My Blog About Me

I know, I know - mea culpa, I haven't been blogging in forever. I need to take my camera with me everywhere, and I need to figure out what I'm doing with this here blog. I'm a blog junkie, and sometimes I feel like there's no way I can ever be as interesting or funny as some of the uber-talented bloggers out there are. But you know, this is my blog, read it or don't, love it or not. I need to start using it for things other than a spotlight of my photography skillz/someplace to say something cute and make it meaningful to myself. And then maybe other people might READ it, but it's okay with me if it's only a place for me to get things off of my chest.

So this pic is of my and my friend Molly, who recently moved to California. Doesn't she have a great smile? I miss her. I meant to write a post about her last month, but it seemed too heavy then. Now I can just say I'm really glad we met and I'm sure if we are good about corresponding, we'll always be friends. That's important to me, just like it's important that I remain close (or at least in touch) with the friends who have known me since way back when. They are important people to me - they are the friends I have chosen to keep among the ones I weeded out for various reasons.

THIS is the kind of stuff I want to talk about - the things that are important to me - my family, my friends, the God who made the universe and everything in it...hey, I'm a spiritual person, and I don't want to censor myself for the sake of being PC - not that I am going to drown anyone in Jesus. Just I want to talk about him a little when I want to - it's a very cathartic relationship for me. So even if I never mention his name again, there it is. This is me.

Just wanted to say a quick hi, and leave you with this pretty flower - new additions to Family Archives coming this week (I hope!) :)

I swear, I am here!

OMG, peeps, it has been so long and I am sorry! I don't even have a pic for you today! Good news: we have had some sun, and the weather has been warmer. Bad news: my camera is trying to blink out on me - so I am praying like mad that it is just a temporary thing, and it will be acting like it's regular sweet and reliable self very soon!

Unrelated: more additions to the good ol' Family Archives coming soon! Maybe this time the other side of the fam will get a little spotlight. They are interesting folks, I promise you will not be disappointed. ;)

xo!
-N

OMG WHERE IS THE SUN?!?!?!?

Peeps, I had to post some pics of the sun to remind myself it is really there, and that, yes, in fact, we HAVE seen it on several occasions this spring.
Some of these were taken MONTHS ago, when we still believed that summer would arrive in its usual way, in its usual time frame...that happy, innocent time...
Look, right here I am so hot, I am about to roll down the window, except that I already have my sun roof open!!
The trees were feeling it, and opening up their leaves
And THIS day was freakin' HOT!!! I have faith in you, sun, I know YOU WILL ARRIVE! Pretty please, with sugar on it...?

Dear Alec Baldwin

So I have developed a crush - well, a crush I have felt a bit here and there before, when this guy was obviously a major hunk. Yes, Alec Baldwin, it's YOU I am talking about! Look at Alec right here - GORGEOUS HUNK!!!Gorgeous doesn't matter to me with Alec, though. Even though his eyes are beautiful, his mouth has that nice pout going on, he still has a really nice head of hair, and I could go on - all of these things MATTER NOT A TINY BIT!!
In fact, the older and more (pardon me Alec) out of shape he gets, the better I like him. Why?? Why?? I'LL TELL YOU WHY - the man is HILARIOUS and therefore I WANT TO HAVE HIS CHILDREN!!! Okay, MAYBE NOT SO MUCH, but Alec, I just want you to know that I think you are TOTALLY BRILLIANT, and if you ever wanted to hang out and maybe do your Marlon Brando or your Al Pacino, or OMG - Tracy Morgan impressions for me, well, let's just say I would be a MOST APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCE!!! Oh - and not in some crazy, stalker sort of way, I promise... no, honestly, I swear... But I love you much better now than when you were always playing the hottie - you are quite the Renaissance Man - wait - Man of Parts? Man of Means? Man Oh Man!!

xoxo, Alec Baldwin!!!

post - no picture

I have found the BEST new website - and sorry, for those of you in my gmail address book, you have all been invited - totally by mistake, but so far turning out to be a good one. Anyway, it's called Goodreads. I LOVE IT!! Check it out if you get a chance...

A Handsome Graduate

Okay, I feel little bit bad about this picture - this handsome fellow next to me (way back last Christmas when I had long dark hair which I don't anymore, and that's a long story we don't need to get into right now, but let's just say I was tired of it and move ONWARD!) is my brother Rob. He's brother #2. And I cut out brother #3 from the picture, but that's not because he's not important (!) - just not to this entry.

My handsome brother Rob is graduating from the University of Washington with a Master's Degree in Architecture. If I thought any ladies were reading this blog that WEREN'T related to me, I would also add that he is SINGLE!! :)

CONGRATULATIONS, ROB!!!!!!

xo
your sister

Rock Love.

I'm in love with this guy. Is that so wrong? Even though he's as old as my father, married to someone else (my age), obviously living somewhere I'm not...a girl can dream, can't she? Well, can't she?!?!?
What about this one - again, almost as old as my father, but still pretty nice, although...

Right HERE, he was BEYOND GORGEOUS. Never mind that, a. I was probably about 8 years old when this picture was taken, or b. he was a rock god anyway, so women were all over him, and who is to say he would have ever picked me among thousands, if I were even 10 or 12 years older? c. THIS IS BESIDE THE POINT! In my dream where he is serenading me with champagne in the bubble bath, we are completely alone. Oops, was that TMI?? - sorry. I'm just sayin'!

xo Eric Clapton,
xo Robert Plant!

N

LOOK out, Weekend

To my peeps - love ya, can't wait to see ya - only 6 more weeks and you'll be here, I'm totally excited!!! :)

Hope you all (or 1, or 2 of you) have a great weekend!!!

xoxo
N

I Love My Macro Lens

These are the plants my bro and I bought our mom for Mother's Day. Nice, but somewhat boring, right? At least, I think so. Because when you are photographing flowers, I think that they look much, much more dramatic when they are close up, like this: And like this:
And like this:
And like this:

I'm not a professional - but my macro lens sho makes it seem like I am. :)

Family Archives - The Courtship of Bert & Louise

So when Nick left off last time, Louise was working as a soda fountain girl in Winterset (?) Iowa, and on one particular day, in walks this handsome guy in overalls. He happens to be buddies with some of the fellas hanging out, drinking sodas, and he has eyes for the perky little miss full of banter behind the counter. Apparently she has eyes for him, too - because when her shift is over and several of the fellas offer to walk her home, she says to them, "Oh, Bert can walk me home," because he is obviously too shy to volunteer.
And history is made. In Louise's words, "He chased me until I caught him." Nick thinks that if she got a chance to see him in this suit before she caught him, she was probably wishing he would hurry up and cut to the chase!
'Course, Bert is just as handsome in his regular clothes - check the belt buckle to the side, ladies! Bert and Louise will court for four years before they are married - because of the depression, there is oviously a lack of any substantial employment. Bert eventually goes to school to learn metallurgy, gets a good job, and he and Louise are able to be married. Meanwhile, they have lots of outings....
Bert and Louise are nature lovers. And apparent outlaws. Nick thinks it was probably this other gal's idea.
Even though a fella might not have much cash, he can still impress the ladies with a spiffy outfit and a roadster.
Okay, Bert, you don't have to work so hard...
You've already got your girl.

Tula and Indy - Intrepid Hunters

Today we track the scent of the other dogs in our neighborhood. These bushes hold many secrets - secrets that only we dogs can detect. We work the scent.
We move quickly when we sense that the leash is held only loosely. There might be a fleeting chance of freedom,
when we can RUN LIKE THE GAZELLE!!!
In the tall grass we call a brief halt. Grass is our lifeline in the jungle - we eat it to calm our nerves and our bellies. We will leave this area only when we are satiated, or something calls irresistably to our wild natures. Then we must run again.
We are proud hunters - and when we get home, we would like another snack, please.

Antiquing, and the Holiday weekend, or I Heart Dixie Dogwood

This weekend my mother and I went antique shopping in the town of Snohomish, about 30 minutes north of where we live, and it was a great time. I was so excited to find these pieces! This stuff is called Dixie Dogwood, and I am insane for it. My grandma Louise used to have these, and I don't remember eating on them myself (the grandkids usually ate off of paper plates, natch), I REMEMBER them, and I'm FINDING them in different antique stores, and I'm LOVING it!! :) That's the kind of stuff I like to go antiquing for, the stuff I remember and want to have again, don't you think that's the most fun?? I totally do!

Anyway, then I took a bunch of pictures of THESE:

and THESE:
and THESE:
and you get the picture.
Actually, these are for my friend Janiene, and I hope she likes them!! :)

Cause I see them everywhwere in the spring/summer, and I never really appreciated them myself, until getting up close and personal for these pics. So thanks, Neen! :)

xo

N

Family Archives - Edith (GG) Shutt Young

I usually do these posts in third person, but this one is a special post, so please forgive the apparent eccentricity. This is my GG, the way she looked when I knew her. She is sitting outside my grandparents' motel, and that's my grandpa in the distance with his head cut off. BTW, behind him is the famous pop machine. But I digress. This was the GG I knew: endlessly kind and patient, she was always either holding me in her lap, reading me a book, listening to me chatter away, or letting me bake her a cherry cake, stirring it up in my grandma's red bowl (red was my favorite color - hence the cherry cake - there was no actual batter used or harmed in the making of said cherry cake). She wrote my name in red ink in all of my Little Golden Books. She let me paint my fingernails with her red polish, and when I made a mess and my mom got mad, she defended me. She was my best friend.

This is my GG on the right, and her older sister, Nida, on the left. My GG was a very stylish lady. I think Nida was, also. My GG could make a dress for herself without a pattern. She could crochet, embroider and quilt, and wring a chicken's neck, pluck all the feathers, and cook it for dinner. She was a wonderful baker, and famous for her Divinity and her fudge. I don't know what she is looking at here, maybe she is just posing - I don't think she was married yet. Maybe Elmer is the one with the camera - or maybe her brother in law, Nida's husband Jim, is taking the picture. Maybe Edith (GG) is dressed up to go on a trip somewhere, or going to some event - maybe a date with Elmer. Did she have other boyfriends before Elmer? I was too little to ask, and she died when I was 4. I wish I could know these things.
Here are the three sisters together: Lulu, the second oldest, on the left, GG (Edith) in the middle, and Nida on the right. I love their skirts, and I think my GG is the prettiest of the three. They have two older half sisters, one of whom died when 2 or 3, along with the mother. There is a brother older than Nida, and four other brothers - two between Lulu and Edith, and two after Edith. Their mother dies in childbirth with the last boy, and their father dies when Edith is 10. The oldest half sister has married and moved away by then, so I'm pretty sure Nida sort of raises the younger kids. Nida and her husband have only one child, Katherine - but I'm not sure they really are sad about that, given all Nida's younger siblings.
Here are Edith and Bert again, and she has her book with her - probably the same one I would so like to know about. She never sat for a portrait, so this is the best picture I have of her face when she was young. She looks a lot like her mother, whose name was Phebe Catherine Fisher Shutt. And my grandpa and my mother both look a lot like Edith. I wish we could see this in color, because the yard really looks dead, doesn't it? And I wonder why my grandpa is sitting there - is he having a time out, or did he just want to sit with his mommy for a minute or two?
Here are Elmer and Edith and their unknown furry companion during WWII, when they are living in Washington State, and Elmer is working on an army base as an airplane mechanic instructor. Apparently they like it here, only - "it rains too GD much!", to quote my GG. So they move back home to Nebraska after the war.
This is taken right before Grandpa Elmer dies, in 1961. At this time, they are living in their own house, although earlier they had been sharing their house with my grandparents and their children - my aunt, my mom, and my uncle. GG is the kind of grandma who sits on the floor and lets the girls brush her long, long hair, and makes toast that is so toasted it is almost burnt, and all the kids in the neighborhood come around asking for a piece. She makes everything from scratch - probably the reason her arms still look so taut - she is in the kitchen, stirring and beating and lifting things, all day long. She does all this and more with love, and all of us who knew her miss her very much.

Random. My Grandparents' House

Okay, so I know I was going to post about my GG today, but instead I'm going to talk about spending time at my Grandparents' house. They actually owned a motel in Creston, Iowa, and we lived not far away, and got to visit with them almost every day. They had a TV in their Unit #1, which opened right off of the office, where I could go to watch my shows if the grownups were watching something else.
The Monkees was one of my Faves - and no, my crush was NOT on Davy Jones, it was on Peter Tork. Look at him here - such a hottie!! He was usually the goofy one, but not in this pic - hey!! :) That's one cutie patootie!!
Dear David Cassidy, if only we could bring back your youth and make you about 7 inches taller, and make it that somehow we would be in the same place at the same time, and meet and fall in love, I would be all over that. You were my very first crush! I wanted to marry you at age 3. I also thought Lori was really pretty, but the I heard she hooked up with my man while they were filming the series and then I was through with Susan Dey. HA! Just kidding, my peeps!!

Now of these boys, I don't remember any crushes. By the time I was watching their re-runs on TV, the oldest one was married to Katie and they had triplets. And I don't remember his name - wait, was it Robbie? And Dodie was Steve Douglas's little stepdaughter,brought in to keep the cute factor going because Ernie and Chip were getting too old. I later saw really old reruns of the show and they did the same thing when Chip got too old - they adopted Ernie. Then there was a whole other older brother named Mike who disappeared from the show. Scary! I LOVED this show - I thought Marlo Thomas was so pretty and I loved her hair, and mostly what I remember is she had that kite with her face on it in the opening credits, and I really liked it. Do I remember anything else about the show? Just that she had a boyfriend named Don, but she was a single girl. And the kite. Okay, maybe it was all about the kite. *Ah* Family Affair. One of my very favorite shows ever! I wanted an Uncle Bill and a Mr. French - and a Mrs. Beasley doll, but I never got one and I'm glad now, she was NOT cute! And I got my first perm (a home perm - a Toni, remember those?) at age 5, and I wanted it so I could have curly pigtails like Buffy. Then Buffy died from an overdose the next year, and it was hard for me to think she was so much older, because in the reruns she was not that much older than I was - but then, Jody was on Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (another great show - "Shello?" okay, I know, I know - ONWARD), and he was a teenager. So anyway, Buffy died young, and I remember that made me sad. I also thought Cissy looked maybe like Daphne on Scooby-Doo might look if she were a real girl.

The Courtship of Eddie's Father - another great one - I loved Bill Bixby so much in this I thought really fondly of him and wrote him a letter before he died of prostate cancer. I am sad he is gone - and why did he get a nose job later? Don't you think he has a perfectly nice nose? I think so.

So these now are the foods I learned to like at my Grandparents' house (not that that was a difficult task with Tootsie Rolls!). The other candies, which I didn't get pictures of, were Brach's Butterscotch and Cinnamon hard candies. I think these were candies that my GG liked. She lived with my grandparents until I was maybe 4, then she moved into a nursing home, and she had a bag of butterscotch candies in her bedside drawer, and I was allowed to have one or maybe two when we visited her. Such a sweet lady - more on her tomorrow, I promise!

Anyway, my grandma had tootsie rolls in a drawer in the kitchen. I think I snuck them sometimes - well, I'm pretty sure I did sneak them sometimes - okay, YES, I snuck them sometimes!
Mmmmmm - Kraft American cheese, cold out of the fridge - nuff said! I have an Australian friend who thought this was possibly the grossest cheese ever - kind of like rubber he thought. Hey, they guy eats EVERYTHING with "tomahto sauce" - or ketchup, as we say in AMERICAN English. So what does he know?? AUSTRALIANS! I'm just sayin'! :)
Okay, I know I got some foods mixed in with my media - this is the kiddie stuff - Captain Kangaroo - a classic! I loved Mr. Green Jeans, and the naughty Mr. Moose, who always dropped ping pong balls on everybody's head. Also I got to meet Captain Kangaroo once when we lived in Minneapolis - he signed a picture like this for me, too. He was the first celebrity I ever had up on my wall.
The Floppy Show. It was on every noon, and sometimes I got to watch it, but I had to ask. I would say, "Can I watch the Floppy Show?" and my grandpa would say, "What? The FLOOPY Show?" and I would say, "No, FLOPPY!" and we would go back and forth like that a few times, cause that's the way we rolled. On the Floppy Show they showed cartoons like this:

I learned so much of 1940's (and later) culture from these cartoons! And my grandpa knew all of the songs, like "The Blues in the Night". He loved music. He was a music lover. And like that.

This picture is NOT the way we made graham cracker cookies! We made them with vanilla frosting - either like below, or my mom would make it from scratch. Peeps, these are heavenly things! Especially if you let them sit out awhile, and the graham crackers absorb moisture from the frosting and get all soft - oo la la!!
Oyster crackers. Down in the bottom cupboards in my grandma's kitchen were things like this. I spent a lot of time inspecting these cupboards. There were also yucky things like cans of deviled ham, or tuna fish. But I liked the little devil-man and the beautiful mermaid on the cans - I liked the mermaid's commercial, too. Anyway, I could have these crackers in a little peach lustre Fire King ramekin. But not more than one ramekin full! This was the root beer that was stocked in the pop machine right outside the motel's front door. You were only allowed one pop per day, but I think my cousins may have bent that rule when they visited. :) Now I say soda instead of pop, because I am a west coast girl - how did that happen?? Funny. Anyway, this is the BEST root beer I have EVER tasted!

Mmmm...I wish A & W still made baby burgers. I had to have mine plain, no ketchup or mustard - and I still like burgers that way from McDonald's - with cheese and nothing else.

My grandpa taught me to eat this cereal. Back then it was 40% Bran Flakes. He would say, "Hey, are you eating my cereal?!?!" probably to get me to eat it. Well played, Grandpa, well played. I still love it.
Creamy Jif peanut butter. Morning, noon, and night. Used to be the only sammie I would eat. Still awful tasty! I know, it's not organic. Even though most of the things I eat nowadays ARE organic, this is still the BEST peanut butter, in my humble opinion!
I do not know if they still make this bread since I don't live in the midwest anymore, but man - I used to love to eat it all by itself, and I used to bury my nose in a piece of it and suck in the wonderful bread smell. I used to have quite a sick relationship with white bread. Okay, that sounds bad - I mean, I ate it a LOT - just plain. Used to sneak it, and ruin my dinner.
Blackberry jam (not the weird apparent maple syrup on the plate - what's up with that?!?!) - I was a grape jelly girl until I tried you, blackberry jam. And I didn't want to try you, but my grandpa persuaded me. Now I am true only to you, blackberry jam.
Couldn't finish without this one. See how much that boy is loving his Franco-American spaghetti? I'm just sayin'!!!!


*DISCLAIMER* I just want to say, in case anyone OTHER than my family happens to read this blog and freak out, that I do not eat any of this stuff anymore, with the exception of blackberry jam and Jif Peanut butter, okay?

xo

N