More sun!

I have a piece of garden art in my study given to me by Tal's daughter several years ago at Christmas. This morning between 8:30 and 9:00 it cast a sharp shadow on the wall as the sun cleared the trees at the front of the house.

It turned out to be a great day for a seven stop list of errands, which I handled, and an 18-hole round on the golf course for Tal. I didn't want the day to end ...

Blue sky

Oh, the sun came out today. Taking a good, long, dry walk was first on our list. With the camera in hand, I couldn't help but let it turn skyward at will. The budding trees against the blue, cloud-streaked sky was uplifting beyond measure.

Pure sweetness

While I was preparing lunch today, Tal came into the kitchen, quietly got my attention, senting me for the camera. After a busy morning in the outside dampness, Whitby and Belle had come in with Tal and had promptly taken to the sofa, falling asleep, looking serene, sweet and exceptionally comfortable. After taking the picture, lunch postponed, Tal and I stood for a long moment simply to enjoy looking at them.

I cannot express or begin to understand for that matter how much we love these two dogs and, indeed, how fortunate we think we are to be their caretakers.

Hijacked

My day was hijacked! Hijacked by Whitby who went outside with Tal as he worked on our new bottle tree and ended up, unsupervised, deep in the mud, a total, grimy, disheveled wreck of a dog. He was having such a good time and how his tail did wag! My plan had been to clean house, a plan hijacked by the need to give a dog a bath. We make plans in order to have something to adjust, I suppose.

I couldn't be mad and we ended up having a damp and wonderful time, the hot water in the utility sink running brown for quite a long time, three soapings and rinsings worth. There's something about Whitby when he's drenched, looking thin, his eyebrows and beard slicked down, his eyes big, something so very dear.

The combing and blow drying included a fair amount of snarling and snapping (Whitby, not me!) and more than a few applications of the scissors to particularly tenacious knots. But in the end Whitby was clean and fluffy - and exhausted. After changing into a dry set of clothes, I got to the house, not making good on all my thorough good intentions, but giving it a step above a lick and a promise.

It'll do for this week.

Potential travel

It's the last Monday in January. I am tired of being cold and, while I really like damp, grey weather, I have to admit that I am growing weary of it -- even while acknowledging with profound gratitude that we're not living in the northeast any longer. The luxury of silk longjohns in my wardrobe not withstanding, I'm having a hard time keeping my spirits up.

Something that helps us both are conversations about travel possibilities. We have received a letter from the propritators of Shining Falls Lodge in Manitoba about our "penciled in" dates for June and we're researching a train trip across Canada and a Road Scholar jaunt into Alaska. Admittedly, although we need to choose one of the three, it's strengthening just to have the options.

I found, tucked into my journal, a napkin I picked up at a recent party at the Hilton near in the convention center in Columbia. On it are three inspiring sentences.

Travel is more than just A to B.

Travel should celebrate good times.

Travel should take you places.

At this point, for us, the mere prospect of travel is helping us keep January's gloom in perspective.

Success

In early December I wrote a post about the birth of my brother 51 years ago (see 5 December 2008). And, I remembered a photograph taken for our Christmas card that year. It was printed by my father on "from our house to yours" card stock and I do believe I have an original around here somewhere, but it's still hidden, awaiting a day of rediscovery. But, last night during a late night movie, I met up with a happy, exhilerating moment. Success!

At some point in the last six months I did something in the Elements 6 program I use (part of Adobe's Photoshop) which loused up my catalog terribly. I've not had the heart to get into it, frankly. The prospect of straightening it all out seemed nearly impossible, having swelled the number of images in the catalog from roughly 9000 to nearly 16000. How would I ever straighten it all out?

Then came these cold, foggy, wet grey January days. Grimly and determinedly, I set out to fix it, giving the project three to four hours a day and using my occasional sleeplessness to advance my progress. I'm still not clear what actually happened, but it seems I ended up duplicating a vast majority of the images in the catalog. The rememdy was, beginning with the oldest first (my choice), working my way through the collection, image-by-image, eliminating the duplicates and updating the catalog as I went.

There are benefits to beginning again. But, it takes not obsessing over the mistake that necessitated the new start; it takes letting oneself enjoy the process, allowing for discoveries and enjoying the treasured images. What else are they for, after all?

This is what I was hoping to find in early December: a photograph of my family just days after Paul and Mother had come home from the hospital, our Christmas card picture for 1957. Now, this is not the photograph my father took, I don't think. This image is in a square format, was extremely crooked and included, along the edges, information about the photograph in my Grandmother Tarbox's handwriting, making me think my grandmother Tarbox took it (Family Photographs D, image #50). Now, I don't remember my grandparents being present that day, but I was just five years old and remember with extreme clarity my wonder at all five of us sitting on the piano bench and the beautiful dresses my sister, Joyce, and I were wearing.

All I did to the image is beef up the contrast, straighten and resize it. And, while I'm still hoping to find the actual Christmas card one day, it's my pure pleasure to be able to post this one.

A chilling read

I brought home a novel -- a door prize -- from the library-sponsored spa day the week between Christmas and New Years (see 30 December 2008). Having a list of tasks that I really wanted to accomplish this month, I'd not picked up the book. But, Thursday afternoon, another grey day in this long string of grey days, wearying of being productive, I curled up on the sofa (which I had to share with the dogs, who were warm, by the way) with the gas logs adding cheer to the room and opened the front cover. Whoa ...

Entitled The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold (who also wrote The Lovely Bones), it's a story about a daughter and her mother. It's also a wild and overwhelming read, the time frame a terrible, catastrophic 24-hour period. Not able to sleep last night I got up to read for a little while and ended up not going back to bed until I'd finished the book, whose story didn't end as the back cover closed.

I am in awe of Sebold's skill. The story is one thing, but the writing, the daughter's layered, strange interior landscape, is so mesmerizing that somehow I found myself experiencing a disconcerting unbalance, the daughter's disconcerting unbalance. I shudder thinking about it now.

I'm glad I read it; I'm more glad it's over. Sleeplessness, it seems to me, needs reading material easier on the nerves -- like articles about the economy, or Wall Street, or the legislative and executive branches of government to name a few.