Holiday Pictures. Deconstructed.

You know Instagram? Yes, that app, where you spend hours looking at everyone's perfect images and wonder "how the heck did they manage to get them, did they hire a whole team of photographers or an entire special lighting crew? hair and makeup?" yeah that app... I know, because I often times wonder that very same thing. I am almost certain nobody thinks of my pictures in quite the superlatives, but I try my best there too, it is true for everyone, I think, we all put our best online, on Instagram, on Facebook, whichever, we do want to put the best picture to represent us well, I belive this is a quite natural instinct.



By all means, I am no picture expert, nor do I know much about photography, but since the season when we want to take the best family snaps is upon us, I thought it would be fun to discuss what works for me and what doesn't while family picture taking. Probably there is more of what doesn'ts,  because taking a pic with two littles is never an easy task, and a lot of things don't work, but still I will try my best.

Polished reminiscence

 I wrote this right after I came back, but it took me three weeks to put it together, oh life...

***

So we are home, today marks a week since we landed back on American soil, and I feel like I have never left. It feels like I haven’t been to Poland, or I have, but in a different life, in some altered dimension and for sure a thousand years ago. I would even say I was dreaming it, if it wasn’t for the fact that Simon’s polish really improved and he is still walking around building sentences and all, responding to me and such, or was is indeed magic!?

So yeah, that is how it usually feels, it seems like in the age of facetime and Dreamliners, that 6,000 miles is not really that big of a distance, the world is much smaller after all. But it does. I feel every mile of the distance and every hour of the time difference, each closing down the window of connection between the worlds. I think quite obviously the time and distance are the real reasons why it always feels like this, why it always feels like it didn’t happen, or happened in a different life, but it is just so surprising… every time it happens.

{ you will always have a piece of my heart Chicago }

We are moving. We are leaving Chicago for good. In two weeks, we won't be calling Chicago our home anymore. We will be from Boston, from Massachusetts. Different zip code, different phone number, different airport abbreviation, even different store chains. It feels surreal, it feels like I am talking about the life of someone else, but it also feels exciting, exhilarating and liberating.

{ Chicago-dog days of summer }

Chicago can be weatherly cruel, oh yes, it can stab you in the back many times with its bipolar moodiness, but by the middle of August, through September and sometimes - if kind enough, and slightly distracted perhaps- through October, it will cuddle you in its sunny glory. These are the golden days the city's crammed population lives for, waits for ten months just to witness these dog days of summer, really, Chicago ethos. We have enjoyed a great deal of this late summer, or what westerners would call the Indian summer, simply golden times.

{ Hello }

FAQs

But not the fulminating kind

Note that it is the first fact I want people to know about me strictly, because I am following my natural patterns of associations. So yes, I do course on occasion. I think there is a time and a  place for a good course word, sometimes Polish, sometimes English, context-wise permitting.

Why another blog?
There is about a billion unoriginal reasons why people do it and I am doing it for all of them, but hey, I have more, so here is another one, maybe you have not heared that one before. So, I really wanted a place for all the outtakes of the pictures I save on my camera roll, for reals. I usually obey the sacred, unspoken rule of Instagram not to spam and choose to post just one picture, but I keep all the outtakes and they haunt me at night. I just want them to be used, somewhere, thus I am keeping them for something, at  this point I am on a verge of spamming Instagram and that is just such a faux pas... so bear with me, I need a happy space to upload the pictures, and simply clean up my phone instead of saving them for God knows what. And then I always want to say so much, I just have words in my head that need a more solid outlet than a caption or w comment, so here is my resolve.