chronicled & illustrated

Yesterday I wrote about being drawn off-task by the newest shiny thing. Well, here it is: animoto. They’ll make slick videos of your photographs…pretty much effortlessly.

Yes, I paid them money. No, you don’t have to, but yes, they make it seem like something you reallllly need to do. Hey. I was vulnerable. I needed something shiny.

Anyway, here’s one version of my first video. The photos are of my granddaughter, Cadi. She was playing in a fountain in the park. Nearby were anti-war protesters who have come out to the park in Bar Harbor, Maine each Sunday since the invasion of Iraq and stood in silent protest. I do not know the priest’s full name but his colleague told me he’s Father Jim and is retired. He couldn’t resist playing with Cadi and she, as you will see, took to him immediately. I’m so grateful I was there not only to see the spontaneous joy of their sharing but also to capture some of it with my camera.

Enjoy Acadia and the Priest, perfect strangers sharing a perfect moment.

Thanks to Beth Felice who first posted an animoto video on Being Practically Creative and to Suze Corte who showed me how to play with them!

The 21st day of NaNoWriMo and all I could think about today was Christmas! It literally took over my writing time. I got about 500 words written.

Maybe if I hadn’t been ahead on the word count, I would have buckled down and concentrated on what I should be doing now. But as the word count has been good for the last five days or I let other things crowd in and take over.

I live far away from both of my sons and farther still from my mother and sister and brother. Getting together for Christmas has become a big hassle! Last year I decided that to have my sons, granddaughter, husband and me descend upon my sister and mother for the holidays was just too much. If any of us had our own home there (in Houston), it would be different, but we don’t.

What I would most like is for my sons and grand-daugther to come to my house, but at the moment that isn’t possible. Neither of them have passports and they live in the States and I live in Canada. I have to go to them. So considering these two parameters, I decided to take matters into my own hands and find a nice vacation rental in a beautiful place, invite my sons and that way we could have Christmas under one roof without causing more work for some third party.

Nice plan. Didn’t work. After spending hours online looking for that illusive perfect vacation rental, my younger son told me, “Honestly, Mom, if you are asking me what I want to do for Christmas, I’d have to tell you that I want to go to Houston.” He went on to say that it was important that my mother and sister see his daughter before she gets too much older. They haven’t seen her in a year. So what’s a grandmother to do? I sprang into action in the other direction. Back to Houston.

But I was still determined to have us all under one roof.

Unfortunately finding a “vacation rental” in the big city of Houston isn’t easy. I couldn’t find a thing that was near our families.

In desperation, I put two ads on Craigslist, one for a short-term (very!) rental and the other for a pet/housesitter. Guess which one paid off? No contest, is it? The pet sitter ad just came through for us.

We’ve been offered a truly gorgeous home in a nice location for almost the full amount of time we wanted. Our pet is an 8 year old greyhound who, we just found out, sleeps in the master bedroom. Eeeu, major drawback! At least it’s a king-sized!

It’ll be an adventure but I’m already feeling 100% better, just knowing that I’ll have a kitchen to cook in and a place to invite family over. In fact, I’ve already started inviting people for our first night in the house to help us make Christmas decorations for our tree. Once they get a load of the tropical plant-surrounded swimming pool with waterfall and koi pond in the back yard, we won’t be able to get rid of them!

Tomorrow, however, I have to remember that it is still November, so it’s back to my novel.

[Santa’s little elf up there is Cadi LAST Christmas]

learning our colours,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

One evening while in Maine, I picked up my granddaughter, Acadia, and took her for a little drive. It was getting toward dusk. We stopped between my son’s house and my rented cottage several times as Cadi was asking to “see the water.” We got in and out of the car and took short walks.

These days, she holds tightly to one of my fingers as we walk. I showed her things. A bird flying. White cherry blossoms and lilacs. Bees on the bushes. A feather. A pine cone. The sound the water makes as it rushes over the rocks. The older boys playing on the other side of the street.

Our last stop was where this photo was taken. The wetlands at this spot are always stunning to see whether it’s sun, fog, rain, morning, noon or night. This day had been gloriously sunny. One of those late spring days when the new warmth, super-blue sky and the fresh young leaves and grasses combine for a spectacular crispness that will soon blur into summer fullness—rich, deep green, hot, but no longer new.

As the sun went down I held Cadi while snapping a dozen photos or so. She was patient with me and afterward we talked about what was happening to the colour of the clouds. I reminded her that they are usually white but that sometimes when the sun goes away for the night they change into a variety of colours. Cadi’s only just learning her colours. She has the idea now, but the specifics as to green, blue, red are still in process. Sometimes she gets them right and sometimes she doesn’t.

I started naming the colours in the sky.

“Pink.” “Orange.” “Violet.”

“Yellow,” whispered Cadi, her eyes fixed on the sunset.

“Yes,” I agreed, so pleased that she was with me, “yellow, too.”

READING: I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes by Jaclyn Moriarity
WRITING: NetWorld, a short story
PLANNING: Our new front porch
WATCHING: A mama woodpecker feeding her babies in a tree outside the bedroom window

This is my wonderful 2 year old granddaughter, Cadi. I’m in Maine right now for her birthday celebration. This was taken on my first full day here. I got to stay with her while my son had some well-deserved r&r. Cadi and I took a walk into the little town where there is a school playground.

I took a dozen or more photos but this one and only a couple of the others are decent. Cadi’s difficult to take pictures of as she moves fast, does not—to say the least—like to pose and often looks away if she sees a camera.

I like that in a little girl. While there’s nothing wrong with a child who knows how to “turn it on” for a camera, it’s pleasing to me that Cadi doesn’t see the need to do so. She’s been seeing images of herself on my laptop screensaver and she definitely enjoys the photos. “Dat’s Cadi,” she tells her dad. She seems to remember certain ones, what she was doing and where she was, even though many of them were taken at Christmas. But she obviously doesn’t like them enough to make herself available for my lens. She’s got more important things to do with her time. Right on, Cadi!

Now, I just need to get a camera with a faster response time!

The jacket and hat that Cadi is wearing were brought from Cape Breton. I ‘won’ them in a silent auction at Girl’s Night Out, a fund raiser for the Sydney women’s shelter. It was made by a local woman who’s name, unfortunately, I didn’t get. I planned on giving it to Cadi as a birthday gift but didn’t really have an expectation that it would fit or that she would like it. But the day we were going to the playground was a little cool and Ty hadn’t brought her a jacket, so I immediately busted this out. She took right to it and especially loves wearing the hat. And doesn’t she look grand in it? I love it when a non-plan comes together.

dragonfly on obi,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

On Saturday I leave for my long-awaited trip to Maine. There I will stay in a simple, familiar rented cottage near the water within walking distance of shops, restaurants, library and post office. I’ll be less than ten minutes from my son and granddaughter, Cadi. My other son will be flying in from New Mexico and staying with me in the house. We’re all getting together to celebrate Cadi’s second birthday.

I am very much looking forward to going, but I am in a pre-trip slump. I only just realized that this is often what happens a couple of days before a trip. I become almost immobilized. This afternoon, rather than do anyone of the myriad of things I could do to get ready, to clean house before leaving, to work on my website, to work on the projects lined up in the sidebar of my life , instead I went downstairs, got a piece of cake and watched junk-tv >PSYCHIC TWINS!!< and (at the same time) played alchemy on my laptop for approximately two hours.

It's so unusual for me to watch tv in the middle of the day, that when I do, there is a residual feeling that I've done something >a little< wrong. I haven't always felt guilty about goofing off. I used to watch a lot of tv. I used to waste a lot of time. Perhaps I still waste as much time as I always did but now when I waste time, it's on the computer so somehow it doesn't seem quite so vapid.

Anyway, this blog, my life, my writings are NOT about beating myself up. I used to do a lot of that too. But I'm past that. If I need to eat cake and watch tv for a while, I'm just grateful to have the time to do it. No, this is about reflecting on energy levels. I would be lying to myself if I didn't acknowledge that there has been a LOT going on in my life for the last two weeks that have led me to need a day of goofing off. And even though events lately have had an unusually dramatic flair, it's always the case that an upcoming trip is preceded by a set of more or less engaging life events. So maybe that's my answer to the pre-trip slump.

Perhaps it's because a trip marks the beginning of a new story. The slump is me resisting or not quite knowing how to write the last sentence of the story I'm in right now. Tomorrow as I flash through packing, cleaning, doing, I'll jot down the final sentence and period. I'll write the words, "THE END" and when I get in that car early on Saturday morning and begin that almost-impossibly long, increasingly familiar trip, it'll be a brand new page.

THE PHOTOGRAPH: taken in my dining room. The dragonfly (my favorite bug!) is pinned to an obi that I picked up in a textile fair in Connecticut years ago. The sun has faded the fabric which was old when I got it. I’ve thought about moving it out of the sun but I have decided in favor of letting it age where it is. It’s a small vignette in my home which I never think about but which love.
ROLLER COASTER: on the level
WRITING: NetWorld - a short story
LOVING: this blog
NEEDING: a good long walk by myself
HOPING: for sunny weather in Maine next week