What a Life!

Aren’t those flowers pretty?

Every year they bloom on tall shoots from these bushes which I’ve thought were downright ugly every since we first looked at the house.

This would be the snake I almost stepped on when trying to take the picture of the ugly bushes. Hope no one saw the little yuck! dance I did in the middle of the front yard. The picture of the ugly bushes ended up being taken from the driveway so I could see where I was stepping.

One thing that I miss about my old Canon S3 IS is the zoom. That picture of the snake is cropped, and he doesn’t look very sharp to me. Loss of resolution, perhaps? Or the camera focused sharply on something other than the snake? I don’t know.

I thought that with 10.1 MP of resolution with the Rebel XTi that I could safely crop. But now I’m thinking that instead of an 4×4 being half the resolution of an 8×8, it’s actually a quarter. [4×4=16 and 8×8=64; 16 is 1/4 of 64]

Pictures like that make me really miss that 12X zoom. I could zoom with the camera, get really close while being far away, and still get a crisp, clear shot. Don’t get me wrong – I love my 35/2 lens, but so many of the pictures outside – even when they aren’t cropped – seem to have a soft focus. You don’t know how many outdoor pictures I have that aren’t up on Flickr because they just seem out of focus.

I asked the talented Alissa what lens she has. She takes great outdoor photos, which is where mine seem so lacking. She has the Sigma 17-70/2.8 which she loves. The 35/2 would still be the lens I kept on my camera, but when I go outside…or to the park…or to the farm, I could use the Sigma. That’s where I so miss being able to zoom. [I still don’t miss it at all inside.]

I could ask for the new lens for Christmas, but that’s the time of year I would use it the least. That’s the thing about photography. I can spend $20 on yarn here and there and nobody notices. But one photography purchase a year is a huge ordeal. I don’t know if I want a zoom lens that bad.

What I’d really like would be Lolly’s new set-up – a Canon 40D with the L-series 24-70mm/f 2.8. Wouldn’t that be sweet? [No links to the camera or the lens because they’re so out of my range that I don’t even want to know how much they cost.]

Someday when I’m rich and fabulous, maybe I can have one of those. Until then I’ll take pictures of the one and only plant with flowers on it in our yard with the camera and lens that I have…and try not to step on a snake!

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[Ben is at Vacation Bible School. I am at home. I don’t want to say anymore for fear I’ll jinx it!]

These potholders are on there way to a dear friend who will be surprised and [hopefully!] delighted to receive them. She spends a lot of time outdoors, and the colors in this yarn make me think of her.

They are made with dishcloth cotton. Double-knit. Loosely based on Elizabeth Zimmermann’s pattern in her Knitter’s Almanac. Originally I made a prototype for myself – just one – and then I made a pair for my sister and her husband for a Christmas gift one year.

Last year after Susie was born in October and my sister had a house full of company for Thanksgiving (everyone coming to see the new baby), I heard that those potholders I’d made had been the set everyone wanted when they had to take something out of the oven (there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen!).

They are quite nice. They’re just the right size. They’re thick so you feel protected. And they’re very flexible so they go where you want them to go rather than making you fight with them (as I have to do with some of the potholders in my drawer). Since they’re made with dishcloth cotton, you can wash and dry them right along with everything else (though they do tend to fade with washing so it’s better to wash them only when they need it).

My mom begged for a pair of her own. I finally got them done and gave them to her when they were here in April. And why did it take me so long to get them done? They may be a great finished project to have, but they are painfully boring to knit. You know it’s bad when I have to discipline myself to sit on the couch and knit something. That just doesn’t happen to me.

In May, when we were going through Steve’s job transition, there were a lot of things I didn’t have control over, but I did have control over my knitting, and my knitting world got a complete makeover. I went through my stash and got rid of the yarn that didn’t make me smile when I saw it, and I came up with a formula of sorts for what projects are on my needles at any given time.

I love knitting with my friends, but one problem I always seem to have is nothing to take with me to knit that’s mindless enough that I can enjoy the company and have fun laughing and talking while I knit. Nothing is worse than spending two hours knitting and frogging and knitting and frogging because you keep messing up.

Enter: knitting potholders. I now have a specific knitting bag devoted to them, and they’re always ready to go. A month of Wednesday evening knitting sessions and I have a set of potholders. If I have a painfully boring portion of another project I am trying to slog through, I can take that instead, but my potholders are always ready to go.

Now, I am finally working on a pair for myself. I can hardly wait to use them, and I’m savoring the time spent with friends while I knit them. Does life get any better than this?

Ben went to Vacation Bible School this week. Every morning from 9 to noon. Joey and I went along. I’m either over protective or truly devoted. Or just plain nuts.

Every summer, I’ll be going on my morning walk and one week, all of a sudden, I’ll see everyone headed toward one of the churches in town for VBS. But I never seem to know about it ahead of time. This year, one of the churches had a big sign up, so I made plans for Ben to attend.

I only remember going to VBS once when I was a kid, but it is one of the highlights of my preschool years. The theme was creation, and we had a workbook that we did a page in (mixed art using crayons and then gluing things onto the picture) every day. Steve and I allow ourselves one 18-gallon tote each for childhood memorabilia. I still have that book.

I would have loved to drop Ben off every morning and picked him up at noon, but I knew that would never happen. Even though they have a separate storytime for Joey each week at the library, Ben insists that we go with him and refuses to go alone. He went by himself the first week, but the stampede at the end when everyone went up and got their coloring sheet and then left the room reduced him to tears. Or so the leader told me. Ever since, I have to go with him or he won’t even enter (much less stay in) the room.

So I knew I would have to go with Ben every day to Vacation Bible School. But I really wanted him to go. When we registered Monday morning, I asked if I could attend with him as a fly on the wall, and they were happy to let me do that.

What I learned? My child is more normal than I thought.

Ben was in the Preschool 2 group (based on the year of school just completed), and there were about fifteen children in his group every day. When they tried to do a new game, like Duck-Duck-Goose, which none of them said they knew how to play, it quickly became obvious that there were three groups. A third of them listened to the directions and figured it out right away. A third of them were willing participants but had to be told step by step what to when they got tagged by the Goose. And a third of them insisted on watching while everyone else played. I don’t need to tell you which group Ben was in. I can tell you I was not the only mother tagging along.

The first day, I had Joey in the stroller so he was “contained.” But then the wheel broke off my stroller so the rest of the week he was on the loose. If I wasn’t helping Ben, I was chasing after Joey. It was exhausting! Here and there I was able to be of some use and lend a hand to the other children, but I wasn’t much help otherwise. I can say I spared them from having to carry him out and call me when he realized I was missing and burst into tears. There were a number of those on the first day. After that, apparently they got used to it or they didn’t come back.

I did take Ben’s hand and make him do things he would have preferred to watch. I let him watch a little, but then we participated. Together. We did that with Duck-Duck-Goose, Red-Light Green-Light, and being in a dark room to watch a movie (every time a ride went through the dark at Disneyworld, Ben cried – even though he was sitting right next to us – so at least I was prepared).

Every day, as the morning went on, he would participate more and more willingly in the activities. But when we got home and I asked him if he had fun [Yes!] and what he liked best, his answer always seemed to be the thing he feared [and resisted] the most. Don’t ask me to explain – I’m just his mother.

By the end of the week, he would go find a place at the craft table without my having to walk him over there and stand immediately behind him in order to get him to stay (hard to do with Joey on the loose). He still preferred to follow me when we when from activity to activity, though. In my book, any progress is good, so I’m proud.

Next week, the other church in town [yes, we have two churches] is having Vacation Bible School. My hopes of being able to drop Ben off at 9:00 and pick him up at the end are very small, though there is no lack of enthusiasm on my part. Someday he’ll leave home without me and I’ll be sad. For now, I’m tagging along. Cheerfully.

This evening, when it came time for a bedtime story, Steve chose to read about the flood and Noah’s ark. While he was doing that, I was out taking pictures.

We got two inches of rain in less than an hour. There you can see the storm clouds that brought it all.

Last Wednesday night [a week ago] is the first time we remember seeing a pond in the neighbor’s yard. This shot [taken this evening] reminds me of a Florida swamp.

Last Wednesday is also the first time we heard the sump pump kick on since moving into this house. The next morning, the pit was still full of water so we called the plumber. The pump was kaput so he installed a new one. For the next twelve hours, it ran for two or three seconds and was off for two or three minutes – over and over and over again. When it wasn’t running, you could hear the water pouring into the pit. According to the neighbor, their sump pump hasn’t run since the mid-1980’s.

Doesn’t that look like the perfect cabin to stay in while fishing on a lake?

[See more pictures here.]