Potential resurgence…

 Considering I’ve been at one of the lowest points in my life in the last few weeks, I thought that blogging would be a decent and much needed distraction. I’ve talked about my anxiety numerous times here, so there no need to go over it again. I’ve always attributed every bad thing happening to me or my animals to be due to my blogging or posting on social media. 

Crazy, right?

Anxiety does some very strange things to your mind. I think the only thing that keeps me sane is the fact that I acknowledge how crazy or insane things sound. I know where to draw the line, for the most part. However, that doesn’t keep my mind from taking something minuscule and absolutely running a marathon with it. 

My sister and I lost our precious 16 year old angel, Una, on the 25th of last month and I swear to God it’s almost killed me. After Milla and Zoe passed in 2018, I clung to Una even harder. She was part of my soul and with me in every aspect of my life. The only time we were apart was when I was a work. 

I’m still not okay and I don’t know that I ever will be. 

I can’t talk about it, so I’m going to stop there and will most likely never bring it up again because it hurts too much and makes me want to cry. I already cry daily… numerous times usually.

With that being said, I think blogging would be a nice outlet for me. I feel like I have no drive to take pictures anymore, so maybe this will help spark one of my absolute favorite things in the world. 

Don’t hold your breath, cause I won’t. 

Maybe I’ll pop in tomorrow or some day soon with a little recap of my life from the last… idk, 18 months? 20? It was around March of 2023 when I posted last. So there’s that. Hope everyone is doing well, until next time…

Happy Thanksgiving {2022}

 I want to apologize for my very winey and depressing post a couple days ago. I was just really down and getting into my feels, but I shouldn't have ranted like I did or complained about stupid stuff that has no relevance. I tend to overlook how blessed I am and really take some things for granted. Thank God I have what I have and am able to do what I do. 

I'm an anxious person and have a lot of issues with things like that. Unfortunately I'm predisposed to anxiety and depression - it runs deep in my family - plus I experienced a lot of psychological abuse when I was a child, so yay. I really didn't want to use my blog for complaining or wining, but I guess I just needed to vent. 

Anyways, Thanksgiving dinner prep was in full swing all day yesterday. I'm not going to go into great detail, but we were cooking from like 3pm until 9pm. Somewhere around in there, anyways. Today when I got up I made the dressing, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole. Then, of course, engorged way too much, but I'm thankful that I was able to. 

Earlier today I went out and took some pics around the yard. It was super hot in the house and the temperature was pretty mild outside. It was cloudy, so I didn't have to worry about harsh, early afternoon lighting. I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of this camera, because I really like a few of the pictures that I got today. 

Tomorrow we're headed to a new Tree Farm to hopefully get our Christmas Tree from. It's a place in Bonne Terre called Bollinger Farms. They're new this year, so I'm sure their prices are ridiculous. Hopefully not, but it would be nice. I really miss Beck's Tree Farm, but they've been closed down since like 2018 or something.

Anyways, I guess that all for now... Happy Thanksgiving!

Hung the Dollar Tree inflatable ornaments today... they're not even and it kills me.

I know it's probably hard to tell, but there is so much detail in this picture. I was amazed with how it looked once I saw it on the computer. There's no posting editing either, this is straight from the camera.

I'm still trying to work out my shutter and ISO on this camera, it's basically the same, but since this is an FX camera, it's a smidge different.

There's great detain in this photo of tree bark too.

The lighting on the bathroom wall.

Out Christmas Village at night.

The little Christmas Village always looks so nice all lit up.

I took these Christmas Village pics with my Tokina lens.

A nice macro shot of the bread cubes I made last night for homemade stuffing today.

I took a couple more, but they were super dark.

Dried and decayed basil leaves.

There's something so beautiful about fall leaves.

Some dried and dead flowers.

There's a lot of awesome detail in this picture too.

Raindrops on some parsley.

I love this waterdrop on the end of a tree branch. It turned out really good I think.

I'm clearly obsessed with raindrops, but check out the awesome bokeh of the 105mm lens.

This is a raindrop in one of the little pom pom weeds.

Beautiful pine branches.

Moss and a leaf on the roof of an old dog house.

The focal point is off a bit here, but I still like it. Mainly because I love leaves.

One more picture of the dead mammoth basil leaf for good measure.

Let's Chat... {The Walking Dead, Thanksgiving & Christmas}

 Warning, potential long post ahead!

I don't have an insane amount to talk about or anything and it's nothing like super serious. I just want to ramble for a little while to whomever may or may not be reading this. It sometimes helps to let my emotions bleed into my blog every once in a while.

This is kind of random and something I haven't talked about on my blog in literally years, but I'd like to talk about The Walking Dead for a minute. As I'm sure almost everyone knows, TWD series finale was Sunday and it's just like really sad and depressing to me for some reason. I've been a HUGE Walking Dead fan for year. I remember seeing the preview for it back in 2010 and couldn't wait to watch it. I wrote the name and date down on a piece of paper and taped it to the back of the door. LaVaughn and I fell in love from day one and watched it religiously every single Sunday.

Until they killed Carl...

If you read the comics and love them as much or more than the TV show, then you had to have been pissed at the decision to kill him off - I know I was. Then Rick being written off the show half way through season 9 with the final nail in the coffin. After Carl died it didn't feel like the same show. When Rick left it wasn't the same show. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good zombie show, but it wasn't The Walking Dead anymore. LaVaughn and I stopped watched for over a year or maybe longer, then we finally decided to give it a go.

We watched all of season 9 and up to episode fifteen on season 10 and that was it.

I read so much stuff Sunday about the finale and saw peoples posts about how they've watched it since day one, yadda yadda yadda. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people did, but I feel like they're probably the Daryl stans that are only in it for him. Someone who wasn't even in the comics to start, I might add. Idk, I think a lot of it has to do with making me feel nostalgic or something. It makes me think of old times and just depresses me. I miss the fall of 2010 so much, it was just an amazing time and the fact that it was 12 years ago sucks. It was just really depressing to me, which I know is probably so silly, but that how it makes me feel. I'll never forgot the first few seasons of TWD and how amazing they were and how much LaVaughn and I enjoyed watching them.

Now on to Thanksgiving... like how is it already almost the end of November?? I had to do a ridiculous amount of grocery shopping yesterday for all the stuff that LaVaughn and I are making. We're mainly making deserts this year, but I'm also making homemade stuffing and cranberry sauce, LaVaughn is doing the potatoes. Plus we're making this one type of dip that my aunt and uncle like, plus cheese ball dip. We also go some of the fancy frozen yeast rolls instead of making them homemade. My aunt and uncle are doing the turkey, ham and chicken and dumplings. She's also doing the stuffing that they like with all the nasty stuff in it.

 All of the prep and desert making is happening tomorrow... should be interesting.

Now on to Christmas. I'm always super festive around the holidays and I absolutely love Christmas shopping. Idk what's going on this year, but there's just something off. I feel like I'm the only person in my immediate family that is excited about it. LaVaughn and I always Christmas shop together for my aunt and uncle, my mom, Jeff and Jake. We've only gone one time and that was two weeks ago and we just got like 4 things. I know people Christmas shop by themselves all the time, but it's not something I'm used to, so it's kind of depressing to me. I feel like no one cares and it's getting to the point where I don't even care. 

I hate it.

I don't know why, but it's super easy for me to get sad and depressed anymore. I'm a genuinely happy person, but damn... this is just getting to me. Even writing all this out is making me a little sad and depressed at the thought. I think I'm just going to stop mentioning anything to LaVaughn and let her approach me when she wants to go someplace. I'm just gonna start shopping online I guess, cause I'm too bummed out anymore.

First world problems, I know.

Anyways, I'm done crying and complaining about stupid stuff that I shouldn't be complaining about. Here are some pics that I've taken with my new camera over the last week or so. It's nothing special and they kinda suck because I'm still getting used to this camera.

Here are some pictures from my D750 with my 105mm 2.8 lens:

Here are some pictures from my D750 with my Tokina 11-20mm 2.8 lens:

Giant Christmas Village

I'm so lonesome I could cry...

That song speaks true to me at the moment. I don't know what it is, but I'm having a major rough patch in life right now. I guess I'm just depressed. This has happened twice before in my life. Once when my gran passed away, then again a couple years later. Once it hits, you can't kick it. I try to be happy and look at the bright side of everything, but sometimes it's just hard. I find it hard to enjoy things I once looked forward to. How's that for a classic case of depression.

It's just been an all around bad day. Like seriously, things were okay for an hour or so after I got up, but then they went from okay to completely unbearable! It's amazing how one wrong move and set the motion for the rest of the day. My luck.

Dare I bring forth the terribly depressing news about Sookie? She passed last night. I don't know what happened. She had recovered from her wet tail just fine. It doesn't look as if she suffered in the end, she was curled up in a little ball -- like she was sleeping. I'm happy that she went in her sleep. I can't talk about it too much right now, I'm just not in the right state to do so.

I went against my better judgment today and took outdoor joey pictures. I've been slacking TERRIBLY in the joey picture department. And it wasn't until after Viktor almost got away from me that I realized that he was too damn big for outdoor photos. He's 6 weeks already, what was I thinking?! That's a perfect example of how my mind is working at the moment.

I did, however, get some cute pictures of Wanda and Pietro. They held fairly still in my hands while I took their picture. It was nearly past sunset, so the lighting was terrible. It didn't help that it was cloudy, muggy, and foggy outside. I had to jack the ISO all the way up to 3200 -- way too grainy for my taste, but I had to.

Speaking of cameras, I have to use the kit lens for joey pictures anymore. I use the 50mm for basically everything, but it's a fixed zoom and that doesn't work well for joey pictures, not at all! I need a macro lens, I've already stated this to LaVaughn, so she knows. And if I ever get my photography up and running, I'm going to invest in a 85mm. That will be AFTER I purchase a new body, of course.

Well I guess one thing still excites me, talking about cameras.

I'm going to call it a day and enjoy what time I have left before work tomorrow. It's been a terribly sucky day, I honestly can't wait for it to be over...

Love & Peace

-Megan

Random (and rare!) food finds:

Baby yellow tomatoes!

Salad cucumbers.

AND mascarpone cheese! Do you have any idea how long we've looked for this?

Random pictures from the day:

Love Bart's face.

I managed to clean the drop trays today - go me.

A caterpillar I harassed:

The joeys:

Viktor

Marcus

Pietro

Wanda