"....I like girls that wear abercrombie and fitch... I'd take her if I had one wish...."

Have you all seen this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/abercrombie-and-fitch-homeless-brand-readjustment_n_3272498.html

So I saw this link for the first time last night, and while it's unique and interesting... I'm not sure it's really that great of an idea.  While this is saying 'screw you' to A&F, it's also saying, 'let's give their clothing items to the opposite of the pretty people/cool kids'... and why would you want to say that?... It's sort of de-humanizing.

I'm all for sticking it to the man, especially that man... but perhaps there is a better way.

Perhaps we should make A&F products into baby diapers... because then they'd be covered in shit :).

-mrp-

#3/30

So part of this 30 before 30 is pushing myself to take not only 30 self portraits [which is a feat in itself], but to also make them interesting.  I'm going to assume that people don't actually want to see 30 selfies of me.... [boooooring].

I'm hoping that as I'm thinking, and the months go on, that I'll push myself to do things that are not traditional portraiture.  That are more art.

So today's image was created with that in mind.  I'm not 100% satisfied with it [I wish there was more space between my feet and the ground], but it's a start to better art portraits in the future.

*click the image above to see it larger.

-mrp-

ps: this was taken at New Buffalo beach.  I love the emptyness of the beach.  There will only be a few more weeks of emptyness I bet.

#2/30

Numero dos!

*mrp*

The Bentley...

*Bentley, running all over trying to get away from his weird smell [of flea stuff just put on his back].

me: Come here stinky dog!
*rubs puppies back and gives kisses
me: Do you not like how you smell?
Bentley: Grrrrr
me: But it's killing all the bugs!

***now he will go and lay in one spot for about 30 seconds before he gets up to move to a different spot, trying to get away form the smell... of himself :).

-mrp-

In a few weeks....

I'll be headed down to Indy to photograph a boudoir session, and then an event with School on Wheels, and then hang out with some photog friends, and then hang out with some church friends, and then meet up with a friends new [ish], baby!

I'm excited about it.

But I just e-mailed the friend I'm staying with, and she mentioned it was firefighters week in Indy [her Dad's a firefighter].

And I was like:

THE FIREFIGHTERS CONVENTION!!?!!?! [smile].  My favorite time of the year in Indy!!!! [well, when I was single :)]; it is like the first real sign of spring :).

-mrp-

ps: remember this? wahahahaha rofl... lol... ha ha ha

Munchkin...

Have you played it?  There are a lot of cards, and a lot of reading, but it's fun.

And there are a ton of different genres: zombie, space, regular, pirate, etc.

So looking for something that was challenging, fun and short enough I could do it every night [ish], and not be overwhelmed, I decided to start drawing from the munchkin deck.

Here we are so far:

I finished up another 5x7 sketch book with these images :).

*mrp*

Kindergarten

A few weeks ago I substitute taught a kindergarten class at a private school here in town [maybe I mentioned it here or somewhere?].

Anyways, at one point, we sat down to do journal time where I give them a prompt and then they draw a picture and write a sentence about it.

I can't even remember what my prompt was [it was supposed to do something with the story we read right before].

What I do remember is, as we are drawing, one of the kids picks up his paper, barely written on and says he messed up and needs a new sheet.  I inquire about how he messed up and encourage him to draw around it or draw it into the story, but he starts to crumble it up, while telling me their teacher lets them start over.  Which of course ticks me off.  And I say something like, "well, I'm here today, and while we'll do a lot of things like your teacher does, this isn't going to be one of them".

In the end he crumpled up his paper in a ball, and I had to have a talk about respecting teachers, and when they ask something he needs to do it.  I should have made him draw on the crumpled up sheet.  But I didn't.

I was thinking though, what exactly are we teaching kids with that approach?  Are we teaching them if they mess up they can start all over, and not worry about the first mess up?  I know this is one of those small nit-picky things where it's ridiculous to pinpoint what it really is teaching kids.  But to a certain extent, I think the small things like this do teach kids problem solving skills for the future.

Should we have kids, I want them to know it's okay to mess up, and inevitable that they will mess up.  But they can't just run and get a new paper every time they mess up.  Most times they have to figure out a way to make the mess up okay, or better.  And learn from it so that next time they have a clean sheet of paper they don't make the same mess up.

And hopefully that lesson will expand to all things in life.  You can't always just start fresh.

-mrp-

April 1st!

And, it's snowing outside.

Not an April Fools joke.

:/

Spring needs to fight harder to get here!

-mrp-

An Update :)

Goals Update:

It's been 11 days since I stated my goals here on the blog.  And I'm happy to say I followed through with a respectable amount of them :).

1. I read the bible every day since then [with the help of the bible in a year; which has daily readings].  I also journaled, and stuck with the idea that I don't have to write a long drawn out passage every time I journal.  It was nice to write one or two sentences a couple times.  Freeing.

2. I've drawn 7 of the 11 days.  That's more than 50%, so I consider this a win :).  I've also found something to help.  I've pulled out Ronald's deck of Munchkin cards, and have been drawing a new one each night.  It's fun, and definitely been a creative pusher to just get my brain to think more about art, and possibilities.

3. Duolingo.  Okay, so I've sorta sucked on this, but in my defense, Whit was in town from Saturday to Wednesday morning, and it's weird to do a half hour of language learning when a friend is in town :).  BUT, I did do it 5 times, which isn't too bad.

That's all.  Hope everyone is has an excellent Easter!

-mrp-

So Sad :(

It's so interesting to open up your facebook news feed and see 90% of your friends making a statement on something that's happening in the government.

It's kind of cool for the first inspiring day.

And then it's sad, when all the people opposed to that statement figure out clever ways to refute it [shrug].

What I want to say to most of my fellow Christians, is that you can both believe that God made marriage between a man and a woman, and also support equal rights in the United States of America.

Have you watched Lincoln yet?  Back in the day, the good Christian people had their panties all in a wad about freeing the 'colored' folk.  Some were adamant they were not equal to the white folk.  Same story about women.  Let the women vote!!! [ho-ly-shit-no!].  I believe it's the same story with the gays and lesbians.

Because marriage is more than just something that happens in churches, I wholeheartedly believe they need to be seen as equals in our government.  No one is asking for churches to marry a gay or lesbian couple.  No one is asking you to change your beliefs about what is right and wrong.  What they are asking, is that you give them the same rights straight people have [lifelong partners don't get to make decisions if their partner is in the hospital, they don't get tax advantages, they don't get to be recognized as a family unit].

I've only watched one talk about this on CNN [the video here], and it's just sad.  On all fronts.  It's sad that we can't come together and talk about it.  Just talk, without any hurt feelings, or bashing of each other [I personally think that Suze Orman did a SHIT job of being respectful of the other dude in the clip; and seriously, from someone who has been told she's wrong probably her entire life in her lesbian relationship, why would you want to turn around and do the same thing to someone else?  I mean, seriously, you're going to tell him he's not educated because he holds different beliefs than you?!].  sigh.

I hope marriage equality becomes a thing where all states and the federal government recognize gay and lesbian couples.

I also see both sides, and understand it's a scary situation for a lot of conservatives.  But it's just not fair.

-mrp-

30 selfies before I turn 30?

I might have added a new goal today... maybe.  I'm so bad at goals though, and trying to get through things [we remember how the alphabet drawing thing was... so good at first, and then I fell apart at V].... [I have plans to finish some day even if it's already more than a year later].

In any case, I took a self portrait today, and I love me some Cindy Sherman [her early work anyway, her later work is a bit cray cray].  But I'm getting close to my final year in my 20's [I can't believe the 30's are so close! Yikes!].  And to celebrate (?), I might attempt to share 30 self portraits before I turn 30.

So here's number 1.

-mrp-

New Goals...

So, when I was in middle school and high school, I was always checking out self help books from the library.

Saying that [well, typing it], sounds super lame.  But I don't actually think it was that lame.  It was just that I wanted to be better, and access my full potential! [which sounds so cliché!]

In any case, this morning, I'm wanting to once again create new habits, in order to be more tomorrow than I am today.  Because I truly believe I can be.  And if I don't ever start those habits, and get into routines, then I'll never achieve some of the goals which require more than a one time/one day commitment.

So I thought I'd share them with you.  I'm going to be using the pomodoro technique, if you haven't heard about it, and want to make better use of your time, you should totally check it out.  I've downloaded an app on my phone, but you can also use an actual kitchen timer.

New Daily Goals [which I've had on my hypothetical to-do list forever; and haven't actually done at all]:

* 1 pomodoro [25 minutes] of duolingo * [I'm learning German :); my awesome Onkel George died in Germany just a few weeks ago, and so a new determination has built up inside me to make this happen].

* 1 pomodoro of reading the bible and journaling * [Besides just actually gaining knowledge and thinking more about the things I believe, I think this will be really good for my identity in general, and writing out things I'm thinking about as well as ideas I have on making my business more than just a business, but also making it something that gives back to the community, and figuring out what I'm passionate about as well and how to make a difference in that part of the world].

* 1 pomodoro of drawing * [I took drawing classes in college, and I loved it (well, mostly, except for that one tool professor).  My one teacher made me promise I would continue to draw after the class was over.  My response was, "of course!"... but I've sucked at it.  So hopefully this will get me back in the habit, and more inspired].

And that's it, as far as daily goals.

An hour and a half with short breaks in between.

Totally do-able [not for everyone, I know, but I'm self employed, so it totally is for me].

In other news, we're turning in an application next week for a special house purchasing program [they help you out with the down payment, and there are special restrictions for purchasing their houses; which we currently qualify for (hooray!)].  Who knows what will happen with it, or whether or not we'll be accepted, but we're hopeful!

That, and I'm working at The Cove this summer in the box office :).  I'm sorta excited about it, and it's a good summer for us to stick around SB and not spend money traveling [no weddings, or other big things that we NEED to go to].  So instead, we'll try to make some extra money, pay off more debt and just plug into SB more.

-mrp-

pinterest

Pinterest is less offensive than facebook... I hope it stays this way.

-mrp-

savers and futuristic language

So I've stumbled upon some awesome TED talks recently, from friends sharing them on facebook.  So this morning, instead of perusing facebook for inspiration/education/entertainment, I decided that I would just go to TED talks site and watch one of the videos I found which had an interesting title.

I found this:
"Could Your Language Affect Your Ability To Save"

Of course, most of you know since the husband and I have been married, I've been investing a lot of time and thought into money, and how to get it to work best for us.  Dave Ramsey says something like, you have to tell your money where to go and what to do, otherwise, it will always have control over you.

All that to say, money interests me, and the way we think about money interests me.

This Keith guy, he proposes the language we speak has an affect on how we see money and how we save money.  Our English language has a past, present and future tense where we have a lot of things that change in our terminology.

It rained last night     vs    It is raining     vs    It is going to rain tomorrow

Other languages approach the tenses differently, and translated is like this:

It rain yesterday      vs     It rain now      vs     It rain tomorrow

Obviously, he does a much better job explaining it [you should go ahead and watch it :)].  But his studies show USA citizens are worse savers than most [well, everyone except Greece] countries where the language for future encounters is not as different as present encounters.

It's fascinating to think about.

My favorite part though, when when he goes on to talk about health benefits.

He talks about smoking.  While saving is a current pain in exchange for a future pleasure, smoking is a current pleasure in exchange for a future pain.  And of course there are links to people who suck at saving, also being smokers, and overweight.  Clearly pointing to current pleasures outweighing their future pains.

-mrp-

"uncomfortable truth"

Homelessness... 

The “uncomfortable truth” about panhandling is not that most homeless people are liars, but that many of us want them to be.  Beneath all our ego and superficiality, our core desire is to make human connections – and yet we deny such connections to those who most need them.  He’s a wino; she’s a con artist; those shoes look new.

Makes you think a bit, ya?

I read this, and then this, and then this tonight.  This Andy guys is an incredible writer/storyteller.  I encourage you to click on the links and read them.  And take time to think about what it's saying.

-mrp-

Mornings!

So there have definitely been times in my life where I hate HATE HATE mornings.  But recently, they're my favorite part of the day.

Ronald comes in before he leaves for work to give me a kiss good bye.

A few minutes later Bentley jumps up [shh, don't tell Ronald], and curls up with me until I'm ready to be awake.

Then, when we've decided it's time, Bentley snuggles with me, and is all cute and sweet and puppy-ish for a good 5 minutes while he lets me pet him and scratch his belly, and he tries to lick my face off.

Then, when I ask him if he's ready to be awake, and get out of bed, he pounces like a tigger, all over the bed.  It's awesome.

That is currently why I love mornings.

-mrp-

A Bitchin Saturday...

I've been on a recent tangent of cleansing my facebook newsfeed from lies and misrepresentation and internet junk.

Which you might think means I'm chucking people out my friend group, when in reality, it just means I'm posting a lot of snope.com links on peoples shared internet stories [the ones we used to be spared of on facebook, because elderly relatives used to only have e-mail].

It got me thinking though.  About how much information there is out in the world, and how we often do a crap job of doing the research to see if it's true or not.

And how freakin gullible we are.  I mean, seriously.  Do you know how many times I've seen the post of Bill Gates wanting to give everyone who likes the page a gazillion dollars, or the free ipad link.... we are somehow smart enough to not believe that bad shit will happen to us if we don't forward this onto 18 of our friends, but we're not smart enough to realize this is not, and never will be true [if you're looking for that, you have to get yourself onto a screening of Oprah or Ellen, duh].... [also: can you seriously NOT tell that it was photoshopped!!!  Honestly?!?!].

Full disclosure, if you have shared this, I'm automatically going to assume whatever political posts you have made, or believe in, you haven't done your research about that either.

That's right.

I said it.

Do your damn research!  There are honest truthful research capabilities with the internet!  Don't be that gullible, easily manipulated, lazy person who gets all passionate and bent out of shape about stuff they read on the internet, without first doing your research.

I'm in no way asking you to change your beliefs, but I AM asking you to freakin know why you believe them, and if the reasons you believe them are TRUE stories, and TRUE information and TRUE facts.

I don't know why there is so much untruth out there, but I am amazed at how a fabricated story can spread like wildfire.

-mrp-

ps: Thank the LORD my one grandfather never had e-mail; I'm sure I would have daily reads and links about the minutemen of which he was a long time financial supporter.

pps: I'm particularly fond of how in the second photo, the origin of the story is from a facebook group called "People are Fucking Dumb".... so so true internet.... they're so dumb they are sharing your fictitious story over and over and over again... so dumb.

pps: years ago, we were excited to get the mail because there would be cards, and letters, and real communication in them!  Then that was inundated with crap credit cards applications, sales shit, and other stuff that automatically goes into the recycle bin in my house... Then we had e-mail, and it was so much fun e-mailing back and forth to friends and family and having access to quickly interact with people through words... Then that got clogged up to where I now have four e-mails, and two of them are used solely for junk mail and forwards.  And then we had facebook, and it was awesome, and we got to see pictures, and stalk boys we liked and could end our wondering about their relationship status with a click of our mouses... and now that's clogged up too.  Which does make me wonder what the next thing will be.  I suppose we have text messaging [which a couple companies that have my digits actually text me info (a tanning place and target)].  But what will be next?

ppps: this also sort of makes me want to come up with my own bad advice, etc and see it go viral.  But that would just make me cringe at the illogical-ness of people.

sickness

I'm sick.  And while complaining about it on facebook is tempting, I'm resisting, 'cause unless it's cleaver, I don't really want to hear about other people being sick, so why should they want to hear about my snotty nose, stuffed up ears, cough from hell and achy muscles [which I usually like, 'cause that means I had a killer work out].

In any case, I have stuff to do, but no motivation to do it.

Last night, I woke up around 1am coughing [ps: when this happened when I was single, I was mostly annoyed, now that I'm a married, I feel SOOO bad coughing in the middle of the night when I know the husband is asleep and waking up early to go to work; how sucky].

It was one of those annoying coughs.  Like a tickle in your throat.  A very small tickle.  And then when you cough to get it to go away, it's starts a coughing explosion.  So you take a sip of water.  That makes it go away for half a second while you think, "I just want to freakin sleep!".  Then more coughing.  So I get up and get some juice, I'm not a doctor, I don't know, maybe it will help!?!

Negative.

So I end up in the kitchen again [side note, I usually sleep walk to the kitchen once or twice a year and have, more than once, woken up with my hand stuck in a pringles container].  I grab some tortilla chips, eat a few there and then take a few with me back to the bedroom [which Ronald hates food in the bedroom/on the bed].

Silence for 15 minutes, when I consider if I need another Nyquil.  Then the damn tickle is back.  I quickly squelch it's annoyingness with a chip.

Better.

Sleep.  No more Nyquill needed.

***

I should be doing some sort of other work, but it seems harder than writing a ridiculous blog about my last nights sleep :).

So instead I'll settle for some creativelive.com... It's like school while I'm in my pj's, and for free... it's semi productive.  I'm learning.  I'll leave the doing things for tomorrow.

-mrp-

self portrait research

Some of you remember I started a self portrait series back in the day, right after I got out of college.  It was titled "To Scare My Mother".  It was awesome [smile].  And something I'm still pretty proud of.

So I've decided to revisit the idea of another self portrait series.  In college I studied Cindy Sherman who did a series of awesome self portraits back in the day.  And I figure, although my friend pool is growing up here in the bend, I still don't have a ton of people who would feel comfortable having me photograph them.  So, I'm comfortable in front of the camera, and I have time right now to do awesome photo/art things... so why not!

I'm mainly going to focus on things that are a bit out there, and more unique than the hum drum portraits [I can take an awesome portrait, what I want to take is an awesomely AWESOME artsy ART portrait].  In my research [pinterest, you are so ever helpful in this!] I've found, however, google apparently thinks "Glamour Portraits", really means topless chicks with giant boobs... wtf.

I realize nudity is all over the art scene, and I TOTALLY appreciate the figure and nudes... but "glamour" does not freakin mean nude!

Meh.

End of rant.

I'm sure I'll share eventually when I get one or two done.  I'm thinking I need to start out easy, and then work my way up.

Here are my "To Scare My Mother" series:

-mrp-

ps: everytime I write a blog... or really anything... I have to go back and erase like, at least two or three "that" or "that's".  Thank the Lord one of my mentors senior year in high school pointed out how often and ridiculously I use that stupid word :).

really though...

It totally ticks me off when people use their facebook accounts for the sole purpose of spreading hate, bitterness, ugliness, and just bad shit.  And I don't even think the people that do it, realize what they are doing!

There is so much of that in the world anyway.

You are probably right, that the world is out to get you... and everyone else... But really, the only thing you CAN do, is determine how you respond to that world that's out to get you.

I'm not saying there's no legitimate thing to bitch about on facebook [I'm a culprit of this every once in a while].  But when you seriously post every.single.time... about how you are being taken advantage of, or being disrespected, or how the president is taking away your freedoms... it's just too much.

There are so many beautiful things to share.  And so many awesome things happening in this world.  Why can't we share those things, and bond together about awesomeness, instead of bitterness and the things that we tsk and shake our heads about... why do so many people not share the story about the dude that offered the indianapolis guy a job, after he found out he was going to trek through the snow for 10 miles to get to a job interview [right!?!].  But will instead share our ragingly one sided opinions on everything.

I just wish people were more aware that they have to be the change in the world.  We have to educate each other, and that doesn't mean sharing links and bonding over negative things via facebook.  It instead means we need to do better to change things.  To be living life off of the computer in an effort to make a difference.

And I need to do better at this too... once again, I'm my a culprit.

-mrp-