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Archive for the ‘Photographs’ Category

Retrieving memories from the shoebox

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Morgus (maybe)

This is Morgus, my mom’s long-lived dog. I found him in a cemetery when he was a puppy. Ever since I got my digital photo scans back from ScanCafe, I had been thinking it was Newsted, the psychotic hound dog that I found outside my high school gymnasium.

Obviously, I shouldn’t be in charge of naming animals or making sure their stories live on in memory.

I have to highly recommend ScanCafe. They’ve scanned a few hundred old images for me over the past couple of months, with impressive results from 35mm negatives, color slides, and even Polaroid prints from the 1970s.

It’s beyond cool to see old pics that were formerly just laying around in boxes brought to life on the computer screen.

Also beyond cool: accurate recollections of names and faces. But I guess sometimes a girl can’t have it all.

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Shaggerty and the Bandit

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2009| 2 Comments »

Me on my wedding day

Me on my wedding day

My mom on her wedding day.

Mom on her wedding day

First of all, how much of a babe was my mom on her wedding day?

I was flipping through old photos on Mother’s Day, and it occurred to me that most brides get the same wedding-day advice from their mothers – stand up straight, blot your lipstick, don’t drink more than two glasses of champagne every hour, etc.

My mom didn’t load me down with nitpicking advice. On the way to the ceremony site, she sat next to me and explained that she really liked my fiance and thought he was the perfect man for me. She added, though, that if I had any idea that I didn’t want to get married, for any reason at all, then we would just keep driving.

I was never clear whether this “we” included my future father-in-law, who was chauffeuring us both around. My mom is the queen of Plan B, so for all I know she had a black Trans Am hidden behind a billboard, ready to make our getaway a la “Smokey and the Bandit.”

Trust me, if the woman ever got behind the wheel of a V8 muscle car, no one would catch up to her until she hit the Texas state line.

I didn’t take her up on her offer, and neither one of us has regretted it. If I hadn’t married my fiance, I think she may have tried to adopt him.

I don’t know that I ever told her how much I appreciated the thought, though, knowing full well that she was willing to risk a museum full of angry out-of-town relatives if I needed an out. And if I had to let anybody drive 130 miles an hour while I was stripping off wedding gown parts and letting them fly into the wind, it would be my mom.

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Mississippi Snowing

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , on May 7, 2009| 1 Comment »

Snow crows

Snow Crows

Yes, WPOFD, I have seen snow. As you can see from the plastic bags that my brother and I are wearing over our shoes, however, my family wasn’t very good at snow.

Note that I rocked the outerwear early on. I’m loving that plaid coat.

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King Cake Fail

Posted in Photographs on February 26, 2009| 7 Comments »

Revenge of the King-Cake Babies

I was positively stoked my first year in Huntsville when I discovered that the local Publix carried king cakes. Having spent the last 10 years in Mobile, I expected the days leading up to Mardi Gras to involve at least a couple pieces of this delicacy, which is pretty much a giant cinnamon roll covered in colored icing and sugar.

The king cake carries with it a great responsibility: Whoever gets the tiny plastic baby hidden inside is obligated to buy the next cake.

Upon opening the box for this year’s king cake, I discovered what has to be the biggest plastic baby in the history of king cakes. It’s probably three times the size of a normal plastic baby.

Obviously, some chowhound either chipped a tooth or choked on a tiny plastic baby in the last few years, causing corporate lawyers to advise Publix to go for the big-boned, more easily discovered plastic babies. And there’s the rub: How do you hide a plastic baby that’s the size of a dessert fork in a piece of cinnamon roll?

No common sense, corporate policy run amok, blah blah blah. The best part of this post was going to be the awesome photo juxtaposing the emergency backup king-cake baby (yes, I have backup king-cake babies) and the family-size king-cake baby. Unfortunately, I had forgotten how nearly impossible it is to take a good picture of these oddities.

Several years ago, while helping co-workers plan a Mardi Gras photo shoot, we got the bright idea to spread a ton of king-cake babies out as a backdrop. Turns out a couple hundred king-cake babies make for a scene that really tests the definition of creepy. Plus, their pale pink, shiny surfaces makes them a chore to properly light.

So I have no idea that you can even see how ridiculous this humongous king-cake baby is. But at least you know where to find a few tiny king-cake babies if you need them.

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My mom’s excellent taste in men

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , , , on December 17, 2008| 1 Comment »

Jerrel

This is Jerrel. When I tell a story that involves him, I’ll often call him my stepdad to save an explanation of my mom’s living arrangements and romantic life. More accurate wording is “my mom’s boyfriend,” since they’ve both been married a couple of times and aren’t interested in signing up for that particular institution again.

He’s so much more than a boyfriend, though, that I need another word to describe his role in my mom’s life:

  • He’s the man who drove my mom across two states when she received word that her father was dying, and then did everything he could to make things easier for her.
  • He’s the partner who quickly and calmly called for help when she woke up in the middle of a still-unexplained late-night seizure. He remained at her bedside at the hospital until the worst had passed.
  • He’s the brave soul who navigated a path through some 60 miles of storm debris two days after Hurricane Katrina to bring my mom to check on me and my husband. He also detoured to check on my in-laws.
  • He’s the homeowner who has added on to make room for my mom and her vast collection of shoes.
  • He’s the two-stepper who has danced with my mom countless times.
  • He’s the enabler who has helped her maintain her habit of spoiling small, bad dogs.

In short, he’s the guy who keeps her happy. And what more could I want in my mom’s boyfriend?

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A Week of Why, Part II

Posted in Photographs on November 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »

verticalBecause he totally went first during vertical caving class.

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Day of doom is here

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , on October 24, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Dear Creature Scratching Around in my Attic at 3:30 a.m.:

Meet Yang. He will crush you, see you driven before him, and hear the lamentations of your women.

Come on downstairs for some cat food and water. He’s looking forward to meeting you.

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Season of the not-quite-as-bad cat

Posted in Photographs on October 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »

It got cold enough this weekend to break out the heated mattress pad, meaning that until spring I can enjoy blissful sleep until approximately 7:30 a.m. on the weekends.

Yin, above left, The Cat Who Cares, spends most mornings during the warmer seasons doing his best to get me up at 5:30 every morning. Yang, The Cat Who Couldn’t Care Less What You Do All Morning, sleeps in regardless of the weather.

The heated mattress pad keeps Yin in snuggly comfort for a couple more hours in the a.m. Maybe it’s the electromagnetic field.

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Goats of Wrath

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , , , on October 15, 2008| 3 Comments »


I don’t have a thing for goats. Really. The photo at the top of this blog just struck me as a cool image, a unique moment in time.

The husband and I had just finished making our way through a north Alabama corn maze (an especially bad idea, given that I grew up spending summers on a Mississippi farm and knew how miserable a cornfield was in August). Making our way back to the car, we stopped at the advertised “goat walk,” and this is what we found. A lone goat on an elevated walkway. He wasn’t picking stocks or diving into a plastic pool. He was just walking. On the goat walk.

When I was about 2 years old, I’m told, I developed a terrific fear of goats. I got my signals crossed with the “Billy Goats Gruff” fairy tale and thought that goats were the bad guys. This may or may not have had anything to do with my grandfather, whose story embellishments were legendary.

At any rate, my fear of goats led me to pull my feet up anytime I sat down, proclaiming that the billy goats were going to get me. This lasted until my dad took me to the nearest petting zoo and introduced me to the goats, decidedly non-scary furry creatures. My phobia was cured.

So goats and I go back a long way.

The goat on the goat walk seemed a little embarrassed, like he knew how ridiculous the whole contraption really was, how futile it was to be part of a rural circus put on for city folk. I felt a little embarrassed for him, too.

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