7 months

House

First off, a house. It’s pretty.

Details you don’t care about!!!!! I can’t help it!

• Brett wanted craftsman exterior. I was pulling for the cheeper stucco because I generally hate siding. Brett says that’s cause most builders use a cheep aluminum siding that cost less than the stucco.
• When he convinced me to switch (this stuff does look better than what I usually see/picture), we’d already wasted time picking out stucco colors, and had to go in all over again. A few times... because we had to go in after work, when it was dark, and I insist on seeing colors in the daylight.
• I got to pick all the colors, though he was rather insistent on white trim and garage doors that matched it. As a result I didn’t go too dark, because I didn’t want the outlines to be overly contrasty. Also, switching from stucco (50 ish choices, even dark purple) to siding (7 choices) pretty much meant that the gutter, soffit, and facia were going to be white. I liked some housed where they were lighter than the roof but darker than the house, but the colors weren’t in the right family for the sidings. 
• the door is going to be a sea-ish blue green grey. Brett has his doubts.
• I am relieved to see that I picked the right stone. I think 95% of the houses picked stone that doesn’t work well (there were like 20 choices), but I was a perfectionist that insisted on picking everything according to how colors look outside... because lightbulbs have colors people!!! they change how things look!!! I was nervous until they took the tarp off. 
• Generally, the board and baton on the porch, and the columns either match the trim, or are white (in our case both are white, but I was the weirdo who insisted they match the shake (the shingly triangles) instead AND that the columns not be all one color, but rather that the stripes match our trim. They had to write in notes on the form for that column stripe. I love that our builder doesn’t charge for stuff like that, and I love how it came out. I like it much better than the ones with white on the inside. 
• Brett also thinks I did a good job getting all the colors to go well... though, like I said, he has his doubts about how the door will turn out when they paint it. 

A you can see, the other’s on our street are yellow and mossy green... though 50% of the neighborhood is dark blue siding... which Brett was voting for. I think we are the only one that did this particular combo of grey and grey. 

The Evolution of How and Why I Came to Choose a Home Birth. Part 1: Comfort—A choice

Me, surrounded by my husband, my mother, and 3 of my 6 midwives (not as cultish as it looks)

The Evolution of How and Why I Came to Choose a Home Birth.   Part 1: Comfort—choice

Somewhere between 2005 and 2008,  B and I were living in Wymount (where all joy goes to die) and we received an email from someone Brett had once been friends with. They sent a photo of mommy and her new baby on her bed, daddy and other children at her side, and included a quick little note announcing that they had just home birthed their child and “whatever your feelings are concerning hospital  vs. home birth, nothing compares to the comfort of giving birth in your own home.” They had done their first child(ren?) at the hospital .

Wait, what? Having birth at home, on purpose???? That’s a thing? 

The concept, in all honesty, had never even crossed my mind. I did not have a script for this. Home births were (with the exception, perhaps, of 18th century novels) something that happened when a snowstorm or tornado kept a woman from getting to the hospital. Home births were accidents. End story.

So, it took me perhaps months to fully internalize the fact that this was, in reality, an option. Real people did this. I had a choice where I gave birth, and I had never known that. Hospitals were not the “The Place,” with Taxi cabs (en route to the hospital) as the back up. 

And while the reality of the option took a bit to sink it, the understanding of what B's acquaintance had meant by comfort, took no time at all. They hadn’t gone in to details explaining why a home birth was more comfortable, but they didn’t need to; it made sense. 

I’d been to hospitals. Nothing is comforting in a hospital: security desks, cold hard floors, lifeless walls, stranger nurses coming in and out. I couldn’t see a hospital being at all peaceful and relaxing, and  when giving birth is already a stressful, painful, and overwhelming experience, who needs the added anxiety of giving birth in a cell.

But home, I could envision. I may have hated Wymount, but I would feel more at peace giving birth there than rushing off in a panic, bags in to, to a hospial.

I told Brett immediately that I thought that I might want a home birth. Brett did not immediately accept that option. Maybe for the second child, but for the first we should be safe. I know. Poor logic. First births are not more likely to end it tragedy are they?  But atlas, I wasn’t out to make B uncomfortable and fearful at the birth of his child, so I wasn’t putting my foot down. I did however, continue to bring up the option from time to time in conversation. 

Worse than English

It’s one thing to find bits of creative writing I saved and going, “yup, this is trash.” It’s another to find college photography bits and thinking “my teachers were nicer than I thought”

Soooo a lot of prints and cd disks of files going in the trash today

Check out these “Album covers.” Then mock me because it looks like a 4th grader designed them. Call it “growth. I was probably learning about layers, and and about thinking I was cool and creative even if I wasn’t.

Then, my skills improve a bit, but there is the problem of “I can’t afford a model,” and “people that work for free keep canceling on me." Far more often than it should’ve been, my solution was to do a self portrait. 

The Saran wrap had symbolism people. It was deep. Can you feel it? The spandex? Well, that was just a bonus.

Ummmmm...Editorial... about...?...How did I never turn this one in. It is sooooo, um, good?

Like Gretel, Charlotte felt that the bad which was trying to fatten her up to eat her.

Not bad, but what does one do with... this..

Yet another keeper I have absolutely no memory of taking

It’s artistic because it’s blue. duh. 

Flooding is a huge problem in the Barbie community

So, I felt the need to prove that my college work wasn’t complete crap.  I think i just really struggled with editorials