visiting

They are the people of the cute, and I visit their land. A surprise, a not like me. He is out in the garden. She is making a grocery list. The house is in the country but a city is so close. I favor the front porch with a yard which reaches to some stables. White horses and fences and a little dirt road.

The temperature has dropped. A steady wind pushes and she meets me at the door. She is the queen of the cute and the princess of the adorable. A big fat cat lays on it's back on the floor. His legs sprawled, the cat looks up. I tell the cat, Hey, and turn to her, You know I'd take a picture of her and show her to the world if it wouldn't get the humane society out here on your ass. That is one obese cat (says the mama of Billy Sue). I think it's funny to pretend my blog has world moving effects as if a wave from me provides some kind of ripple. One sentence typed from my magic fingertips and I can wield the power of the humane society. Now that's funny.

She laughs, Oh shut up. Sit down, I have something for you.

Me first, I say and hand her a magazine.

This is it, she sits and begins leafing through it. Where are the pictures?

Just look. You'll see them, I watch and then she does.

It's the Como article, she recognizes a few of the photos. She starts studying it and I start apologizing. They're darker than I thought. I would have lightened them up. It's digital to print, something I have to consider.

They are good, she says. This being a duty placed on her shoulders when we were eleven years old. She has to tell me at all times I am good or laugh at me hysterically and she must read the blog. Oh, these little rules. It's funny to think about how in thirty one years she has yet to figure out how to change her number and leave me without access especially considering otherwise she's pretty damn smart.

She starts pointing at the pictures and turning the pages, There's the Steakhouse, the Courtyard, my favorite little grocery store. She likes to cook and thus adores the Como Green Grocer.

Do you think she'll love it? I point to the ad on the next page.

She pauses, presses her hand against the page and says seemingly to the magazine, She is going to love it. Her Mom and Dad are going to video her seeing it for the first time.

It is over half a page and in the world of a five year old it might as well be the cover of Toys R Us. Peyton and me, we have been published. She is the photo in the very first ad of Shea Goff Photography. We should wear dresses and have a publishing tea party with cute little plastic cups and saucers and cupcakes with not too much frosting.

She hands me my gift, a large paper sack which signifies whiskey, a purchase I am no longer willing to make. Then she hands me two pieces of paper, one from a coloring book, the other torn from a steno pad. A butterfly, a flower, Peyton has drawn a picture of a camera and written a note in some impressive handwriting. She is a small child of Thank you and I love you.  You know, she is a human who makes you happy just to be human.




I got something free in this world, didn't have to pay a dime other than my labor. The publisher sent me fifteen free copies of eat.drink.Mississippi and they are being distributed as follows.

1. Mom
2. Kim
3. Peyton
4. Mrs. Sue, Peyton's Grandma (among many other titles of wonderfulness)
5. Josh (he designed the ad which is a story in itself)
6. Slater and me (we'll share our copy)
7. Charlie of Woodstomp
8-15. You or a random human at the convenience store.

There are eight magazines I will give away freely, even pay postage. A seven dollar and ninety-five cent value delivered to your door, even more if I need to ship internationally which I will. All you have to do is leave a comment or email me at sheagoff@gmail.com and say, Dude. I want a magazine. That's all.

It's some great reading (Karen wrote the Como article). There are recipes from this neck of the woods and photos galore. Just let me know. Nothing random about it, early bird catches the free magazine worm.


It's the least I can do and the best I got, like I need to send you some kind of prize for coming here, for reading and looking at the photos and sometimes commenting and always patient and encouraging and beautiful and now I am gushing and you're blushing and it's gotten ridiculous.


I am seriously grateful for you.

wherein we pepper the OCD with some empty nest psychosis and party like rock stars

Our last morning is tense, rushed. Thirty minutes till your first day on the job and you head to the store to buy a duffel bag. You want to take all your clothes just in case you leave today and don't come home for a few weeks. It's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. You'll be back tonight. I'll cook supper and we'll laugh about how you thought the guy had said something about maybe possibly going to a state that begins with an M.

Missouri?  Surely not.

That doesn't happen. You don't get a job one afternoon and leave the next day going to a whole'nother state possibly beginning with a particular letter in the alphabet which could be an M but not Mississippi or Maryland or Michigan or Minnesota. Maybe the guy on the phone said Missouri and you could get in a truck with strangers and go to a town I haven't scouted and be around people I don't know and

I'll just edit photos.

Don't worry about me. I'll be fine here with these photos and the internet and Billy Sue and really, you'll be okay. They pay for your meals? And your hotel, I mean motel, I mean it doesn't have internet access? okay.

okay.

Oh. you're rooming with someone? Is he a crackhead? Not that there's anything wrong with crackheads, I mean we shouldn't judge, I'm sure there are some wonderful crackheads in this world but he doesn't smoke crack, right? Yes, I do realize the fact that I just asked that makes me a crackhead. 

Answer the question. No?

okay.

You know I can drive up there, right? Take you out to eat, bring you some more clothes.  

No. It wouldn't be an intervention. 

Are you not happy? You sound serious. 

I'm fine so you are too and everything is okay and I'm just editing photos and deleting photos and Billy Sue did the funniest thing.

oh. you gotta go.

okay.

don't go.






That was just a joke. I know you have to leave because you are twenty years old and you are brilliant and you are kind and you will be fine and I was always this crazy but before I just tried to hide it and I have the photos and Billy Sue and the writing and I'll take the garbage can to the road and I'll figure this out because this is part of raising a child and I'm strong and I can handle it and I don't want to make you cry because I love it when you laugh.

I love you. I miss you but not too bad. this is normal. it's just parenting.

It seems silly to say I am grateful for Slater since so much of the gratitude started with him.

Photoshop doesn't kill people. People kill people.

I am grateful Madalyn gets home from her honeymoon today and that she likes Photoshop.


Back to our regularly scheduled insanity tomorrow morning.

director of creative works her magic

Hey, Jess. Come on and help me out with some dress shots.

Sure, Aunt Shea.

Today I am very grateful for all the help I get in this world.

matrimony

A few shots from this weekend 'cause well, Mom. Mom and Nana and Kim and everybody were needing to see some wedding photos and if they came to this blog one more time and there were no wedding photos but rather some gibberish I have written about a Mr. Dauber then I was going to be hunted and officially removed from family/friend status. These are by no means even a good sampling of all that is contained in three days of photography last week. I am still working on them but am hoping this helps with all the anticipation.

Madalyn began crying when trying to say her vows and it was butterfly kisses on rainbows surrounded by fluffy clouds carrying smiling unicorns. All I could think was if a sister ever wanted anything for her brother it would be this. I would want him to always be loved and love like this.

I am so very grateful to be a part of these moments when even cynical me can't help but believe.

mister dauber and the girl without internet

Once upon last week there was this little guy who worked tirelessly building his home. Nervous, yes very nervous he was as if everything around him posed some sort of threat. He warmed up to me but it did take the entire week. He was not amused by my amusement. I at times wondered if he considered me lazy and thus an annoyance. Still I sat and watched, got in his way with my presence. Seven days later I became a fixture in his world because I no longer posed a danger. This to me, as much as to him, became a particular kind of ease and I can't help but wonder if today he'll miss me.

He'll still hear the singing, some guys who've taken to begging down the road. There will still be an afternoon sun beating down making him work faster of building and building and even some more until well, I don't know. I only got seven days and they were worth every penny I never paid.


Today I am grateful to be in a place where I can write you of him.

Thank you for waiting on me.

roughing it

wherein Billy Sue practices for camping by sitting in the grass

So we're going on an adventure like camping but without the bugs and with a roof and air conditioning and a new home and a job and a swimming hole and family and I'll try to post pictures along the way if I can find internet but who knows 'cause we're gonna treat it like an adventure.


If I'm not back by next Monday we've taken to the sea.




For the next few days I am so very grateful to accept what life offers.