slowly the shutter moves

Hello imaginary friends. As you may have noticed I put up a couple pictures of our cats on this web log. I am hoping to add photos more and more, and more artwork as it arises. This should, after all, attempt to be a complete portrait.

But before future endeavors, photos first. I have a special place in my heart for photographs. I love old ones, treasure new ones, and find them incredibly hard to part with. The picture of my mother in her communion dress, the day we all met Weired Al (and I knew I had the best friends one could ask for), the picture of my sister and I when our 'real lives' were just beginning, my fella and I on our first trip, the slow dying, and the instant of birth. The thousands of pictures of the little one that I stop to pour over.

So it is though photographs that I am currently easing into my artist shoes. For me these days taking pictures is quiet and slow. Moments during naps when I can actually see what I am looking at, or moments when I look at something so wonderful that I am forced to see it.

The pictures that I have been taking remind me of how lucky I am to be here at home. How there are such few times in our lives when we can feel quiet and still. Life with a toddler, I must add, is by no means quiet and quite the opposite of still, but there is a feeling that comes out of days that stretch together when I look at her little face and say, 'what would you like to do today?'. Inside the walls of the house that is becoming our home there is sometimes a peace so great it has a presence . Outside the daffodils bob, the birds gather and scatter, and everything moves so fast.

recent portraits of the cats

The task at hand: Mealtime

Ok, so here is a post from the mommy side of things.
We just came into the living room, after another aborted breakfast, and I swear if I have to feed my child another meal I am going to jump of off the roof. I realize that I will, in fact, have to feed her another meal (within 4 hours no less), and that if I am face down in the dirt there will be no one to clean her and the quarter of the kitchen that she destroys, but it was nice to imagine. To preserve our relationship it was mutually decided to abandon breakfast in favor of Elmo. The icing on the cake was that the Word of the Day on Sesame Street was 'lazy'. "Lazy is just lounging around, when you don't want to do anything." Oh brother.