day 59

Not a compelling image, aesthetically, but a significant one for me personally: Here is my beloved 1991 Jeep Grand Wagoneer (dig the classic woody side panels!) being loaded onto a tow truck, en route to a local garage and eventually its new owner. I have been forced, by recent unfortunate personal economic circumstances, to sell the Jeep, which was customized with a diesel engine to run biodiesel or WVO. Unfortunately, as a highly customized vehicle, it's had some mechanical issues that I lack the skills to fix myself and the money to pay anyone else to deal with for me. So I sell the fun and funky, but unreliable, car I adore and keep the dull but eminently practical Honda minivan, which has the sterling quality of starting each and every time I turn its key. Sigh. Some days impersonating a responsible adult is even less fun than usual.

day 58 - mea culpa

Perhaps it was inevitable, but the day did come when I didn't take a photo. Just didn't. Early on this day making my picture was very much on my radar, I was watching for possible photo ops from behind the wheel as I dashed around on checking off a seemingly endless list of errands between school drop offs and pick ups. But I never found anything compelling, and then there was homework to supervise and dinner to cook and an empty shoebox to find for Cole to take to school the next day and next thing you know it's bedtime. I woke up somewhere close to, but still before, midnight, realized I hadn't taken a photo for the day...and decided I just wasn't going to get up again. I was bone tired, snuggled up warm and happy with my children, and my commitment to this project simply could not carry enough weight to overcome my eyelids' drift back closed. So. No photo today. It's not that I forgot. It's just that I didn't do it. Maybe I should feel more badly about this than I do, which is pretty much not at all. There were some really bad days recently, after all, when I still managed to make a photo, and today was definitely not bad. But all you can do is go forward, which I am, and I've decided to give myself this one-time pass and to make up for my lapse I am going to tack a makeup day onto the end of this project. So instead of July 9th, 2012, being the final day of my 365 project, now July 10th, 2012 will be the final day of my *366* project.

day 57

A rainy walk in the woods, and we found two box turtles hanging out together. Um, sorry if we, you know, interrupted anything there, turtles. But we enjoyed meeting you.

day 56

Been a busy, busy bunch of days, and we've been having let's just call them issues with our internet service. As in, often there isn't any, and Comcast seems unable to figure out why or do anything about it. But I keep taking pictures. Here's a sweet one of Jack taking an inaugural ride on our new backyard tire swing.

day 55

Driving home from Dundalk after spending an evening with my cousin Val and his family on their boat, the Echo Sound. I already had a photo of the day, a safe shot easily made earlier in the day without much feeling. On our way down Merritt Boulevard I spotted this parking lot outside a grocery store closing for the evening, the lone stranded shopping cart, and it tweaked my eye. It was late (for us, anyway) and everyone was tired so I nearly kept on going but, for the first time in awhile, the impetus to make a particular picture presented itself. I pulled into the lot, told the boys what I was doing, and hopped out to take the photo -- just as an employee started trucking over to retrieve the cart. I managed one shot, not at all the shot I would have liked to have worked into over a series of exposures, but for today's photo I think the significance of stopping outweighs any pictorial merits.

I've said this to several people in the past few days, but I feel like I'm in recovery from some long malady. I'm still so fragile and tired and easily depleted, but at the same time feel more like myself than I have in some time. It's the sensation of having been rather seriously ill for awhile, and only when you finally begin getting better, finally start feeling once more like at least a pale semblance of your normal self, do you realize how under the weather you actually were.

day 54

We have had a few days now of doing blissful nothing. Hanging around our new house, figuring out how to live here happily. Summer is my favorite season, in part for the opportunity of long lazy days of doing not very much in particular, but this was a hectic one, and here it is over already.

So it feels good to just be here with a long holiday weekend stretching out ahead. Friday Jack had a half day of school, Coley stole one last day of summer vacation. We picked up Jack at noon, came home, had some macaroni, and then chilled all afternoon. Jack played Lego computer games, Cole and I lounged in bed and read books. Naps happened. Still so much to do, boxes to be unpacked, rooms arranged, purchases made. And it will all get done. Just not right now.

day 53