It never fails that the last and biggest photo in any given gallery is the worst one.

I’m feeling a bit rejuvenated this week and that has been nice. My visiting friend last weekend is another photo nerd – that’s how we know each other – and geeking out about film photography and weird photography and so on has kind of gotten me more interested again. I sent off a couple of rolls of film on Friday so in the next two weeks there should be some more film interludes! Unless they are terrible! Which is certainly always a possibility, she said cheerfully. It’s never been the gear or the (ugh) math of photography that I like, it’s always been the randomness of it all. It’s why I like toy cameras so much. You never know! Also, he kindly gave me a Canon A1, which is a camera I have wanted for many years for some complicated childhood trauma reasons and because the font in the logo is so absolutely cool. What? I contain multitudes.

Anyway, this was a surprisingly productive week. I went to work every day and actually got some things done. I walked the dog every day. It is the little things, sigh. I don’t know why the little things are sometimes so freaking hard, but on the uncommon days when they are dealable with, I try to rejoice. I’m also trying to limit my social media, with limited success. I can’t quite look away from Reddit, even though I’m pretty sure it is, at this point, mostly bots talking to other bots. And some of it is just, wow. Train wreck people doing train wreck things. And I’m not just talking about politics.

The doom bells keep on clanging and the grocery prices keep on going up. This is not sustainable and I don’t know what we all think is going to happen but at this rate, the famous 1920s German man with the wheelbarrow full of cash going to buy bread is soon going to be a familiar sight. We just won’t be as well dressed and our Temu plastic wheelbarrows will probably fall apart en route. That’s okay! The billionaires haven’t been inconvenienced one iota, and that’s what counts. On my darker days I think that they have inside information on climate collapse, know that 90% of the populace are going to die horribly and are just setting themselves up for Feudalism 2.0: Dome Boogaloo. Because, clearly, they do not care.

But no! This is a post about positivity and hope! I still don’t have much of either but I do inexplicably feel a bit more cheerful lately. So let’s look at last week. Last Sunday features an absolutely fantastic photograph courtesy of my Canon 5D: look at that. I should be famous and rich. On Monday, here is an extremely creepy photograph that should also be making me famous and rich. I had just taken Harvey for a walk on the sawmill trail and was driving away when LO, there was a pink highchair in the middle of the road. I checked to make sure there was no baby in the highchair because, you never know, right? The highchair was empty. There were two young teenage boys nearby – they had passed me on the trail earlier, riding bikes with fishing poles and I thought at the time that it was suspiciously wholesome. I suspect shenanigans. Possibly hijinks. Anyway, here’s the highchair appearing creepily in my rearview mirror. Eeeeee! On Tuesday I stopped to take a fairly unremarkable photo of Saddle Mountain for when I start up making art about it again. Wednesday, my daughter had a run in with our new! improved! food safety! Are we great again yet?!? when the frozen salmon she made for dinner tasted like it had been dipped in some kind of heavy duty chemical cleaner. We did not eat it and went out instead because sometimes only a margarita will do. Here she is picking blackberries with Five in the lovely evening light. Thursday, I forgot to take a picture until like 8:30 at which point I hurriedly shot the courtyard plants. Friday, Five and I went to see Zootopia 2 outside at the park. We had a great time and here is Five dancing to the singing antelope, or wtf ever with that movie. It is copaganda for the preK set and, okay, whatever, I too enjoy the occasional good chase scene with cop cars flying into the air, but all the kids at the park got bored halfway through and took off for the playground. I concur. It’s not as good as the first one and honestly I do not love the first one. And then Saturday, which was yesterday, here is another view of Saddle Mountain, this time from Pipeline Road.

I will leave you with another fantastic amazing photograph from last Sunday, sea lions, because we all love sea lions and they have a lesson to teach us: make noise! Be loud and take up space! There are more of us than them.