In which her dream job disappears into the ether

Remember this? Poof, it’s gone. Hiring freeze. The day before I was supposed to start.

It’s taken a while to get the paperwork together. (Only about nine weeks.) We were waiting on an hourly basis for final approval from on high, and just before that happened — department-wide hiring freeze. No signatures, no new job. And the very worst part? Had the paperwork gone through just a little quicker, like a week or so, maybe a couple of days, I would have been in.

In the grand scheme of things, I know I’m lucky. I still have a job, a job I loved until I heard about the other one. Nobody is sick, nothing catastrophic has happened, nothing has been lost except opportunity. And the bus pass I cancelled. And the promotion of the girl who was going to replace me. And the two hours each day of recovered commuting time. And my dream job.

Sigh. I just want to go home and cry…

Coveting

When I was a wee lass of nineteen or twenty, and I’d just quit university to work full time in retail, we were living a pauper’s life in a tiny apartment in the west end of Ottawa. We barely had enough money to pay our rent, let alone buy groceries, and I remember putting $2 into the ATM so I could withdraw $5 to get us through the weekend. (I loved Royal Bank back in those days, because it was the only bank whose ATMs dispensed in $5 increments.)

I was working as a cashier in the smoke shop of Zellers, and I can remember with almost painful clarity the hungry covetousness I’d feel when people would open their wallets to pay for a purchase and reach into a deep stack of $20 bills to pay. Imagine having more than one, let alone a stack of five or six, $20 bills in your wallet at one time. It was almost unimaginable to me.

By the time my first baby was born a dozen years later, I was far from rich but certainly comfortable enough financially that having a couple of twenties in my wallet at any given time was the rule rather than the exception. With a steady job, a roof over our heads and a reasonable disposable income, what I coveted most in those early days of motherhood was sleep.

Tristan at least was a good sleeper from an early age, but my middlest son Simon nearly killed me with his nighttime wakings well into his second year. I was so tired, so catastrophically exhausted in fact, that I remember an overwhelming covetousness of six or seven or — I was almost giddy with desire at the idea — as much as eight blissful hours of uninterrupted sleep. I couldn’t even look at images of someone in bed or sleeping on television without feeling an overpowering jealousy, an almost physical covetousness of their sleep.

While Lucas still wakes rather predictably twice each night, once around midnight and once closer to dawn, he’s easily placated and I’m back in bed and asleep after just a moment or two of nighttime comforting, so these days I’m about as well rested as I’ve been through most of my mothering career. Something about the move from two boys to three in the household, though, has tipped the scales of balance wickedly out of order and I find that my life has become an epic battle between me and the never-ending to-do list.

What I covet now is time.

Sometimes, I catch myself thinking back to the five or six years between when Beloved and I moved in together and when the first baby arrived with a kind of wonder. What on earth did we do with those mountains of free time? Okay, so I was finishing my university degree through night courses for a couple of those years, but there were still three solid years where it was just him and me and the dog… and we thought our lives were so busy! Oh, the things I would do if only I had half, even a quarter, of all that free time back in my life right now.

There is so much to be done, so many things clamouring for my attention, every single minute of every day now. I’m actually having to put in a conscious effort to notice the things that I’ve managed to get done in a given day instead of the things left undone, because the latter was really starting to freak me out. And maybe it’s just my personality, but I’m easily inspired and quickly distracted, so I keep coming across new stuff that I’d like to try, new project in which I’d like to become involved… and there’s just not any room in my life for what I’m already doing, let alone any new stuff.

Like when I was on CBC the other day with Lynn, and third person in our little interview was a fellow who had done a lot of organizing in his school to make it more friendly for kids to walk to school. I was quite intrigued by what he had done, and I could hear my internal engines revving up. What a cool idea, I would love to get something like what he has done going at our school, and my brain was off and running with the possibilities, the people I’d speak to and the approach we’d take and… and then, cold as a bucket of water in my face, the realization that I can’t do that right now. Simply can’t. There aren’t enough hours in the day to get the floors washed regularly and the grass cut more than once a month and closet doors hung that have been sitting in the garage since we picked them up in Home Depot half a month ago. Seriously? No time!

Each moment of my life right now feels like it’s stolen from one account to satisfy another, the temporal version of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’m coming to peace with it, and I’m getting the important things done, and even finding time to do the things that I do simply for me — the pictures, the blog, the Saturday morning visit to the gym. I’m getting used to the fact that our house is hopelessly cluttered and not as spotlessly clean as I might have liked, and that just about everything we choose to do is a tradeoff for something we must consciously choose not to do.

When I’m feeling the most overwhelmed, the most thinly stretched, and when I’m most keenly aching for that extra time — oh, the things I would do with just an increment of all that wasted time of days gone by! — I try to think of the future. Surely having a relentlessly curious toddler in the house is one of the largest contributors to the everyday chaos of our lives. Right? I truly can’t imagine that it will always be like this, and I simply can’t conceive of the fact that it might be worse, that I might some day look back with nostalgic regret and wonder why I thought I had it so bad when in retrospect these were the glory days of leisure.

One day, I’m quite sure, I’ll have that time again. Sometimes, I find myself coveting my own future… which is, really, not such a bad place to be.

HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer WINNER!

Congratulations to lucky Chantal of Two Hands Full, who will I have no doubt make excellent use of her new HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer when she prints out images of her pending brand new baby boy!

(There’s a print-screen of the random.org page confirming the winner that will be inserted into this post a little bit later this afternoon!)

I think this was the most successful giveaway I’ve hosted, if number of entries can be used to measure success. Congratulations to Chantal, and thanks to all of you who entered. Special thanks, of course, to HP Canada and to my peeps at Hill and Knowlton.

Project 365: One of these things is not like the others (sing it with me!)

There’s no doubt that the dominant theme in this week’s project 365 pictures is autumn: rich reds, yummy yellows, outrageous oranges. Is it just me or is this one of the most spectacularly colourful autumns we’ve had in years? Thank you Mother Nature!

But, in the way the exception proves the rule, my favourite image in a week filled with saturated colours is this first image in simple black and white. I like the picture, but I am head over heels in love with the subject. On Sunday, we took the boys on a treasure-hunting road trip down Highway 31 (Bank Street way south) to Merrickville, where we poked around McHaffie’s Flea Market for the better part of the morning. We found a couple of fun things, including Pokemon cards for the boys (sigh) and another vintage camera (a Duaflex II this time) for a very affordable $12.

It was on the way home, though, that we stopped in at Aubrey’s Antiques and I fell in love. When I saw it, I literally gasped in surprise and delight. I’ve *always* wanted a manual typewriter, but I never imagined I’d find one with this much character. And my darling Beloved bought it for me, wrangling the price down to an affordable $30 splurge. Isn’t it beautiful?

265:365 100 days to go!

I figure it’s circa 1920s, maybe as late as early 1930s. It’s a Portable Underwood, made in Canada by the United Typewriter Company of Canada, serial number 533186. It’s in fantastic condition, works like a charm. I figure it was so affordable because of how the keys are backwards like that. (Just kidding, it’s flipped like that because the viewfinder on the Duaflex uses a mirror, so through-the-viewfinder pictures are reversed.) I can see this beauty showing up in many of my remaining 365 pictures!

And speaking of road trips down Highway 31, have you ever been through Williamsburg? Each time we drove down to Upper Canada Village, I wondered about this abandoned theatre as we passed by. My menfolk are becoming increasingly benevolent toward the 365 project, and were happy to stop and let me take some pictures of it on our way home.

264:365 Picadilly Theatre, once upon a time

The Picadilly Theatre opened in July of 1935 (not too long after my Underwood was built!) but closed its doors forever in December of 1959. According to this article, the owner keeps paying the property taxes on the empty building her grandfather built and won’t sell it or tear it down because her father, who died in 2003, wouldn’t hear of it. Another vintage beauty, no?

This was one of those “oh no, it’s almost dinner time and I haven’t managed to take a single picture all day” kind of shots. Quick, what’s photographable? Okay, crazy-coloured shrubbery in the backyard, good idea!

266:365 Autumn colours

From there, the autumn leaves only got more spectacular as the week went on. Another one of life’s little curiousities I noticed this week was that raindrops only seem to bead on the back side of leaves. Why is that, do you think?

267:365 Rain on leaves

These two are from yesterday morning. I was driving to work about 20 minutes before the sun came up, and I noticed that because it was so cold (two below freezing, brrrr!) there was a lovely mist coming off the Rideau River. I pulled off Prince of Wales to take a few pictures at the Black Rapids lock station, and got totally sucked in by the beauty of the sunrise and the fall colours.

268:365 The path to the bridge

This was taken from the bridge you can just see in the photo above. The tree in the foreground was literally raining leaves — I wish I’d had video mode on my camera to capture it, I’ve never seen anything like it!

268b:365 Creek at Black's Rapids

If you don’t mind losing the feeling in your fingers, poking around in the leaves by the river at dawn is not a bad way to start the day!

I just realized that including the typewriter and the Picadilly and all the autumn leaves falling off the trees, my 365 pictures this week are almost exclusively about things past their prime. Except, of course, for these handsome young things.

263b:365 My boys

As I said when I posted this one to Flickr, they make my heart sing every single day. This one is pretty cute, too, when he’s not into mischief.

263:365 Lucas at the park TtV

So I need your help now. By 3 pm today, I’ve got to post one of the leafy-type shots above in a Flickr contest I’ve entered. I won the first round with the typewriter shot, so now I’ve got to post something I’ve taken in the last five days. I’m caught between the raindrops on the leaf one and the one with the path leading to the bridge. What do you think? Help me pick!

Talk to me about scarves

I’m wearing a scarf today that I got for a tremendous discount at the end of last season at the Gap. It’s gorgeous, a creamy white in the centre that changes to a colour somewhere between tangerine and coral at the ends. I love how scarves look on other people, and really think they add a beautiful touch of flair to an outfit.

I don’t think I’m pulling this one off, though. No matter whether I loop it around my neck, or leave it dangling, or pull the two loose ends through the little loop at the other end in the jaunty way I’ve seen countless other women wear their scarves, it just doesn’t look right. It seems to add a lot of bulk right about where I don’t need any extra bulk. Are scarves for skinny girls only? Am I missing something?

Scarves seem to be a hot fashion item this year, not to mention endlessly practical in a climate that’s hovering right around the freezing mark as I type. Surely wearing one is not as complicated as I’m making it out to be. I’ve got a pretty comprehensive understanding of woolen scarves that you pull up to your nose to keep out the winter chill, but pretty silky scarves as accessories are apparently beyond me.

Help! How do I wear a scarf? Really, this is not rocket science. Is there a right or wrong way? Is there a current hip way versus the way your grandmother wore one? Why can’t I make this work?

And, for the rest of you who are as clueless as me, what other accessories leave you baffled?

Tune in to All in a Day on CBC radio today!

Remember when I mentioned that the producers for All in a Day, CBC radio’s excellent afternoon drive show, were looking for parents to debate when it’s safe to let kids walk to school by themselves? That’s happening today at 4 pm!

Lynn from Turtlehead will argue a more conservative approach, and I will defend the idea of greater liberty. To a point. And maybe for somebody else’s kids, not my wee helpless babies. Um, this might be a bit of a lopsided debate!

Got a thought to add to the debate? I’d love to hear your opinions. At what age should kids be walking to school by themselves? When I mentioned to Tristan’s Grade One teacher last year that we were considering it, she flinched visibly and said she thought that was far too young and yet, I’ve said it many many times before, I was walking back and forth to school with no problem at age four. Have kids changed? Has the world? Is it our kids’ judgement we’re worried about, or stranger danger?

And don’t forget to tune in this afternoon, 4 pm at 91.5 FM!

A Thanksgiving Portable HP Photo Printer Giveaway

Here’s a Happy Thanksgiving gift for my Canadian bloggy peeps: a chance to win an HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer!

Remember this?

HP Photosmart around the house (3 of 3)

That was from my blog post back in the spring, when my lovely friends at Hill and Knowlton sent me a free HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One printer. And then they gave me one to give away, too. I think I might have mentioned how much I love them.

And now — for even better printing-from-the-bathroom or just about anywhere else you might go convenience — you can win an HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer. How awesome is that? Here’s the deets on the printer:

A646 printer and bag

The HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer Series makes it simple to view, edit, create and personalize photos—all without a PC—with easy-to-navigate menus right on the printer’s HP TouchSmart control panel with large 3.45-inch touchscreen. Ideal for on-the-go photographers and busy parents, this portable and compact device easily prints from Bluetooth®-enabled mobile phones, allowing users to print out and share their photos wherever they are.

With more than 300 creative elements to choose from, including borders, clipart, album pages and photo captions, the HP Photosmart A640 Compact Printer Series makes personalizing and printing home photos easy and fun. In addition, 30 editing and enhancing options from the HP Design Gallery, including pet-eye fix, slimming feature, blemish removal and sepia tones, make photos look their best.

This ENERGY STAR-qualified printer helps reduce packaging waste by shipping in an innovative, reusable tote made from recycled plastics.

I haven’t had a chance to see or try this printer, but I am totally in love with the quality from my Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One so I can only imagine that this one is equally excellent.

The contest is open from now through noon on Friday October 16, 2009. There are three ways you can earn a ballot to enter this contest:

  1. Leave a comment below and tell me one thing for which you are thankful. (It is, after all, a Thanksgiving giveaway!)
  2. Write about the contest on your blog, linking to this post, and come back and leave me a comment with the URL to let me know about it.
  3. Tweet the contest on twitter using hashtag #HPContest and linking to this blog post, and leave me a comment with a link to your status update. You can use tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/ykb87eb (Edited to add: you can create a direct link to your Twitter update by clicking on the time of the update and saving that link.)

The fine print: this contest is open to Canadian residents only. One winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org, selected from all eligible entries. The winner will be announced the afternoon or evening of October 16, 2009. You must be willing to share your mailing address with me, and I will share it with Hill and Knowlton Canada, who will ship the prize directly to the winner.

Thanks to HP and Hill and Knowlton for another fun giveaway. Good luck to all!

Five ideas for family fun in Ottawa this Thanksgiving weekend

Looking for some family fun this Thanksgiving long weekend in Ottawa? Here’s five ideas! (Edited to add: please note this post was written in October 2009. The last four points still apply, but the Lego exhibit was, alas, in 2009 only. In 2012 I wrote a new post with five MORE ideas for Thanksgiving activities for families in Ottawa!)

1. The Lego exhibit at the Museum of Science and Technology. Free with museum admission, this is a wonderful exhibit in one of Ottawa’s best locations for family entertainment. We checked it out last weekend, and all three boys were thrilled with the hands-on Lego displays, and the amazing exhibits created by master Lego builders. They’ve put out separate tables of Lego for the big kids and Duplo for littler fingers. Even though we’ve got bin upon bin of Lego at home, we still spent the best part of an hour just in this part of the museum alone.

2. The butterfly exhibit at Carleton University. We tried this one year, but I’m just bug-phobic enough that I was uncomfortable with the idea of all those dangly legs and antennae. If you’ve got a higher threshold for insects, though, the kids will love having the chance to see so many beautiful creatures up close and personal.

3. Parc Omega. The fall colours are at their peak this weekend; why not drive the couple of hours out toward Montebello to visit Parc Omega? We visited last year around this time, and the scenery was spectacular. Here’s my post about Parc Omega from last year.

4. Saunders Farm. An Ottawa fall classic! There’s corn mazes, a Discovery Barn, a Barnyard Treehouse, a “haunted hayride” and — for the older kids — the Barn of Terror. We paid $60 for our family of five last year and found it was worth every penny. We might check it out ourselves again on Monday if the weather holds.

5.Take a hike! Let’s face it, the weather might not be ideal right now but the forecast calls for six months of winter, so you might as well get out and enjoy fall while it lasts! Two of our favourites are Mud Lake and Stony Swamp.

What are you doing this holiday weekend?

(Edited to add: Don’t forget to check out my updated post written in 2012 with five more ideas for Ottawa Thanksgiving fun for families!)

Project 365: In which she goes snap-happy with the fall colours

You know how some days you take 50 (erm, who am I kidding, two HUNDRED and fifty) shots, and you get about three keepers? Yesterday wasn’t one of those days. I knew it would be sunny and a good day to enjoy the fall colours, so I brought my little TtV contraption with me to work and went on a little walkabout. It took me three HOURS to sort, edit and process them, but in the end I still had more than 30 pictures I liked. Even in squishing some of them into collages, I still posted five pictures of the day yesterday. Photo overload!

(You just know that I’m going to be scrambling for even one decent image today. I think that’s why next year, I might do a 7*52 instead of a 365. Seven new pictures each week, instead of a new picture each day. We’ll see!)

This is the week I discovered the TtV collage, because if one through-the-viewfinder shot is good, two dozen of them is exquisitely good! Here’s my first one, taken last Friday in Ottawa’s Byward Market.

225:365 TtV Byward Market collage

Then on the weekend, I went back to taking pictures with just one camera. We went for a little wander on the hiking trail at the Chapman Mills Conservation Area along the Rideau River on Saturday, and Lucas stopped to inspect every rock, leaf and flower along the way.

256:365 Lucas's purple flower

I had a hard time deciding between the traditional version, above, and this one. Sometimes, I find selective colouring actually detracts from a photo, but I liked the subtleness of the purple here. What do you think?

256b:365 Lucas's purple flower (take two)

This may be one of the three best portrait pictures I have ever taken — and it’s not even my kid! This is Aiden, son of my dear friends and friend of my sons. Isn’t he going to break about a million hearts some day with those clear blue eyes?

257:365 Aiden

I can feel the winter coming, with its monochromatic tones and faltering sunlight, so I think I’m on some kind of subconscious mission to squeeze every last bit of colour out of what Mother Nature offers right now. Like this crazy crab apple tree growing in our backyard.

258:365 TtV crabapples

I tried to make this one work as a TtV shot, too, but I liked the straight shot better. I spent the better part of one lunch hour poking around in the wet leaves under a pair of giant oaks in the park across from my office one day, looking for acorns… something I never would have done before the 365 project. As I said on Flickr, I think the 365 is making me a better person. It’s definitely giving me dirty pockets.

259:365 Acorns

See that grainy quality? It’s called “noise”. That’s what happens when you leave your ISO on 1600 by mistake. And you can see it in this pinwheel shot taken the next day, too. It can add character to a shot, but I’m copping to this one as a lucky mistake!

260:365 Colour wheel

All of the following pictures were taken yesterday. And if you think I should have worked harder to cull the flock, you haven’t seen the heap I almost posted but didn’t! I cancelled my bus pass thinking I’d be changing jobs sooner than this, and so was driving to work along Colonel By when I realized that I absolutely *had* to stop and take some pictures of the fall colours reflecting in the Rideau Canal. Another thing I never would have done before the 365! See?

Sunrise on the Canal

And this one! (And, by the way? There are not nearly enough parking spots on Colonel By!)

Sunrise on the Canal 2

I took about 30 pictures, both TtV and straight on with the Nikon. You’d think that would last me for the day, but on my coffee break I wandered past the Chateau Laurier and snapped a couple of TtV shots, because I think the dreamy retro fisheye effect makes the Chateau look even more like a fairy tale castle. (I like the one in the top left the best.)

261b:365 Chateau Laurier TtV Collage

And then, because it was still sunny and clear and blue, and the forecast is calling for rain followed by six months of winter, I went for a walk along the Canal at lunch time, too. (If nothing else, I’m at least getting my exercise with this damn photography habit!)

I took at least eleventy-hundred pictures, most of which I looked at later on the computer and said, “Wow! I really like that one!” and realized I had to start lumping them together into collages. This one is called “Perspectives on the Rideau Canal”.

Rideau Canal collage

And finally (if you made it this far, you’re a trooper!) here is my favourite collection and perhaps my favourite among faves in a week of fortuitous photography.

261:365 Autumn TtV Collage

I don’t usually get a lot of comments on the 365 posts, and I can never tell if it’s because you’re yawning waiting for me to get over the pictures already, or if it’s because the nature of the posts don’t engage commentary like some of the other things I write about. Having said that, I’d really like your (non-obsessed) opinion on the TtV collages — are they too much? Do you think I should edit harder and just choose a single fave or two to post, or do you think they have a more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts synergy to them? And do you think I’ve finally lost it, using a word like synergy? Yeah, you can skip that last question…

What the heck is TtV photography anyway, and why would you bother?

A couple of you have asked me about my new fascination with TtV photography, so I thought I’d post a little tutorial here.

The idea is simple enough: take a photograph through the viewfinder of another camera. The viewfinder camera is usually a vintage twin-lens reflex camera, the kind that you would have held at waist-level and looked down into the viewfinder. It doesn’t need to be in working order, it just needs a largish and relatively clear viewfinder. A little bit of schmutz on the viewfinder does give your images character, though! I started with an old Kodak Brownie Hawkeye that I got from my uncle when I was wee, and I recently won an auction on eBay for a lot (pun intended) of vintage cameras including my new baby, a Kodak Duaflex IV. It’s in amazingly good condition for a 50+ year old camera!

duaflex

This is a terrible, blurry shot of the top and back of the Duaflex, but at least it gives you an idea of how nice and big the viewfinder on top is. (Note to self, check the LCD display every now and then. You’re not shooting film anymore, you can fix your mistakes on the fly!)

duaflex back

The second camera, the one that actually takes the picture, can be a point-and-shoot, or a dSLR, or if you’re really old-skool, a film camera of any kind. The first tutorials I read said you need a macro lens, but I don’t use one. You align your subject in the viewfinder of the vintage camera, check your focus, and shoot. You’ll end up with a shot that looks kind of like this.

pinwheel fullsize

Then you crop it to square, leaving that characteristic bit of black frame, and do however much or little post-processing twists your knickers. I like a little bit of an urban-acid cross-processed look to mine.

Once you’ve taken a few TtV pictures, you realize that there is an annoying glare on the viewfinder, and that’s why people build amazing Rube-Goldberg-esque contraptions to eliminate the extraneous light. I’ve heard of TtV junkies using everything from a Pringles can to elaborately decorated and personalized contraptions. I’m using a highly sophisticated contraption myself, constructed from yellow posterboard and scotch tape:

duaflex in contraption

And, equally stunning in its sophistication, here is my visual summation of the TtV process. Because sometimes a picture *is* worth a thousand words. Try not to be too awed by my mad photoshopping skillz.

ttv illustration

And this is the final product.

260:365 Colour wheel

It’s a lot more challenging than it looks to get your composition right, not least because everything is flipped right to left, so when you want to adjust your image to move the subject more to the right, you have to swing to the left. In fact, there’s ongoing debate in the TtV community as to whether you should flip your final images or leave them reversed. (So far, I lean toward the latter.) Getting your camera to focus on the image in the viewfinder and not the viewfinder glass is another troublesome spot. But IMHO, when it does work, TtV produces dreamy, retro images that are oddly compelling.

I’m totally hooked! In fact, I’ve discovered that there’s a group on Flickr of devotees who are doing 365 projects entirely in TtV. Hmmm, that may be next year’s challenge — if I didn’t think my family would completely disown me if I even thought about it!

If you’re curious and would like to see more, check out my TtV set on Flickr!

Edited to add: I finally got around to rebuilding my contraption and writing a better version of this tutorial in May of 2010. Check it out!