The most patronizing thing you can say to me

As you might have guessed from the longevity of this blog, I like to discuss parenting issues. I’ll compare notes with any parent, any time. I often find it’s the first area of common ground I establish with someone — do you have kids? If not, there’s always the default – do you have parents? It’s failsafe!

I remember one day in the waiting room of the pediatrician’s office, a mom and I compared our babies. Lucas was maybe six months old, Simon just turned four and a half, and we spent quite a while swapping anecdotes of the baby years. The funny thing was, her son was sitting beside her drowning her out with his iPod as he flipped through the latest Macleans. He must have been at the very top end of the age group for a pediatrician, maybe 15 or 16 — old enough to wear a trench coat and have stubble, anyway. But she blithely went on describing his various toddler exploits as if he were still in preschool. It was utterly charming, and only the tiniest bit creepy.

You know what really drives me bananas, though? I really hate it when parents of teens or adult children haul out that hoary old nugget: “Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems.” I find that the most dismissive, patronizing, and downright annoying thing one parent can say to another. It’s even more annoying than the hyper-competitive mom who wants to make sure her baby is hitting all its milestones before yours, or the whole slacker-mom movement. (Really? Don’t get me started.)

I get what they’re saying, these condescending parents who diminish the daily struggles of life with little kids by insinuating that life with teenagers is so much more complex and fraught with peril. Now I’ll give you that toddlers rarely come home with random body piercings, preschool is virtually flunk-out-proof, and the only substance I worry about my seven-year-old abusing is his brother. I’ll admit that when things do go wrong in the teen years, there is always the potential for things to go catastrophically wrong in a life-altering sort of way. But I still don’t think that the actual parenting of a teen is so much harder than parenting a preschooler.

In fact, I’ll put it right out there and argue that parenting a child is WAY more labour-intensive than parenting a teen. I think the parents of older children have more freedom than do parents of schoolage kids, and I’m willing to gamble they get more sleep. When kids gain independence, so do their parents. Of course, the emotional investment is the same and I’m in no way saying that you somehow disengage from your children as they get older (hell, I’ve shown no signs of disengaging from my mom and I passed 40 this summer!) but I think the bulk of the parenting “effort” if I can call it that, is expended in the first 15 years or so.

The crux of it is that I truly cannot accept that any stage of parenting will be as traumatic, as transformative, as hard as parenting that squalling newborn. And anyone who has rose-coloured memories of the sweetness that is the toddler years is welcome to come to my house tonight between 4 and 6 pm and witness the debacle that is a our feisty, moody and endlessly adorable not-quite-two-year-old during the arsenic hours. Bonus points if you can entertain him (because he missed you all day while you were at work), supervise the homework, get dinner on the table, ask the middle child about his day, make the lunches, clean the kitchen, and sort the paperwork from the school without wanting to curl up in a ball and rock yourself to sleep on the dining room floor. Surely this is not simply a function of the quantity of kids in my house — it has everything to do, I think, with the fact that there is just more of me required in every hour of their lives than will happen when they’re 16 and trying to have the absolute minimum amount of contact with me.

Of course, I have only sang the first couple of verses of this particular song. My oldest will turn eight in March, so I can really only comment on the first half of the equation. So I bring it to you, bloggy peeps. What say ye? Is there merit to that hoary old nugget, or am I right to bristle when I hear it? Is it really any harder to parent older kids and teens?

(Although if it is, I’m not sure I want to know about it!)

In which she joins the ranting multitudes on Apple’s ridiculous iTunes gift card policies for Canadians buying apps

So I got an iPod Touch for Christmas, as I mentioned. And, as I mentioned, even though I hadn’t even asked for it and when I opened it, wasn’t entirely convinced I wanted it, in the two weeks I’ve had it I’ve come to love it dearly.

It didn’t take long for me to start exploring the app store, and most of the apps I downloaded were the freebies. (I have to admit, I am highly impressed by what you can get for free. And, in a delicious coincidence, my new task at work is to figure out how to make our Web site more mobile-friendly, and even look into creating an app of our own. Wicked cool, and wickedly serendipitous.) But, of course, there were a few games that sucked me in. I had no problem forking over $4.99 for Sim City, and I think Tetris set me back $2.99. The one I play most often is Boggle — I think that set me back another $2.99. I didn’t mind splurging a bit on games, though, because Beloved also gave me a $25 iTunes gift card to go along with it.

(Many of you are nodding along, because you know what’s coming. I have to admit, I had no idea, but I am peeved.)

I didn’t realize anything was amiss until I happened to see the $1.99 and $2.99 charges to my Visa card. Apparently, in Canada you cannot use an iTunes gift card to buy apps. That is annoying in and of itself, but to me even more annoying is that I had no idea. Not when we gave our niece and nephew $25 each gift cards for Christmas to use on their new iPods, and not when I entered my iTunes password to purchase the apps. It did not give me any sort of indication that I was bypassing my $40 gift card balance and instead charging the purchases to my Visa card. A friend of mine with an 11 year old didn’t notice until there were nearly $100 worth of charges on his credit card, so I guess I got off lucky.

So I started poking around on the Internet, figuring there must be some sort of workaround out there somewhere, but there isn’t one that I could find. What I did find was post after post after post of angry consumers, many of whom had contacted Apple and received paltry compensation like a credit for a free song or two. Apple seems to be claiming that they are unable to allow the use of gift cards to purchase apps because of what one Apple customer service rep called “Canadian Commerce Laws”.

Then I found a guy named Jim Whitelaw who showed a hell of a lot of initiative and managed to get Industry Minister Tony Clement to address the issue in a letter to his own MP. I mean, if the Minister of Industry doesn’t think it’s a problem, and if Sony and Nintendo and other companies allow the use of gift cards to purchase games and software, I have a hard time understanding why Apple is choosing to draw this particular line in the sand.

I’ve had lots of reasons to interact with Apple over the years, and I’ve always found them reasonably responsive. But this totally taints my opinion of them. I’ve been seriously considering both an iPhone and a Mac, but if this is how Canadian Apple customers get treated, then I’m not sure I want to invest any more of my time or money with Apple. It’s a bit of a tarnish on my love of my shiny new iPod, too. I’ve written to Apple (feel free to do so yourself if you’re as ticked as I am — they say they are responsive to customers) but don’t expect anything more than a cursory response.

Consider yourself warned, if you haven’t already found out about this one the hard way like many of my friends already have. The policy itself is bad enough, but the lack of information is inexcusable.

Edited to add: while Apple did respond to me, the response was rather unsatisfactory. The first e-mail told me, rather unhelpfully, that gift cards could not be used to redeem apps in Canada. When I replied that my initial query stated that very fact, and that I was asking instead about the “why” of the policy, I got a second response that said:

According to Apple policies, canadian customer’s are not able to purchase Applications using Store Credit. I know this must be really frustrating.

I encourage you to use the iTunes Feedback page to submit your feedback below, it may help us to improve our customer satisfaction. We will be considering your feedback very carefully:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Your efforts to share your feedback are very much appreciated.

So, I took their advice and I encourage you to do so, too. Have at ‘er, bloggy peeps!

At least he comes by it honestly!

Please indulge me in a moment of shameless bragging. I’m practically bursting with pride.

I got a call from Tristan’s teacher this week. (I swear, getting a call from the school elicits the exact same physical response in me now that getting called to the principal’s office did when I was a schoolchild myself. That wincing anticipation of unpleasantness ahead.)

In fact, she was calling to tell me how delighted she was with a piece of work Tristan handed in. Can we take a moment and admire the kind of teacher who calls a parent after school hours to offer random praise? And can we find a cloning machine, please? They’d been working on descriptive paragraphs and given a sentence upon which to expand. Tristan took a sentence about a tree and apparently turned it into a very vivid description of a boy sitting in a tree reading a book, and his teacher was blown away by the thought behind it, the style, and the way he evoked the moment.

I laughed out loud when she started describing it, because right away I knew from where Tristan had taken his inspiration. Remember this picture from my 365 project last autumn?

236:365 Tristan in the tree

Apparently, so does Tristan!

She went on to say through the year Tristan has proven himself a bright boy who has little difficulty with his school work, but that she’s had trouble encouraging him to fulfill his potential. While he is able to meet the standards expected of him with relatively little effort, despite her encouragement he has shown little interest in excelling beyond the standard. Until, it seems, this particular exercise. She wondered aloud if he should be put into the gifted stream in the next year or so, and while I was delighted to hear she was pleased, I am not going to even bother thinking about those things right now.

For today, I’m happy to hear that the same boy who has in the last few years shown an amazing aptitude for drawing inherited from his father has also inherited a certain grace when it comes to stringing words together. I think I might know where that one comes from, too.

The City responds to your question about composting

I could have put this in the original post about Green Bins and composting, but it’s a couple of days old now and I wanted to make sure you guys saw it.

One of our regular commenters, Windex, asked the following question:

You know I was talking about the bin to the hubby last night as he is opposed to it big time and he was saying the biggest complaint is why we pay $14 million a year to give it to a company who will make a profit on it – but I am thinking he is missing info from statement – Can anyone fill in the blanks? Are we really given our compost to them for free?

I sent the question back through my PR contact, and she provided this response directly from Chris Wood, the Waste Diversion Project Coordinator for the City of Ottawa:

The specifics of the City’s contract with Orgaworld allows for the company to retain 90 per cent of the compost and the City retains 10 per cent. The city will use its 10per cent for internal greening efforts and community-based tree planting and garden projects. Orgaworld plans on selling its share to the local Ottawa farming community—our community wins here too, as farmers are able to get good yields without relying on chemical fertilizers. This same process has been successful in other communities such as London, ON– to the point where they have more demand for compost than they can supply. In fact, the compost Orgaworld plans to create from Ottawa’s waste has already been sold!

While yes, the City is paying Orgaworld $93.40 per tonne of waste, Orgaworld is also investing in our community, building $20 million dollar facility, and employing local residents. The main benefit to Ottawa though will be seen through the extended life of existing landfills, allowing the City to defer the cost of setting up new landfills (which is always contentious and expensive). The Green Bin program, along with other waste diversion strategies, are part of the City’s goal to achieve 60 per cent waste diversion.

Thanks for a good question, Windex, and to the City of Ottawa for a prompt, informative and IMHO, very reasonable reply.

Project 365: In which she comes perilously close to running completely out of things to photograph

After more than 350 days of taking pictures, I’m running out of steam. I still love taking the pictures and processing the pictures and especially sharing the pictures, but I have to admit that I’m just not as keen to go out and hunt for the pictures, yanno? So most of this week’s photos were taken of things that were nearby. Call me lazy! (And, I just noticed, probably the first week since I got my Duaflex in October that I don’t have a TtV shot.)

This may be my favourite shot of the week. We went tobogganing on New Years Day. Okay, so that’s not quite true. The big boys went tobogganing (and somehow Simon coerced Tristan to pull his sled up the hill for him each time, cementing my assurance that he will go far in life) while Lucas sat in the snow and ate large handsful of it.

346:365 Sledding

This was not the same day, but just as there were lots of flower shots in July, there’s lots of kids-playing-in-snow shots to be collected in January!

351:365 Simon in the snow

And even when they’re inside, kids at play make for a charming subject, don’t you think? (I called this one “Building a fort with Tristan is a hair-raising experience!”)

Building a fort with Tristan is a hair-raising experience!

This is part of a blog post I was planning to write this week and never quite got around to it. I was poking around in the basement looking for my old LPs for a half-formed 365 idea and I came across an carton with tonnes of old school papers in it. I found this, the journal I was required to keep in English class the year I was in Grade 11: February to June, 1986. One word: boycrazy. Another word? Painful. Really, it’s a wonder I survived to see 17.

347:365 Dear Diary

This next one? Classic “oh crap, what am I going to take a picture of today?” Oh look, there’s my makeup bag. Haven’t taken a picture of anything in there yet. *sounds of rummaging* Stubby lipstick? Nah. Mascara? Not feeling it. Compact — pretty colours. Excellent! Reflection — even better. Macro filter? Delightful. Picture done!

350:365 Compact colours

What’s that? You say you can’t get enough of the baby fingers at work pictures? Me neither.

349:365 I can do it myself

This was from my mental checklist of “things I noticed that might make a good picture some day.” Now that I’m within two weeks (eep!) of finishing, I can start using them up! This is from the pine tree in front of the boys’ school.

352:365 Snowy Pinecones

I like this one because it reminds me of those blissful three or four days over the Christmas holidays when I spent most of Lucas’s nap time in heaven with a hot cup of coffee, a wee snack, and the latest Stephen King, a gift from Beloved. I can’t remember the last time I spent back to back to back afternoons curled up with a book!

348:365 Afternoon delight

And finally, last week marked the last day of December, so here’s the full month in pictures.

December mosaic

Less than two weeks to go!

On daycare, yet again

It’s been a good long time since I’ve bitched about child care, hasn’t it? I think we’re loooong overdue!

The reason it’s been a good long time since I’ve bitched about child care is because I’ve been so happy with the young nanny who has been coming to the house since I went back to work after my maternity leave ended last January. After a horrendous search, we found a gem and we’ve been thrilled with her care. And we will be thrilled with her care, right up until she leaves on March 1 to start her own maternity leave. Sigh.

When she came back after the summer off, she told us she was pregnant and I steeled myself for another demoralizing foray into the search for affordable, accessible, quality child care. In late September, I started haunting the online child care ads, and whimpered in dismay. And then, early in October I think it was, I mentioned our situation to one of the other moms from Simon’s kindergarten class that I’d befriended. I told her about the nanny’s (relatively) imminent departure, and asked her to keep her ears open for me. To my surprise and delight, she called me up the next week and wondered if I’d be interested in having *her* take care of the boys, and I couldn’t say yes fast enough. She has three kids, too, almost the same ages as my boys at the same school, and all the kids are friends. It’s perfect! I swear, it’s like karmic payback for all the daycare shit I’ve had to wade through over the years. Not only the easiest daycare search ever, but with optimal results. I couldn’t be more happy. It’s only an interim solution, as she doesn’t want to keep doing daycare beyond this spring, but it gives us a perfect bridge over the gap in care this year.

So she can bridge the period between the nanny’s maternity leave and the end of Beloved’s semester, and Beloved will be off from May through August with the boys. In September, Simon will be in Grade 1 (!!!!) and Tristan will be in Grade 3, which leaves me finding full-time care for Lucas and before and after school care for the big boys. Should be easy-peasy, right? Not so much.

A part of me is dismayed to be looking in January for care that isn’t required until September, but I’ve been at this game long enough to know there is no such thing as too soon. I’ve been tossing around different options. I could put Lucas into the day care centre near our house for $40 a day, assuming we creep to the top of that waiting list — I’ve been told it’s even odds since he’s been registered since 2007. Yes, he was born in 2008. Hell, they just called me this year to tell me that Tristan has not yet made it to the top of their waiting list — that he’s been on since 2004 — but since he turns eight in March, he’s no longer eligible for their centre.

If I get a spot for Lucas at the daycare centre — and a big “if” it is — I’d still have to arrange for before and after school care for the big boys. I’ve had them registered on the wait list for their school’s before and after care program since 2006. I just checked yesterday and while the coordinator won’t know for sure until March, she said it doesn’t look good for this year but we’re likely to get a spot for September 2011. Can you believe it? I registered when Tristan was in JK, and we’ll likely get a spot as he goes into Grade 4. And I’m not sure, but I think he’s ineligible after Grade 5.

And setting aside the whole wait list thing, there’s the cost issue to consider. The daycare centre is $40 a day, and the school’s before and after program is $19 per day per child. That’s $80 per day for “institutional” care. If I go private, in-home daycare, rates are similar. On the other hand, I can get a live-out nanny for $80 – 100 per day plus payroll taxes. This is good in that I am the boss and therefore in control of the conditions of employment — the reason I was drawn to nanny care in the first place. Currently, I’m only paying for 4 days per week of care because I’m off on Wednesdays, and we lay the nanny off each summer so she can collect EI and we don’t have to pay a fee to “save” a spot or coordinate holidays with the daycare provider and potentially all the other families for which she provides care. On the other hand, Lucas is painfully shy and I’m thinking it might be good for him to get out of the house for care, and it would be really nice to have everyone out of my house during the day. But finding a daycare provider that has space for all three boy who is in our school cachement area — let alone who is a good person and someone worthy of caring for my boys! — is a Herculean task that I am dreading to my bones. And the idea of going through the nanny interview process all over again gives me a stomach ache.

Sigh.

It’s kind of disappointing to see that even though two of the three boys will be in school full time in September, we stand to gain absolutely no financial break on daycare fees, and will be spared exactly none of the headaches of finding and managing child care. But, of course, we lose the $100-a-month child care payment from the government for Simon when he turns six next month.

Seriously, how the hell do people with less resources than our privileged family make this work?

Editorial Aside: Every link in this post is a link back to a different spot in the ongoing saga of one family’s search for affordable, quality, accessible day care. If you want to read more, you can peruse my “working and mothering” category. I’m sure my experience is just about average to what any Canadian family must endure, and I’m horrified by that. The system is broken, and we MUST fix it.

I can’t believe how excited I am about our new Green Bin!

Way back in the day, we used to live in a not-so-nice neighbourhood in Hunt Club and I loved to wander the streets in the much nicer neighbourhood adjacent to ours. They were one of the Ottawa neighbourhoods selected to participate in the first “green bin” composting pilot project, and I couldn’t wait for it to be rolled out to the rest of the city. Seven years later, and I’m maybe just a little bit too excited to start using my shiny new Green Bin this week.

I have always admired the idea of composting, and have always meant to get one of those backyard composters, but I never quite got around to it. I totally support the concept of composting, but the actual maintenance of the composter seemed like a lot of work. I mean, really, it’s a good week month when the grass gets cut, and the gardens run pretty wild, so maintenance of outdoor things is not my strong suit. But separating my compostables and having someone haul them away to make good use of them? I’m all OVER that idea!

When the Green Bin arrived in the fall, I hauled it into the garage and pretty much forgot about it in a “I don’t have to think about this until next year” sort of way. And then suddenly over the holidays it WAS next year, and I started noticing articles in the paper that talked about people using their Green Bins and I checked the Web site and sure enough, the official Green Bin collection starts this week. Yay! See what I mean? Way too excited.

And here’s where I admit, in a twisting-my-toe-in-the-carpet kind of way, that I really do not know anything about composting at all. But the city does make it pretty easy for you. (I’m not being a shill for the city, by the way. For the sake of disclosure, they have sent me a couple of e-mails with information and links, but I haven’t really had time to go through them. This is just me muddling my way through my first Green Bin experience and documenting it for all the Interwebs to enjoy!)

I thought I’d have to go out and get one of those stainless steel countertop buckets that I’d seen in the flyers. I checked the Ottawa Web site and found a User Guide and thought, “It would have been nice if they’d sent me one of these.” And then I kept reading and realized they DID send me one, and they sent one of those little countertop buckets, too, albeit in plastic instead of stainless steel. They were inside the Green Bin when it was delivered back in October, and I’d never even thought to open it! Huh, how about that!

So I set up the little bucket on the counter, and stuck the “what can go in the green bin” sticker to the front of it. I’d picked up some of those paper liners at Loblaws, and so I popped one of those into the countertop bucket and started using it right away.

It took about a day for me to fill it up, so I don’t think we’ll have any issues with odours, as that’s about as often as we change the kitchen garbage bag anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I can compost dryer lint and — I swear, my life is an echo chamber some days — I can even dump the pet hair and other crumbs I collect each day in the little swiffer vac in there.

I’m not sure why some people have been complaining so vociferously about the program. Yes, there has been an additional fee foisted on us, and yes, it’s probably not been handled as well as it could have. But for the average household, the pros far outweigh the cons. I don’t mind the extra $60 or so a year in admin costs, and I don’t mind the extra $4 or so on my grocery bill for bin liners — to me, they’re well worth the price of doing our part for environmental sustainability. I do wish that the bins were collected every week instead of every second week, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it works out this summer.

All in all, I give the city a thumbs-up on the Green Bin program. I still remember when the first recycling programs were implemented, and how I found the switch to bi-weekly paper collection such an inconvenience — and now that’s all second nature. Really, composting through the city couldn’t be easier, and I’m delighted to do my part.

In which the dog hair finally snaps her last bit of sanity

There’s an old Dan Hill song (what, you don’t do early 70s Canadian folk rockers?) that has the lyric, “Freedom takes on new meaning / When you have a family of five.” With all due respect to Mr Hill, I’d like to posit that the following is also true: keeping the house clean takes on a whole new meaning when you have a family of five.

As you might remember, we got new laminate floors installed on the main floor at the beginning of December, and I’ve since spent a lot of time thinking about keeping the place clean. There’s no doubt that the house is now freer of dust, dog hair and crumbs than it was before, because instead of having these things migrate deep into the pile of the (horrendously ugly) sky-blue-washed-out-to-grey carpet, I’m now sweeping them up on a daily (sometimes twice-daily) basis. Was there really this much smutzch floating around before, or have I suddenly become hyper-vigilant to it as it dust-bunnies itself into every corner?

I’ve become alarmingly obsessive about cleaning the floors. (Not, for whatever it’s worth, much else in the house. So far.) With something like a missionary zeal, I sweep the main floor in search of every stray dog hair and crumbled bit of goldfish. Once upon a time, Procter and Gamble sent me an e-mail asking me to evangelize their Swiffer line in exchange for free product and I declined with a superior sense of derision. And today, I will tell you free of any commercial endorsement whatsoever that I am ridiculously infatuated with my newly acquired Swiffer vac. Seriously, why did you not tell me about this before? I have been freed from the tyranny of the dust pan, and any of you who have spent any time at all watching tufts of golden-retriever-German-shedder dog hair floating lazily over the back of the dust pan or dancing out of the bin on the faintest hint of breeze must IMMEDIATELY set out to acquire one. I also bought a new canister vac at the Boxing Day sales ($200 marked down to $139, with special pet hair attachment!) to replace the 10 year old Kenmore upright that was literally held together with duct tape, but it’s the zippy little Swiffer vac that really floats my boat. There is something supremely satisfying in seeing those stray dog hairs get sucked up instead of skittering away from the broom that moves me deeply.

In another life, I remember reading an article in some woman’s magazine about housekeeping shortcuts, and I knew that it was so not the kind of article for me because it suggested that you don’t have to move the sofa every single time you vacuum. I remember skimming past the rest of the article in search of the next one, with a puzzled little thought bubble over my head that said, “You’re supposed to move the sofa when you vacuum?”

Fast forward three kids and one laminate floor and here I am, moving the sofa about every third time I swifferize. By all things holy, I WILL conquer the dog hair and the crumbs, I swear it.

(There is a small, concerned voice in my head that is suggesting, in the carefully modulated voice you reserve for the craziest of people, that maybe I’m spending a little bit too much time thinking about the swiffer vac. You think?)

And since I’m rambling about cleaning, you know what else I do now that I once scoffed over in derision? I wash the kitchen floor by hand. It’s just easier that way. Next think you know, I’ll be ironing the bed sheets. It’s a slippery slope.

I wish I could declare with a smug sense of self-satisfaction that at least the floors are so clean you could eat off of them, but, well, the dog just shed another half pound of hair, I just noticed at least a tablespoon of coffee grounds that skittered out of the filter, the baby crushed a stray goldfish into powder and someone’s just tracked no-salt-ice-melter from the front hall way half way across the dining room.

And Sisyphus thought the rock was a bitch.

Project 365: The beginning of the end

Wow, only three weeks to go in my year of photos! A few of you have been asking what happens on day 366, and I’ve been chewing that question over myself. Back in July, or October, I might have told you enthusiastically that I couldn’t imagine a day without a picture any more, and of course I’d be starting a new Project 365 right on the heels of the old one. In late November, when the picture-taking was an onerous duty instead of a delight, I wasn’t sure I would make it through one year and would be thrilled to be relieved of the millstone — erm, I mean camera strap — constantly around my neck.

I’m still waffling. I hate to stop, I really do, but I think if nothing else, my family has had enough of the 365 for now. I might try something a little easier, like a 52×7 project, where I take seven pictures each week instead of one picture each day. Or, I might take a little vacation and see how keenly I miss the challenge. For all the angst, the annoyance, and the additional stress that this silly project has brought into my life, it has more than redeemed itself in the improvement to my mad photographic skillz, and it’s simply amazing to me that I have this pictorial tribute to a year in our family’s life. Much like the blog has captured little moments that might have been forever lost otherwise, I’ve learned to take pictures I would have never conceived of just a year ago.

Pictures like this one from yesterday, of Lucas playing my cousin’s piano. (A piano has been on my 365 to-do list almost from the start. I still have to get to a billiard hall some time in the next three weeks, too. Anybody got a pool table in their basement I can borrow for half an hour?) The hands-and-feet project has been one of those unexpected and delightful outcomes of the 365.

345:365 Songs in the key of life

This was my Christmas Day shot. After the Christmas Eve 12-Hour Photo Project, I was pictured out and this is one of the few shots I took all day.

339:365 Christmas cheer

I got two days worth of shots from the ice storm that moved through the Ottawa Valley just after Christmas.

340:365 Ice world

341:365 Icy grass

Lucas at play seems to be another favourite theme of mine — go figure! This was taken through the viewfinder (TtV) of my Kodak Duaflex IV. I don’t think I’ve missed having a TtV shot each week at least since I got the Duaflex in October. This is another thing I never would have tried, probably never would have even heard of, if it weren’t for the 365.

342:365 Lucas at play TtV

Speaking of TtV and old cameras, check this out. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I found this in the bottom of a box in my own basement. I had no idea it was there. It’s a Kodak Junior Six-20, made in Germany in the 1930s. It must have belonged to my grandmother, who lived in Germany until my father was born, or maybe my grandfather. Makes a nice addition to my vintage camera collection, though, don’t you think?

343:365 Kodak Junior Six-20

And finally, another bit of play that I never would have thought of before the 365 project: light painting with Christmas lights. Leaving the camera on aperture priority on a dark night keeps the shutter open for a long time as the sensor tries to gather enough light. By moving the camera around in little circles, the Christmas lights on the maple tree in my neighbour’s yard make cool light trails that look like a psychedelic spirograph! (After much deliberation, I designated this one an outtake and chose the next shot as the picture of the day.)

Christmas light zoom 3

And by holding the camera (relatively) steady but zooming in on the same tree while the shutter is open, you get a different kind of light trails.

344:365 Christmas light painting

It was only after I’d posted it to Flickr that I saw the impression of the angel in the light trails. Can you see it? Total fluke, a serendipitous bit of luck.

Kind of sums up the whole project sometimes — a bit of skill, a bit of observation, and a whoppingly large dose of serendipitous luck!

Flip Mino HD winner!!

Congratulations to Guillermo of Los Ziegler en Canada, one of Ottawa’s most unique blogs, who will be starting the new year with a new Flip Mino HD camcorder courtesy of Mom Central!!

Thank you all for your comments and your tweets. You might have noticed that there were some duplicate tweets and comments, but in tabulating the results I removed all the duplicates and in most cases, let people know that only one comment and one tweet per person would be entered into the draw.

Thanks, too, to Mom Central for sponsoring yet another fun giveaway! Stay tuned for more freebies in 2010, and a Happy New Year to everyone!