While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

For my 29th birthday, a Pulitzer.

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(Because I share a birthday with Joseph Pulitzer, that muckraking genius.)

Today is my birthday.

And what am I doing for it?

Well, right now I’m sitting in my backyard in my green sky chair.

In pajamas.

Drinking an iced tea and listening to the sound of church bells four blocks away signal the 12 o’clock hour.

My next door neighbors are swimming in their pool. I can hear kids cannon-balling and screeching over who gets what pool floatie.

Henry is doing his own restricted version of water aerobics.

As I type this, my stomach is undulating. His little arms and little legs are stretching like he’s doing baby yoga. Like he’s trying to break the surface. Like a scene from Aliens.

I’ve always adored Russian nesting dolls.

Matryoshka.

Now I feel like I am one.

Last year at this time I had completed my first triathlon. The simultaneous euphoria and exhaustion I experienced during that race was like a drug I could get used to.

Now I’m 25 pounds heavier and seven weeks away from having my first baby.

Bring on the simultaneous euphoria and exhaustion!

People keep asking me how I feel and lately the answer has been, thus far, great.

I feel great.

Most of the time anyway.

Yesterday I felt like shit, but yesterday I was especially hot, exhausted and sleep-deprived.

Today I feel grand.

Joe and Sir Pugalot are taking me on a picnic in the park.

We’re going to eat giant sandwiches on Cuban bread with Muenster cheese and shredded lettuce.

We’re going to spread a blanket out in the grass, read books and lounge in the sun.

It’s 84 degrees out with no chance of rain.

When I woke up this morning, the pug was on my head, Joe was at my side and Henry was kicking my ribs.

By 9 a.m. I got everything I wanted for my birthday.

Happy birthday to me.

—

PS. Pulitzer illustration from Life magazine, Nov. 1897, Vol. 30: 459.

A garden variety valentine from my Oma

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The sweetest Valentine’s Day gift I’ve ever received came today in the form of my Oma, who pulled into my driveway this morning with her Ford Taurus stuffed with two dozen bags of red mulch and her trunk full of plants.

She was a German workhorse on a mission.

Basically, my front yard has looked like hell for a year.

Joe and I have been so busy and broke lately that the last thing on our minds is landscaping, not that we don’t curse our grass-less front yard and dead potted plants every time we walk from our cars to the front door.

The first year we lived in this house I lovingly tended to the plants and shrubs. Two years ago, my mom and I planted fuchsia petunias that flowered so big and brilliant the neighbors stopped to admire them.

Remember last year’s vegetable garden? The thing went bust midway through the spring. We ended up with a handful of cherry tomatoes, two deformed bell peppers and one cucumber. We’ve yet to plant another garden, or even one patch of marigolds (Joe’s favorite flower).

I’ve been slacking in the horticulture department. Big time.

Enter my Oma.

She’s a master gardener with two green thumbs, two green pinkies and two green toes.

She could grow a bed of orchids in a leaky bucket in the corner of a dungeon. That is if she had a dungeon.

The small yard surrounding her park model offers few landscape opportunities, which (I think) has made her stir crazy.

SO … today she arrived at my house with enough mulch to carpet the neighborhood and enough ferns and flowers to manicure a golf course.

I had several appointments and various phone interviews, so I was in and out of the house and otherwise occupied all day.

By the time I returned from my last appointment, she had filled all my empty pots with pansies, planted small sprouts of greenery where dead scraggly bushes once crept, laid more than a dozen bags of mulch and replaced the batteries on all my burned-out garden lights.

The funny thing is, I’m not even sure she knew it was Valentine’s Day.

—

Bleeding heart photo by Simon Whitaker

Peace. Love. And cold.

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I’m cool with the cold.

It can stay for a bit longer.

I know I moved to Florida for a break in the gray. For warmth. For sun. For sundresses. Flip flops. Enormous sunglasses.

But I miss the cold. I miss bundling. I miss warming my face over a hot cup of soup. I miss the crunch of snow. Skiing. Snowmobiling. The utilitarian function of long baths. How when you step outside on a bright white day, the air doesn’t move. Even your breathing is silent, as if your lungs are also wearing a sweater.

I realize how much I miss the cold when the square-jawed weathermen in Florida start shaking in their Izod shirts and advising people to cover their plants and dress their children in snowsuits every time the temperature drops below 50.

The cold is such a novelty in Florida, like juggling monkeys or monogrammed pillows.

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Kimberlee & Jonathan | October 9, 2010

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Western New York | The Quintessential Fall Wedding

When my friend Kim asked me too shoot her wedding in our hometown, I was honored and thrilled. When she told me it was in October, I was even more thrilled.

The fall in Western New York is breathtaking and Kim and Jon picked a date that turned out to be the peak of fall foliage.

A trolley named The Fonz transported the wedding party from North Collins, where Kim and I grew up, to the church, where I once wrote an article about a pipe organ for our weekly newspaper, to Knox Farms, where the groomsmen dutifully posed along a fence until it broke. (See below.)

Take 1: Down goes the fence.

This one’s even better: the guy in the middle goes down and his fellow groomsmen catch him.

I loved photographing Kim in the makeup chair at John Roberts Salon. Here’s a little fun fact about Kim: in college she used to sleep with a full face of makeup in case there was a fire drill in the middle of the night. The night before her wedding she also slept in makeup.

Beautiful, makeup or no makeup.

Mirror, mirror in my hand. Who’s the fairest bride in the land?

Kim desperately wanted to take pictures with her two pooches, but in the end she decided we didn’t have enough time between primping and trolley pick-up. Instead she brought a framed photo of her fur children to the salon, where they sat in spirit and watched the bridesmaids get up-do’ed.

The wind in the willows & the dress in the tree.

By all means, kick off your heels in the leaves and stay awhile.

A little collage action.

Kim and her dad.

Each lady delicately pinned a flower to her waist.

The unveiling.

Kim has a photo of she and her dad ambling down the street in front of their house when she was a little girl. She wanted to recreate that. Here’s the shot from the front.

And from the back. Hello shadows.

Bouquets courtesy of Etsy. Wise choice!

Pretty maids in a row … boarding The Fonz.

Kim and her mom.

This shot is one of my favorites for a few reasons. We’re sitting in the church parking lot. Guests are filing into the church, including the groom and his groomsmen. Kim is hiding behind the Just Married sign in the back of the trolley so no one will see her. She’s watching all the people she’s ever known in her life walk from their cars to the church to see HER get MARRIED. It’s a surreal moment and she realizes it. I imagine the look on her face is a combination of nervousness and anticipation.

I can’t say enough good things about the bridesmaids. They were all so sweet, patient and lovable. Not to mention stunning in their purple dresses.

Back at Knox Farms. As we meandered through the property in The Fronz trolley, I spotted a few dilapidated barns that I thought would work splendidly for photos. (Juxtaposition!) But of course our farm “tour guide” wouldn’t allow us to shoot beside these crumbling structures. (Liability!) I thought they were being overly cautious until the fence fell.

At one point Jonathan busted out a pink suit coat and aviator shades. I’ve never seen a dude look so dapper in pink.

I don’t know which is more delightful: The fact that there’s a ray of light cutting through this shot. Or that Kim is posing like a model in a bridal magazine.

Wondering how to pump up a hungry crowd at the start of a wedding reception? Make your entrance under an awning of inflatable baseball bats.

The koozies were an ode to one of Jon’s favorite outdoor hobbies. (That’s my best friend Ro holding the beer. She also served as a hand model at my wedding.)

Jon and Kim engage in a twisted-arm champagne toast.

And then dance like no one is watching.

—

To J+K: Thank you for letting me capture the day. Much love and congratulations. I hope you’re having a fantastic time zip-lining through the Dominican Republic.

To those of you who don’t believe in fate: Kim told me there was a “Post-it note mishap” in the early stages of the wedding planning process that resulted in accidentally booking the church for Oct. 9 instead of Oct. 2 –– her original wedding date. It turns out the mix-up was fortuitous. The Oct. 2 weather was dreadfully cold and rainy. The Oct. 9 weather? Well, you saw the pictures.

The motorcycle diaries

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My friend Dex asked me to shoot some photos for his modeling portfolio.

So at 9 a.m. on a balmy August morning, we hit up my favorite alley in downtown Sarasota.

When we’d had our fill of alley shots, I suggested we head to a quiet spot on the downtown bay front.

I picked Centennial Park because it’s grassy, waterfront and relatively underused. As expected, the place was empty. Other than a homeless dude, who emerged from taking a bird bath in the park’s public restroom (and sat watching us on a bench for three minutes), we garnered no attention.

If you live in Sarasota and you’re unfamiliar with this park, I suggest you check it out. It’s at 10th Street and U.S. 41, not far from the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. Although it’s mostly used for its boat launch, it has one of the best underrated picnic spots in all of downtown.

Oh, and did I mention Dex races this Ducati?

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A ballerina’s belly in pictures

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Last month my friend Tracey sent me this message on Facebook:

“As you know I’m pregnant! And some of the dancers and I thought it would be fun to take some maternity photos of me with a tutu and pointe shoes and my belly! I was wondering if you could possibly take these for me … nothing fancy … just so I have the memories.“

It goes without saying that Tracey is a ballerina …

A beautiful ballerina, at that …

With a warm Midwestern personality …

And mad skills, as evidenced by this shot. How many of you mamas stood en pointe at eight months pregnant?

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Seeing my breath makes me feel alive.

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It’s 35 degrees out and eerily beautiful in St. Petersburg, Fla. I walked the pug twice today, exhaling hot breaths slowly and deliberately, staring at the way it hung in front of my nose and floated away. A ghostly cloud of carbon dioxide. It was as if I’d never seen my breath before.

I wore long johns today under a pair of running shorts. I wore a scarf all day inside the house and an Oliver Twist hat to the grocery store. Joe’s cheeks were rosy after our afternoon bike ride and my morning coffee burned going down like whiskey or an iodine injection before a CAT scan.

The bay was calm, flat and gray and people buried themselves under layers of sweatshirts and scarves, tossing tennis balls to their dogs in the park, jogging in place to stay warm. My ears turned red and hard when we were pedaling, but when I tried to pull my hood up under my bike helmet, the helmet wouldn’t fit, so I pedaled through the prickliness.

It was gloriously cold out, but if you’d have met me when I was 20, I promise you I would have cursed the weather with a furious fist. Western New Yorkers may be a hardy bunch, but we’re nothing if not expertly dissatisfied with the weather 300 days of the year. The weather, among other things, is what makes us exotic. How creatures can live comfortably in sub-zero climates blows peoples’ minds. What kind of creatures would choose to live this way with such utopian options south of the Mason-Dixon Line?

Of course now I miss the tundra (in small doses anyway) and as I lie here in bed listening to a Florida news station blow a perfectly chilly 40-degree day out of proportion, I can’t help but summon my inner grizzly bear.

“Cover your plants, folks. Remember to bring your pets inside. Farmers are working overnight to save their crops from the cold. Don’t forget to turn the heat on in your car before your morning commute. Some bay area students will have to dress extra warm tomorrow. How one Largo middle school is coping without heat. Next: more tips on how to stay warm in an arctic freeze.”

One Tampa news station posted these actual tips: Wear multiple layers of loose-fitting, warm clothing. Do not use charcoal or other fuel-burning devices indoors, such as grills that produce carbon monoxide. Stay dry and in wind-protected areas.

PUT ON A PAIR OF FUZZY SOCKS AND GET OVER IT. For criminy’s sake, it was so insanely hot in October the only pumpkin I was ever proud of rotted two weeks before Halloween.

—

PS. Dragon Mohawk hat by Bella Hats. Visit Bella’s Etsy shop. She’s a violinist from Grand Rapids, Mich. who homeschools her children and makes an adorable product.

short & sweet

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LOVE THIS.

It’s beautiful and clever, simple and joyful. I wanted to bump Steve-O’s ugly mug down a notch with something Zen and inspirational, and when I saw this stop-motion video on my friend Ricci’s blog, I gasped and said A-HA! I had not heard of Oren Lavie until this afternoon, so thank you Ricci for giving me something pretty to watch/listen/ and reflect to.

For those of you who’ve filled up on ugly stories today, consider this dessert: