Internet Grapes

for myself

scarf
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

About a month ago (maybe more?) I decided to go to The Yarn Store and buy some yarn.  I was going to buy the prettiest, nicest, best and most beautiful yarn that I saw.  I wouldn't even look at the price.  (You don't really want to know how much I spent, and really, I'd rather not dwell on it.)

And so I bought that yarn you see up above, and I'm making myself a scarf.  With any luck, I will finish it this weekend, in time to wear it once or twice (or 10 times?  more?)  before the end of winter in Chicago.  Just looking at the unfinished scarf (throwing it around my neck every so often to see how long it's getting) makes me happy. 

I had never done any knitting when I took a knitting class in September of 2004.  Taking the class was a gift to myself - an hour or so every week that wasn't spent at work or doing housework or taking care of a baby.  The very first thing I made was a scarf, and I kept it for myself, because it had too many mistakes for me to willingly give it to anyone else.

Since then, I have knit scarves, children's sweaters, slippers, hats, and purses.  I kept none of them.  And almost without exception, I forgot, before sending my creation out in the world, to even take a picture of it. 

I figured it was time I made something for myself, a present to me, from me. 

I have a lot going on these days, in some ways.  At any moment, big changes could be afoot, and so I think I have been trying to keep myself in a constant state of readiness.  I try not to plan too much, do too much, push myself too much.  "I'll have enough going on soon enough," I think.  "I'm going to take it easy on myself."

But then the big changes don't happen, and I am left in the same place.  I haven't moved.  I haven't grown.  More specifically, I haven't written, I haven't taken many pictures, I haven't taken any classes, I haven't gone back to the gym, and I haven't gotten serious about dieting. 

I have no real wrap up for this.  Taking the time to write this is part of my (repeated) realization that writing is something that helps me stay happy.  When I stop, I'm hurting myself.  So I'm goin to try - again - to write here more often.  I hope that there are still people out there reading, of course.  But even if you're not, I'm going to have to do it for myself.

Katie's First Year

Katie's First Year on Vimeo

Another little movie, this one much higher on the sap factor than the last one was.  This one is a compilation of short clips taken through Katie's first year, so you'd think I might have put something like it together, say, around the time Katie turned one.  But I think in this case, at least for me, better late than never is really true. 

(I posted this one on both Vimeo & Youtube - and I also went back and posted the ball-yations video on Vimeo.  To see this one on Youtube, go here.)

Katie talks about the ball-yations

This video is too dark, and the fan we use to make white noise in her room overnight is going the whole time, but still. She makes me laugh. (And this is my first attempt at editing video, adding audio and text. I'll get better!)

(Ok, I tried to follow your advice to embed the video directly into my post, Joanne, and in doing so, typepad decided to erase my original post!  So here's a replacement.  I know I'm leaving stuff out that was in the first post, but oh, well.)

Way to tell you're in a good holiday mood #537 (November 22nd)

Peace
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

You actually dance in your chair a little bit to a Christmas pop song sung by N*SYNC.

And you're not even ashamed to tell the whole internet.

I know!

Grateful (November 21st)

mischief maker
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Linda posted an entry today and asked us to tell her what we were grateful for.  I posted this:

I’m grateful for my daughter, and so many of her attributes, especially the way she gives hugs & kisses (like this: hug, kiss, grab the hair on top of your head to pull you in for an Eskimo kiss, “noggin” (which is bumping the tops of your heads together), another hug, another kiss - and sometimes if you’re really lucky, she sort of forgets what she’s doing and she grabs your hair again and starts over), and also the way she puts words together. I’m grateful for my husband, who is my very favorite person, tied with Katie. I’m grateful for having enough money this year that we can buy some Christmas gifts without freaking about it. I’m grateful you mentioned Aimee Mann’s holiday album, because I will have to check it out, and also that you linked to the pumpkin cheesecake recipe, because I am SO going to make it! I’m grateful, still, on a near daily basis, that we didn’t die in our car crash in July. I’m grateful for my parents, and Geoff’s parents, and our siblings. I’m grateful for my camera and my computer and for all of the internets, and for all of my beloved friends, and for Cosi’s signature salad with grapes and apples and pistachio nuts, because it is delicious. 

And then I thought, you know, those are some gratefuls worth remembering. So I posted them here, too.

And hey, I'd love to hear what you're grateful for, too, if you're willing to share.  Tell me.

Geometry (November 8th)

Geometry (November 8th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I have been trying to look at this photograph in a sort of abstract, detached way, as if it's not a photo of me in my bathroom. As if, in the photo, I'm not standing there with what could be called a goofy somewhat self-conscious smile on my face, with wet hair, with what I can't help but see as chubby forearms and an awkward grip on the camera.

I've been trying, instead, to look at it in a couple of different ways. I've been focusing on the shapes, which I think is one reason I like the picture. I like the rectangular mirror with the rectangular shelves (big rectangle on the outside, smaller rectangles on the inside) reflected in it. I like the square tiles below the rectangular mirror, the corner of the rectangular door reflected in the left side of the mirror, the rectangular camera reflected in the rectangular mirror. The rectangles make me appreciate the softer shapes, too. The edge of a hand towel on the left, hanging from a silver ring. A little bit of the circular capiz shells attached to the candle sconce in the upper right.

And me, of course. I have almost no sharp angles.

I'm not sure why I feel a sudden surge of emotion when I write that, but I think it has something to do with how much this lack of sharp angles (inner, outer) might say about me. I am not hard edges. I am not sharp angles.

It's not just me, though, is it? We humans, we are all pretty non-geometrical. We are all pretty soft. We are pretty resilient, in so many ways, but still. You know. Handle with care.

Oh, and I said I was trying to look at in a couple of different ways, didn't I? I am trying, also, to see it as I might see it twenty years from now. As a record of who I was then (who I am now). I am almost never nearly as critical of my past selves as I am of my present one.

"(E)ver(y) (D)ay of the (Y)ear" (November 7th)

"(E)ver(y) (D)ay of the (Y)ear" (November 7th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I got there a little bit early, I thought, so I took a few pictures before I went in. It was a little bit before 9. It turned out that she was already there, at the bar, drinking wine and reading a magazine, looking pretty and happy. I don't have any idea when the last time was that I started my day before 5:47, got to work a little after 6:30, and still went out for drinks until after 11:30. I was tired, but it was good. The presentation went well - I felt prepared for it, and everyone seemed on an even keel - and once that was over, I felt so relaxed that I realized how much of my anxiety was related only to the presentation. A whole lot of it.

So I had a long but productive work day, and then I came home to my family. I talked to Geoff before he left, played with Katie and put her to bed after he left, and went to see Wendy when he returned.

I'm feeling much better.

something completely different (November 3rd)

something completely different (November 3rd)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

When I woke up and saw that the sky was a bright shade of fuschia and the streetlights had turned into circular rainbows, I knew that things were going to start happening to me now.

The blue sky of the following day did nothing for me. "Oh, how very quaint," I said.

November (NaBloPoMo)

I decided a week or so ago that I'd like to keep trying to do this one-post-a-day thing through the month of November.  (One month at a time.)

Then I fell off the post-a-day wagon a little bit - we went out of town last Thursday (we went to Indianapolis to go to the Children's Museum with our friends Tracy & Tim & their son Xander, then we went to visit my dad & stepmom & brother in Kokomo) and got back Saturday night.  Promptly upon our arrival back home, I started to get sick.  Sunday I was in my pajamas all day.  Monday I felt better.  Tuesday I started losing my voice, but we went trick or treating anyway.  Today was the worst day so far, even though by the end of the day I started to feel like maybe I am getting better again.  Still, through all of that, I did manage to go back and post a photo on Flickr from each of the days I'd missed, even though I didn't always manage a post here. 

You can see the final version of photos from the October Photo Project here, if you're interested.   And here is something interesting - as I watch the slideshow of those photos, I realize a couple of things.  First, that almost every day was a struggle.  Almost every day, I had to force myself to take photos even when I didn't feel inspired to take them.  Almost every day, I forced myself to pick a photo even though there was not one about which I thought, "I love this!"  And second, now that I look back at the set, I think, "Huh.  I am proud of these.  I am proud of that work." 

So for obvious reasons I'd still like to do the post-a-day during November thing, and I've even signed up for NaBloPoMo.  I'm planning do the same thing I did in October - post one photo a day on Flickr (my favorite picture taken that day), then blog the photo here, and write some words to go along with it.  I tell myself that any words, and any number of words, will do.  The goal here is just to keep going, keep producing, keep posting.

Today's problem, though, is that I didn't take a single picture.  I didn't leave the house all day, and I am just bleh.  Awful, in fact.  My throat hurts so badly that I have to wince and hunch my shoulders every time I swallow, to steel myself for how badly it's going to hurt.  I could go take some pictures now, around the house, and post one of them just for posting's sake, but that's what I already did here:

And here:

So this is all just my long-winded way of saying hi.  Thanks for reading in October.  There will be more in November.  And almost all of it will be more interesting than this. 

Snow Princess (October 31st)

Snow Princess (October 31st)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Katie was more excited about ringing people's doorbells than about getting candy. At the first house, the man told her to take some candy. She took a package of sweet tarts or something else small, and he smiled. "Take another one," he said. She looked at him, paused, put the sweet tarts back, and started to reach for something else. "No, you can have both, we told her. "You can have more than one!"

She got pretty good at saying "trick or treat" loud enough so that people could hear her, and some of her "thank you's" were even spontaneous. Person after person complimented her beautiful costume.

By the end of our trick or treating, she was reaching for candy without having to be prompted, and taking more than one piece. It was near the end of the night - everyone was urging her to take more.

She was pleased about the candy, but what she really loved were the doorbells. Whenever someone came to the door before we'd rung the bell, she headed for the bell, anyway. "She'd really love to ring your doorbell," we told them, and they always told her to go ahead. A second or two after putting her candy in her Elmo basket, she was grabbing one of our hands, urging us on toward "another doorbell."

Tonight brings Geoff and I to another rite of passage: first time to filch candy from our child's Halloween loot. And mighty tasty, too.