Me and My Shadow

At the SAL-on with Hannah and "client."

I had a great weekend. I saw Bradley. I spent time with Hannah. I brought Hannah over to my house and we spent several hours together. She played with Bradley and "did" his hair. She tried to put barrettes in his red curls. He didn't seem all that thrilled. I took blackmail photos.

"Does this hairstyle make my butt look big?"

Joanne and I took our dogs to the dog beach on Saturday. Afterward we parted ways, I drove back home. Kaffy came by the house in the afternoon and helped me finish my scowl. It's supposed to be a cowl though when I took a photo and sent it to Joanne's phone, she replied with a "You could smile." Right then I decided the item was more of a scowl than a cowl so I've chosen to call my scowl pattern "Whine after 9-O-9" because if you saw the actual pattern, you'd know I wasn't in my right mind at that time of the night (for whatever reason). And because I chose black yarn to make the scowl -- you can't really see all my mistakes unless you have eyes.

My Scowl,
 let me know
if you want one.
(Helen - this is my Andy Rooney shot)

When Hannah and I were taking Bella for one last walk late yesterday, we noticed our shadows stretched out before us in that last glimpse of afternoon sunshine. Out of the blue, Hannah says "Aunt Jan, how come when we see our shadows, we can't see them smiling?" And even though typically you can't get me to STFU, I couldn't think of an answer to her question (other than the obvious which would have been some flippant smart-aleck remark like "You can't see anything in a shadow - duh." Probably something I would have said to my own kids, ruining them for life.) So we spent a few moments making gestures with our bodies in a way that made our shadows seem as if they just might be smiling though ultimately none of what we did mattered. We twisted and turned, using our hands, flapping and holding them out above our heads. To anyone watching, we must have looked ready for the nut-hatch. Moments before Hannah had said "I really like being with you!" We were happy because we were in each others presence and we didn't need a shadow smiling back as proof.


BTW, it's raining this day before June 1st, 2011 and the weather is still cold enough to cover oneself in a scowl. Just so you're not tempted to make comments about it, I'm seriously much happier than I look in the photo with my scowl. That photo was taken for promoting the scowl and PR purposes only.