Shutterbug Mama

I realize that it's been a while since I've updated this blog. I feel kind of guilty because I've been posting something EVERYDAY on my Other Blog. I guess I find the One-Photo-One-Paragraph-A-Day thing a tad more manageable. Well, like the title of this post suggests, I'm rejecting the guilt and I'm choosing grace for myself on my laziness around here, and I'm not even going to try to catch up. Thank you all for understanding.

And it seems that my laziness has spread from the world of blogging to taking photos of Cadence. Have I already mentioned this? I don't even remember. But yeah, it's true. I looked through my flickr stream and these are the the only photos of her I can find from August. I better get on the ball with that, or August is going to look pretty bleak when I make my annual calendar for the grandmas.

Well, I do have a few other shots of her, but they're set to private because they're part of photoshoots I did that I've chosen to keep private for the sake of the other kids in the photos. This one happens to be from last week's VBS at our church.

I know I said I wasn't going to try to catch up, but I did want to mention that we visited Scotch Hill Farm last Sunday to help weed the vegetable patches and to hang out with Tony and Dela, the farmers, and their CSA subscribers. Spending a few hours down in the dirt amongst the prickly squash plants pulling weeds with your own bare hands (although I recommend gloves) gives you a new perspective on something that seems as ordinary as putting food on your table.

And then I happened to pick up Wendell Berry's novel Hannah Coulter for my commute last week, and I felt that familiar lump in my throat and aching in my heart for a slower, more connected way of life.

And then while researching cooperative nursery schools, I stumbled upon this website that sparked the hope that our family might actually be able to participate in a housing cooperative someday.

Daydreams, I know...But I'm thinking of writing all of mine down in one place so I can refer to it regularly and keep hope alive...

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, community.supported.agriculture, random.thoughts, this.busy.life

So I've had a number of emails from folks who've had problems subscribing to the feed for this blog. When I changed domains, there was a bit of a mix-up. I won't go into all the details, but if you are interested in subscribing and haven't been able to, just copy and paste the feed URL into the reader of your choice:

http://www.shutterbugmama.com/atom.xml

My apologies if you somehow got subscribed to the old site.

That's all, folks!

Labels: blogging.schmlogging

Welcome to the new domain, y'all! This is my first official post on shutterbugmama.com! Hope you guys are as bright-eyed and bushy tailed as Cadence on this first day of 2008.

We had the most boring New Year's Eve possible in our home. Ted and I both had headaches (his was beer-induced, mine was a migraine) all day. Poor Cadence had to fend for herself. I had wanted to take her downtown on the train (it's what she wanted), but my headache didn't go away until around midnight (just in time for 2008!). We stayed in and watched The Straight Story, which is a sweet movie and all, but about the most boring movie you can watch on New Year's Eve. Yeah. We're a dull bunch around here.

That's alright, though. We had enough excitement on Sunday night when we hosted a chili party for (mainly) our Berry Church friends. It was so exciting I didn't take any photos pretty much the whole night, unfortunately. Actually, I kind of feel stupid taking photos at parties, probably because I hate having my own photo taken, but my friend Amy tells me that most folks like seeing photos of themselves afterwards, so now I regret not taking more photos.

Anyhoo, we had around 40 people show up, and Ted made JUST enough chili. It was a lot of fun, and of course the homebrew flowed like we were in the Promised Land. Cadence had a blast, as her friends Fischer, Ada, Rudden and Baby Jack were there, and I was happy because their PARENTS were there. I wish I had taken photos. Did I say that already? Oh well. Next time.

There's a fresh layer of snow on the ground calling our names to be turned into angels, so I gots to go now. Have a wonderful 2008, everyone!

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, friends, i.heart.berry.church, i.heart.my.friends

A while back, Ted mentioned that I should blog about something to motivate me to take action about that said something. I've been mulling it over because I don't really know how to blog about it, so I'm just gonna do it. My thoughts haven't crystallized, so if I sound like I'm rambling, that's because I am...

Anyhoo, one of Ted's passions in life is Voluntary Simplicity. Yes, I know you all thought all he was interested in is beer and homebrewing, but he's actually more complex and contemplative than I usually let on. I'm all for Voluntary Simplicity in theory. But when it comes to day-to-day living, man, do I totally suck at it.

For the past 3.5+ years we've been living together, Ted has been trying to get our family to minimize our possessions and to declutter our living spaces. Poor thing. You see, he married a packrat. Needless to say, it has not been a painless process for us. But I think I'm beginning to see the light. I recently had a daydream/visualization of the world just filling up with stuff and stuff and more stuff at an astronomical rate, and it really freaked me out. I can see that happening in our home, and it's really got to stop.

I like to think of myself as someone who is bucking the system, rejecting material consumption, and who cares about the environment. Truth be told, however, I'm sooooooo lazy at it, which makes me question my motives. Do I really care, or do I just want to keep up appearances because Green is the New Black [could someone explain this phraseology to me?]?

Anyhoo, I'm not being hard on myself or anything here. I'm just trying to sort out what's real, and if I've been faking it all this time, well, I gotta come clean one way or another...To Be Continued...Indefinitely...

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, family, random.thoughts, sustainability

So I've started the process of moving my blog over to an anonymous site. Some of you may have noticed I can't make up my mind how to sign my comments on your blogs. I don't want to put my full name any more (stupid of me to do that in the first place). Sarah is just too common a name. So I've come up with something else. It's actually Ted's nickname for me. I'm not going to put it here in this blog post because I'm paranoid like that, but when y'all see it in your comments section, you'll know it's me.

Now I have to figure out how the hell to move all my posts over to the new site...

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, prayer.for.the.paranoid

Kim over at Diapers, Budgets and Paint has tagged me for the Eight Random Things About Me-Meme. I'm not sure I can claim that these things I will post are random from a statistical standpoint, but I'll try to keep it not too deliberately random.

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Rules:
Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to 8 other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they've been tagged.

1. Our family immigrated from Seoul 3 days before my 6th birthday. Before we moved, I got to be part of a big birthday party for all the May birthdays at the kindergarten that my grandpa was the director of. The teacher asked each of us what we wanted to be when we grew up. I don't think I had ever thought about this before, and said the first thing that came to my mind, "A nurse." Because at that time, I thought the only professions available to women were teaching and becoming a nurse. How sad...

2. I grew up in a fundamentalist quasi-evangelical cult named University Bible Fellowship. It sucked. ASS. Bigtime.

3. When I was in the 8th grade, I had a crush on a perpetually stoned heavy metal drummer in my class named Mario Kuehn. For about a month, I covered my red Trapper Keeper with names of heavy metal bands written in Liquid Paper. Back in 1986, 103.1 FM was a little suburban station that played hispanic programming by day and heavy metal by night, and I would listen in on my headphones secretly in my bedroom while doing my homework. If my parents knew I was listening to the devil's music, they would've totally taken me somewhere to get the demons out of me. To this day, I get a little nostalgic when I hear Motley Crue. Or Wilco's song Heavy Metal Drummer.

4. When I was in school, I had a talent for multiple-choice questions. Every year, we'd have these standardized tests that lasted a couple days. The entire student body would spend hours filling in endless little bubbles with their #2 pencils. I remember looking over questions I had absolutely no answer for, and concentrating really hard, trying to plug in to the collective knowledge of the universe, and I would feel for the right answer. I did so well on these tests that I really believed that I actually had access to all the right answers in the Universe. Ha ha. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. At least I learned a thing or two about intuition.

5. I attended Chicago Public Schools from 1st grade through graduating from high school, EXCEPT for my freshman year of high school when my dad moved us out to WHEATON, ILLINOIS, the Evangelical capital of the midwest. Oh. My. Lord. Wheaton Central High School was full of girls who sported the same haircut (curled bangs and triangular poofy bob), carried Gucci purses (the real thing, not like the knockoffs from Korea my relatives sent me) and wore Guess jeans. Plus, I was one of maybe 7 Asians in the entire school. I escaped to the city every weekend, and was relieved when my dad sold the house to move back to Chicago after a serious lawnmower accident almost severed his 3 main fingers on his right hand.

6. I was married once before. I was a little spring chicken, one semester away from graduating college, only 22 years old, when I married my first husband. I went straight from the dorms to married life. I had a serious identity crisis in my latter 20's, and by 30 I was divorced. I'm still friends with my ex and with his new wife, and I'm glad about that.

7. I like my bananas a little green. Ripe bananas make me want to gag for some reason. All the more reason for Ted to make his famous banana bread!

8. I believe in Narnia. Shut up. I really do.

Okay. This is where I tag people. I'm sure most people have already done this meme, but I'll tag Mamazilla and Miss Mia and my sis Orange Loren.

Labels: about.me, blogging.schmlogging, memememe

I have a dilemma. It's something I've been thinking about for awhile and not sure what to do about. Namely, how do I get Google to forget about me???

It's pretty well-known the harm one can do oneself by leaving a careless trail on the internet. I don't think this blog is anything to be ashamed of, but now that Cadence is getting older, I wonder if we'll ever get our anonymity back? I deleted a link to my blog from my Flickr account ages ago when some sicko was going around favoriting photos of other people's kids, but let's be honest. If you wanted to find me, it wouldn't be too hard.

Also, what if I ever have to look for a job? A lot of employers google prospective employees to see what dirt info they can dig up.

These are just random thoughts right now. Someday, I may be going anonymous...I'll let you know though if that happens. Ha ha. Because becoming anonymous requires letting all your friends know.

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, internets, prayer.for.the.paranoid

My bro-in-law Dave left a comment on this photo on Flickr wanting to know who authorized a haircut for Cadence, "especially in such a style." Ha ha! Truth is, it's a fake haircut. Her hair got stuck inside her turtleneck when I was getting her dressed, and I noticed it looked like she got a haircut, so I snapped a few shots. As IF. It's taken me FOREVER (okay, 3 years, not really forever) to get her hair long enough for pigtails and barrettes, so there's no way I'm letting a pair of scissors come near her head.

Yesterday was a truly blustery day. I had a migraine almost the whole day. Luckily, it was my day to telecommute, but still. Working with a migraine, even from the comfort of my sofa, kinda sucks bigtime. I was feeling well enough by around 5pm, so I took Cadence outside to play. Holy schmoles! I was NOT expecting it to be THAT cold. The sad thing is, it probably wasn't all that cold. Maybe in the high 40's with the wind chill, but compared to what we normally get in winter round these parts, not that cold in the grand scheme of things. I'm just not ready to let go of summer just yet...

So, I realize I take a lot of photos of Cadence (that would be the understatement of the year). And yet, I have to admit that sometimes I get these shots that just take my breath away. Like this one above here.

Or this one. She can be so cheesy sometimes, but it's really her serious, deep looks that pierce me in that maternal place in my heart.

So while we're on the topic of photos, it looks like a few of you have discovered that I'm working on a new photo gallery. I didn't mean it to get out there in public, as I'm still futzing around with it, but I've discovered a great little tool called Pictobrowser that lets you create a snazzy looking slideshow gallery of your Flickr photos based on a specific tag, group or set. I'm still playing around with it, but if you like, you can go take a looksy at my new photo gallery page over here.

Or just look at the example below:


What I like about Pictobrowser is its sleek design and no nonsense font and the fact that you can see the title of the photo if you hover over a thumbnail with your mouse, as well as give you a link to the actual Flickr page where the photo resides. The downside is that I can't figure out how to get more than 21 pages of photos to show up. Of course, it's kinda crazy to have 21 pages of photos of any category, but I take a lot of photos, ya know. Oh well. I guess I have to be more critical of the photos I put in these here galleries. Currently, I just have the one of some of my favorite photos taken after I switched to dSLR. I'm working on one for all of Cadence. And the one posted in this blog is of my nature shots. I'll probably do one of Chicago, or street photography, or something. I dunno...The possibilities are endless with Pictobrowser.

Tags: Pictobrowser, Photography

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, cadence, photography, photos

...and it's coming from this blog. Yes, lame-age abounds around here these days, I totally admit it. It's been a rough week, people.

So Monday through Wednesday, I had this meeting in downtown Chicago with other folks within the compensation world in my industry. My boss asked me to make a presentation about our company and our compensation practices. I was totally stressed out because 1) if given the choice between a root canal WITHOUT anesthesia and speaking formally in front of total strangers, I would gladly pick the root canal and thank the Lord for my good fortune; 2) I knew I'd be the LEAST experienced person professionally in the room; and 3) I just don't know my sh*t as well as I should.

To make matters worse, Cadence kept me up most of Monday night, so I went into this meeting on Tuesday with only a couple hours of sleep. Plus, I was starting to feel a cold coming on. Last, but not least, I was scheduled to give my presentation at 4:30pm, right before everyone would be heading to their hotel for the cocktail reception at 5pm.

I can't tell you how the presentation went as I've permanently repressed the memory, cuz everybody knows that anything more painful than a root canal without anesthesia (except for childbirth) should qualify for automatic repression within the memory banks. All I know is my boss didn't fire me on the spot, so it must have been okay. And no, I'm pretty sure I wasn't great.

Anyhoo, if that whole debacle weren't bad enough, I developed a migraine Tuesday night (from lack of sleep Monday night) and had to sit through Wednesday's meeting with a bruised head. Thank goodness it was a half-day meeting. I'd had plans of going on a photoshoot as long as I was downtown, but instead I went straight home and threw up. I missed our friend Erik's birthday dinner, and my head kept on hurting right into Thursday. Plus, I developed a full-blown cold by Thursday morning and couldn't stop sneezing, which made my headache worse. I stayed home from work, but I barely felt well enough to attend the Tim Lowly art reception/music show that evening.

Nevertheless, I really wanted to see Tim's art as he is one of my favorite artists, so I dragged my sickly self (actually, I should say WE dragged OUR sickly selves, as Ted is sick too) out of the house to see the show. I'm glad I did, because I hadn't seen most of the stuff he was showing, and it's pretty flippin' rad. That's Tim in the photo above, wearing the Tim Lowly ensemble t-shirt that the lovely and talented Katie Schofield embroidered. And that's my good friend Amy taking some Super8 footage.

I also took some of my favorite photos in a while, so click on the photo above for the whole slideshow. You can also see some of Tim's artwork, as well as photos of the music show that followed the reception.

This is actually my favorite photo from the night. It's just kinda wacky, ya know? Tim says it looks like a scene from a play, and I would have to agree. Katie C.(the violinist) looks like she's about to say something really poignant. And Matt looks like he's just gonna ignore her. And then there's that bottle of wine off to the side...

Tim's really nice to let me bring Cadence to all the shows. She was running and dancing and hopping around a lot, and at one point found her way onto stage. She told me she needed to talke to dada. No, really. That's what she said: "I need to talk to Dada." And she was totally serious.

Speaking of the munchkin, she's turning 3 on Monday. Another reason we're kinda stressed in this household. We're not having a party or anything--just cake w/ immediate family, no kids or anything. I'm glad we planned it that way, cuz I don't think I would've wanted to host a party w/ other folks' children in the condition I'm in right now--all snotty and achey and whatnot.

So that's the scoop, y'all. I'm sorry I've been bad about responding to comments or catching up on your blogs. I hope things mellow out in October...

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, cadence, fess.up.time, photography, photos, this.busy.life, tim.lowly.ensemble

#1—I've been wondering how the digital age will affect the long-term memories of the babies and children of today. Take Cadence, for example. She's had just about every few days documented for her since birth, and that's pretty lazy on my part compared to some of my more dedicated photog friends who document their kids every day. Does this mean that she and her friends w/ equally photo fanatic parents will retain MORE long-term memories when they are older than we in the older generation have managed to do thus far?

I've mentioned my own loss of memories before, and I can't help thinking that if my parents had taken more photographs as I was growing up, or if I had taken up photography seriously as a kid rather than after grad school that I'd remember so much more. Like how many snapshots from their everyday life growing up do most people my age own? Maybe a bunch of baby photos—the new born shot, the embarrassing naked bath shot (which my mother dug up for my mixed-company 14th birthday party), messy eating shot, first step shot, etc.—and a few at holidays and birthdays until one reached the age of bershon, at which point our parents gave up trying to take our photos or they stopped being interested in preserving the moment for posterity, considering the cost of film and processing.

Aside from these pictorial cues, we are dependent on our diaries, school records, and our memories, which over time become like the shifting sand--changing details here, covering up entire segments there, uncovering little tidbits here, washing away portions there.

But I'm not talking about aging folk like myself. I'm talking about the kids that will have so many special and mundane moments preserved for them that they could quite possibly remember everything. What will happen then? Will their brains explode? Or will the human brain adapt to this sudden increase in use of hard drive space? Will it affect other brain functions? Will there be less forgiveness if there's less forgetting?

One of my favorite documentary series is the UP Series, which follows a group of British youth every seven years from the time they are 7 in 1964 up to the present, the most recent being 49 Up just released a couple years ago. Ted and I watched the entire series over a few days, and it was quite fascinating to watch these kids grow up literally before your very eyes.

With blogs and online photo communities like Flickr, that's kind of what we're doing now with each others' kids and lives. I've been on Flickr since Cadence was 7 months old, and I've watched so many other kids her age or a little older or younger grow into toddlerhood with her. I wonder what these kids will think about all this when they're older. I've heard of a columnist for a newspaper who often wrote about her family being asked by her son to stop writing about him because he was tired of total strangers coming up to him and acting like they knew him because they followed his mom's column. Will Cadence feel the same way? I guess I'll have to ask her one of these days…I don't know what I'd blog about if not her, so that may be the end of my online life then.

#2—Speaking of blogs, I've been really busy lately and feel like I'm not spending enough time reading up and commenting on you peoples' blogs. I'm actually doing more reading than commenting, so I am TRYING to keep up. I wish we could get together at a local coffee shop and just chat face to face. Yes, I realize I type much better than I chat (I suck at the chat, actually), but I feel the need for real and tangible relationships. Not that online relationships are not real—some of them have been the most rewarding and helpful to me. I guess what I'm trying to say (really badly, I might add) is that all you folks who come visit over here mean a lot to me, and I'm grateful for your friendship and I WISH y'all just lived in my neighborhood so we could hang out (and you could babysit Cadence once in awhile since y'all think she's so cute). So here. This is a virtual hug from me to you: <= =>

(Lori, can't wait to see you next weekend!)

#3—I think I may have to go out and find me some paht-bingsoo this weekend. That would be the perfect way to start the summer off right! If any of you Chicagoans are interested, let's meet up at Outdoor Café on Bryn Mawr!

Labels: blogging.schmlogging, cadence, digital.age, random.photos, three.thoughts.thursdays