Photographing with my Guts

I admit I was enjoying the eternal autumn as opposed to winter.  40 degrees and sunny in January?  No snow?  Yes, please.

However, I confess that a sticky snowfall followed by a single digit day of strong sunshine is breathtakingly beautiful.  These are shots I took this afternoon, some in my yard, and some only a mile or two from my house in the nearby countryside.

I took 187 shots in total, and put 23 up here.  That's a pretty good ratio for me.  I love digital photography because it's so inexpensive to take photos and there's no guilt associated with not using ones I don't like because they don't cost me anything.  I take at least 20 times as many photos as I ever use - probably far more.

So if I take that darn many, how do I select the ones I use?  My photo editing and selecting process is very visceral.  The ones that make the cut are the ones that give me an emotional response.  They make something tighten or tingle in the pit of my stomach, or the best photos are the ones that cause me to stop breathing for a moment.  When I feel that, I know I have captured something worthwhile.  At a minimum, selected photos have to make me feel.  And then all I can do is hope that my readers have a similar response to at least some of them.

For this photography adventure, I was accompanied by my whole support team including spouse and both dogs, but the Bean was the most enthusiastic companion, eagerly sniffing the fresh cold air for interesting scents, and assaulting me with her tongue every time I ventured within range.

I hope you, my dear readers, enjoy a few of these.  If you would like to see them as a slide show without all the surrounding distraction of my blog layout, just click on the first one, then flip through them.  If you are curious, my favorite one is the barn window. 

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A Doggie Test of Wills and Some Pictures

It's disturbingly un-January-like around here these days.  Being a non-winter person, I confess I am loving sunny, 40+ degree days and lack of snow.  There's a part of me that worries though, about what this weather means about climate change, and what it means for increased flea and tick problems, and whether it means we'll still have snow on the ground in July.  I mean, we have to pay for this somehow, right?

Anyway, enough winter philosophizing.  An update:

Our Christmas flew by in a positively mad whirlwind of activity, and then my husband left town to spend some time with his family in South Carolina, leaving me home with our zoo all by myself for the better part of a week.

The 5 cats are not a problem.  They kind of do their own thing.  Although at the moment we have discovered we've got a carpet pee-er, and I'm not entirely sure which cat to blame, or which cat to take to the vet.  And when I'm the only human around I sometimes wish I could clone myself so that one of me could get some sleep while the other spends much of each night snuggling with each needy cat in turn. But aside from those minor factors, and the occasional hairball, the cats aren't much bother.

The dogs are a lot more work.  For the most part, Phoebe and I get along just fine.  She's a good girl, and has largely outgrown the worst of her puppy misbehaviors (although she did eat a pen on the rug one evening, leaving a puddle of black ink on the cream carpet and grinning up at me with blue-black teeth). On the whole, though, she behaves.  She does what I ask her to with enthusiasm.

Simon and I, however, should never be left home together for an extended period of time without supervision.  We seriously get on each other's nerves.

This happens every time Seth leaves town for a few days.  Simon starts off being his usual stubborn self, but day by day, his response times get slower and slower when I tell him to do something.  I can stand at the top of the stairs and tell him to come, and he'll sit at the bottom of the stairs and look at me.  Then scratch his left ear.  Then nibble on his right front paw.  Then look at me.  I'll tell him to come again, sounding more exasperated.  Then he'll look at me.  And scratch his right ear.  And still sit there.

By the end of Seth's time away, I was starting to worry my neighbors must think I'd lost my mind.  I was all-out bellowing at Simon daily. He got into the garbage, he pooped on the rugs, and he refused to do anything I asked him to do.  He even took to refusing bribes of treats.  Then the day before Seth was due to come home, he escaped the leash, refused to come when I called him, and when I finally recaptured him and tried to bring him back home he tripped me, then pulled so hard on the leash that he was pulling me face-first down the icy sidewalk.  I didn't know whether to scream "Simon!  I'm going to kill you!"  or just give up and say "Hyah!  Mush!" and make him drag me home.

The little $#!*

When Seth finally walked in the back door, I believe I said something to the effect of "Hi honey.  Glad you're home.  They're yours."

Heh.

It's funny how very much Simon is Seth's dog and Phoebe is mine.

Anyway, all this winter sunshine is conducive to some lazy sunny winter day photography.  I found the pups snoozing in the sun on the spare bed, and took advantage of their cuteness.  If you've seen much of my photography, you know I love to play with sunshine and shadow.  I suppose it's no coincidence I took far more photos of Phoebe than of Simon.  I think I'm still holding a grudge against him.

This pic of Phoebe cracks me up.  Something about her in it reminds me of Zuul, from Ghostbusters.  I expected her to say "I am the gatekeeper":

But then she looks at me like this, and reminds me more of a bat:

Simon, drooping:

Bat and droops:

Simon looking his most handsome:

This is akin to the look I get when she knows she's in trouble:

I simply love this last one.  She looks so contemplative:

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Cabin Fever

The winter just won't let go of its death grip on Central New York.  40 mile an hour wind gusts are (again) buffeting the house.  There is a grim warning of snow in tonight's forecast.  If I wake up to a white Village tomorrow morning I shall scream.

Anywho, we've all got cabin fever.  All eight of us.  Yes, that's right, all eight.  That includes the Attic Ghoul, who just this past weekend wandered out of his fiercely guarded attic hideaway of his own volition.  I was making myself a snack around 8:00 Saturday evening, and heard a meow several times before it registered in some dim recess of my brain that the meow didn't seem to belong in the scene.  I looked down, and discovered Rocky sitting on the kitchen floor, looking up at me, meowing curiously.  It was as if he was saying, "Hey Mom.  Is this where you go when you're not petting me in my attic?"

The former recluse hasn't looked back.  He wandered about exploring a little that evening, cool as a cucumber, as if he had been living comfortably with the rest of us forever.  Sunday morning, I awoke to find him sitting draped over my husband's legs, purring comfortably.  Why it took him seven weeks to emerge from his attic, I shall probably never know.  In a couple of days, he's progressed from practical non-existence, to being a persistently purring ankle-bumper, who follows me from room to room and is surely going to cause me to trip down the stairs in the immediate future.

Somehow our giant 2,200 square foot house seems to be shrinking with each pet we add.  It seemed HUGE when we moved in here with just five of us.

What with the miserable weather, we all need something to occupy our attention, so while my husband braved the winds to glue parts of his car back together (curse the road debris from someone's @#%$*^! uncovered load on the highway!), I got the bright idea to construct a cat playhouse.

It took three sizable cardboard boxes, a box cutter and some tape. I had to dump cats out of it several times before I could finish it, which I took to be a good sign.

Ta da!  Hours of feline entertainment.

Here's proof Rocky has emerged.  There he is, on the left, looking burly.  I love how the boxes have sprouted a tail.

Watching for paws to come waving through the hidey holes:

Thus far it's the biggest hit with the young 'uns.  Pippin is only a bit over a year, and Wednesday, though past two, retains an eternally kittenish disposition that I expect she'll retain forever.  The three year olds, Sneakers and Rocky, are more dignified, and though intrigued, will likely only explore it when they think no one else is looking.

And grouchy old Tucker?  He would never stoop so low as to acknowledge the presence of something the "kids" play with!

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Top 10 Reasons Holly is Glad it's Winter

1.  Winter misery makes me appreciate Upstate New York summers so very, very much.  Ah, the warmth, the sunshine, the growing things.  How delicious it all was all those months ago!

2.  Fires in our nicely remodeled fireplace/wood stove are so lovely.

Here's Pippin, sound asleep, worshipping the fire:

Here's where it starts to get tricky... I think those ARE the only two things I like about winter right now.  Hm.  Time to think creatively.

3.  The male cats, who like to spend their time frolicking in the great outdoors, are feeling fractious from being cooped up all the time.  The result is a fascinating animal behavior experiment, and since it's cold and miserable out, I have plenty of time in the evening to sit and watch it.  It turns out, to my shock and consternation, our docile and dumb girl kitty Sneakers is the anchoring personality in the household.  She spends her time monitoring everyone's behavior, breaking up fights, and defending any cat who's getting picked on.  Who knew?  Perhaps I shall have to ratchet up my estimation of her intelligence.  She may be daft enough to light her own tail on fire on the wood stove doors, but she's apparently got some spark up there.

4. Fuzzy Muppet socks.  They make my feet happy.  If you don't know what I mean by "Muppet socks", take a look at the ones I have on right now:

What else can you call those other than Muppet socks?  Honestly, they look like they're made out of the hides of retired Muppets.  I have dozens of pairs of Muppet socks.

5.  I am developing an even greater appreciation of the stubbornness of mold.  Since we largely heat with wood and have been too lazy to buy a humidifier, it's so dry in our house that I can't wear my contacts for more than 10 minutes before they start to irritate me.  My nose is dry, my skin soaks up gallons of lotion daily.  And yet, despite the lack of airborne moisture, my favorite wooden chess set, which to my knowledge has never gotten wet or even damp, randomly started sprouting a fine fuzz of mold.  ??????  Dang, that mold stuff is impressive.  My house is now both an animal behavior experiment and a fungus experiment.  Yay for science!

6.  More animal behavior fun:  When you leave Simon the Basset hound indoors for too long and don't give him enough exercise, every once in a while he just snaps.  I call it Frapping ("FRAP" = Frantic Random Acts of Play).  It could also be referred to as going bonkers.  He will spontaneously jump up from in front of the fire, and rip around the house full speed, catapulting off the furniture, sliding across the wood floors.  He does it all with this maniacally joyful expression on his face, with his tongue flapping out the side of his mouth, and his long ears flying wildly behind him. 

Frapping is hard to photograph, but here are two random shots of him spazzing in our upstairs hallway. They give you some idea of the ridiculousness of it.

Sometimes he inspires Pippin the cat to join him and it becomes a great barky game of tag.  His glee is contagious.  And people wonder why I don't have a television! 

7.  http://goldensnowball.blogspot.com/.  Because if I'm going to get all this snow anyway, I may as well gloat over the citizens of my neighboring upstate cities.  "Oh yeah?  Your winter has been miserable this year?  Well ours has been worse!  We've had even more snow than you have!  And therefore Syracusans are even tougher than [insert citizens of neighboring city here]!"  Oh, we Upstate New Yorkers are a weeeeird breed.

I swear this has been the view out my bathroom window for most of this winter:

8.  Speaking of bathrooms, winter makes me exceedingly appreciative of indoor plumbing.  Every single time I send my poor dog outside to do his business in Arctic temperatures and gale-force winds, I am grateful that I don't have to do the same.

9.  I am, honest to goodness, one of those weird people who actually likes driving in the snow.  No, really, I do.  I drive an awesome all-wheel-drive car with Nokian Hakkapelitta snow tires.  I would argue strenuously that they are the best damn snow tires EVER.  And driving in snow and ice is more interesting than driving on dry pavement - it keeps my commute from getting boring.  Now if only everyone else on the road drove sanely in the snow, I'd like winter driving a whole lot more than I already do.

Random history lesson of the day:  Per Wikipedia, "Hakkapelitta" is a Finnish word, that was used to refer to light cavalrymen in the service of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  Who knew?

10.  I don't have to feel quite as guilty when I spend a weekend sitting inside doing artwork.  Because, after all, no matter how "nice" it is outside, it's only comparatively nice.  It's nicer, than, say, the prior weekend when it was -17 with the wind chill and snowing like the Dickens.  But 25 degrees outside can only ever be comparatively nice.  It can't be that gloriously intoxicating way-too-nice-to-go-inside-other-than-to-use-the-bathroom kind of nice that we get during some Syracuse summer days.

Which leads me back to #1 on my list.  Oh, how I appreciate Syracuse summers right now!!!

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Icicle Art

I must confess:  I have been hiding from winter this year.

I have been watching the remarkable snowfall tallies, and actually cheering for more snow.  We've had 113 inches thus far this year, compared with 50 inches this time last year.  We are almost at the normal season's average of 121.  The way I look at it, if we've suffered through this much already, we may as well keep going and break a few records.  Mind you, every time I mention that to my husband, he drily suggests I can do all the rest of the shoveling this year.

Yet I've essentially been just watching the snow from indoors.  Instead of going out hiking, or snowshoeing, or looking for critter tracks, or in any other way enjoying the season, I have been holed up inside.  It's quite pathetic, really.  I mean, if one is going to live in this climate, one ought to find ways to appreciate all 4 seasons.  Yet instead I have been roasting my bones before the fire and occupying myself with artwork, trying to forget winter's bluster outside my door.  I just haven't the energy to deal with it.

It makes for good art, but rather a dearth of writing material for this blog, I am afraid.

Anywho, after cleaning the house and cooking chili and doing all sorts of domestic indoors things this afternoon, my husband called my attention to the icicles outside our spare bedroom window.  He kindly popped out the screen, and I shot a few pictures of the ice shining in the weak winter sunlight.  It's pretty much the only interaction I've had with winter all weekend.

The effects I achieved were not necessarily what I'd had in mind, but were fascinating nonetheless.  This new camera is such fun to play with, and ice is amazing stuff.  After a little adjustment to contrast, some of these photos look distinctly as though they are of metal, not ice.

Now I'm feeling cold after looking at and thinking so much about ice.  I think I'll plunk myself back in front of the fire with a book for the rest of the evening!

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