Feet, Faces and now Hands

I love to watch people.

The question of the day.  Who goes to the fair?  I am so glad that I  have a new lens for my camera that enables me to take pictures at longer range.  It isn't that I want to sneak up on people but I see more "normal every day" expressions when I can shoot from farther away.  So, here are examples of who goes to our little, small town, home town, county fair.

My Own Front Door, leads to the County Fair

Who goes to the fair ?.. Edition One. 

I was going to call this Fair Faces............. 

Wandering around the fair with my camera around my neck with the intent of capturing interesting faces.  

 

 

 

 But then I realized, that some of my FAVORITE shots from the night, weren't really just faces. 

 

To dream or not to dream..... that is the question.

I have been having a very hard time in the last few months with my night time activities.  For all of my life I have experienced terrible nightmares.  We wont go in to the reasons why at this point, just suffice to say that the earliest recollections I have started somewhere before I was 2 years old. 

I have always gone through cycles of time.  For a few months up to a year I might not have any trouble with sleeping, not many dreams at all, good or bad. Then, WHAM, they hit and I go through a cycle of time that is pretty awful and I get to the point that I am almost afraid to go to sleep because I don't know what my subconscious is going to do to me.  Which we all know, only makes me more tired which drives my need for REM sleep to correct the balance in my head.   And on and on we go. 

Well, at the moment I have been in my longest cycle to date I would wager a guess.  This has been going on for several months.  The good news is that the dreams are unsettling but not the murderously horrific fodder that horror movies are made of that has been my normal.  However, along with the milder but more frequent dreams, comes just NOT sleeping.  I go to sleep pretty well, some nights my mind is more full and it takes me a little longer to empty it but I would say that I am not awake more than 30 minutes to start with before I go to sleep, and I may sleep for 2-3 hours pretty soundly, but then I am awake either in a cold sweat, shaking and trying to catch my breath from what ever was inside my head, or... just awake with my brain going 90 miles a minute thinking about what is going on around me in my world.  I may be awake for 45 minutes to an hour, or that may be the end of sleep for the night. 

The last 2 nights have been interesting.  Tuesday night, after a long and stressful day which isn't anything out of the norm for me, I went to bed... went pretty much straight to sleep and woke at 3am in that cold sweat, realized that the dog was laying on top of the blankets so I couldn't get warmed up with out waking my husband, and he has been missing enough sleep, so that wasn't an option.  So, I laid there trying to sort out the dream that had woken me.  Being called in to a room much like the questioning rooms in police drama shows,  sat down in front of a computer to take notes on the conversation going on at the table... however, every time I began to type, the letters that were on the keyboard were NOT the letters that were being typed.  ( I am old enough that I was taught "touch typing" in school, by the way)  But if I typed a B... the letter might be an H.  If I typed an H, the letter might be a J.  Everything that was coming up on the screen was gibberish.   The dream went on from there involving all the people in the room. 

Don't worry about analyzing my dream, I pretty much know what it is about.  I'm just giving an example about how this particular dream on my scale was not horrible, just unsettling but the truth is, now my brain would not shut off enough for me to go back to sleep so after about 45 minutes of trying and realizing that I was just making it more difficult for my husband to sleep, I got up and went to the living room to read.  The good news there is that I almost finished the book that I have been reading on since the end of May that I kept complaining that I didn't have time to read.  See, I DO have time, if I use those hours from 4 am till 7, I can get a LOT of reading done. 

So, you would think that last night I would be tired enough to sleep pretty well, right? 
Well, I honestly did stay asleep more hours, so that was good, after it taking me longer to GO to sleep, but this morning I can honestly tell you that the place my brain went in my sleep was very interesting.  I believe that if I were told today that I was moving, I could pack everything I had the desire to take with me into a maximum of a 6 x 12 uhaul trailer behind my pickup truck with room to spare.   Yep, that was where my brain spent the night, or the 45 seconds that dreams take in fast forward, which ever is the truth.   I went through my entire house, room by room, and picked up my flute out of my closet, enough clothes to get through a week, the knickknacks off my dresser that mean something to me, my grandmothers jewelry, the pictures off my walls, I sorted through the probably several hundred books in my house to narrow them down to about 6 boxes of books. I took my 2 cedar chests, my china that has memories attached, all of my scrapbooking materials and the boxes of memorabilia that I still want to do something with, my grandmothers cookbook, and a few other items, and I was ready to be out the door.  Then, I believe that I woke up in the process of deciding whether or not to torch the rest, I'm not really sure what my decision was. 

So, if my eyes look a little tired today, I seem a little quieter than normal, or I am moving slower than usual,  maybe you can cut me some slack, I have worked very hard in the last few nights. 

The Best News is.. that now I am only hours away from Rocket Dogs.. and other "Fair Food"  and that will cure all ills for a few hours at least. 

Faces

From the 75th annual fair parade.  I am not sure how I am going to choose which ones to display here.  I don't want to bore anyone with too much.. but the emotion and expression and everything else that was part of yesterday is too interesting not to capture.  A friend of mine commented on her facebook page with some of the pictures that she had from the parade...."Its never JUST a parade"

I think each face speaks for itself, but what a community this county is.  And this week the fair starts on Wednesday.  Just to be able to walk around and see the choices our community offers to each of us to give a little back into our community is amazing every year.  Our county fair is unlike any other I have been to.