What a Life!

Ben is marching around the house, riding his broomstick horse, his cowboy hat on his head.

Joey has the tail of a stuffed animal pulled through his legs, holding it with one hand as the animal trails behind while the other hand steadies a blue cool-whip-style bowl on his head, as he marches around the house in like fashion.

But alas! I have no camera so I cannot take any pictures. This one will just have to be left up to your imagination.

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I’m having a crisis. [Said with a tremor in my voice.]

Steve’s Dad has a 1940-something grain truck he wants to sell. Of course, he needs a good picture of it in order to list it online. But it needs to be cleaned up first.

This Thursday and Friday, Steve is going to be working up near his Dad’s farm, so he’s planning to spend the night there in order to not have to spend two extra hours driving back and forth.

Steve told me this morning that he wants to take the camera with him. As in, the only camera we own. The one I use to take pictures all the time. The Rebel XTi.

He says his Dad is all gung-ho about cleaning up the truck this week since Steve can bring the camera with him when he goes up there and take pictures of it.

Now I can almost count on one hand the number of pictures Steve has taken with this camera. Not that he doesn’t know how to use a camera. He was one of the photographers for his high school yearbook, taking pictures from a 60’s version SLR camera. As in, everything manual. In fact, I would love for him to take pictures with it because then I could be in some of them. But he doesn’t seem to be interested. So I am the one who takes all the pictures with it.

You must understand, Steve’s grandma and his aunt both have cameras. Eighties versions of the point-and-shoot. They store them in the boxes they came in. With a rubber band around. Manual included. Every time we get them together, they get them out, take two or three pictures, and then put them away in the boxes until the next time. Their cameras even travel in the little boxes that they came in - I know that, because that’s how they bring them to our house.

I, on the other hand, take pictures almost every day. In fact, I looked this morning, and I got that camera last year on August 8. As of today, I am just a few pictures shy of 6600 pictures. That’s well over 500 pictures a month. Nearly twenty pictures a day. Average.

So to them it’s no big deal for me to send the camera with Steve up to the farm. To me? I guess if he cut off my arm and took it with him, that might be worse. Or leg. [Trying to be positive here.]

And yes, Thursday and Friday may be two days when I don’t take any pictures. Or they may be two days when I catch some really great ones. I don’t know.

Do I send it? Or do I hide it, tell Steve I lost it, and then stand guard in front of where I put it?*

I’m having a crisis. [Do you hear the tremor in my voice?]

*****

*Actually, I don’t operate that way. I would simply refuse to let him take it along. That’s just what I would feel like doing.

Cows aren’t dumb - they know where to go when it gets hot.

Today Steve set up the swimming pool for Ben in the back yard.

At first, he just threw his toys in. Balls. Buckets. Bats. When Steve saw him getting ready to put his tricycle in, he brought a halt to the game. [The other toys remained.]

Then Ben got in. And stood in the water. Had a great time playing with his toys. Would not sit down.

Finally Steve convinced him to sit down in the water to get cool.

Such fun!

Did you know you can dump water out of the pool with your bucket and not get in trouble for it (unlike the sandbox)? Steve says the water level went down at least six inches.

Now Ben, too, knows where to go when it gets hot.

Can you believe how red that water is [that the cows are standing in]?

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Last Wednesday, the boys and I drove down to Oklahoma for a family reunion. Yesterday, we returned. Before we left, I told everyone we’d be back today. Now I’m regretting not telling them we’d be back tomorrow. Quite frankly, I need a vacation.

A sit-on-the-couch-and-knit-all-day-with-not-a-care-in-the-world kind of vacation.

Some stats for you:

Total miles driven: 1288

Miles each way: 465

Miles per gallon after the first tank (the only time I calculated it): 30+

And no, I didn’t drive like a granny. I had two boys in the back seat who were going to get tired of driving at some point, so I drove in the interest of making good time.

Photos taken: 740

Photos taken out tromping around on the land: over 600

The first day we tromped around on Mom’s land, which she inherited when Grandma died. The second day, Mom and I got up early and went out to the home place (now Uncle Rod’s land) and took pictures there. I have always heard there is magic in the first morning light. Now I’ve finally had the chance to experience it.

All of those landscape photos gave much opportunity for practice with the “rules” of photography. There’s this rule of thirds they talk about, where the horizon isn’t supposed to be smack at the center of the picture but rather a third of the way from the top or bottom.

That rule was the thorn in my flesh the entire time. You have red dirt and blue sky. I don’t want too much red dirt. Nor do I want too much blue sky. I want to see the variations in the blue sky but not miss out on the contours of the land.

The photo above was taken out on Mom’s land. Note that the horizon hits almost smack in the middle. But of all the pictures I took of those stair-step trees (I was obsessed with them), I really like that one. It’s a perfect balance of land and sky. Forgive me.

I will be posting more pictures soon, as I get a chance to go through them. Right now, though, I need to make a trip to town as the cupboards here are bare.