Is anybody out there?

I haven't posted in so long that I wouldn't blame my handful of readers if they don't stop by anymore, but just in case, I wanted to make a note that I'm posting more often these days over on the new studio blog for my company.

See it here.

(Site address updated on February 15th!)

why you gotta be so noisy?

On To The Next

So that was my honeymoon. Not too shabby, huh?

Some big changes around here the last few weeks -- Things I thought would give me much more time to blog, but this is my first chance. I've been busy working on editing photos and baking with this pretty machine.

At the end of last month, I left my office job to devote myself full time to our photography business. I don't have words, truly, for what a big deal this has been for me. I told G. the other night that being able to work from home doing something I love feels the same way to me that I felt when we first started dating -- like I was finally where I was supposed to be.

Naturally, there's a somewhat scary downside to this developement in that it puts considerable financial strain on G. and I. But it's so, so worth it (so far). It's already improved my life, and it hasn't even been a month. I hope we can pull it off.

Fly Me To The Moon, Part Four: Paris

I was wild about Paris.

The morning we arrived, bleary eyed from traveling overnight from Venice, we rode in a cab through the still quiet streets of the city to our hotel. At one point Gym nudged me and pointed out the window. There, oh so tiny, peeking through a gap in the skyline, was the top of the Eiffel tower. I cried.

Paris is a city I plan to go to again and again. It was different in some ways than I expected (Bigger! More modern!) but still somehow exactly as I'd hoped it would be.

Certain places can make your heart pound in a way that feels just like love. This was one of those places for me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweetmondaygirl/sets/72157594315843822/

Fly Me To The 'Moon, Part Three: Venezia

So many amazing things about Venice:

The little bar run by two women near our hotel that we found within an hour of arriving and went back to a few times because they had the best panini and the friendliest smiles (which is saying something as most everyone we met in Venice was nice).

The Californian couple we met while getting gelato on our last evening who were celebrating their 53rd anniversary. They had more energy than we did!

Eating at a restaurant right on the Grand Canal. Spectacular location and one of our cheapest meals on the trip. Can't beat that.

Napping in the afternoons because it was so! So! SO! Hot! Out! Side!

Getting lost. Truly. Several times.

Buying a painting from an artist in St. Marks square that I am absolutely in love with. I get butterflies in my stomach when I look at it. It's hanging over my dresser in our bedroom now.

That being there feels like a fairy tale because only in a story would an entire city be built on water.

Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweetmondaygirl/sets/72157594302024498/

Fly Me To The 'Moon, Part Two: Firenze

Amazing things about Florence:

Our hotel. I could write pages singing its praises. But I'll stick with saying that there was breakfast in bed every morning, champagne when we arrived, and a welcome package with spaghetti and sauce!

Walking through the quiet backstreets and stumbling upon a wonderful little art shop selling beautiful dainty etchings that were being made as we browsed around. We bought two.

The food. Oh goodness, the food.

The fact that I was a little in awe of the place, and therefore didn't take all that many photos. Most of the time, I wanted to see it with my eyes rather than the lens.


To see a few Florence photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweetmondaygirl/sets/72157594271986422/

Fly Me To The 'Moon, Part One: Roma

Wonderful things about Rome:

The narrow cobblestone streets

Gelato!

Granita!

The businessmen in suits on scooters

Eating in restaurants where there are no other tourists

Learning a handful of words in Italian and actually using them

The quiet, sprawling green park above the Piazza del Popolo

To see a few of my photos from Rome:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweetmondaygirl/sets/72157594259940517/

Just for the record:

Hunt's does not count as ketchup.

Toasting an onion bagel in the workplace has got to be near the height of rudeness.

my writerly self is buried beneath so many things right now. house stuff, day job, photo work.

every once in a while, a good sentence will pop into my head, but when it does it's like seeing an old friend across a busy street. the traffic is too full and fast to even try to wave.

one soft small lesson to learn

When I moved into my last apartment, G. and I had just started dating. For the first time in the history of my moving life, I let the boxes sit unopened for weeks. I couldn't be bothered with my customary rush to get everything situated as quickly as possible, so busy was I with the task of falling in L.U.V. It was months before that place was completely assembled, and those months were some of the best I've ever had.

I didn't learn my lesson from it though. Since we've moved in to this new place, my almost desperate instinct has been to UNPACKRIGHTAWAYORELSE, despite my outward insistence that I am going to take time to set our home up properly, even if it takes a while. I've lost sleep the past few weeks over the state of the office and living room. I've had small waves of panic while thinking about the inside of our kitchen cupboards.

But I've been forced, in spite of myself, to take this homemaking process slowly. I haven't been able to rush it, haven't even had time to shove things into closets so that the place looks shiny on the outside. And yet, somehow, slowly...

Just now, sitting on the couch with G., talking about what to order from the Thai restaurant down the street, looking over his shoulder into the dining room at the evening sun streaming through the window on our two plants in their brightly colored pots, at the green glass knobs I bought to replace the old ones on the dark wood cabinet, at our stark white wedding china mixed with my red latte bowls, I realized the pace is perfect.

I'm having a hard time believing it's been over a month since the wedding. In ways it feels like it's been that long and then some, and in other ways I feel like it was a (really good!) dream and the real thing is still lingering in the future.

I thought for sure I'd have had time to write about all of it by now, and I'm a little sad that I haven't. I keep thinking one of these days I'll get around to looking at our honeymoon photos or finishing up the journal we wrote while in Europe. In the journal, we are suspended in our first full day in Paris. Not such a bad place to be stuck...

I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to get some of my thoughts down here at some point because I love reading other people's wedding stories and would like to contribute my own. But for now, it's back to working on photos for clients, trying to get started on thank you notes (yikes!) and unpacking our still cluttered apartment. Please forgive my temporarily horrid blogging habits, with the promise that there will be better things to read soon...

Newlywed Bliss in Full Effect

Hi everyone! We're back and we're married! And all the stuff people say about their weddings is true. It really was the best day our our lives. We're still on a high from it.

I can't wait to write the details of the day (too jet lagged right now!) and share honeymoon photos (no hard drive space on the computer yet!).

But for now, I wanted to take a second to thank everyone who left or sent a sweet comment around the wedding day. They all made me smile!

For anyone who'd like a sneak peek of our wedding photos, check our our photographer's blog. We are so, so happy that we hired Jessica to photograph the wedding. She and Nathan did an amazing job. And, seeing Jessica work made me excited to get back out and shoot another wedding myself this weekend!

http://homepage.mac.com/jessicajphoto/iblog
/B1406720197/index.html

You'll have to scroll down a bit since she's had other weddings since ours. Once you get to us (Lindsey & Gym, for those few of you who may not know our actual names), be sure to click on the slideshow.

More soon.

One Week

I'm off to get married!

(If we can do it as well as these guys did, then I'll consider it a perfect day.)

8 Days: Oh, the sappiness begins!

I don't have my ring on today (it's at the jeweler's getting a special polish), and I keep catching a glimpse of my bare fingers and panicking. It's strange how in just a matter of months that ring has become part of my hand. Today is the first day I haven't worn it since G. proposed, and it will probably be the last day in a very long time that I won't be wearing either it or my wedding ring. I feel like I'm just now starting to understand the full significance of wedding rings, of why when H. lost his, he and A. combed an entire soccer field until they found it. It's not just that wearing a ring says "I'm taken," it's that it says "We're joined."

10 Days: Glutton

I wish someone could make me stop looking at the weather forecast for next week. It's getting worse and worse, and I keep looking and looking. I know (I KNOW, PEOPLE!) that even if it rains the wedding will be a success in the sense that G. and I will be married when it's over, but I've spent months and months planning this thing based on a rain-free day. In the past week alone I've spent no less than ten hours assembling placecards that will look utterly ridiculous if it's too rainy to hang them on a clothesline as planned. Not to mention my darling lemonade table that won't be anywhere near as charming if it's stuck inside the barn. These details mean a lot to me. And don't even get me started on the fact that I know from first hand experience how difficult it is for a photographer to get good photos at a ceremony under a dark ol' tent.

I'm freaking out here, kids.

12 Days: Other Honeymooners

When my grandparents were newlyweds, and only 19 years old, their house burnt to the ground. They lost everything, including their wedding and honeymoon photos. Several years ago, another couple who they spent part of their honeymoon with gave them some film negatives from that trip. The type of film used is no longer readily processed, so my grandma was unable to do anything with the negative. Recently she passed them along to me, and I've been working on getting prints made. The negs are in pretty bad shape, but I'm totally smitten by the photos nonetheless. Time has worn down the celluloid and given the images a surreal, romantic quality. Some of them give me chills. My grandparents look young but confident, and in the photographs I can see little fragments of the rest of their lives already etched on their faces.

15 Days: Home Stretch

For some reason, every time I've ever been anticipating something exciting, I always thought that if I could make it to the two week mark, I could survive the rest of the wait. Tomorrow is the two week mark!

P.S. If you want to read about someone's deepest prayer and biggest dream coming true, click on the Superhero Journal link on the side of my blog. It made my day today.

16 Days: Dreaming of Venice

One thing I've found sort of funny about this whole wedding thing is that it involves months and months devoted to the careful arrangement of one day, while the honeymoon, at least in our case, goes largely unplanned. G. and I are going on what is truly my dream honeymoon, a trip to places I've wanted to visit my whole life (Rome! Florence! Venice! PARIS!),and I've probably spent a total of two hours thinking about this trip. We're wildly underprepared to spend two weeks in countries where we don't speak the languages beyond G.'s spotty French from a class he took last year, and my thin grasp on the first two lessons of an Italian language CD I've been listening to in my car every few days.

I love this. I can't wait to stumble around these cities with my husband G., and be sappy newlyweds together.

(I also can't wait to have some photos to post that aren't of weddings!)

17 Days

I've got such tunnel vision right now. I would say 90% of the thoughts going through my brain are related to wedding tasks. My eyes are glued to my to-do list.

This does not make for good blogging.