The Little Things

Little things make me happy. This morning I got into my car and saw that Mel, our landlady, had painted red flowers all over the black rubbish bins. I smiled. It kind of made my morning.

Later I was at the shop, and when I put the tub of margarine into my trolley I saw that it had a picture of some perky, smiling little insect on the lid, instead of just the usual branding. It was adorable, and I burst out laughing.

I went to photograph some tablescapes for a magazine, and my friend Eve gave me the leftover white tulips because I love them so much. I had to stop off for a lunch date on my way home, and they turned into the child of Floppy Mcfloppyson. Now I've got them in a glass of water, trying to nurse them back to perkiness. This makes me happy.

After I did my Trash the Dress recently, my wedding dress has ended up hanging over the back of a chair in our bedroom, while I get around to having it dry-cleaned. It makes me smile every time I see it.


I put in a cd I haven't listened to in a while, and I forgot that one of my favourite songs was on there. I got so excited when I heard the intro.
And bubbles. Bubbles make me happy. Don't ever lose your childlike joy. I need mine to make it through the day.

in the hospital

So. Remember my last post, where Mr Ruby Slippers had a stomach bug and I was sitting on the computer in the middle of the night to avoid his possible vomit? Yeah...turns out, not so much a stomach bug. We went off to the doctor in the early morning, after the poor guy was unable to sleep because he was in so much pain. Many X-Rays and ultrasounds and even more $$$ later, it was discovered that he had a blockage in his intestine. And they had to operate. Twelve hours after I wrote that last post, he was being prepped for surgery.

I did NOT see that coming.

I was assured that he was never in any danger and that it was all pretty routine, but it was just so...hard. Hard seeing him lying there, barely able to move, with tubes down his nose and in his arm and up his...well, you know. Hard to drive to the hospital two or three times a day to see him. Hard to be strong for him when I just wanted to cry. And hard to carry on with work when all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep. I never realised just how exhausting it is to have someone in hospital. I don't cope well with stress, I think.

Mr RS was released from hospital eight days after his operation. He hobbled around at home for a while, and he had his stitches out last Thursday. Now, aside from a painful and quite scary-looking scar, he's doing okay. And my mind is getting more or less back to normal. I felt quite hazy for a while there.

As for what caused the blockage, we still don't know. The surgeon said it was something he ate, something mostly fibrous, that hardened into a bezoar (and yes, I also immediately thought "ooh, those have magical properties!"). Unfortunately we didn't get to keep it :-)

Anyway, so that's where I've been for the last two weeks.

I'm going to leave you with a pretty picture I found on desiretoinspire.net:

 

It's a fairytale. LOVE it.

Middle of the night ramblings

So it's 1:30am and I'm here, writing. It's not unusual for me to be up this late - in fact, since I started working from home, I often find myself going to bed at 2am and waking up at 11. I'm sorry, I know you're all gasping in envy, but I seem to need 9 hours. It's what my body wants. If I get less, I just sit there craving a nap the whole afternoon. And I can work whenever I want, so why not sleep half the morning and do my work at night? Sounds reasonable to me!

Anyway, right now Mr RS is is the throes of a stomach bug of some sort - he seems particularly susceptible to them - and is lying groaning on the bed. I was keeping him company, until he suggested that he might need to vomit at some point, at which point I left the room at the speed of light. You might remember my intense fear of vomit. So now I don't know if he has - you know - or not. I much prefer stomach flu that only comes out the correct end. I won't be able to sleep if I think he might throw up. Which kind of ticks me off because I LOVE sleeping. No, I'm not pissed at my poor husband for being sick. I'm pissed at my own stupid phobia for making me unable to sleep in the suggested possible tentative chance of the presence of vomit.

Funnily enough, the cat vomit doesn't bother me. Well, that's because I don't believe Gollum know how to chew, because he always brings up a neat pile of unchewed cat pellets. They just look like damp new ones. So those I can pick up. Also, they smell like cat food, not like vomit. That's a big part of it.

So apparently this is just going to be a rambling, middle of the night post. Sorry. I'm bored. I don't feel like watching tv anymore, and nothing's happening on Twitter or Facebook in the middle of the night. My night. Actually, there is stuff going on on Twitter because it's still evening for the Americans. I'm just not in the mood. Maybe now would be a good time to go and read some of the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November. I haven't even looked at it since I finished it.

*Excuse me while I go read a 50000 word novel. I'll be right back.*

Yet another year, with bigger and better goals

Two years ago, at the beginning of 2008, I was newly-engaged (a whole two years and ten days ago I got engaged! Wow), and because of that, my New Year's goal for 2008 was pretty much "get married awesomely". Most of 2008 was sucked away in accomplishing this, but I'm okay with that, because I DID accomplish it, and it was awesome. I also managed to break free of the horrible chain bookstore job I'd had for three years, which I hated 98% of the time*, and found myself in another retail job that I thought I'd like more, but which I ended up despising for different reasons (except for the customers. I hated them in both shops).

One year ago, at the start of 2009, I posted a list of New Year Goals. You can see the full list and explanations here, but I'm going to go through them now, and see how I did. This is a bit scary, because I haven't actually gone back and looked at these since I wrote them, or at least not since early last year, so I'm not really sure how I did. Even now I haven't looked at them. I'm going to go through them one at a time.

1. Get a new job. DONE
I started my own photography business, although I probably still need a part time job to bring in more money so I can afford stuff.


2. Take at least a month off before starting alleged new job. DONE
I took my photography course during this time. I REALLY needed this break. I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown, the way I started crying every time someone asked me how work was, or how I was.


3. Buy a house. NOT DONE

Yeah...we just didn't have enough money to consider this one. But we still need one, so badly. Renting is horrible.


4. Take singing lessons. NOT DONE
I don't mind so much that I didn't get to do this one. When it came down to it, I had to decide whether to put the money I had towards singing lessons or photography classes. At the time I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to make photography my career, but I knew I most certainly wasn't going to make one from singing, so I chose photos. And I'm glad. I can always do it one day.


5.Do a Photography course. DONE
Self-explanatory. Best thing I ever did.


6. Be happy within myself. MOSTLY DONE

This is a hard one, because there's no tangible evidence that I accomplished it. I AM happier, though. I finally have a new job I love, and that makes a huge difference. No one is trying to steal a piece of my soul anymore, I'm not treated like a moron, and I can go to the damn toilet without having to ask customers to leave, lock up, and get a security guard to watch the outside books. Oh, and I get a lunch break. Of my very own! :-)


You see, I'm a person who likes solitude. I go crazy in busy places, and I get all weirded out. My brain starts going fuzzy and I forget words and talk nonsense. It's not as bad as it sounds, but I do go slightly weird. I really should never have worked in retail. I'm surprised I never had an anxiety attack or something around Christmas time. Working as a photographer is perfection for me. You get to spend time with people on their happiest day, and then go home and work on their images in peace and quiet. And eat lunch without interruptions.


So, now for THIS year:

1) Shoot at least twelve weddings as the primary photographer.
2) Grow Kat Forsyth Photography into en established business, with a recognisable name (or at least, the beginnings of that)
3) Buy a house (well, there has to be one carry-over, right?)
4) Get some kind of part-time income in order to afford to buy and decorate said house.
5) Tidy and clean the house more often (I'm a lazy slob sometimes)
6) Go to gym at least once a week (technically it should be twice, but I might have mentioned I'm lazy)
7) Watch at least fifteen of the forty movies I haven't seen on the AFI's 2007 Top 100 Movies of all time list.
8) Have a proper Date Night with my husband once a month.
9) Post on here once a week, at least. Preferably twice.

I think that's enough for one year!

I hope you all have a great one. I intend to.




*I still miss the 2% I didn't hate.

Last night...

...I dreamed that I was pregnant and both Mr RS and I were totally excited about it.

However, I'm not reading too much into it, since I also dreamed that I was held hostage by a group of people and made to live on the upper level of a double decker bus, where they ran episodes of I Love Lucy in a loop.

I just wish that at some point we could decide if we even want children. Because at this point, I haven't a freakin clue. I really thought that after being married for some time I would just KNOW what I wanted. But I don't.

My problem is I can only see the downside of having children. I can't see the upside, because I think you need to have your own in order to experience said upside. My Dad says, "children bring you so much joy." Yeah, and I remember him yelling at us for hours while we stood there sobbing. Not so much joy in that, for either party. And I have my Dad's temper. Oh dear.

Last night at rehearsal some of the backstage crew had to leave early because they had an exam to write the next day. I turned to one of my cast members and said, "This is why I'm never studying anything ever again. I can't stomach exams, tests, speeches, projects..."

Her answer? "Don't have children, then. You'll be doing homework and projects for the next twenty years."

GLEEP.

Not to mention I feel like I'm way too selfish. Sorry, I kind of enjoy sleeping for 10 hours uninterrupted, thanks. So if you wouldn't mind shutting up, tiny baby, and letting me sleep, I'd be forever grateful. If only that would work!

Anyway, we're nowhere near having enough money for a child, so our problem is temporarily solved for us.

I feel like there's a ton more I could write about this, but I need to go make dinner. Which is mission enough just for two of us. Did I ever mention I'm lazy about housework? Um, yeah.

Now what?

Guys, I'm in that place. That place where I just don't know what to blog about anymore, despite the fact that I do totally want to blog! Really. I love it. It's just that this blog started out as my wedding planning space (it was my own little version of Weddingbee, because, you know, I didn't get accepted onto Weddingbee itself!), and now that the wedding and the endless recaps are over I don't know where to go from there. I even got over featuring photos I liked because I got into photography myself! Does that make a difference? Maybe I should feature them anyway. I do still love them and look at them all the time!

Right now, I'll just tell you some random things about myself, to get the ball rolling. The thing is, I do live quite a boring life, to be honest. No family drama or weird things happening at work!

At the moment I'm addicted to this chocolate:
Cadbury's coconut and cashew milk chocolate. The words "heaven", "perfection" and "I don't ever want to eat any other kind of regular chocolate* again" come to mind.

*obviously I'm not referring to things like Lindt or Cote D'or or any kind of Belgian truffle yumminess, but, you know, chocolate that I can afford to buy and eat daily.

The problem? They seem to have STOPPED MAKING IT. It's a calamity. I have to go into every shop I pass in case they have old slabs still. I could cry. No, really. You have noooo idea how much I love chocolate of any kind, let alone the squares of heaven kind that this flavour is.

At the moment I'm also addicted to Stephen Sondheim. I just play those soundtracks over and over and over. Kind of weird because in many cases I've never seen the shows to which they belong, but hey, that never stopped me being addicted to Wicked.

Speaking of Wicked reminds me. I've always wanted to go to Broadway. It's a desire that's always there, and sometimes it's just "oh, that would be cool", and sometimes it's a full-blown "I would give my first-born child to go to Broadway" obsession. Ok, it's never that bad. But it does make me want to spend every cent I have, and since I barely have any cents, this is what I would call A Bad Thing. I'm just going to lay it out there: I'm getting heartily sick of never having any money. I didn't expect to have any money this year; you don't when you're starting a business and you have to buy expensive equipment for it without seeing any monetary returns, really. I thought I could handle it, and for the most part, I have been. But I had to go to the doctor the other day and buy medication worth R500, and while I was at the mall where the doctor's rooms are, I made the mistake of going window shopping. And it just killed me that I couldn't afford to buy anything, but I'd just had to spend R500 on drugs. And there were all these pretty summer clothes with ribbons round the waist and rouchy lacy bits, and I wanted to cry. I went to look in my cupboard to confirm, and do you know what clothes I've bought this year? A pair of black ballet flats for comfy wedding shooting (R60) and I purple satin blouse, also for wedding shooting (R70). That's IT. I'm still wearing clothes I bought last decade. (Ok, only one or two awesome pieces, but in most cases my clothes are happily three or four years old).

I feel so despondent. I've never made a lot of money (in fact, I've only ever had poorly-paying jobs), but this is really starting to get to me.

Bet you wish I hadn't blogged now :P

Loves & Loathes

So not much is up at the moment in the usually-mad world of the Ruby Slippers'. So I thought I'd do a little post about things that I'm loving at the moment, and things that are just ticking me off!

At the moment, I lurve:

1) Salmon & Avo California rolls.

YUM. I don't know why I'm so addicted to them at the moment, but I could eat a pile of these babies everyday. Salmon plus avo plus seaweed plus those little seeds must be the best flavour EVER. (this pic isn't right, but it's the closest I could find. I like it when they have seeds on the outside!)

2) Woolworths double cream coconut yoghurt.

I've basically been eating this for lunch nearly every day for months (with fruit, of course, but not together!). I have a weakness for anything coconut. Best drink I ever had was a coconut shake in Thailand.

3) Monopoly.


Mr Ruby Slippers and I have been playing this a bunch lately. I brought over my old set that I got for my 7th or 8th birthday, and it still works. :-) Tonight we played two games... One All.

4)The soundtrack of Sweeney Todd (Broadway cast with Patti Lupone; not the putrescent mess that was the Tim Burton film. Ugh.)

What an awesome musical. If you hated the movie but expected to like it, try getting hold of one of the dvd concert versions with either Angela Lansbury or Patti Lupone starring with George Hearn. Both are excellent.


And I'm Loathing:

1) People who close the stall doors in public toilets so you think someone is in there. Seriously, are you just trying to make people wait in line so you can point and laugh? It's people like you that make other people push on the doors when you are in there, because they think it's possible no one is. And I hate that, especially if the catch is a bit iffy and the door doesn't stay closed properly.

I don't have a picture for this.


2)Cooked raisins.

I'll eat them out the bag (raw, I guess, though that seems an odd term for a dried fruit), but by golly I do not like them cooked in buns (see above), apple pie, etc. Uuuugh. They get all bloated and disgusting. Shudder.


3)Electric Gates that close automatically after a few seconds. They terrify me. I've had a few narrow shaves with these bastards, and I find them completely unnecessary. What, so you have one in case you possibly forget, one day in the future, to close the gate? Isn't it far more likely that someone's car will get pranged by by the stupid thing closing on them?


4) Car guards in parking lots. I'm sick of them saying hello and goodbye in that wheedling tone and expecting me to give them money. Gah. Could we just have a parking lot safe enough not to need guards??

Funny how you can't find pics of the bad stuff...

Movies watched! I keep forgetting about this:

Star Trek - Pretty good. I used to date a Trekkie, so I saw all the recent films, and this one was definitely better! I got a bit distracted trying to count every time there was flare, though.
Into the Woods - the Sondheim musical in concert. LOVED it.
Bride Wars - Hey, it wasn't as bad as everyone made out. Watchable, but probably not rewatchable.
My Fair Lady - One of my top musicals of all time. I hear they're doing a remake; whyyyyyy??
The Wizard of Oz - Ditto, except for the remake bit. It has Judy and it's magical. That's all there is to know.
The Princess Bride - Not really; I just watched the commentary on the new edition. This was my favourite movie for years, and it's the one I can quote pretty much by heart. Which led to me quoting lines while Rob Reiner was talking...

(It looks like I've fallen off a bit here, but in between this I did watch seasons 3, 4 and 5 of The Nanny, and a bunch of other tv...)

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Adsense

Do any other bloggers use adsense to make money on their blog? Is it a good option, or do the ads everywhere just annoy people? Also, I'm hesitant about giving out my personal details and/or banking details to "some company on the internet". What do you guys think?

Photography Blog

Hi everyone,

My new photography blog is up at http://katforsythphotography.co.za

It's not complete yet (the logo is coming, I promise!) but I've put lots of photos up in the meantime!

Go check it out.

Random photo I took and liked

This could be the beginning of another Photo of the Day Series, but this time MINE. We'll see. I don't know if I take enough photos for that :P

So the other night this moth came and landed on the books on my bedside table. He picked a great one because the metallic red cover reflected onto him beautifully. I leaned over and picked up my camera out of its bag by my bed, and got this:

Pretty.

RIP Beatrice Arthur

One of my favourite ladies of stage and screen is gone.

I grew up with her as my favourite character on The Golden Girls, and I had the absolute privilege of seeing her perform live in 2003. Not forgetting her film-saving turn as Vera in the not-so-great screen version of Mame.

Thank you for being a friend.


I'm not clued up enough to figure out how to embed a youtube video here, but go to this link and see how wonderful she was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilV5K8tw_6o

How do you like them apples?

Why, with water poured on, please.

I went outside earlier to try and get some fast shutter speed splashing water shots. Unfortunately I couldn't get it as bright as I wanted without going into direct sunlight (which I hate hate hate), but I think some of them came out kinda cool:









I promise I didn't get any water on my camera :-) (I don't know how I did that, but thank goodness I didn't! Haha)

I haven't done anything to these in photoshop, either.

EDIT: Ok, now I have. Here's the last one edited a bit:

Sp sharp, love it!

Play Festival madness

It's play festival madness here at the Ruby Slippers house! I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this (I'm sure I must have) but Mr Ruby Slippers and I met when I joined The Franklin Players, a community theatre group of which he was a long-standing member. I joined in 2004, and though we weren't actually in the same show - I was in the big musical while he was in a heavy play about infidelity and fighting and more fighting - he did come to help us out with putting up the set and providing an outsider's viewpoint. Plus he was the director's housemate so I saw him a lot. Lucky me :-)

Here's me doing my best Judy Garland impression in "Get Happy", the closing number of the musical, "Faces of Music".

So fast forward a few years and hubby and I have both been in a number of other musicals and short sketches and plays. Well, not me so much; I far prefer singing to straight acting. Anyway, I've been in stuff. But last year we bowed out because of The Wedding (those rehearsals are killers) and, well, we just haven't felt like going back. I just feel like it's not as fun as it used to be. You really have to enjoy going to rehearsals on Monday and Wednesday nights plus most of Sunday, and I just don't anymore. And Mr Ruby Slippers, after two years as chairman of the Franklin committee, has lost all enthusiasm and soul for drama. Which is a pity.

HOWever, it's still fun to go and see what's going on there. Plus we're kind of obliged to, since Sister Ruby Slippers and her husband, not to mention a host of our other friends, have all got plays on. My sister and her husband co-wrote a play, which he is directing, and she is directing another one which is on next week. (And which she's now starring in, thanks to a dropout two weeks ago. Can I just say that I ABHOR people who can't stick to their commitments? Way to ruin it for everyone else).

Here's Sister Ruby Slippers and friends Paul and Tarryn in 'Teatime of the Living Dead' last year, which was written by my clever husband. She's a dead body come back to life (one of many) in a funeral parlour...it's a long story.

The play festival runs over four nights, and other amateur dramatic societies are invited to participate, which means that we have eight plays this year, four from Franklin and one each from four other societies. Mr Ruby Slippers is adjudicating along with two other people, so that's what we'll be doing for the next two weekends. It's kind of fun, though, to be on the outside looking in. Though I have to say I do miss that dressing-room excitement; the smell of make-up, the roar of the crowd...oh wait, we didn't really get that sort of crowd at Franklin. Well, the pleased applause of the crowd, then.

I just wish I could muster up the enthusiasm to be a part of all this again. I love theatre (well, mostly musical theatre), I really do. But sometimes the effort doesn't seem worth the result. Sigh. Mr RS and I have had many, many, sad conversations about this.


PS - I have to get up at 5am tomorrow morning to get to my photography class practical at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens at 6am. Shudder. I don't even know what 5am LOOKS like.

Well, that's annoying...

Like many of you (or at least, many of you who stalk blogs like I do) I read all my blogs in Google Reader. It's just so much easier to click on the name and scroll through the post quickly without having to open a new window. Today, however, I discovered something annoying. In order to comment on a post you have to open it in a new window, and today there were two photo blogs I wanted to comment on. And that's when I saw it.

In both cases there were twice the number of photos on the actual blog website as were shown on Google Reader! After the first one (Andrea Carlyle) I just assumed it was her specific blog being weird, but when Punam Bean's blog did it too...

Have I been missing out on half the photos ALL THIS TIME??? Gah!

Anne Hathaway = Judy Garland

According to reports this morning, Anne Hathaway has been selected to play Judy Garland in a new film biopic, as well as some sort of theatre version (details were hazy on that bit). Now if you know me at all, you'll know how I idolise Miss Garland. Aside from the drug addiction and four failed marriages, of course. But her presence on screen overshadows all of that. Her luminous "can't tear your eyes away from her" presence, and of course her unbelievable, never-equalled VOICE, are what make me fall a little bit in love with her every time I see her onscreen.

So Anne Hathaway is going to play her. Well, they could do worse. As long as they still use Judy's actual singing voice (I know Anne can sing, but you can't make a biopic about a singing legend and then not use her own voice) I can live with it. I think. My main issue is that while Anne can easily look the part of the young, fresh-faced, wide-eyed Judy Garland, I don't see how they're going to make her up to look like the older, beaten down, drug-ridden Judy of the 1960's.

This can work:


This, however, not so much:
This is a picture of Judy Garland in 1969 with her fifth and final husband, Mickey Deans. She died twelve days after her 47th birthday, so in all likelihood this picture was taken when she was 46 (she only married Deans in March of that year). This is what drugs and alcohol do to a legend. It makes me incredibly sad. Anyway, my point is that I can't imagine how they can possibly get pretty young Anne Hathaway to look like THIS.

At least she can act. I saw Rachel Getting Married on Saturday, and I was blown away. Hello, Oscar? Where were you?

And who on earth is going to play Mickey Rooney and all her famous co-stars?

PS - if you haven't seen the tv miniseries Life With Judy Garland: Me & My Shadows, for which Judy Davis won a Golden Globe and an Emmy, do yourself a favour. It's brilliant. I won't deny that Judy Garland was probably quite an awful person, self-centred and difficult to live with, but Davis really brings out her vulnerability and "Little Girl Lost" quality. I'm not actually sure how they can better this miniseries with a movie....we'll see.

RIP Natasha

A beautiful presence was taken from this earth today. Rest in Peace, Natasha.

Natasha Richardson

I've been reading the news all day. I really, really hope she's going to be okay. She's one of my favourite British actresses (after Emma Thompson and The Dames, of course!) and I just love her to bits in The Parent Trap, which is one of my favourite movies.


For those of you out of the loop, Natasha (daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, wife of Liam Neeson, sister of Joely Richardson) was injured in a skiing accident yesterday. Various reports say she is in critical condition and/or braindead. There was a statement that she had died, but this was later retracted to state that she was not expected to survive.

I'm really depressed right now. I'm hoping everyone's thoughts and prayers find their way to Natasha and make a miracle happen.

Really late Valentine's Day

Because our point and shoot was stolen in January (thank you very much, dickheads who fixed our ceiling) I didn't have a camera on Valentine's Day to take a picture of the cute card Mr Ruby Slippers made me. It's inspired by Cyanide & Happiness. I love my husband's offbeat sense of humour. This is so much more "us" than a card full of roses and hearts (not that I would be upset if I got that, either).


The front:
Inside:


I just love how pleased "I" look about the chocolate bit...Mwahaha! I am a bit nutty?

(PS - yes, I know my white balance was off. I couldn't be bothered to retake them!)

(PS2 - The "Mr F" thing is a bit of an in-joke...anyone know where it's from? I have high hopes after Jess identified my Singin' in the Rain quote!)

Kitty portraits

My favourite test subject for my new DSLR is my cat, Gollum. After the first few days of getting freaked out by me sticking a big black thing in his face, he settled down and relaxed in front of it. Now he's the perfect (kitty) guinea pig to test out lighting settings and focus and whatnot. Plus he moves a lot. Good for shutter speed. :-)

I didn't edit these because I wanted to see how good I could be Straight Out Of Camera, but I did change this one to b & w on the camera's retouch menu. I love his expression here! "Something's coming at me and I'm suspicious!"



EXTREME CLOSE-UP! If you look closely you can see me in his right eye (that's the one on the left):

This was too awesome to pass up! He was licking himself when he got startled by a noise outside, and forgot to put his tongue away. I got a ton of these tongue shots; I swear he had it out for at least 3o seconds before he remembered his manners!


Three quarters of the photos on my camera are Gollum. He's so photogenic ;-) And much more interesting than flowers and ivy leaves.

Yes, I do think my cat's tongue is cute:


The Mom shot! Haha:
I don't know if they're great photos, but his cuteness makes up for that! Um. I guess. :-)

Leaping

It's time to take a leap. A leap of hope, a leap of faith, and - hopefully - a leap into a new life. Back at the beginning of January I blogged about my New Year's Goals (Not resolutions; I hate that word). I am proud to announce that I've already accomplished the following:

1. Get a new job.
In part. I've quit my old job, in fact I did it the next time I went into work after I wrote that post. I don't have a new job yet, because...well, you'll see. :-)

2. Take at least a month off before starting alleged new job.
Doing this even as I type! My nice nature and guilty conscience forced me to work till the end of February, despite having quit in early January, because I'd verbally agreed to work for a year when I started there. And my (now ex) boss is a nice man. I didn't want to stay longer, but I felt bad for him, so I did. Yay for Jewish guilt trips.

5. Do a photography course.
I signed up right after I quit my job, and it started last week. It's only once a week, so I have plenty of time off to recover from the hell that is retail, and to practise practise practise! I asked around and read some photography forums, and invested in a Nikon D60 in the end. I luuurve it. It's like a new toy. Seriously, it's giving me excitement that I haven't had since I last got a new My Little Pony. Wow, that's pretty sad. Have I not been excited about owning something new for twenty years?? I don't know. I used to like buying clothes but I got over that right after high school. (Now I don't care what the heck I wear! :-)) But I know I've never really gotten over my childhood. I still wish I could pull out my Fisher-Price airport or pop-up treehouse and play some of those awesome games that my sister, she of the vivid and inventive imagination, dreamt up. Sigh. Those were the days.

Anyway, I'm hoping this will lead me onto the next goal in my list, which is:


6. Be happy within myself.
My parents have given me a lot of good advice over the years. Maybe at the time I didn't know it, but if it's stuck with me, it's probably good. Here are some of them, random and insightful:

* Assume that everyone else on the road is about to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous. Everyone drives like a moron.
True. I assume this all the time, and I've never had an accident (yet) in ten years of driving.

*Be with someone who makes you laugh.
I give you exhibit A, Mr Ruby Slippers. Actually, he's so good that if I can make HIM laugh, I feel really clever.

*When you meet the person you want to marry, you'll just know.
Exhibit A again.

And, the point of this section:

*Do something that makes you happy. You spend too much of your life at work for it to be a job you hate.
I have never had a job I liked. Which could explain why I'm so often depressed and lethargic and listless and plain miserable. So I've left my job. And right now, guess what's grabbing my interest and making me happy? PHOTOGRAPHY. It may not be a job with prospects. Heck, it may not be a job for me. I might not be good enough. I might decide I don't like it after all. I might discover that clients are worse than bookshop customers (if that's true, I'll never have any faith in humanity again). But all that is a "what if" scenario. And I'll never know "what if" if I don't jolly well DO IT.

So, I'm doing it. I'm hoping that once I've finished my course I'll be able to start out in a small way, second-shooting for people, maybe interning for someone, helping out with editing, that sort of thing. I do have some leads but I don't want to talk about it until it's set in stone. Not that I believe in jinxing, but I just don't want to, in case. :-)

It's a big void I'm leaping into, but I have got some money saved up, and I think it's worth using on something that could be the biggest adventure of my life, that could end up with me Doing Something I Love. That's what's really important to me right now.

"It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes, and leap..."