Time ...

She flies.

Box boy

Some toys you never outgrow.

Nostalgia

I miss film.

A lot.

Ok not  a lot ... more like a little.

The expense of it is hard to justify in these times of technological want and excess.

But I'm not going to lament the advent of digital any more than I'll decry the death of newspapers.

Been there. Done That. Moving on.

I burn through film faster than money in my pocket.*** I'm no hypocrite. I'm hooked on digital.

Still, every once in a while, I find myself thinking about those lost days of excited anticipation.

The days of seeing how closely my memory from the viewfinder resembles the actuality developing in the darkroom.

In those moments of nostalgia, which are pretty frequent these days I'll admit, I may buy a roll of film at the pharmacy and dust off my old Nikon F series.

And a day or two later I'm back at the drugstore counter with my spent roll and scant hope for a little of that old-time magic.

It's not the magic I remember, exactly. But it's still got a little spark.
*** Just learned from PetaPixel, that Fuji is planning to increase it's film prices next month. Now's the time to stock up if you'd like to wallow in nostalgia.

Nostalgia

Technology brings us such amazing things.



But I tell you what ...

When I'm roaming around the house late at night ...

Checking on my sleeping children ...

I'm really going to miss the sight of flashlight beams filtered through blankets and the sound of paper pages being turned.

Just like old times

front yard, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Last weekend, as I was scrounging around the house looking for film and an old camera that was still in working condition, it occurred to me how much I miss simplicity.

Not that old times were simpler times; because I don't really believe that. But my old cameras were mostly simple contraptions. I didn't have to worry about batteries being charged or tiny cards being misplaced. They only required a roll of film to operate. Sure, some of the more complex cameras I owned required batteries to trigger the light meters, but they worked just fine without. I just had to guess at f stops and shutter speeds.

As I worked my way up to thinking a good camera -- one with tiny bells and whistles such as automatic hocus focus -- wouldn't be wasted on me, the more reliant I became on batteries. Without them the cameras were lifeless.

When I unearthed and dusted off a roll of 120 film, I had three choices: a Holga; a Mamiya and a Yashicamat (my very first medium format camera, which I bought at camera show for $100). I wanted a little bit more control so I nixed the Holga outright. The Mamiya was a splurge camera ($800) so it's one that requires batteries for the shutter to work. Since it's been about seven years since I even looked at the thing I'm sure the batteries are toast. So the twin lens gets the tap.

I have a serious love for this camera. It's got a photocell light sensor and that's all. You load the film, crank the winder and you're set. Even the shutter has an anti-climactic click. Using the camera is like photographic meditation.

Every time I make images with it I feel as if the subjects and I are transported back in time.

But then again the economy of my super-dooper expensive camera on the processing end made me race to the UPS service center last night so I'd have the Nikon consumer-model apex today ... when Silas was going to be rummaging around in the recycling at work.

It all makes me vow, yet again, to do more with film. To not wait until the digital camera is in the shop for me to break out a roll. But it will likely be another broken promise. And before I know it, 35mm and my beloved 120 film will follow Polaroid into the abyss.

Blink and you miss it

A friend of mine recently relayed a story about how, at 27 weeks gestation with her second child, she'd attended her first prenatal yoga class and nearly cried at the thought of how this time around she hadn't been taking care of herself.

How is it possible, she wondered, that it had taken so long to check in with herself and connect with the newbie? Just one hour a week, that's all she needed.

That's what it's been like for me this whole winter. The weeks just seem to fly by, bringing with them one niggling sickness after another. From one head cold to a stomach ailment and right back to nasty head cold, I've been coping since November with this cyclical suffering.

If it weren't for monthly obstetrics appointments I'm sure I'd forget I was pregnant at all. I can't help but feel sad that I haven't been as present with Thing 2 as I was with Ittybit. I haven't enjoyed it as well.

If I say that aloud I instantly feel the cold gazes of women and the incredulous looks from their menfolk. To many of them enjoying pregnancy is a contradiction in terms.

But I readily admit that I am one of those oddballs who LOVES being pregnant.

For the most part, I feel fine if not better than I normally do during my regular, single-serve existence.

Even the not-so-nice parts -- the heartburn, nosebleeds and itchy skin -- are merely momentary inconveniences easily explained and easily set aside. I know it's the pregnancy that causes it, and as such I can let it go. No worries.

With Ittybit I attended my regular, weekly yoga class religiously; I went to the gym after work three days a week and walked my legs tired on the treadmill; I took time most every morning to follow Shiva Rea's lead on a prenatal exercise tape I vowed would become a staple in my life, even after the pregnancy was over, because I enjoyed its flow.

But my life is markedly different this time around. I come straight home from work, feeling the weight of guilt for having spent so much time away. Every weekend is set aside for "Mommy" time.

"Me" time is what I steal late at night and early in the morning, and cheat my husband out of whenever I get the chance. Me time is for writing about HER, and processing photographs of HER life, and checking in with other moms to reassure myself that I'm at least getting a quarter of it right.

That's the ME I've become. A mother. And not even an efficient one at that. Every morning I pat myself on the back for being able to get out of the house with a kid who's only partially dressed and fed a mere 20 minutes past the time I'd really wanted to leave.

What pains me, though, isn't the "ME" time I'm missing. It's the "HE" time.

I've been making due by keeping score during the morning and evening kickfest game that the inside of my belly has become. I lift my shirt and look down in amusement as one quadrant of my blue-veined abdomen jumps and squirms.

I may not feel as if I'm in this game, but at least I'm cheering it on.

... That's what I tell myself, anyway.

Selective memory

Sometimes when I'm feeling low and not too productive, I click through the archives to see what was going on a year ago today. Turns out this time last year, in the flickrsphere anyway, we were also in Concord for Great Grandfather's birthday. His 99th.

I think about "family" a lot more than I used to. It shouldn't be surprising seeing as how time seems to march at break-neck speed once you decide to spawn. All of a sudden heartache and mortality loom large on an otherwise unincumbered psyche.

Not that I wasn't a fatalist BEFORE deciding motherhood might actually be a good idea, just that when time is marked by a child's metamorphosis time marks you, too.

Yet, as I count on my fingers the three months left until Thing 2 will be hatched into this world, it all seems so incongruous. So incomprehensible. How is it possible that time moves with the speed of both molasses and lightning?

Lately, we've been "shopping" daycare facilities, and it's been nothing short of culture shock (for me). Giant, multi-colored complexes in professional parks. Cinderblock walls, locked doors and intercom security. Everything is colored with learning speak: "The we-prepare-your-kids to-be-the-brightest they-can-be" slogan marketed to modern parents.

Instead of "free play" kids engage in excercising their "gross motor skills."
These great bastions of early childhood education build "problem-solving" and "critical thinking skills." Instead of story time they delve headlong into literacy achievement.

The critic in me wants to smack myself over the head and say this is why Mommy's supposed to stay home: so that Junior can learn about family before he has to learn his ABCs. So he can get hugs and kisses instead of lessons and progress reports. Yet the phobic in me knows that without my stable income, we are only one out-of-commission truck or lost client closer to destitute. And worse, we are one nervous breakdown away from total chaos. And in the end, nothing really changes.

No matter what they call it this week -- story time, literacy readiness or whatever catchphrase sounds like it will net the most cash from stricken parents -- in the end it's still about sitting around on a carpet somewhere reading "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish."

It's just that it's so easy to pine for a simpler time; a time when health care wasn't a three-ringed circus, groceries for the month didn't cost a week's pay and heating a home didn't include budget plans.

And yet, when you really look into it, when you are reminded of the kitchens and cafeterias our grandmothers worked in or the assembly lines, it's entirely possible the golden age had its tarnish, too.