you know what they say, its the journey that counts

I've just returned from a Very Important Roadtrip--a trip I can already tell is one of those life-changing events.

It wasn't just the destination that was so important, although going to an art opening was up there among the best things I've done; rather it was the journey. It was meeting with my women friends (that I've known nearly 10 years but have never met). It was HAVING women friends.

I've never really gotten along with other women when I was growing up. It was a feeling of not being popular or fashionable or pretty or thin enough to matter in the eternal competition among the female species to attract the male species. It was watching women flirt outrageously with my very handsome musician husband... women who, when our marriage crumbled, spoke sympathetically to my face and then I overhear them say, 'good, that means he's available' when they turn away. Women like the one my husband always criticized for her sleeping around yet she's the one he goes off with.

I gravitated towards the guys because they seemed easy to talk with, and, growing up with only brothers, I was used to them and the way they dealt with life (by not dealing with life).

Unfortunately, I carried that over into my adult years. One of the BLESSINGS of getting older is to be free of that emotional, soul-killing race!!! Somewhere along the way, women became allies and I never really realized it until now. I have many women 'friends', and while there are still many of them out there trying to attract a man--any man, there are so many more that are happy within themselves and have gotten on with the business of Real Life.

Meeting with Liz (for the second time) and Sue and Cathy, driving 8-9 hours to see Sue's solo show; that was wonderful! It was sharing a room and a couple days with Cathy and Liz...of eating together, shopping together and sitting in the motel room til all hours in the morning, sharing all that we'd bought and talking and laughing together...it was, as they say, priceless.

st patty's day

My friend called and asked if I wanted to go downtown to the St. Patrick's Day parade. Having a dislike of intense [drunk] crowds where there is a lot of drinking [did I mention drunks?], I've never gone to it before but hey, there's a first time for everything and I had nothing else terribly pressing that day that couldn't wait til the next day.

I love going downtown if I don't have to worry about parking. I like walking around window shopping, people watching, and searching out unusual architectural details-of which there's a lot. Cleveland has more old buildings still standing and it's fun to search them out.

We arrived at Tower City, the refurbished building that once housed the train and bus terminals and still holds RTA-our cable car, transit, train, Metro-whatever you want to call it, they all end at the Tower City Terminal on Public Square. As we were walking out, the ornate windows framed the newer buildings outside and it made a neat picture but, try as I might, I couldn't get the inside and outside to expose at the same time. I knocked off a few shots of the different windows and we left.

Here's the photo of the inside of the terminal. I'm learning my way around photoshop lately and am getting pretty good at some things...to the point where I can take a person's smiling face from one shot and cover the one with their eyes half closed in the other shot.

In this picture, I took the window from the one photo and stuck it in the window of another shot. They were two different windows with two different angles so I had to play with the perspective. That turned out fine but there really should be just one light-I'm not good enough yet to clone out the second one when its in such a patterned area. I could have cropped the photo above the window, but then you'd lose the ornate ceiling, which is the point of the whole picture.

I would really like to go back and take the photo again-and this time, take the same window with both exposures.

After we left here, we were to meet our friends at the House of Blues where they were having free concerts all day.

This photo is of the pit in front of the stage-they were throwing beads and things out. It was loud and a bit crazy...no, it was LOUD and crazy. At one point, I had to move to around the corner as my chest hurt from the loud bass. I felt like my heart itself hurt from trying to beat against the pressure of those bass speakers.
I worked at the House of Blues last fall doing photography and I never saw it as crazy as this during any of the concerts. This was like a mini-spring break. One girl in the front row took her T-shirt off and tossed it to the DJ-a DJ for Pete's sake, not even a live band!-and kept dancing without a shirt on until he eventually tossed it back.
This shot shows the people (at a quieter point) but there were just so many people! (You can tell I haven't been out much lately)

After a while we left to watch the parade. No good pictures there, but I like the two I took of a couple vendors. Maybe that's more descriptive of what it's about anyway.


I love this last shot-the crowds of people streaming by, the look on the vendor's face...the hope of making a good buck and being disappointed..I so hope he made out later.

So that was my first St. Patrick's Day. And yes, I ate corned beef sandwich but no, I didn't drink any beer, green or otherwise.

But all I could think of was, all those empty bottles...

updates

i havent posted in quite a while. I've been spending my time working on jewelry for my urbanartifaks.etsy.com site and uploading fiber art to my other site jacqm.etsy.com.

thursday i got a call in the morning that my dad had tripped and fallen while over by my mom at the nursing home...he'd gotten himself up in the chair but then he passed out. they called 911 and finally revived him but his heart rate was in the low 40's. he began vomitting and his heart rate wouldn't go any higher so they took him in to the emergency room.

after a few hours of tests and X-rays, EKG's and all sorts of other things, the doctor mentioned a pacemaker.

i left him soon after and left a message for my brother to go see him, and spent most of the evening with my mother, trying to keep her mind off where he was...with her dementia, she no longer remembered what had happened, she only knew he wasnt there.

After that, i went to a concert i had made plans for just before this happened.

Next morning, i went to the hospital to discuss the pacemaker with my dad but he was all ready for it. they scheduled it for that afternoon. I went to the nursing home to check on my mother, then went back to the hospital to be there while my dad went in for his surgery since my brother couldnt make it.

surgery went well, and i stayed with him a bit after that...then i went back to the nursing home to keep my mom's mind off him still not being there with her. i left my brother a message that he'd better go visit dad that night, and thankfully, he did.

i went home and fell asleep for a while, then woke up and worked online until 5:30 (am). Slept again until 8:30.

Doctor called about 10am to say all was well and he could go home so i brought him home around 2pm. he decided to go straight to mom's and when we walked in there, she was so happy!

so that was my couple days...now dad has a pacemaker and he should do fine for another 10 years at least!

i just hope i can keep up with him.