Inside

This morning on the way to school, Luke was telling me about some books he wants to get from the library.  They read one in his kindergarten class, and he was excited to tell me that at the end, there's a page where the author talks about what he was thinking when he wrote the story.  I was like, "that's pretty cool, seeing inside the writer's mind."  Claire piped up and said she will tell me what's going on in her mind:

Princesses and monkeys.  The monkeys chase the princesses all around.

She's a pretty awesome kid.

Some things going through my mind:

Today is a sad, strange day.  It's my Aunt Helen's funeral and also the seventh anniversary of my dad's death.  I wonder how things would be if he were still here.  What would he think of the disarray my life's become?  Would he feel sorry for me or tell me to get it together?  Would he be healthy, seven years after a bone marrow transplant, or would he be fragile?  Would he like spending time with my kids?  Would he request that I make him a banana cream pie?  Would we listen to albums and go to doo wop concerts together?  Would he let me take photos of him?  Would our stubborn personalities still clash?  Would he want to change my oil and check my brake fluid level? 

I worry about my sister and my mom.  I'm somehow The Strong One, but I question my ability to be supportive.  If I offer a hug, will if feel strange to them?  If I say I'm sad, will they think I'm going to break down into a blubbery mess? 

I'm participating in a photo shoot this Saturday night with The Photographer Who Makes Women Look Amazing.  Model participation is tricky.  Hard to know who's going to show.  I'm still getting my hopes up.  I need the practice and I rarely get the chance to shoot indoors, since I have no lighting equipment of my own.  If you're interested in modeling, please let me know.  We are casual, comfortable, and laid back and dig all personalities, shapes, and looks.  Shoot will be south of Dayton, OH.

I'm getting ready to download The Pioneer Woman's free Photoshop actions.  I've not done it to this point because it scares me.  I take a photo and mess around with it in Photoshop...rather minimally.  But what I do to it comes from my mind, from my fingers.  Not a one-click set of actions created by someone else.  Kinda, each picture I take is my painting and I sort of want the finishing touches to be my own.  However, all that said, why not try her actions out?  Might be fun.  Might learn little tricks or different ways to tell a story.  It's FREE!

I've been thinking a bit about sense of family lately.  Sometimes I get envious of other families...families with a mom and a dad and kids who live together and do family things and support one another.  Sometimes I miss that family feeling.  I liked being married and having our family.  I wonder if I understood how it feels to lose that, if I would have taken my family for granted a lot less.  Neither here nor there, it's in the past.  I'm pretty damn lucky to have experienced that.  Sort of related to the family thing, some nights I get the "ooh, it would be nice to be snuggled up on the couch watching Arrested Development with an awesome guy" pang.  But then I think of all the things that go with having that kind of guy around.  The commitment, the answering to someone else, the thought of letting that person down, the thought of being let down by that person, the fact that he can't remember what you told him five times....get what I'm saying?  Yeah, I think I'm good snuggling up with my laptop to watch quirky tv comedies. 

Monkeys chasing princesses....crazy.