Sometimes I forget I have a sleep disorder. Because, so long ago, we mostly fixed it.

It used to be, I would wake up screaming, flailing, punching, crying - and swearing there were people in the room attacking me. About three times a week. For years and year and years. For so long I didn't realize how unnormal it all was.

Then I got tired of hurting my husband, tired of feeling terrible, tired of fearing bedtime - just plain tired.

So, I had a therapy, a sleep study, was diagnosed with "arousal disorder" - I still giggle when I say that - and started taking large doses of crazy meds.

That was five years ago.

I have had three night terrors since.

This week has been bad at bedtime. No major night terrors, but I've been... off. Sleep has been almost muffled. I woke up last night (early this morning?) around 4am and I had no idea where I was. I could feel the fear there, almost creeping around the back of my skull, but I also knew I was OK. Like five years of not screaming myself awake had conditioned me to try and figure things out before jumping off the diving board into that icy pool of hysteria.

I sat up in bed and looked around in the black, trying to remember. I almost wasn't even sure who I was, much less where I was, or when it was. As my eyes slowly adjusted, the breath I didn't realize I was holding exhaled.

I was home. In my bed. With Bryan. Safe.

I fell back on my pillow and wondered what was going on. Sure, we have been stressed as ever, but nothing more than normal.

Then I realized what time of year it was.

Late January.

Which had always been the worst time for my night terrors. Always.

Something about the combination of light shifting to longer cycles plus the dreariness of winter had always made January a non-stop screamfest for me.

It was actually soothing to recognize this. This time of year. And the date.

January 26th.

Almost February.

Labels: Health, Sleep

Here is how this all happened.

1. I was asked to speak at EVO.

2. I was on a photography panel with Jenny Cisney of Kodak.

3. Jenny had some leftover cameras from the conference and I grabbed the waterproof Playsport.

3. I spent the summer shooting water footage.

4. I put it all together along with a song by friends here in town, My Body Sings Electric.

5. I sent it to Jenny.

6. She told me about a contest the camera folks were running for the Playsport.

7. I didn't win the grand prize in the contest.

8. But I did get a runner-up prize - which was having my video play every 15 minutes on the Kodak billboard in Times Square for a week.

I think I *TOTALLY* won the grand prize.



Many thanks to our friend Jason, who lives in New York City, who made the NYC video, and is the father of Dominick, the best friend of Declan, who also appears in the video.

Labels: Brands, Friends, Music, Video

I am in the airport, waiting for my flight back to Denver from Salt Lake City. My mind is a blur of ideas and emotions from Alt Summit. But one thing sticks out. Well, three things actually.

Three friends who I have known online for a while, who I met in person for the first time at Camp Shutter Sisters, and who made this past weekend one of the funnest I have had in a long time.



Many thanks to Meghan, Lindsey and Mae for being a big huge dose of awesome.

P.S. Photo shamelessly stolen from Meghan's Instagram feed.

P.P.S. Mae stole it first.

Labels: Friends

You may have noticed that you can't use Wikipedia today, and Google's "censored" logo. There is a blackout, and for damn good reason.

They are protesting SOPA, and it's sister, PIPA - which amount to censorship of the Internet by the government.



I can't thank these guys enough for taking a stand.

Labels: Education, Tech

Last week, I posted a story that Declan wrote while home sick from school. I was so impressed with it, I just had to brag share. The few who saw it before I ripped it down couldn't believe it either.

Read for yourself:





Pretty damn good for a nine year old, right?

I thought so.

I had asked him multiple times before I posted it if HE wrote it. If it was HIS story. After I posted and a few people commented on its brilliance, I told him how much people liked it, and he blushed with pride.

Then his dad saw the post and was suspicious. A few clicks on Google and the story was there, almost word for word in many different places - apparently a very common writing exercise.

UGH.

A normal sick day just got really, really ugly.

I pulled the post and we had a LONG talk about plagiarism. Like LONG LONG LONG. That it was stealing someone else's work. That is was OK to use the story for practice (they do a lot of dictation at school) but telling me that it was his original story was where he went wrong.

And he was going to write a new original story to make up for it.

It took hours.

It made no sense for a long time, and still really doesn't.

It was so painful for him to rewrite over and over to my satisfaction, that he finally just started typing on the computer.

But I think he gets the idea now.

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Joe and Buckaroo's Crazy Day

Kids play Groundies at school. Groundies is a game like tag but you have to close your eyes on the equipment. The story I am about to tell you is about some kids and a monster playing Groundies and the kid getting hurt. Will he survive? Read on to find out.

During a big game of Groundies, Joe pushed Buckaroo off the equipment on to the rocks. “HA HA HA!” Joe hollered. Buckaroo thought he saw something funny on Joe's face but he wasn't sure.

“AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Buckaroo yelled as he fell. Buckaroo fell 10 miles and in the air did a full twist and then landed funny. CRACK! “Wahhhh! I broke my ankle!” Buckaroo cried. WEEE OHHH WEEEEE OHHHHHHH WEEEEEE OHHHHH WEEEEEEE OHHHHHHH WEEEEEEE OHHHHHHHH The ambulance is coming!

After 2 months in the hospital Buckaroo came back with a cast on his foot. Buckaroo suggested playing Hide and Seek because he was afraid of playing Groundies. Everyone agreed, even Joe. Buckaroo and his friends played Hide and Seek instead of Groundies.

Buckaroo finds Joe first, deep in a dark corner of the equipment. Unfortunately, Joe was actually a monster and his real face was peeking out of his mask. YIKES! Buckaroo saw his real face! He was scared to death!

See kids, the moral of this story is: Never let monsters play with you.

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And parents, never post stories from your kids without doing an internet search first.

Labels: Education, Family

Isn't it weird when you find out there are amazing things right in your backyard? Well, not literally your back yard - in this case I mean a quick drive up the hill to Silverthorne - but here in Colorado - that is our backyard - right?

The Ice Castles (the place, not the movie) contacted Mile High Mamas (who is running a contest for tickets through the 26th, by the way) and while I have been a bad little Mile High Mama lately with all my life craziness, I still love being part of the group and jumped up and down at the chance to go see THIS in person:



We happened to go on a 50 degree day, when the sun was melting the ice like crazy, and I was able to walk around in just a fleece. But that made for some good photography time.



And good OH MY GAWD time.



And good Declan wants to play with chunks of ice time.



And good "Is this actually real?" time.





But, while the day was spectacular - the night was INSANE.



Where walking through the different sections was totally different from the morning.



Well worth the return trip.



Well worth ANY trip.

And since the Ice Castles change all winter long - while the crew builds them icicle by icicle and Mother Nature adjusts their texture and form with every weather pattern - we'll be back for sure.

Full Flickr set is here!

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Blogger Disclosure: My entrance and accommodations were covered by Ice Castles and Keystone Resort. All thoughts, words, and images are mine.

Labels: Brands, Colorado, Travel

Yes! More Bop Skizzum! More design work!

And LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF CATS!

Well, specifically, one cat. Named "Hello Kitty." Owned by Momfluential.




Yes! The new single by Bop Skizzum is called "Heavy Petting" and we went there with the cats and Ciaran let me use a ton of her Instagram photos for the album cover.

However.
I call her cat "David Bowie" - anyone care to guess why???

Labels: Design, Music

When I was a kid, I had to be home when the street lights came on in the neighborhood. My mom threw us out the door in the morning and we came straggling back for lunch, maybe, more like when the fireflies announced themselves just before the ominous buzzing of the big florescent stopwatches. Winter Break was a series of snowball fights - if we were lucky enough to get snow over Christmas in Maryland - or if not, most definitely a playfest with all the new toys from Santa.

Declan has been home with me going on two weeks and he has played with a friend once. We had to do a bunch of finagling around schedules, the whens and wheres, to make it happen.

We also live fairly close to downtown, so I have yet to release Declan to the wilds of our 'hood. At his age, I was free to roam, with or without my bike. But it's just been in the last year or so that we even let Declan play in the front yard alone, or maybe run across the street to play with the only child on our block his age.

Of course, I didn't ride a city bus until I was nearly 20 - Declan did that on a Kindergarten field trip.

It is interesting that our experiences are so different; everyone says it is the sign of the times.

But, I had gross dudes approach me in that neighborhood where I was free to roam. Back then. When things were supposed to be safe.

Of course, we also over-schedule our children now; they are running from one appointment to another constantly.

This is so true, in our family at least. I am constantly looking at my phone and calculating how much time I need till the next thing, how much can I fit in. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and be some floppy aristocrat who spent have the day getting dressed and the other half listening to music. But then I would have to corset, and that would never do, of course.

Point being, I long for calm, and I know my son does sometimes too.

So, sometimes I purposely don't schedule things and let him goof off. Do whatever.

Sure, yesterday he watched about 8 hours straight of Looney Tunes on YouTube.

But he doesn't do that every day. I try my best to find the middle ground. Some days playdates. Some days a book. Some days cleaning the house (he loves that one). And yes, some days vegging in front of the TV.

And then I sit and think, how will it be for him when he grows up? Will he look back and wish he had been able to run around in the streets like a maniac? Catch fireflies at dusk like I did? Will it influence where he decides to live? How he raises his children?

No clue, but he will be interesting to watch.

Labels: Family

Every so often I do a funny tweet round-up, and last year everyone seemed to like my best tweets of Christmas list. Well, when I say "like," I mean laugh HYSTERICALLY and LOL and LMAO and ROTFL and IDKWTFIATA. (Try and see if you can figure the last one out. It's a riddle.)

Either way, people asked me to do it again, and I was happy to - because all the humor tweeters, who I often find through Favstar.fm, make me laugh all year long, and sometimes even PMPAL.

So, here we go, in alphabetical order, my top 25 tweets of Christmas.

Click the images to get to their Favstar accounts and follow and star the crap out of these people.


























Happy holidays, friends!

Labels: Funny

It was such a fun time at the One Republic benefit show here in Denver last night, and I was able to finally shoot two more of my favorite bands, as well as several I have photographed many times - I'll tell you the combination was a little like sniffing glue.

You can bet I have pretty much a boat-load full of photos to edit - a real boat-load, mind you, not some stupid dinghy. But till then, here is Isaac Slade from The Fray singing "How To Save A Life" all on his own, no mic, no amp, no nothing. Amazing.



Towards the end, he says the line of the night: "Denver is the first state that learned this song."

Which just goes to show how tired the guy was - seeing as they performed on the Today Show in NYC just that morning and flew home through a foot of snow to make it in for the concert.

Also showing just how much all these dudes from Colorado really do rock.

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UPDATE! ALL MY PHOTOS POSTED! STILL SUCH AN AWESOME NIGHT!

Labels: Music