It has been a long few months.  Too much ‘real world’– feeling behind and out of touch with friends/fam, feeling a lot like some ‘fun’ needs to be added back into the mix.  –Its been a month that included such ‘joys’ as a cancelled insurance policy (we seem to live in a spot where thieves like our things/and with 100 year old houses– things break.  Apparently…3 claims in 3 years is grounds for termination. grr..)  We’ve gone a week without hot water (heater broken…not a tankless to be found in the city. Have I mentioned cold showers r-o-c-k? NOT.) We’ve missed multiple outings with friends, an angry eye infection had me looking like I could have used  a pirate patch for a few days. We have some ‘major life decisions’ that need to made but seem stalled…my travel schedule has been intense.  Just feeling plain tired and run-down…!!    Do I sounds whiny to you??  WELL I DO TO ME TOO!!!!  And THAT my friends is not how I want to go about my days…how about you???
That said, some recent ‘inspirations’ have made me take a step back and want to put some focus on the ‘good stuff’ that is going on. I mean man, we live in a great house, we get to do things in life many folks are not fortunate enough to do, I have some wonderful friends that ‘check-in’ even though I have pretty much been MIA lately.  And, I get to take photographs of fabulous people and catch moments in their lives they may not have been able to have documented otherwise and on…and on…
Inspiration 1: I met a client a few weeks ago who has two boys.  We met for a family mini-session session.  They were running behind….the youngest was sick with a very runny nose and not exactlly thrilled to see  me and my 70-200 lens!   It was hot…full, awful sun.  All she wanted was to document the littlest ones’ 1st year and nab a fam pic.. But wow. The odds were against us…baby boy was not giving us much.  Dad played court jester, mom wiped his nose, I barked like a dog, whistled and jumped around like a fool.  –We even tried favorite toys…and it all resulted in pretty much this:

But mom and dad stayed cool as cucumbers…  Me…hard to say but admittedly, with only an hour session  (which I tycially do not recommend for more than 1 child…especially little ones.)  and us being 10 min. over our allotted time with another session across town and feeling like the cicumstances had not yet yeiled ‘the photograph’ of little guy to document his 1st bday…I may have been feeling the pressure.  At this point mom states she really had just 1 more idea she wanted to accomplish (as little one is still in a partical melt-down mode and eldest is off and running somewhere else)  …she wants to incororate a ‘sign’ into images with her boys and then her hubby alone.  Here is the sign..

I could not help but chuckle at the slight ironly of her sign and our current ‘situation’ as we loaded one squirmy 3- year-old and a runny-nosed, tear-filled boy baby onto  her lap in an attempt to get ‘the shot.’  But I continued to fire away with dad back in jester role trying to make the kiddos laugh with tickle torture and the like…  And then with a ‘just one more’ from mom (we are now 20 min. over our time and I am now officially late)–I grabbed a few quick shots of she and  hubby alone.  We exhanged a few pleasantries and ‘next steps’ and as I was running off to the next session (truthfully, not really all together certain if I had gotten everything I was after)  when mom says…”You know, I do feel really lucky.”  **Lightbulb**   Late, runny noses, crying babies…and she remembers just how lucky she is all the same.  Wow.

Inspiration Dos: As you may have seen…there are many photographic ‘365’s’ flying around the internet  (essentially, the concept is to take a photograph and document your life for 365 days if you have not seen one..)  I have wanted to do one for a while ‘just because’ but I have never felt truly inspired I suppose.  But in the spirit of ‘being lucky’ I say  ‘zip it Sally’-its time to stop the whining and focus on the things you do have going for ya’.  So Welcome to 365 days of Gratitude people!  I plan to shoot one image a day of something..any old thing…big or small that I am grateful for.  I may not post them all (don’t want to bore you too much:-) and they may end up being taken with a cell phone vs. my mack-daddy gear…but I am off to the races in hopes of at least some days remembering just how lucky I am.

What is it that makes you feel ‘lucky’???

XO,

Cassandra

PS: And by the way…as I complete this post guess what???…we just got hot water and a dear friend invited us over for a bite to eat tonight and we can actually make it. 🙂   –And just wait until you see what I found inside that little camera of mine when I got back to the house a few weeks ago (below) …. boy, I am ‘lucky.’

Happy 1st birthday baby boy!!!