Waiting

 

It feels like I’ve spent the past year waiting.  I’ve waited in the car countless times while one of my cats is at the vet.

I’ve waited for packages to be delivered and food and grocery deliveries.

I’ve waited for the doctor to call with test results, hoping for good news and fearing the worst.

I’ve waited to go urgent care after I fell down the stairs because I wasn’t sure if I could even be seen.

I waited for the election results to be called and then again for the inauguration.

Now I’m waiting for warmer weather and my turn to get the vaccine so I can stop waiting to see family and friends.

I’m waiting for this f#cking pandemic to end, for the freedom to start living a more normal life.

And right now, on a Tuesday morning before work, I’m waiting for the weekend.

What are you waiting for?

***

Making this photo was a lot of fun.  It took me back to my theatre days – sourcing props and costumes,  doing hair and make-up,  building a set and working with lighting.  Except this story is captured in a fraction of second (one-sixth of second to be precise) instead of in five acts.

Since it took so long to get everything set up, I thought I’d have some fun with the set before tearing it all down.  I think the photograph with the wine and my phone is a more accurate representation of my last year. 🙂

This is the meme from @attorneyproblems that inspired the photograph.

Covid Couch

Happy Quarannviersary! One year ago today, the managing partner of my office gathered everyone in a conference room and told us that we would be working from home for the next two weeks while we ride out the pandemic.  ha ha ha ha TWO WEEKS! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Two weeks turned into two months and two months has dragged on to a year.  Over the past year people have been singing the praises of our doctors and nurses working tirelessly to save lives and the essential workers like the grocery store employees who risk their lives everyday so that idiots without masks can grocery shop.  They ARE America’s heroes.  They deserve all the praise and hazard pay.

But on this anniversary that I never want to celebrate again, I’d like to honor the true hero in my life – my couch.  I’ve spent a year on my couch.  It has been my office, a restaurant, a movie theatre, my best friend.   I drink my morning coffee on it while I read all of the emails I will eventually fail to respond to.  I’m on the couch when I reluctantly log on to work and I’ll stay there until my laptop threatens to shut down because the battery’s drained.  I eat my lunch and take my lunch time nap on it every day.  In the evenings, I sit on the left side to eat dinner and watch TV.  I sit on the right side to drink wine and scroll through social media and text with friends or read a book.

I’m especially attached to it on the weekends.  With nothing to do and nowhere to go, I like cry from frustration/boredom/loneliness and then take a long afternoon nap just to pass the time.  Which side I cry/sleep on depends on where the cats are.  I do my best to contort my body around them so they can sleep in peace.

My abused and suffering couch is wine-stained, coffee-stained, tear-stained, chocolate stained (and yes, it’s chocolate – I sat on a rogue chocolate chip), shredded by a kitten who doesn’t give two fluffs that I don’t want her to scratch it, and sagging from having to support my ever increasing pandemic weight gain.

I haven’t decided what I’ll do with it after the panny ends.  I probably should put it out of its misery and send it off to couch heaven, but I’m not sure I’m that selfless.  Do I really want to have to get to know another couch while I reacquaint myself with my friends, family and co-workers?

 

 

 

2020 Wrap-Up

I’m four days late in posting this.  I meant to post it on December 31st, but as per usual, work got super chaotic and I lost track of anything that wasn’t eating, sleeping or putting out fires.

These aren’t necessarily my best pictures, but they are the ones that felt representative of the month.

January:  Randy and I braved the bitter cold and went down to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Andy Warhol exhibit.  I took this on our way to meet a friend for pizza and beer afterward.

February: B.C. (Before Coronavirus) I used to get up early on the weekends to shoot at sunrise.  I love the early dawn light and it’s much easier to get up for the sunrise in the early spring than it is in the summer!  If I had only known that in a few short weeks, I wouldn’t even be allowed along the lakefront because of a pandemic.

March:  Life ground to a halt.  When I left my office on Friday, March 13th, I thought I’d be back by April 1st.  Oh, how naive I was!  As people started to hoard food, I spent the next several weeks, making daily trips to multiple grocery stores hoping to find basics like toilet paper, bread, pasta, canned goods, frozen foods, milk, eggs, yeast, flour, soap and other cleaning supplies.  I ate a lot of salads and off brand snacks!  Funny (and maybe a little sad) how the produce department was always well stocked.

April:  Illinois is under a stay at home order and all of sudden my photo walks felt dangerous.  I became wary of people so I started walking in alleys to avoid people and photographing people’s trash.  Everyone was eating and drinking a lot.

May:  Two months into the pandemic and everything is still shut down. Cleaning supplies are still scarce and I’m on Zoom 3x a week talking to friends.  I’d grown tired of walking the alleys so I started walking through the cemeteries.

June: Chicago is on fire, literally.  The BLM protests have become violent and Chicago has a curfew.  Once again, groceries become difficult to get as grocery stores are closed and boarded up.  Animal shelters are cleared out because people have been adopting or fostering animals and I’m no exception.  Gladys is my little Covid kitten.  Though I didn’t get her from a shelter.  I have my very own kitten dealer and because of her I have both Rose and Gladys.  I think three cats makes me a bonafied cat lady!

July:  I booked my first gig as a photographer.  A friend of mine “hired” me to do her maternity pictures.  The word hired is in quotes because no way was I going to let her pay me – I had no idea what I was I doing so we agreed that she’d buy dinner.  It was a learning experience!  Portrait photography is A LOT harder than I ever imagined it would be.  Memo to self – learn how to pose people.

August:  This was definitely the worst month of the year.  Randy and I lost Henry on August 2nd.  It was traumatic and devastating.  We rushed him to the emergency vet on a Sunday night and had to wait in the car while waiting on news from the vet.  I didn’t take any pictures this month.

September:  I’ve been stuck at home for six months.  I’m watching a lot of TV.   I miss my friends, happy hours, dinners out, brunches, movies, and traveling.  Most of my pictures of my cats.

October:  I did family portraits for a friend.  Again, I’m lucky since the stakes were pretty low.   I bought speed light for the shoot having learned from the maternity shoot that the lighting would be poor.  Not sure I used it properly though….

November:  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected as President and Vice President and my neighborhood went nuts.  People were dancing on the street corners and driving up and down Clark Street waving flags.  Mayor Lightfoot even joined us and gave a little speech.  I posted this image of a woman on her bike Flying the W (Cubs fans “Fly the W” when the Cubs win) on Instagram and had someone contact me asking if they could buy it.

December:  I didn’t take many pictures in December with my Nikon, but I did take a picture everyday of the Christmas lights in my neighborhood with my iPhone and posted them in my Instagram stories with Christmas music.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 9

Warning: I’m quite hammered writing this post and my firm is to blame (in a good way). We had a Zoom cooking class taught by one of our Italian attorneys. I’ll tell you all about it next week (and share the recipes!), but lemme tell you – it was so fun!

Last week was week nine of the quarantine. Between work and the rainy weather, I didn’t get out much to take pictures. (The pics below were taken with my iPhone for documentary purposes.)

I’ve been ordering my groceries online and having them delivered so I really haven’t left my condo much in the last few weeks aside from my daily walks around the block. I did make a trek to Walgreen’s last weekend just to check out the current TP/disinfectant/hand soap situation. In some weird way it’s become my way of gauging how freaked out I should be and based on the shelves in my local Walgreen’s everyone in Chicago is gonna get Covid-19.

Still no toilet paper on the shelves.
I can’t disinfect my home, but I can still unclog a drain!
Now there’s a running Swiffer products??
A few hand soaps

I’m back to using bar soap to wash my hands since the only hand soap left on the shelves is clearly the kind that nobody wants. It’s scented and irritates the skin. Also, please leave any good lotion recommendations in the comments, my hands are developing rashes from the constant hand washing.

How are the shelves looking in your areas? Do you have toilet paper, cleaning supplies and hand soap?

Cheers,
Bec

Week 8

Last week was week 8 of working from home/quarantine. As the quarantine drags on and the weather in Chicago gets marginally better, it’s getting harder to social distance from people. More and more people are out and about. The sidewalks, while not exactly crowded, are definitely busier and there are more cars on the roads. I’m still walking in the alleys and trying to get my daily walks in in the early mornings and late evenings.

On the weekends, when I have the time to venture a little further from home, I’ve started exploring the cemeteries. It’s a lot easier to social distance there than on the city streets.

On Saturday I packed up my camera, a water bottle and some snacks and walked the 2 miles to Graceland Cemetery. The walk was much quicker than I expected and the cemetery was a lot smaller than I imagined. As it turns out, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t where I thought I was. I had ended up at St. Bonfice Catholic Cemetery. Chicago has A LOT of cemeteries smack dab in the middle of the city!

Still, it was peaceful and I could walk around without my face mask on. I was really drawn to the trees in the cemetery. The tree in the photograph below is perfectly shaped – almost as if it had been created by painter.

1/640 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400

I liked the shape of the tree below as well, with it’s gnarly and twisted branches.

1/640 sec at f/9.0, ISO 400

I was disappointed to find that I over exposed both images when I downloaded them. I shoot in manual mode and it was a very bright day so I’m guessing I either couldn’t see the light meter or I misread it when I took these pictures. Either way, I clearly wasn’t abiding by the sunny 16 rule.

Anyone else find some interesting places to explore?

Cheers,
Bec