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Whooooooosh!

I feel like that is the sound of time whipping past me. My to-do list keeps getting longer, and I seem to slowly be getting things marked off of it, but only slowly. *sigh*

My parents are staying at our house right now; construction is well under way at their house, they are now working on the district heating design, and while the painters are working there, we let them escape the craziness by coming over here, they just worry a lot, they made sure the painters had a fall arrest from https://mhipros.com to prevent them from falling, I guess it is also very nice of them to worry that much. I spent most of the afternoon there today, and my eyes are still burning from the paint fumes! So I’m glad we’re giving them a break from all of that. Let me tell you though – if you’re ever considering remodeling, don’t. Just stop. Sell the house and buy a new one. I swear, it would be so much easier! (I say that, and yet if I could live in some great craftsman style home and the price I had to pay was fixing it up, I would totally go for it. But that is different, somehow. I’m not sure how, but it is!)

So in the past week I’ve installed a new shopping cart over at the Fresh Photography site – you can see it by going to the “Client” area at the top of the page. I’ve edited and uploaded Leia & Jim’s wedding. I’ve edited and uploaded Idalis’s photos, my latest newborn shoot. I’m about to finish editing and uploading Alexis’s photos, my latest toddler session. Elaine & I went to shoot a bar last Wednesday for a local magazine – details on that to follow once the issue runs. I then did another shoot for them on Friday of the bartender of the month for the next issue.

All in all, life is fabulous – but so busy right now! I am not complaining at all – I just need to catch up and stop adding more to my to-do list than what I mark off of the list each day!

Whew.

Where has the time gone? I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without posting anything here!

I went to Orlando to attend a workshop called Elevate with Garrett and Joy Nudd. It was AMAZING. We talked shop, we talked gear, we talked business stuff. We brought in everyday people and a few that want to be models and had photo sessions, including a “shoot out” where we worked with our “clients” (models & not models) for 30 minutes at a time and then switched who we were working with. It was fantastic! I then followed that up by attending OneLight with Zack Arias, which was an intensive 16 hours of learning. Yes, 16 hours, although really we went for nearly 20 hours – and it was the 20th workshop. How appropriate is that?

I’ll post more about all the great wedding photographers I got to meet and work with later this week. Right now, I’m still a bit scattered from the end of the week.

Murphy had the large abcess in January, and he never seemed to fully recover from that. Then, on the second to last day of school, we took him to the vet because he was not eating or drinking anything and was completely lethargic. He had lost 4 pounds, going from 12 lbs. to 8 lbs, had a low temperature of 99 when it should have been 101 or so. We ran tests, and nothing came back from them – his kidney functions and everything else seemed to be fine. They said then that the infection from January could have spread to anywhere, or it could have just been a matter of not recovering completely – they really did not know. He spent a few days there in their hospital, and after a night of IV fluids he was doing better and eating again.

I knew when we brought him home though that he was not ok. He walked as if he was drunk, stumbling and weak. He had lost a lot of his spirit. You could tell he wasn’t feeling well, he wanted to be off alone. You could just tell.

On Friday, while I was still in Orlando, Mike told me that he wasn’t eating again, would not drink water, and was just in bad shape. As I tried to leave Florida (after 1.5 hours of circling the Ft. Lauderdale airport in a tiny plane), Mike & Jason took him to the vet. It was clear that while they could have tried more things, he just was not going to recover. Once I finally landed, we all talked, and agreed that having him put to sleep was just the right thing to do. It was such a hard, hard call though.

I had mentally told Murphy goodbye before I left as I really knew he was not going to make it, but it was still hard not seeing him one last time. It is even harder on Jason, as he was his cat really, and they had such a sweet bond. It is hard for Mike & I to see Jason so sad, and we all miss Murphy.

I swear, I keep seeing him. Every time I walk past his favorite chair to sleep in in my bedroom, I see him out of the corner of my eye. While it makes me cry every time, it also gives me a bit of comfort to see him happy and well as he used to be, not sick like he was in the end.

So it was a good week, ended by a really hard weekend. Now we are part way into June, and I can’t believe I’ve written nothing here in that time. I guess I just needed time to recover from it all.

Watching this video about John Halcyon Styn and Grandpa Caleb having in home care San Mateo made me teary-eyed. What a beautiful, beautiful thing – I just had to take a moment to share.