Every boy huggles his pretty pussy, part one.

 I only have five more photos left to edit before I'm out from under all of the work that backed up during the move, and then I can get to working on my own photo projects. I have a pretty big one I've been daydreaming about for a few years now, I just need 300 bucks to make it happen. Which seems like nothing, but I'm also putting every spare dime I have toward a two week trip to Ithaca in May, and then a week in Colorado in June, and then a few days in NC in July plus another trip back to CO at the end of the month. It's a fuck ton of travel. 

Anyway. I wanted to compile my favorite shots from 2020 in here, I feel like I do that every year, but I'm too lazy to look. 

So, here are my favorite photos I took for me, not for clients, last year:

Caught this dude surfing at the beginning of the year, during a pretty mild storm. II'm a sucker for monochrome. 

Top of Crouching Lion, after the early ass AM hike. I really miss O'ahu. 

Marching at the George Floyd protests in Honolulu. 

An Empty Waikiki Beach, right after the covid shutdowns. I can't say I was sorry to see the island beaches so empty, honestly. Seeing Honolulu so empty was wild. 

Our second to last time at Ka'ena Point. 

I never did figure out what kind of lichen or fungus or mold or...air plant?... this is. But I loved seeing them all over the hike Derek and I did at...uh....fuck. I can't remember the name. But it was a five mile hike, it was a good one, and there are so many other photos from the hike that I loved, but I never got around to blogging about it. 

Lulumahu Falls. I really really REALLY wanted to do a mermaid shoot here, and I had quite a few people that were more than happy to make the trek to the location and be in the freezing freezing water to make it happen for me. However, each time we tried to set up a shoot here, it rained and I called the shoots off. Should have just gone for it, anyway, it always rains in Hawai'i. I deeply regret it. 

This was a small beach down by Kahe that I loved to take sunset shots at. These are from several different days. 

Makapu'u beach. I did Derek's mermaid photos here, and they turned out magnificently. I just wish I could have done the couples mermaid shoot here that was planned, but got rained out and rescheduled at a different location. Also one of my favorite beaches to photograph surfers at. 

Found this little bloom on the way to Maunawili Falls (which killed my knees. They grind now, very audibly, and the last mile is almost all stairs. It uh...it wasn't great. 

Pele's Well, Big Island. This is the first stop we made after arriving! I wanted to come back to get sunset photos of Pele's Well,  but we ended up packing the trip way too full.

The Painted Church! I gave the entire history on this in my Big Island recap. I truly was smitten with just how ugly this church is. 

Akaka Falls. OF course. 

Volcanoes National Park, which was pretty much fogged out every single day we went, save for one. 

Papakolea Beach! I know nobody notices, but it isn't lost on me that I'm not writing the phonetic markers on the names of everything. I am lazy and sorry. 

Various places around Volcanoes National Park. Which is massive. 

An adorable little saffron finch gets an adorable little nosh in the rain. 

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this beach overlook. I also wrote about this in the Big Island recap, though...uh...I may never have published that one. Fuck, I really WAS bad about blogging last year. 

We drove by this gorgeous Japanese cemetery, I could have spent hours there. I felt very certain that the tree in the middle was either haunted, or the start of a mythical quest. I didn't get close enough to find out. 

Driving by the foot of Mauna Kea, a storm was rolling in. I really wanted to stop, the colors were so beautiful, but this was the best I could get from the car. 

And now we're in Missouri. No more new Hawai'i photos ever again, there are too many other places to see in the world. 

I fucking love my macro. 

I fucking LOVE my macro. 

I FUCKING LOVE MY MACRO!!!!!!!!

I was so annoyed at Derek when he bought one for himself. So annoyed that I promptly stole it and we had to buy a second one. Seriously, seriously, seriously...I love my macro. 

Aren't Lily Pads neat??? 

Obviously, I am a true artist and everything I do is original and good. 

This is one of the juvenile Ruby Throated Hummingbirds in our backyard. We moved in at the very tail end of hummingbird season, but we spent hours photographing them and being delighted by them. We even befriended a few enough so that they'd land on our fingers. They truly weigh nothing. 

Sleepy little bumbler bee!!! Did I mention I love my macro? I do.

I lied earlier. One more new Hawai'i shot. Our last time at Ka'ena, we took pictures of the salt collecting in the tiny tide pools on the big rocks. I am not great with my macro when I have to point down and keep my shutter speed low because it's getting dark out, but I'm not completely mad at this shot. 

So there they are. My favorite shots of my own from 2020. 

But 2020 was also a really good year for me, professionally. I am going to do that in a second blog, just because there are already 50 photos in here. 

Please don't hurt me, I'm just your taint

Checklist of things that have happened since I last wrote in here:

- did a fuck ton of mermaid shoots

- did a fuck ton of non mermaid shoots

- bought a house

- moved to Missouri without losing a single cat

We've been in our house since September 7th, and traveling to Missouri was long and stressful. I find that I kind of love my house, though. It's big, it's in the middle of nowhere, and Derek and I are working on our in house studio, thanks to a generous grant from my dad. We pulled up the carpet and put down new hardwood floors in the downstairs area that's going to be our studio. Good thing this house is almost 3k square feet, we can afford to block out the entire downstairs for shooting. 

I finished my degree, with distinction. I just put in my application for grad school. 

Found time to do this:

When we arrived, we had three cats: 

Lilikoi (Lili): our fat, sassy orange tabby lady

Mr. Floopies: our distinguished tuxedo gentleman cat

Battletoad (Snodelicious): our white and tabby patch mini monster.

We live in the middle of nowhere, in a really tiny town, so there are a lot a lot a LOT of feral cats out here. The first one to make his way into our brood:

Stonks: the biggest black cat I've ever seen in my life

He just showed up on our porch one day, desperately wanting the attention of our pre-existing cat colony. It took weeks for him to trust me enough to let me pet him, and then more weeks to get him to come inside. But now he's our indoor/outdoor gentle giant, he's a snuggle bug, and I love him to bits. 

On voting day, I was outside taking a walk around my property (it's a quarter acre, so walk is unfair. A jaunt? an amble? A constitutional?), Stonks was keeping me company, and I heard a tiny little meow and saw the scraggliest little calico cat. Emaciated, dirty, pathetic. Enter:

Quigley: My calico cunt.

Quigley desperately wanted affection, but Stonks attacked her and ran her off. I found her a few hours later, grabbed up some food for her, and fed her. She was just the starvingest. She sat in my lap, let me love on her, let me pick her up, and I thought, ok, I can get this cat inside and get some food and warmth into it. Joke's on me! Stonks has sprayed around our house and marked it as his territory, so when we got close to his markings, she freaked the fuck out and bit my hand. Like bit it real good. When I dropped her, I tried to catch her, I accidentally yanked her tail, and she swung around and bit me again, clamping down on me with her nails this time, too. I got a wicked infection, my ring finger got swollen and purple and red and ugly. I had to get 13 shots the next morning, 9 of them directly into the wounds, I was on antiobiotics for almost two weeks, and it took two months to finish up all of my rabies vaccines. But I found her the next day, got her inside without incident, took her to the vet and got her vaccinated and fixed, and now she is the fattest and cuddliest protector of me. She doesn't let the other cats near me, she sleeps with me, she loves me the very very most. And we call her stupid face. 

So five cats is a lot of cats. Stonks may not necessarily count, as he is also an outdoorsman, so 4 1/2 cats? 

Last Thursday, we were getting ready for our first winter storm (yay!). I heard a cat crying outside, and there was Stonks, sitting in the driveway. No surprise there, he loves to sit at the edge of our driveway, as there's a kind of...ravine there, with trees on the other side, and trees lining the road. Next to Stonks was a big grey ball, and I thought to myself, "well fuck, he finally killed a squirrel and brought it home as a present", as he is quite the hunter (he has caught uncountable chipmunks, and gets SUPER close to getting squirrels, they're just marginally quicker than he is). So I wandered over to him to assess the damage of the squirrel, and the grey fluff meowed. It was a tiny little kitten, in rough shape, ear all fucked up, face all fucked up, scrawny, shivering, generally just a bedraggled mess. Enter:

Goose: our adorable little kitten with an ugly URI. 

It barely took any effort to get Goose into a carrier and inside. He was clearly tiny, clearly starving, so I ran out to get kitten milk replacer, a litter box, kitten wet food, kitten kibble, and bottles. Derek stayed home with him and cleaned up his face, he had days and days of mucous gunk matted into his face fur and his ears, and his nose and eyes were crusted over. He had fleas, he was just...just a rough little guy. But we've gotten him back to juuuuuuuuuuuuuuust about normal. He's still sick, as all the vets at our clinic have covid and we couldn't get an appointment anywhere else until tomorrow (marking six days he's been with us), but he's playful, he eats enough that I'm not terribly concerned, and he's a love bug. Just purrs as soon as you touch him. He hissed at me the first two days any time I went into the bathroom we're quarantining him in, but that's over now, and he loves me. 

We're guessing he's no more than 8 weeks old, but as he's still trying to nurse from Stonks and he's not very interested in wet food, I'm guessing he's 6-7 weeks old. 

So. We started with three, and now we have six. 

Other than that, there really isn't anything going on. It should be quiet here until May, when we go to Ithaca for two weeks (EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!), and then June when we go to Colorado for a week (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) and then July when we go to North Carolina for a few days (I'm unsure how I feel about that one? I'm more excited than not, but there are certain family members that I'm less than thrilled about having to interact with). At the end of July I got back to CO to grab my kiddo back, and then in August, provided I get in, I start my masters. Which is wild to me. 

Anyway, I thought I should ramble in here for a little bit. I would like to do better at blogging this year, but we'll see. I have two photo sets to finish editing, and then I plan on soaking up the months and months of leisure time I have between now and grad school starting...maybe read all of the books on my list, paint more, learn to knit better, or just...play video games and veg out, because I've earned that. 

SOCKS DON'T PROTECT MY HEART!

So I'm busy as fuck.

I have done seven shoots in the last week (over a period of three days, with one of those days only containing one shoot. So really, over two days), I have four shoots coming up this weekend. I am debating on whether or not I can take on the two shoots I have inquiries for, because our HHG is scheduled to be moved on August 6th, and that's a LOT to add on in two weeks along with the other 11 shoots I have to edit. Two additional shoots doesn't sound like much, but I'm already super fucking stressed out, and I just...I don't know that I have the bandwidth for putting my effort into anything more than I've already taken on.

Just kidding. In the hour it's been since I started this blog, I DID take on another shoot. I think that's going to be it, though. I really can't hack much more stress.

Is anybody else exhausted? I am exhausted. To top everything off, my period got here four days early, and it's like, making sure I am aware that it hates my guts. The human growing ones, in particular. I am tired, I'm bleeding like it's my primary hustle, I am having a lot of dizzy spells, my tummy hurts intermittently (which may be keto flu, I seem to pop in and out of keto the longer I stay with it), and my allergies are going crazy.

I am super ready for bedtime already.

I also turn 36 in four days (two now! I just can't stick with anything until it's finished!). And I'll be working on my birthday, because being an adult fucking sucks. But I DID tell everyone to bring me vegan keto treats, so maybe I'll get lucky?

SO since I wasted two days without finishing this, here's the update:

the "hurricane", which is a hurricane right now but will not be by the time it starts impacting us, has closed my location for Saturday, and rained out Sunday. After conferring with all three of my clients, I pushed all of their shoots back to August 1st, which gives me FOUR shoots that day instead of one. Early ass shoot at China Walls in the morning, then pretty much straight to the three shoots on the exact opposite side of the island.

The shoot I was supposed to do on Sunday that the hurricane is ruining everything for is now being bumped up to Saturday, because the weather should still be pretty good until Saturday evening/early Sunday morning.

Our HHG was moved to September 1st and 2nd. Because no possible way can HHG move our shit on dates where we AREN'T flying out immediately the next day (though in this case, we DO have four days between HHG and our flight out. Which is nicer than last time, when we only had less than 24 hours). Jasper gets shipped to the mainland on August 14th, so we'll have a nice long while on the mainland with no car, which, you know, rules. Not NO car, we'll have a rental, I guess, but fuck that's a lot on a rental. God damn.

Moving is so fucking stressful. I was telling Kati I couldn't complain TOO much, because everything is being packed for me, and moved for me, and I don't have to deal with the expense or the time suck, and really my stress level is pretty minimal as compared to any time we moved on the mainland. I'm uh...I'm still fucking stressed. ESPECIALLY when I think about getting our critters back stateside. As it stands right now, we have 17 hours of flying/layover time, not including the two hours at the airport before we depart, however long it takes to get a rental the day we arrive, and then the two and a half hour drive back

I never thought I'd be saying anything like this, but I can't wait to be in Missouri. I just want to breathe easy again.

Edit on July 29th.

I never published this. I have already turned 36, and I really wish someone had told me I was going to be closer to a smokeshow at 36 than at 26. Not that I wasn't a fucking snack at 26...I was. Though I think 27 and 28 were my snackiest years. But like...it's real hard to be mad at myself at 36. Check it.

I never would have guessed I'd look this decent adjacent this close to 40.

When I was 27, I figured this....

was the hottest I was ever going to be.

I was definitely wrong. At least for me, I can't speak to my hotness from the outside.

I still look JUST as vapid, though! Some things never change.

August 2nd edit:

I'm fucking bad at this. Four shoots yesterday. Booked two more milk baths. I've been so preoccupied with getting everything for the move set up that I ignored booking that other shoot I wanted to do with another mermaid client, and I hope I didn't fuck that one up, because I really want to do that with her. If I can arrange the location, of course. Anyway, days and days later, I'm 36, I'm fabulous, I just spent 200 on make up that is so fucking bright and vibrant and fun and I am so excited and I leave Oahu in less than 40 days.

I'm swamped. Swamped and sad and happy and swamped.

He's dancing with chicken slacks

I can't even explain how this train of thought came up, but I was sitting at my desk editing photos when I realized that Allen is the only long-term boyfriend I've had that never bought me a camera. My daughter's dad bought me one (and I still maintain that he was hoping I wouldn't want it and I would give it to him, but perhaps I'm wrong. It's possible that Chris had one or two decent moments in our farce of a relationship...perhaps the gift of a camera was one? Surely he couldn't have been all bad to me? Right? Is that right? Tell me that's right, because I don't remember him ever being anything other than a lecherous dick with fidelity issues and a disregard for the feelings of the fucking teenager he was dating as a man in his twenties). My first camera, actually. I remember the first time I thought I might really love photography, I had taken some photos of my daughter in the yard of the people who lived next door to us in Lucerne. Taking photos of Rhyann was my favorite thing to do, and she was such a little nature baby. These photos in particular was just her in a diaper, eating a dandelion, in the shade. I haven't seen the photos in a very long time, though I do remember they're on black and white film (of course!! What kind of girl with a camera would I be if I didn't shoot on B&W film in the early stages of my photography development???), and I also know that if I were to critique them NOW, I'd find a thousand things to fix about them (light, composition, angle, all my failings as a girl with a camera who didn't know what the fuck she was doing. Rhyann was perfect, of course, but the photos themselves could have been better had I known what I was doing. Rhyann was who I photographed non-stop. Rhyann and some truly awful selfies that make me cringe a lot. Oh oh oh, and landscapes. Which...man, I have just never had the eye for landscapes. Chris took me to this place once...I want to say it was called Hanging Rock, but I can't be sure...and the drive there I was totally fucking obsessed with the scenery. I remember taking so many pictures (on my black and white film, fucking bless) and then getting the washed out, boring ass photos back and being so fucking disappointed in myself. I wish I could remember what that fucking place was called. I googled Hanging Rock and a trail DID come up, but not the correct one. It was this gigantic rock that you could climb up and jump off of into the river below it. Which I didn't do, because I am a coward, as many historians have said. I don't even remember which way we traveled to get to it, so trying to drive my way through Google Maps Satellite View would take hours. Because I'd just have to click aimlessly in the hopes of seeing something familiar. I DO remember driving by a huge apiary, though. Surely that will narrow the area down!!

I took photos as often as I could, which wasn't nearly as often as I wanted. I couldn't get film whenever I wanted, but that made the pictures I DID take all the more special to me. Rhyann was about 85% of my subject matter. I wasn't even trying to take the kinds of photos I try and take now...I wasn't going to artistic photos of my daughter, I just wanted photos of her period. I was fucking OBSESSED with taking photos of her. My mom's favorite photo of her was a photo I took of her when Chris and I were moving into our apartment in Willits. Rhyann was wearing an outfit with flowers on it, I believe...a little periwinkle number with daisies...and she had her hand to her face as if she was making the universal "shush" motion. I took photos of her doing everything. On one of my good days with a nice reprieve from fucking debilitating postpartum depression, I took MY favorite photo of Rhyann. She was in her lilac purple dress with white lace edging. I loved that dress so much. Rhyann had grabbed my hat, a little angora number that looked kind of like a cloche hat, but not quite. She put it on, it was far too big for her, and she started somersaulting all around the yard, laughing the entire time. I got a photo of her mid-somersault, and even though you can't see her beautiful little face, it was my favorite photo of her for a really long time. Until I took the photo of her sitting on the stairs at Dave and Doreen's, drinking a Capri Sun. That day hadn't been nearly as good, Rhyann was a crabby cakes that day. I can't remember why, but she was a grump. I'm sure I hadn't helped matters. This is completely unrelated, but I really wish I had known about PPD back then. Maybe if I had been able to name what was going on with me, I could have gotten help, because I really needed it. Chris was part of what made me so miserable, and had been during my entire fucking pregnancy and I definitely needed to escape from that nonsense, but I was really in the clutches of PPD. I had days where I couldn't get out of bed, where I just couldn't fucking function as a mom, and making sure my daughter's most basic of needs was met was all I could force myself to do. I couldn't get dressed, I had a fucked up sleep schedule, I couldn't do anything but cry. Rhyann would lay with me and watch Brother Bear and The Emperor's New Groove, and I would just...cuddle her and cry as quietly as I could. Maybe that's part of why I love the photo memories of her so much...because those were good days. Days where I could actually be a mom and enjoy days where I could breathe like a person who didn't kinda want to die just because feeling nothing would surely feel better than the way I felt almost all of the time.

I ran that camera into the fucking ground, man. When I finally left Chris and had to leave my daughter behind, I lost interest in photography for a really long time. I fell into a stranger kind of depression, but I could kind of function again. I was working toward getting my daughter back, that fell apart (and man, I could write a god damn novel about that disaster. I wonder a lot how Chris remembers that going...if he remembers how fucking hard he stonewalled me from access to my daughter. If he remembers breaking promise after promise to me. I know I thought maybe I should lie and behave like I wanted to be with him still, and that he should come to be with me, which I think kinda blew up in my face. I had no interest in being with Chris again, I just wanted my daughter back and he was pretty fucking flatly refusing to make good on the arrangement we had made...I really wonder if he remembers any of that. If he remembers my mom and I arranging flights for him and Rhyann that he just never bothered with, if he remembers telling me that he had changed his mind and didn't want to have joint custody any more...despite the fact that he had asked me to be left off of her birth certificate and he had approximately zero legal claim to her...that I would have to come get Rhyann from him. I wonder if he remembers that I gave up a fantastic government recruiting position to move to Vegas so I wouldn't be as far from him and we could both have equal access to our daughter...if he remembers setting me up to live with his friend Matt, who stole thousands of dollars from me and then left me fucking homeless....if he remembers any of this, or if he's willfully forgotten? Or if maybe he tells it differently because he really looks like a fucking heartless prick if you tell it the way I remember it, and he knows it. I don't even think he told Shila the truth about our relationship. I didn't always think Shila was the worst...I remember one time, I tried to warn Shila about being with Chris. She was pregnant with their son, and Chris had been trying to tell me that he couldn't bring Rhyann to see me, because if he saw me, he'd have to fuck me. I told her about it, the conversation didn't go well. That isn't even when I began to despise her, I just felt bad for her, because seeing even a glimpse of Chris on the other side of being with him felt AWFUL. Matt had filled me in on a lot of Chris's behavior from when we were together...I had only suspected the things Matt told me about, and it was upsetting but gratifying to know I wasn't just imagining the worst for no fucking reason. When I still lived in California, Shila had never been anything but nice to me, I had no real reason to hate her yet and I just wanted to let her know what Chris was saying behind her back. She told me she didn't believe me, so I didn't tell her any of the other shit Chris went on to tell me that just WAY crossed the lines of what a person in a monogamous relationship should be saying to a person that isn't their partner. Shila would definitely earn my malice later, though I did spit a LOT of venom her way that I kind of wish I hadn't. Some of the things I said to her...some of the names I called her...I hate myself for. Kind of wish I could apologize for them, I was only in my very early twenties, and she had my daughter and was helping people keep her from me. She helped get my pages that I had put up for my daughter taken down, she stole my photos of my daughter and acted like they were hers, she helped perpetuate the idea that Rhyann should be afraid of me because I was going to steal her...what kind of person does that? I'm quite sure we misunderstand each other on several levels, and it's not just possible but PLAUSIBLE that Chris sold Shila a monstrous version of me that never existed and Shila was just trying to be a protective momma bear. Which in a way, I can respect, and I respect Shila for adopting Rhyann and taking care of her and loving her and being her mom her entire life. I just wish Shila had maybe had the foresight to figure me out and make up her own mind about me. Like...maybe refusing to even let me see photos of my daughter was the wrong turn to take? Blocking me from even LOOKING at my kid? I will never ever ever forget how fucking brutally angry I was the day my mom got an email from Dave saying that Chris and Shila had found out he was sending her photos of Rhyann...that she was of course forwarding to me...and he was no longer invited in their home. I have just...I have pounds of emails I printed out and kept for when I eventually took Chris to court for shared custody of our daughter. That was one of them. I had started to hate Shila LONG before that, but it isn't for nothing that I will not hesitate to think of her as one of the worst human beings I've ever known. She clearly doesn't think much of me, either, but all of that being said, she didn't deserve the low blows I lobbed at her because I just wanted to hurt the people obstructing me. I could have insulted her based on her actions rather than, say, her intelligence [which was my favorite way to dig at her], or her being on welfare [which....number one, fucking HYPOCRITE, man, I was on that shit for years at Chris's behest, and even WORSE, needing assistance to fucking survive isn't at ALL something that should be insulted. I was a deeply disgusting person, it was a really dark time in my life. Yucky. I am a yucky human sometimes]...I wish I could justify all of that shit better. I understand why I said the things I did, and I think most people would soften their view of the things I said, given the proper context...but it doesn't make any of them right. Especially when I could have easily stayed away from low blows and been completely correct in calling her a bad person in whatever creative ways I wanted to without digging into digs based on education or economic status. Not fucking cool of me. I have...I have really strayed from the point. Anyway, Chris is a horrible human being, I am not a fan of Shila's, but from my far away perch, Rhyann looks like she's been completely loved and has had a wealth of experiences in her young life, and I can at least rest easier knowing that Rhyann has good parents. They may not be good people to everybody, but they look like they've been mostly good one of the people who matters most to me. Even though I don't know her, I still fiercely love my kid. I wish I had been allowed to love her a bit better, but I didn't walk myself into that situation by myself. I take some responsibility, I dole some out to my parents, and I dole a lot more out to Chris and Shila. Maybe they've both forgotten about who they were to me and it's...it's just easier to make me out as an uncaring monster. Maybe Shila was more like me than I could have imagined, maybe she only aided Chris in denying me access to my daughter because he made her. He very successfully made me do a lot of shit I didn't want to do, and I wish I could explain why with something other than desperation on my end to not be turned out and have my daughter taken from me...something Chris loved to threaten me with when I told him I wanted to leave him. I really fucking lost my story here, but the moral is Chris is trash and I fucking hate him. I hate him with a god damn passion, and more than a little of me hopes that part of him hates how much Rhyann looks like me. Shila can suck a butt, too, but I'm a bit more inclined to be forgiving of her, even though she's pretty god damn complicit in Chris's bullshit. So is his mom and Dave and while Dave gets a bit of a bye for sneaking us photos, and for at least being civil with me, they can all die in a god damn fire. I shouldn't have been villainized for having postpartum depression, I shouldn't have been villainized for hating living in a small city, I shouldn't have been villainized for not wanting to be with Chris anymore, and for taking the only option open to me to get out from under someone who completely and fucking TOTALLY abused me in every single way he could, I shouldn't have been villainized for being young and stupid, I shouldn't have been villainized for wanting access to my daughter, or for wanting photos of my daughter, or updates on my daughter...I shouldn't have been an object used to terrify my daughter to help her hate me any more than a kid too young to understand the nuances of why parents leave would hate the parent that wasn't around...but I was. And every last one of them helped perpetuate that shit, and that's vile. It's awful. I wish I could make Rhyann understand. I wish I had confidence that maybe her family figured out what they did, and that they were more than a little wrong in how they handled the situation...I suppose none of that matters. I mean, it all matters to me, and I know I fucked some things up, and I wish I could tell my daughter I am so sorry, and that I've loved her from the very second I saw her, but that counts for next to nothing. I would spend the entire 10 grand on lawyers fees trying to get shared custody of her all over again, even knowing what I know now about how it was going to end, because I think I'll always hope that it turned out differently. In an infinite multiverse, there's no such thing as fiction.

Cameras? Back to cameras.

I kept that camera Chris gave me, and when I moved back out to Vegas to try and make dual parenting work, I starting taking photos of the desert. They weren't wholly awful, in fact I remember one photo of the wooden walkway at Red Springs being one I liked quite a bit (I think I'd hate it now, though). I turned back to landscapes without my daughter around, though I did take a few photos of me and Allen, and one great photo of Allen under the covers where he looks like the world's most gentle pugilist. But my camera stopped working, and I didn't know how to fix it, and we were pretty fucking homeless and in need of cash, so...I pawned it. I got thirty dollars for that camera, which was staggering, since it was god damn broken. And then I went without a camera for years. I didn't really think about it, I guess. I liked photography, and I had a vague idea about being somewhat decent at it (the three or four photos of my daughter don't count. Those are sentimental photos to my, but I do not think they would be something I delivered to a client. Do I sound highly disengaged with that remark? I may never be able to answer that accurately), but I didn't need a camera. Perhaps that's why Allen is the only boyfriend I've had that didn't buy me a camera. Which is literally what I set out to joke about with this blog, and instead I WAY derailed. I pointed this out to Allen today, and here's what he said to me:

Vintage Allen. 

Dan is the next boyfriend I had that bought me a camera. He had deployed, and my webcam just wasn't cutting it for his UNSLAKABLE THIRST FOR VAGINA SHOTS. I'm only kind of kidding. Dan wasn't gross about demanding that shit, though....I just don't understand pictures of genitals. Don't get me wrong, people having an interest in staring at my vagina has made me a fuck ton of money, but I just can't get my head around wanting that shit to get off. Like...have you ever seen a genital region? Ew. Fun to play with and all, but like, so is a squishy bowl of grapes. I just don't wanna stare at it. Anyway. Dan just wanted like, super crisp images of me, and he asked me if I'd get more utility out of a webcam, or an actual camera. I told him I used to really like photography, and I'd use an actual camera a lot. So he got me a Nikon D3200 with the standard kit lens, and a zoom lens. Nothing fancy, but I'm not snob. It was a great starter camera. And I took photos of EVERYTHING. Comically, everything but my vagina. Oh irony! You so silly. 

And those photos were BAD. And I thought they were so fucking good. I reverted a lot of the entries in this blog to drafts after Dan and I stopped speaking...mostly because I was extremely embarrassed by the sentimentality toward him, because I thought it made me look bad. It didn't, I just looked like a girl in a relationship who was devastated when it ended. But I judge my feelings toward Dan with exceptional harshness, because hindsight is 20/20, and I never should have stayed for the amount of time that I did. Anyway. The photos were more than bad. They were stink, stank, stunk. Oversaturated, without intention, pointless, and stupid. And I ran around the Springs thinking I was such hot shit with my dumb little Nikon and my tiny little Gorilla pod and my ripped version of Lightroom Classic. I taught myself a lot, but I was worse than an amateur. 

That Nikon kept me creatively busy for a couple of years, and then in 2014, Derek and I started dating, and he was having none of my Nikon's shit. He bought me a Canon 50D and made me pitch my Nikon. Well, he didn't MAKE me, I just didn't mind pitching it. It was a symbolic way to put my relationship with Dan in the trash can. Derek has bought me other, better cameras, and I've gotten so much better at photography that I definitely feel like I deserve the cameras he buys me now (the last of which was a 5Dmkiii for my birthday two years ago, and then this year he bought me a 5D S and I fucking LOVE IT). 

But the entire stupid point of this is I would probably be a much more accomplished photographer if Allen had followed trend and gotten me a camera, too. I maintain that the man is inconsiderate.