The children playing computer games together.
05 December 2008

Recently Tab uploaded a couple of really beautiful pictures on her blog. She was experimenting with color, and there is also a lot of texture in the photos. The photos are beautiful. Here are the links:

Colorful pictures
A tunnel of trees

There isn’t anywhere to post comments on Tab’s blog, so I’ll post them here: Those photos rock, Tab! I like them very much.

We had Tumama’s birthday party yesterday.
Most people could make it and we had a
really nice time.
21 February 2009

Tumama’s paparazzi (and this doesn’t
show me with my camera 🙂 ).

I’ve thought of two new entries on my Austin residency form.

11. Do you recycle?

(If you lie on this question — simply to gain residency in Austin — and say you recycle even though you don’t, the city planners strongly suggest that you stay in the closet regarding your non-recycling habits or be prepared to be run out of town on the light rail while having organic produce thrown at you.)

12. Do you find 90s Grunge Lite clothing appropriate apparel for the opera?

I’m so pleased with my Austin residency form, I’ve created a page for it. There are only 12 questions right now, but as I think of new ones, I’ll add them. Earth Day, organic produce and products, vegetarianism and veganism, zero waste, light rail, UT Longhorns, cinema, and micro-breweries really need to be referenced in there somewhere.

For the family Christmas present this year,
we bought a new piano. Matt plays all the
time, and it’s really nice having live music
playing in the house.
14 December 2008

I’ve been keeping a food journal since starting this mostly raw diet. I thought Tuesday’s entry was significant, so I decided to share it on my blog:

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Day Twelve

17 February 2009 

Mood:

Today was the worst I have eaten since starting this diet. I had a Starbucks toffee almond bar with lemonade/tea for breakfast, and then an apple oatmeal pancake with lots of syrup and molasses for lunch.

I felt crap all day, but about an hour after lunch, I went from feeling crap to feeling sick. Then I switched into hyper-ultimate-bitch mode. I started yelling at the kids and bitching at my husband. I knew what it was — my body and my spirit felt like shit and it was exploding out of me.

Yeah. This diet is not about losing weight, although that is an excellent bonus. Nutrition is about feeling good on the inside and outside, and being a kind, stable person. Poisonous food creates a poisonous spirit.

————————–

I know a lot of people think that the New Age folks are a bunch of fruit cakes, but after my experimentation with this diet and how I felt before and how I feel now, I have to say, they have — by far — the best information on nutrition, and we would all do well to listen to them. By eating more raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts, I am consistently in a better mood and have more energy. I just feel so much better. And I’m not even being strict about the diet… just a lot more raw fruits and vegetables than I ever used to eat.

Damian
13 February 2009

Though you may not know
     where your gifts may lead,
and it may not show at the start.

When you live your dream
     you’ll find destiny
is written in your heart.

“Gosh, Angel, where did that sage little quote come from?”

That would be, ahem, Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper. 😉

I sent this photo of Nana and the grandkids
to one of my mom’s friends. My mom liked it
very much and asked for a copy for herself.
It is really cute. (The photographers out
there can probably see the experimentation
that I’m doing right now Photoshop’s
brightness adjustment layers. It adds a
dodge/burn look, but, by using layers, I have
more control than using the dodge/burn tool.)

Conroe, Texas
06 July 2008

Eds3 keeps posting very interesting blog entries, and therefore, he is making my blog updating easy. All I have to do now is link you guys over there, and voila! I have an interesting blog post by association.

Heh heh. 😉

This is a picture of Lily taken on 17 February 2007
when she was just over two years old. I did not
dress her or pose her in any way.

This picture was taken this past Friday, 13 February 2009,
and she is just over four years old now. Once again,
she dressed herself entirely.

Our kids make us laugh every day. 🙂

If you are in the mood for a hardy laugh, read this post by eds3. Very amusing.

Happy Valentine’s Day, all. 🙂

The children in front of the fire.
(Lily is laying in the dog bed.
That’s how big our German Shepherd is…
or how small our daughter is.)
24 January 2009

When I was in my early 20s, one of my favorite cartoons was Mighty Max, and from this cartoon I learned a deep truth. Many people have said it many ways, but the first time I heard it was from Virgil, the wise fowl on Mighty Max.

Bravery is not lack of fear; it is acting in spite of fear.

This little quote from Virgil was my mantra many times throughout my life. Recently, while watching my children’s shows with them, more pearls of wisdom were laid in my lap:

Cody Maverick from Surf’s Up says about Big Z:

He lived so hard because he wasn’t afraid to live.

How many of us are afraid to live? I know I have spent most of life afraid of what people will think of me or if I might spectacularly fail at a project.

Early in an episode of Kim Possible, Yori says:

Change is a part of life and leads to growth, wisdom and happiness.

And then later in the episode, she says:

Like change, we must always welcome destiny.

I love the destiny quote. It is currently my new favorite. And there are too many awesome quotes in Kung Fu Panda. Just watch that whole movie and absorb its wisdom.

The children playing on the swing.
08 February 2009

Matt and I have significantly changed our diet over the last five days. We are eating “raw.” Not completely raw, just largely raw. We first heard of this diet from watching Crazy Sexy Cancer. In the extra features, Kris Carr shows you how to make a green smoothie, but I really didn’t like the way it tasted. Matt continued to drink the green smoothies, but I stopped.

I did however continue to investigate the raw diet. And how can a man this beautiful be wrong! Here’s some other folks’ Before and After pictures. Very compelling.

I also learned that you don’t have to severely limit the fruits as Kris Carr does. Matt and I started this 14-day Green Smoothie Challenge. And since they use fruits in their green smoothies, I found the smoothies much more palatable.

It’s been interesting. We are both surprised by how hungry we get and the sheer volume of food you consume on a raw diet. I’ll keep you guys updated on how our raw adventures go.

Clara loves the sandbox. Whenever she visits,
she’ll easily spend an hour playing in the sandbox.
Right now, there’s a bunch of fallen leaves in the sandbox
that we need to clean out and get it ready for a summer
of play.
02 February 2009

Over the past three months, I have put on 10 to 15 pounds (one stone for you Brits out there). The weight gain came out of nowhere. My weight has been a stable 180 lbs for the past four years since Lily was born. Then all of sudden, bam! I started gaining weight.

I had been trying to figure out what it was. Am I eating differently? Has my metabolism changed again? When I was in my 20s, I was one of those folks who could eat anything (and I did) and never gain weight. People always said to me, “You’re so lucky” and “Your bad eating habits will catch up with you.” And they were right. I was lucky and my unhealthy eating did catch up with me. At age 28, to be precise. I shot up from my healthy weight of 150 to 180. Then I kind of stabilized.

Yesterday I was talking to Carla about my weight gain and that none of my clothes fit. I have to suck in my stomach right now to put on my slacks, and once I have them on, they are so uncomfortably tight. Then she asked, “Is Damian still taking as much milk as he used to?”

Holy macaroni! That was it! The baby has started weaning himself. He doesn’t take near as much milk. I’ve had a free-for-all with food for the last five years, between being pregnant and nursing. Now my body doesn’t need all those extra calories to produce babies or milk.

Damn. My food playtime is over. Time to adjust my eating. 🙂

Photoshop is extremely good at making muddy photos
look a million times better. This picture was taken
in the shade, and therefore the lighting did not give
much depth or variation. Photoshop had to do that.
Damian
02 February 2009

I saw this quote the other day:

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

and I liked it very much. I was curious who said it, so I Googled it. This is a quote from George Bernard Shaw.

My Google search led me to an essay by Scott Ginsberg on this webpage. I like the article very much, but I especially like this line:

Never apologize for your art.

I apologize for my art all the time. In fact, I never even thought about not apologizing for my art until I read this article. It didn’t even occur to me.

I love my art, even my crappy art. And by art, I mean my photos, my drawings, my blog, my writing, anything that comes from deep inside of me. And that’s why I love it. But, externally, I do realize that some of it is crap and could use improvement.

But that’s not the essence of art, is it? Art is not about perfection; art is about self-expression. And therefore, Scott Ginsberg is right. We should never apologize for our honest communication with the outside world.