Gnomes in my garden on Thanksgiving day.

I have a thing for photography.  My dad used to have a home made dark room when I was little, and I loved helping him out in the red colored lab.  It was pretty neat, watching him through the shadows, working his way around the chemicals and the papers.  I grew up finding stacks of pictures all around the house, my mom trying to keep up with him while putting the family albums together.  She would label the pictures and put funny notes in them, just a little reminder of the story behind the frozen image.

Now, with all the digital revolution, dark rooms have been replaced by computers and Photoshop. No more red lights in dark rooms.  I bought a digital SLR camera about a year ago and now I'm the one taking pictures all the time.  Just before sitting down to have our Thanksgiving dinner, I went to my garden and took this picture.  I bought several of these gnome figurines and placed them all around my front garden.  So here it is... I want to call this one Leo.  Don't ask me why.

Dinner was lovely and really good.  My sister left Tuesday to meet with her new boyfriend in NYC.  After six years of living with her girlfriend (yes, that's right), she now decided she fell in love with this guy and wants to be a mother.  This in itself is an entirely different post so I'm going to save it for later.  My mom and dad are still here through next Monday.  We watched Wall-E after everything was cleaned and put away.  I loved it!! The guys at Pixar have always been able to steal my heart... so thanks again for delivering :-)

Tomorrow I have work, can you believe that!? I'll be the only one having to wake up in the morning.  I guess I better start wrapping up my day.  At least I got to play with my gnomes today.  And hopefully tomorrow won't be such a lousy day at work.

So much to write... so little time.

I have been up since 4:30 am. Well, not literally, since I stayed in bed tossing and turning. Just couldn't fall asleep again. I have so much garbage revolving in my head right now. It needs to be taken care of or otherwise I will go nuts.

My family came to visit for Thanksgiving week. I've had a full house since last Friday and it has been kind of hectic and chaotic. My sister came from the north and my parents from the south. I'm in the middle so it's the most convenient place for everybody to meet. I had been looking forward to their visit, although I knew it was going to be an emotional challenge. Don't get me wrong: I love my family more than anything. It’s just that sometimes communicating with them can become a difficult engagement. Too big personalities, so much time apart from each other... people change in those lapses of time. If you didn’t keep up along the way, you better be ready for the surprises.

We were four kids growing up together. My sister is the oldest, I come in five years later as the second child, and then I have two smaller brothers, three years apart from each other. My sister was my hero while I was growing up. I thought she was the coolest person alive. Of course, if you ask her all she remembers is that I used to bite her when she wanted to play with me or wouldn’t stand still when she told me to. But that was when I was four or five years of age. By the time I was a teenager I was ready to make her my role model. I wanted to hang out with her friends and listen to their gossiping about boys. I wanted to do everything like her, look like her, listen to the same music she did. Then she graduated from High School and headed out to college. That was the beginning of a series of disenchantments on both sides of the story.