this isn't cute

um. still really sick.

the boss called last night. "why are you talking like that?"

"because i'm sick!" i croaked.

"you try to go on vacation and you get sick instead. you should have just kept working".

"yeah. why are you calling?"

"to heal you. can you do this this and this?"

"i feel better already."

topping the list of covenient things

laryngitis on christmas. when you're seeing your whole extended family for the first time in a year.

a tie with:

flying across the country two days after your lifelong friend gives birth yet not being able to see her or her new baby because you have a flipping cold.

these things are really weird and annoying

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

until someone puts pictures of you in them and send them to you. then they are still weird and annoying, yet oddly addictive and hillarious...anyway, merry christmas

okay, okay

ivy katsua perkins (quite sure i've misspelled her middle name)
born december 20, 2008
7.5 lbs
20 inches

this photo was taken only about a week ago, on the day they went to the beach to choose names. and a nice job they did!

part two of crazy big final project finished! now 'all' i have to do is write a business plan and i'm done. but all i can think of is getting to california to meet this little one....

breaking news! a skiyomi is born!

it's a little girl for kiyomi and skip! and on the winter solstice too, a holiday which kiyomi and skip have always celebrated with enthusiasm, a party and occasionally a funny yule log cake. eddie and maria's 2 and a half week old girl just got a best friend....

okay, i have to get back to my tears of joy now....

p.s. happy birthday to tristan. if shared birthdays are any indication, this little girl will be one awesome human.

p.p.s. i cannot take credit for the above most glorious portrait of kiyomi and skip. it was taken by one of my fellow boat inhabitants in paradox lake...

the unveiling

announcing....my website! http://kittyjoesaintemarie.com/

you cannot access it via the photo above. that is just a screen grab to entice you to go visit the actual site. you can click on the written link above though.

i've been wanting a website for years to post my portfolio. many things delayed me including feeling like my work didn't warrant a site--flickr seemed enough, not having the money or expertise to make a site, not to mention the daunting task of editing. but the kick in the pants i needed came in the form of my three-part final for my 'business practices of professional photographers' class, in which i have to turn in a website, a print portfolio and a business plan. okay, so i'm one-third there!

seriously, though, the joy i felt at one in the morning after staring at a computer for six hours straight (not to mention the countless previous hours of editing down and re-sizing images) beside emre's sainted brother emir (master web designer--i had no idea!) was disproportionately larger than the relief of a final finished. this was a much bigger goal, and my heart swells with pride.

as you will see, i kept the portfolio pretty simple, choosing to show mostly new color work that somehow felt cohesive despite it's random nature. surely later i will add to or switch up the content and possibly provide more traditional categories like black and white, polaroid transfers, etc. but for now, there you have it. now i'm off to print the whole sha-bang.

enormous thanks to emir balik for the web work, and to my instructor and friend, seth, for contributing so generously to my 'about' page.

what are you still doing here? go see it!

phoning it in.

since i'm embroiled in finals and really can't be here to entertain you, and feel terrible about it, i'm just going to have to pass that task off on danielle because this video she posted is hillarious and worth it...

sugary sweet methods of procrastination

sorry, i know i've been truant. is it a rebellion post nablopomo? partially maybe. but i've also been super busy procrastinating finals with all manner of things that are cute and sweet, like christmas trees and babies.

had the pleasure of meeting diana esther marie la calle yesterday. i figure it's okay now to post her photo, since she's already hit facebook, but i still hesitate as her mother is super private and her father has this thing against my blog (!). fear not la calle's: you ask, i take down post.
ah, yes, but diana. she slept through my entire first visit. this did not upset me, as her parents seemed to need the break. i did peek in on her, and just the sight of her little mane of hair and perfect shoulder brought tears to my eyes.

then it was back to my house to decorate my tree. we all know what a christmas enthusiast i am, yet this party had to be shelved the past two years due to the plague that visited me on and off for over a year. i can't tell you how lovely it was to have a party again! that people could come to my house. without being afraid.
adrienne's little maisy was the life of the party. sixteen month old hipster. she was most taken by the choo choo trains engaging in head on collisions.
then this evening i rushed back to the la calle's to catch diana awake:
and bring loaner christmas decorations to the new little family, alone in the city this year.

looks an awful lot like my tree!

now stop trying to distract me with trees and babies--i have finals to study for!

happy birthday grandma!

this was christmas of i'd say, 1999? i showed up in my zebra striped heels, grandma showed up in her leopard print coat from the 60's that now hangs i my closet. it was a moment.

my grandma called me 'maverick' after her mother's nickname.

then a couple of villans who shall remain nameless went and ruined it for what seems like forever. will it ever blow over so i can remember her instead of them?

so long, farewell

yesterday as i cleaned the kitchen i knocked into something which of course knocked into something else which of course knocked the very last of my set of beautiful and beloved candy cane tumblers from the dish strainer to the floor. the glass was suspended in air long enough for me to take stock of its value and panic, but not long enough (nor would i be lucky or dexterous enough) to catch. while my clumsiness has schooled me very well in the art of catching myself, i haven't yet worked out the object-recovery side of things.

as i stood surveying the lovely, vivid red shards of glass i lamented the final of the four of this set broken one by one. this was the first one i actually finished off myself (breakage of the other three was handled by a couple of turkish men in my life, both going by the name of fish, ahem).

so why did i pull out the camera? why am i telling you about a broken glass? because i'm superstitious. i could not keep myself from infusing the situation with significance.

the reason these tumblers were so beloved is that they were fancy with a capital F. they were nicer than anything i'd ever buy. they were a gift from a former dear friend of mine who has impeccable taste and always gave me ridiculously beautiful and thoughtful things. these glasses he brought to my annual christmas tree trimming party three or four years ago. said friend and i were co-workers for a solid decade! we were peers for eight or nine of those years, and then, in the end he was promoted. i mention this promotion not because i coveted it. indeed, by that time i was moving in the other direction, becoming serious about removing myself from the comfort and stability of that job that nonetheless sucked me in and consumed the pursuit of all other goals.

no, i did not envy his promotion, yet it clearly changed a power dynamic between us. he stopped making it to all of my events he'd formerly never missed, and the invitations to his suddenly went to those with an eye more trained on our mutual work. our friendship had formerly been about laughing and poking fun at our jobs, and now that i was moving on, i seemed to become invisible.

i didn't get angry. i didn't get sad or mad. i merely chalked it up to life changes. he was too busy now at work to connect. i felt like i understood. but then....but then as i took a season off to do an internship and when i say "off" i'm talking about a FREELANCE job. naturally i hoped that the jobs i was finding in the art world would pan out and i could ween myself off of my old job. but that old job (catering) was a safety net. its foundation is flexibility. you come and go, and it's nice to know that it's there. in new york city, that's what it's used for. it's not about commitment!

unfortunately, the company i busted my butt for in so many different management capacities, helping out in so many different scrapes, became so corporate that they decided they needed to weed people out who weren't 'commited'. this from the number one new york city source for temp work. and although i'd talked to said friend and his boss about even the possibility of coming back after graduation to accept a full time position to aid in paying off my school debts....so i'm going on too long about this, i realize, as you can tell, it's an emotional subject. the point is not that i got a letter in the mail from the company telling me i'd been removed from 'the system' and would need to reapply if i'd like to work for them again--essentially, "you're fired". the point is not that i didn't even want to come back. but to bring it back to the glass...the point is: that letter was signed by said decade long friend, without so much as a warning phone call or a follow up to say, "hey, this corporate bullshit is necessary, just wanted to give you a heads up because you're my friend."

and while i really didn't want to turn this entry into a rant or a pity party, clearly i couldn't avoid it. i stood over those shards of broken red glass and thought, well kitty joe, this glass is telling you this friendship is over. let go.

SHE'S HERE, SHE'S HERE, SHE'S HERE!!!!

i quote:
"We are happy to announce the arrival of Diana Esther Marie LaCalle on December 3rd at 9pm, born 7 lbs even, 21" long. Everyone is doing well; Maria and baby will be home from the hospital on Sunday."

running of the mouth

okay, so finally i can take down the nablopomo icon on the right. for those of you who were confused as to why i just wouldn't stop posting in november despite having nothing of worth to say (as opposed to all of those other months that i'm writing epic novels)--it was a challenge. a very tedious and silly challenge that i got much worth from but also drove me kind of crazy. nablopomo stands for national blog posting month. you get the idea. there are over 10,000 people registered, so you feel a kind of kinship in checking in with other sites and sensing their dual frustration. i felt such relief on the day it was over, and ironically, had to fight the urge to write a post to tell you about that big relief. then for a few days i felt like i could never bring myself to post again. and now, back to feeling normal. i know. you really appreciate hearing these mundane details. you really appreciate nablopomo for loosening my very tight lips...

so on to other topics of inundation and tedious challenges driving me kind of crazy: the self portrait class. i can't tell you how tired i am of taking pictures of myself. and what an absolutely horrible model i am. and yet, some of you continue to want to see my homework, so i'll give it to you and qualify as the world's most narcissistic blogger, which is quite a distinction, considering the twisted nature of posting your journal online every day....

for last week's assignment, each of us was handed an index card declaring a body part that our next self portrait had to emphasize. i was given 'mouth'. this was true torture considering it's the body part i've grappled the most with this class. i've learned that i haven no control over my mouth (hey, and i'm not talking about the drivel that pours forth from it--though that, in this case, would fall under the culpability of 'hands'). apparently when i think i'm looking neutral, i'm scowling. when i think i'm smiling, i'm smirking. when i think i'm relaxed, you can see my flexed jaw muscles. very attractive. very frustrating.i was also coming up with zero ideas and getting quite irritated with myself for being such a wasteland of inspiration. then i solved the problem in the way that works best every time--pulling out the damn camera and just shooting. having no 'big plan', i scoffed at my images but my class was shockingly happy with the results.

i know you've all probably seen it, but just in case...

jack black (and our founding fathers) said it best. 'separation of church and state' people! go and believe all of the frightened, judgmental things you want to about gay people, but don't go writing it in to our constitution!
i'm not going to stop posting this shit. i'm enraged. saw milk the other night in one of the two second rate theaters it was showing at in all of new york city. you know, because sean penn isn't one of the biggest actors of our time or anything. thirty years later and the same religious bullshit is being used to oppress people. how poignantly this movie speaks to our current situation. go see it.

push!

maria, in the hospital today doing what women do...can't wait to meet diana!