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.