11 - Little Lancaster

Just after sunrise this morning, along Bel Air Road near my house - a shop called Little Lancaster selling picnic tables, Adirondak chairs, and other purportedly Amish-made products. The plain folk are apparently very fond of silhouette cut-outs of children and pets.

One of the fun things about this photo, for me, is that we are actually heading to Lancaster this weekend for a family getaway. I don't expect I'll personally pester the notoriously photo-shy plain folk. But maybe they'll be willing to let me photograph their wooden silhouettes?

10 - Still Life with Galleys

Yesterday's photo once again not the most exciting image every recorded, but it's big around these here parts -- yesterday was the day that my man received the galleys for his second book, which will hit booksellers in May.  Galleys, it now seems, look a lot like the actual, eventual book -- other than the words 'uncorrected proof' on the cover.

I noticed these on his nightstand. It's now time to read through for final corrections and changes, but I think the bottle of Scotch and the Pepto Bismol tablets really are what speaks most eloquently about this writer's life still life.

9 - Slip Slidin' Away

A most uncompelling image, but the important thing about yesterdays photo is that it exists at all. I had a day of nonstop demands from work that kept me glued to my computer until the very second I needed to dash to a meeting. As I drove along the Gunpowder I noticed this small, winding tributary stream that was frozen solid white, contrasting with the dead forest floor in a way that grabbed my eye and my brain.  I stopped, took two very quick pictures, realized that in addition to being drastically late I was also not wearing the kind of footgear that would get me across a half-thawed and very muddy river bed to make the shot I wanted. So I got back in the car and drove away. But I stopped.

And that is the important thing. Even if I can't make the picture that's in my head, the fact of stopping, of trying, of taking one small fraction of the day to be something other than a constant mad dashing through life. Some days, stopping is almost impossible. Life carries such forward momentum.

8 - Dragon a little behind

Last night at bed time, sent to put his pajamas on, Coley comes out wearing the dragon suit that was his costume three Hallowe'ens ago. "It still fits!" he proudly exclaims. Indeed it does. Sort of. In a bulging-at-the-seams kinda way.

Then of course he wants to wear it to sleep in. He knows this is not a sanctioned sleeping outfit, so the big pleading eyes are put into play. Dang. I'm such a sucker for the big pleading eyes.

We compromised: he slept in the dragon suit pants (complete with beclawed dragon feet), but not dragon suit top. 

The title for this blog post is acknowledgement that I am a day behind on posting. I really do want to post the same day I shoot, and I am going to have to find a way to make that happen when the boys are around. Their fondness for Minecraft means I have to compete for time on my own computer. But I want so badly to not fall down on this 365 for a *third* time that I think I'll even be able to resist the big pleading eyes rendered in Jack and Cole stereo...

7 - On Not So Thin Ice

It's been bitterly cold for the past week. Most days the high is hovering around a balmy 19 degrees. So it's not surprising that the river has partly frozen, in the places where the water runs slow. We went down to explore the frozen landscape -- skating on the ice above the place we normally go swimming, heaving the biggest rocks we could find out to the edges of the ice where it was thin.

I thought the opportunity for good photographs would arise, and it probably did. I totally missed it however, since my protective mama bear instincts were on high alert and I was focused on making sure nobody fell through the ice or met any other catastrophic fate. These tar splashes on the road caught my eye as we parked along the river road, and uninspiring as it maybe be this is the picture for yesterday, round 3, day 7. But I still consider the day a success in that only Cole fell through the ice, and only a little bit -- up to his shins.

6 - A Simple Song

It's disconcerting for me, sometimes, how posting these photos can make me feel so incredibly exposed. Intimate dispatches from my life in an upturned boat, marooned on a cliff...

5 - Spoon!

Emma, bringing me a spoon to stir the oatmeal we were cooking for breakfast. She's so marvelously creative and spontaneous, and -- even better! -- ever willing to let me photograph her.