P52, Somewhat: Week 15, "Tradition"

I grew up in a family with traditions.  We knew, more or less, what to expect at every major holiday, and it was nice to know what was coming.  Now that I'm a parent myself, I want Kaleb to benefit from these same types of traditions.  But the pressures of wanting him to have the perfect Rockwellian holidays, as I remember having in my own childhood.

What I have discovered is this: I probably actually never had a holiday that went perfectly according to my parents' plans.  My family holidays with Kaleb will probably never go perfectly either.  And that's ok.  Just as I never had any sense of things going wrong as a kid, Kaleb probably won't either.  In fact, the most important tradition is to simply spend time with Kaleb and do things to make his holidays special and memorable, just as my parents did for my brother and me when we were kids.

This year, for the first time, Kaleb and I dyed eggs.  Assuming I already had all the supplies we'd need, I didn't bother to read the directions of the egg dying kid my dad had given us.  I bought some eggs, and hard boiled 20 of them.  18 of them survived the boiling without cracking, and they were set aside to be colored.  On the day we were to dye the eggs, however, I realized we had no vinegar to add to the dye water to help the color adhere to the egg shells.  A quick glance around Google hinted that I might be able to use lemon juice instead, and I decided it would just have to work.  Kaleb and I spent some time dying the eggs, six at a time in three rounds.  They came out with plenty of imperfections, not at all what I had hoped for my first attempt at sharing this activity with Kaleb.  But you know what?  He didn't notice those imperfections at all!  He was overjoyed to be able to help, to get to participate in something new and fun.  When it was all finished, I couldn't pry Kaleb out of the kitchen.  He actually wanted to stand atop his stool and watch the eggs drying on the counter.

P52, Somewhat: Week 14, "Toys"

The photo topic this week is "Toys," and toys are definitely something I know plenty about.  Why?  Because I'm a parent, and my son has a particular talent for making an absolute mess.

A few days ago, I blogged about my son's new Jobs Chart, mentioning that one of his jobs is to clean up all his toys every weekend.  When I was this topic coming up, I knew in advance what the photo would have to be this week.  So, when we woke up yesterday morning, I snapped a pic of our living room floor before all the toys got cleaned up.

And, rather than writing a lot this week, I have decided to let the photo speak for itself.

P52, Somewhat: Week 13, "Accessory"

This week's post almost had me stumped.  We have been given the topic "Accessory."

Let's face it: I'm totally not a girly-girl.  I don't wear make-up, I don't usually have the most trendy jewelry, and I don't really accessorize much at all.  I do own many little items that would qualify as accessories, but none of them were things that I felt were really all that important to me or things I thought would make a good photograph.  So when I hit that brick wall mental block, I did what any natural lexophile would do: I turned to the dictionary for ideas.

Here is what the dictionary told me:

That single definition lit up many areas of my mind, but it was this part that stood out the most: "Contributing to or aiding an activity or process."

I knew immediately what to photograph for this post.

P52, Somewhat: Week 12, "Spring"

Do you ever get the feeling that the inanimate or non-sentient things around you are aware of what's going on in your life, and that they're working either for or against you?  Sure, we may know it's not true,  we as people sometimes can't help but imagine and project human qualities onto nonhuman things.

We get mad at the car when it won't start.  We beg the traffic signals to hurry up when we're running late.  We thank the cool breezes when we're outside on a hot day.  And though we know that none of these actions actually have an effect, many of us continue to do them.  And, as evidenced by the picture to the right—which I snagged from the  Facebook profile of my friend, Sarah C.—some of us even make a preemptive habit of being genuinely polite to some of the objects in our lives.

Personally, I have frequently felt like everything was going right for me lately.  Don't get me wrong, there have been some trying times too, but when things are good, lately, they're very very good.

This week's P52 post topic is "Spring," and Spring is a season which has arrived even earlier than usual in my part of the world.  All over the place, record high temperatures are being recorded.  Kaleb's back into wearing shorts to school nearly every day, and I'm digging the capri pants back out.

P52, Somewhat: Week 11, "Nostalgia"

This week's P52 post topic was "Nostalgia."  I could think of plenty of things to write about, but they were all either quite mundane or were memories I like to keep to myself.  Then I was looking through some storage boxes, came across one very small item, and was stricken with a bout of nostalgia.  So I snapped a photo of that memory-inducing item, and here it is:

"Tiny Memories" photo by Sarah Getz for P52 Photo-A-Week Challenge, 3-12-2012

Just three short years ago, Kaleb's little feet were shorter than my fingers.  While I can't honestly say that I miss having a newborn baby, I can't help but look back fondly at where we've been.

P52, Somewhat: Week 10, FREE WEEK

Several dates over the course of this P52 Photo-A-Week challenge have been left as unassigned free weeks.  This is one of those weeks, and I decided to use it to take a photo that would illustrate an ideal evening at home for me.  So when the perfect night came along, and after Kaleb was tucked into his bed, I snapped a few quick shots the remnants of our quiet evening activities.

Lately, Kaleb and I spend a lot of our evenings together doing quiet activities that exercise Kaleb's developing motor skills.  This particular night, we spent out time on the floor of the living room coloring in some brand new coloring books with crayons and stringing beads onto shoelaces.  Kaleb likes pretty much any activity we do together, but these are some of his current favorites.

"Beads on Strings & Coloring Things" photo by Sarah R. Getz for P52 Photo-A-Week challenge.

P52, Somewhat: Week 9, "Distance"

This week's post topic is "distance."  I could think of plenty of distant objects the photograph: a setting sun, a tree in a field, a storm looming on the horizon, a boat heading out to sea.  And any of those shots, along with a multitude of others would be great practice for a photographer using this photo-a-week challenge to bolster their photography skills.  I, however, am not a photographer; and while I may see some improvement in my amateur photography skills by the end of this project, it is not my primary motivation for participation in this challenge.  Rather, my motivation for attempting this was to help bring some added variety and diversification to my blog and give me a chance to further build and exercise my writing skills.

So rather than deciding on what photo to write about, I decided instead to write about something that I could find a photo to complement.

What comes to mind when I think of the things in my life that are meaningful yet distant?

Jack.  Of course.

Friendships worth having require a great deal of shared work and mutual responsibility to keep them healthy.  And maintaining such relationships over long distances grows exponentially more difficult.  For it to work, you must care enough to work for it.

Frequent readers of my blog will already know who Jack is and how we met.  (If you missed that post, you can catch up here.)  Jack and I share a relationship that neither of us quite know how to properly label.  We are friends, for certain, but there is more too, and it is the addition of this "something more" that makes our friendship so valuable to us both.  And even over the 10,122 miles (16,290 km) between here and Jack's current home in Japan, that "something more" gives a reason to stay close.

P52, Somewhat: Week 8, "Color"

This week's post topic is Color.  Color is something that has always been important in my life.  As a natural redhead, I can even go so far as to say that color—specifically the color red—has been a defining force in my life.  So, when a friend suggested that I might want my photo this week to be a red-centered photo, I agreed and set my mind to deciding what to photograph.

Red hair?  Red shoes?  Screen photo of this very blog?  There are hundreds of red things in my life.

However, the "red" I see most routinely and noticeably lately are the glowing red numbers on the display of the digital alarm clock on my bedside table.  These glowing red numbers are the first thing I see every morning when it's time to get up and start my day.  More importantly, these glowing red numbers are the last sight I see before going to bed each night.

Many times I sit in bed, blogging too late into the night, watching the time ticking past on the clock and counting down the hours and minutes until I'll have to wake back up....using the time on this clock to determine how much longer I can allow myself to stay up writing and still get enough sleep to function as a mother and at work the following day.  It's not uncommon for me to see the time change from one day to the next before finally satiating by writing needs enough that I can get some sleep.

P52, Somewhat: Week 7, "Love"

It's hardly surprising that the P52 topic this week was "love," being that this is the week of Valentine's Day.  I have plenty of things I love: my little boy, family, friends, pets, books, shoes, chocolate....the list goes on and on.  I could think of plenty of things to photograph for this week, from the mundane to the extraordinary and from cliché to unique.  But I couldn't narrow down my options and decide what sort of photo I wanted to take!

To: Minha ruiva! [My redhead!]
Love: Seu devoto! [Your devoted!]
(Brazilian Portuguese [English])

But today, my sweet Jack solved the question for me, sending me a gift with a story.

Most people who read my blog have heard of Jack.  He's my....well, I don't know exactly what to call our type of "us-ness"....but there's definitely something here.  He's my friend; he's the person who knows every single one of my secrets; he's the first person I want to talk to when I've had a bad day, or a good day, or a day that's notable for any reason at all.  I could spend all night extolling the virtues of Jack, but that is not the purpose of this post.

♫♪ Let's start at the very beginning....♫♪

In December of 2002, I was married to a guy in the Marine Corps and we were living in Ramona, CA just north of MCAS Miramar where my then-husband was stationed.  Several of the other kid-free military wives in our apartment complex had begun volunteering at a V.A.-run recovery center in downtown San Diego where a number of recently-wounded Marines were living while undergoing extensive physical therapies for a range of injuries.  The other wives invited me to come along with them, and it sounded like a worthwhile cause, so I went.

P52, Somewhat: Week 6, "Texture"

Monday, January 23, 2012 marked 9 years since I met my friend, Jack.  As he does on many holidays and special days, Jack had a gorgeous flower arrangement delivered to me at work.  I kept them at work to show off and admire all week, then took them home on Friday afternoon to enjoy them longer (they usually last a couple of weeks).

It was nice to have the flowers at work all that week, giving me something to jump-start happy thoughts during the occasional low points in my days.  It struck me how many of life's situations we tend to describe using "texture" words.

• Work was tough today.

• This car has a smooth ride.

• Marriage is a bumpy road.

• Single parenting is rough.

Friendship is another situation we describe with many words, and the descriptions can change over time.  The friendships that last the longest seem to be the ones that make it down the bumpy roads, past the rough times, and into a smooth comfortable closeness...never giving up when the going gets tough.  I have been lucky enough, in my life, to have had a cherished few friendships like this.  I have some amazing friends who have shared the good and the bad with me, and who have remained my faithful friends though it all.

P52, Somewhat: Week 5, "Self"

What a tough topic "Self" has turned out to be this week.  You see, to take a photo of your "self," you must first understand who your "self" is—and that is something that can be quite a challenge for anyone.

What I've decided about myself is this: I'm a person who constantly looks back.

•  I look back at past friendships, to learn what went wrong and why and how better to take care of my important friendships and other relationships now and in the future.

•  I look back at past romances, to learn where my priorities are and what I want and need from that sort of relationship.

•  I look back at past jobs to learn what about them made me happy and what made me miserable, what gave me a sense of purpose and what seemed frustratingly impossible.

•  I look back—to past joys and hurts, frivolities and losses, successes and failures—to learn how to move forward without repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

I look back.  Looking back allows me to be a better mother, a better friend, a better daughter, a better teacher, a better co-worker, a better citizen.....in general, a better person.  Looking back helps me to accept my flaws by showing me that, even though I have always been flawed, I have still had successes.  Looking back helps me to see that I am a person worthy of happiness and love and contentment.

Looking back gives me the tools and the wisdom I need to move forward.

And so, I look back.

P52, Somewhat: Week 4, "Animal"

I am the mother of a 3-year-old. And my 3-year-old, like most other children his age, is absolutely fascinated with animals. Cats, dogs, gerbils, cows, giraffes, fish—if it's an animal, he's interested. So when I saw that this week's photo topic was "animal," I knew that my subject for the photo would likely be something that is already a part of Kaleb's life. I began a few weeks early, snapping pictures of our family's pet cat and gerbils, as well as any number of Kaleb's favorite stuffed animals left lying around the house.

And in the process, I came up with many shots I liked.

But none that I quite wanted to post for this week's P52.

On January 14, my mom and I took Kaleb to the Pensacola Civic Center to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The troupe touring in our area is presenting a show called "Bash," which had an hour-long pre-show event open to all ticket holders. We got to go down on the show floor, meet some performers, and Kaleb got to be part of several activities to make kids feel like part of the show.

During the course of the pre-show, they were encouraging people to sign up for a raffle, for which the prize would be a free elephant footprint.  We put a couple of entries into the box, and thought it might be pretty fun if Kaleb were to win one.  What hadn't occurred to me was when exactly they were going to make the footprint.  Not until, while we were sitting around the ring on the circus floor, several of the circus performers rolled out a cart with some trays of watered-down paint and began to spread a drop cloth on the ground.  I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see a trainer leading an elephant into the ring.  She walked the elephant around the perimeter of the ring so all the spectators sitting there could wave hello.

Kaleb was stunned into a paralyzed silence.  He didn't move.  He didn't speak.  He was simply amazed to be so close to such a giant animal—the M.C. said she weighed 7,000-ish lbs!  After he recovered form the initial amazement, Kaleb got excited and began to laugh and clap and chatter along with everyone else.  We watched as several performers helped to coordinate the making of elephant footprints, and then they escorted the elephant back to her area backstage.

P52, Somewhat: Week 3, "Inspire"

As I've mentioned before, I'm a lexophile....a "word person."  My fascination with words began as a child and has never stopped.  I love all kinds of words, both the familiar and the obscure.  And, like other word people, I have a habit of relating one word to another, by definition or usage or by some other means.  When I first read the list of topics for this P52 challenge, my eye immediately caught on this week's "Inspire" topic.  In my mind I couldn't stop turning the word over and over, thinking of how many pictures could be taken to fit the prompt in one way or another.

I thought of the cliché photos I could take of my adorable little boy, and then label him as my "inspiration."  But that would not have been truthful.  I've loved writing for much much longer than I've even been a parent.  So, while Kaleb may be the topic of plenty of my blog posts these days, he's not the reason I write.

I thought of how to play with the word, turn it into a pun and take a picture.  I thought of all the lovely old churches downtown, with the towering architecture that might give me a place to climb into and take a photo.  You know, from the spire of an old church.  From the inside.  In the spire.  In spire.  Inspire.  But even I couldn't get behind that silly an idea....and I sure didn't know when I'd ever have the time to find a church to let me climb around in their towers.

So, I decided to take a more serious turn with the word.  I thought of all the words that are used with 'inspire,' and the words with similar meanings or alliterative assonance.  Inspire — Influence — Instigate: Three words with meanings a hair's breadth apart, yet with vastly dissonant connotations.

I've decided that maybe it is the words themselves that inspire me to write and to improve.  And the source of my inspiration, therefore, is the sourse of all the words: books.

Books have been a part of my life since I was a tiny child.  When I was born, my mother was the librarian at the Crestview Public Library.  I'd say it's a good bet that I listened to the text of more than one book before I was ever even born!  From my birth, my parents both understood the importance of reading to children, and their awareness only increased once they were both through school and working as teachers.  While my memories of my pre-school days are limited and fuzzy, many of my earliest memories include reading with or being read to by my parents.  I heard words, and I learned words; eventually, I fell in love with words.

Words enabled me to excel in school when I put enough effort behind my abilities.  Words helped me to build a healthy imagination.  Sometimes words got me in trouble....because I couldn't keep quiet during my school lessons.  But overall, words have done far more good in my life than most other influencing factors.  So, it is in tribute to my love of books and the words within—the words of others—that I snapped this week's pic.

P52, Somewhat: Week 2, "Perfect"

So, I have hit upon the most perfect idea for this week's P52 post!

My secret addiction is crossword puzzles.  Most people don't know, but I do them all the time.  I do them online, in magazines, and in the newspaper.  One of the teachers I work with even bought me an entire book of them for Christmas!  I like the easy ones and the more challenging ones.  And I've been addicted since about my senior year of high school.

By the age of 15, I was writing all the time.  I wrote short stories, poems, journals, letters, word puns.  I wrote, and I filled folders and notebooks full of these writings.  The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write.  And as I wrote, I developed a fascination for words.  So I began to learn new words: short or long, impressive, obscure, words with odd spellings, even a few "q"-without"u" words.

Not only did my increased vocabulary begin to make my writing more interesting, it also made me great at solving word puzzles.  My senior year of high school, I took a fluff-type class, 1st period all year, called Contemporary History.  Basically, we had one of the coolest, ridiculously-intelligent men on the planet teaching the class, and we sat around reading the most current newspapers and news magazines and discussing world events and politics.  Most of the students in the class were seniors like I was, and we'd all sit around like the almost-adults we were drinking coffee and eating breakfast snacks and reading the paper, all the while having rather advance teacher-led discussions about what was going on in the world around us.

During the year in Contemporary History, I made friends with another student who was also a lexophile* and together we would work the puzzles in each day's newspaper: 2 crossword puzzles, the Jumble, and the CryptoQuote.  It was our "thing" and everyone knew it.  Now, as every crossword addict knows, as you get into working harder and harder puzzles, you're going to run into clues for which you have no answer.  For those times, there are books similar to Thesauruses designed just for puzzle lovers.  You look up a key word in the clue, and hints are sorted based on the number of letters or spaces you need to fill.  Need a five-letter word for "mad"? How about "irate"?

Some words, as every lexophile* knows, have lots and lots of synonyms.  Perfect is one such word.  In fact, in my crossword puzzle dictionary, there are over 200 synonyms given for "perfect."  So, while perfect may not mean exactly the same thing to every person, there is certainly a "perfect" synonym to compliment your vocabulary!

And, after all, what is a writer without words?

P52, Somewhat: Week 1, "New"

It's Week 1 of P52.  If you don't know what that means, click here to open a new window with the first post in this series, and check it out!

The topic for this weeks P52 photo was "new."  Obviously, this topic was chosen specifically for this time of year.  It's a new year.  We just passed Christmas, during which many people got lots of new things.  January is a time for beginnings to many people, so "new" made perfect sense as a photo prompt.

With all the technology that is available today, the concept of writing has taken on a new connotation for many people.  You can sit down at a computer or pick up an iPad or smart phone and compose any document or blog or status update you with with a simple click of a few buttons.  But for someone who truly loves to write, there is still nothing that gives that same sensation as sitting down to write, using a brand new pen on blank paper.

A piece of blank paper has very nearly infinite potential.  Paper can be filled with any words you choose, and can become a love story or an adventure or a heartbreaking tale of sorrow.  The only limits placed upon a blank sheet of paper are its corporeal dimensions and the writer's own vocabulary.

In a time when technology has replaced the need for legible penmanship, in many peoples' opinions, the love of turning a simple sheet of blank paper into a work of living, emotional art is a rarity.  I have this love.  I often write drafts of blog posts on paper before the words ever make it into the pixels of my laptop's screen.  I have notebooks and folders and binders filled with things I have written, some over a decade old and others written as recently as yesterday.

It's the promise of creation that draws me to the paper and pen.  The lure of "new."  The opportunity of the yet-unwritten story.

P52, Somewhat: My Twist on a Challenging Project

So, a couple of days ago, a fellow blogger, of Bella Angel Blog, put up a post about a Photo-A-Week project/challenge she will be participating in this year.  It's called P52 ('p' for project), and emphasizes that the goal is to make you "Practice viewing the world in different ways, and push your creativity and hopefully your skills."

Now, by no stretch of the imagination am I a "real" photographer.  I like looking at photography, but when it comes to taking the photos, I can shoot a hundred pics before I come up with one I like enough to keep.  My photographic knowledge is limited to my Kodak point-and-shoot digital camera, for taking pictures of my son, our everyday life, and for sometimes getting "artsy" enough to attempt to get a decent shot of my flowers when they are in bloom.  Beyond that, I leave most photography to the pros.

So when I read her post about starting the project, I thought, "Oh, I can't wait to see what she does for all these posts!"  And then I began thinking about how often a photograph has inspired me to write.  Those thoughts progressed to, "If a photograph can inspire me to write, why couldn't the desire to write inspire me to take a picture?"