Wrangling Chaos, also known as Shooting the 2009 Holiday Card Photos
Pandemonium was the order of the day, in my quest to shoot the photo for this year’s holiday card.
I’d originally planned to take the kids up to the mountains and pose them knee-deep in the snow, with snow-covered trees all around and the golden glow of a setting December sun tinting the air.
But as the day dragged on and everything took 40 million times longer than I even thought possible (showers, gathering appropriate clothing, charging up of teenager iPods, food, hair brushing, hair curling, more food…) I realized we had to move to Plan B.
Problem was, I didn’t really have a Plan B.
Fortunately, my mom works at the Santa Fe Institute, a very beautiful place that’s generally empty on weekends. The kids can run around, there are great props (red couches!) and snacks in the kitchen. So as the hands on the clock approached 2:30 pm and we were still milling about with the kids’ new Goodwill finds for the pictures and Mira was still touching up the big HAPPY HOLIDAYS! banner, I decided to trade knee-deep snow (and the heightened chaos associated with being in the frigid woods as the sun set) for general comfort.
We drove up to SFI with my mom, moved the red couch outside, and followed the mayhem around until I scored a good shot…and got all four kids looking at the camera!
Jumping jacks help stave off shivering….
Chiara channels Elvis, or something…
Graysen charges about with his middle fingers crossed…not sure what’s up with that.
Ummmm….Graysen?
No comment.
Gray being…Gray.
Gray being Gray again…and no, he’s not upset, just freaking out after enjoying a mini candy bar from the stash in the kitchen.
Le piece de resistance, aka a pretty good pic of all four of them. Like herding cats, I tell ya…sometimes it’s harder to get the OLDER ones to behave!
Following the final shot and bringing the couch back inside, the kids began to climb the walls before it was time to head home.
This poor woman. She has no idea what a huge effect she had on my crappy day.
I teach a weekly Photoshop class at Warehouse 21 here in Santa Fe, and have fun helping kids learn how to do various and sundry things with PS like cut pro wrestlers out of photos and paste them in midair over the Himalayas (that was three weeks ago) or…tweak the facades of unsuspecting musicians whose pictures happen to get posted on Morgue File (a free photo website and fabulous resource for Photoshop teachers like moi).
But before I go into that, I need to detail a long overdue THANKS…to the invisible bunch who organized, and just disassembled, the New Mexico Free Press. Up until Tuesday at about 5 pm, I was the Art Director for this “community” paper. The title had become a bit of a misnomer–in August I opted out of full-time employee status and became a contractor during heavy production days. I stopped writing my column for them a couple of weeks later, and tapered off doing photography and any other writing. Why? I just couldn’t deal with what the paper had become (but, uh, still needed the money thanks to those rather ravenous and lovely kids I have living in my house).
I was hired in January 2008 to help build what was supposed to be a positive community newspaper. I was encouraged to bring all my skills and passion to the table. The clouds in the masthead? Those are mine, shot a couple of years ago on a daytrip to Wagon Mound with my mom. Through this position I could be creative for 35 hours per week and get paid pretty well for it to boot. I was given free rein to write a column documenting various adventures in my life as a mother of four (all the backstory is in this blog, of course…every single installment I wrote) and was also given the opportunity to be a journalist. I developed story ideas and wrote them up. Covered various events, conducted interviews, went on assignment as “PRESS.” It was exhilarating, and I grew to love journalism more deeply than I thought possible.
Thus, I want to thank those invisible people for that opportunity.
Along the way, however, I came to realize I had become planted in some sort of brave new world. While the publisher danced around the truth about the founders’ intent for the paper, especially when talking to the employees (namely me), the pages grew slowly more conservative–generally following board meetings. One afternoon, I pointed out a problem I had with one of the Viewpoints pages–that we were repeatedly running super-conservative Cal Thomas on the top of the right-hand opinion page while alternating weekly, below his vampiric visage, the more moderate perspectives of Leonard Pitts and Mary Sanchez. I asserted that it amounted to tokenism, smacked of white privilege (not the only instance) and was, in any case, a terribly inaccurate reflection of the community in which we were publishing.
I got shouted down. Literally. Shouting occurred (and yeah, I participated, mostly before a long crying jag in the bathroom followed by cranking Green Day on my iPod at my desk and angrily wondering wtf I was doing working in such a place).
That was only the beginning.
Eventually, Leonard Pitts got a little too excited about Obama, so he was removed from the editorial calendar. Mary Sanchez dissed Palin, and she became columnist-non-grata. The Viewpoints pages became suddenly very white and very male.
Things pretty much regressed from there, and I came to understand that essentially, my worldview clashed entirely with their worldview. They simply were not complementary at all, and yet…
I needed a job.
Further, even in my most miserable moments (more often than not) I felt like it was silly to just give up because our beliefs and attitudes differed.
So, I set out to bring what balance I could to the pages. I did my best to photograph and write about my hometown–the real Santa Fe that the rest of the Free Pressers had no clue about (I can’t count how many times I corrected pronunciation of Spanish names in that office…and spellings in the pages of our paper). I also did what I could to learn what I could about the issues that moved me. I researched climate change like crazy, when I found out that everyone else (with one exception) didn’t believe it was anthropogenic. I wrote two stories about it….and did what I could to bring some truth to the pages. It was something that had to be finessed, lest it be censored, and I strove to keep my opinion out of it (the hallmark of good journalism in any case).
I was happy with how they turned out. (Click to my coverage of a screening of “The Great Global Warming Swindle“…and a feature on an energy breakthrough at MIT.)
In September of last year I insisted on covering Obama’s visit to Espanola, and was beside myself while I was crouched down in the press pen, camera in hand. Though only a pullback crowd shot was published along with a short cutline, it was worth it…partly for the experience, partly for the fact that they really really didn’t want me to go.
“I’d cover McCain’s visit here too, if he ever comes,” I told them. “This is news, for crying out loud.”
But it wasn’t their news.
The entire experience with the Free Press was all at once disheartening and uplifting…frustrating and delightful. Life-changing and…depressing as shit. Really really depressing as shit.
But I owe a huge thanks, again to the invisible ones, for challenging me and holding my assumptions about the world up in my face so that I may get to understand them better, and not take my beliefs for granted. In doing so, I grew. Thank you all for that.
Thank you as well for the repeated opportunity to practice dealing with difficult people. I am forever stronger for that experience.
And finally, thank you for paying me for my time and effort to design and produce your paper. The paychecks helped greatly in my efforts to feed and clothe four members of the newest generation of super liberals.
As I’ve said before and will say one last time…just once more. Onward.
But about that musician….
You see, this fall has been a real downer. A real serious string of depressing and downright sad events. From the disappearance of our friend Mel, to the sudden death of another,…from the end of a very short, but delectable, era…to this newest of news, the end of a longer one. And so many things in the spaces between.
Mostly, it’s all been too much. My perspective has waned.
But this morning, I saw a raven delightedly playing with a Lotaburger bag. It was so cold and icy, the sun shattering the morning edged in snow….and I smiled. Yeah, so many things have sucked lately but sometimes, you turn your head and there’s something amazingly perfect right there waiting to be seen. The raven being dragged down by the fast food bag. Or, last night, the moon rising through scudding golden clouds into the blackest of skies. Life is so beautiful when I stop and just look.
It’s also fun. When asked by one of my Photoshop students if I could help him create a zombie, I sat down to walk him through the process…and found even more of my smile and optimism along the way.
So thanks as well to you, anonymous harpist on the internet. Zombifying your smiling face was ultimately the highlight of my day.
I didn’t want to get up this morning. The world is blanketed in gray clouds, the air still and frigid. I was wrapped up in technicolor dreams about searching for something and helping my sister give birth…does this mean I will be there for her son’s birth in January?
But I reluctantly rose, gently woke the kids, downed my first cup of hot coffee made by Chris…he’s a good husband. Brings me coffee in bed and just asked, as I sit here and write, if I want another. I love him.
We must get moving. The kids go to Albuquerque today to stay with their dad until Tuesday morning. But before the frenetic energy of leaving overtakes us, I thought I’d capture a couple of scenes from what began as a Slow Sunday.
Graysen watches Chiara play “Moshi Monsters” on my old Mac laptop. This game is the newest rage with the littles…
Chiara demonstrates singular focus as she plays Moshi Monsters….
Yep…that’s pretty much how I feel too.
Okay, time to get this day under way. Second cup of coffee just arrived and it’s shower time.
T is not for our homemade cranberry orange sauce, made this year by Soren, Mira, Chiara, and Graysen…
T is not for potatoes or caramel apple bars (or pumpkin pie, which the girls begged for and nobody else likes…).
T is not for the beef roast or salmon we enjoyed with friends from Hungary, Korea, and Vietnam.
(In the pic, clockwise from lower right: Graysen, Chiara, Soren, Bence [Hungary], Chris, Hye-Jin [Korea], Bela [Hungary], Kwon [Vietnam], Mira, and my mom.)
T is sorta for “Take my picture!” but then again, so is “m” and so is “p.”
T is really for Turkey-free Thanksgiving and….TEQUILA. Which gave me an even better coma than tryptophan.
The end.
This magpie tried to elude my lens one apres ski afternoon a couple of winters ago. I caught him though, and called the print “Exit Stage Right.”
Since Friday the 13th, I’ve felt like exiting. Stage right or left, don’t care which. Up down inside outside…I’ve been tossed and turned by the universe. Barely able to come up for a breath.
Tumbleweeds kicked into full gear, and I very quickly became chained to my laptop to make design sense of 48 blank pages.
My Friday food shooting gig was suddenly canceled indefinitely due to lack of funds.
A friend of mine from high school passed away suddenly.
Along the way, other stuff started piling up….
Chiara needs glasses (and we don’t have vision insurance).
My car started vibrating at about 60 mph on the highway, and now needs about $700 of work on the shocks and struts.
Chris’s car needs about $300 of work so that he can once again have heat.
The mortgage is overdue. Again.
Right now, I am sitting near a gentle fire, watching the moon through the living room curtains begin its descent through the blackened sky. All is quiet, the kids asleep. I want to write…I haven’t worked on my NaNoWriMo novel in two weeks or so, and am woefully behind.
But my wrist burns from so many days of solid designing without a break.
I need to find my center again. Need to stop looking around for that exit.
I took Graysen to his first break dance class last night at which a few things happened:
1. He was warmly greeted by the super cool instructor with the giant Zia symbol tattoo.
2. He was given personal attention as he attempted the various stretches and moves.
3. He was encouraged to freestyle in the center of the circle of dancers, as the music pounded.
4. He was cheered on when he launched fearlessly into the spotlight to spin and jump around to his own interpretation of the beat.
5. He stubbed his toe.
6. He decided to “give up.”
In the 45 minutes that he was happily involved, he was soaking everything up like the little sponge he is. He was delighting in the individual attention, paying close attention to how the instructors were moving their bodies, and practicing on the sidelines in quieter moments. He grinned and waved at me from across the room several times, and was deeply focused on the proceedings.
Then, everything turned upside down, and not in the way Gray would have liked.
He was champing at the bit to jump in the circle of dancers a second time, and when the opportunity opened up…there he was. Break dancing his little heart out and attempting a variety of handstand moves.
But after he was done, he walked over to me and put his arms around my neck. Suddenly my big break dancing boy was my baby again. He then carefully but clearly articulated himself.
“I’m giving up,” he said.
“Giving up?” I asked, incredulous. “Why??”
“I hurt my toe.” He flopped down in the chair next to me, and proceeded to stare somewhat sadly out at the people on the dance floor.
The sadness morphed into crabbiness after we left. The crabbiness to anger.
“And the guy kept punching me!” Graysen exclaimed as we drove away.
“Punching you??” I asked, again incredulous. I’d been watching the whole time. There was never any punching.
Turns out, Gray was referring to the encouraging “fist bumps” the instructors gave him when he tried something new. This is not a foreign concept to Graysen – he fist bumps his uncles happily all the time. I mused that maybe they just did it a little too hard, but Gray was convinced. They were punching him.
Much later, the truth started to leak out.
The instructors were incredibly strong young men – fantastic role models for the kids they were working with (for free, mind you), and very good break dancers to boot.
Turns out, they were too good.
The guy with the Zia tattoo could spin on his head very very well. The other guy, the one in the picture above helping Gray with a move, could stand on one hand and hop.
And Graysen, the silly little sponge, was taking it all in and feeling inadequate.
“I can’t do those things,” he told me later, his jaw set in outright anger.
And no amount of reasoning about practice, or the fact that none of those guys could do those things when they were 5 either, got through. Gray was done. Is done.
The words I’m quitting. I’m giving up. I’m never going back there ever again… fell from his lips repeatedly over the course of the evening (a mantra which was punctuated by temper tantrums and insinuations that I am mean…for…whatever).
Finding an appropriate response was challenging for me. I tried the reasoning approach, as I mentioned….and that fell on stubborn little ears. Fail.
I tried just listening and reflecting…. but the fire in his little self raged on. At one point, annoyed by the vehemence with which he was processing his sudden abhorrence for break dancing, I made some flip comment.
“Fine, quit. Give up. Who cares…” or something like that, all the while realizing that though he might be a “quitter” in terms of formal break dance classes, but he doesn’t let an upset like this go without a significant battle.
The sarcastic approach hurt more than helped. His little face fell, and guilt crept into my heart.
I centered myself and changed my tactics. I held my big little boy on my lap, and hugged him. Reminded myself that he’s a little guy locked in a battle with this big, confusing world…and that he’s very very competitive.
Right now, given his age, his competitive streak seems to be running toward saving face when he can’t do something to the level of the people he admires.
He’d rather angrily give up than let himself dwell in vulnerability.
I hope this isn’t the last time he attempts break dancing. I do see that he has a natural talent for stuff like that.
But I also told him, with great compassion, that I wouldn’t make him go back if he didn’t want to. It was his choice.
This morning, he woke up cheerfully and gave me a big hug. Then, as I was looking through the cabinets for some sort of breakfast item, he said Mom, look!
He wove his fingers together and raised them over his head, then lowered them in front of his body and looked at me with a smile in his eyes.
“Remember this?” he asked.
I nodded – it was one of the first moves the break dance instructor showed him.
“And then you do this, remember?” I asked, showing him the next step. He followed right along.
The moment was brief and no further mention was made of the previous night’s upset. But he was smiling. Something sank in…something was being processed.
Now, all there is to do is wait and see where that process leads. With this kid, you just never know.
Above is a tryptich of photos showing the light table setup that has been provided for me to use for my food shooting gig. The shot on the right is an example of what something looks straight outta the camera, before I go and remove the noise, brighten the grays, etc. etc….
I am no expert on lighting setups (prefer natural light, which has been hard to come by in this shooting location), and use this to the best of my personal ability. I have colorful paper I can put beneath the glass to change up the look, but am finding that I have a lot of photoshopping to do because of glare.
I’d like suggestions about how to better set this up…I think I can buy some not so ’spensive equipment and would like to maximize my shooting quality and minimize my Photoshopping. Maybe something to diffuse the light a bit? Another couple of lights?
Please leave a comment with any suggestions, all will be gladly received!
Soren contemplates his cooking skills while a dinner of desperation steams in the wok. Graysen snuck a “Go Diego Go” yogurt out of the fridge as I was serving up his food….next attempt at sanity, a prepped menu plan thing called Relish…
Main Entry: arsenic hour
Part of Speech: n
Definition: the time of day when both children and parents have come home but dinner has not yet been served, seen as being difficult due to everyone being tired and hungry.
Example: ‘Arsenic hour’ was first used as a play on the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Children’s Hour.”
Around these parts, you can set your watch by it.
It’s the Arsenic Hour….that weird limbo time of day when it feels like the volume of everything has been cranked. It’s when children all talk at the same time about the same thing they did in school that day and the day before and the day before that. It’s when tears come easily over such things as “girl songs” on the stereo rather than “boy songs.” It’s when pencils are most likely to break over homework. When small girls are most likely to recall playground spats with overwhelming sadness.
Of course, it’s also the time when I am most needed, and the time when I am least able to deal with being needed.
Last night, when it became clear that the Arsenic Hour would be particularly suffocating, I did the only thing that made any sense: I spiked my Odwalla and started pulling random foodstuffs out of the fridge.
Leftover bacon-wrapped chicken breasts (’cause bacon makes everything better)…the five-pound bag of organic carrots Chris didn’t feel like we’d need (I am the queen of overkill, after all)….a piece of rather shriveled ginger….many cloves of garlic….
I put some Basmati rice on, taking way too much time to read the directions (my cooking ineptitude rearing its head here…you’d think I could remember how to cook rice after all these years of cooking…rice.)
Not knowing what else to do right then, except stare at various ingredients that refused to tell me what meal they should all be, I asked Soren to unload the dishwasher. When he was done, I decided to chop carrots. Whilst chopping carrots I mulled over what to do with the carrots once chopped. I decided against cooking them in a pound of butter and leaned toward throwing them into the wok along with the garlic and ginger. These things I did, all the while swilling my Vodkadwalla and fielding three different attempts at conversation, not including the one Mira tried to initiate with me via Facebook chat from the other side of the room. I have this habit of cooking while catching up on Facebook and email, you see.
Through all of this, the kids were in and out of my space–a level of chaos with which I am all too familiar. Chiara was absolutely wasting away from hunger, and couldn’t wait another second. Upon hearing how famished his sister was, Graysen chimed in that he must have a snack. He simply must. Soren started to get pissy, which of course made me even more pissy than I already was, and so he and I got all passive aggressive with each other. On top of it all, the dog was pacing, her nails clickclickclicking on the wood floor until my head started to buzz.
But despite the commotion, the carrots started to smell good. Inspired by a modicum of food success I cut up the leftover chicken and threw it in too. A short while later I tossed in the rice, then decided to add two eggs and a little soy sauce.
Soy sauce makes everything better. Mostly.
Then I implored Mira to quit feeding her virtual goldfish and help me set the table. I sarcastically asked Soren whether he’d rather escort his particularly fidgety little brother to the bathroom, for chrissakes, or cook dinner, since I am only one person and can’t be in two places at the same time. Dangitall.
Then I had to fend him off when he chose dinner prep over shadowing his brother to the potty for the third time that night. He called my bluff, then acerbically insisted that he knows how to cook.
“I mean more than just Ramen,” I said, watching him push food around the wok in such a way as to insure that it would burn all to hell on the bottom … or spill over the sides to smoke on the stovetop.
“I can cook more than Ramen!” he insisted.
“Oh, really?” I queried, skeptical. I was envisioning him as a bachelor, while simultaneously trying not to envision him as a bachelor.
“Yeah,” he said, condescendingly. “I can cook pasta too. And…toast.”
Meanwhile, Graysen was hopping around grabbing himself. Mira was asking whether we needed forks. Soren was, by then, ignoring everything but some monologue he was making to nobody in particular. And Chiara was slowly melting from hunger and exhaustion.
“Take your brother to the bathroom, Soren.NOW. Please. Go.” I stuttered. Mira, get forks. Chiara, sit down, dinner’s ready…
Ten minutes later, a relative peace settled. Finally.
Because everything’s better with dinner.
At least until it’s time for homework.
In the interest of saving my sanity and making dinnertime a little better for us all, I signed up to give this a try. I have my first week of recipes and a grocery list here…but no time either today or tomorrow for shopping so…perhaps tonight I’ll have Soren make pasta. And toast.
This is what writer’s block at 2,851 words looks like on a Monday night….
It’s the end of day 2 of NaNoWriMo and I have a million thoughts swirling through my head … few of which have to do with the story I’m working on for the writing marathon.
I need 1000 more words for my story tonight. Instead I’m here. Blogging.
And I’m starting to think that this is all just a silly excuse to take a picture of my laptop and vodka tonic, (which really are so pretty by candlelight!) and write about writer’s block.
Or more precisely, ramble about writer’s block.
Which is still writing, right?
Coincidentally, my friend Yves just emailed me the following perfect illustration of how he’s feeling about this NaNoWriMo stuff. I sheepishly admit, as I watch my “predicted word count” ticker at the bottom of my Firefox drop slowly toward 40k–far, far from the goal of 50k–that I am right there along with him.
Hmmmm…interesting….this post now comprises 161 words. Back to it. Dammit.
And if not, there’s always more vodka in the freezer.
177.
If pictures are worth 1000 words, here are 4000 to start off this first post for November:
The cast of characters for this year:
Mira as a dead prom queen
Chiara as a dead Dorothy
Graysen as a….werewolf with a rainbow afro ‘do…?
Neda, Mira’s friend (behind Gray) as a disco star (Gray is covering up her fabulous sequined shirt)
Soren as the candy hander outer cause he is apparently done dressing up…he deigned to don this flower headband and hold the skull all Hamlet like for this picture. Good son…
Chris dug out the old lady wig and glasses and trooped with the kids through the neighborhood so I could stay inside, stay warm, and drink red wine. Good husband….
After trick-or-treating, candy trading went on for over an hour.
I was glad to say goodbye to Halloween–it isn’t my personal fave. I was traumatized in 7th grade when I went as a suitcase and all my classmates at school found it hysterical to punch the cardboard box I thought would be such a clever hiding place. Fortunately, Chris enjoys Halloween.
With the close of Halloween, two wonderfully awesome things happened. 1. we fell back, and gained an hour thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time. And…2. NaNoWriMo started up.
After the sugar wore off and the kids were off to bed, I curled up with my laptop, an idea that has been festering for over ten years, and a new inspiration: write a novel in 30 days. Quantity, not quality is what counts in NaNoWriMo….
As the first day of this writing marathon draws to a close, I have 1886 words written. Only 48,114 to go to “win.”
Best get back to it….
