when in doubt, shift your focus

The day dawned foggy. How do I know, as a Non Morning Person? Because of the incessant complaining of one Charlie, who finally persuaded me to feed him at the absurdly late (by his standards) hour of 6:20am.

After which, I assure you, I went back to bed.

I have a confession to make. Lately, I have noticed that my moods match the weather. It was a gloomy kind of day, and I nearly veered into gloominess myself. BUT! I used my ninja skills, and managed to steer my personal vibe-mobile into “ahh, what a nice mellow day” territory instead. I was helped in this endeavor by the following:

• Reiki
• Harry Potter Vol. VII ((in preparation for the film)
• Michael humming randomly to himself as he wrought additional destruction in the bathroom
• Miles Davis
• The usual meanderings with the camera

Bathroom Project

That rag-stuffed hole on the left is where the toilet – or “crapper” as we are currently referring to it – used to be. It’s moving over to the right a few inches. So here’s Michael making way for it. Such fun! Almost as much fun as cutting into the floor so as to be able to shift the pipes over.

Michael also shifted around a bunch of that old pink fiberglass insulation to insulate the exterior walls. It’s a good thing we haven’t made a dump run yet with all the crap that’s accumulating in the garage, because it’s not always crap…not if you can re-use it, as he’s doing with the insulation.

He also started prepping the pipes to be reconfigured to fit inside the newer, shorter vanity. See how they’re cut? They used to make a 90 degree turn to the right.

Our Hero uses an incredible assortment of gizmos and whatsits for this gig.

He tells us that tomorrow will be a big day – the new vanity will go in.

Onwards to Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw.

We’ll begin with … drum roll, please…Water Droplets.

This is the fluffly explosion stage of something I’ve seen before, but smothered in tiny beads of water, which I hadn’t seen until I got the pictures up on the computer. I thought at the time it might be unmelted snow.

Along the edge of the shared driveway, there is something I tentatively identified a while back as something minty. It’s one of the few green things left around here. And it turns out it’s quite hairy.

These next few are blurry – it’s the best I could do – I haven’t mastered the art of forcing the camera to focus on particular things. I watch it think about it, and shift gears from focusing on what I want, to what I don’t want, but I don’t know how to control it. Maybe I should look at the manual. What a concept.

Just by way of example, the photo below is the same shot as the one above, but it’s focused deep in the background. The twig and its drop of water show up just as blurriness.

Somewhere there is a deep analogy in here – something about if you’re experiencing blurriness in your overall outlook, maybe you need to rummage around with your focus…

Squiggly Vine Things

 

I never realized that the edges of this kind of fern’s leaves have tiny spikes, until I got a shot from below of the underside. From above…

 

…and from below.

 

More Moss and Lichen Porn (cause you can never have enough of that, and, bonus, it’s safe for all ages!)

Yeah, so anyway, just about 20 minutes or so outside completely re-integrated me, body, mind, and soul.

And, in a final accomplishment for the day…I conquered my irrational intimidation of pie crusts. You might recall I made my first batch of pie dough (the “real” kind) the other day. It’s been waiting in the fridge ever since. This evening, I brought out the rolling pin.

 

Now watch these moves:

My first ever, from scratch, apple pie. Yay! It’s not the prettiest, but so what? It sure is tasty!