Tag Archives: family

we are back for a while

Posted on by
Reply

we are back from the frozen wastelands of slightly-north-of-here. despite being this far north (relative to the residences of many of my readers), this was our first “truly white” Christmas in several years. yeah, yeah, yeah…there’s been snow on the ground the last few years…snow like somebody went and opened a fifty-pound bag of flour over every square mile. this year, there were actually a few inches of sun-and-wind-skinned snow setting, and some appreciable drifts courtesy of the wind.

it was an early Christmas this year, thanks once again to the sisters’ conflicting work schedules. one of my brothers-in-law got half the family sick because of something he brought along with him after having gotten it from one of his kids. so our short, early Christmas rapidly became a care center for the stricken: my other brother-in-law, my son, and both of my parents-in-law. i knock on wood several times a day.

i am trying to pump out the blog transfer for the otherwhirled and synthaetica, but i have experienced a wordpress import problem that may ultimately require me to do the import directly from the database. in fact, i should probably just do that and scrub the support ticket. it’s been a while since i did something completely databasey, anyway.

and, for what it’s worth, i know this will eventually come up in searches for wordpress+'import & problem'which is by no means the point of this post. but in case that happens, i hope you read down to this to discover me saying “the wordpress import problem is probably somewhere in my php.ini, the default installation of which is an excellent example of too much information in the way of code-comments provided in the file.” because if it wouldn’t be such a butt-pain to read without all the comments, but my limited understanding of regular expressions keeps me from making that available in any sort of responsible, feasible time. besides which, i’m not really confident of the intrinsic, ongoing, and long-term benefit of seeing that file as just a bunch of settings with no explanations. heh. i’ll just have to sit down and read the whole damn thing one of these days, but….*yawn*….

anyway, we are back, except for #1 Daughter, who is continuing her annual stay with her grandparents, who always enjoy her company. she’ll be coming back on New Year’s Eve, i believe. and we are back, but will quite likely be moving—out of this house at a very likely minimum, and possibly even out of the state. it’s all rather hypothetical right now, but the bottom lines are fairly simple. the Spouse Unit is getting laid off where she works, and some of her best job opportunities could potentially lead us to “follow the money” to places as far apart as Santa Clara, CA to Colorado Springs, CO to Minneapolis, MN to somewhere in Florida. Colorado Springs would be our preferred area if our current location isn’t an option, although Minneapolis would put us closer to the Spouse Unit’s sisters.

but even that aside, the other bottom line is the fact that even after putting a lot of money down on this house when we moved here, the inherent limitations on how much i can make when working almost entirely alone coupled with the fact that companies out here do not come even close to compensating intelligent, well-educated females for what they’re actually worth is forcing us to consider selling this house and moving into town. None of us want to do that, but since we put so much down on the house (which was actually a very good idea on the time, just one that was based primarily on the expectation that it’d take the Spouse Unit about six months to get hired. instead, it took almost 18. and then her layoff comes at the bottom of the bell curve of my business cycle (not many people get married in the winter, and soccer’s not a good game when it’s less than 40 degrees. cold-weather injuries are a bitch).

from the front porch of the base camp © 2007 Dawnne so, it looks very strongly like we’re moving. we just have to figure out how not to make it an entirely bad thing for #1 Son and #1 Daughter. the photo is from our current front porch just this morning. several retouch methods, obviously. predictably, with the prospect of moving looming over us, i will be more inclined to document the views for what little time i have remaining.

congratulations to my father, by the way. it took the VA until just this past Monday to finally award him 50% disability with back-pay. it should have been at least 75%, but now that he has finally been awarded something, the paperwork, while considerable, is much easier to file. i’m glad you finally got something out of them, Dad. hang in there!

The more things change…

Posted on by
2

…the more changed by them I become. Or more properly, the more a certain level abstraction becomes more prevalent in my life.

The Elder and Unknown is no longer Unknown to me. “Elder and Unknown” was always a bit of a misnomer anyway, because I have been very aware of who she was and how she’s been doing, through her contact with my mother, and over the past year, with the Spouse Unit and even #1 Son. But, she contacted me directly yesterday, and so now I need to think of another way to refer to her without saying her name.

{I can’t refer to her as the Prodigal Daughter (although it oddly came to mind), because I don’t like the biblical reference, and it would be a misattribution because she never left me (it was the other way around). Other appellations that immediately came to mind are identifiable as unkind towards her mother, and while the typical male tendency to think of things that way is irrefutable, I don’t actually harbor such ill will.

Then of course, I went and called the two kids I’ve had the honor of raising “#1 Son” and “#1 Daughter”. I realized even back then that this would create some confusion later on when “she” finally contacted me, but those appellations are very much correct. For all the obvious reasons, they do and must come first in my life. Not only do I owe them that, but somewhat ironically, i owe “her” and her brother that as well. So….what to do. Ah…

“Daughter Prime”…no, that sounds like something out of Star Trek. “Elder and…” No, let’s drop the “elder” thing. I read that in older writings (and, uh, yes I do that sometimes) and I sometimes feel like I’m writing about my grandmother or an aunt. “Daughter The First”. There we go. #1 Daughter gets to keep her functional ranking, and “she” gets to keep her order of precedence.}

Anyway, my first contact with Daughter the First was relatively brief. Of course, when I responded, I couldn’t resist saying more than was strictly necessary. Gawd, I hate my lack of self-control in that regard. Ann has been letting me read some of her emails her over her shoulder, but there was something very special about that email being written directly to me that I cannot really describe. Of course, given the distance, it’s not “She’s here now!”, but it’s something very similar, and I’m not sure I have the words for it. Her conversations with the Spouse Unit and Mom have always been polite and often quite entertaining, and through those messages, I have seen glimpses of a young lady who is going to make a phenomenal adult. To have that engaging personality…that intelligence…that level of insight…that will…turned towards me was wonderfully intriguing, and I’ll admit: even a bit intimidating. She was very forthright with me in telling me that she’s never regretted her childhood and is proud of what it has helped form within her, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to ignore the facts that I wanted it to be different—so very different—and that I only left when it became obvious that such options were not going to be afforded me in a respectable way.

There were seven or eight times over the past decade-plus when I sat down and tried to compose what I thought should be my first words to her. I have kept most of them over the years, but one I wrote back in February, I may actually share with her. The rest, especially the oldest ones, were still too caught up in the typical acrimony that comes from a relatively biased reminiscence and the added angst of self-denial that comes from attempting to keep it all “objective”. The fact that I entirely changed my life for her and her brother, and ultimately for no functional recompense, doesn’t mean it should all be dumped on the shoulders of an eighteen-year-old young woman who has had enough troubles of her own.

Yesterday was a mixture of many emotions, many of them being inherently conflictive. By the end of the afternoon, I was elatedly melancholy: Elated because I had finally, after “all this time” (which ultimately isn’t very long at all, but still which constitutes just slightly less than half my life) been afforded the opportunity to speak directly with my daughter, and melancholy because I still haven’t heard her voice, and because it will be quite some time before I can finally see her and truly get to know her as the person she is becoming.

But it was certainly a good beginning, and I need to quit thinking too much.

and then, all of a sudden, it’s “tomorrow”

Posted on by
Reply

I have several important things to do today, but when I woke up this morning and realized it’s the fifteenth of October, my stomach lurched a bit. That was a surprisingly fast eighteen days since I last noted the date on the calendar in relation to tomorrow’s date and the importance of it, so here I am the day before the Elder and Unknown’s eighteenth birthday and I am, in several ways, unprepared for it. The story of my life, I suppose. I have this wondrous capacity for being able to WAY overthink a situation for days, weeks, months or years on end, only to be frightfully unprepared for it when it finally happens.

Except I’m really not unprepared. I just wish I could legitimately spend the day in some level of focused concentration on it. I’ll have to put that off until tonight, though. Today, I have to straighten out an issue with my driver’s license (referred to in the previous post) and I have a doctor’s appointment early this afternoon to see if we can figure out what is going on with this insidiously pervasive tinnitus in my right ear that I can’t seem to get rid of. I would say something vapid like, “It’s driving me crazy,” but we all know that is a) a rather short drive, and b) redundant, because I’m already there. Atop that, I have a wedding to finish up, now that I have the computers and processing space back in working order so that my workflow is back on track. #1 Son and I are both supposed to referee tonight, but the seemingly incessant rain down here (most of which I missed while up in Aberdeen) will likely have the fields so soggy as to be unplayable. I have to admit that with the High School season being over, I’m about two shakes from being ready for the rec league schedule to be over as well. I very much enjoy refereeing the younger kids, but I’m tired.

Wow, how was that for a long-ass paragraph with virtually no cohesion? Sorry, Bing. I was well educated, but I get lazy.

So, tomorrow is her eighteenth birthday. A funny thing: I honestly cannot remember what I did to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, and at the time, in Texas, that was full, legal adulthood like 21 is now. But I really don’t remember doing anything special. I hope the Elder and Unknown gets to do something special and memorable on her eighteenth birthday, and I hope it’s basically meaningful for her. But I could say a hundred million other things like that, and they would be basically as personally frustrating for me. For in truth, all I really want is to be able to let her know, personally, how much she will always be such a fundamental part of me.

But, I will wait. I’ve waited this long, after all. So, what, really is the difference?

She begins her nineteenth year tomorrow, and nineteen is the number of the Sun. I wonder what her radiant light shall be, and what she shall become. Whatever the answers to those questions, I hope she knows that she is loved beyond imagining, and not just by the ones whom she currently knows.

Non-Random Observations That Seem Random

Posted on by
Reply

(© 2007 Dawnne Gee) I have not had a good summer and early fall. Not that I mean to complain, or even excuse myself. I’m behind on work, I’m behind on some personal goals, and there were some projects that #1 Son and I had intended to complete this summer, and here it is a week after the first frost, and not only are those projects not finished, but they were never begun. Naturally, I beat myself up over this virtually all day every day, but I’ll get over it.

One of the reasons I feel like I’m riding the fine line between depression and simple angst is because I’m continually tired. I’m in pretty good physical shape (heck, thanks to taking up TaeKwonDo last winter with #1 Son, I’m in much better shape today than I was last December), but we simply don’t have enough referees out here to cover all the soccer games that are going on. As one of the instructors, I’m going to have to help come up with a way to curtail our attrition and to recruit more adults into serving The Game. For the past several weeks, I’ve averaged 13 or 14 games every six days, and most of those being High School or Men’s League.

Eh. Waaaah. I’m tired, go figure. Sorry, I don’t mean to whine. But it’s somewhat relevant to everything else that’s going on. Try as I may to get enough sleep, eat right, and stretch before and after games, I’m still getting up tired each morning. It’ll thankfully be over in a few more weeks, but in the meantime, I worry about what I’m doing to my liver with so much ibuprofen in my system, heh.

I’ve got another wedding to shoot tomorrow, and I get to meet the Power and Influence behind tramplingrose first, which is kind of cool. We’re going to do coffee together before I head over to “Touchdown Jesus” to shoot the wedding. In my previous visits to Brookings, SD, I don’t recall having seen this particular church, so I’ll make sure to get a good shot of it for all my photoshoppy friends to play with. ;-)

Which reminds me, I guess I better make sure all the camera batteries are fully charged.

I’m sorry I haven’t gotten more kitten photos uploaded. They sure are growing fast. It’s pretty hard to shoot ‘em playing when there’s not someone else around to keep them somewhat together and focused, and they have, for the most part, taken the fine advice of the older cats and pretty much snooze when it’s only me around. And in the evenings, as you know, I’m usually out refereeing, often with #1 Son, and it’s even harder to shoot then, heh.

I’m hoping that come the end of October, I’ll essentially be caught up on everything and moving forward again with some of my personal goals, which include the redo of our business site, and finishing some metaphysical studies. I really do want to incorporate the metaphysical stuff up here to a greater degree. It’s not quite what most people think it is. I’m certainly by no means one of those overtly-esoteric patchouli-smelling who does little more than philosophize on everything to the abject ignorance of reality, but I do find some interesting insights to the world we live in and life in general that aren’t really found by other means.

The photograph is from late last January, the morning after an overnight storm which rimed all the trees and plants from the south (left). I always get in these kind of moods before winter.

Anyway, wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, do it well. Peace to you all.

talking shop and hair loss

Posted on by
Reply

i hate days like today.

work-days like today, that is.

Thomas Knoll, who is one the extreme end of “genius” in my mind, and who writes the Camera Raw specification for Adobe, has unfortunately flinched a couple of times in the past. The end result being that “automatic” settings for digital photos taken a couple of years ago are by no remote means today, how they looked a couple of years ago. Which, since my business model encourages brides and grooms to come back on their first anniversaries or whenever to get their wedding albums, means that i have to spend an entire workday reprocessing over thirteen thousand photographs from 2005 alone—and that’s just weddings. well, not necessarily each file, but those i left as “automatic” because it seemed to provide the best mix of shadow, highlight, contrast, and….gah….a myriad of other settings that i would rather not have to readdress after such a long time.

that having been said, though, i’m thoroughly pleased with how the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw works, both in Lightroom and PhotoShop, so what the hell. it’s a bit inconvenient, but i’ll get over it….and myself.

the rest of today has been cool. we haven’t heard from The Elder and Unknown in a while, but that’s okay; she has her own reality to deal with, and i’m sure juggling her mother’s feelings about “all that” haven’t exactly been easy….or comfortable. the other two beasts….er….children are doing just fine. i think we’ve found a better place for #1 Son to go to school next year, and the program they have in place for #1 Daughter will support her for another three years.

so, while the computer sat and churned for roughly three hours, re-ingesting and meta-tagging thirteen thousand-plus photographs, i got a wild hair up my ass and shaved all my facial hair. it’s been a while since i did that—summer of 2005, in fact. i hate being predictable. #1 Son says i look old. #1 Daughter says i look young. pfft. whatever. the cats still love me.

things i would say (i)

Posted on by
Reply

(…and maybe will someday, for that matter)

i am very proud of The Elder and Unknown. she contacted the Spouse-Unit after our return home and apologized to her for not being able to meet with her. she has apparently been open with her mother and step-father about the Spouse Unit’s and #1 Son’s contact with her, and that has predictably created some upheaval in their household. i’m proud of her because she has been honest and forthright about all this with her family. at her age, i would have found some way to screw this type of thing up.

heck, at 22, i did screw this type of thing up.

and i still struggle emotionally with wanting to contact her. honoring the law behind the release of rights that i signed in her regard, as well as the social contract that represents between myself and her parents, continues to win, though. i doubt my contacting her now, despite her positive responses to the Spouse-Unit and #1 Son, would really “help” her in any way.

and i’ve waited this long.

if i could talk to her, i would tell her that i’m proud of her, like i just said. i would also try to make it clear that i never intended this to be so hard on her. irresponsibility has many ramifications, and most of them verged beyond my control to rectify or mitigate once i understood that i wasn’t going to be given a real chance to rectify or mitigate them.

i would tell her that she always has a place here, both in our hearts and in our home, should she ever desire to get to know us. i would tell her that she has always been a part of us.

and i would remind her, in case she hadn’t figured it out yet, that i was a complete jackass when she was born, so her mother’s fears in her meeting us and taking her rightful place in our family is only justified if you accept the belief that people don’t evolve, mature, and progress from the states they were in when last they were known to you.

The Land of Nostalgia and What If (iii)

Posted on by
Reply

long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my first love was Music, and She was mine i was Hers. those who received a copy of “the sabre” may remember that quite a few of those 333 poems made references to musical inspiration. as well, and undocumented, many of those “poems” were lyrics i created to remember melodies that i didn’t have the time or equipment to otherwise record.

{and yeah, on a side note, the number 333 was significant, because i consider myself only half evil. shut up.}

the ghost that i laid to rest, and which i’ve honestly not discussed with anyone yet, was a surprising ghost to revisit and to now have at ease, for it was a ghost in the form of a blockage. meeting up with this ghost was neither foreseen nor planned, and now creates an interesting conundrum for me. i already find myself once again driving around and humming to myself instead of listening to the radio. anybody got a decent midi keyboard they want to donate to the cause? it ain’t like i’m allowed to buy photographic equipment these days, let alone musical stuff. i have songs in my head again, and many of them were originally composed when i was somewhere between the ages of 10 and 18, riding on my bike in my old neighborhood.

The view going south down Mertz Avenue at Senova Street. The title given to this photo in the popup is from Simple Mind’s “This Earth That You Walk Upon”, one of my favorite songs at the time I left San Antonio (most memories associated with this song are actually from Austin, though), and which literally happened to come up in my playlist rotation while I was writing this.

so, as i already stated, and as you have probably already guessed, i went by the house i grew up in. it’s a humorously eclectic thing i do, this working in numbers. i drove by the house exactly three times. it’s effectively been twenty-one years since i was there (in fact, i got a kick out of telling people i was last in San Antonio an “adult ago”—think about it….), which is the seventh third (or the third seventh, if you prefer). either way, basic primes hold a relevance for me for many reasons. numerologically speaking, 3 is the number which relates to resurrection, revival and rejuvenation and 7 is the law of motion. any other Jungian correlations are strictly intentional (so there, hah!)

my first drive down Teakwood Lane was a bit disconcerting. during my last couple of years of high school, there was a field across Jones-Maltsberger Road from us that used to have baseball fields when i was younger, and which was being built up. in fact, the construction site itself became a haunt of mine, but since i have fonder memories of being much younger, i found that having the whole area between Jones-Maltsberger and the MacAllister Freeway built up to be just kind of sad.

the tree on the left of these photos and i used to have a great relationship, despite my falling out of it one year. the big knot up front was depressing to see. when i was last there for a brief drive-by when i brought The Elder and Unknown and her mother home back in 1990, that was a fresh cut. the limb-that-used-to-be was a handy foothold, and thus a launchpad for many a youthful excursion in responsibility-evasion.

i took these two photos on the second drive-by. anxious at the potential of accidentally running into my adoptives, i didn’t really have the camera setup for high-speed snaps while moving on the first drive-by, and while i see now that those photos were easily correctable, i wasn’t confident of that at the time.

on the third drive-by, which was just after i met with Sherri briefly out at MacArthur Park, my adoptive father was home, standing in the window of the den (under the carport) and talking on the phone. in the space of a second or slightly more, i thought and re-thought about stopping approximately seven times, while simultaneously setting the camera down. i luckily managed not to rear-end a parked car on the side of the street and called it quits and went on back downtown to the Spouse-Unit .

it was just a brief glance, but it was far more disconcerting than seeing the commercialization of a formerly relatively open field. the image hasn’t been in my dreams as of yet, but i’m sure it will be soon enough

The Land of Nostalgia and What If (ii)

Posted on by
Reply

Sherri (who sadly falls into the category of “old friend”) has been bugging me about how the trip went for me. sadly, i am still assimilating it. she also thinks the “installment method” sucks. oh well. there’s always a critic somewhere. responsibilities aside, the reason why i’m doing the installment thing is because one post would be terribly long, and i’m told i’m better when taken in smaller doses.

so….hrm….where to start with this one?

i guess i’ve already noted the most important part: we didn’t get to meet The Elder and Unknown after all. she won’t be getting her driver’s license until her 18th birthday, and since she is living again with her mother and step-father, her personal freedom is anything but expansive. the Spouse-Unit did call her and talk with her a bit, which i think was odd for both of them, but pleasant as well. i think it meant a lot to The Elder and Unknown that we did try to meet with her. the Spouse-Unit says she didn’t sound too terribly Texan, so i guess there’s hope for her future! (oh, me SO funny).

we stayed at the Hyatt downtown along the River Walk, as i mentioned before. it looks something like this from the River level, and this is the inside of the hotel. the last time i was there was my senior year of high school for the Texas State Choir concert. they made us all stay there, even though some of us were from San Antonio. talk about blurred memories! (in a positive way!)

our room was on the second floor (which because of two floors of conference and meetings rooms, is actually the fourth floor), but i did go up top and take some photos looking down. a little over halfway up on this photo, just right of center, one floor is jogged in a little to the right. right there was the room we stayed in.

when i have the time to get a gallery of photos from the trip up online, you’ll see that i frequently pretended #1 Daughter and #1 Son were along, and i tried to capture things i knew they’d like to see. however, when i get that gallery up, i know i’m going to be asked to get other galleries up, so i have to go carefully with these things. wedding season approacheth, and all that….

this was taken a few minutes prior to the photo i included upon my return—the bridge down there being where i took that photo from. this part of the River Walk is not a natural part of the river. i think it was made sometime during the 1970′s. just past that bridge and to the right, is the Convention Center. to the left is some sort of shopping extravaganza from hell that didn’t exist when i was growing up….er….getting older….down there. it was under construction when i briefly returned to San Antonio after Basic Training. like any mall, it has a cheap food court, so the Spouse-Unit and i ate over there a couple of times.

so, i guess that’s enough tap-dancing around impressions of the place while playing tour guide to my semi-nostalgic reminiscences.

to be honest, i could have driven around San Antonio anywhere i wantedd (traffic and reconstruction endeavors allowing, of course), but i didn’t. on the initial drive in from the airport downtown to the Hyatt, it was immediately clear that we were simply visiting some big-ass city. since in so many other interpretations i wasn’t coming home, i slipped into a comfortable tourist mode. the Spouse-Unit and i had to do the same thing over the summer when we visited Albuquerque. the River Walk was “safer” in that regard: it’s changed a bit, and a couple of the restaurants i liked back then no longer exist. but even with those changes and the construction on some parts of it, it felt a lot more homier than anywhere else i visited. plus being so picturesque, it was much more personally gratifying to hang out down there and shoot than slog around in the traffic and try to catch brief glimpses of half-remembered places.

i did go back to my old neighborhood, and will probably write about that little excursion next. like everything else, it had changed a lot. i drove by old schools and places where i used to hang out: all measurably changed, not that i expected anything else. change is always noticeable when you aren’t in the middle of it happening. but since i was pretty young when i left, and hadn’t really been driving all that long either, my memories of San Antonio are ultimately pretty confined to downtown, my old neighborhood (several square miles if you include where we lived across to where i went to school and where many of my friends lived), Loop 410, places i went to church, the Mission Trail, etc.

actually, i remember more detail about Albuquerque than i do San Antonio, and i spent barely 1/3 of the amount of time there. San Antonio has just become so huge, i wonder if, unless you live there or visit frequently, it’s really much like coming home for anyone. extrapolating from the 2000 Census, the city is pretty close to twice as populated as it was when i left back in the mid-1980′s, and it shows no signs of slowing down. ah….progress….

i used this lens a lot along the River Walk, largely because it’s representative of my memories of growing up down there. an inherent myopia and a type of fixation that was rarely exactly on center. the particular location i shot this from makes it look like i was on a boat myself, but i wasn’t, nor was i in the water (ew! yes, it really is that green without any early Saint Paddie’s Day shenanigans).

it might be fun to take the kids down there someday, but that would probably be more of a Six Flags/Sea World kind of thing—which brings to mind that those places didn’t exist while i was growing up there, either. i’m glad i went along with the Spouse-Unit on this trip, though. i seem to have finally laid to rest at least one old ghost (i’ll write about that later), and seeing the changes to some of the places that used to haunt my dreams has brought me at least a little peace.