I found a little time this afternoon to make an attempt at the final pattern shot for this month’s self-portrait challenge. I had to work quickly as I tried to take advantage of the few minutes after Alex wakes up from a nap when he’s still groggy enough to be positioned for a photo. Of course I wasted half of the time scrounging around for something to put him in that had vertical stripes.

This was one of the only shots I managed to get before he insisted upon leaving.

Even though the wee boy wasn’t into this photo session and made every attempt to scurry off to play with his measuring cup collection, I managed to get a couple interesting shots. Here’s my choice for runner up this week, practicing thigh drumming:

Hypothetical situation:

Let’s say that your neighbor has taken the lid to your garbage can. You prefer not to risk an interaction where the neighbor denies this or gets their panties in bunch and you’re a wimp so you never mention it.

A couple months later this neighbor goes on vacation and you’re passing by their house and spot the lid causing all that resentment to bubble to the surface so you sneak over and take the lid back.

Does this make you just as much of a jerk as the offending neighbor?

Do you just keep the lid and live with the fact that you’re a sneaky, spineless coward?

Or, do you slink back over there and put it back - sentencing yourself to a lidless garbage can as a punishment for your initial avoidance of the whole issue to begin with?

It was our intention to spend a couple days at H’s dad’s house this weekend and get a little time at the beach (L.B.I.) but things don’t always work out as planned.

Awhile ago I would have had the energy to write this story properly, but alas, life is different and I just can’t do justice to a good long story. Bummer.

So the boring version of the long story is that we got there later than planned and still rushed out to the beach arriving around 4:30 on Friday. The wind was blowing out of control and the waves were a surfer’s dream, well, a lame-ass east coast surfer anyway. I took my camera out and within two seconds it was covered in salty schmutz, very stupid move. Clouds were starting to gather and goose bumps were clustering all over our skin, but damnit, we were at the beach and not going to be driven away. So H hustled down to the water with the boy and frolicked in the surf for 15 minutes before it was time to feed him dinner.

You can’t tell from the serious face photos, but he really liked the ocean and wasn’t phased in the least by the waves.

5:00 came quickly, we only had a half hour for merriment and it was time to give the boy some dinner so we propped him up in his backpack and he had a lovely windblown, wind-salted meal.

By 5:30 thunder was rumbling overhead, logic told us that is was best to pack it in and scramble back to the car.

Not quick enough however, we got soaked on our way back from the beach. It was sort of nice though, a pleasant, warm, summer rain. If you’re going to get caught in the rain, that’s the kind you want.

Ali went to sleep effortlessly after we got to Pop’s house and then he offered to baby-sit so we could go out to dinner. That seemed like a great idea until we were out trying to find somewhere to eat. If Appleby’s is your idea of a great night out you’d be fine but H and I prefer something with a little more ambiance and perhaps, uh, good food and a wine list. But there was nothing for miles, absolutely nothing. I was thinking we were going to end up eating a Wawa hoagie in the car, because sonofabitch, we had a night out and we weren’t about to go home. 

At the point of complete frustration bordering on anger H spotted a sign for some half-assed restaurant and we decide to go there no matter what it was. When we got inside it was worse than we thought it could be, bright lights and two old guys sitting in an otherwise empty room drinking coffee. Ugh, could we endure this torture? But then we heard a horrible sound, “what’s that?” we asked the hostess. “Oh, it’s karaoke night in the bar” she replied. Our pupils dilated, a bar, karaoke night, we’re stayin’!!!

We entered the dark, crowded room knowing that we’d found our evening’s saving grace. First of all, the bar was packed with people mostly 40-75 years old and up on stage was a lovely little lady belting out Anne Murray’s “Can I Have This Dance,” right then we knew we’d found our perfect evening.

(We were lucky this couple finally sat in front of us.)

The only table open was smack dab in the middle of the room and we thought nothing of sitting there until we quickly realized that anyone who was singing stared directly at us the whole time. It didn’t have any real impact until this older gentleman who had been circling me like a buzzard all evening got up to sing a song. He chose “Take Good Care of My Baby” and he sung it right to me. My notoriously bad judgment in these situations kicked in, helped in no part by the Blue Moon I was drinking and the general happiness I was feeling, so I smiled at the guy, played along and encouraged his little song. I really didn’t know that this meant “hey, old dude, I’m hot for you.” This suave player stared me down as he swaggered off stage winking and making a kiss face at me. He worked his way closer and closer to me all night but poor old dude, we left just as he was going to make his big move.

Oh bluberd how we missed you, we cannot count the number of times we wished you were there!

The food was an abomination and the beer was fine, but it was the karaoke that made it all worthwhile! We realized that with all that has changed since Alex came we totally forgot that it’s our anniversary, so I guess that was our big anniversary celebration, yee haw!

I’ve been fairly engrossed with my new hobby of re-learning Spanish. I usually flit from hobby to hobby so we’ll see how long this one lasts but for now it’s occupying a good amount of my time with the wee boy. He definitely responds well to hearing Spanish and from what my research tells me, it would be a sin to waste the fact that he spent the first year of his life hearing it spoken.

We read bilingual board books, at lunch we watch an educational Spanish soap opera which is designed to teach people Spanish and we listen to a lot of Spanish children’s music. Much of this information gets stuck in my head, not in any really useful manner but more like a skipping record.

This song in particular has been trapped in an endless loop for two weeks:

After a long, hard day of practicing our bilingualism (is that a word?), it’s bath time.

Colonel Sanchez?

I believe a bubble bath beard is a mandatory shot in every child’s photo album, isn’t it?

I have a lot to say about this, but I’m not going to.

I prefer not to interpret my own work, I think it’s too limiting and the impetus I had for making this particular image would probably detract from it if I were to explain my ideas. 

More pattern shots for this month at SPC.

Lucky me, Alex has discovered that high-pitched shriek/squeal/scream this week. There is very little that I hate more or find less tolerable than any child making this horrifying, paint-peelingly awful noise.

Short of yelling or smacking him (which I doubt would improve the situation much), does anyone have any methods for stopping this torture?

I was considering a little duct tape over the pie hole but then there’d be all that tape residue to clean off his face when I’d finally remove it, so that’s out, I don’t want to cause myself extra work here.

They put collars on dogs that give them a little “jolt” when they bark, maybe one of these would work. If people think they’re humane enough for dogs they should be good for kids too. But I guess some people may get their panties in a bunch if they see a little boy with a dog collar on, crap, that won’t work.

Well, if anyone has a good suggestion, PLEASE let me know!

I can only say that I am so run down and haggard that there was no way I could have been photographed today without shattering the lens. So my primary mission here was to obscure my face.

Continuing on with the confinement issue in last week’s spc post, I now decided to add more texture and some discordant, potentially irritating pattern to this one. The pattern isn’t quite as visually annoying as I would have liked unless it’s viewed really huge. At that point the tiny checkerboard backdrop starts to vibrate more the way I envisioned it. But you’d need a 30″ monitor to view it so no dice.

(larger version)

Visit SPC for more pattern shots.

I seem to be having technical difficulties with the blog so this post may suddenly show up numerous times or vanish. I uploaded this last night and by this morning it had disappeared so I have no idea what the problem is. Ach, it’s always something. 

Sometimes I feel like there are parts of my body that are out to get me too: