For The Journey Not just the destination…

Voting is open over at Are We There Yet Mom for the winning photo in her photo contest. Anyone can vote, so head on over there and pick your favorite…or pick mine (listed as Dallas). :) Hopefully, they’re one in the same. This heron photo was my entry.

• Vote now! (scroll down in the orange box)
  

And so this isn’t completely contentless, I’ll tell you about the first time I ran for office in school.

I was in 5th grade, running for Treasurer, and it was pretty embarrassing. We had to go in front of the auditorium and give a speech. Besides being painfully shy, I thought adding music to my speech would make it memorable. I walked down to the stage to Pink Floyd’s Money and back from it to the Dallas TV show theme song – except that we were 5th graders and nobody got it. They didn’t know Pink Floyd and Dallas was on after our bedtime. Needless to say, I didn’t win, but it was more of a popularity contest anyway.

Wednesday is Orange in Curious Bird’s Color Week. Check out the other participants at her site.

This is my forgotten red-headed orange-bellied stepchild – a firebelly toad. He was Thomas’ pet before Clover and I came along, but when we moved in together, and Clover claimed Thomas as her daddy, his frogs got pushed out of the way. They no longer had a space next to his bed, and now live in the living room. Clover gets to sleep in the bedroom.

No orange in the top view…

This is the second entry in Color Week – Yellow. Check out the rest of the participants through Curious Bird.

This is Pooh. I stole inherited him from my brother about 25 years ago. He now sits on a shelf in my guest room – a well deserved break from many years of constant loving.

He reminds me of a favorite quote from the Velveteen Rabbit:

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

I’m participating in Curious Bird’s Color Week – where we take and post photos focusing on a particular color each day of the week. Today is Green. The rain made the colors in my yard look rich and vibrant this weekend. I took my macro lens out in the yard to get some leaf closeups, but when I loaded them onto my computer, I was surprised by what else I captured.

This is a Bleeding Heart leaf. I was photographing the water droplets on it, but when I looked closer, I saw the tiny spider.

I really don’t know what this is called, but it’s the algae, mossy stuff that grows on tree branches in wet, shady areas. I was photographing the long, hairy plant, but then I noticed the little black hairs on the shorter plant.