Warning: Be prepared for anything. 

I felt awful the day I took this photograph. I had two toothaches. One on the top right and one on the bottom left. I could feel the holes in my teeth. It helped to make wads of paper napkins and bite down hard. Why does it help to grind down on pain sometimes? Does it diffuse the pain? 

I remember taking this photograph. September 1999, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. I remember culture, crowds and chatter from children on field trips. It smells like dust. I bought a couple of photo books in the bookstore and then made this photograph. I took a long pause watching all these people thinking about their own worlds. I couldn’t make out the words but their echoing voices blended to a soup of human sounds. You can almost hear it when you look at this photo. 

I couldn’t sleep next to Sam a couple nights ago. She’s 8.62 months pregnant and if she spoons me the baby kicks hard enough to keep me awake. 

The other night I watched “You don’t know Jack”, a film about Jack Kevorkian. He helped 133 people committ suicide before going to prison for 8 years. He built a machine he called the “mercitron” that dispensed first saline then muscle relaxers and finally sodium penthathol that stops your heart. The patient had to pull the clip from the IV tube to start the drip under their own power. Jack pulled one for a patient. That’s what got him in jail.  They got him on a 2nd degree murder charge. That night I woke up at 1AM sitting up in bed hallucitating that someone was sitting in the kiddie pool that we have inflated in our bedroom. Sam shook me awake. 

We have an inflated kiddie pool in our bedroom. Sam’ll have the baby in there. My brother Zach said, “I’d hate to see the water in that pool after a birth”.  I laughed. It’s actually very clean. 

The worst part about going to costco is putting all the groceries away. 

The best part about going to costco is the mountain of groceries. 

I’m glad it’s Sunday. I need to fill up my spiritual tank. It’s low. 

Everyone in the house has had Chicken Pox now. Everyone except Kimi, who is in utero. Lily had one on her eyelid. Grace’s were mostly in her hair. She never knew that she had them. Bailey’s were concentrated on her face. She put a blanket over the mirror in her room. “I’m so ugly I can’t look at myself!!!” 

Christian and I made 24×36 inch prints of this photo and several other negatives in my basement in 2000. We were in the backyard spraying the prints clean with a hose at 2Am. They were hanging from our clothesline. Does anyone use a clothes line anymore? I have distinct memories of my mother hanging clothes on a clothes line in Basalt, Idaho. We lived on main street.