Power, Strength, Dignity and Joy

Sometimes I love my job so much that I am overflowing with emotion. To tell stories through the power of photography is what I live for.

Today was one of those days.

It started with this young lady.

This is Adaora and she is delightful. We met at a photo shoot last year when I did some work for the company that she was then employed with. Since then she has moved on to work for a non-profit here in Cleveland called Towards Employment. Towards Employment empowers individuals to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency through employment. I was so excited when Adaora contacted me a while back to see if I would be interested in taking some photographs of some of their TE “graduates”. What could I do but say yes.

Getting the photo shoots set up has been a bit challenging as there are a lot of moving parts and pieces but this morning found me up in Cleveland to spend some time with Adaora and Sarai, a Towards Employment graduate.

It is a rare thing indeed to meet someone like Sarai, who is so full of joy and brimming over with enthusiasm for life. Her story was amazing and the effort and energy that she has put into taking hold of everything that Towards Employment had to offer her to gain the skills that she needed to be employed in a job that she loves, was truly humbling. Her story is her own to tell. I am sure that she would say I could share it all if I had asked her to, but let me just say that she readily admits to making some mistakes in life before being urged by her sister to contact Towards Employment. She has had to walk through fire to get to where she is now but you would never know it by her joyful take on life.

Sarai’s grandmother is her inspiration and she let me take two pictures with Sarai before scooting off to take up her day again. Grandmothers are awesome.

We had to squeeze in the pictures in between bouts of laughter.

Thank you, Sarai, for being willing to share your story with me. You are a woman of power and strength, dignity and joy.

And thank you to Towards Employment for asking me in the first place.

7 Quick Takes (Vol 275)

I am late! Time got away from me. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it. You know the rules and routine. Once you are done here you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, surely at a faster speed than my updating iPhone, over to Conversion Diary.

Tally Ho the Blather!

1.
Even though it is HOT outside……

It smells like Fall.

And the light has taken on a different quality. It just screams shorter days and Fall.

And the sun is just barely thinking about coming up when I pull my aged body out of bed.

I have a feeling that Fall is just around the corner.

Especially considering the high tomorrow is supposed to be a blistering 69F with rain.

2.
One of the nicest things about being a free lance photographer is that I can do a favor for a friend and if I want to do it free of charge….I can.

Today I spent some time taking interior shots for a friend who has put her house on the market. She is a knit sib and I was uber glad to be able to haul Big Bertha and several tripods and all the lenses (even though I only needed the wide angle) over to her house.

The extra added bonus was that she had made lunch for us! Plus I got some kitty time with her three furry children.

That is what I like about working for myself.

3.
I love music. Have I told you that? I still remember what it was like to learn to put the record on the record player and have the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel appear from the speakers.

You do remember a time before digital music and iTunes and iPod’s right? You had to PUT the record that you wanted to listen to onto the turntable. You didn’t take all your music with you wherever you went. 

iTunes is just another way for me to hoard something. Music tracks.

Children…..I have almost 11,300 songs stored in my iTunes and therefore available to me on iTunes match. I am almost embarrassed to say it.

I cannot buy any more music until I have listened through ALL of those songs.

That most likely means that I can never buy any music ever again.

Pshaw! We know that is unlikely.

4.
While we are on the iTunes vein of talk. You won’t know this but I started writing this blog post several hours ago. I had intended to post it somewhere around 2pm……

Because I cannot do just one thing at a time I was writing a blog post and doing my once a month hard back up of iPhone to computer and I was surprised to see that I had very little space left on the iPhone, which I have never actually named, poor thing. It goes through life just being known as Debbie’s iPhone. I should give it a name.

But I digress.

Shoot! What could possibly be taking up all that space. It isn’t photos, although you would think that would be it. I regularly delete photos from my iPhone after I back them up to Drop box and my computer. It couldn’t be that. I am a tad bit behind on listening to all my podcasts so that is a bit of space. I store only a bit of music on the phone, I usually listen with iCloud, so it couldn’t be that. All my audiobook are on Dahling (the slowly dying iPod touch), so it couldn’t be that. I regularly delete emails, so it couldn’t be that.

And then I realized…..

It is the txt messages.

I send a lot of txt messages over the course of a day, week, month, year. A LOT. I like to see the ever increasing thread of messages that the progeny and I send back and forth. And then there is the ummm, how shall I put this, slightly off color and often riotous thread that the cousins have going. I don’t want to lose any of those txt threads. But I need room on the phone.

So I just spent 90 minutes researching what to do about transferring txt messages from iPhone to computer (of course it is not cut and dry and you ALWAYS have to pay someone for the privilege of doing it) and buying a program that will download all those messages to my computer and store them so that I can review them at leisure. They are like a revolving letter that we have been sending back and forth and I don’t want to lose them.

Once I was sure they were safe I deleted most of them……and got back almost 2 G of space.

Good golly.

5.
Isn’t it always the way that when you are busy then you keep adding more and more long term projects to the list of things to do.

You do that right?

Right?

Hello?

FINE!

I have had oodles and boodles and tons of time on my hands the last twelve months. And did I make headway on any of these long term projects that I have on my list?

I did not.

And now I have a part time job.

Insert dope slap here.

6.
Guess where we are going to be in a bit of time….

HHBL has a conference in Washington, DC. TMO and TSiL live in Washington, DC. We are going to sleep on their floor. I have an entire DAY to myself to wander the Mall and go all over. I am so excited that I don’t know what to do.

The same day that we arrive…..TMO gets home from a MONTH long work trip to Ghana. Yikes. But she says she can handle it.

Just pray that I can handle the floor.

7.
Instagram. Because I am behind schedule and because I can.

Math, A Tool of the Devil.

I had to do math today.

I don't think that my brain exploded but it was a near thing at times. A very near thing.

I am finding that it is a much more difficult thing to learn new skills as a 54 year old than say when I was 35. It really isn't so much that I am learning new skills, I have done payroll and taxes and all that stuff before. I have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing so OF COURSE I know all about payroll and taxes and billing and invoicing and doing market research and writing blog posts about education and data sets and other fun stuff. Didn't you learn the same things in nursing school??

I managed to generate payroll today without screwing anything up....I think. And I got a bit of a handle on taxes. CURSE the person who thought up all these stupid taxes that have to be paid at just exactly the correct time. Not a day late thankyouverymuch. Mother Mary and all the Saints I hate taxes.

Am I being a whiner? I don't really care.

This evening finds me watching William Wallace hack and hew his way through the English army. He probably had to spend part of his day doing taxes and payroll as well and is just getting out a bit of aggression.

Posted with Blogsy

Gratuitous Pig Butts Just Because I Can

I have a confession to make…..

We went to the Great Geauga Fair on Saturday, not today. I KNOW! We broke long standing tradition. The weather person was saying that there “might” be rain today, which by the way has not materialized, so we decided to throw caution to the wind and go on Saturday instead. We were actually going to do a complete crazy and go clockwise around the fair grounds instead of our usual counterclockwise….but we just couldn’t mess up the well oiled fair machine. So we just got our onion rings early and called ourselves crazy rule breakers and left the rest alone.

Diggety Dog was it hot! But the sky was blue and the milk shakes were cold so all was good. I know you are DYING to see what we saw so without further ado………

After some talk and internal agitation we started out with the Agricultural barns, where for some reason you will also find the baked goods. I must say that the baked goods looked much better on Saturday than I know they will on Monday. No dry and curling edges. I swear that the prize winning pumpkins get smaller every year. Because it was Saturday rather than Monday the “Bee guy” actually had all of his bees on display. There was a large crowd so I had to muscle my way to the front to get a really boring picture. Sort of like when you see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre…..or not.

The pottery fellow was actually at work. I think we are going to have to go on Saturday from now on. So much more to see!!

Then we got all wild and crazy and actually bought our onion rings BEFORE we went into any of the animal barns. We were hungry. This is the bucket of onion rings, yes I said BUCKET, when we purchased them at 11:30a.

This is the bucket at approximately 11:35a. We are obviously masters of onion ring self discipline.

Burp!

Then it was on to the…….

Wait for it…….

the Dairy barn, where I took gratuitous pictures of cow posteriors. I am getting a reputation for this sort of thing. Starting on FRIDAY morning people were sending me photos of cow butts from the fair. I am so proud. The cows were just hanging around as cows are wont to do.

The youngsters, both bovine and human, were napping in various places.

Then I became fascinated with this guy. Look at the horns! He ignored me throughout our entire photo session. RUDE!

It seemed like every time we turned around the sheep were “baaaaaaaaaaing”. Of course it didn’t help that HHBL takes great pleasure in standing there and egging them on.

Sir Lambs a Lot (I will just BET he does based upon the size of his nether regions!) says please stop that noise and show a bit of dignity.

Then it was over to the goat barn where HHBL has to have just this same picture taken, year after year after year…….. One of these days one of those goats is going to take a little nip…..

And I will have my camera all ready!

Ugly turkey butt just for your enjoyment. I took this photo and then crouched down to see if I could get a picture of his face if he ever turned around…..

Which he did. And then he started advancing towards me. Jimmeny Crickets! He strolled over, wiggling his tail feather and then turned to the side, right in front of me, and stopped. Holy schlomly! I am snapping away thinking this is so unusual when I hear his “owner” until she sells him at auction for someone else to eat say, “Oh yeah, he LOVES to have his picture taken. He does it all the time.”

I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille

Gratuitous pig butt just because I can.

It was a rather warm day so most of the bacon on the hoof were taking a bit of a siesta. If they were REALLY lucky there was some little girl just sitting in their pen and spraying them with water.

So ugly and yet SO tasty.

Even the alpacas were making their alpaca noises. They were hot and a bit flustered so there was a bunch of alpaca humming going on.

Come closer……closer…..I want to spit at you.

This is also what I love about the fair. Everywhere you turn there is someone leading a cow around.

There was a bit of mid way entertainment.

This is your public service announcement. When you are at the fair and you are Instagramming what you are seeing….also be sure to watch where you are stepping. Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

The cow was bigger than the kid!

Clean cows make for tasty hamburger patties and big juicy steaks. Right?

The “Oh PLEASE stop doing that!” moment of the day was in the Draft Horses barn. This little pip squeak was cleaning out the stall of a massive draft horse. He didn’t want to move his foot. She wanted him to. What is she doing to get him to move? She is poking his with the rake and yelling “MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!” Oh please stop that little girl. Where is your mother? Does she know you are a dare devil? She finally gave him one big poke plus a shove where her hands and he moved.

My heart may not be the same.

And as usual we ended the day with a 4H milkshake of such deliciousness that all other milkshakes pale in comparison.

Well really, we were just hot and tired and thirsty.

And so ends the yearly sojourn to the Great Geauga County Fair. All the pig butts and cow butts and horse butts that you could ever want.

Hopefully it will last me for a few months.

7 Quick Takes (Vol 274)

When next we meet, t’will be September. That just seems so wrong. Where did my summer go?? You know what you must do. When you have finished harvesting the last season blather you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of departing Summer, over to Conversion Diary.

Just enough blather to make you nuts.

1.
Friday is my day off and so far I have made the most of it. The temperature was cool, the sun was shining so I hopped in my car and drove out to pick raspberries. I had been hoping to pick at a place closer to Chez Knit but Greenfield Berry Farm was berriless. So I drove over to faithful Monroe Orchard which is further east even than OCK. But I love Monroe so it wasn’t a problem.

Holy Schlamoly Andy there were tons of berries on their canes and only two other people picking when I got there. I was fully prepared to pick while listening to an audiobook on the trusty iPod but once I got out there I just didn’t want to disturb the peace and quiet. The wind was blowing. The birds were singing. It was quiet and naturey….until I butt turned on the iPod that was in my back pocket. Don’t ask me how it happened because I cannot possibly tell you. Or more likely I don’t want to think about the fact that my big bahookie is able to do this thing. All of a sudden I heard Fernando Ortega singing softly and I thought, “Wow, how nice that they provide some faint music for the people working in the field next to where I am standing!”

And then I realized that the music was coming from my buttocks. I am so talented.

Oh bright jewels of late summer, you are going to make us so happy in the middle of winter.

And after I was done communing with nature I stopped at my favorite farm stand and bought a dozen ears of corn and a BIG bunch of plum tomatoes.

Guess what I am going to be doing this afternoon.

2.
Most of the schools in our area seem to have started.

I have an almost overwhelming urge to go out and buy school supplies that I do not need.

Pencils! There must be a need in my life for pencils!

Surely I can do something with a notebook or two and a box of crayons.

Someone stop me!

3.
We are fast approaching our last poultry CSA. That will mean no more Brunty Farms eggs until next year. I love them but I am not going to drive 30 minutes to buy a dozen eggs. I will find a closer source.

HHBL and I have decided that the flavor of the chicken that we have been getting is so vastly superior that I am not sure I can ever buy a chicken again from the grocery store. The meat is a bit tougher than something you get at Giant Eagle, which is to be expected. But these things taste so good that it really doesn’t matter to me.

Last night we had what I like to call “Special K Chicken”. That just means that I dredge the chicken in flour and then buttermilk and then crushed up Special K with some grated Parm cheese, powdered garlic, salt and pepper in the Special K. No, I do not have measurements.

Then you bake it at 375F for about 45 minutes.

Mother may I have another piece PLEASE! In fact, that is what I had for breakfast, cold and straight out of the frig. Ambrosia.

I am pretty sure that we will sign up for the CSA again next year. Now lets just hope that my stockpile of frozen chicken lasts that long.

4.
The thing I am remembering about working with HHBL is that we have to be careful not to talk about work all the time.

You may laugh but it is something that happens. We could talk work all through dinner…and while watching Johnny Manziel and the Browns…and while getting ready for bed.

We are making a conscious effort not to do that.

5.
Cousin Hadoo had to make the hard decision this week to put her sweet doggie, Honey, down.

HHBL and I look at each other when we hear news like this and just pray that Max lives forever.

We know that cannot really happen but right now every year that we get out of him is a gift. He is the best dog that either of us have ever had and we really just run away from talking about “that time” when we have to make that decision.

Max is going to live forever. I have decreed it.

6.
You know what Monday is?? It is All the Animal Butts that you can stand Labor Day. Here is a little peak at what you can expect to see from me come Monday afternoon.

I know you can hardly stand the excitement.

Lady! Quit taking all those pictures of animal butts! What is wrong with you??

Try to contain your excitement.

7.
And here for your enjoyment are the usual lazy Instagram photos.