Rock Haus

I want...

I want the sun to come out already. 10 days of rain is NOT helping my psyche.

I  want my upcoming long weekend in Chicago to NOT fly by in a nanosecond

I want to save enough to get the computer and camera i want by the end of the year (which with the new gig isn't completely out of the question)

Next year I want to spend 6 weeks in Europe

I want to show my Dad that I'm not just an immature whiny slacker by refusing to seek full time salary/benefits employment around here, to do this I must make something of this photo effort, pronto...but first need camera and computer...

I want to be published in a proper publication by the end of next year (by proper I mean one that people have heard of since nobody *I* know of reads Inside Counsel)

I want to lose another 10lbs

I want to shoot portraits again

I want to shoot live music again

I want to do the 365 project but just can't seem to stay on track with it for more than a few days.

I want to get a gallery/coffee house/living room of someone other than me just HANG MY WORK SOMEWHERE by years end

I want to assemble some semblance of a functional social circle around here so I don't feel so desperately alone and pathetic when I  find myself with absolutely nothing to do and all I want is to hang out and shoot the shit with someone who isn't my dad.

I want to be able to think about Mum without setting off down a dark and twisty path that leads me to a bad place or immediately driving any thought of her from my head so as to avoid the inevitable trip to the bad place.

I would like to think about getting out of this podunk shithole without overwhelming wave of guilt at the thought of leaving. Dad. all. alone. (this isn't something I plan any time soon, much as i would like my own place i want equipment and 6 weeks in Europe more)

I want to stop with the self doubt and crushing moments of "who the fuck am I kidding my work is garbage and behind my back they're all snickering at the idea I think it's any good, I should just accept that I did something awful in a past life and go find a nice soul killing administrative job", there are much shittier photographers than me who have done quite well for themselves.

I'm pretty sure I've posted this picture on here before but I still really like it and therefore don't care.

I want to stop making this list and go to the gym.

bye.

Well...since i't's been a month....

Where to start...

When we last left Lis, she was feeling mighty angsty, Mothers Day was a tough one, her birthday approached, she and Sluggo were circling the drain...

Fast forward one month:

The decision to run away for my birthday may have been my best decision of the year. I had an amazing time. Birthday dinner (sushi noms) with Cammille and Dave, a couple of v. fancy Martini's at the Clover Club. The next day was spent with Camille, Rachel and Paul Morrissey at Coney Island which is THE MOST AWESOME PLACE ON EARTH.

 I took lots of pictures, That night after a nice fish and chip dinner at The Chip Shop, had a couple of drinks with Richelle, who was in town for the paper show. The next day before my train we had a nice diner brunch, browsed a couple of shops, took a walk in Prospect Park...

I managed to pack a whole lot of awesome into a very short trip (OMG - I forgot about the B&H store - holy crap if there was a Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory for Photographers, this would be it) and there wasn't even the slightest *hint* of self pity to be seen...

Having returned renewed and refreshed, well...hmm..

I got a second job, part time office manager, just started yesterday. It isn't the least bit interesting but pays better than any PT gig I've had before and should enable me to save the money I need for my new computer and camera - hopefully by years end. Still working the gym but cutting back a bit so I can at least have one whole day off a week, and I still don't have to be anywhere before 1 in the afternoon, those who know me are certain to understand that this is a significant advantage...

Bought a vendor space at Milltowns Return, will be hawking my photos of hotrods, I don't think I'll make a ton of money but I hope to break even. Also going to open up an Etsy shop, website should go live soon...at which point I will actively start trying to whore myself out. Went and shot at the 100percentkulture.com show a couple weeks back:

Sluggo and I are done, but I think we'll be friends, and that's a good thing, because he's pretty awesome. I should have known going in it was a bad idea, how many times have I declared NO MORE GEMINI MEN. When will I learn? They're just all so goddam compelling.They're sexy and funny and good fun to drink with, and in some cases, very good boyfriends to girls who are't me, but me? they DO NOT WANT.. Perhaps I've finally learned my lesson... If I say I'm gonna date another one, please, I INVITE YOU TO PUNCH ME IN THE FACE AS HARD AS YOU CAN. And yes, of course it's the gemini's, it's not me - I AM PERFECT IN CASE YOU HADN'T NOTICED.

I'm off to Chicago in a few weeks, can't come soon enough. After that I'm stuck here for a while as I try to save some cash, but Milltowns will be a weekend in lovely and glamorous Palmer MA, and I'm hoping to get a few folks to come out for it...

Er....yeah I guess that's about it...

reboot

So last week I was really letting my head crawl up my ass and getting all dark and twisty. A combination of really starting to miss Mum, the Mothers Day media smackdown, and my impending birthday, which was shaping up to be as awful if not worse than last years birthday, which was spent here and marked down in history as the WORST BIRTHDAY EVER. I was getting to feeling mighty sorry for myself..

I really can't stand myself when I get all BLAH BLAH BLAH

In the interest of getting out, shaking myself up, re-boot, refresh, change direction, decided to blow town for a couple of days for my birthday. It's my last birthday of my 30's, next year I turn 40 (OH MY GOD FOURTY *throws up slightly*) it can't suck. So on my birthday I'm getting on a train in the morning and heading to New York. I'm gonna visit Camille, maybe see Jayson, eat some good food, buy myself what i anticipate will be an extremely overpriced martini (maybe 2!) day after I'll be heading to Coney Island, which I've always wanted to see...dunno what else I'll get up to but I plan on taking lots of pictures. 

Weekend after I get back is a car show at Ralph's in Worcester, pretty psyched for that too.

so yeah that's where I'm at.

now what...

Mum has been gone for a month today. I miss her. I realized yesterday just how much. THere were times that that the only person I wanted to talk to about things was mum, yesterday was one of those times, and I realized she really was gone, and I felt so incredibly alone, and it was just devastated. At work! so that was fun. Thank god for locker rooms to hide in.

I miss her terribly, I mean in a lot of ways I've missed her for a long time, she wasn't herself for quite some time before she passed away, but she was still my mum and she was still there and at least if I needed them, hugs and reassurances were readily available. It's not like I don't have friends, I have an amazing group of friends and despite distance, they have been incredibly supportive, but still, not Mum. I don't know if I can really get used to the fact she isn't here anymore. When I really think about it it physically hurts in my guts. So I try not to dwell on it.

I have a good friend going through what I went through a month ago right now, with his father, we've been talking, it's hard because I know what he's going through, and I know there's nothing I can do or say that will make it any easier, I wish I could give him a hug.

Not much else to report, I work, I'm still working out a lot, I've lost some weight, so that's good. Things with Sluggo, well, we're still seeing one another but I'm not optimistic. I'd hoped with everything else that's gone on in the past 6 months he could be my gimme. Nope.

Dad is off in the UK until the 24th, it's nice having the place to myself. I miss living alone although I'm no longer used to *being* alone...

I went to the beach last week and took some pictures. I plan to do this a lot more...

I'm trying to figure out what my next move will be. I have no idea. I feel completely at sea.

This concludes your daily dose of glitter, happiness and kittens. Enjoy!

still here...

Mum has been gone for 2 weeks. I want very much to write about it but whenever I really think about it I realize that I still haven't wrapped my head around it and figured out to process it. Intellectually I accept it, emotionally I've packed it up in a box bearing a tag "open later". A healthy way to deal with something? I'm guessing probably not but it's working for me at the moment so there.

I have a lot of shit to figure out. I'll get back to you...

to update..

Mum passed away a week ago yesterday. The funeral was on Wednesday.

That's really all I can say on the matter right now.

this is why i came back here.

Mum is dying. The other morning it was wholly apparent she'd experienced another stroke, of a far greater magnitude than those prior. At first she was at least aware of us in the room and her eyes would follow us, but she couldn't talk. At the hospital she was given a blood transfusion and she became slightly more interactive, we left her that night in the ICU. We got a call around midnight saying her heartbeat had become erratic and her breathing labored. Her pacemaker sorted her heart out, and she's on oxygen, but since Mum is DNR that's all being done, no ventilator, no feeding tube, just oxygen and morphine. I completely support this decision. Even if Mum were to "bounce back" as a few Pollyana's suggested as a possibility, she's got nothing to bounce back to, she certainly couldn't come home, and my mothers greatest dread was that she would end up in a home like her mother.

To my mind, my mother is gone, she hasn't responded to anyone around her in over a day now, her eyes are open but her gaze is fixed, she isn't seeing anything we're just waiting for her body to catch up with her. She doesn't even look like my mother any more, she's aged about 20 years in 2 days, I can barely look at her.

I feel impossibly crass talking about her this way but I feel like I've lost my mother, but I can't mourn yet, I can't fall apart. I need to keep it together so Dad doesn't have to. Watching my Dad go through this may actually be the worst part of it, Dad is English, Dad is stoic, Dad is not a "i need a hug" kinda guy. Seeing my father break down in tears because he's slowly and excruciatingly losing his wife of over 40 years is possibly the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen in my life and I don't know how to help. we don't hug, we don't hold hands, all I can do is make tea, feed him, and bring him whiskey. I don't know what else to do.

I hope when I am old and hanging on by a thread like this that it will be legal to just put me to sleep. Am I the devil for saying that? I know my Mother wouldn't want to be like this, she wouldn't want people to see her like this, she wouldn't want Dad and I to go through this.

I've been tremendously moved by the outpouring of support that's come my way via twitter and facebook. If I didn't have my internet community, I don't know how I would cope. I have Marianne here, and Bob. Sluggo is definitely still in the picture but we're early days yet, I don't want to draw him in to something like this...but my virtual community has been amazing. I visited Baltimore last weekend and Molly Goatwax and I were talking about the phenomenon of social networking, and how it's like people are right there, as she departed the Mt. Royal Tavern the night before I left she said  "remember, I'm just in the next room", and I really feel like she is, like you all are, and really I don't know how I'd cope if you weren't. So thank you.

blabity blah

Happy irish get yer drink on wear a striped dr seuss hat and make a complete arse of yourself day.

Not so much for me. Wasn't a bad day, don't get me wrong, but my day mostly consisted of going to the gym, taking mum to coumadin clinic, making dinner, and going to work. Picked up some Jamies on the way home, had a nice whiskey soaked chat with Char Mar Superstar, and now I'm ready for bed. Tomorrow! Home help at 8:30 (which means I'm up at 7:45, then off to the wound clinic for mum's appligraph. Woo! good times!)

to update...

So yeah it seems resolution of writing every day here has gone right in the crapper...oh well...

On the bright side, if we're gonna talk about resolutions, I *have* lost about 7 lbs, approaching mid march maybe it should be more, but I'm just gonna pretend it's the whole muscle/fat ratio, muscle weighs more than fat etc etc...I'm still working on eating better but it's tricky in my situation...and if mum wants chicken wings for dinner I certainly can't deny that, sure I don't need to eat them too, but that would be rude...I'm also getting published, not in an exciting way or anything, but one of the shots I took for inside counsel is being republished in the Georgetown alumni magazine. Also, number 6 can be scratched off the list...

I'm heading to Baltimore weekend after next, glad for that, can't wait to see folks, eat some sushi, drink some beer. Big boo hiss Tony Waddy isn't performing that weekend, but I will still get to see all my peeps, have some drinks, eat some good food, take some pictures, and not deal with old people for a few days.

Still haven't run Sluggo off, still think he's the cats pajamas.

I think that's all there is...

Still...cough

But i'm feeling better, cough is easing, more productive (I know, gross). Hopefully soon I can do more than 15 minutes of cardio before I start feeling like I can't breathe. Added the gravitron  to my circuit, I'm a total pussy and barely work with 40lbs on this thing but still oh my god the hurty boobal area. Ouch. Upside is, everyting that hurts is stuff that needs work, hopefully, it's working.

Today I"m making ribs. I've been trying to eat better, yesterday when I made sheperds pie for mum and dad, I made a vegetarian interpretation for myself with red lentils, corn, peas, chick peas, swiss chard, and a butternut squash topping, flavoured with a little curry, OH LAWD NOM NOM! But today I eat ribs. Guess that means salad for lunch.

Isn't all this fascinating? According to my stats maybe 4 people are reading this these days, so really I'm just gonna ramble about whatever I feel like.

Saw Watchmen with Sluggo the other night, he's read the book etc, I knew nothing of it. I didn't hate it. I do feel however Dr. Manhattan could have put on some pants. YES I KNOW HE DIDN'T HAVE PANTS IN THE BOOK...doesn't mean i want to spend nearly 3 hours looking at smurf blue junk. Pants. I stand by it.Rogue dangly bits aside, good flick, Jeffrey Dean Morgan was pretty awesome as the Comedian.

Guess that's all. I'm gonna go make some bbq sauce, get my ribs in a super low oven, finish my laudry, and do my taxes. YEAH!