Trifextra 91: My Beast

This weekend's Trifextra Challenge is inspired by The Tummy Beast by Roald Dahl, and the challenge is to write about a beast living in an unusual place.  Last weekend's Trifextra was supposed to be about a fear, and while I didn't enter last week, my entry this week fits both, as it isn't entirely fiction.


*
It's not real. It's not real.

"Prove it. Just look."

She almost gives in, but she knows.

Hiding in that darkened mirror, the beast patiently waits for her to meet his shadowed gaze.
*


My beast lives in the mirror.

I prefer not to voice my worst fears, I'm just superstitious enough not to say the words out loud, but I'll admit to one of my biggest fears, which is also my most irrational one. You see, I'm not scared of the dark, I sleep best when the room is pitch black, but I'm freakin' scared to look into a mirror if the room is not well-lit. And I know it's the stupidest thing in the world and I know there is nothing in there, but the tiniest part of me will not tempt fate and look into a mirror if it's dark-ish. Because, well, what if?

*

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've entered a challenge on the first day it's been available! This gives you lots of time to check out the rest of the entrants and maybe take a shot at the challenge yourself!

Redscale: An Experiment in Film Photography

I rarely shoot with my 35mm SLR anymore because the cost of developing is crazy*. Every couple of years, though, I can't resist the urge to take a roll or two of shots before going back to digital.  This past summer was one of those times, but I was pretty busy and never got the chance to pull out my camera, so instead I haunted Lomography, a website dedicated to film photography and daydreamed about my own dusty camera.  Last week we ended up taking a trip to the coast, and just a day or two before leaving I found a tutorial for making your own "redscale' film on their website, and decided I'd try it out.

Here's the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse taken with my digital camera:

And here's the same shot with my 35mm using the redscale technique:

Pretty cool, right? Unfortunately, things weren't as easy for me as they were for the guy who wrote the tutorial.  First, I'm not overly competent or patient with pliers. Second, my camera didn't seem to care for my loading the film in upside-down. Neither of which were major deterrents. The third little glitch, though, almost ruined my whole experiment: the film I used ended up tearing out of the canister after my last shot, so I couldn't wind the film back up. I had to take the whole camera into Costco and have them remove the film in their darkroom bag! Luckily, they had no problem doing so and I ended up with a full roll of pictures including a few interesting images.

I'll post a few more redscale pictures along with a few of the digital pictures later on. I have ~1000 digital images to sort through from our trip, plus another roll of 35mm that I used normally, so it might be a week or two before I post them.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

*I almost forgot! The drugstores around here charge $13-$15 for developing, a set of prints & a disc; I just found out that Costco charges $8 for the same three services! If you don't get the discs it's only $3.99, or $5.99 if you want duplicates! I won't be able to blame my lack of 35mm photographs on the cost of developing anymore...

Trifextra 74: Silence is deafening.

The current weekend challenge at Trifecta Writing Challenge is to mirror this quote in our response:

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
--Henry James

My response is a little cliched, in fact all the ideas I kicked around seemed to be. Even so, I kinda like it:

There are three things I find ironic about silence. 
     The first: silence is deafening. 
          The second: silence is deafening. 
               And the third: silence is deafening.

Hope you're enjoying your Sunday afternoon!

Marine Haiku: How I murdered Patrick...

Jenn at "You know...that Blog?" has given us the theme of "Marine Life" for this week's Sensational Haiku Wednesday.

The first five verses are inspired by the death of a poor little starfish when I was 13; the sixth (!) verse references the first poem I remember writing, when I was 12, it happened to be about my favorite marine animal.

Amid shells and sand,

A perfect, ruby sea star:

collection worthy.

Nobody warned me:

a sea star with moving feet

is a living thing.

Sea stars are not meant

to dry out in a hot car-

Leave them in the sea.

After a lone week,

the grand sea star liquefied:

A young kid's victim.

No souvenir, just

sea star murdering guilt to

haunt my memories

*

My first real poem:

Dolphins swam the moonlit sea...

Symbolic escape.

2013 Run or Dye Pics

Long-time, no-write. Not going to bore you with excuses, or tempt you with promises.

Just wanted to share some pictures from today's Run or Dye 5k. I may have only walked it, but I still finished.

We finished! No doubt that Gina would-she is still jogging 3-6 miles almost every day in prep for the 60 mile  run/walk for Susan G later this month.

"Tough"-ish faces 

Posing w/Gina's 2 oldest, Kylie & Ashlin

Just A Random Update

My sister, Gina, is doing well. She hasn't had her surgery yet; they rescheduled because she had a sinus infection and a day later she found out it would've been moved anyway-all non-emergency surgeries are being rescheduled because of the antibiotic resistant strain of Staph that our area has apparently been hit with. She isn't doing any radiation or chemo right now, they've decided to put her on immune suppressants and just keep an eye on the spot in her lung and throat. Now that she's not struggling with the side effects of those two treatments she's feeling better, although the immune suppressants create their own set of issues for her and some days are worse than others.

It's harder to write about her than I expected. It's too difficult to write about how I feel about her illness, but I thought recording my memories would be easy, that in doing so I would be able to cope better. There are some truly funny times that I would love to talk about, some rough times, some happy times. Some moments that are just memorable for no real reason at all. But when I set out to write about things like that it feels like I'm giving up in some way, like I'm focusing on the past because I'm worried there isn't a future. Which I know isn't true, and it's a little silly to think like that, but I over-analyze everything and can't help but feel that way when I try to write these things down. I hope to get over this soon, since most of these memories are fun to talk about regardless of why I initially thought to record them.

Now that she's feeling better most days, Gina has signed up for a 3-day, 60-mile walk to support Susan G and breast cancer research (we've found almost no lung cancer awareness programs outside of stop-smoking support). She has started walking again, she was able to do 5k's as late as last fall but the last few months she hasn't really been able to run much, so having to restart with just walking is a little disappointing for her. I always say I want to walk/run with her, we used to do a 2 mile jog 3-4 times a week when we were younger-then I got a serious boyfriend and wasn't nearly as interested in jogging at 9pm anymore! Anyway, last week I finally decided to quit making excuses and I walked her home. It's ~4 miles and took us an hour and 15 minutes. It was rough-if I had remembered that it was all uphill, I probably wouldn't have quit making excuses to get out of it! The quality, one-on-one time with her was great though, plus I was finally able to get a picture of the tree I moon over every time I drive by.

We're supposed to go again tomorrow. Wish me luck :)

Anything is a Trigger, in 100 words

Every week I check out the prompt for Velvet Verbosity's weekly 100 Words challenge. Every week I think about participating, mentally forming an entry but rarely do I follow through.  This week I tried harder, and since the challenge host got to meet Queen Latifah last week she gave us an extra day to finish the challenge-otherwise I might not have made it.***

This week's word is "shake"; we can use the prompt however we feel, as long as the result is 100 words. My 100 are titled "Anything is a Trigger".

no advice

            available,

none too helpful

            anyway,

watch for signs -

ha, good luck -

            the effect is inconsistent

one beer, one case;

one shot, one pint, one fifth -

            doesn't matter

expect the worst,

don't bother

hoping for the best-

            just hope

your smile

            isn't too big,

            too small;

your tone

            isn't too happy,

            too sad,

            sarcastic at all.

Don't be noticeable.

            but, again,

it doesn't matter -

anything, nothing,

            is a trigger.

Just survive until

you are

            safe in bed.

in the morning:

don't ask

            why his hands shake,

be sure

bruised feelings

            aren't visible

on your face.

           

            anything

                        is a trigger.

I figure since this is my first time participating in the challenge that I might as well fully participate and include the blog hop--be sure to check out the rest of this week's entrants!



****Edited-I misunderstood the blog host's post, she doesn't meet Queen Latifah until this week. The extra day was because she hosted her friend's poetry :)****