Page 40 of 49

Happy Friday- Fun with Actual Photo Titles

Lauren

Ah, the world of professional photography. It’s a weird world. And also one where if you want to make any money… I suggest you sell your camera.

I am glad for all those weirdos out there taking quality pictures of the most random things and posting them for free on the Internet- pictures that most of the time have straightforward captions. But sometimes… magic happens.

Female lady pig outdoors on a farm

Female lady pig, asleep on the farm

You gots a youtube tutorial on how to recreate that smokey eyeshadow technique, piggy? My makeup game needs some help.

Fruit salad ingredients lemon lime kiwi mango and orange

Colorful fruit salad ingredients, a yellow lemon, a green lime, kiwi, tropical mango and an red coloured orange.

You’ve never actually eaten fruit salad, have you? And… that orange is orange. Orange is not red. Red is not that orange. Orange orange.

Military parachute jump celebration

Military parachute celebration

Stab in the dark here- this is a French Military parachute celebration we’re talking about?

Attractive young male rodent

Cute young male rodent

Yeah. There are a LOT of “rodent” pictures by this one photographer. And not one mention of the word gerbil. And.. some are so weird I started getting a bit concerned. And rightly so, turns out, by this next picture.

Cat food concept photo - brown rodent sandwich

Cat food concept photo – brown bread rodent sandwich

When life hands you lemons you make lemonade (or fruit salad). When life hands you dead young cute male rodents you make a brown bread rodent sandwich.

Know what’s better…?

Lauren

Know what’s better than being 37? Being 37 and not pregnant! Ami-freaking-right?! HIGH FIVE!

(It’ll forever after be my determination of what makes a good birthday. I’ll be 89 with an amputated foot and cataracts and STILL be like “Pfft. At least I’m not pregnant!”)

 

 

 

 

(There is a 90% chance I’ve messed up that age- it’s been known to happen on an increasingly regular basis. Did I just count on my fingers up from 1979? Maybe.)

 

Resolution: More charitable giving

Lauren 7 Comments

For almost 2 years now I’ve been a sponsor to a girl in Sierra Leone- to save her from the practice known as FGM, or Female Genital Mutilation. This sponsorship pays for the ongoing guarantee that she will not undergo FGM, her education, food for her family, education for her family as to why FGM should be avoided, and regular healthcare. Since that time I originally sponsored a child in January of 2015, I’ve had another daughter. And as I look at my 3 girls it grew in me that I wanted to do more for this cause- and so I’ve recently signed up to sponsor 2 more girls each month. This allows me to match the number of my own girls and seemed eminently important to do. Honestly, I was totally unable to ignore the call to do so, it’s so grown in me recently. I feel as strongly about this cause as I did when I originally posted about it 2 years ago. And as strongly committed to wiping it out as then as well.

May more girls grow up unmultilated.

Healthy.

And Educated in this world.

Amen.

 

Below is my post from January of 2015:

The cause I cleaved to in the later part of 2014 and will be more focussed on helping in the future: Ending FGM, also know as Female Genital Mutilation.

girl

Young Girl in Gambia- where the incidence of FGM is 76% (image by Joe Rodd)

In 2015 I started to contribute to Waris Dierie’s Desert Flower Foundation to end FGM around the world. Why? Because the thought of some innocent child my daughters’ age getting held down and screaming while she is permenantly mutilated with no anesthesia is so incredibly horrifying I want to throw up every single time I think about it. Having been a victim of this mutilation, that child’s risk later in life of contracting HIV and dying in childbirth go up astronomically; and that is in addition to the lifetime of pain caused from it. FGM isn’t a religious practice as many believe, it’s cultural- and therefore changeable within a single generation.  Below is the link to The Desert Flower Foundation, which is the organization I chose to support after researching the ones that had proven positive results:

 

Desert Flower Foundation:

http://www.desertflowerfoundation.org

And yes, historically, charitable giving into Africa hasn’t always been successful. But that is because changes were attempted to be imposed from the outside. The Desert Flower Foundation works from within these communities, and is thus much more successful in achieving lasting change. And lest you think the work to end FGM is fighting a losing battle, it is actually quickly turning the tide of cultural practice- but nowhere near quickly enough. And even if it wasn’t, remember the story of the starfish:

Thousands of starfish had washed up on a beach, and a little girl was throwing them back in the ocean. Someone walked up to her and said “Save your strength, there is no way you’ll be able to save them all.” The little girl paused for a moment and then quickly knelt down and picked up a single starfish off the beach. As she threw it in the water she said “Saved that one!” Others around were inspired by that child’s action and started throwing the starfish into the water with her. Soon, no starfish remained on the beach.

Sure that story is smaltzy, I’ll give you that. But like in that story, I’d try to save just one girl even if it didn’t have a rippling effect on changing cultural norms in her community… but luckily it does. But also? These are not starfish. These are children. These are girls with dreams. Girls who love their kittens and their mothers’ cooking and being able to go to school. Who should one day have a right to grow from a child to a woman- with a right to love and have children, and not suffer in pain daily. Who should grow into women who will fight so their daughters don’t have to suffer FGM. And who should live to see their granddaughters be fully safe from FGM as well. These are girls who should not have to suffer this horrible practice. SHOULD. NOT.

Please learn more if you are interested and help if you are so driven.

Happy Friday!

Lauren

beach

Here is a picture my 2nd oldest/2nd youngest took almost 2 months ago at the beach- just wanted to share. Love the colors! Love the composition! So art-y!

Got a baby slowly talking herself awake over here- Happy Friday!

 

On Overcoming

Lauren

There was a point when I was shy- or described that way, at least.

theater-5-1228132-1599x2395

The gradual loss of most of my sight from 6th to 8th grade played a big role in eroding my self confidence. Friends and I drifted apart.  Hormones betrayed me and I became super sweaty- even though I tried everything to not be. I was growing out a terrible haircut and had holes in my shoes and weird pants. I was 5′ 7″ and towered over everyone for a few years there. And I was more interested in space than in New Kids On the Block. From a peer perception standpoint all of those things matter in middle school. They matter a lot.

It got to a point where my words just stayed constantly locked in my head and I started getting described as shy. And I was meek now too- because it’s hard to fight all of that all the time. Tiring. A boy I had a crush on spit on the ground in front of me once, so that he and his friends could laugh about how the weird girl stepped in spit. I just kept walking, head down and shoulders so slumped they might have been trying to meet in the middle. (Crushing- in the original sense of the word. At least I had the good sense to stop liking him after that) I was just generally having a difficult transition from child to whatever the hell it is that comes after. It’s hard being a teenage girl, let me tell you.

I had been an outspoken and strong willed younger child, I vaguely recall. But I had become really isolated and awkward. And one day- I decided to do something about it. I signed up for Theater Arts in 8th grade. I didn’t join because I thought it’d be fun- I knew it’d be a slog. I joined because I didn’t want to be like this forever. I needed to learn- not how to act differently- but how to be okay with being different, maybe? To find A voice, even if at first it wasn’t mine. To force myself to make a change, maybe? Something. I knew it’d help.

Now, I am NOT a theater fan. I have an intense dislike for it, actually. And oh, did my contempt show- that teacher hated me and I hated him right back. And I was so odd-man-out on that front because the rest of the students loved him. That was another revelation- I’d never disliked a teacher before. I’d never been disliked by a teacher before. I learned a lot that year, let me tell ya. (Years later I’d mention how much I hated that guy and people would gasp because he’d been their favorite. That happened more than once.)

But I worked hard in that class because I’d be damned if I was going to be behind the scenes- I wasn’t there to learn how to work lights or open curtains- none of that stagehand shit for me. So even with the teacher’s intense dislike of me… I could remember lines. I could project. I could do more then stare at the ground while grinding my toe in a circle… and so I got pretty prominent parts even if I’d ignore occasional stage directions. He never gave me the parts I wanted, mind you. Not even once. But what the hell did I care? I hardly wanted the ones I wanted, after all. And that part about ignoring stage directions? That’s why that teacher hated me. I remember once my character was some vapid movie actress- sister of the main character- but during this long ass speech I had to recite I wouldn’t use a compact with a brush to touch up powder on my nose like he wanted me to do. (Everyone knows you use a puff for that, you evil twink) He threw a god damn desk because of it during practice.

The true lesson  was not that I was shy- it was realizing just that I had gone quiet. There was a difference, and it was an important one to learn.  I’d still be awkward for years though- don’t let me pretend I wasn’t. But “quiet” and “meek” got crossed off the list before I started high school. I was on my way. I’d learned my lesson.

Random Friday Thoughts

Lauren 1 Comment

“Turn of phrase” is my favorite turn of phrase. That stupid sentence has been running through my head on repeat for about a week.

I wear my Cracker shirt too much. Does anyone know that’s a band when I’m wearing the shirt? And I always realize I’m wearing it at really inappropriate times. Packed Mexican restaurant? Fan-tastic.

Eyelashes are there to keep things from falling in my eye… but the only thing that ever falls in my eye are eyelashes. Tidy little loop, that.

 

Random Words and Random Thoughts

Lauren

Let’s dust off the ol’ random word generator again:

Fugitive– When I was little we were members of the Irish Cultural Society. Which- let’s talk about this. We’re mutts. Sure my grandmother is an O’Shannessy, but we’re SMALL percentages Irish (my Dad a quarter, me at most an EIGTH)- it’s odd to me that we so picked and chose to play up only certain bits of heritage. Other members of the larger family emphasize the German, even smaller percentages. I guess we all want a bigger connection, but we do it through the denying of other parts of our heritage. It’s weird.  But at 6 I had no idea about any of that- and so gladly attended Irish Cultural Society meetings. And my parents befriended a guy from Ireland named Jody at the meetings. Who my parents said told them he was IRA once. Now I, to this day, can never figure out if an IRA fugitive was smart to join an Irish Cultural Society (“I’ll hide out in plain sight!”) or if he was just rock stupid. So. Yeah. Weird, right?

Prayer– Never done it. Not even when my daughter was in the hospital over Christmas many years ago, seriously and  frighteningly sick. I never cried out for a higher power to save her, save me, save us. I never reached out even questioningly. I knew any questing for a higher being would just be the crying out of a scared child, alone in the dark, for a parental figure to make it all better. But there is no sky parent behind the veil of darkness. There was only us, doing our best out here on the mortal coil. And I was strong enough to face that. It was that experience that made me an Atheist with a capital A.

Blinking– I wear contacts because I am BLIND without them. 350/20 blind, last I checked. Can barely see the line under the big E on eye charts blind. And contacts are amazing. Truly, the change they make in my life- it’s up there in the miracle department. But that means even the most innocuous blink can be fraught with danger. I take care with my blinking. And eye rubbing. And swimming. Because blindness… it’s only a blink away.

Dancer– I am an AWFUL dancer. I have no sense of rhythm at all. It’s a problem. I actually think that comes from growing up with a Dad who was a musician and lead vocalist in his band. I grew up listening to his words in songs- it’s still how I listen to music. And yet other people listen to baselines in music, or the music as a whole, turns out. It’s hard to dance to the words, I guess. Or maybe it’s because I never had a Dad to teach me to dance, because he was always the one on stage? Maybe a little of that to. But I try. Also, Dancer was the name of the miniature poodle I had when I was a kid. First example of “I’m a big dog person” turns out- because she and I never much cared for each other. The little shit.