The kingdom of make believe

I can’t remember where or how I came across this illustration. Googling something, I suppose. All I know is that I immediately saved it to my desktop because I thought it was so cool. My only clue is that the file is named “hanami-picnic.”

For me, this illustration sums up the sense of wonder that accompanies the imagination. It has also been wonderful this last month to watch Ben begin to tap into his. As a creative type, that’s a big milestone to me. He pretends to talk on the phone, pretends to put his toys and pictures of animals to sleep. Last week, he picked up some plastic wrap on the front stoop and said “night, night” because he wanted to put the owl on the welcome mat to bed.

Welcome to the kingdom of make believe, Ben.

by
LBC
on 6Oct08
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The tree and the Woods

Kris and I thought it would be nice to plant a tree this fall, something that would grow with us in our new home. When we began to discuss what sort of tree we might like, we decided one that turns yellow in the fall would be pretty against the red brick of the house. That reminded us of the glorious tree in front of the mod house. We discovered that it was a ginkgo tree.

Assuming a ginkgo tree was not the sort of thing one finds at Lowe’s, we asked Liz about it one evening. She said she’d look into it for us.

This weekend, Liz and her mom discussed ginkgos and went looking among their tree offerings. I think they bought a lot of trees from a recent trade show and weren’t even sure what they had. Wouldn’t you know, there was a single ginkgo tree?

Kris asked them how much they wanted for it, and Liz said she and Chris would like to gift it to us as a housewarming present. Not only that, but they came over yesterday and planted it! Two hours it took them to dig the massive hole and plant that tree. (Mr. Ben slept the whole time and we’re out of baby monitor batteries, so I missed the whole thing.)

Not twenty minutes after they all retired inside, our neighbor came over.

“Is that a ginkgo?!?” she exclaimed. “I love ginkgos!”

As it turns out, she had looked years ago for one and there were none to be found. Where it’s planted now, she can see it every morning from her screen porch.

So the Woods came over and made not only our day, but our neighbor’s, too. We are insanely blessed.

by
LBC
on 5Oct08
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. 1 Comment

Pumpkin patching time?

When the weather is so nice and the sky is so blue, it makes me want to be outside. Ben’s legs are a bit short for hiking, so I have a desire to find a good pumpkin patch.

Ben is convinced that the pumpkins on our porch are in fact not gourds. He picks them up and says “Ball.”

“Pumpkin,” we correct.

“Ball,” he says again.

“Pumpkin.”

I think he’d get a kick out of a whole field of ‘em. Probably the hay ride and petting zoo, too.

The problem, to me, is that any pumpkin patch I can find is over an hour away. What if we make the trek and he’s in a bad toddler mood and doesn’t even like it when we get there? My “could be fun” outing could be torture, as well.

A cranky toddler can totally ruin your day, y’know?

by
LBC
on 2Oct08
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Oct08 Illustration of the Month: Scrap Pink

This is the second year that Susie Q’s (a local scrapbooking shop) hosted Scrap Pink, a benefit for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a foundation to promote breast cancer research. Scrap Pink was created by Scrapbooks etc. magazine as a way to raise both money for research and awareness of the prevalence of breast cancer.

For me, it’s a chance to work up a fun layout. First, we ran the story on A2 of the regular paper and then used it again on the cover of Times2.

All of the scrapbooking elements came from freedigitalscrapbooking.com

by
LBC
on 1Oct08
in Portfolio
. 1 Comment

Down to the wire

Thank goodness we cleaned out the basement yesterday. When the closing attorney sent us our deed, he included a letter reminding us to file a homestead exemption. In the bustle of the move, that letter ended up in the basement. Deadline to file is October 1. While Kris took Ben to the doc for his 18 month check-up (more shots), I went to the courthouse.

I took a vacation day today because I am in between special section layouts. We decided to go to Birmingham to (a) look for Halloween costumes at the cool costume place we visited before and (b) see if Target had any options in the way of shelving for the bathroom. No (the costume store has since closed, even though Google still thinks it’s there) and no (while we got the duplex ’stroom stuff at Target, they had nothing today). Fine.

So we came back to town and picked up Mr. Ben from daycare and took him to Noccalula Falls to ride the train. And that was a complete success.

by
LBC
on 29Sep08
in blog
. 4 Comments

You might like

I met Lorna for lunch to return her Twilight novels. We agreed on a lot of points where we felt Meyer went right and where she didn’t. And we both liked Jacob better than Edward.

She told me about fan videos created with the Sims: masterfully done and yet they still kinda sucked. It reminded me of the James McAvoy fanvids I found that, while yes, well-seamed, were set to abysmal song choices. I told her she should rent Penelope.

“You can tell it’s a freshman effort with the screenplay, but the casting is spot-on. It’s fun and sweet.”

I enjoy getting to recommend things to friends and likewise when someone thinks of me. I told Nathan and Terica they should give Mad Men a shot. That’s the AMC drama about ad execs in the 1960s. It’s a wonderfully produced series, but weighty. A lot of gender identity issues and not very many redemptive story arcs.

Kris and I abandoned Man Men for the same central reason that we quit on Battlestar Galactica (annihilation of the human race – downer much?), Entourage (immature enablers – too much therapy had) and Dexter (murdery mayhem!): we have precious little time for television these days, so we’re looking for something that we feel good about after watching. If there’s no time to balance the bleak with banter, the bleak’s gotta go.

But still, please don’t quit thinking of us! Whether it gets bumped from the Netflix queue or not, we want share in our friends’ experiences.

by
LBC
on 26Sep08
in blog
. 5 Comments

Year and a halfer

Dooce, I salute you for the monthly newsletters you write to Leta. Do you take notes all month long? Because this is the kind of conversation that takes place around the Catoe house:

“Hey!” Kris calls to me as he’s brushing Ben’s teeth. “Did we know that Ben’s lower incisors were coming in?”

“Um,” I try to think when we noticed the top ones and whether or not they preceded the bottoms one… “Yeah, I think so!”

Sunday, Dad and Patsy asked what new things Ben was doing since they’d seen him the week before. Kris and I looked to each other like “are you gonna field this one?”

Ben, I promise it’s not that we don’t notice or don’t care… it’s just that so much of our lives are one big blur. You have impacted our lives in such profound ways that the nuances often get swept up into the bigger picture.

Last night, you weren’t ready to wind down for bed yet, so we put you in our bed and turned on a DVD. You floundered about for awhile, smiling at the cat, trying to crawl over me, asking, ask ever, “dog?” Finally, you flopped back on your dad’s pillow, grabbed a fistful of his whiskers and fell asleep. Twenty minutes later, Kris transferred you to your crib.

But for the remainder of the movie, I would turn to Kris and ask “remember when he fell asleep just now?” And we would aww for a moment because it was so adorable. Whether we can pinpoint your new developments or not, know that we cherish them all.

by
LBC
on 25Sep08
in blog
. 1 Comment

Word up, WP

Welcome to the WordPressization of LauraCatoe.com

by
LBC
on 24Sep08
in blog
. 2 Comments

The Lost Technology of film prints

Let me take you back to the late 90s for a moment. I shot my first roll of black and white film when I was in high school. I took it to Wal-Mart for developing, because that is what high school kids did then. It took two weeks (TWO WEEKS!) to get the prints back because Wal-Mart only did color processing on site.

When I was a photography student in college, I (shamefully) never learned how to load film from the canister to the reel. I was able to get away with this because Wal-Mart started selling C-41 “black and white” film. I would shoot photos for my black and white photography classes with this film, take it to Winn Dixie for developing and then print in the JSU darkroom. If my professor knew, he didn’t care.

Over the years, I had dozens of rolls of film developed at Winn Dixie or Wal-Mart. I took pictures at every church event, for all of my photo classes, at every even so gig, at parties, at weddings…

But then, for a lot of different reasons, I started taking less photos. Around the same time, the photo lab world changed while I wasn’t watching.

Now it’s 2008. My son will be 18 months old this week and the only film photos taken of him were by Marianne Lewis at The 215. I decided it might be fun to kick it old school and shoot a roll myself. I had to go buy new batteries for my film camera, but I still have several rolls of film.

Yesterday morning, Ben was clean, well-fed and in a good mood. I put him in an outfit Jan bought for him from a children’s boutique and we drove over to the bird sanctuary behind the mall. At 7am on a Sunday morning is a great time to visit the mall parking lot. Ben gleefully ran up and down the sidewalk; he was ecstatic to see the ducks.

I had forgotten what the film camera sounds like, but the feel of it and shooting the way I used to felt very familiar. It seemed like this might be a fun thing to do every once in a while.

We dropped off the film at Walgreen’s on our way to church. We picked them up after lunch. What words describe my response to the prints? Devastated and appalled are too strong. Disappointed and unhappy are not strong enough. The photos were digital. They developed the negatives, but the prints were not from the negatives. I assume they scanned the negatives.

I showed the photos to Carol and Eric later that day. Surely these two could commiserate! But no. They gave me incredulous looks that seemed to say “It’s Walgreens. What did you expect?”

I did not expect them to be digital! That was the point of shooting film!

I pestered the both of them until I understood why they were so cavalier. Carol, it seems, has just lowered all expectations upon moving back to Gadsden. Okay, I can see that.

But Eric is a professional photographer! Why was he not getting that these prints sucked?!? With him, it seems, the age difference is just enough. While I have memories of bringing home Wal-Mart or Winn Dixie prints that while probably not properly exposed were at least clear and actually printed from the negatives, he does not.

He has agreed to have pity on me and print one of the photos from the actual negative.

I don’t even know where I could take film to have it processed “the old way.” If I took it to Wal-Mart, would they be able to send it somewhere? Would it be like all those years ago when not enough people brought in black and white film to warrant on-site processing? Does nobody shoot enough film anymore to make the store real estate worth it for anything but digital?

by
LBC
on 22Sep08
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Carol’s Granola Bars

Earlier this year, someone started sending out Recipe Exchange e-mails. I got one for granola bars from someone named Carol York (whom I didn’t know at the time). She made a batch of these granola bars and sent some to my coworker Cyndi, who shared one with me. And it was ah-may-zing.

So I went out and bought the ingredients, but every time I pulled out the recipe or laid everything out, something happened and I never made them. In the interim, I actually met Carol and she has shared many more wonderful recipes with Kris and I.

I finally told her “Carol, I bought the stuff to make your granola bars when I lived at the duplex. Would you have mercy on my soul and come make a batch using the stuff I bought?” And, quite graciously, she did.

This batch turned out even more amazing than expected. I’ve had a request to share the recipe and a request to share the specifics of this batch (as you’ll see, the recipe is open for variation).

Carol’s Granola Bars (Catoe batch items in parentheses)

1c. Brown Sugar (light brown sugar)
1/2 c. Light corn syrup (light Karo)
1/2 c. Butter, room temp. (Land o’ Lakes – the real deal)
2/3 c. Peanut butter (JIF – as if any other peanut butter will do!)
2 ts. Vanilla extract
1/2 c. Sunflower seeds
3 c. Quick oats*
1/2 c. Coconut, grated
1/3 c. Wheat germ
1/2 c. dried fruit (golden raisins)
1c. choc. Chips (semi-sweet)
1c. nuts (half toasted pecans, half toasted almonds)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat inside of 9X12 glass baking dish with vegetable oil. In large bowl, combine brown sugar, corn syrup, butter, peanut butter, and vanilla. Stir well to the consistency of a paste. Stir in remaining ingredients and work the mixture so that several large clumps adhere together. Using fingers, press the mixture into baking dish (be sure to mash pretty hard, or you will end up with bars that fall apart, which is not so bad, either, because it’s still edible). Bake at 350 for 15-20 min. until golden brown. Allow to cool completely before cutting into bars. I wrap each individually, and haven’t missed store bought granola since I first discovered this recipe. They freeze well, too.

*Carol notes that you may substitute 1 &1/2 c. crisped

by
LBC
on 17Sep08
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. 0 Comments