Week 26

It's spring cleaning AND nesting mania going on over here so Cole was dressed for a Sunday around the house and we ended up pretty much doing nothing. She managed to clean the bathrooms, and I managed to make breakfast and then wrote most of the day. I was in a panic as I thought my Macbook was dying. I bought it 3 years ago and have been a horrible abusive lover to it. Well a little google searching and a simple solution to an annoying problem. A tiny precious oragami star was constructed and placed under the battery, on top of the track pad, and I am back in business. Crisis averted.

Look at this belly grow! It is so amazing. The soft box I use really washes out the veins coursing thru her belly. It's so awesome to see her body grow to support a life. I am thinking of trying to light things a little different next week to see it better. She keeps threatening a tan once the summer hits and I tried to hold her off by swearing I read that she would burn the baby if she laid in the sun. I will never understand why people lay in the sun. What's worse spray-tan-orange, cancer, or gorgeous glowing white? I'll take the Casper every time.

red loop terry running shorts by: American Apparel

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

P.S. I was nominated by this super lady for a blogger award. Now since this has never happened to me before and I was born with a fire in my belly to win. I thought I should make an effort to encourage you to consider the candidates AND VOTE IN THIS CATEGORY.

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Natalie Portman's Shaved Head - Sophisticated Side Ponytail from NPSH on Vimeo

*I'm going to put up the weekly picture for the maternity series at 3PM EST today.

I have a half day assisting job this morning. It's in Tampa with this talented man. So I will not be able to get all the bells and whistles finished on the weekly picture done until I get back. I might as well make this Place Holder thing "a thing" that I do here until I get my shit together. I know this isn't like earth shattering breaking news on brand new music or anything, but I really love the videos these guys are making in one of my favorite places on earth. If I were a rich frivolous asshole I would fly all the way there just for dinner at 13 Coins. Yum! Since I am not I will just smile at my pewter finished Space Needle souvenir and be content with the memories.

I noticed that I have only been listening to music by bands that I wish I could photograph lately... like todays Place Holder NPSH, and the band I posted this weekend Mt St Helens Vietnam Band. They just seem like they would do just about anything you thought up. There aren't many bands I would actually agree to shoot. I decided that I hate band photos, and have belly laughed for hours at sites like The Hall of Douchebags over the ridiculousness of promo photos. It's really hard to take a shot of a band and not have them all end up looking like complete ding-dongs. I do know if I were in a band and we ever made the cover of Rollingstone, I would demand that we be on a train track that has a brick wall along side of it (or maybe a wall built on the tracks with a train busting thru it), and we were all looking in opposite directions, and everyone would be blurry except for me, and maybe to show we were zany (because we would be) someone could be jumping so they're in mid-air when the shot is taken. Now that would be sweet :)

So here is the only promo shot I have ever taken that I liked for a band: Summerbirds in the Cellar



This was shot in Jacksonville, FL at a place called Little Talbot Island. That sweater that dude is wearing on the back of the scooter was actually worn by Theo Huxtable himself on the Cosby show. (actually that's a lie but we made fun of him all day about it. he is one of the best drummers I have ever seen in my life so he gets away with it.)

I am pretty sure had I just went ahead and wrote the fucking post for the weekly update instead of getting all blabber mouth about my thoughts on band photography and my boner for Seattle you would be looking at the new shot for the Maternity Series right now. I would be pissed if I were you.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

P.S. I wanted to also mention, and offer an explanation, that if I haven't answered an email or responded to something that you wrote I have been putting a lot of extra time into working on some other writing projects that I have a responsibility to. If I am going to get things done in time to release before the baby comes I need to start working on it a little everyday. So I am not an ungrateful ass I promise, I will get on top of all this in the next couple days.

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Nothing Means More to me than the Follow Through”

I ordered myself the world and tried to eat the entire thing in one sitting. If I really chew the shit out of it then I might actually have a chance at swallowing this thing down. Let’s be honest here, I’m not in any hurry to take this all in…who needs a face full of the world right now. It’s enough to kill you dead when you let it all into your head. I do believe in portion sizes and plenty of small meals to be sure you're getting what you need to function and fire with the kind of clarity you need to find compassion. Become a voice to the fat-snackers that are too busy gorging to see past the condiment bar.

The point of this post is being elusive from the get go. I apologize. I am going to run with it at this point and just make sure I am wearing comfortable and sensible shoes. I’m afraid I woke with the urge to launch into a self-motivating pep talk. I have noticed an awful lot of pouty shoulders in my locker room and I need to get these hands back in the middle chanting WIN WIN WIN!

You get everything you want the second you walk up to it and tell it you want it with some muscle and conviction. This NEVER means you get to keep it as yours forever, that is where the real work takes place. And well… that is the tricky part isn’t it? Nobody is ever careful enough when there is plenty to go around, all the sudden you’re the Once-ler, a miserable regretful asshole standing in your ruin and scratching your head at the devastation you laid. You just can’t read enough cautionary tales to your children these days.

When I met Cole I let a smile find a home on my mouth and told it that it could stay around awhile. I am careful to keep it in place, if my mouth needs to motor and express anger I am careful to move the smiles to my eyes so there is never any doubt that this love isn't lost. I was reminded a few times this week about the initial get-go with Cole and how quick we were to marry after meeting. We wondered how many of our friends had secretly trashed the sentiment and laid bets as to how long we would last. I am sure there are a few who did, and I’m not sore about it. Sadly it’s human nature in these times to be suspicious of bliss. People are so quick to say: NOBODY is THAT happy! And revel at validation when a celebrity couple finds doom and finally splits. “I knew it” they say. Cole and I are not out of the woods. I am sure if we were to split even 3 years from now some asshole somewhere would say: “I KNEW they wouldn’t last!”

Rooting for failure seems like it’s going around on many levels lately. Is it a uniquely American flaw of wishing the worst on opposition? I assume that it isn’t the case… as in some countries they not only wish the worst, they hit you over the head with a club and carry out mass genocide because your belief system is off by a couple Saints and Wizards. So I suppose that tricks Americans into feeling sophisticated that they just wish bad things will happen? What is wrong with people...

I am spelling all of this out to emphasize how careful Cole and I were to not drink any of the kool-aid we were spiking for one another. The amazing sex and belly laughs were certainly warranting butterflies and warm faces, and all of the excitement that goes along with finding someone that puts that pep in your step. Despite feeling so good we knew that all of it could quite possibly be ridiculous… and seeing as how she had a little boy we were careful about our dive off of the cliff. To say we just went for it would be wrong. It’s certainly more of a fairy tale, but in the forward of this particular tale there is the part where we thank our therapist for the 4 months of marriage counseling we participated in to double check our steps before the great plunge.

I hadn’t thought about our therapist in forever till recently, and I wondered if he wondered how we were doing and thought to write him a letter or maybe when things pick up just schedule a sit down so we can tell him about our life. It was important what Cole and I did. And I feel like we truly armed ourselves well to fight for this marriage in so many subtle ways. I am not sure I would understand Cole as well as I do without the talks we went thru. It always felt good to go to our sessions, we felt like we were a relief to our therapist, as we would watch the disconnected couples in the waiting room, leaving as we would happily enter. You could still smell hate in the air sometimes when we walked in and took our places.

The reminder and the pep talk here is that all of this is supposed to be a little tiring, it’s work right? So I am feeling relief that I feel zapped, a little drained, kind of winded, sort of sweaty. It means I’m doing my fucking job. It feels good to be going thru this time with someone I love so deeply.

The single most important thing I realized about marriage was you can NEVER wake up and think or assume that we were are supposed to just be happy because we are in love. With all of loves power it is nothing unless you are physically holding it up off the floor so it can shine like it’s supposed to. Like any great magic, it is useless unless you understand it fully and wield it with intention and let it move through you. How useless are words unless they are backed with the follow through.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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For You (enjoy that weekend)

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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Cancelled

The Thursday Photo Shoot with LB was a bust today. The Littlest Buddy was so tired when I picked him up from school today he couldn't even be bothered to wipe the snot fountain he had kicking. He walked into the house. Took his shoes off, and then kind of just fell over and went to sleep. It was amazing freakish kid tiredness. He has been sick all week, so I think it took everything in him to be awesome at school all day. So no shoot today. Just this little treasure :)

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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We Are Officially Poor

Last night was a bit of a role reversal: Cole called me into the living room, she had been typing away for awhile but I figured she had been writing friends, or writing in her secret journal where she details all the things she can't stand about me (it's an irrational fear of mine anytime she is typing longer then 20 minutes, but still unconfirmed that it actually exists). She had me sit down and proceeded to read me a journal entry she had just written, and wanted me to hear it. This is a practice that is common around here but it's usually me reading her the entries I write and then read out-loud so she is the first to hear it, and can brace herself if I detail anything she forgot about doing. She read me her entry. It was to the point, it was sad, it sucked to hear some of it, it got us both thinking. Her entry was titled: "We Are Officially Poor." Her entry was chronicling her experience going to the grocery store and using food stamps for the first time. The thing that sucked about it the most was that she had made this particular journal entry private so nobody else could read it, because she was afraid I would be embarrassed that we were using food stamps. She said "I didn't want people that read my journal that read your blog to know we were so poor, it might embarrass you."

Just when you think you're communicating as a couple on epic levels, that everything is subliminal, and you just know how to read your love, something pops up that reminds you that you need to sit down and get square. The sweetness involved in her wanting to protect my pride is almost enough for me to shrug it off as motherly and protective. But thinking about it this morning there is a real problem here, that I have built the impression that I would want to pretend our financial position is anything other then what it is... we are fucking poor and she thinks I am ashamed of us. Now before anyone even thinks about scurrying down to the comment section and saying ANYTHING about how we're not poor because we have love, health, and blah blah blah I will scratch your eyes out. Nobody needs to ever remind us of what we have in that dept. We spend good long hours at night as we both fall asleep holding hands and feeling the baby kick talking about how amazing it is that we are falling more in love the worse things are. That we are lucky to be moving thru this crappy time with grace and still making memories. We know what we have on that front, and I am not trying to get all sappy in your face about it or anything, I just wanted you to know that we know.

So here we are. She is at work. I am here with a few pages of pitches to polish. A little boy at school that has been sick all week and has infected both Cole and I. And in 14 odd weeks a little baby is going to be in this house, making us feel unimaginable new heights of love and joy. What the fuck, right? How can I let myself fall into depression or strife when everyone needs me? So I don't. I sit here everyday and try and figure out a new way to make something happen for us. I have put in for positions, too many to count. I am sure that I will admit at some point soon that NOT going to college was a mistake. Nobody admits that when they are working on movies and driving tour vans around that they might have fucked themselves for the future. But when you are sitting in front of the classifieds as a 34 yr old man with a family... you feel a little silly for that move when EVERYTHING requires a minimum degree of some kind. I don't regret my life, but maybe I could have snuck some kind of school in there somewhere. I almost ran away to NYC after a breakup and I was filled with the idea of reinventing myself (you know how people get) and was going to try and beg my way into the School of Visual Arts in NYC. That was the big dream for awhile. I wonder what would have happened or where I would be with my photography had I been formally trained? I wouldn't trade meeting Cole for anything in the world, that isn't what I am fantasizing about. I just feel like I needed to admit to myself that I was a stubborn ass about life and what I needed to arm myself with in order to win at it.

I blame one man (besides myself). Dick Dukes. He was my fathers boss when I was a kid. My father worked for the same company for 30 some years. He got rings and watches and shit for the milestones. Anyway, the short of this very long story is that Dick Dukes was the topic of all of my fathers frustrations and worries and complaints. My relationship with my father growing up was watching him come home from work, sit with us around the dinner table, and then launch into a rant about this man. ALL night. All the time. I learned how to swear from these rants. Then he would help Mom clean the kitchen and turn himself off. He was done. My Mother would say: Leave him alone tonight he needs to relax so he can work tomorrow. This was said every night. I am telling you about this, I am saying these things, you parents that come home and bitch and moan within ear shot of your children about the daily grind and how much it sucks. I am warning you. If you want your children to value work then do not make it a villain. I have spent my entire life working unconventional jobs and creative pursuits because I did not want to become my father. The slave to the check and insurance so he could feed his unhappy family that just wanted to play with him and wondered why he was never in a good mood . You get what I'm saying? I have never shied away from work. I didn't sit around living off my parents playing video games. I work my ass off on jobs and projects and created many opportunities for myself. I just have avoided a Dick Dukes my whole life. I fear him. I fear who I will become.

Does that make sense? Or am I being a baby about my past? Well because of this avoidance of the grind I did not go to college, and I do not have a degree, and it seems that the answer to the saturation of the job market is to make EVERYTHING require a degree. Even the jobs that pay bogus bucks. So I woke up after a long talk with Cole last night about job hunting to an article on CNN about how for some people it might be a bigger risk to try and find work, rather than just create work. It was all about making your own business and a mild collar shake and ass slap into that direction. Was that a sign? I am going to pretend it was.

We are making do and making sacrifices. We are thinking of defaulting on my car and just go ahead and do the voluntary repo and go down to one car, we got rid of cable, we are using food stamps, we will grow a garden, we don't go out, we will make it. I know I will find something, I'm not an idiot. And I never give up EVER. so I am not that worried about all of this. I think I shared all of this and wrote about it because I needed my wife to know that I am not ashamed of us. I am not worried about what others think of us. I am sure some people might have an opinion about how we could do something better or how I could try harder? I don't really want advice or a pick me up. I just want my wife to know I love us and am not ashamed.

I watched my wife hand craft and make pieces for the babies room out of scraps from the house yesterday when she got home from work, and they are gorgeous little works of creativity, and smashes anything that could come from a store with the weight of the love that is being placed into the stuff she is making. The babies room sat unattended and untouched for a few weeks because we didn't have the money to run out and fill it full of pretty things from the store like we are used to doing. That baby is coming, and the urge that Cole has to make that room ready just kept getting stronger until she went out and started finding things around the house that we had tucked away and turning them into these great works for the baby. I love how the room is shaping up. I think when we closed our eyes and imagined a nursery 6 months ago it looked like a picture out of a catalog and now it looks like us. And that is so much sweeter.

Now. I need to put my head back down and keep going. Thanks for reading I just needed to get some things straight with the wife :)

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

P.S. Good luck to the families bracing themselves in N Dakota for the river rise. Our problems are tiny in comparison to the cruelty of this world.

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Witches Chest

I was on the phone this weekend discussing some possible assignments for a parenting magazine that floats around Central Florida, and I was asked a few questions on the spot (which I'm totally fine with although Cole was home and eavesdropping and claims that I say Umm and Uhh WAY too much). While I was working my way thru these questions it started to feel good just to talk, hearing myself launch into elaborate answers it started to become therapeutic and a relief. It was right then that I realized I hadn't really been talking about anything I needed to talk about in awhile. All these distractions have been uhh exactly that. umm Distractions. Welcomed of course and crucial for the smiles we've been wearing but still... distractions.

I wanted to layout some dilemmas, the first one has been how awful it feels explaining to someone what is going on with LB. It makes me feel like that sandwich board wearing "End is Near" hobo I have spoke about before. Covered in shit and stomping around on tops of cars, booming voice, crazy eyes, and hopeless shoulders. In order to explain the diagnosis to someone I need to explain the symptoms, so as I launch into them I hear myself and I just get sickened by the negativity. The person I am dropping this on starts to squirm, and so they start serving up hope and sweet thoughts and it puts me on the defensive. So I relaunch into a speech about how we have NO idea what will or will-not take hold of LB. How we aren't going to focus on the scary stuff, and he might end up being just fine. SO sorry I just said all that scary shit, just forget I even brought it up. It goes on and on like this. The build up, tear down cycle and it's exhausting. I feel like a drama queen.

You ever notice how people want to hear the gruesome shit? They want that physical emotional reaction, the stomach turn, the heart squeeze, the hot face, they want to hear the bad. Later when you're not around, and they unload the burden of accepting the offer to listen to our hardships... the first thing they tell the other people is the dark gut wrenchers. It's now their turn to spread that physical reaction. People love the gory details, it's true. Think about how people describe a car wreck, or an accident to one another. You say the worst, and then you try and comfort the other person into thinking everything will be okay. You snatch away the hope and then start to give it back as irrational and unlikely as it seems. That is what people do. "Did you hear Bob? He got his head smashed in with a baseball bat and he lost like 20% of his frontal lobe and his brain is swelling so much he will probably die or be brain damaged the rest of his life? I mean he might be okay... he was moving his fingers and reacted to light so they say that is a great sign."

Oh the gory details. People want them and then they freak out and treat you like you're dying.

I made an important realization about the photo series as well this weekend. It had never really dawned on me completely why we started the maternity series on week 17. We actually took the very first set of pictures at week 5 and I honestly couldn't tell you where any of the files are at this point. (This is something I plan on writing about in considerable detail so I am going to just breeze thru it for now) Cole and I were really scared and uncertain the first weeks of this pregnancy, we were going thru the system, on hold with medicaid for hours at a time just to have them hang up on us, or say that we were denied for doing something wrong that we were never told to do in the first place, the Doctor we had picked out would not do a VBAC if we were on Medicaid and so Cole was being forced to have a Cesarian, and basically we were all around being treated like assholes for having any kind of our own desires or a birth plan for this baby. It wasn't until I figured out a way to pay for the exact pregnancy that Cole wanted, that we were both happy. The instant we met our midwife and realized she was the perfect fit for us, we both caught on fire with the fever for this baby. It has been such an amazing feeling to be able to experience this pregnancy in this way.

And it wasn't until I was talking about the photo series and why we had started at week 17 and not any sooner did I realize that it was because we had been so unhappy and afraid. We didn't feel like taking pictures, we just constantly discussed how trapped we felt. We had been made to feel like complete schmucks for not just doing it the way we HAD to do it: "You're poor, so you have to go here to this Doctor, and have it cut out, or else we will not help you." So we found another way. And it is EXACTLY what Cole wanted. Of course we had to pay out of pocket and are completely broke now and scared about that, but in comparison finding a way to make more money is nothing compared to being told you HAVE to have your baby cut out of you. I decided awhile back I would not get all detailed and preachy about our experience and get all pro home birth and scream at the evils of the billion dollar baby business in hospitals. I am quite aware that for some this is a scary and stupid way to go. That in the end we might end up in a hospital with a Cesarian anyway, but we go into this knowing that we are doing everything we can to have this baby at home and on our terms and it keeps the steps light and the moods sweet when we talk about the baby coming.

So that is why on the first picture in the series (week 17) the very first line I wrote was: "We decided to have you at home"
And that is all I have to say about that.

We all know what stress can do to a body. I have a friend who actually crushed his own spine with stress. He has had 4 major back surgeries so far to correct it. He suffered no car accident, no heavy lifting injury, no sudden fall, just stress compacting and crushing his discs into oblivion. So from what I have gathered from his experience, is that the weight of stress is infinite, you can load it on until you crush your own spine, or simply tense yourself into unrecognizable emotional evils. For me when the stress comes I have always from a very young age suffered from its effects in my sleep. How many of you have heard of or read about a "Witches Chest" or a "Ghost Chest?" Anyone?

This is the part IF you have... you get all excited because you suddenly don't seem so crazy. From the little I have found about it, your body will partially wake during REM sleep and so part of the brain is conscious and aware while the rest of your body slumbers on in a deep sound sleep. The feeling this produces is bizarre to say it plainly. You feel paralyzed and helpless, unable to physically move, your breathing is shallow and it feels almost impossible to get a full breath. Your eyes are open and you can see the room, but you cannot move, which makes a person start to panic, which makes it even harder to breath. Now all of this is heightened by an accompanying hallucination, traditionally one of a ghost standing at the foot of your bed, or at your chest, some imagine a break in, or burglar in the house, and some even have alien abduction scenarios. All of these hallucinations share the same common theme that someone is coming to get you and you can't do anything about it. It usually takes me a few minutes to wiggle out of this and I am left sitting in bed soaked in sweat and terrified.

Cole can't figure out why I am so scared of the dark. I have been dreaming about a ghost standing at the foot of my bed for years and so now whenever I am in the dark I am sure that I will walk right into it. The day I start a post off with "So I shit my pants today" you will know I finally saw this ghost.

All of this wraps up nicely to say, I have a lot of worries on my plate and I haven't been eating any of it. I need to get rid of some of these worries about LB in a healthy way, and I need to stay focused on my support role for Cole as she is nearing the point of the pregnancy where I want her to constantly relax and take it easy. I want to devour all of her stress and take away anything that will get in the way of this baby coming into our lives any other way then thru her vagina and in our home.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

P.S. If you're curious and want to read more about this Witches Chest take a look here. It is an old article but has SOME good info in it

P.S.S. If any of you have some extra time I would love it if you could swing by JPG which is a great photography magazine and slap a vote down on my picture. It takes like 30 seconds to sign in and vote. And then you have access to JPG and can easily waste hours looking at amazing photography. Thanks in advance if you stop by: JPG magazine take a look :)

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week 25

red Baby Rib Pocket Frock by: American Apparel

Cole was so sleepy during the shoot yesterday I felt like a slave driver setting up the dining room for the weekly shot. I kept shooting thru when she would yawn, so we could laugh at the shots later. I had just missed a really loud man belch she ripped by a second, she caught me off guard. But I did have this awesome shot of her just quitting half way thru the shoot, and letting out this lions yawn. When I was going thru the photos later it was just the perfect way to demonstrate where she's at with this stage of the pregnancy. I think it goes without saying that the fact Cole was totally fine using the shot of her yawning is a HUGE reason why I am so infatuated with her.

All the Love in the Universe ~

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Nothing like a Monday to get you feeling like the world is going to suddenly change, maybe open its arms and press you between the heaving bosom of all things wonderful. I went to bed with the intention of waking up with enough positive energy to tow this old body thru the week, I'm not sure if I pulled it off yet, it's only fucking Monday. It's gorgeous weather in Florida right now, so I am assuming that will help with the smiles. Our spring lasts just a couple of weeks, and then it's bathing suit season in this sticky bath house till December. Let me tell ya, this pudgy pale body needs to get ready for the summer in a bad way. I have short shorts to squeeze into ya know :)

Speaking of short shorts, yesterday while I was inside washing fruit for dinner, Cole was out back with a belt sander stripping shelves down for a "project." She went thru a super Tom-Boy phase this weekend, and wanted to work with wood, go to the hardware store, change out light bulbs, basically anything that made me feel like the lady of the house. I don't mind it... until the realization hits that while she was in the middle of her wood workshop I was calling for her to come quick and look at the cute new post on Daydream Lily. I put a stop to this immediately and made sure that I cooked dinner over a fire, did not eat a single vegetable, flipped back and forth between 3:10 to Yuma and the super-nasty Bunny Ranch show before going to bed (I even watched the part where Russell Crowe stabs Toothy McHuge from Lost in the neck in slow motion a couple times), drank a beer and farted. So whatever.

I have a busy morning before I can finish up the weekly picture and banner, it will be up soonish. I have been trying to use Mondays to send out as many "feelers" as I can for possible work that I think up over the weekend. That way the rest of the week I get to cross my fingers that someone will actually respond. The cold call/email feels so hopeless these days. But every once in awhile, somebody out there actually reads the email, or listens to the voicemail and gets on board. A couple glimmers of hope are burning bright for this little family right now. We received quite a few emails from strangers that stumbled on the maternity series and wanted to share a story, or just say good luck, and it was freaking inspiring to say the least. How do you say thanks without sounding unappreciative? I need to invent new exciting ways to show appreciation. Exclamation points and emoticons just aren't cutting it for the kind of smiles that are being put on faces around here.

If you happen to be bouncing around blog hopping this morning, I have a site to see. Actually it's a favor for a fellow sailor mouth that I frequent. Please click on over to Scary Mommy she had luck take a shit on her blog recently and she lost over 700 subscribers from some technical misfire and went down to 0. For those of you who are building a readership... you know how awful that must have felt. I searched and searched and this was all I could find to help you to possibly fathom the feeling of losing 700 readers all at once:



Please click on over to Scary Mommy and help a lady out.

I will have that Week 25 picture of Cole up in a few hours.

And can someone please tell me what the Fuck Luke Wilson is doing in 3:10 to Yuma with those fake butter teeth? Why? I put that in my questions to ask celebrities when I meet them in person box. Why Luke Wilson?

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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Dear Universe

I did not find a job this week and normally I would have met this Friday with a frown after 5 consecutive days of failing at life, however Joanna Goddard found me and this blog thru Liss over at the wonderful Day Dream Lily and she gave me a big nudge into some limelight, and thousands of people were able to see the series I have been doing with Cole. And for that, the fact that so many people have been seeing the series and appreciating it, I don't feel like a failure (today). I knew what Cole and I have been making together was special, but beyond that I didn't realize so many people would find so much emotion from it. Reading the comments and posts has been such a welcomed distraction here at the house. At night after LB goes to bed I have been reading Cole the words that have been coming in, and that have been posted around the net, and it is so unbelievable. In the end we are two people lucky in love and just really excited and terrified that we are pregnant while surrounded by so much uncertainty.

For me the lesson and preparation has been to solidify our little pack, and pour as much love into this marriage and family as I can, so we can get thru the hard times with some fond memories. If this all passes as predicted our kids will never remember struggling and certainly appreciate the stories of how we figured out how to make do in a dying economy. Someone had suggested in a comment that perhaps our child will feel slighted that we sold out this special memory for some hipster clothing, and to that I laughed with Cole and realized that we would never raise a child that would be that self-conscious and insecure that they would feel slighted. I would think they would be fascinated that because of their Fathers images, it provided a way to put some comfortable beautifulAmerican made clothes ;) on their Mother that was just starting her career as a stylist that needs to look good for work. I am not upset at all by that comment and really it was a nice conversation to have with Cole, and we were both really just awe struck that we were even having a conversation about the photo series to begin with.

So I wanted to be sure that I posted a little about this buzz because I was starting to feel like an unappreciative shit for not marching around handing out the thanks. The Maternity Series has popped up all over the net and I try to track it down thru technorati and google but I am sure I have missed it here or there. Cole and I are going to be sure to spend some time hitting the links and saying hi this weekend. Of course the flash of attention gets a dreamer like me all dizzy with ideas and hopes that somewhere in Chicago Oprah is reading Pacing the Panic Room and figuring out how to hire me to do a shoot for her. Because that's of course the next logical step. A mention on the Glamour Blog and then Oprah right :)

If you just started following this blog I wanted to say hi and I am going to go thru and try and trackback and check everyone out. Thanks for subscribing and reading, oh and sorry in advance for all the swearing that goes on around here. AND whoever put The Panic Room up on NotCot is a super hero, what a reach that site has. Holy WOW! So thank you to the mystery hero.


All the Love in the Universe ~ Us

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Playing in the Past

So today we approached the Thursday shoot a little different. In an effort to not wear out the novelty of shooting each week, I needed to be sure to keep this fun for The Littlest Buddy. So we did a lot of prep. I picked up LB from school today and kept mentioning we were going to shoot later and he started signing for "picture." So I knew he was in.

So for today I had a plan.

I have always really loved to look at vintage pictures from kids in the 50's and 60's at play. There is just something about them that feels like kids will never play in these ways again. More theatrical, more imagination? A little more innocent maybe? Like they didn't know what guns could do because they hadn't been forced to watch 'Saving Private Ryan" with their Dads. So the mission today was to create something similar for LB to look back on. Last summer I had built LB a teepee in the backyard to play in while we worked in the garden. It was fitted with that crap that lies and says it makes the temp 15 degrees cooler. Whatever. So he has this teepee, and so I figured we would put it to use for the pic. A boy in the backyard getting awesome pretending and playing.

Then I realized he probably had no idea, or had never been taught ANYTHING about Native Americans in the first place... so I sat him down and we watched a little video together. He was mesmerized by the voice of the narrator "Viggo Mortensen" ( ya know Aragorn) and would point and say Mama at everything, he did recognize the teepee while we watched the section on Western Expansion where we march across America and slaughter its inhabitants.

After the movie we looked at pictures of Native Headdresses, he loved them and would get super smiles and jump around. And then we practiced shouting like a Plains Warrior, and then I tried to teach him how to make a sad face because we're assholes and stole everything we have from them. So now we were finally ready. We went out back. I handed him his tomahawk, and put on his headdress, and stepped back and said: "make your sad face" and this was the first shot we took, and the best.

I did some post in Photoshop to give it the old-timey beat look I wanted. In the end LB loves the tomahawk, and has not put it down since I handed it to him. We had a good time today. He barely even noticed I was taking the pictures he was so fascinated with the props.

So here is the final result.



When I have more time I will come back and update some of the crap I did to make this picture today. I have some other writing to attend to and the day is ticking quick.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

P.S. I realize that there is quite a bit of new traffic here (hi, welcome, how are you?) so in case you were wondering what this post is all about... I try and do a photo shoot with my step-son every Thursday. He is becoming quite the model.

P.S.S. To you skimmers do yourselves the favor of watching that movie I put up there. Thanks in advance.

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The Ones That Get Away

A few things to note. I went out to celebrate with one of my oldest and bestest of friends tonight who smacked the ass of victory and was greeted with a smile and personal invite to the winners circle. He is one half of a jingle writing business and they nailed their first HUGE national ad. If you only knew how much this guy has eaten shit and suffered thru the years someone somewhere would make a bad afternoon Lifetime movie about it and we could all sit around and eat chips and have a cry when he finally hoists his arms to victory. Seriously can we just have a moment for all the people that WILL NOT give up on their childhood dreams and say a little something to the sky. People like him give people like me so much fuel for the fires.

The second thing to note was that I put my i-tunes on to write, hit random and Jam Pony Express' "Dicky Ride" came on. I decided since I was the kind of asshole that actually had this on my playlist I would have to suffer thru the 3:48 and deal.

Fucking random i-tunes makes you hate yourself sometimes.

Today was an undeniably HUGE day for this little blog about my family. The blogiverse shined its light down upon us and we were seen by thousands of new people. I really need to be obnoxious and acknowledge the love and say thank you again for the nudge into the spotlight for a little bit. It felt great.

Back to tonight. While celebrating this victory of my friends perseverance, it occurred to me the number of things that I have thought of that I have forgotten about... things that were once passionate great ideas. Things that I abandoned after I was met with some kind of solid FUCK OFF or humiliating snub. Whenever you are close to someone's well earned jump up and down it leaves you all edgy and feeling like you can chase the tiger down yourself. So I started thinking of my photography of course, and all of the ideas I've had that I know would be amazing if I could just get the right gear, or model, or location, or budget. And I start thinking of little Annie Leibowitz and the joy she must breathe when she can turn a hap hazzard whisper of an idea into a full blown mind blowing fully realized vision... and I just know if I want it bad enough, I will know what a chest-pounding thrill of power feels like to take a picture of a daydream you built during a brainstorm.

This made me remember a fantasy shoot of mine of infiltrating the defunked and so lame it's hip Florida theme park "Dinosaur World" with a pack of 6 ft tall models and pose them with these crumbling exhibits of the earths first world shakers. I snuck around this park once before with my best photo friend Chloe and she jumped the ropes and I got this shot:

EVER since, I have been dreaming of taking the park over for a day with lights, and models, and stylists and going to town. I took the time once to write a thoughtful letter asking permission to shoot during their off season when the times were tough. Offering to pay full admission price and all. Their PR person was just not having it one bit. I wrote a few more times pleading my case but they just went unanswered. I just couldn't convince them, and knew if I was shooting for a major publication or had a budget I would win them over. A forgotten fantasy shoot that I scribbled back on my list of things to figure out how to do.

I can't imagine their doing very well in this shitstorm of joblessness and poverty. They are located in the dead-mans-land between that shithole Tampa and Orlando. Really lame people that say things like "Brangelina" call it "Orlampa" but if you have the extra cash and a hankering for the most boring time you have ever had staring at chipped and faded fiberglass dinosaurs than check this place out. I had a good time.





So Dinosaur World is back on the big board. Maybe Annie Leibowitz will google search her name and find this blog and make a phone call for me :)

I am going to eat things and find bed without waking up Cole, it is so hard for her to sleep lately, the uncomfortable belly thing ya know. I have to figure out the Thursday photoshoot with LB for later today. Started this post out with "Jam Pony" and the random all knowing DJ in my computer ended it with "So Long, Marianne" by Leonard Cohen


All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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The Lights

I filed this in the adorable file for Cole. When LB came home from school on Monday the lights were still set up from taking the weekly belly picture. He walked up to the camera sitting on the tripod, looked up and saw the soft box aiming down and wouldn't stop staring at it. He started doing the sign for "picture" over and over and pointing up at the lights. The rest is history. Now I just need to get him to stop staring at the lights and he is good to go to be the king of boy super models :)

Since starting this blog I have never really felt pressure to write more then I have this week. All these voices are bouncing suggestions in my ears: Be positive. Don't write about the economy again. Move past the sadness. Never mention God again in a blog post. Don't bitch about not finding any work. Just tell funny stories. It goes on and on like this as long as I have my hand on the keys. All of these voices competing for post time reminds me of The Simpsons episode where Montgomery Burns Doctor explains how ol' Monty is still alive, despite having been diagnosed with EVERYTHING! Nothing gets thru the door. And here I am. Fucking stuck.



Be back later with something to say.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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Week 24

Oxford Blue / Pinpoint Oxford Shirt Dress by: American Apparel


I finally got around to updating my portfolio, the last step of course adding this maternity series which I plan on doing once we hit week 30. So here is Porch-Light Pictures. Please take a look. More shoots scheduled this weekend.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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Place Holder

thunderheist - jerk it from thatgo on Vimeo.

Cole and I had ourselves a Sunday, SO that means we did not shoot the Weekly picture. It will be up later this afternoon after we do all our shit on our Monday lists. LB hits the dentist today, I'm going to go put my name in the hat for some jobs, and then we will all get back and take care of this picture taking business. So in the meantime I slapped this place holder up for your viewing pleasure as I am sick of seeing my face staring back at me when I click on this page. I wonder what a shrink would tell me the reason I hate seeing myself in a picture is. Not enough hugs? That is my default for everything :)

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

P.S. Also since I am stalling for a scheduled post, I wanted to be sure to say that I know I've been a real suck ass blog friend on returning the comment love. I've been poking around and reading for distraction. It's just that I'm finding it hard to say much about anything, and I feel like it's more insulting to leave behind a generic phrase just for the sake of saying something. I will be back to business as usual soon enough.

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Baby's Ass

I almost always hide from cameras and I rarely have my picture taken. I took this picture today because I wanted to remember this time in my life. I wanted to have a picture of my face before the baby comes, and before the beat from no sleep battered my eyes any blacker. I wanted to look at this and remember the day my wife shaved and cut my hair so I could go out into the world and find myself a slice of the American Dream come Monday morning.

I can count the number of times I have been clean-shaven on one hand since I was a young 20 years old. At that time I held a job that required me to shave the whiskers off to stay in compliance with their grooming policies. I understand fully the luxury of never having to deal with shaving since leaving that job. It has been a joy for the last 14 years to grow whatever kind of stupid beard I wanted or just keep the scraggle and scruff. I understand how insanely lucky I was to keep finding jobs in production and creative pursuits. I have been spoiled rotten.

I was pretty annoyed with how this picture turned out and was going to scrap it and try again tomorrow, however the entire process of capturing this image was so relevant that I decided to keep it. I don't own a remote to take this picture with any real ease so the focus is soft, the backlight was causing flare and glare and blowout and so I have weird light bouncing off my nose. The soft-box behind my head was not triggering because the connection was loose with the sync chord. It was just a lot of little things all making this simple task very difficult. Within a few minutes I was feeling the anger from everything else going on coursing thru me and I was right on the edge of getting crazy. So I sat down. Set the timer. And just took it. There was no way I was going to make this perfect by myself. I couldn't do it alone. Not at this point anyway. So I decided it was fitting and figured I would use this image to remember this time in my life.

And that is all I have to say about that.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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My 30 Second Photo Shoot with LB Today

It's Thursday. That means pictures. As soon as I picked up LB from school I plopped him down in his super awesome room to take a picture of him in his neck of the woods. I put him on top of my favorite thing in his room... the dreamy red floor locker from IKEA that we keep all of his LOUD toys quietly locked away in. I have made mention before that I usually only have a quick 20-30 seconds to get LB to stay where I want him for our pictures. If I am letting him do something he finds interesting he will sit all day, but for the simple little shot of him sitting in one place, it is almost impossible to keep him still. So I have my camera set to shoot away, and I fired off about 70 pictures. I went ahead and dumped them all into iMovie so you could see LB in action and then posted the final result. The video of course compresses the hell out of a still image and they look like garbage but, you get the idea. If I was feeling more ambitious I would have totally set the video to the always hilarious Yakety Sax ya know the Benny Hill theme song.
So here is a little glimpse into our shoots.

Not sure if you can tell... but LB signs "mama" in this because he heard her come in the front door from work, so he was done and decided throwing Muno and Plex to their death was the easiest way out of the shoot. Anyway, I got what I needed. He was free to go.



I had a reflector set to the left of the camera and my aperture low so the window would glow from the afternoon sun.



All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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Soaking in the Bath of Failure

I'm not sure why, but after hitting publish on yesterdays post it made me feel like the WAY too drunk guy at the wedding stumbling around with a microphone giving an inappropriate toast about how mind blowing hot the bride is, pumping fists and pelvic thrusting like a slob spilling bourbon down my front and saying: "God I would love to bang it out with that broad tonight!" (just so you know, I have never referred to a woman as a "broad" before, I felt like it was important to mention this.)

So to round out the week I figured I would just go for broke and complete the circle, just go ahead and throw-up on the brides tits after my speech and pass out in the cake to really put the punctuation on the awkwardness I am feeling.

The struggle I'm having is with the rage filling up inside me. Without any more stalling, let me get to the disclaimer portion before I begin. Let me set this up so I'm not the devil. I appreciate a persons beliefs. I value the morals and teachings in the Bible. I would never argue the side to dissuade or divorce anyone from their belief system. With that said, I am finding that in almost every instance of reading personal stories and perspectives from other families struggling with disabilities, that they are ALL apparently Gods special children, and it pisses me off. I hate the phrase, the idea, all of it. I keep searching for a support base, a community of parents that have not subscribed to the belief that this is all Gods plan for them. So far it does not exist. I am inundated with prayers about angels and heaven and miracles, and I'm not having it. I'm not going to march down this rant with the fervor and passion that I am feeling because I know in the end people will feel its disrespectful and irresponsible, and I'm not willing or interested in getting into ANY philosophical debates about the Big Guy in the Sky. As I said you believe what you want. You convince yourself of whatever you need to get you thru your days. I'm just venting frustration that the other side does not exist. Where are my people?

I want to find some logic driven cold hard facts: This is what we do. This is how we do it. This is how it felt. This is how it feels now. This is how we live, love, deal. I'm never going to pray my way into feeling better. Sure I ask the Universe a million questions a day, and if you want to call that praying then my knees are bloody from it. I am just really uncomfortable in crisis when people start giving things away to God.

For example and back to my father from an earlier post. My father smashed the entire front of his skull in falling from the top of a 16-step ladder onto concrete. He was in ICU with his brain swelling and hooked into every machine they had to save him. When he survived and recovered, all of this effort and fight was given over to miracles and prayer, and I found it offensive that the credit was not simply given to my father for living a responsible life for his children and wife. Fact: If my father drank or smoked or ate like shit and never exercised then he would have died 100 different ways. His body simply would not have been able to hold up to the stress. His liver would have failed, his kidneys, his heart, his lungs, he lived his life in a careful and responsible way and so he had the health to survive. He made a choice everyday to take care of himself, and for that he was able to not only survive but recover. His body was able to do what it was meant to do. I just don't get why it has to be an Angel flew down and touched his Soul and so he came back. Can it be both? I will be happy with both. Just give some credit to HIS sacrifice and courage, just a little.

Since when does everyones faith have to get all mixed up with medicine? If it was really your belief that God had a plan then why the fuck are you doing going to a Doctor? I know my anger isn't letting me be totally fair right now. I am just saying shit to feel better and when I am wrapped in calm and clarity I don't think this way. So I am going to STOP!

The last little bit of fire I will stoke are the feelings I'm having about my "friends." Without getting into a big epic rant about it, I will borrow from someone that just recently said to me: "that the metric I use when classifying my friends is If you don't care about my family, you don't care about me." I am going to have Cole sew that into a flag and fly it above our save haven. I am very clear on who I have in my life that I can rely on, and I guess the rest of them are just a part of my past that I can look back on and wonder why I ever cared. It's so funny who you get the little messages from, and the lift me ups. For almost an entire month prior to receiving the news about LB my ears were a dumping ground to problems ringing in, and since then I have not heard from a single one of them. I don't expect them to be a mind reader and know something is wrong. I just realized that they felt better now, so they went on with their lives, and it never occurred to them to ask how I was, or Cole, or LB, or the growing baby. They didn't care if I was okay, THEY just wanted to feel okay. I have friends that live a few minutes from my house and I have not heard from any of them. It's the ones that live the farthest away that have been there everyday for us. Again I am not expecting any of them to be mind readers, but you would think that if you were friends with a guy that is struggling to find a job, with a baby on the way, you would call once in awhile just to say hi. Right?

Or maybe I'm just being a baby. Maybe I'm just mad. I know I'm mad actually. I'm mad because things are hard, and I'm not used to the kind of hard that all of this is. I am the kind of asshole that needs straight answers and a line to a goal. Right now that goal is LB's happiness and peace of mind for Cole, we are learning quickly that the straight answers do not exist in this. We are met with a bundle of case studies and statistics and percentages that may or may not apply to LB. So in the end people are just left to ask the sky for their answers, and they make their hope from that. And to that I understand why so many people cling to their religion. It gets you thru the not knowing. So what the Fuck am I supposed to do?

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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Dear Foxbury - Letter FOUR

THIS IS NUMBER 4 IN A LINE OF ADVICE LETTERS I AM WRITING WITH MY FRIEND AND HERO STEVEN FOXBURY. WHO IS ENDLESSLY HILARIOUS AND JUST BURIES ME WITH BELLY LAUGHS WHENEVER I READ ANYTHING HE WRITES. STEVE IS A HUSBAND AND A DAD AND ONE HELLUVA TALENTED SONGWRITER. WE WERE TRYING TO MAKE THIS A MONTHLY FEATURE HERE AT THE PANIC ROOM BUT HAVE MANAGED TO SCREW THE POOCH ON THAT ONE. BETTER LATE THEN NEVER... TREAT YOURSELF.

we switched it up this time and Steve wrote the lead letter to me since I have been sick with the writers block for weeks now

If you're really insanely bored and just trying not to get anything done at work today, you can read the other entries here:ONE, TWO, and THREE

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Dear Ryan,

Here goes nothing:

So it's obvious that the universe is conspiring to keep us apart. Even when bona fortuna places us in the same locale, we both get struck down by plagues that squash any chance of shared drinks and merriment. What secrets are the stars keeping from us? Maybe there's some I Am Legend-esque super-virus that will be unlocked if you and I ever spend more than 15 minutes together. Whatever the reason, the stars can rest easily since you and I are in no danger of seeing each other any time soon.

I remember a while back that you were writing about all the cool jobs that you've had over the years and whether it was acting alongside Peter Fonda, working at James L. Brooks production company, opening a bar with friends or driving a van full of wicked hot dancers across this once great land of ours, it seems like you've always had a job that has made me hate you a little bit. I've had one cool job in my whole life and failed miserably at it. Beyond that, I've basically been a mop boy at various jack-shacks over the years. The shacks have changed, but it's still just me and my mop. So my first question is: how on earth have you consistently landed cool ass job after cool ass job? Please know that if you say some shit like "just always follow your heart", that I will set your bed on fire while you are sleeping in it.

I guess that the topic of employment is on everyone's minds these days. While no one has told me that my job is in any immediate danger, I just have to believe that it is. Shit is unraveling quickly! Case in point: My mom is visiting so of course we just got home from Costco where we picked up a couple of those rotisserie chickens that she's so fond of - her treat because in Joan's mind and according to our bank statements, I am still a 14-year old kid who makes $10 a week cutting lawns. Anyhow, while I was walking around waiting for the lady in charge of the Panko breaded tilapia samples to get her shit together, I couldn't help but notice that everyone was wearing the same expression - Nothing is good and no one is happy.

So that brings me to my second question: How are we all going to get through this? I can't believe that anyone is going to come out on the other side unscathed. Do you have a plan in place? Are you going to take in boarders? Develop a can't miss gambling scheme? Are you finally going to take that position as head writer for The Simpsons and if so, do you need a mop-boy?

You know, I have to say that fear is not the only emotion that I'm entertaining these days. It's kind of exciting to think that life as we know it is almost certainly on the brink of becoming something drastically different. If nothing else, I'm hopeful that we are entering an age of small and fascinating ideas - a renewed era of the hustler! So that brings me to my third assignment for you:

I'd love to read your version of what the next few years might look like. Think 1984, only lazier, shorter and maybe a bit funnier. Will it be Thunderdome or just shittier malls? Will the barter system completely replace our meek and flailing currency and if so, what will you bring to the bartering table? How's it all going to end Ryan? Does it all get fixed? Will we ever return to normalcy again?

Ryan, tell me about the rabbits.

Steve

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Oh Steve,

I noticed you didn't sign your letter with "love" or "respect" or even "sincerely" you just signed "Steve." Am I missing something? I'm sure it was a mistake. You would never intentionally hurt me. Moving on...

How could you know that when you wrote me about my litany of "cool" jobs I was sitting here in Florida coming unglued as I am finally allowing the realization to sink in that my "run" (as they say) is over. I'm not even considered "hip" enough to bartend any longer, as I was put out to pasture for a younger and more relevant nighttime drinker with loads of friends. I have been trying to find a job that would continue my winning streak of super awesome jobs since November... knowing my job with Redken was over in Feb I was trying for a smooth transition, and I still didn't manage to find anything. Right about now, mop boy at a jack shack sounds pretty great, if it offers some group health insurance benefits. I might even just opt out on the mop, and clean up with my hands for that American dream of insurance for my family. The only photography job I have found is standing at the front entrance of a theme park and forcing families to smile, and then pushing photo packages on them the rest of the day when they happen to walk by. If it actually paid enough money to take a chunk out of our bills I would have taken it. But it won't, it's a job for teenagers and geriatrics, a Wal-Mart greeter with a camera. So my aspirations of working as a photographer full time has run out of sand. I'm afraid the formula for the "cool jobs" has always been a willingness to drop everything you're doing, and go wherever that job takes you… no matter what. I'm no longer in that position. I had just started reaching out to old production lines again to get back into Art Dept work, but with recent news rolling in, I can't really run off to film paradise and leave my family behind.

Crap! This is a downer and not funny at all. I suppose when asked to focus on employment and the economy and prognosticating about what the future holds I am leaning to the side of crazy guy wearing the sandwich board with "The End is Near" painted on it with my own feces. What keeps me from making that leap is my family and their ability to fill me up with enough emotion to exist as a human being with drive and passion.

You spoke of "the fear" with your job. I am not sure what's worse these days, having nothing, and existing on hope and dreams, feeling like maybe you can find a spark and make something huge happen. OR working a job in constant fear, that any day someone can just take it all away from you. I think we are all at our breaking point with "the fear." Eventually when a person is scared long enough they fill up with adrenaline and emotion to the red line, some panic, some break, and some go on a Alabama shooting spree. Over all it's going to take a big set of balls for the first person to look into a news camera and speak to America and just start saying it. Start telling us the truth, this latest shooting spree isn't a puzzling mystery where the question needs to be asked: “Why did he do it?". As this happening is most certainly tragic, there doesn't need to be any head scratching over it, people are being pushed to their limits. The writing is on the wall. We are living in the towering inferno and people are jumping, reacting in unpredictable and violent ways. Not everyone understands this yet, as they are still safely away from the reach of the smoke and the flames. But unless someone emerges to champion a movement to keep us all together, things are going to get bleak.

Isn't this the part in the movie where we are all supposed to just sigh and admit that we were all huge assholes that did shit wrong?

We drove the wrong cars, we charged too much shit on the credit card, we bought too big of a house, we do what we want! We're Americans and we're NUMBER ONE! We've been eating 2 helpings of dessert and looking the other way on just about every important issue in America for so long now, people can't even figure out where it all began. Nobody wants to take responsibility for anything. Everyone is so busy brow beating one another about why their shit doesn't stink, that they don't notice despite their use of "green" shopping bags, and the AIDS walk they donated to, and the solar panels on their roof to heat their swimming pool that this place is STILL on fire.

So what is my prediction for the future? Does it all get fixed? Will we ever return to normalcy again?

When I look into the future I see an impatience that is swollen to the breaking point with fear. It’s going to tear us all apart. Think about it this way: If someone were to come along and trap us in a bubble and fill it with smoke how would you react? Smash your head bloody into the glass trying to escape? Trample the weak to get to the last of the clean breathable air? Think of the women and children first? Or would you just simply sit yourself down, nice and still, and wait for it to all go away? Wait for someone to make it all better for you?

It will all get fixed and go back to “normal” if we suffer as a nation in historic ways.

Americans are scary unpredictable people that I am terrified of being trapped in this fire with. I feel like the only thing that will save us, is if something huge that we never thought could be taken away from us, is suddenly gone. I just think it's our time to struggle. This is what will save us from ourselves. Families will dig deeper to connect in ways we have forgotten. We will value work and money in important ways again. We will be quick to help others because we will have known what it means to struggle. We will put focus on our communities to keep them safe and look out for our neighbors that might be reaching their end. We will remember to save. In the end if things get bad enough and the struggle is long, we will take back our country from greed. We have to struggle long enough to get past the mindset that if we just keep spending money everything will be okay again.

I don't know what I'm going to do for a job. Last night I was convinced that I would be fine working in the meat dept. at Publix. I really don't have a choice any longer on what I will do for money. I have just joined the ranks of most of America, I am a guy with a family, with the urgent need for medical and so I will eat shit and do anything for it. I will live under “the fear” for my family.

Aren't these letters usually sarcastic and funny? Sorry buddy. I will make it up to you with some hilarious links to weird fetish porn later in the week.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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Making It Make Sense

It occurred to me for the first time today while on the phone with a friend that I have rarely discussed any of the finer details of The Littlest Buddy here in this place, or about the pursuit of a diagnosis for why LB struggles in some areas. Cole discussed his verbal delays in a post to satisfy some curiosity that readers had expressed, but for the most part no specific attention has been given to the anxiety or stress we live under dealing with the uncertainty of not really knowing what has been keeping him silent and delayed. That is when I realized that I was a liar. I had not been writing honestly and candidly as the tagline in the header boasts about this place. Looking deeper it has not been a calculated omission as much as it has been an unconscious cling to hope that The Littlest Buddy will someday read these pages and find a source of great joy and understanding of our lives together, and how I have come to love him so deeply since meeting him. I realized that I have been protecting him. I didn’t want this to become a place of confusion, where he suddenly discovers that when he was a little boy there was something “wrong” with him. Or that Cole and I lived with a fear that he wasn’t “normal.” We love every inch of him, and that is what is being built here for him to find.

The Littlest Buddies delays are not discussed here, because they do not define him. For Cole and I, he is expressive and communicative and the greatest thing on our planet. You know him as we know him; his silence and sleep disturbances are a side story to the way he makes us light up everyday despite his challenges. People that read here, see him in pictures and read stories where the central theme is never about his daily struggles to communicate. His delays have always been viewed as a temporary thing, just a bump in the road of his very young life. LB being non-verbal always carried the blame for all of the spin-off frustrations and quirks that he possesses. So for us, the thought has always been that when LB finds his voice he will speed toward “normalcy” and fall into line with the other kids that scream and run in our neighborhood. We wonder if there will ever be a day when we are as thoughtless to blog about the “annoyances” of how he never shuts up and asks thousands of questions.

I felt like there needed to be an explanation so you could understand that Cole and I are not some pair of oblivious dummies sitting around crossing our fingers that nothing is wrong with LB and he will just magically talk one day. He has been put thru the medical ringer trying to pinpoint the culprit to his roadblocks, crossing off and ruling out countless possibilities along the way from Autism, to hearing loss, and always being told "they just aren't sure what is wrong exactly." Also on this pursuit and roller coaster ride is his Father and Stepmother. LB has a whole other family that love him gross amounts. Between the two homes LB has love and support on all fronts. We are his unconventional family, sick with love for him. He is the kid that has 4 parents standing behind him at a teachers meeting, and at the Doctor, fighting for him. In these ways, he is most certainly one of the luckiest boys I know. He is surrounded by adults who understand the value of setting aside differences for the greater good of a little boy who needs his family to be mature and logical and rational. So the pettiness of past does not interfere with the raising of this boy.

I had initially called my friend this morning as I was faced with being alone in the house for the first time and was plainly just trying not to freak the fuck out. I was suffering thru the realization that I have no coping mechanism for being sad. In the past I literally would drink myself into the ground. I would terrify myself with the near drowning of any reason or logic and always emerge spitting and gasping for a big breath of fresh new life. I just don’t know how to be sad in a “healthy” way.

When my father suffered a traumatic brain injury from a ladder fall I was the kid that was strong for my family and made clear-headed decisions. I studied intently in the hospital library so that I could ask better questions and understand our Doctors jargon. In private I was sobbing rivers away from them to preserve the illusion of strength and confidence that everything would be fine. I would emerge from around the corner, dry eyed and smiling and confident that everything was going to be just fine. In the end, my Mother caught up to this strength and became a champion to her husband and guarded him ferociously during his recovery. She was an unrelenting pain in the ass about procedure and detail. She would second-guess every decision, of any person that dared lay their fingers on my father. Some of you in the health profession might roll your eyes at this behavior upon reading that, and possibly have stories of patients loved ones being obsessive or annoying. But I have to tell you she was right more times then not, and prevented countless mishaps befalling my father. I mention this because I have her strength and fight in me to protect the ones I love, but I am not sure that I have her endurance.

Upon learning the news of LB’s diagnosis I found myself thinking of this time in my life with my father and how I handled myself. It was familiar in the way that this is now the second time that I have had to say goodbye to ideas and expectations of someone I love. Now although my father is alive and well, and loving, and he accomplished biblical miracles in his recovery that reduced his neurosurgeon to a jaw dropped moron as he strolled into her office, stood there in front of her, talking and casually joking, after driving himself to this appointment a year after she told us to kiss him goodbye. She had told us that at best he would be a low functioning vegetable. He did in fact recover... and to levels of gratefulness I could never write about. In the end, he was not the man that I remembered. Still a great man, possibly a better man, just not the same man. That might seem course and confusing at first, but without getting into detail about what we are dealing with in regards to LB let it be said, that nothing I am writing here can even begin to match what Cole is feeling. To put it into perspective you would need to find a way to imagine what it feels like within a brief phone call and a few words muttered of a syndrome, that all of the hopes and dreams you hold for the future of your child are suddenly snatched away from you.

A quick awkward phone call while Cole was at work was how the Doctors office delivered the news. She uttered unfamiliar words to Cole, she was cold, and crass, and this method should be reexamined, as it seems irresponsible and unethical. The Doctor let Cole know that they had a diagnosis; it was a name she had never heard of that would change all of our lives forever. When I started this I wasn’t sure what I was writing, I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of an “announcement” of a diagnosis and an explanation… and to be honest I am not sure what this is. I do know that this news doesn’t change how we love LB and so I’m not going to suddenly change the way I discuss him in this place. For us we have a rough road to navigate and I am sure the harder times like this one will end up as posts. I am ending this with the hope that this particular entry will be happily deleted someday before we let a healthy and happy grown ass boy sit down to read thru old stories of his life. It’s our job more then ever to protect LB and to continue building a safe and positive place for him to thrive in.

As I said before, when we know more about this diagnosis we will discuss it in an educated clear-headed way as it specifically pertains to him. For now it would come out as pages and pages of confusion and speculation and worry of what might happen down the road. LB is at no risk of a diminished life expectancy, he will just have a life where he will need his family to care of him for its entirety. It has been a diagnosis that required Cole and I to say goodbye to a future that we had dreamt and giggled about in bed, and we are settling into our new reality of the lives we will need to lead to ensure that LB has the best possible chances for independence and happiness. There isn’t anything that we wouldn’t do for him so it isn’t like we are making hard decisions, we are just coming to terms with a set of symptoms that are now attached to LB that we will never let define him.

So for now, just respect that we aren’t ready to discuss the ins and outs of what is going on just yet. This is good for now. I am going to try and get back to the swing of things soon. Thanks for reading, thanks for understanding, and thanks for not being all up our ass about what is going on. We will be fine. We are not living in doom and gloom. We are not the kind of assholes that give up and turn to sadness. So put your worries for us away, and the hope is that everyone in our lives will continue to treat us as they always have... because if they don't, we aren't interested in having you in it.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Ryan

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duh

I'm not sure I can take this wide eyed puzzled bewilderment that the NEWS is expressing over this open water incident involving the Chinese taunting an American ship. These commentators end each segment with this exasperated innocence and ask one another: "why would they do this to us?" and say "It just doesn't make sense. This is such weird unexpected aggressive behavior."

Why don't they just come out and fucking say it already? Stop calling it an "odd" story. It isn't odd, weird, bizarre, peculiar, it is what happens when a super power loses its power and nobody fears you any longer.

The Chinese bullying that American ship is kind of like what happens when a down and out gambler borrows a bunch of money from the mob, and then over extends himself. The Chinese fucking with this ship is what happens when you borrow shit loads of money from someone and they start to figure out you probably have no possible way of ever paying them back?! They don't necessarily want to go ahead and kill you right away, because you might be able to figure out a way to make good on your debts. Or maybe they can convince you to do some of their dirty work so their hands stay clean. But what they will do, is start massively fucking with you on a regular basis.

The Chinese just stuck up their middle finger and basically said: "What are you going to fucking do about it assholes!"

Am I wrong? These guys fearlessly harassed the United States.

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Week 23

Creme & Black Print Cotton Spandex Jersey High-Waist Skirt W/The Black Unisex Tri-Blend Rib Cardigan by: American Apparel

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And then There Was Yesterday

For those of you that saw the post from yesterday regarding the list left for me "of things to research" The Punchline for "fisting"= perineal massage

That was Cole's hilarious joke to me so I would finally remember to look it up and set to researching. I have been putting it off to be honest, just like the air filters. I guess I'm just not ready for purchase commitments or mastering the art of loosening up a vagina. Our Doula discussed this with us last week and I couldn't help but think while I was sitting there: "So you're telling me I need to start finger banging my wife everyday for around a month leading up to the baby being born, AND work in as many fingers as possible?", "So basically what you're saying is that you want me to fist my wife?" The perineal massage is going to be the challenge of this pregnancy for me. An important component as I want everything to go as smooth and tear free as possible, but I just didn't see this one coming. Then I started wondering about the single moms that opt to go this natural route, and where they go to get this massage? Who's greasing the wheels for the single Moms? Do they just go get the deep tissue done to the back and feet, and then roll over and ask for the "Happy Ending" for ladies style?

I know some of you thought I was a total hack and was trying to use the Obama Fisting joke from like a whole month ago :) But no... I am not THAT desperate for blog material. I have plenty going on right here in this magic place.

How many of you noticed I didn't post a picture of LB yesterday? Oh great NONE of you. Well, not to get all censored and cryptic all the sudden, but we actually had some formal important necessary sit downs to deal with that got pretty heavy in regards to LB. At some point once we are all educated and up to speed and feel secure in our own understanding we will blog about it and share the experiences and the situation.

So all I can offer is a picture of LB doing his impression of Montgomery Burns making the "excellent" fingers while ogling some fresh cupcake batter.

I have to be honest for a second. I know this post is going all over the place, but our world crumbled yesterday and we are both sitting here next to one another taking the very first steps to rebuild and find our footing again. I feel so phony not to just scream and yell and get emotional. If I was a younger man without the responsibility of a wife and family I would have drank myself into the ground and smashed anything I could get my hands around on the way down to the darkness. I finally understand the scene in Fight Club when Ed Norton beats the face in of the dreamy Jared Leto and he stares down at the bloody mess and says: I just wanted to see what it felt like to destroy something beautiful"

Here I am in the sober morning without the luxury of recklessness to get me thru this day. I feel like I'm mentioning it because I'm not sure what exactly it's going to do to me. I am very capable of becoming one of those "I fucking hate the universe" kind of people. As a friend pointed out to me yesterday, I'm a "fixer" and when I can't figure out a way to make something better I kind of fall apart. So I suppose I am more afraid of the end of the rope down the road then this place we're at now.

Cole asked me if I was sad, because I don't cry. And I told her that I was. I am not sure why the tears don't come, I just think over time I figured out a way to make the sadness turn into fuel to get me to a new place. If I knew the actual mechanics of how I have achieved this I would write a book and sell a million billion copies and use all of that money to bail other people out of their sadness. Money fixes everything right? Isn't that what this President has been teaching us so far? We are America. We can buy ourselves out of anything! Even if we don't have the money.

~ Me


And luck would have it I wrota guest post for the hilarious and hip "Mama Pop" blog last week and it's going to be up around 11:30 AM today. I am pretty happy about it. Hopefully it will make you laugh a little and get you to stop feeding your kids till they turn into fat little pigs. Enjoy the read: MAMA POP

P.S.S. I realized after reading this that it is so cryptic that I didn't want anyone to think there was something wrong with the baby or anything. I guess a small simple explanation would be we found out some unexpected news about LB but in the end it is nothing that we can't figure out as a family because we are pretty amazing people :) That's all for now. Go read that post at Mama Pop. It took me a long time to write it. I'm just not as good as Sweetney

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Found

Cole had some bad luck and her computer took a dump on this life and is no longer with us. So she has to borrow my computer for awhile till we figure out a way to get her a new one. So she has set to making lists to maximize her time on the internet. This morning I found one of her lists...

THINGS TO LOOK UP ON THE INTERNET

* 16x24 air filters
*Allergies & Ringworm
*Fisting

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Mexico vs. Killdozer

First things first: I'm sorry I have been such a terrible shit of a blog person and not blog hopping around reading and leaving hilarious little pieces of me behind in your comment section. I do have a reason. I have been busy trying to pretty up my photography portfolio so I can get some super awesome jobs going. Now that the Economic Recovery Plan has been passed... people will be spending money on Photogrpahers any day now. Right?! I don't want to NOT be ready. Did you smell that? It was sarcasm.

So tonight after my family passed out all around me while watching Killdozer clips on You Tube. I figured I would sneak around and see what I have been missing out on. I didn't get far because I looked over at my blogroll and noticed that a favorite read of mine had just updated...

So I used the internet to travel on over to The Bloggessesss'ss site and she has this post up about being a lazy drug addict that uses Coinstar and to just go ahead and leave comments about whatever, and so I started writing a comment about the Amero and Coinstar and it got me thinking about Mexico. And you know how I get when I start to think about Mexico.

Sometimes when I watch CNN on rotation (like I'm not supposed to anymore), I perk up when I hear the little blurbs that they never really focus on. The little subtle slip-ins like a month ago when James Carvell was repeatedly saying that Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. I always notice the pushiness, the intent. These guys are the worst at keeping secrets and get so excited when pushing an agenda. The newswire at the bottom is always more telling then what anyone is saying. They are the previews for the bullshit they will be pumping in the future. They always start as whispers. The latest "Whisper Campaign" turned MAJOR NEWS HAPPENING with its own theme music is Mexico. First they were bleeding news stories in about violent drug wars gone wild in Mexico and saying things like: "it's a bigger National Security risk then Iraq." What?

When I hear buzzwords like "National Security Risk" What this translates to, and means to me is: They are just greasing the wheels for us to occupy Mexico with a military presence, crush their Drug War with military power, and stick around to install a new more "responsible" Gov't. I love cooking up a new conspiracy theory to go around and convince my friends is the truth. They usually believe me because I am always right about LOST, except for that one theory I had about the eye patched Mikhail Bakunin being a robot, because he never fucking dies, and I thought giving a robot a Russian accent would be the coolest thing to do.

Back to Mexico.

The thing that makes me think we are about to get tangled up in Mexico's burdens is that we are about to get "hip" and do some legalizing around this totally square country. Which brings me to the other story that is slow bleeding into the mainstream news: All about how America should legalize Pot (I used the word "pot" instead of marijuana because I can't spell marijuana correctly, but my favorite substitute has always been "reefer" because it's so fun to call people "reefer addicts" that smoke "the pot.")

Isn't it strange that right before we take over Mexico and "fix" their little drug war problem and install a new Gov't (that we have total control over), after we have used our military to kill all their drug Czars, while we "assisted" and came to aid in their time of crisis, after all of that noble work to stabilize a country that happens to grow and import a HUGE amount of really awesome drugs, that we decide to legalize Pot in America? Just like greedy America to smash the competition. If you think your tweens won't be blowing their Amero's buying pot and rubbers at the Wal-Mart as soon as 2012 then you're crazy.

So in other news conspiracies. I get the feeling that there is some other not so subtle shit going on. All this buying gold talk that is going around. People just dropping the tip that they are buying gold and you better hurry it won't last forever. I get the feeling, and this might just be me still drunk on the Mexico story, but I think the news is trying to push gold fever in some pretty lame and desperate ways. Pretty lame indeed.

How bout that "Amateur Sketch?" Alabama certainly looked like they had "gold fever" didn't they.

Am I blowing your mind? Well mine is blown. So now I'm going to go watch some more Killdozer clips. You think the guy that built that thing was fun to talk to when he was drunk at the bar? I bet he would agree with me about Mexico and "The Pot"

I want to see if he owned or had excessively rented the 1984 classic "Tank" starring James Garner and the dreamy C Thomas Howell.

All the Love in My Paranoid Universe ~ Me

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WEEK 22

Here it is... a little later then normal, but we were super busy this weekend, (see the post below). Nothing much to tell on a Monday afternoon. This week like the entire month of February will be spent trying to find as many photography jobs as possible. I think Cole is starting to take over my job as the person who panics. If you were thinking that this weeks pictures look a little different then the first series I did, well they do. We wanted to show more of the full stretchy glory that is the American Apparel Unitard, so they were shot wider then normal and I lit things a little different. A sidenote from this morning, and I'm not sure why, and don't think I'll be finding out first hand, but it would seem that when Cole puts this on, she starts dancing around the house like a maniac. They make her slink around the house. It's bizzarre. AND so very funny. Hope everyone had a super awesome weekend.

WEEK 22

Spandex Jersey Unitard (black) by: American Apparel

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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And then There Was Sunday

Today was the day of the big shoot. It had finally arrived. Cole and I spent almost all week, mentioning it to one another: "You excited?" 'I'm excited!" "Are you?!" So yeah. . . WE were excited. It had been awhile since we did one of these together. She had asked the super talented and mild mannered Tricia from the salon she works at to lead the project. So the two of them bounced ideas around, bought supplies, and found models. Everything was set. Then this morning. . .

It was raining. Cold. The makeup artist had cancelled. The models cancelled. And all of the test shots I had done in the morning looked like garbage. Cole asked: "Should WE cancel?" And I said: "NO!"

We all put our heads together and started calling friends. Rallied the troops as they say. We bullied and bothered our friend Jen Omalley. We were pushy determined assholes and totally interrupted her Sunday breakfast and it paid off, she agreed. She came to the rescue. Not only did she show up and let us pretty up her pretty face and do a little modeling, but she also happens to be a whiz with the clothes making, and styling, and she brought some pieces she had been working on for us to shoot.

Jenn


I broke a rule of mine and shot against a brick wall.

View On White

We also got a hold of another rising star from the salon Michael, who happened to know an incredible girl for us to shoot at the last minute. He came thru hangover and all, and went and grabbed our model for the day out of her bed and whisked her away to our house for some shooting. She had homework to do, her sweet sister to hangout with, and obligations later in the day, and she still agreed. I don't know what he said to her, but THANK YOU Michael. He not only went out of his way on his day off to hero us a model, but the kid has some amazing skills with braids and assisted on the hair, bounced light, ate oranges off our tree, and is just a joy to be around.

I am spent, exhausted, used up, fucking tired, so the rest of this post is going to be mostly comprised of sentence fragments and sputters. I figured I would post some out-takes from the days work of everyone chipping in. It felt so awesome to spend an entire day being productive, surrounded by creative positive people. What a fucking incredible day we had.

Michael and Anna



Jen-O pinning and primping Anna. Cole w/the baby in the tummy just out of frame


Cole did the makeup after our makeup artist bailed. She nailed it.


Tricia about to do that Mr Miagi Magic Hands thing on some hair


Last looks before the shoot



And now The Payoff. Here are my favorite shots from today. Notice the links below each picture, these are to view the photos larger on black, which I encourage you to do.






View On Black



View On Black

If you were wondering: I shot these on a Nikon D300 mounted with the handy Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens. I bounced natural light with a bounce board for extra fill and the shots were lit with the Broncolor Impact 41 lighting kit (about 30yrs old), one up high and on tilt soft-box mounted, the other at knee level bounced into an umbrella, all set to the right side of the model. I washed the images down with a tiny bit of diffused glow (just 15%) to give it some pop and, I boosted up the Saturation +5, and that was it for post.


All the Love in the Universe ~Me

P.S. Cole and I didn't get to do this weeks shot for the belly series today because we went to long on the shoot and ran out of light. So. We are doing it in the morning and I will post tomorrow at 3PM EST. How is that? Everyone cool with that?

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