• happy 2024!

    Happy 2024 — Good morning– Happy 2024!

    I chose not to stay up for festivities on New Years’ Eve this year. I opted for a 9 PM bedtime.

    It’s part of a decision I’m making to favor health and wellness over late nights in general. I was the first up this morning, though I slept later than I planned. So far, I fixed the sticky front door, have tended to the dogs, have laundry going, and have made a general plan for the day already this morning. It will be a good day.

    I have resisted blogging (and journaling) for the better part of two years. For the past several days, I have made journaling a bigger priority. I am feeling better for it. It might be time to return to the blog, as well.

    For a long time I have really wanted to pick and up and move to Atlanta. But the last several weeks I have been reinvesting myself in our home. I remember why I loved it so much when we bought it. (Plus, walking away from a 2.875% interest rate would not be the smartest idea). It is utterly amazing how just a few simple tweaks (that haven’t cost much, if anything) have made all the difference. I am trying to reinvest myself in our community a little bit as well. However, our church home will definitely remain in Atlanta. I am starting to think about getting out to volunteer somewhere. Maybe Open Hands will be the first stop.

    Happy 2024 — Redecorating with Art We Already Had

    Yesterday, I spent a good portion of the day moving artwork around different places. I rediscovered a watercolor my mother-in-law did that I always meant to hang but never got around to, a beach scene, whose frame glass had long since broken. I was able to re-mat it with a mat I had in stock for photo prints. All it needed was an 11×14 frame. When Jared and I went out for another project last night, we picked up a $13 frame for it. Voila! New artwork for our living room. The featured photo is the beach scene in question, as well as the new mat and frame.

    I posted a photo of the artwork I moved in the kitchen on my personal Facebook, but here it is, as well. I’m super-happy with this configuration. From left to right the paintings were done by my Mama, Lucy King, two by a lady my French host family was related to when I went on a trip in high school, Gerald Byrd, and Laura Smith.

    There is nothing to be done about the intercom command center on the left side. Jared would like to take them all out, but it would be a tremendous undertaking. Also, our doorbells are tied into the system. I haven’t given up on resurrecting the whole thing. The command center works and so do a few of the intercom panels throughout the house. But none of the doorbells on any of the three sides of the house work, and two of the three panels in the boys’ rooms do not work.

    Art with Personal Meaning

    Most of our belongings have some sort of personal meaning, and the art that hangs in our home is no different. The French watercolors are actually a funny story. I knew the lady was going to paint something for me because they asked me to pick between a few scenes for her to watercolor. They’d taken me to her home. She was such a talented artist. I picked a goldfish scene from a very old Japanese postcard. But the other scene is a road with a house and a castle in the background, which is the exact scene in Kaysersberg. We were there touring and my French host’s father very nearly ran over us, lol. He was a passenger bus driver. We were out in the road and had to hightail it out of the way quickly. When I looked up I saw it was him driving and he very clearly saw me. We all laughed when she presented me with the both paintings. I understood exactly why she had painted it.

    I wish I knew the name of the artist. I called her the French Sarah Belle while I was there. She was not exactly related to my host family but she was close friends with them, kind of like our Sarah Belle was here. She only signed her work as “GW,” and I never knew her name while we were there. Google searches based on those initials with searches in the St. Die region in France reveal nothing. I’m sure she’s long since passed away, as she was an older person in 1997.

    There’s a story about Lucy’s goat painting as well. Jared and I met online, and we watched a lot of movies over the phone together while we were dating. One of those movies being “Notting Hill.” I think Jared had the “Happiness is not happiness without a violin-playing goat” quote on his profile on Lavalife. So when Lucy painted the goat (even without the violin), I knew Jared had to have it. That painting was his anniversary present one year.

    Laura’s painting of the Hubbard Slacks Factory in Bremen just reminds me of Ike and George, my Daddy’s parents. We’d always go through Bremen on the way to Rockmart when I was little. The cut through big Highway 27 hadn’t been built yet so 27 went through downtown Bremen. I swear I remember when I was super little (I must have been super little because George died when I was 5), driving through there with Ike and George and Ike talking about somebody she knew who worked there forever.

    My Mama gave the flowers and apples painting to either either my aunt or one of my grandmothers. I don’t know who; we play “musical belongings” in this family and stuff ends up in other people’s household all the time. But I know she painted it in 1982 because the year is on it. I bet she gave it to one of them for Christmas that year. If I had to guess, because I don’t remember it hanging at my aunt’s or Nannie’s, I bet she gave it to Ike and then Lollie ended up with it after Ike died in 1994.

    The Gerald Byrd piece is the newest addition. It came into the house because Jared and I got tickets to his painting party on December 16th, a couple of weeks ago. The theme was abstract art and the point of the painting party was really to do a new piece yourself. But I love Gerald’s art and wasn’t really interested in doing a piece myself, so I spoke up early in the demo piece and claimed it instead of painting one myself. Then watched him paint it for the whole class. It’s a reminder of a super fun night where we met some really great people, and we got to visit with Gerald and his pup Andi for a little while, It was a really fun date night.

    Happy 2024– Meet Arthur

    Arthur made an appearance on Facebook yesterday, too, and I learned that Arthur has a cousin, lol!

    This is Arthur. My aunt named him.

    Arthur was painted by my Nannie’s first cousin, Inez, sometime before 1925. He lives in our bedroom now, but for all my life until 2012 he lived at the end of my Nannie, my grandmother’s hallway. That hallway was dark even in daylight most of the time, so Arthur was ominous and scary to me as a kid. My aunt says he scared Nannie when she was little too, when she hung in Inez’s mother’s living room.

    Inez and her Mama painted a lot of stuff– my aunt and my Mama have a lot of their paintings– oranges, different flower scenes, a moonlight beach scene.

    When I posted him on Facebook, a friend of the family posted that their relative had also painted an identical scene to Arthur, and posted a picture of their family’s painting! My whole worldview shifted a little bit, lol, because I had always, my whole 44 years, thought Arthur was an original. But I called my aunt, and she was not one bit surprised that Arthur has a cousin. She knew of the friend in question’s relative and that person would have known Inez, who painted our painting, and they probably took lessons from the same person. So they probably used the same model for the paintings. It’s a very cool story. The community those folks grew up in and spent their lives in was really small and close-knit at the time.

    I feel really fortunate to know (and be related to) some really talented people.

    Making Home Less Scary

    Jared working on our front porch

    The scene here is not nearly as bright as it is in the photograph. This is our front porch, and last night the string lights went up. I am hoping this is a permanent solution to make our front porch less treacherous at night, especially when one of us needs to take the dogs out but also for when we have guests coming up and down the steps on the front porch.

    The two lights by the front door do not give off really any light at all by themselves for some reason, so it has been really dark out there for a long time. It doesn’t bother the boys or Jared to take the dogs out there by themselves in the dark, but it bothers me. This will greatly help, as the street lights do not light up our yard at all. We were able to use command hooks to hang the lights, and I have ordered some brick clips to secure the outdoor extension cord powering the whole thing. Thankfully, there are power outlets on both sides of the front porch. Those power outlets are another indication that whoever designed this house was brilliant; we’ve known that since we looked at the house the first time.

    Happy 2024 — Today’s Agenda

    Today’s agenda includes working some in the studio, in the garage. We have to figure out a long-term solution to the power situation out there, which will likely involve calling an electrician. Eventually, I want a mini-split to heat and cool the whole thing. But, I think that is going to involve a whole second air conditioning unit. The house borderline needs one anyway. Not a today-type problem. But, the studio is supposed to double as an additional living area, especially when family who are allergic to cats visit.

    There is still a dramatic lot of painting to do in the studio. Eventually the plan is to cover the popcorn ceiling with black decorative tiles. I also intend to continue the faux concrete polishing I started in October. The garage doors and tracks will remain in place because with white backgrounds, the outdoor lighting is pretty essential to getting the shot. I would have liked to have taken the tracks down and covered the doors, but Jared has convinced me it’s not practical. I am okay with that fact now

    For today, it will be enough to concentrate on the sheer amount of cleaning there is to do, because there is a ton of it.

    There are two huge closets in the studio. One of them is Jared’s office, and for now the other contains outdoor equipment and tool storage. The plan is to clear out the leftover things in storage in our tall finished crawlspace and store outdoor equipment in there, and then turn that second storage closet into a changing room and storage for the studio.

    Jared is re-hauling his office today, too. A much-deserved space for him.

  • a different kind of selfie — atlanta, ga photographer

    A Different Kind of Selfie — Three days ago, I photographed my back. It was compulsory; I had to do it. And yesterday morning when I got home from taking the boys to school, I sat down and wrote the majority this blog post in an equally compulsory way. I stared in bits and pieces of seconds at the photo in question as I wrote the post.

    I got home from an errand before the plumber arrived to fix our toilet three days ago. In a mad rush to finish and get dressed before the plumber got here, I stripped right in the studio. I got out the camera and tripod and light and just took photo after photo until where I stood, with my back to the camera, and got the whole thing I wanted centered correctly.

    For those of you who may not know, I had/ have severe scoliosis— the curve was 87 degrees when they operated in 1993. I grew a full inch and a half in that 10-hour surgery that saved my life. I found out in college that the curve would have eventually crushed my heart, uncorrected. Last I knew 20 years or so ago, the curve had settled at around 45-47 degrees when all was said and done after the surgery.

    I’ve never really taken a photo of my back, a different kind of selfie, before. I’ve seen the scars, etc. in the mirror, but I’ve never taken the time to really look at it, beyond in passing in the mirror.

    So, thirty years and nearly six months later, here we are and I photographed my back. And I sat here, for a few seconds at the time, staring at it. I can’t look at it for more than a few seconds at the time,

    I am not self-conscious about the scars themselves. As a teenager, I’d pull up my shirt and show the front and back scars (It was a 2-part surgery and I have a scar that winds down my side and around front in addition to the one that spans the entirety of my back), I’d show them off just for fun. When I was younger I’d wear dresses and shirts that would show the top bits of my back scar. It was a sort of “see how tough I am” sort of mentality thing. One of my last psychiatrists said the showing off was trauma response.

    With the photo, a different kind of selfie, what I wasn’t prepared for (though I knew it was there and wanted to see) was the visual evidence that the scoliosis did indeed keep progressing as I have gotten older, as I have gotten more sedentary. It’s unknown but doubtful that the sedentary lifestyle is the sole-cause of the progression. My scar makes a sort of ellipsis shape now, with a mini-S in about the spot where I had a ginormous hump in the lumbar portion of my back as a kid. My bottom end continues the curve, where things should otherwise be straight.

    I wasn’t quite prepared to see the bunched up fat sitting on top of the scar that wraps around my side and up the left side of my back, nearly to my shoulder blade. I’ve known it was there because it makes nearly all bras uncomfortable now. But seeing it there was another thing entirely, not just my reflection in the mirror. As I sit here looking at it now, I see a sort of stretch mark has formed above the fat pocket, and that fat pocket is indeed sitting right above the scar line. It looks like my recent weight loss has left a tad bit of loose skin, even, at the top of the crease in my back. A solid mark of middle age.

    For the photo, a different kind of selfie, I purposefully stood in my most natural, comfortable state, letting my left shoulder droop purposefully. Most people don’t know this, I assume, but when I walk around I consciously hold my left shoulder up much higher than is natural. I got so good at it as a young adult when I was in good shape that I could walk around without it mostly drooping at all. What surprised me about the photo is I expected to see a more pronounced droop than is actually there— in my mind it is more pronounced than it actually is.

    I wasn’t prepared to see the little indentation of the chest tube spot, which would mostly only look like a fat roll indentation in the photo to anybody who didn’t know what they were looking at.

    I wasn’t prepared to see the mottled skin of solid middle age, all along my back, where it used to be creamy smooth.

    I had two different edits worked up, both in black and white. I called Jared over Tuesday night and we agreed on which one was the better edit. The one we settled on has more contrast, more definition to my shapes, shows the scar more completely. The sun was coming in bright through the double doors on the sitting room side of the studio. Eventually I’ll need to get shades to cover those double doors or I am going to have trouble controlling light in the studio; the sun is shining on my right side and on the right side of my hair in the photo, despite having the Lume Cube on full power on the opposite side of the room. (And no, our only neighbors on that side cannot see in those double doors even without shades.)

    This photo, a different kind of selfie, is more than navel-gazing. It allows me to face head-on in a tangible way, beside the ever-increasing presence of pain, particularly in my upper back at night just after I lie down— it allows me to face that there was a force completely beyond my control that has shaped my life in more ways than I can count.

    This photo, a different kind of selfie, probably equally as well represents my humanity, just as much as that little inch-and-a-half piece of the metal rod I have from the top of the rod that had to be cut out in December of 1994, because that silly little twist-tie had popped and the rod had made a nice sized-callous under my skin where it was poking out, leaving me breathless from the pain occasionally.

    And, this photo, a different kind of selfie, helps me come to terms with my age, too. I am painfully, painfully aware that as a teenager, that scar was straight as a line, with no curves in it at all. It is visual evidence of the reason I am now closer to 5 foot 8 inches tall, than the 5 foot 10 inches I used to be. It is visual evidence of fairly severe deformity inside my body. For a perfectionist, that is a hard image to see in oneself.

    On March 1, 2023, about 5 AM in the morning, I felt a sort of “pop” behind my heart area, is the best way I can describe it. It wasn’t painful, but I was awake at the time anyway and it was a sensation pronounced enough that it sort of made me lose my breath as I sat on the edge of the bed. Jared thinks it was a muscle spasm or something like that and maybe it was.

    I’ve had an x-ray of my back since that time and so I know it wasn’t anything that is going to cause issues, at any rate.

    But, I sort of look at that event as a marker reminder that I am living on borrowed time. I don’t know how long I would have lived without that scoliosis surgery when I was 13. I know that having children would have been much more difficult and more painful and more dangerous. I know that I probably wouldn’t have lived to be 44 years old.

    There is a sort of grief, too, that bubbles up to the surface, knowing that while everyone has their trials in life to carry, this particular one has been mine, and mine alone. It makes me tremendously sad that I have been so very hard on myself my whole life, for various extremely trivial, superficial reasons that never really mattered all that much.

    Looking at this photo, a different kind of selfie, brings into crystal clarity the fact that I am grateful that Jared came along when he did, and that I am with the sort of man I was meant to be with all along, despite the fact that prior to Jared there were a few men of questionable character— it’s no wonder at all I was so desperate to be accepted that I lowered my standards, allowing men who had no business in my life to be there, for way longer than they should have been there. I am grateful that Jared came along and taught me what respect from a man really looks like.

    I will never be one for proper boudoir photography. Seeing myself like that isn’t interesting to me. But this exercise has been a big lesson in learning to be kind to myself, and reminding myself that there is more strength in me than I give myself credit for.

    This epitomized my empowerment session. I doubt it will ever live anywhere besides my external hard drive. But the photo exists, for me to see, when I need a few minutes to just remember exactly why my hips hurt late at night, and why my upper back hurts when I lie down first thing in the bed at night, and mostly it’s there for me to remember exactly how strong I really am and have been my whole life long.

  • charting my path: embracing goals and growth

    Charting My Path: Recently, I stepped out of my photography business, but it didn’t feel right. I’ve decided to fully commit to my true passions—my photography business and my beloved home life.

    In this stage of our family journey, we’re navigating a phase where our kids are growing up. Porter is a senior, Liam is a sophomore, and Oliver is in fourth grade. Jared stays busy with work, and I’m engrossed in the photography business. Both boys are actively involved in band activities, and we’re cherishing this phase of life. We’re charting our path as a family.

    A lesser-known fact: I now have a studio! Our garage has transformed into a beautiful studio and cozy sitting area. The excitement is palpable as I prepare to welcome my first clients to the studio in mid-October.

    Although venturing out to work was refreshing, I’m committing to spending more time outside our home. For stay-at-home moms and those of us with solitary work, being social and venturing out is vital. Even a trip to the library or a coffee shop offers a refreshing change of scenery, which I’ve found to be invigorating.

    It’s been a while since my last blog post, and truth be told, it feels a bit unfamiliar. Yet, I’m eager to reignite my writing spirit. Journaling, too, has taken a back seat, despite its importance for my mental well-being and life perspective.

    Embarking on a Goal-Setting Journey

    On the path of personal growth, setting and achieving goals is like navigating with a compass—it keeps you on track and moving forward. Here are some valuable tips to guide you:

    1. Define Clear Goals: Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Clearly state what you want to achieve, how you’ll measure your progress, and set deadlines to stay accountable.

    2. Break Down Your Goals: Large goals can be overwhelming. Break them into smaller, achievable tasks or milestones. Celebrate each small victory; they build momentum and keep you motivated.

    3. Prioritize Self-Care: Your well-being is paramount. Make self-care a priority—physical exercise, mindfulness, proper nutrition, and adequate sleep. A healthy body and mind are the foundation of success.

    Furthermore, commit to lifelong learning. Read books, take online courses, attend workshops, or listen to educational podcasts. Expand your knowledge and skill set to stay relevant and adaptable.

    Charting My Path: Navigating Towards a Brighter Future

    In this phase, I’m actively working towards several goals:

    Firstly, I aim to establish a cleaning schedule for our home. Beyond the essential chores, I’ve somewhat neglected keeping our living space neat and tidy. I miss the orderliness and cleanliness, and I’m determined to restore it for our family promptly.

    Another goal of mine is charting my path to return to daily journaling, preferably on paper. Journaling is a vital tool in my mental health toolkit. It allows me to pour out my thoughts and emotions, providing a fresh start each day.

    Furthermore, I’m committed to improving my physical health. I’ve made progress, shedding 24 pounds since December, but I’ve hit a plateau lately. I realize there’s room for improvement—I haven’t been exercising as consistently, and my diet could be healthier. So, there’s an opportunity to refocus and work on it.

    In addition, I’m in the process of growing out my hair and have adopted a new haircare routine. I’ve managed to extend the time between washes to every other day. Although my goal is to wash my hair only twice a week, I acknowledge it might take some time to achieve that fully.

    Lastly, I’m recommitting myself to blogging. It’s been too long, and while I’ve never been a fan of batch writing sessions, I’m open to the idea. For now, my main objective is to return to regular writing—I’ve missed connecting with you all. This new version of charting my path is a welcome change in life.

    That’s all for now.

    Love,
    Caroline