FeeFiFoto Blog

Wordless Wednesday: I'm Back!

And more important: my POS computer's back from its week at the spa repair center.

Meanwhile, here are a couple photos from our trip.

Strangers On A Train: Obnoxious Travelers

Dear Man Who Sat With Me And My Boys For Breakfast On The Train:

The motivation for this letter has almost nothing to do with your profuse ear and nose hair, although really -- could ya visit the barber once a month?  Seriously, dude, I've seen my father get haircuts.  I know barbers can get rid of all that volunteer hair in your ears and your nose and on your eyebrows and neck... and by the way, that combover suggestive of a Dairy Queen vanilla soft serve sundae? 

Not working and not fooling anybody.  Please do yourself your dining companions a favor: see a barber.

Well, okay, maybe not that one. Still, a haircut once a month couldn't hurt, and might make you a little more comfortable with yourself and a little less abusive to strangers.

Anyway.

Dear Mr. Person Whose Name I Don't Know And Would Try Really Hard To Forget If I Did Know It:

I know it can be awkward to be seated with complete strangers on a train.  Heck, it was awkward for us too.  Still, it's more comfortable and tolerable for all involved if conversation not be dominated by any one particular person at the table (not naming names here because I never even learned yours, but ...).  Further, the rules of etiquette recommend that, even if you maintain the personal opinion that a private school education is somehow inferior to an education from a public school, you might want to consider keeping that opinion to yourself when holding a conversation with children who attend private schools.  And their mother/aunt.

Finally, and please forgive me if I'm overreaching here, but it seems to me that it might be easier to maintain positive relationships if you don't attempt to stump a 6th grader and a 7th grader with obscure geography and history questions and then triumphantly declare that their education is "deficient" when they don't glibly call up the answers to your questions.  Just a guess here.

Hey, thanks for listening, and in case you were unable to hear what I said because of the jungle inside your ears, remember: your local barber can work wonders for less than $20.

Have a nice day.

Spring Fame Contest Winner

The winner of the Spring Fame Contest, JC at Castleruins, has achieved her three months of fame! Look for her nephew's self portrait on wooden keepsake box on the home page of FeeFiFoto all through Spring.

Yay JC! You're a winner!

Here's a sample:

 

JC 's photo is being shown on a Wooden Cherry Colored Box with Tile Inset. The image is printed permanently on a ceramic tile, which is inset into the box's lid. Great as a wedding gift or Mother's Day present.

Unusual Ways Of Looking At The Usual

When your business involves photographs you regularly witness astonishingly creative approaches to the same old square or rectangular format.

When I had portraits taken of my kids I'd baffle the photographers by insisting on keeping the unusual photos like this one:

The woman who took this shot had her finger on delete, but I stopped her; this photo shows the essence of my son when he was six months old, with the fingers in the mouth and the little smile behind them.  I once insisted on a portrait of my daughter taken from the back.

Here are some more unusual photos I found while browsing the net:

"The following shots are all of moving subjects where the photographer has made the choice to set their camera to capture the movement as blur rather than freezing it. This is in all cases by choosing (or letting the camera choose) a ’slow’ shutter speed (although by slow you’ll see that the speeds (noted under each image) vary from anything from 1/30 second to up to 40 minutes)."

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Photo by Sara Heinrichs - Exposure Time: 20 seconds

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Photo by Mr Bones - No exposure settings supplied

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Photo by Amnemona - No exposure settings given

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Photo by Ben McLeod - Shutter Speed - 8 seconds

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Photo by WisDoc - Shutter Speed - 1/30

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Photo by Wam Mosely - Shutter speed - 4/5 of a second

 

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...And one of my own.  Taken at Disney World, shutter speed I-Have-No-Idea, while riding in a slowly moving pedicab.  In case you can't tell, it's a plain old plant.

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Shlepping Kids

Originally published October 21, 2007

Jane at BabySquared writes about intentionally dehydrating herself before a long drive with her twin pre-toddlers so she wouldn't have to stop for a bathroom break on the way:

"This was the first time I've attempted a road trip of any length alone with the girls... I was careful not to drink too much water before I left, and though I would have liked a cup of coffee for the road, it was just too risky. I didn't bring a stroller, which meant that there was pretty much no way I could have stopped to go to the bathroom... I tried to imagine what I would do if things got really, really desperate. I decided that I could:

1.) Pull up close to a gas station with a convenience store, look inside to see if there was a sane-looking woman working there and, if there was, run in and beg her to go out and keep an eye on the girls while I peed. (No offense, guys, but it just wouldn't be cool to ask some random man to watch my children. Probably not so cool to ask a random woman either, but if I had no other choice....)

2.) Pull over to the side of the road somewhere semi-secluded but not too secluded and go behind a bush while still able to see the car, but somehow still hidden from other motorists. It would be hard to find the ideal terrain scenario for this.

3.) Go to a Dunkin Donuts, where there's a high probability of seeing a police officer (in New England, the cops at donut shops thing isn't just a stereotype -- or a mere line from a Bangles song, for that matter -- it's for real, I swear), and ask him or her to keep an eye on the babies while I went inside.

4.) Put one baby in the baby backpack, which I did have in the car, and carry the other one, and go into a rest stop. But this would present the problem of what to do with the baby I'm carrying while in the restroom. Put her on the floor? Ick. But again. Extreme bladder emergencies require extreme measures ..."

As a single mom, I've had innumerable similar experiences.  Can you balance a baby on one thigh to change its diaper while standing on your other foot, propped up against a public bathroom wall because the restaurant's clientèle obviously reproduce by cell division and therefore have no children so the restaurant  sees no need for changing tables?  You bet!  At least I can, and have.  I've also gone to the bathroom myself clutching a baby around the waist with one arm; he screamed  copiously, but hey -- at least it showed he was still alive.

My favorite story, however, doesn't involve potties at all, but rather chocolate ice cream.

When my son was a month old we stopped by Baskin Robbins on the hottest day of the year for two scoops of chocolate ice cream on a cone (both for me).  Robespierre was in the pumpkin seat, so I opened the car door and clicked the seat back into its carrier with one hand, holding the cone in the other.  At this point the ice cream began to melt.  Really.  Quickly.  All the way down my arm to the elbow.  And of course, I didn't have any napkins.

Now, what are my options?

1. Return to BR for napkins.  Rejected due to the impossibility of getting the pumpkin seat out of the car singlehandedly.
2. Leave the baby in the car and run back into BR for napkins.  Rejected for sooo many reasons, notably the baby will suffocate, and, as a brand-new mother, I cannot conceive of leaving him alone even for five seconds.
3. Leave the baby in that car with the windows open and the motor running.  Rejected because, well, even I'm not that dumb.
4. Call for help.  Rejected because in those days I still hoped for some dignity.
5. Ignore the dripping and get in the car.  Rejected because -- yuk.
6. Throw away the ice cream.  Rejected because it's against my religion to throw away ice cream, especially chocolate (remind me to tell the hot fudge story sometime).
7. Inhale the ice cream.  A disappointing choice at best as I'll derive very little pleasure from the ice cream, although there is the consolation that I won't have killed my kid so soon when he hadn't even begun to be annoying.

So I went with Number 5, inhaling all the ice cream in two mouthfuls without even suffering brain freeze because it was the hottest day of the year.

Then Robey and I visited my grandmother.  Before leaving I went to the bathroom and saw chocolate smeared all over my face.  My grandmother was practically blind so she hadn't noticed, but the lady that stayed with her surely must have seen it; maybe she didn't mention it because she thought I always looked like that.  Or maybe she was so entranced by Robey that she hadn't even noticed me.

Or maybe she thought I was crazy lady wearing war paint and she ought not to make any sudden moves.

Vacation?

For the next week and a half or so, I'm going to be on a trip with Robespierre and my nephew, Sweet Talker.  I won't be posting regularly, if at all, for some or all of the following reasons:

1. We'll be on a train much of the time, without reliable access to wireless internet.
2. My laptop will be in for repairs.
3. The dog ate my homework.

To make up for my absence, I've scheduled some older posts (from the days when I had no readers to speak of) to rerun.  Enjoy, comment, discuss amongst yourselves, and I'll see you soon.

Race From Witch Mountain: Movie Review

Robey and I went to see Race To Witch Mountain last night, before shopping for clothes for him -- not me, him.  He's growing so quickly I'm tempted to dress him in garbage bags for the next couple of years.

Anyway, the movie.  The main character is a cab driver played by Dwayne "Don't Call Me 'Rock' Any More" Johnson, who picks up two cute blond teenagers who happen to be illegal aliens without passports, from some planet many multiple light years away from Earth.  You can tell they're aliens because, even though they're cute and blond, they use stilted language similar to that used by HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The alien kids spend half the movie looking very worried and the other half speaking as if they were reciting from a hastily-translated owner's manual for a Japanese-made appliance.  Meanwhile, The Actor Formerly Known As "Rock" drives them through the desert for the first 45 minutes of the movie without ever demanding to know why they talk so funny.

There are Bad Guys and Worse Guys; some guy who wheezes like Darth Vader; black SUVs and more black SUVs; lots of pretty explosions; a cute dog and a cute lady; and Garry Marshall, as a cute, crazy old guy.

You know how sometimes at a movie you hear the audience guffaw at the exact lines that have been playing in the trailer for months?  And you know how usually these are the only lines that are even remotely amusing, and it's obvious that the audience is primed to laugh only because they've seen the trailer?  Race To Witch Mountain is one of those movies.  It wasn't horrible; I reserve that classification for Shark Boy And Lava Girl and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.  It's partly redeemed by Dwayne "Can We Start Calling Him 'Hunk'?" Johnson, who is quite, shall we say, handsome, and a pretty good actor. 

Still, it was loud and shallow and disjointed.  I know I shouldn't expect too much from kids' movies (although Shrek was pretty terrific).  It's just that I'd like to see something with more substance, but I'm certainly not taking my eleven-year-old to see Slumdog Millionaire. 

In any case, the movie got two thumbs up from Robey and me: his.  Unfortunately, it appears that his feelings are a little hurt because I didn't like it.

At least so far I've been able to dodge the bullet of Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.

Photo Hunters: Four

Tame peahen mommy and, count 'em, one two three four chicks.

Tah Dah!

See more Photo Hunters here.

PhotoHunt

**See my additional note in the comments

Online Shopping -- Isn't It Great? Discuss.

So, I was, like, browsing the Internet?  Because that's what I do, like, most of the day?  And I saw this, like, umm, sweater?  That looked really cool?  And I'm all This Stuff Is, Like, Really Cool?  So I like clicked over to the site?  On Etsy?  And this lady had all these really awesome, like, tops and sweaters and leggings and stuff and whatever?  And some of them were made of, like cotton and bamboo and whatever?

Oy.  I'm giving myself a headache.

The seller's name is Sandmaiden.  She makes and custom dyes most of her items.  Here are some of her things:

This one is 100% organic cotton lightweight thermal rib knit.

This is the one that first caught my eye.  It's also 100% organic cotton lightweight thermal rib knit.

Photo courtesy of The Cupcake.

And here's the one I bought.  It's made from a lightweight, soft jersey made of bamboo and organic cotton.  I received it less than two weeks after ordering it.  I wore it today.  I love it.  I might wear it again tomorrow.

I'm writing about Sandmaiden for a few reasons:

1. The top is soft, comfortable and well-made, and the color looks really good with my eyes.
2. I won't see myself coming and going when I wear it.
3. Amanda, the owner, has promised me that if I blog about her she'll send me an entire wardrobe of her designs.

Not really.  I made that last part up.  I'm just so delighted with this tunic that I had to show it off, and maybe I can send Amanda some well-deserved business.  Here's the link to Sandmaiden.

Thursday Thirteen: In Honor Of Friday The 13th

What are you afraid of?

1. Number 13- Triskadekaphobia. Wouldn't this be fear of Triscuits?
2. Asymmetrical things- Asymmetriphobia.
3. Puppets- Pupaphobia.  Sounds like fear of puppies.
4. Church- Ecclesiophobia.
5. Dining or dinner conversations- Deipnophobia.
6. Teenagers- Ephebiphobia.  I think I have this.
7. Color purple- Porphyrophobia.
8. Phobias- Phobophobia.  Duh.
9. Friday the 13th- Paraskavedekatriaphobia.
10. Tickled by feathers or feathers- Pteronophobia.
11. Infinity- Apeirophobia.
12. Long words- Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia or Sesquipedalophobia.  The fear that dare not speak its name.
13. Mother-in-law- Pentheraphobia.

Wordless Wednesday: Darning Egg

This is a Darning Egg:

The Darning Egg is used to repair holes in socks:

Slip the Darning Egg inside the broken sock (this is a Stunt Sock; a genuine broken sock would have a hole, so pretend there's holage in this one):

Then, sew up the hole (if this were an actual emergency hole you'd want to use matching thread, wouldn't you?):

Go Darning Egg, go!!

**No actual socks were harmed in the making of this post.

And The Winner Is...

Do you see yourself in these words? If so, you're the winner of the FeeFiFoto Spring 2009 Fame Contest:

"That is a hard choice, both which product (all very nice!) and then which photo... but off the top of my head... my nephew's first self portrait on the laser etched bowl... or some other storage box thingy. Decisions, decisions... :-D"

Announcing the winner of the FeeFiFoto Spring 2009 Fame Contest:

JC at Castleruins, come on down! Yay JC! You did it! We knew that you could.

As winner of the FeeFiFoto Fame Contest you'll get to admire your photo incorporated into a graphic and prominently displayed on the home page of FeeFiFoto for the next three months.  Plus, you've won a $10 gift certificate from FeeFiFoto.  Congratulations!

JC, send me a photo file in jpeg format and I'll let you know when your graphic is up on FeeFiFoto's home page.

Photo Hunters: Space

Look what's crammed into the ceiling space of this ferry boat.  Do you think you have to break the slats to gain access to the life jackets?

See more Photo Hunters here.

PhotoHunt

Does Not Compute

Peter Tork, the 67-year-old quiet Monkee, has cancer, and I say that is just incomprehensible because how in blazes could Peter Tork actually be 67?

Swinging

Sasha and Malia Obama just got a cool redwood and cedar swing set play system in the back yard of the White House.  It looks way more funner than the creaky metal one we had when we were kids, the one that nearly pulled off its foundation if you swung too hard.  One piece of advice for them: hose it down occasionally to get rid of cobwebs, spider webs and insect interlopers.

Hope they have an easier time getting rid of it when they're finished with it than I did getting rid of ours.

Thursday Thirteen: Things I Got From My Grandmothers

• Darning egg.  Show a darning egg to almost anyone younger than 40 and not only will they be unable to identify it, but when you explain its use they won't believe you.

• Farberware soup pot.  I already had a few of these but this one is just the right size for making a lot of soup without having it turn into a vat; it's technically referred to as the "Not Vat" size.

• Washboard (but not washboard abs, sadly).  Honestly, I don't know what my grandmother was doing with a washboard because I thought those went out of use after the pioneer migration through the Oregon Trail, but Grandma did live through the Great Depression, so I guess she must not have had an electric washer.

• Handmade quilt.

• Hand knit afghan.  I don't know how I was lucky enough to land this beauty.  I just asked before all the other grandchildren.

• Hand knit dress.  Don't believe the photo; this is a prize.

• Hand knit tablecloth.  Another treasure.

• Sewing basket, with some old thread on wooden spools.

• Art deco clock.  I scored this one the same way I got the afghan: by stealth.

• Windmill clock.  Actually, I bought this one on eBay.  It's identical to the one my mother gave away when Grandma moved out of her house into an apartment.  As the windmill second hand rotates the clock makes a loud chicka-chicka-chicka sound.

• Passover dishes.  Kind of ugly, aren't they?  But I keep them for sentimental reasons.

• Costume jewelry.

• Teeny tiny evening bags.

Wordless Wednesday: In Honor Of The Birthday Of Dr. Seuss

These are three views of our library, which started out as Robespierre's nursery, and then Cleo's.  The paintings were done just before Robey was born, by the guy who taught me to watercolor.  When we had the shelves put in I couldn't stand to sacrifice the paintings, so we worked around them.  The blue fish in the center of the last photo had to be moved to make way for the shelf, so I painted the one you see here.

Dr. Seuss's writing has been important to our family for decades; sometimes I still read his books to my kids.

Cupcake, Anyone? My Daughter's New Blog Design

Cleopatra-Queen-Of-The-Nile has just celebrated her one year mark as a blogger.  When she first started blogging I expected her to lose interest in no more than a month, but I shouldn't be surprised that she's kept it up for a year since she loves to write and she's darn good at it.  In addition to learning the ins and outs of blogging she's built her own fan base, with regular visitors and commenters.

Her blog's original name was The Big Hannah Montana Fan, which I thought might be pretty limiting, but I figured she'd lose interest in blogging before losing interest in Hannah Montana so no harm would be done.  A few months ago, still posting reliably every two or three days, she asked if she could hire Ana, from Chica and Pumuckl, to design her a new look.  The price was right, the time was ripe, so she got in touch with Ana and they got to work.

Cleo decided to go with a cupcake theme, partly since cupcakes are such a popular motif right now and partly because I've always called her Cupcake.  After a couple weeks of back and forth she and Ana refined the design, and it went live over the weekend.  Although the URL hasn't changed, she did change the name of her blog to The Cupcake Bakery.

I am hugely proud of Cleo for sticking with her blogging.  I anticipate that she might someday be a bona fide blogstar, maybe even as big as Dooce, but a whole lot nicer.  Heck, she's already selling advertising; so far she's earned nearly $1 on Project Wonderful.

While I'm at it, I want to offer my sincere gratitude to her fan club, both known and unknown.  My heartfelt thanks to Daisy, Lux, Mrs. Mecomber, Eduardo The Snuggle Puggle, and everyone else who's supported her and encouraged her for the past year.

After you've finished here, please drop by and say hi to the Cupcake.  Thanks.

Just A Splash Of Teriyaki, Please: My Kids Are As Klutzy As I Am

Scene 1: Robespierre, he of the Hollow Leg, enters the kitchen in search of many carbohydrates.  Snatching open the pantry door, he spies...

a brand new bottle of Teriyaki sauce hurtling inexorably to its doom at the hands of Evil Gravity, abetted by Tile Floor, Gravity's henchman.

Scene 2 (post apocalypse): Robespierre, he of the Short Attention Span, picks up most of the large pieces of glass and uses the Swiffer to sop up spread around the entire contents of the now defunct bottle of Teriyaki sauce.

Scene 3:  Robespierre's mother, she of the Eagle Eyes Assisted By Bifocals, enters the kitchen and instructs that Robespierre clean the floor again, this time with a damp towel.

Scene 4:  Robespierre, he of the Slapdash Effort, fetches a rag the size of a washcloth.

Scene 5:  Mother, she of the "Oh No You Don't" School Of Parenting, sends Robespierre on a quest to find a REAL towel capable of cleaning up the remains of an entire bottle of Teriyaki sauce.

Scene 6:  Robespierre, he of the philosophy that You Should Keep Throwing Out Haphazard Guesses Until Something Rings A Bell, saturates a beach towel in water and skates in wet circles around the kitchen floor.

Scene 7:  Mother, she of the Discerning Sense Of Smell, insists that Robespierre clean the floor again, since the kitchen still smells of Teriyaki sauce.

Scene 8:  Robespierre, he of the Creative Mind, offers to spray the entire kitchen with his manly AXE deodorant.

Scene 9: Mother, she of the "Okay, Now I've Heard Enough" School Of Parenting, sends Robespierre on his way, lights some candles, and mops the floor one more time, picking up many tiny slivers of glass.

Remind me to pick up a bottle of Teriyaki sauce.