red on the trees

I took over 400 pictures last weekend. ...yikes. A lot to go through.

I'm going to throw up some shots I like and this time not worry about whether it is a comprehensive gathering of every single highlight.

So... through the magic of Slide, 14 shots:

memories...

While selecting some shots for a photo competition, I happened upon photos from an excursion in October of 2008 with Anna and her kids. I pulled out the old CD with the shots on them - and realized some were never edited and/or put online. So, here's a look back at the past - a fantastic little trip to Pioneers Park with Anna, Cami and Calvin, & her camera :)

butterfly in the sky. I can go twice as high

These are the results from one frustrated evening of chasing monarch butterflies.

I went out behind my parents' house on gorgeous evening, and I swear there were at least eight butterflies sitting in a single view of a clover patch. They, having wings, however, did not want to sit still.

At one point I discovered they were grouping together, hanging upside down like they do in nature shows, from tree branches - very far away, but I tried to zoom in. The little things were SO ANNOYING... but even at a distance, as a nicely shaped black speck, they are inspiringly beautiful.

If you want to see my best shot of the hanging group, wait for the last shot! (about 9 pictures in all)

Thank you to God and butterflies for - existing :)

*** Two of the photos wouldn't show up correctly, so here they are.

new lesson

So the last three-ish days were several shades of awful. I came home for the weekend and realized one evening that I had forgotten to refill a certain prescription of mine. Oh well, I thought.

I enjoyed a nice meal with the fam - peach pie included - and went to bed feeling slightly sick. My brain filled with flashing images of the overly-long photo shoot I did that day, I - stayed up pretty much all night, excepting 2-3 hours. I drove back to the house, and spent the rest of that afternoon nauseated and exhausted - literally staring at details in my wallpaper. It got bad enough at 1 a.m. that I had my parents come pick me up and take me home again, where I weathered another day of the same until, finally, around 3:30, Mom came home with the blessed prescription. I hadn't eaten (or kept down) much of anything for about 2 days.

I had a hunch, the night my parents came to pick me up, that I should check out Google to see if my situation was at all pill-related. Google was replete with links warning you not to "abruptly stop" taking this drug, for "nausea, vomiting and sleeplessness" will occur. Exactly my symptoms. Lesson learned.

We worried that now I that I had the drug, whether I'd be able to keep it down, but by the grace of God (or something like it) I managed to and am back to a hesitant normalcy. I actually have energy to do things mentally like read, things requiring more staring at the wall. My stomach no longer feels like it has marbles in it. Yay hooray.

***

I told myself I was too sick of taking pictures to do any editing, but... can I help myself? No, not really. This is a little baby monarch caterpillar that was doing some serious chowing when I spotted it on a milkweed plant.



The plant had several stalks chewed to the nubs - so cute. There was a second, much much fatter caterpillar (like that rhythm - fatter caterpillar) chilling on a milkweed nearby - he never really moved and seemed unfazed by my presence, unlike the little guy who would hide. He really, really seemed to want to live. (Figuring how I spotted several monarch -butterflies- in that same area, it seemed he had some ground to catch up on!!)

Speaking of chewed plants...



The work of grasshoppers along the edge of our property. The whole tree, such as it was, was like that.

Here's some stuff from the nitty gritty, when I waded in a small pond (and thankfully nothing bit me):



So many drowned sunflowers in the water - seemed beautiful in a kind of morbid way. You think of Ophelia from Hamlet, committing suicide in a river, surrounded by flowers.





The second-to-last one is of the -reflection- of a normal sunflower in the water.

It really was fun - although I luckily spotted a medium-sized spider in his web to the side, and managed to get a good macro of another, muchmuch smaller one on a leaf. Teeming with life, as they say, and all that.

My leg in the sweltering pool (I don't know why sweltering - it just seemed like a good word):

That's probably enough for pictures. Ciao.

cat vs. printer

This is what I would like to do at work sometimes. (Although my printer is much louder.)

lotsa lotsa sunflowers

Though I move on to a different post, I still expect some kind soul to offer up an answer to my question in the previous.

These shots are from going home this last weekend and crawling in around huge sunflowers. I escaped bug-bitten-less and unscraped, which is more than I can say for most photographic ventures of the sort.

How can anyone dislike sunflowers? Even the name is sun + flower. Quite agreeable. So yay for all the blooming yellow out there now.

a little different subject

Since most, if not all my readers here are older than I am: what's the quickest (or best, I suppose) way to "get over" somebody?

It's true I've never dated. But I had a very close friendship this past school year that has dissipated into what feels like next to nothing. We talked about dating, but this particular person wasn't a Christian. My family liked him, I was his best friend, so on and so forth. The attraction was persistent, and when I (in his mind) turned him down twice, he was a little bitter and angry at me and then moved on. At the beginning of summer, started dating someone in fact.

I? Brooded over this, hung out with this friend exactly once all summer (a bit easier him living in a different city), and as of a couple weeks ago no longer cared. No longer cared that I wasn't in this special position as a friend of his anymore, no longer jealously curious about this new girl, nothing. He was a backseat to everyone and everything else that was happening.

We were going to hang out tonight, and the night previous, wouldn't you know, I had a very strange dream that involved us actually getting together, etc etc, all very realistic. I woke up and like *that*, the serenity about the whole situation was gone. I was woebegone, even regretting my decision, all conflicted about the idea of him being with some other girl... not wanting to see him.

I still went tonight. Most of the time I tried to ignore this side of it and just be present in the situation. But that's notoriously difficult for me to do. In a social situation where I'm uncomfortable, I'm thinking about fifteen different things: how my voice sounds, how I'm supposed to respond, my body language and what message that's giving off. (It sucks being shy!)

We actually spent most of our time in a group, watched a movie, and he gave me a much-appreciated ride back to my car. Now, by this particular parking lot is where all our romantic-themed, awkward conversations have transpired, and I knew I could still tell him this, and he'd be really sympathetic and understanding: that I COULDN'T go to some back-to-school party he and his roommate are hosting, because I'd have to meet his girlfriend and see them together. But I thought about it quickly, and in my mind decided to play the martyr: he never asked to know how I was feeling about everything when we've only seen each other twice in months and months. "Martyr" that I am, I just didn't want to bother him with it. Said a quick goodbye, and walked - very quickly - back to my car.

Maybe what I miss most is the feeling he gave me when we used to do things together, something simple like eating together in the cafeteria: I felt special. And pretty. Wanted, I guess you could say. I felt funny and like myself. I can't say that even many of my friends make me feel that way (and one that does recently moved to Tennessee!).

It just kind of sucks right now. I'm trying to believe that all this datelessness means something, is worth something; that I want to be honest with other people and with God and not 'take advantage' of someone I see no potential of a long-term relationship with. But it is a lonely road.