One of my coworkers brought in oranges from their yard today. Look at this, it is perfect! A supermodel among oranges. Spokesmodel for the State of California. This orange made possible by the sunshine of the Golden State. Gorgeous!
©2018 Karen Fayeth
Photo taken by me, all rights reserved. Taken with an iPhone7, the Camrea+ app, a green folder from the office, and a little bit of goofing off time while at work.
Here it is, Sunday, January 7th and I’m staring down the barrel of Monday.
It’s time to get myself back into gear.
You see, not only does my employer shut down between Christmas and New Year, but I was also able to scrape up enough hours to take this past week off. I’ve just had seventeen glorious and fun filled days away from work. Days of setting my own agenda. Of not looking at work email. Of working on photography at midnight if that’s where the fancy took me because I could sleep in the next day and the next one after that.
Last week I existed in a fabulous sort of limbo land. 2017 no longer, not quite 2018. It suits me.
All good things must come to an end, and so must my extended vacation. Tomorrow, reality slaps me across the chops, as reality is prone to do.
This morning The Good Man and I left our warm and cozy home to venture out into the rainy, wintry cold for Sunday breakfast. Pancakes to bid adieu to vacation and bonjour to 2018.
Through visible breath and rubbing hands together I looked up and saw a bright red maple leaf shellacked to the windshield. “Hey that’s pretty,” I said and took a quick snap.
Now, I realize that in this simple winter image I somehow exactly captured my mood. No more holly jolly songs and soft Christmas lights. No more Santa and wrapping presents and warm cookies baking in the oven.
It’s now winter, plain and straightforward. No more looking forward to the holidays, instead we look to Spring. I have a lot of (needed) California rain to endure this year because that is what the Bay Area does in winter.
This is the long slog, when it’s still dark early and foggy mornings and shivery cold.
But soon. Yes soon, the world moves into winter so we can know the spring. Daffodils and cherry blossoms are just around the corner, but for today it’s a sodden leaf in cold rainy hazy blue surroundings.
So I won’t lose hope. Tomorrow may loom large, but I will pop back to the surface like a bobber and keep swimming. I will have great successes and I will fail a lot too. I will be mad and sad and happy and grumpy and overtired and all the things I was on December 21 when this wild leave from work began.
Okay 2018. I put you off as long as I could, but you are now top of my To Do list and I’m going to tackle you.
Starting tomorrow.
©2018 Karen Fayeth
It’s January. The holidays are over. Back to work. Inauguration looms large.
The skies above the Bay Area have turned a familiar shade of mushy gray. Expected for January.
When the marine layer isn’t in, it’s frosty cold. When the marine layer is in, it’s torrential. Standing pools of water soak my socks. Windshield wipers can’t keep up. The kind of rain that terrifies a New Mexican until she remembers that Bay Area drainage systems were meant to handle this kind of water. Mostly.
January feels dreary, but there is hope on the horizon. There is a break in the gray.
You see, this past weekend my favorite grocer featured unopened daffodil blooms. I scooped them up and ran home with my trophy.
I love daffodils because they remind me of what’s to come.
First come the daffodils with their buttery yellow optimism. Then almond and cherry blossoms create their own snowfall of fragrant petals. Then tulips in every color you can imagine. Finally colors and flowers of every sort jostle for the gentle rays of warm Spring sun.
I am a child of Spring and Spring is on the road, making its way back home to me. It returns with the dogged determination of a lost love.
Within my pile of hope and anticipation bought at the grocery store, there was a special stem. It made me a promise. Silent and steady.
A promise made.
A promise in progress.
A promise kept.
Now ain’t that something to get excited about?
All photos ©Copyright 2017, Karen Fayeth. Taken with an iPhone6, the Camera+ App, patience and anticipation. Subject to the Creative Commons license on the right column of this page.
Perfect posting for a Friday…
On Monday I had an early morning video call with a company in London. Oh those pesky time zones. Did you know that the US and the UK go to Daylight Savings Time (British Summer Time) about three weeks apart, and the US goes first? Monday was the first workday after the US moving ahead an hour, while the UK didn’t.
Yeah, I remembered that in the small hours of the morning and quickly dashed off an email to sort out the timing. Thankfully everything worked out.
To prepare for the video conference, I got up extra early and came into the office to set up and test all of my video gear. I just moved into an office a couple weeks ago and my video gear was in a heap in a drawer. Great.
I was able to quickly get it set up and tested and then ten minutes before the call, I was ready to go.
Ten minutes. That is a funny amount of time. Not enough time to really get anything going with work. I mean, I could have dived into email but then I just knew I would get engaged in something and would lose track of time.
But ten minutes is also kind of a long time to sit around and do nothing.
So I did what any adult professional in my situation would do. To “test” my video camera set up, I fired up PhotoBooth on my Mac and played with the effects.
I tried the one with hearts around the head, then the birds around the head. I tried the one that gave me frog eyes and one that produced a disturbing cartoonlike square jaw.
But none were quite as impressive as this. Let’s call it Alien Accounts Receivable Clerk. And your payment is overdue.
“Please remit payment or I will be forced to terminate your account”
So yeah, when the top of the hour finally rolled around, I entered the video conference still giggling.
A little too jolly for a fairly serious meeting with stoic Brits. *Ahem*
But I cleaned up my act, greeted the others on the call and then behaved like a grown up for a WHOLE HOUR!
Amazing. (hee, hee)
Photo ©2016 Karen Fayeth, taken with the PhotoBook App on my Mac and ten minutes of downtime plus post Daylight Savings Time exhaustion on my hands. Subject to the Creative Commons License in the right corner of this page.
I’m incredibly in love with that harbinger of Spring, the yellow daffodil.
Sunshine on a stem.
©2016 Karen Fayeth
I adore going to Trader Joe’s to pick up a bunch of tightly closed buds then later at home snipping the ends, placing the stems in water and watching a fireworks display.
Yesterday we sat at the table where this vase is placed and I swear these buds were busting open right before our eyes.
©2016 Karen Fayeth
I took a big bunch to work today and have enjoyed so many of my coworkers (and my boss) coming by to ooh and aah.
“They are just so sunshiny” is the general consensus.
And they are.
Unless I’m being all moody and arty and stuff and go for the black and white on the desk of my brand new office (yay me!). Then they are regal and proud and still very beautiful.
©2016 Karen Fayeth
And because I’m goofy for the daffydils, here is a Kaleida Cam shot:
©2016 Karen Fayeth
Ok, well, I’ve about exhausted the topic of daffodils. Love ’em!
Don’t even get me started on tulips. Oh sigh, how I love Spring.
Even in the middle of this gray rainy Northern California day, I look at tulips and daffodils and feel entirely optimistic.
All photos ©2016 Karen Fayeth, taken with an iPhone6 using the Camera+ app, the Lenka app (for black and white) and the KaleidaCam app. All photos subject to the Creative Commons in the right column of this page.