Postcard from Julie

I have dozens hundreds of postcards waiting to be scanned for The Postcard Project. I can’t believe I’ve neglected it like this. Every time a postcard comes in the mail, Bleu gets excited. The fact that I haven’t scanned and posted your cards in no way diminishes his joy. Thank you to everyone who has sent in a card [especially Julie, a repeat offender!]. I will try to get caught up once school is out. This postcard came in the mail yesterday. Perfect timing!

Michelle mentioned wildfires in a comment and at the time I hadn’t heard anything. It turns out there is a fire. It has burned over 5,000 acres in the mountains near Ruidoso. Maybe that’s why our sky has been so hazy lately? We took a ride that way on Sunday and saw the activity. The Mescalaro Community Center had large white tents set up as the headquarters and lots of smaller tents dotted the grounds. They were even selling Tularosa Canyon Fire t-shirts at the gate!

Video on flickr: Hazy Sunset

While giving the girls a ride to school, I took a shortcut and happened to find this house. I am so in love with the whole idea of it. There are signs everywhere. “Support our troops.” “Recycle.” The sign you see above. By the way, when I drove by the first time there was a trash back hooked to the fence with cans in it. When I came back to take the picture the bag was gone. So much for directions. 

Even the truck is covered with signs. I’ve seen it around town before. The back says something like “If a [insert description of driver here] is not driving this, it is STOLEN!” How fabulous is that? It reminds me of Frank and his painted truck. Sometimes I think that people are so worried about being perfect that they forget the beauty of being original. And then I see something like this and it makes me happy.

Science Night
Thursday the elementary school hosted its annual Science Night. This is something that the kids look forward to every year. All of the science fair projects are lined up in the hall. [You can ask Bleu about humidity in the air vs. underground!] The library is set up with lots of hands on stations where the kids can learn about different concepts, make things or do puzzles. It is a good time all around, but the highlight of the evening is what happens in the back of the school.

Kids line up in the cafeteria and craft rockets out of paper. Outside, they line up to get their rockets blasted with an air compressor and run to catch them. Seriously, an hour and a half just isn’t long enough! Click here to see a video of Echo with his rocket.

Track
Last night, Mayfield hosted the track meet here in town at the Field of Dreams. Mia ran three races: 3200m, 800m and 1600m. We watched the first on together and then went home. I came back to the track for the other two. She was having a bad day yesterday and her times were off by 10-20 seconds. After the last race she dropped down and stayed down for a long, long time. I couldn’t help crying but didn’t rush onto the field this time. She doesn’t want the attention. Even though I know she’ll be all right eventually, it hurts to watch her crying twenty feet away and not be able to go to her. She came in 3rd in the 3200m, 8th in the 800m and 4th in the 1600m.

She is worried about not being able to compete at state if she has a bad day. She doesn’t want to come in last or disappointing her coach/team. What can I say? There isn’t a whole lot we can do to control it so I hope she can relax and just enjoy the experience without putting too much pressure on herself. Click here to see a video of Mia in the 1600m.

Good, Bad and Ugly
Mica has had a hard semester. She hates math and hasn’t been doing well in her honor’s math class. She trys to avoid studying when she needs to do more of it. Lately it feels like every time we talk to her it is something negative. I hate that. Yesterday we got a letter in the mail from the principal letting us know that Mica will be getting an award next week at the underclassmen awards assembly. It was a wonderful surprise. I have no idea what it is for and neither does she. Suspense!

She called her mom to invite her and Julie agreed to go. She told the girls she would come by the house so they waited in the yard all night. She never showed up and when they called she didn’t answer the phone. It’s just a little thing but all these little things add up and I worry about their ability to trust. You can only be disappointed so many times before you begin to get jaded. It’s hard because I love them so much. I really wish she would be more involved because they need her.

Not long ago, the flickr blog featured a post on collaborations. Around the same time I found a cd of photos from my collaboration with Mr. Trona on flickr. Coincidence? Even though these images were shot a few years ago, they remain some of my favorites. I [heart] double exposures and to mix it up with someone else’s artistic eye was even more fun.

[my] CPP on flickr: set | slideshow
collaborations on flickr: set | slideshow
CPP experiment on flickr: set | slideshow
double exposure on flickr: set | slideshow