Observe: this is without any zoom...
(Don't worry, I make up for their fuzziness later by taking an obscene amount of pictures.)
Your camera-and-animal-obsessed hostess,
The Fox
The zoom function on my camera continues to astound. Observe: this is without any zoom... See those specks in the pasture? They're three Appaloosas. Not that you can tell here. THIS is using the zoom. Can we say 'wow'? Go ahead, you know you want to say it. I'll wait. Argh, for some reason this picture focused on that post in the foreground, hence the fuzziness of the horses. Dang. (Don't worry, I make up for their fuzziness later by taking an obscene amount of pictures.) Ahh, yes, here was a random cat. This was at a house that we clean, by the way--there were no less than five cats at the door at one point. But here's the first one I saw. He looked contemplative. Thoughtful. But slightly vacuous. (Define that word and I give you a cinnamon roll. XD) Right, back to the horses. These are national prize-winning steeds, so I understand. And if the plethora of trophies, awards, and pictures in the house have anything to do with it, I'm inclined to believe that statement. This one got my attention, though. He's just rather striking. On a different topic, these horses may not look very big, but compared to Colletta and Violet they're monstrous. (After hanging around a 15-hand mare standing next to a 16-to-17-hand gelding is intimidating, to say the least.) I never did get a picture of this horse's face, by the way. He was determined to look away while there was a camera on the premises. Aw, kitty...he was watching through a dirty window before I washed it. But I DID wash it later, and that's all that matters. XD
Your camera-and-animal-obsessed hostess, The Fox
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Phew. Being alive has its perks, ya know? Speaking of perks, here's my latest art offering: I'm very predictable in my drawing obsessiong. XD There's a description in my Artwork category--go check it out! In other news, almost all the snow has melted outside. This has a two-edged effect: on the one hand, it means that things are warming up and becoming more habitable outside. On the other hand, it also means an onslaught of mud such as I've not seen in months. (The barn alone makes me want to crawl under the couch cushions, curl up in the fetal position, and rock back and forth. A picture would be devestating to my psyche--perhaps I can steel myself in the future. XD) Yesterday on the way to cleaning a house I was stuck behind a gravel truck for literally the entire trip. (For the uninformed who may not live in the Midwest: with the melting of snow and the onslaught of mud there is also pot-holes and terrible washed-out roads. As such, plenty of gravel is needed to prevent drivers from compressing their spines from the jarring.) I got pretty darned close--he was only going about 45 miles per hour in a 55 MPH zone. (I'm an impatient driver. XD) Then he REALLY slowed down as we got stuck behind a tractor hauling a sprayer. I checked my rearview for angry drivers. Fortunately this guy was a little ways back and never got close enough to be of concern. Ah hah, THERE'S the culprit. He was being considerate and pulled over to let us past. Thanks, whoever you were! Hah! See ya, sucker! Aah, the (relatively) open road...there's nothing quite like speeding after being held back for ten minutes. XD (Shh, you didn't hear a thing...) But then there was THIS guy to follow. Ugh. You can be sure that I washed my truck very thoroughly after following that mud-spewing monstrosity.
Also: see that sky? That's pretty much all we'll see this March. XD Your resigned hostess, The Fox This morning I awoke to the sound of thunder and the pattering of rain. To someone who has gone months with the only form of precipitation being ice and snow, it was a very soothing sound. As I peered bleary-eyed out the window I noticed that some of the raindrops were white, round, and pea-sized. Hello, hail! This is how we know March has officially come: we have snow one week and lightning/hail/tornadoes the next. (Okay, just joking about the tornadoes. It'll be at least another week before we start having those around. XD) Also hello, vaguely frightening looking clouds... These aren't tornado clouds...but they are DEFINATELY not snow clouds. Hence the hail.
In other news I didn't have a great day...I had something like an emotional breakdown in church today and had to leave (it was pretty embarrassing--big tears, snot-explosions, the words). I won't go into a great amount to detail as to the cause, but I have been having dreams about you-know-who every. Freaking. Night. I can never remember what the dreams were about, but I wake up two or three times a night feeling lost, sad, or upset and have a heck of a time getting back to sleep. This has been going on for a few weeks, and honestly it's getting rather tiresome. Lack of sleep notwithstanding there's a great deal of things that are coming down to the wire (at least in my mind) and it's slowly wearing me down. Sigh. Your stressed hostess, The Fox Yesterday I snapped a TON of pictures. A few of them were taken using either my 'macro' setting or zooming in on faraway objects, and I have them put in an album on Picasa. This is just a few of them--go and take a look at the rest and descriptions here: http://picasaweb.google.com/molly.nolden/MacroAlbum# Oh, and because I'm a dweeb and couldn't resist doing this, I took the stereotypical self-portrait-in-a-reflection picture. And because I was so pleased with the first one I took another. And another. I have no excuses for this idiocy...I would apologize but I'm not really sorry, so you're stuck with my unrepentent self. XD
Last topic: today was the first day that I rode Colletta this year. She was understandably excited, so much so that she was gawking at EVERYTHING and weaving so badly that she would make a drunk look like a steady, calm, reliable citizen. *shakes head* Oy. Last-last subject: tomorrow I'm hauling tables in my horse trailer to church for a dinner. And I'm making Orange Chicken. I've been a busy person, in other words. And now, without any further ado, I shall let you dear people go back to your normal lives. Your uncommonly gracious hostess (not really, I just like to say that), The Fox Due to unforeseen events this evening, we had an impromptu power outage that lasted over a couple of hours. In that amount of time I sat down and in between snapping random pictures of candles and/or lamps I rambled in my journal. These are my unedited babblings. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~* The power has been out for about an hour. Due to this inconvenience I am forced to write this in the dining room by the combined light of a dribbly candle and a kerosene lamp. My eyes are not used to the strain yet. On the other hand our stoves (cooking and heat) are gas, wood, and gas, respectively, and there was enough water in the hot-water heater for me to get a shower and Mom to do the dishes. Mom and Dad are going out the door--to check on Papa and Grammie and to call the electric company. That leaves me at home, alone, except for the dog, cats, and whatever things may be lurking in the shadows. I am not reassured. My dribbly candle is getting slowly but steadily shorter. That is not reassuring. This is my 3rd day of being sick--on Thursday I woke up with a headache/cold/flu/something and it's been moving from my throat to my nose/sinuses and chest. I.e., I wish that I were better already because I've missed 2 days of work and I'm tired of trying not to sleep all day. The house a block away has its lights on, and I can see street lights on all over the place, but we still do not have power. Hmm. This is most vexing. Hm, what did I do today...posted 2 times on my blog...surfed the 'Net...painted a swallowtail butterfly...drew/sketched a little...dozed a bit...blew my nose a lot...in other words, not much. I am pathetically unproductive when I am sick/have an empty schedule.
Not sure what else to say. May come back if/when the power comes back on. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* (In due course the electric company was contacted, a man came down and flipped a switch on one of the outside breakers, and the electricity came back on. Life can now go back to normal. Good night, The Fox) I just discovered that I have an official inner editor*. His name is Charles. He's average in height and weight, with medium brown hair and brown eyes. He seems to be a bit older than me and has a disturbingly single-minded approach to things. I have a visual reference for him and everything: Oh. Before ya'll start accusing me of schizophrenia, let me explain myself.
*An inner editor is an entity of sorts that exists inside any creative person's mind. Anyone who has ever done a creative undertaking knows what I mean: it's that little voice in the back of your head that's constantly critiquing your work. For some people the criticism is worse than for others--Charles seems to be a fairly balanced individual, and I have no qualms about giving him the smackdown if he gets too uppity in his critique. The odd thing is, before now I had always envisioned Javert (the person) as my personal inner editor...perhaps that was just my obsession with the character showing through, I dunno. Now that 'Charles' has been identified I can imagine that things could get a little tense between him and Javert (the latter is too used to having been alone for all this time). So who's YOUR inner editor? It's taken me a couple of years to identify mine, but inner editors plague everyone. I don't think they all have names, and they certainly have differing personalities, but they're there... *Twilight Zone theme music* Your slightly over-imaginative hostess, The Fox 1. Will found this giant icicle yesterday. After posing with said icicle he immediately turned around and smashed it against the tree. Such is the destructive nature of the male kind and their ilk. 2. I have been insanely lax in the art department. All I have to offer are some random sketches that I whipped out over the week--they're posted in the Doodle-art page. 3. Javert missed me this week.How do I know this? He's been clinging to my side ever since I came home yesterday; according to Mom and Dad he's been mopey and despondent all week; and last night when he came inside he was frantically searching the rooms of the house until he found me. I feel appreciated. XD Maybe.
4. Over the past couple of months I have gained nearly five pounds. This will have to be remedied--I feel squishy. >.< If only it would warm up outside and I could start riding the horses and hauling manure again...but the ground is frozen and riding can get DARNED cold in 20-degree weather. So the squishiness will probably remain for a while. 5. I tackled my comfort zone involving people today.For those who know me personally, I'm not very outgoing. Think the person who sits and does something that doesn't involve the participation of other people (reading, knitting, drawing, etc). So today I started with introducing myself to a random person who comes in at the gym--this fellow has been coming in for a while but I never made it a point to actually find out who he was. Weirdly enough, just working up the courage to say 'Hi, I don't think we've officially met before' had my hands and knees shaking. *twitch* So, due to my discomfort in this area I'm going to make it a point (if possible) to introduce myself to one random person a day. Perhaps it'll help my awkwardness around people... 6. I slept through the whole night last night. In the past week while babysitting I've been sleeping in a strange bed and consequently waking up two to three times a night. Thursday night was the worst--I woke up at 3:15, started thinking about 'Psycho' of all things, imagined (in my half-asleep state) that Norman Bates was coming to get me, mentally posted Javert (the person) at the door to subdue Bates, and couldn't get to sleep until after 4. Phew. My mind does strange things in the wee hours of the morning. 7. I'm eating a leftover fried steak for lunch. This is not helping my current squishiness. 8. Town-water has never tasted so good before.The house I was at this week is out in the country, and they have 'hard water' (lots of minerals in it). 'Hard water' has a very distinctive taste, and after drinking the 'soft water' in town that has been run through an excellent filter the 'hard water' was pretty hard to choke down. The taste gets worse with tea, by the way, and making it cold with ice cubes only helps momentarily. I drank a lot of orange juice in the past week. ^^; 9. I got lassoed into babysitting some other kids today. So from 12 to 4 this afternoon I'll be off watching some punks under the age of 8. Whee. One of said punks is a 7-year-old who put in an 'order' for a pair of fingerless gloves--I made him a pair last year, but through natural growth and wear and tear they're in pretty sorry shape (he must have worn them all the time, because they were very well-used). I have one done, and cast on the necessary 36 stitches for the next pair at work this morning...hopefully these will be up to par with his expectations. XD 10. I almost have enough money to buy my new camera. Here is said camera in all its glory: http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-SX20IS-Stabilized-Articulating/dp/B002LITT3I/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1266687246&sr=8-6 I'm getting rather excited, thinking of all the things I'll be able to do with it (it takes VIDEOS! Hahaha! No more choppy, pixelated, fuzzy vids!)... So what ten things have YOU been up to in the past few days? You know I love to hear from each and every one of you (yes, even the ones who don't reply--I know you're out there!). Your strangely organized hostess, The Fox I recently discovered Etsy.com, and after some deliberation I got an account. :D Currently I've got only two things up (my scarves, and some fingerless gloves that I made this week), but hopefully I can get some more things up in the near future.
Here's my personal account, if you're interested in seeing my stuff (hint hint XD) So Valentine's Day is coming up. In the past I pretty much ignore its existence, because I've never had a 'valentine' and never saw the use of celebrating a holiday for couples when you're single, you know? However, The Pioneer Woman did an entry today about things she loves. So instead of thinking on the fact that I don't have a 'valentine' I'm going to concentrate on the things that I love. This will probably be the Cliff's Notes version, because I love LOTS of things... :D So, without any further ado, here we go! I love... God Horses Drawing Javert (the human) Javert (the dog) Anthony Perkins Chinese food 1978 Les Miserables Tea Lazy days Productive days Snow days Books Journals Writing Cooking/baking Horatio Hornblower The Temeraire series Herbology (is that even the right term?) Italian food Apple pie Training horses Thinking Mike Taking pictures Doing physical stuff Listening to music Musicals Keeping things in a semblance of order Knitting Crocheting Making things in general Looking up words Toy Story The Matchmaker Jeeves and Wooster P.G. Wodehouse's writings Horse books Old-fashioned journals Calligraphy pens Watercolors The feel of heavy paper The smell of coffee One-on-one conversation Possibly more to come... My mom had something disturbing happen today...she works for the concession stand at the basketball games sponsored by our gym (she's also the gym director). Said basketball games are for kids 1st through 4th grade. Anyway, she said that while she sat at the concession table a woman came stomping by dragging this little boy behind her. The little boy was sobbing and crying (the really hard, hiccupy, breathless sobbing) as she dragged him along, and Mom thought that he had done something really wrong.
The woman takes this boy, made him stand in front on her with his back to the lockers, and started yelling at him. "What is WRONG with you?? We've been going over this for TWO DAYS already! You have to keep your arms UP!" Turns out, this woman was ripping on her son because he wasn't playing well enough. Mom, showing an admirable amount of constraint, walked over to the lady, put her hand on her shoulder, and said, "It's okay. It's just a game--he's only in 2nd grade." "He's in FIRST grade," the lady said. There...wasn't much to be said about that. Mom said that this lady kept haranguing her son for another five to ten minutes, and then after the game (Mom had left already) she and her husband, who happened to be the coach, came out looking for Mom. *headdesk* I'm not sure what they were planning to accomplish by getting on her case...but I digress. I also find that the more I see the way people raise their kids, the more parallels between child-raising and horse-training I see. Take for example, someone who's showing a horse. If they smack it on the neck/jerk the mouth around every time it makes a mistake, the poor animal soon comes to loathe the show-ring (or whatever they're trying to do) with a vengeance. The same principles abound in horse training, child raising, dog training, whatever...they're just translated to a different being. You know?? These basic principles are so natural to me that I find it frustrating when people don't look at the whole picture or try to find a better way to do things. My mind is drifting...hither and thither and yon, it looks for interesting things to latch onto subject-wise and is disappointed every time...siiiigh...
In that case, I only have a very short update. Tonight I'm making THIS. Om nom nom. You know who is coming over tonight as well. This makes me happeh. Isaac left on Saturday for Florida and arrived safely on Sunday. He was going to drive all the way through but ran into bad weather in Atlanta and had to stop three hours from Jacksonville for the night. Oy. But he's home and back to normal. While thinking of Isaac yesterday, I remembered that I had bought a $40 watercolor sketchbook last year, left it at his apartment, and haven't seen it since. Hmmm...he wants me to paint/draw him a picture of an Indian on a horse in the snow. I'll do it for free if he'll find me that sketchbook and mail it to me. XD (If you read this, Isaac, consider me getting ready to tell you next time you call) I just discovered an art contest that's going on February 11th...hmm...this shall have to be investigated. Time to look through my stuff and see what I can submit! Tell ya what, how about I ask you mysterious people reading my blog? What do you think I should submit? I can enter up to five pictures...I personally would probably go with: Friesian Mare Welsh Pony (Section C) Kazilik Dragon But I want to know what YOU guys think. What's your favorite painting or drawing that I've done recently? Remember, the deadline's the 11th so if I don't get any replies I'm going with my personal choices. Anyway...class is getting ready to start again, so I shall say 'adieu'. Don't forget to cast your vote!! Love, Da Fox |
Molly Rose
Multifacted obsessionist and all-around randomosity generator Journal
March 2011
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