The last one was unplanned. Couldn’t resist including it. It was taken by mistake as I stood in front of a sculpture bearing antlers at my friend’s house in Wyoming. The rest were all taken this week.
For Cellpic Sunday
Yolanda’s been feeling a bit of congestion. I told her to stay home, but she insisted on coming to work today! Hope she doesn’t pass it on to Pasiano.
How does a Clown Nose Contagion begin? If you’ve missed the earlier part of the story, go HERE.
Click on photos to enlarge.
A Mexican Wedding is a joyous affair. You might guess from the number of wedding cakes how many people were at the celebration afterwards. The photos in this spread just show a bit of the spectacle. I didn’t realize until I started editing that I had taken over 500 photos! 400 on my camera before the battery gave out and then 100 plus more on my friend’s phone. At any rate, here are a “few” of the shots. I particularly love the one of all the children acrobatically dancing on the dance floor…More photos will follow in a few days. I might add that Alejandra is Yolanda’s niece and my English student. I first met her at a camp we threw for local children many years ago. One of the photos is of Yolanda and her sisters. Another is of Alejandra with her two children, her sister Marie Jose and her cousin Yoli, who is Yolanda’s daughter. Yoli and Marie Jose are also taking English lessons from me. The two other Anglo women were Alejandra’s former teachers. Do you know about the Mexican tradition of filling eggshells with confetti and breaking them over each others’ heads? You can see evidence of the practice in the photos. The bride and groom are not the only ones brushing confetti from their hair and clothing at a Mexican wedding!
For Cellpic Sunday
A few weeks ago I cleared 100 folders off my desktop, leaviing only 40. The ones I cleared off, I placed in one desktop folder entitled COLLECT (for Collections). It now holds 194 files, as I combined some. When I change the size of photos from the size my camera records them at down to a size to put on my blog, I have to drag them from the PHOTOS app. to my desktop. Then, if I use them, I file them in a folder according to topic or if they don’t fit into any folders in my COLLECT folder, I file them in my BLOG folder. If I don’t use them on my blog, I leave them on the desktop along with other interesting photos I’ve taken lately (or taken from my media file) that I hoped to use but didn’t. Today I decided to clean up my desktop again, and above are the photos formerly without a home that I want to share before putting them away.
Click on first photo to enlarge all photos. Then click on the arrows!
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #48.” Today’s number is 169. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Here are my contributions to the album.
Click on first photo to enlarge all photos. Then click on the arrows!
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #46.” Today’s number is 167. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Above are my contributions to the album:
Click on photos to enlarge.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #33” Today’s number is 154 To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below.
This is a photo of the little boy in the first photo as he is now. He looks much happier with dog companions.He takes them for walks three times a week!
Click on Photos to Enlarge
I always thought that at some point I would have children, but by the time I finally found the man I wanted have them with, I was thirty-eight, and he already had eight living children. Four of these children were under the age of eight when we met. When I married their dad, I married them, too. This poem was written at a time when, as inept as I was at entertaining small children in an L.A. condo, I still believed in a sort of magic wherein stepfamilies could connect to become become real families.
Connections
Your daughter breaks her arm and something breaks with it.
She becomes manageable.
Her laugh, softer now sometimes.
She loves writing with her other hand.
Her broken one grows fingernails for the first time
which we manicure once a week.
Sometimes, I drive home slower
on the nights I know we’re going to have the kids,
hoarding a few more minutes alone.
My key in the lock brings them, wanting games at once.
You, exhausted, irritable on the sofa,
wanting them yet wanting them gone.
In a movie, Mary Tyler Moore saying
she can’t love the son who needs her love too much.
Can’t love on demand?
Dirty fingernails, torn knees on Levis—
Our rag-a-muffins,
driven down to our city life
where they demand the mall.
Not the way I pictured it.
They call me Mom immediately after the wedding.
I scrub their fingernails,
put medicine on cold sores,
tell Jodie not to wear those torn-out pants to school anymore.
The other kids, I say, will talk—
what my mother would have said to me.
When I tell them at the office
about the homemade Easter decorations
hung on our refrigerator,
about the one that reads “to Mom,”
Jim says he prefers Elliott’s stories.
When I tell them that the littlest grabbed my knees
and hugged and said, “I just love you,”
the clever crowd around the copier groans.
I’m not a mother, they all understand,
and once a week, I barely get good practice in.
But when your daughter breaks her arm,
I try to find a spell to stick us all together—
paper, scissors, colored pens.
I say, “Try to keep the glue off the dining room table.”
I say, “Try not to drop the magic markers on the floor.”
“Take off your shoes when walking on the white sofa.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 