It’s been a minute since I posted anything, but I’ve been busy, y’all.

Not busy doing much posing, though. This is from last month’s shoot.

First, I am still working on my website and getting my business together, and yeah I know, I really need to get a move on with it. Every day I get a little bit closer to opening up shop, and every day I feel a little bit less resistant to the idea. There are so many unknowns, and I’m just old enough to feel a touch more threatened than excited by them, but in the end I can at least say I gave it a try. So, there’s that. Plus, I have been fighting the temptation to continue to think about work on ‘school time,’ since that is one of the benefits of venturing out on my own instead of going back into a traditional classroom, so the rebellious part of me purposely wants to keep vacation going for a few more weeks, even though teachers here have already returned to work and the students will be going back soon. Not the smartest business move, probably, but it is helping me to break free of that old structure that ended up not working out for me and to appreciate the benefits of doing things the way I am now. Either that or I am a procrastinator working too hard to justify it to myself. Moving on.

At least I sound good on (virtual) paper

Also, since I came back from my second trip to the Villa de Matel’s retreat center (the actual center is called Ruah, but I generally just refer to it by the convent name) I’ve been wanting to edit a lot more photos of the place so I could share them here, and that’s been slow going, but I think I have enough to give a decent representation of it now, even though I still don’t have as many photos edited as I would like. This entails processing photos that are less artsy and more representative than what I usually work with, so my motivation has been a little low, but I’ve done my best to still have some fun with even fairly straightforward shots that mainly exist to simply show what a room or balcony looks like. I am going to write a different blog post to share those photos, though, as I’d like to focus solely on the convent when I show them.

Plotting her world takeover

Third – and I addressed this briefly in my last, almost picture-free blog post – about three weeks ago we got a kitten, and well, she’s a kitten, y’all. Which means at various times throughout the day she is a nightmare. And one of my favorite times to write blog posts and edit photos is in the evening, sometimes moving into nighttime, and this happens to be one of Violet’s most INSANE parts of her day. She will sleep all day and then, around 9 PM, she wakes up and goes berserk – so I guess we can take that term nightmare literally.

Violet is hard to photograph – she moves as soon as she sees a camera, and she is so jet-black that with her eyes closed, she’s just a blob in photos

As soon as I get going editing photos she’s all over the place, including my desk where I work, knocking over water bottles and stepping on the computer keys and trying to eat every single cord she can find – you know, the usual. Not to mention terrorizing our other animals (who take it in stride, and Simon for the most part has adopted her as his own) and managing to crawl into the strangest of places and get stuck there. Oh, and she also had coccidia when she came to us, and in spite of my best efforts to keep Simon from getting it too, it happened.

In sickness and in health, apparently

I am not kidding about my efforts either; I would clean out a litterbox as soon as it was ‘used,’ I had each cat’s litterbox in a separate room, completely cleaned out and replaced the litter and wiped the boxes down with Clorox every 2 days, you name it – only to walk into the den and find Simon happily LICKING VIOLET’S REAR END. Great. I was told the best way to stop the spread of it was to keep the two cats separate, but for ten days? Simon was practically scratching his way through the door of the room where I tried to isolate Violet, so that just wasn’t going to happen.

Also – about two weeks ago I filmed at least five wig review videos, mostly of fun little inexpensive shorties. When I went to edit the first one, I realized that the slightly darker shade of foundation I’d bought to compensate for the sun my face has gotten from spending time in the pool did not blend well at all with the DermaBlend foundation I use to cover the sun damage on my neck (which I didn’t think to replace with a darker shade), and when I turn to show the profile of the wig there is a HUGE LINE around my jawline that looks ridiculous. Argh! And I look like this is at least FIVE VIDEOS! And of course, since they’re all shorties it is painfully obvious. Eventually I will suck it up and post them anyway, because I really don’t want to re-do them, but it still pains me to see it now, so I’m still putting it off.

NICE.

I did get a Jon Renau Diane last week and a Georgia by Noriko in Champagne-R, but filming is on hold for the moment as I focus on my new business and our new kitten (I can’t imagine trying to film or pose for photos right now with Violet, and by extension all the other pets, going nuts). I’ll get around to it soon enough.

Oh and one more thing: I am American, so I feel the need to say this – Donald Trump is a narcissistic, ignorant, overblown human Cheeto who has no business being in this presidential election, and the people who handed the candidacy to him have put our entire nation at risk by doing so.

It is beyond my comprehension that the human Heat Miser is about to receive classified security briefings; the very thought of it actually fills me with both fear and rage. Trump is a rabid liar, intellectual black hole, and white male privileged shit-stirrer, with no consciousness or caring about how his words and actions influence the world around him – and the fact that the Republicans gave him a platform to treat the entire country like the biggest catbox he’s ever crapped in on a daily basis represents, to me, a complete and utter disdain and disregard for the dignity and safety of our nation. Trump is the most dangerous sort of buffoon ever, and he actually makes me long for the days of George W. Bush – something I did not think was possible. He’s already lowered political discourse to the level of commenters on YouTube, and opened all of society up to nurturing the worst, most base elements of it’s psyche – damage I don’t think can be undone for a long, long time. When I see young people rallying behind this human traffic cone in a toupee, I weep inside for the future. Be you liberal, conservative, or anywhere else on the spectrum, you should expect the individuals you elect to the highest offices in the land to understand foreign affairs, domestic policy, human decency, and – although George W certainly pushed this one to its limits, and let’s not even get into Palin – for God’s sake, be able to complete a fucking sentence.

I think I’m just going to start putting this at the bottom of every post from now until election day. Because I’m serious y’all, Trump is a really dark, really low point in our nation’s history. Come on America, we can do better than this. Can’t we?

I have a random mish-mashy update post for you, so here goes.

I know what you’re thinking – but in spite of the fact that I am the most Photoshop-happy photographer ever, I actually did very little to this photo. Not that I didn’t try; but none of the bells and whistles really added anything to the original, so I just sharpened and contrasted a bit and called it a day. But the color here was all in the sky, not added later.

I made another trip to the Villa de Matel retreat center last week; I wrote about going in June and have shared occasional pictures from that trip, but I only made reservations for one night last time and it wasn’t nearly enough for me to process my thoughts, let things go, and move back into my own little happy place where I usually reside. I knew when I left last month that I really needed more time, so I always planned to go back in July, and this time I made my stay three nights instead of one. It was PERFECT.

Interestingly, I felt like I got the closure I needed after being back for about thirty minutes! It was as if I’d just rushed off last time without stopping to leave all my baggage on the altar (they have a beautiful chapel) and ended up still carrying it with me. So as soon as I got checked in this time, I headed straight to the chapel. sat my butt down in a pew, and got to work. I ran through all my negative thoughts, and my hurt feelings, and the wounds to my self-esteem, and just said you know what God? I’m really really tired of carrying this around. I’ve been struggling since May and I don’t want to do that anymore. So I’m putting this all right here and walking away from it for good, sound cool? And God (or whatever) was all, cool man, go for it. So I did. Of course, then I had three more days to read and write and really kick all that stuff to the curb, but after that chapel visit it was as if everything had finally been dislodged and it was all pretty easy to knock away.

I’d started not to bring my camera, because I took a lot of photos last time I was there, plus several years ago I took a ton too, and the place hasn’t changed so I didn’t honestly think there would be anything to photograph.But my husband suggested I just bring the camera along anyway, and I am glad I did, although I only spent a few hours total shooting anything, and I’ve only had time to process that top shot. I took different lenses, which gave me the opportunity to look at things differently, so I’ve got a lot of macro shots to edit and share, and for the first two nights I was there I was actually the only person staying in the retreat area so I got to have fun bustling about at 11 PM taking photos of everything with the flash on, but other things have gotten in the way of me editing them, so let’s move on to that now, shall we? Be back with more Villa photos later. And by the way – being the only person staying overnight in a huge building that looks a bit like a castle is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. Don’t worry – I was far from truly alone because it is a convent and one entire wing is the Sister’s residences, and they have full security and all that stuff on staff. But two floors of one wing belong to the retreat center, and it was really cool to be able to just wander around in whatever disheveled state I felt like it without being bothered, until my last night a bunch of other people showed up and ruined the fantasy.

So I was doing that all last week, and came back feeling refreshed and rejuvenated enough to finally take on something I’ve been considering for a few months now:

That’s right – we got a new kitten! Her name is Violet, and I do not have any good photos of her because, unlike Simon, Violet is NOT into posing for the camera. I’ve tried to take photos with my phone, and she’s just a blur, so I sure haven’t  bothered bringing out the big guns to get her picture. She is a bit of a terror right now, but when she sleeps nothing can wake her, which is what she was  basically doing here, so there’s that.

I got her for what is apparently one of the worst reasons ever to get a second cat, according to the internet: because I felt Simon needed a companion. For the past several months, he’s been getting pretty insistent with his play, which has always been what I’ll call ‘aggressive’ – he is not mean, but he does pounce, nip, and on occasion, scratch, and he always has. There’s no malice in it, he’s just always been one of those cats you have to know when to get out before he goes full-cat-Rambo on you and nips too hard or scratches too much. And lately, he’s been pouncing at my feet constantly; even, on occasion, pouncing at them even HARDER when reprimanded, which was starting to bother me a little. Then about a month ago he started randomly licking things for no good reason – lids of jars, my soda bottles, the neck of lamps – and while I’ve read that this could be a sign of some sort of nutrient or vitamin deficiency (which I am keeping an eye on) it is also a possible sign of boredom leading to obsessive behavior, and as playful as Simon wants to be, i could see him getting bored easily, since no one else around here is all that down for playing. So, enter Violet.

Then there was a selfish reason for getting her, too. Simon has never been a huge cuddler, which is new for me. I’ve always had very cuddly cats, but when Simon is done with you, he’s done, and if he doesn’t want to be cuddled, forget it. He’ll swat you away. And as he’s gotten older, the less cuddly he’s  become. Oh, he still crawls into my lap most nights while I’m sitting up in bed reading or playing Hearthstone on my iPad, but that’s about it, and again, it’s only if and when he decides to do it that it happens. So I was hoping a new kitty might alleviate Simon’s boredom as well as give me something to cuddle with impunity.

One of our local shelters, Citizens for Animal Protection, has a lovely shelter and they were holding a ‘clear the shelters’ event this past Saturday where all pets adoptions were free (this is the shelter where we adopted Simon). When I first heard about it, I thought oh hell no, I am NOT going to deal with that madness because it will be packed – but then I woke up Saturday morning and thought, yep, today’s the day. It wasn’t that I wanted a free cat that badly, it was just the day I finally  felt ready to take the plunge. So down to CAP I went. I knew I needed a pretty bold kitten, since she’d be coming home to two dogs and one seriously playful full-grown cat, and not only did Violet seem, personality-wise, to fit that bill, but her original name was Mercy, which of course, is part of my internet/blog name, so I figured she must be the one. Plus her health record was clear, she’d already been spayed, and one of the directors of the shelter told me he’d fostered her at his house and found her to be a really great cat. So I snatched her up, and off we went!

And here’s where I broke more internet rules. Everything I read said to give the new cat its own space and leave it separated from the other pets for, like, two days, but there was a problem – there isn’t one square inch of this house that another animal hasn’t already claimed or, if it wasn’t claimed by one of them, that was a safe place to keep a kitten. I originally chose my office to be the new-cat space, but within five hours our dog Penny was hiding in a back corner of my husband’s closet, completely traumatized that she’d been replaced from her spot next to my desk. Honestly i didn’t even realized she was that attached to being in there, but apparently she was, so Doug and I decided to move the process along and start introducing Violet to the other pets right away.

We put her in a wire crate that was pretty big and allowed the dogs in first. Now, my husband comes from farmers (although not his immediate family; it’s an occupation that ended with his grandfather) and so he has that throw-em-in-a-room-together-and-let-them-work-it-out mentality, whereas I am such the opposite of that it isn’t even funny. While he felt letting the dogs sniff her while she hissed at them inside the cage was just part of the process, I was literally chewing my nails off with worry that we were damaging her for life. Then he let Simon in, and I practically went through the ceiling from the tension. There was growling and hissing and swatting and crying – and that’s just what I was going through! Before I was anywhere  near ready to deal with it emotionally, Doug had opened up the gate to the crate and let Violet out, and of course in the end it was all fine. By the end of the night they were all wary, but basically OK with each other, and when on occasion the two cats would get too aggressive with their wrestling I could easily get Violet tucked away somewhere to give Simon a break, but he seemed to be fine even though he had to swat her down from time to time.

Tomorrow I take her to the vet in the morning to make sure she checks out OK. I’m exhausted right now because although the director at CAP told me Violet was fine sleeping by herself in a closed room, I of course couldn’t stand it and took a sleeping bag into my office and slept with her, which was fine from the perspective that she didn’t actually mess with me too much (unlike Simon, who spent the entire night attacking my face and feet when I did the same for him) but sleeping on a hard floor in a sleeping bag was not good for me overall, and I’m stiff and sleepy today. We left the house this morning and Violet stayed alone in the office for several hours without incident (although I did have to cat-proof it by removing every item in there that had a cord), so here’s hoping I can manage to unattach myself from her enough to sleep in my own bed tonight.

A busy week ahead, and though I have filmed a lot of reviews to share, there were some problems with the results and I haven’t yet decided whether or not I’m going to upload these vids or have to film them all over. We’ll talk more about that later, I’m sure.

I did go on a brief retreat this week, and while there was no agony involved, once I thought up the title it amused me so much I had to use it anyway. Moving on.

The chapel at the Villa de Matel – never was able to get a decent photo of it before

There’s an old convent in Houston called Villa de Matel that has a retreat center on the property; it is in one of the older parts of the city and the grounds are quite lovely. There’s about 70 acres of land overall, with beautiful walking trails surrounded by magnolia trees and high branches dripping with Spanish moss. Unfortunately, on this trip Houston was experiencing another round of Biblical-level flooding and rains, so I was unable to take photos of the trails as they were basically swamps. In fact, I was only scheduled to spend one night at the convent’s retreat center – which is called Ruah (Hebrew for ‘spirit’) – but all the roads leading to my neighborhood were rendered impassible by flooding overnight, so I stayed on another day and waited for the water to go down. Actually, I could have stayed longer as I felt I was getting a lot out of being there, but I hadn’t packed for an extended trip and hadn’t taken care of some odds and ends at the house that needed to be dealt with before the end of the week, so I reluctantly drove back after the second night.

The chapel exterior

The first day’s weather was OK for awhile until the storms blew in, so I did manage to get some shots of the convent’s buildings and grounds that were concrete-adjacent, which I could walk  on without sinking into the muck that all the grass and walking trails had become from the previous round of thunderstorms, so that was nice. But I’m not much of an architectural or outdoors photographer, and I actually like a lot of the photos I snapped with my phone better than the ones I took using my 7D. The one directly above was taken with my iPhone, but the shot of the chapel was taken using the Canon.

The oratory in the Ruah center wing of the main building – this was where I spent most of my time this trip. I find each time I go I am drawn to certain areas, and it’s always different. I sat on the floor in here for hours writing and scribbing in a journal. There was only one time someone else even came into the room while I was there.

I’ve also taken photos at the convent before, and although it’s changed a bit since the last time I was there, it hadn’t changed all that much, and I got bored rather quickly since I was just re-taking photos I’d already snapped previously. Although the last time I took photos there I did not have either a decent phone OR camera, so I did want to get some better-quality shots even if they were duplicates of earlier ones. It just wasn’t all that thrilling to do.

View from the second-floor covered balcony, across from the back entrance to the chapel. This was a wonderful place to sit and watch/listen to the rain – the chapel roof is metal and gave the rain a musical quality.

To stay at the Ruah center, you are assigned a spiritual advisor with whom you are required to meet at least once. When I first started coming here back in the 90’s, that wasn’t a requirement, but for whatever reason they changed the rules eventually. The other times I visited (this was my fourth visit overall), I met with the advisor since I was obligated to do so, but I did not get much out of it. This time, however, I had a lot on my mind in relation to my recent job upset, so I got a lot of use out of that spiritual advising time. My first day, my advisor met with me for two hours. When she found out I was staying an extra day to avoid driving in the floodwaters, she met with me again for another hour. Then on day three even though I was leaving, she met with me again for another thirty minutes. Each time we met, she recommended Bible verses, prayers, reflections, and questions to ask myself during my silent time (the retreat center is silent, and guests are asked not to speak at all while they are there). Even though I’m not all that religious, I’m not offended or put off by religion and I do believe in God, so I was OK with her guidance and took it all to heart, and it was all very helpful.

The covered balcony referenced in the caption for the previous shot

The way I  discovered Ruah in the first place was when in my twenties and very broke I mentioned to a friend how frustrating it was to never be able to get away for a little vacation, and she mentioned it to me as a place I could go without having to spend much at all. At the end of your stay, you simply put however much you are called to pay into an envelope and leave it in a mailbox by the front door, and that’s it. When I was in my 20’s, that was sometimes as little as $35, but there was no pressure or obligation to spend more. I got a small room to stay in, three meals a day, and an entire two floors of the convent to spend my time doing whatever I wished as well as the freedom to walk all the beautiful grounds. They still operate under the same system, so even though I pay more than $50 now because I can, it is still a wonderful way to get away. There’s no stress or hurry or worry and everything is geared towards reflection, meditation, and peace. I’m not sure why I stayed away for five years (perhaps the insanity of the job I’ve had for the last four), but I intend to get back there sooner this time around. And the fact that I actually got to meet with an advisor every single day for no extra fee – as I said, it is in fact a requirement – was pretty amazing. The whole place is a secret gem hidden in the heart of the city, and whenever I mention it to people they are unfamiliar with it – such a shame since it’s such a wonderful place to stay.

The chapel foyer – an oddly framed shot but the space was quite small and the light was non-existent, so I had to make the best of it

Some of the things I was able to reflect on while there involved my perception of what it means to have, or leave, a job. I have a very deeply-rooted middle-class belief that you take whatever job comes along and never turn  one down, and no matter what, you never quit – at least not until you have something else lined up. Well, I really screwed the pooch on all that this time, and it’s been really stressing me out to have nothing lined up to do next. And I’ve never believed that a job was a “real” job unless it involved an organization and a hierarchy and an accounting department that cuts you a check twice a month, yet leaving all that behind and striking out on  my own is exactly what I’m considering doing now – and it terrifies me, fills me with anxiety and dread, and makes me feel terribly guilty. So yeah, I had plenty to fill my journal with this trip!

We also touched on how addicted to drama I am, and how I disregarded so many warning signs when taking that stupid job in the first place, and how I can be a better judge of such things in the future. Listening to the warning signs when they are being given to me, instead of ignoring them to fulfill that familial belief that you never, ever, say no to a  job, like, EVER; and recognizing when I am getting ensnared into other people’s drama and getting myself hooked on it are going to be two big tasks for me moving forward. Not going back into any sort of structured or organized educational environment will certainly help with this, but leaving it behind has been difficult, as I went from knowing everything that was going on behind the scenes at my workplace to being completely shut out within 24 hours, and I’ve literally been having drama/conflict withdrawals as a result – mostly because I’ve been worried what people are saying about me, as if that matters anymore. Sad, but true!

Entrance to the main Villa de Matel building. Most of the second and third floors are dedicated to the Ruah center. The windows on the third floor are all dorm rooms.

I was encouraged to take myself back to my childhood (of course, aren’t we always advised to do that) and try to reconnect with what I wanted to “do” when I was little, before all the expectations of others kicked in, and that was a tough one for me. I had to sit on it for quite awhile, but then it hit me in one big rush of remembering: when I was in fifth grade, I decided I wanted to be a writer. It wasn’t something that I talked about much, and the way I  was raised, girls weren’t encouraged to do much aside from get married and have babies, so it was a small little desire tucked away in a corner of my mind, but it never totally left me, and through my quiet high school existence, it was one of the few ways I actually distinguished myself – occasionally we would be asked to write something creative for an English or History class and I would impress the teacher with my talent, once they figured out just who the hell I was since I was so quiet I doubt they even recognized my name at the top of the paper. Even in college (where I was not any more visible to my professors) my English profs would single me out and encourage me to change my major (which I eventually did, to English Lit. with a minor in Creative Writing).

So right about now is when the pictures start to get weird. But you know with me I’m always gonna do a least a little bit of over-processing. This was actually the stairwell from the pipe organ loft in the chapel; right around the corner is a stained-glass window and the walls are painted light blue to enhance the effect. In reality it’s more pretty than creepy, but I went with creepy when editing.

As some of you know, I dabbled in poetry for about 15 years but always found it very difficult to write, even if in the end I wrote some great stuff, and I abandoned it when I discovered photography, which is a HELL of a lot more fun for me to do. I made some attempts at writing fiction and even took some classes, but I am not a plotter and although I wrote some lovely vignettes, nothing in my stories ever actually happened. And writing fiction wasn’t any more enjoyable to me than writing poetry, so I eventually switched to teaching English and everything that led from there you probably already know.

The pipe organ in the chapel; it was a very small balcony area so I couldn’t get a decent angle to take a good shot. Really not a good photo, so I processed the hell out of it to try and make up for that. 

I have some idea of what this might mean to me and where it might take me, but I don’t want to reveal that info right now. Mostly because I might change my mind tomorrow, but also because if I share my ideas it will make me feel pressured to make progress on them, and I’m not in the mood for that yet. For now, I’m just clearing out the muddle in my  mind and making space for a new future. But radically re-thinking what work is to me is definitely rattling around; it just needs more space to move and I still have a lot of cobwebs to clear.

This was the roof of the heritage building; obviously I edited the hell out of this. The sky in reality was cloudy by the time, but not that interesting sort of cloudy that makes a photo look textured and cool – mostly the sky looked solid white and really boring. But I liked the placement of the sun and how it appeared to be glowing over a roof  which I thought had a UFO-like quality. 

I worked on a lot of the disappointment, betrayal, and heartache I experienced over the past month, too, and I did have a lot of guilt I needed to let go of. I haven’t reached full closure on either of these issues yet, but I got a good start on them. A few things I realized were that all my worry and bother over the fact that my final act might have ruined the good reputation I built up there over four years was a waste of time, because in the end, while a good rep is nice to have and all, it certainly isn’t worth my sanity, sense of peace, and self-respect. If walking away gave me back all that, it’s still a better trade than staying at a place that was determined to devalue me, disrespect me, and take advantage of me until I was either burnt out or used up entirely; a place that was too busy using its employees to serve itself to ever give me the level of respect I deserved.

A bit of a detour here – my great-grandmother lived across the street from the convent, so I drove by and snapped a photo of her old house. This was taken from my car, while those two ladies looked at me like I was crazy. Funny story – I posted this on Facebook and both my mother and aunt, who both practically grew up in this house, insisted it was not the right house. I had to go to Google earth and show them that photo before they would believe me! 

And I’ve felt guilt, also, for leaving my students behind without saying goodbye, but while reflecting on that I heard an answer in my heart quite clearly: sometimes you just have to put yourself first. PERIOD. Teachers, in particular, as well as individuals working in any service-oriented industry, fall prey to this philosophy quite often; this idea that we simply cannot walk away from our OBLIGATIONS because people DEPEND on us and the world will just end, and we will be horrible people who are fully responsible for it, if we do. But everyone has times in their lives when they must stop sacrificing all their happiness for others and simply save themselves. And this was one of those times for me. And if my actions made some of my former students angry or upset, then so be it. It sucks, but I HAD to do it to save myself.

This quote popped up on a little placard in the corner of one of the Ruah center rooms my second day there; I swear it wasn’t there on my first day, so I convinced myself it was put up specifially for me. It wasn’t, of course, but the quote still spoke to me, so I put it in the sky of my UFO-roof photo. I rather like it!

Now, the fact that my action upset some of my former bosses? I have zero regrets about that. Because the fact of the matter was, they’d all come together to create a situation that benefitted themselves, but put me in a real bind, and they had no problems with it whatsoever, and they ignored me when I tried to tell them that what they were doing wasn’t right or fair. So knowing how upset they were when I left indicated to me that I’d finally taken this huge problem they’d dumped in my lap and managed to dump it back on them, where it belonged. They were the ones taking advantage of their titles to pursue other interests on a weekly basis during school time without having to relinquish their status or power, so let them be the ones to figure out how they were going to pull it off. The only way for me to put that problem back on them was if I left immediately – otherwise, they were going to spend that last school week breathing down my neck, forcing me to set everything up for them nice and neat so once I was gone they wouldn’t have to figure anything out for themselves. And that, at least, they did not force me to do. But only because I didn’t stick around long enough for them to try.

Well, folks, we’re almost there:

Pardon the canopy swing sitting awkwardly next to the house, and the pool floats piled on a chair. We’re still getting things tidied up a bit, and we have some more work to do on our new covered patio (staining, mostly) but for the most part, things are done. It’s gotten a touch too cool to swim regularly, but I do fire up the spa every evening and sit in it for at about an hour.

All in all, we started this project right around August 1st, and finally got the grass replaced (which is what finally made things feel ‘done’) the first week of November. It took WAY longer than I thought it would to get from start to finish, but I must say it has been worth it.

A lot of people have seen photos and commented on the relative lack of landscaping we now have in the backyard; we took out all the beds that run along the back fence and just left a single small one in the far right corner, so we could keep out bottlebrush tree that the hummingbirds love so much. I guess it does look a little bare back there now, but we needed to create enough space for our dogs to roam around in and do their business, lest they end up having too small space that was too close to the pool for them to relieve themselves. See, when I put it that way, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all to keep things sparse in the backyard.

Besides, I rather like the lack of foliage back there; our yard was a decent size before the pool, but not huge, and it definitely felt a little cramped once the pool was put in and before those overgrown beds were taken out. We had one sago palm that we really liked back there that we did save and move to the flowerbed we kept that’s up against the house, but aside from that and the bottlebrush tree in the corner we yanked the rest of it out. There are plants added to that corner bed that will eventually fill out and eliminate some of the sparse feeling, but overall I like the changes.

This new pergola was built for us last week; it still needs to be stained and will be much darker, and we’re having a gutter company come out to move that drainpipe over to the end of the garage. We’ve also ordered some lovely new furniture that should be in by the end of the week, and believe it or not my husband wants to get an outdoor flat-screen television to hang on the garage wall – but I kinda doubt that will happen. I believe those things are ridiculously expensive.

So, to sum up:

We are finally, basically done! Who’s coming over?

My makeup routine for photos has gotten so elaborate that I rarely have time to do a shoot in what I like to call “full drag” (even though I’m not the proper gender to be a drag queen). But I do follow makeup tutorials by drag queens when I have the approximately two hours required to prepare my face, so last Wednesday I saw the opportunity to spend an entire day on photos, as long as I didn’t get distracted by other things and lose time. So, I made myself stick to my commitment, and got up fairly early (by my summer standards, which is about 8 AM – as someone who can easily stay up until 4 AM and sleep until 10, eight o’clock is early for me) Wednesday and set to work.

I’d already picked out the makeup tutorial I wanted to try – there are many queens who’ve made tutorials painting their faces like my RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7 fave, Pearl, but I like this one the best (partly because I love listening to Fendi’s beautiful accent):

Fendi and I also share an inability to cover up our eyebrows all that well; I’d only tried once before to do this and it was a disaster the first time, so this time I made sure to be patient and not rush the process as well as to be more precise. The first time I tried it I was quite sloppy about things, and the end result was a goopy mess. I watched several different tutorials for this, but this is the latest one I watched while i was actually doing it:

As I work on my face, I stop after each big step and go take a picture so I can make sure when I start taking photos that everything looks like I want. I learned the hard way that what looks fine in the mirror does not necessarily look great in front of the camera under the bright lights; the biggest problem is thinking I’ve got enough paint on only to find out after the shoot that my blush didn’t even show, or my eyebrows weren’t on dark enough and disappeared. I’ve gotten MUCH better at using Photoshop to correct makeup mistakes (and it’s true I always end up having to correct at least one thing, usually the nose contouring which I still fail at way more often than I succeed) but it is always better to get things, if not perfect, then at least as right as possible during the shoot so there’s less work to do later.

So, here’s a little collage of the makeup transformation process. These are just goony shots I was taking quickly to test out my makeup steps, and I was also experimenting with lighting while doing this, so you can see that each photo looks quite different lighting and color-wise. But still, it gives you an idea of how much of a big process the makeup is.

In the first, I’ve no makeup on but the eyebrow cover, so yeah. Yay for makeup you guys! So much sun damage, but what can I do – when I was growing up a tan was considered healthy, and I was ALWAYS tan. Moving on.

In the second shot, I think you can see the tape I have stuck to the outside of both my eyes. This is actually another YouTube trick I learned that I use every day; it keep me from extending my shadow too far out and keeps it even on both eyes, as well as making blending a snap because I can just slop that dark color on and I don’t have to worry about blending the edges. I just yank the tape off and bam – a really nice upward slant to the shadow.

The trick with covering the brows for drag is that you’re SUPPOSED to then create a faux crease above your natural crease to make the eyes look unusually large. Turns out this is much easier to do when you have a young face, like Miss Fendi up there in her video. My eyelids have some sag and ‘extra’ skin, so when i drew on my faux crease while holding things up a bit they looked fine, but when I let go, well, they disappeared. I’m OK with it since overall for my first attempt at creating true ‘drag’ eyes I did better than I expected, but I guess next time I’ll have to use some tape or something to yank my eyelids up a little. Maybe one of those instant-facelift bands I’ve seen advertised might work…

I’d never use this IRL but I bet I could really get some freaky effects out of one of those things! I may have to get one.

Overall you can see that my final effect really wasn’t close at all to what Fendi accomplished, and that happens everytime. The tutorial is a guideline for me to transform myself, but I never look much like the queen in the video when I’m done. Ah well, it is what it is. I was pleased with my little attempt to draw on some non-ridiculous looking eyebrows, and the rest of the makeup was fine since I’m used to all the highlighting and contouring by now – although I did overdo it on the highlighting and came out a bit too white in the photos. Also, I’ve gotten much better at applying false lashes, and actually had a full set on here instead of cutting each lash in half as I usually do and just applying it to the outside corner of the eyes, but I found that with all that dark liner on you can hardly even tell they’re there. Now I see why drag queens use 2 full sets of really huge lashes! Not sure I can go there yet myself, though.

I took about 400 shots this day, and have edited a few so far, but I’ll save those for another post. I’ll just leave you with this one, since I almost always find one makeup test shot that I like enough to process:

Mainly I used Photoshop here to better contour my nose, and I enlarged my nostrils for an extra-creepy look. Obviously I also distorted the lens shape so things would look a little off. There are lots of quite lovely photos to come, though, never fear – this is the only freaky-looking one I’ve done so far. You all know I’m generally NOT going to make myself look bad in my photos! But this one needed something kinda spooky, so there it is.

On to the photos soon!

I am on the verge of another 4-day weekend, due to both Monday’s holiday and the Tuesday the students earned off as a result of selling enough raffle tickets (which led to the teachers having Tuesday off, too). For me it’s actually a five-day weekend, since I took Friday off to spend with another friend from work who is in desperate need of a mental health day. We were going to zip out of town but that didn’t work out, so we intend to do some lunch and shopping instead.

I’ve edited a few more plane pics since the  last post, but not many due to time constraints. I seem to be leaning towards a more stylized look to these shots than other plane sets I’ve edited before; not sure why since I usually desire accuracy and detail when working with my airplane photos, but I’m just going with it for now. It could be because with this set I’m seeing the limitations of my cheaper telephoto lens and in an attempt to repair some of the graininess I keep creating this surreal quality anyway so I just keep going with it.

At some point over my long weekend I hope to throw on a bunch of wild makeup and do some portraits, which I haven’t done in awhile. I also haven’t done any leaping or movement shots in forever, but the truth is that I injured my knee back in December (doing nothing, as usual – just stood up one day and it hurt. Yep, I even once injured my tailbone doing nothing and had to have six weeks of treatment to get it re-aligned; a process that is NOT fun, let me tell you) and I still can’t jump or move much at all if it involves bending my right knee (which pretty much everything does). So I’ll have to settle for portraits, if I have time to do anything at all. With work in high gear I’ve seriously slacked off with the photo-taking, but that always happens.

That’s a close-up of the little lock on one of my Vuitton bags – I love my macro lens! Speaking of Vuittons, my obsession with the bags has slacked off a little, but I’m still acquiring them here or there when a good deal pops up. I have one on the way as I type from Fashionphile, and another one on layaway over there. I also quite accidentally donated one to the school’s silent auction gala – I brought my little refurbished Papillon up to the school just to see if the women organizing the gala thought it might sell for a decent amount, and they immediately whisked it off to take photos and do a write-up for the auction’s program, so yeah, I donated it. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to, but they had taken it and claimed it before I had to a chance to object, and I would have felt like a heel asking for it back after that. It sold for about $300, which isn’t bad considering I paid $180 for it to start with.

Took this one through the car window with my iPhone

In other shopping news, Stitch Fix has really upped their game, and I’ve liked a lot out of the last two fixes they sent me. In fact, the Fix I got for February was so good I kept the entire thing. So I guess even when the shipments get disappointing it’s a good idea to stick with them. The most you’re out is twenty bucks for the styling fee, so why not? I’ve not been doing a lot of clothes shopping lately anyway, so getting a few new things in once a month is a nice way to supplement the wardrobe without leaving the house. And speaking of clothes – I recently had to buy several new pairs of pants because since the last time I bought a bunch of them, which was during the Black Friday online sales, I have dropped another size and none of those fit anymore. I am now a size ZERO – which I haven’t been in probably ten years. I’d been noticing my size 2s being loose on me for a few weeks now, and finally on Monday someone at work said something about my pants being too big, so I knew it was time to bite the bullet and buy some more.

Sprocket is much better now and seems to have recovered from whatever illness he had about a month ago. And my father-in-law has also managed to stay out of the hospital for almost a month, so that’s good too. And as you can see in the phone pic above, my perm is pretty much done – the curls are still there, but the layers have grown out and new growth has come in flat so the shape is pretty off – and my now-straight hair has finally hit my shoulders. You can see how much the dye has grown out too; I’m surprised by how little gray I’m seeing as my natural color comes in – the gray is there, but not nearly as pronounced as I thought it would be. I still have some layers to grow out,  but they are long enough to at least look decent.

I think that about gets me up to date, so here’s hoping I have more shots to share next time instead of all this rambling.

Lots has gone in the past week, and even though I’m in the midst of a four-day weekend, it hasn’t been very relaxing. But, I’ll update you anyway, and throw in a bunch of random pictures I’ve managed to edit over this crazy week. Haven’t had time for any new photos, but I did take a ton over Christmas break (and as you can see I still have a ton to edit from my airshow set back in November) so let’s get to it.

Sprocket started behaving strangely Wednesday afternoon; he was moving about gingerly, especially when going to sit or lie down. Sometimes he leaps about too much and temporarily pops a knee out of joint, but it manages to pop back in quickly (gross I know) so at first that’s all we thought was going on and he’d be back to his usual sprightly self in no time. But by Thursday Doug was growing concerned, and he texted me to say he was taking the dog in to vet that afternoon. Turned out Sprocket’s temperature was quite high (106) and he appeared to be in pain around the spine. The vet recommended we bring the dog back in Friday morning for some tests that he would send to a specialist for analysis, and based on that we would decide what to do next.

I’ll keep the details brief because it all became a blur anyway, but it was late Friday afternoon before the specialist called us back and recommended we take Sprocket in for the night to be monitored and have more tests run. We rushed him up there around 5 PM, and after spending some time with the dog, the specialist (a veterinary neurologist) said she believed he had an infection that had manifested itself in his joints, and that he was basically in pain all over. Poor thing! She thought there was a slight chance of Lyme disease and tested for that too, but we don’t have the results yet and are fairly certain that’s not what he has (he’s never outside long enough to get anything like that). Anyway, the upshot of all this was that whatever he had was treatable, and he was not in any danger of dying, which of course was our concern. Sprocket stayed with the vet overnight and was back in our care by Saturday morning, but he was on a fair amount of pills, some of which made him goofy. By Sunday he was more bright-eyed, and his temperature has stayed down, but he still requires a lot of attention and care, and he’s taken up a lot of our time this weekend.

Without getting too much into it, though, I have to discuss this specialists’ clinic where we took the dog Thursday. I’ve dealt with them  before – they are the ones that nursed Sprocket through his distemper, as well as taking one cat there when she fell ill to be put down, and a few other specialty treatments over the years, one for a dog who had cancer, and another for Sprocket when we were concerned about his knee problems and thought he might need surgery (we decided against it because the specialist and our vet could not agree on a diagnosis about why he kept limping). Every time I’ve dealt with this place, I’ve come away from it feeling like I got mistreated and overcharged; they are terrible at communication to an extent that it feels it must be intentional, and I always get the feeling I’m being scammed and/or given a runaround. In fact, every time I do deal with them I end up swearing to never go there again, but there’s a catch: they have a load of specialists in their facility and they are basically the only game in town for specialist treatment for our pets (with the exception of driving over an hour through heavy traffic to another specialist clinic across town). Since they didn’t even bother to call us back until late Friday, we really didn’t have a choice but to use them – something I suspect was intentional. They basically called us at 4:30 and said they could take Sprocket, as long as we got him there by 5 PM. So, what were we going to do? We had to take the chance.

And, they were still shady. We knew enough to demand proper service from the beginning, and at least we got that although we had to sit around for about two hours to make it happen (the people in charge at this place are very good at never being available to sit down and talk to you – they prefer you talk to a lab assistant who takes notes and then delivers those to the vet, whom you only speak to briefly). We finally got to speak directly to the vet, who at least appeared intelligent and confident, but when we starting asking pointed questions about how many times we could expect to get an update on our dog and when exactly she would have an answer regarding a pick-up time for Sprocket the next day, she got visibly nervous. You could tell she wasn’t used to people doing anything other than bringing in a pet and leaving it in the hands of what they believed to be trustworthy veterinarians. But we were very clear that we hadn’t always gotten good service from the place, and wanted to be sure we got it this time. We did get good service, in fact, and our dog got a lot of attention – but that is only because we demanded it.

Now for the really shady part: after talking to us for awhile, the neurologist sent in her assistant to show us the estimate for Sprocket’s stay. We were given a “high” and a “low” estimate, then told we would be paying the “middle” between these two costs that day, before they’d done any work on Sprocket at all, and before we even knew whether or not they’d be able to help him. Out of curiosity, we asked the assistant what the clinic would do if we refused to pay upfront and said we wanted to pay after services were rendered, and of course she didn’t really want to respond with the answer, which was clearly yes. Now to me, demanding payment upfront when your clientele is pet owners who are, in many cases, beside themselves with worry over the health of their pet, is bad enough; to refuse to treat a sick animal because it’s owners won’t (or can’t) allow themselves to be forced into paying in advance is unethical as hell. Our “middle” estimate was three thousand dollars, which after much arguing and grumbling we paid; I get how people do not want to haggle like this when it comes to their pet’s life, but at the same time, this practice seems vile to me, and well, someone has to point it out to them rather than just doing whatever they say.

Also, on our estimate, not one line item was an even dollar amount, yet when we got our “adjustment” on Saturday before paying the bill, we were told that our refund amount was four hundred dollars even. We pointed out that was odd, given that none of the charges on our estimate were an even number, and asked to see exactly what it was that they removed from it. Not surprisingly, no one was able to explain what they’d taken off, and then, as we were still haggling with them over this, another guy came to get his pet out of the clinic, and they adjusted his bill as well – by four hundred dollars. So, I’m guessing they just overcharge everyone who walks through the door, then refund them four hundred bucks and hope no one questions it. Well, question it we did, but we were never able to get anything straight and were given a phone number to the manager of the clinic, who of course was not available on weekends. We are definitely going to be calling that person, and deciding what to do next with what we experienced. It isn’t right to fleece people who are trying to be responsible pet owners and take emergency care of them, and even though the treatment these animals receive is, in the end, successful, that simply doesn’t justify behaving kinda like scumbags when it comes to the cost.

On top of all that, I’ve injured my knee again doing nothing much whatsoever, so I had to go to the doctor for that (also Wednesday) and then had a mix-up over what medication the doc was to call in for me. First he called in the one anti-inflammatory med that makes me sick, so I had to call him again to get him to prescribe a new one, and that took me two days to straighten out; when I went to pick up the second prescription, I had once again received the wrong one (!), so I spent two more days trying to get that changed again. And, this is my second round of anti-inflammatories overall  and so far nothing is making much difference, so I’ll probably end up at an orthopedic specialist getting MRIs or x-rays at the end of all this. Sheesh! What a week.

Monday I go see another doctor, then run errands. Then, it’s back to work for another week. There’s been drama there as well, but at least it’s not directly related to me this time. Perhaps I can talk about it at some point, but for now I’m staying mum. Let’s see how things go this week!