arms and gave him a hard hug, something I hadn't been able to do in weeks because he'd been in so much pain. I don't remember too much fo what happened next, I just remember walking Savannah to the car, putting her in her booster seat and driving her home again... this time under a full moon.

When we got home we talked about death, the viewing and the funeral to come. We read "What's Heaven?" a really good book by Maria Shriver.

We picked out clothes for her father to wear.. a dark suit with Scooby Doo boxers and a Vegi-tales tie.

At the viewing Savannah touched Randall, checked out the casket and the rooms of flowers people had sent. Unlike my Grandpa.. who just looked like he was sleeping, Randall looked dead to me. He was always so full of life energy and movement that he moved in his sleep... to stare at him for minutes and see not a twitch.. made his body appear to be what it was... the cast off housing of a soulmate. Savannah turned to me, I was holding her up, as she'd requested, so she could get a look at her father... "You said they were going to put him in the ground!"

"That's tomorrow, honey."

"Oh.." Her face clouded. "I want to get down now."

I put her down and she ran off to play with her cousins.

"I love you, Randall" I said to myself, tears welling up, just the same now, as six years ago when all this happened.

Yesterday Savannah and I talked about her Dad as we sometimes do... she only remembers him in pictures and in the stories we've told.. I don't know if she has any real memories on her own about her Dad.

"If my Mom dies, do I get to come live with Aunt Lynn and Uncle Mike?"

"Yep."

"Will you still be there?"

"I hope not sweetie, I want to live by myself again!"

"Can I just come live with you?"

"Let's hope your Mom lives a long long time... but yes Savannah, like your Dad told me when I was a kid.. you can always come stay with me for as long as you like as long as you're not fighting with your parents!"

She smiled.

I promise the next blog will be a happy one.

Savannah is asleep on the couch next to me... We're going to go the 11:15 Am Willy Wonka, followed by Mellow Mushroom (one slice of cheese = 3 oz. slice= 3.5 points! The trick is... what the hell does a three ounce slice look like?)

I missed WW yesterday because I was working til 8:30PM... as they say here in the South, I am plum tuckered out. Savannah doesn't want to go to WW today, but I may make her go with me to get weighed anyway. (me, not her..)

I really should go back to bed.. I have been awake since 6: 30 AM waiting for Savannah's mom to drop her off, but I am wide awake.. so back to finishing photo work. I am astounded at how much post-production goes into jobs. People never think about that when they hire you. I hear people complain all the time that photography is too expensive. I remind them that just because you own a knife doesn't make you a surgeon... How come certain professionals just get paid more and some never enough... i.e. plumbers and mechanics have good hourly wages... but day-care professionals and teachers never really seem to be adequately compensated.

Is it wrong of me to longer do pro-bono photography? I always end up losing money on that type of thing. Maybe the new rule is if they are a legit charity, Tax ID number and everything then I will let myself do free stuff. Here's the thing... I love doing work for free, but I have to face the fact that at thirty... I've got to save some money. No one would ask a doctor to come over and remove a mole for free after work... right? Right? I'm not being very coherent.. I need more sleep.

I have so many New York stories, and I should really write them down...

One of my first is when I interviewed with Jack Reznicki, great guy and wonderful commercial photographer, (hired my friend for the job, who promptly quit...) wearing new shoes. I was already in pain by the time I got to the interview, but afterward I took a glance at the back of my ankles where the top of the shoes had cut deeply into my leg. Blood was pooling in my shoes and now that I had removed the shoes the prospect of putting them back on... unthinkable. I called Mom in Alabama.

"My new shoes are making my feet bleed!! What can I do?!?!"

"You come from a long line of people who go barefoot... take your shoes off!"

"I can't go barefoot in New York City!!"

"What's the difference? If you're in pain, take them off! You know better than to wear new shoes to something like that anyway!"

I took off the shoes and walked barefoot from SoHo up to Grand Central Station.

I always used to say you know you're doing something weird when you get the attention of New Yorkers. People stared. I was in a suit, with my portfolio under my arm, carrying dress shoes, bleeding down the back of my legs.

My new suit was SO uncomfortable. I moved to New York in July and the suit was lined polyester. (It's funny to think about that now... I think my style has changed so much since then. I moved to New York with THREE gingham dresses. At a fashion shoot months later, a stylist told me there's no reason for a grown woman to have three gingham dresses unless she's Dorothy in Oz.) People were always trying to make me over.. I never cared very much one way or the other... I did adopt a few rules after living in New York. I bascially toned my wardrobe down to solid longsleeves with jeans and boots for assisting... and got rid of all my Disney embroidered shirts, anything with a floral pattern, and bought a brown suede jacket with a silk scarf for winter.

I remember a stylist in Los Angeles telling me, "People don't want to touch fat people, so you have to make it a pleasant experience, wear soft touchable fabrics to make them like hugging you."

Whatta bitch! I remember thinking, people probably also don't like hugging your smoke-smellin, boney ass... so lay off the cancer sticks and eat a cheeseburger. What I say was..."Thanks!"

Amber, my buddy in crime in NYC, and I got flashed more than what seems reasonable on the subways... and our grossest experience was a guy who was coming on to Amber by LICKING the pole in the car, of an N train. LICKING the pole. First off, there's no way in hell she's kissing that nasty tounge... and was a guy seriously trying to turn an a girl by licking a pole? How does *that* work??

Thursday I picked up Aunt Jimmie Lou for her hair appointment and that reminded me of when I first came to New York and was still trying to settle in, she hooked me up with her granddaughter's boyfriend, a photographer in New York.

He was extremely flighty and hard to get a hold of, but when I did get in touch, he insisted that I come to see him RIGHT THEN. I was nervous about meeting this guy in his apartment in the meat packing district... (that just sounds ominous) so Kate, who was also job hunting, came along.

A frantic guy, with sunglasses perched on his head, tight jeans, barefoot and white shirt opened the door. "Who the hell is this girl?"

"My friend Kate came along."

"Don't ever bring anyone with you without telling me."

I'm already thinking, "Who does this guy think he is?" Although a better move would have been to have Kate wait at a cafe and call me on her cell, checking if I was okay in a few minutes- rather than coming up.. but whatever.

He was shooting some model on the roof and explained that we didn't have enough room for the two of us so we should both wait til he was done. He grabbed a large canon with a massive lens and took off.

We surveyed the scene. Most alarmingly, hypodermic needles* and cash lay all over the ground--with a smattering of contact sheets. All black & white, not that great. A photo of a much younger photographer hung on the wall... I just checked that photo is still on his website. He's about thirty years older than that now. Dirty dishes filled the sink and his portfolio was on the table. We breezed through it and I was arrogantly underwhelmed.

When he came back sans model, he said, "Look, I can make you sort of an intern... I need you to hang these signs all over Manhattan. It's sort of illegal, so they'll get torn down, so you'll need to redo it a lot. I can't pay you, but if the business picks up, I'll throw something your way."

He hands over a flyer whose slogan says "HedShots.com when you can't afford the 'a' "

What the hell?

I told him the other photogs I was interviewing with..

"How did you get interviews with them?"
"I called them up!"
"Can you get me in touch with any of those guys?"

I figured if he needs me, recent photo grad, to hook him up, I needed to aim higher.

By the way, the website is still up.. I never worked for him, but after 9.11 he published a book. He's done a lot of charity work to benefit the firemen... so the man can't be all that bad.

*he said the hypodermics were for vitamin shots.

It's fourish in the morning and I am up because we're having an AWESOME lightening storm. When I was in college I bought a CD called "Thundering Rainstorm." The idea was that I could play it in my dorm room and convince myself that it was raining outside and thusly, I should stay inside and study. This was a really stupid idea, as I never could achieve.. would you call that... suspension of disbelief? It's the same idea as setting your clock fast. You *know* it's fast, so you always know the real time. You gotta get someone else to set the clock so you're not sure!

I got up because the thunder and lightening have been over the house for a good half hour now... and I figured it would be a good idea to see if the storm was spinning off any tornados. We have a local tornado siren that is audible inside the house, but The Weather Channel is just so much fun anyway. Do you instinctively count when you see the flash? oneonethousand, twoonethousand, threeonethousand... to see how far away the storm is? Everything is under five one thousand and there are a lot of FLASH! oneoneth-CRACK!! BOOM!!

It's cool to sit here on my laptop, unplugged without worrying about power surges. I remember in the old days as soon as it looked like rain we had to unplug the computer. Now I can check and see what the storm is doing!

A-HA!

see... we just got a "significant weather alert." What *is* that?

this thunderstorm is not a drill

the orange alert bar on the weather channel tells me that the primary threat from the storm is flooding and that we've got two inches of rain in the last hour, and this is expected to hold up for another hour. I wish I had a motion camera so I could take a clip and podcast it. Of course... everyone's seen this before. It's like a movie storm where there's constant lightening and the bad guy hits the glass really hard, lit by the lightening, bloody, screaming the girl's name...

"Let me in!"

If any of my neighbors reading this actually do it, I'm not responsible for acting like the Southern girl I am and grabbing Daddy's shotgun and giving you one chance to move on to someone else's house.

Consider yourself warned... I'm going back to bed.

Packed into a narrow bus, tourists holding with one arm the straps from the ceiling as they swayed and rocked, I felt the flutter in my stomach as strongly as the summer sun on my back... My Dad was smiling broadly, my brother had his "concerned" look and Mom looked over saying brightly, "You know, it's not too late to turn back!"

Months earlier, I had applied to be an exchange student with a program called Congress-Bundestag. A post-war effort to increase relations between Germany and the US, each country sends one student per government representative to spend a year in country... living with a foreign family and attending school.

I was desperate to get out my new High School in Richmond Virginia, where I had only two friends and no hope of fitting in. I had always wanted to be an exchange student since I was six years old and met Perjo from Finland. My parents said that being an exchange student was fine as long as they didn't have to pay for it, so I was delighted when I found out about the CB Program, which is a full-scholarship. I spent weeks crafting my essays and getting all the paperwork in order. When I finished the inches thick packet and get it ready to mail, my Mom, who hadn't been excited at all about her daughter leaving for a year, volunteered to take it to the post office. It's funny the tiny little things that change your world. For me, informing my Mom that they send postcard to let you know they recieved the application was one of those pivitol points. My Mom was going to throw the application away. She had no intention of letting me go. When she heard that they confirm reciepts, she knew I was good as gone.

At the interview stage, I confidently defended US foreign policy as a world leader. I explained that we're speading freedom and justice for all, everything you would expect from an American girl who was a military brat and grew up in the mid eighties watching films like "Top Gun" and "Russkies."

A interviewer (there was a panel of eight people doing the interviews) asked me pointedly "Do you know what ethnocentrism means?"

"No sir, I don't." I said without batting an eyelash.

When I went downstairs to the waiting room, on a college campus, I scouted around and got a dictionary.

Ethnocentrism: 1. Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group.


At this point, I thought I'd blown it.

On the way out of the interview area, I saw one of the panelists going to his car.

"I know what ethnocentrism means now."

He stopped and smiled, for some reason in my memory he has a bagel in one hand, and his keys in the other, he said kindly, "Sometimes, people who think they know it all have the most to learn."

Weeks later, I saw a thick envelope from CB and knew... I was on my way!

Back on the bus, I looked over at Mom and rolled my eyes, "MOM! I'm going!"

"You have no idea of what can happen to you! Aren't you scared?"

"Mom, I know what can happen to me, what better plane to blow up than one full of peace loving exchange students?"

My mother blanched and looked at Dad, who put his arm around her. Mom's tears puddled up in her eyes. I tried to not feel guilty for saying the terrorism comment, but I was thinking of Pan Am flight 103 that was bombed by terrorists and crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland killing 259 people. We were also in Dulles which is wherein Die Hard, Bruce Willis fights all those nasty terrorists.

"Mom, sometimes you just have to be brave." I knew that what I was saying wasn't really helping, so I decided to shut up and look out the window.

As we checked the bags and got into line I gave quick hugs to the family and joined the other exchange students to board the plane.

My brother told me later it took about an hour to wrench my grief-stricken mother out of Dulles.

At that moment, standing in line, waiting to hand over my passport and ticket... I was scared and exhilarated, feeling for the first time that I was embarking on a great adventure, alone. I was remembering that moment this week... it was such a turning point... a moment that set everything else in motion.

Just checking out buzznet's new blogging feature.

I usually compose these awesome blog entries on the way to work and by the time i get home I am too exhausted to type them up.. This is why I think podcasting rocks...

I am in a funk because my Rebel is sick.. and has to be sent to the Canon mothership for some repairs... I guess I shouldn't complain since I have had it since 2003 and shot around 40 images a day with it...

I will still miss my baby!