Shannon Montez Photography Blog » San Jose's Family and Child Photographer, Shannon Montez, captures all aspects of family life: Families, newborns, children, babies, high school seniors, and weddings.

This will be the second and last ugly Monday. Not because I can’t find ugly pictures, but because nobody wants to see them. Including me. This was taken by Shelby.

Ok. Now that I have that out of my system…

I’ve been super busy the past week. I’m trying to update everything photography business related. When I started the business a year ago, I was excited. Until I launched it. Then I freaked out. It became an extremely scary thing for me, having expectations and trying to be a business person AND a creative person at the same time. It’s hard. Add in mommying, laundry and cleaning, and there were several times over the past year that I felt ready to close up shop.

But I survived. I got a little breathing room. And I re-evaluated what I want to be doing and where I want to go. I realized that I do love what I do. I’m excited about giving people tangible memories of their families. I just don’t want to sacrifice my family in the process. And I don’t have to.

I have been afraid to even face the business. I’ve told people before that it felt like a monster that was still small, but if I gave it too much attention it would grow to be a monster that eats my family. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I can keep it under control and have it serve me, instead of eating me.

I’m ready now. Excited. Happy. Glad I can finally face this monster and groom it and make it pretty and teach it tricks that make people laugh. So it’s back on. I’m ready to make a go of it, for real this time. I’ve been updating my website and re-evaluating the way I do things. Be prepared to see changes coming soon.

ps… If you live in the Salt Lake City area or in the Philadelphia area and are interested in having some portraits taken, let me know! I’m planning trips out there this year and might as well make them "business trips."

I’m still here. Busy.

Feeling guilty that I didn’t write yesterday.

I feel guilt for the dumbest reasons. I should feel guilty for the way my bathroom smells sometimes or what my kids ate for breakfast or number of hours logged watching tv. But not blogging? I don’t know why I’d feel guilt about that. Except for the little fact that I publically announced that I would be blogging daily and then failed, right in front of everyone.

Kind of like walking out of a bathroom with your dress tucked into your pantyhose. Not like I’d know how that feels…

I can’t stop looking at this page. I’m so excited. I got a great picture of Dave for the first time, like, ever. He hates the camera as much as I do. He looks away, blinks his eyes, ducks and hides. But finally, he quit fighting. He actually smiled that gorgeous Hottiepants smile. Makes me happy. Ahhhh….. Listen to the Hallelujuh chorus singing in the background…

(page copyrighted by Two Peas in a Bucket)

I got such a hot guy. And you know how I did it? By being so hot myself.   This is a really good picture of me. My friends told me that in order to make your double chin go away, you suck your tongue to the top of your mouth and smile. It’s really flattering. Looking at this… I may not have a double chin, but my single chin is bigger than Jay Leno’s. Interesting. I think I’ll have to pass this tip on to all my photography clients. I’m hot, don’t you think? 

See… most girls sit and practice how to look pretty in front of the mirror. Me? I practiced ugly faces. I’ve got some really awesome ones. I’ll be sharing them once a week from now on. At least once this week. I’ll think about sharing one next week too. Maybe. Should Monday be Ugly Monday? Or would that be too humiliating? Vote now. You can choose to vote me off the island if you want. Or vote for me as the next american idol. I don’t really care which. I’m just trying to make the world a better place.

I woke up this morning feeling foggy. My insides felt dark and damp and cold and depressed. My morning was horrible. I had so many reasons to be in a bad mood. The puppy was licking herself half the night. It woke me up and grossed me out and made me mad. So around 6am I got up, took her outside, then moved her out of my room and went back to bed. By 6:30, Franklin had woken me up again, coming in for snuggles. Grumpily, I allowed him into the bed, because I was too tired to tell him to go away. By 6:45, his wiggling and the puppy’s banging around in her crate got me out of bed for good. 6:45… I guess they hadn’t read the memo that I don’t believe in getting up before 7, even if it’s 6:59, unless the house is on fire. Which it wasn’t, thankfully, but still… needless to say I wasn’t happy about it.

Within the next hour and a half, I had problems with whining, fixing lunches, homework not done, backpacks lost, breakfast, second breakfast, snack. I felt bad about not blogging yesterday and falling short of my daily goal, and not being interesting enough anyway. I felt bad about my house being a mess, and frustrated by the fact that I’m going to need to mop today because the puppy sneezed medicine all over the kitchen. I felt bad that we fell short of Matthew’s goal of homework being 100% completed through the end of the year. I felt bad that I’m avoiding my photography work. I felt bad that my heart wasn’t full of gratitude and a can-do attitude like I’ve been trying to cultivate.

So, I went back to bed. And within five minute, Franklin let the puppy out and I had to get up and go some more. As I stomped around the house, frustrated with myself, I suddenly thought about some things that put it all in perspective.

• Today, I’m not trying to deal with how to help my twelve-year old as he is dying from cancer.
• Today, I’m not taking my six children with me to attend the funeral for my husband, who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm.
• Today, I’m not packing my house and leaving to find a new job and start over somewhere else.
• Today, I’m not bandaging my son’s blisters because his skin won’t stay on his body, a job I will have to do daily for the rest of his life.

I know of four people doing the above four things today. I can bet they’d love it if their biggest issue today was puppy medicine sneezed all over the kitchen and a little exhaustion. Out of respect for people dealing with real issues today, I’m changing my day. I’m doing something else. I’m putting on that hat that I told myself I’m too old to wear. I’m going to mop the floor today, and feel grateful for the job and the husband that make it possible for me to do so. I’m going to go antique shopping, something I’ve never really done, just because I can.

The fact is, it’s possible, even likely, that someday I’ll have to deal with something awful in my own life. I can’t help but think that my friend’s cousin still had her husband a few years ago, when she only had four kids like me, and that Jen’s son didn’t have cancer when he was 9, like oldest child. They didn’t plan on their lives being turned upside down. At some point, their worst nightmare was a day like they’re having today. I hope if any of those above scenarios become one of my bad days, I will be able to look back at today, glad I didn’t waste it in undeserved self-pity, but instead, took advantage of it to the fullest, celebrating that today, my life was full of minor instead of major inconveniences.

Carpe Diem.

p.s. if you want to help Jen and her family, there is a benefit going on here.

She got expanders today. Expander is a nice way to say "an appliance that pries your mouth apart and makes you unable to eat good food and makes you cry at night when you should be going to sleep."

She’s not happy tonight. Part of me feels bad she has to go through this. Part of me feels glad that at least we’re not in China and I’m not binding her feet like in the book "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" I read recently. It was sooo fascinating. The mothers took their precious little girls and broke all the bones in their feet by binding them with rags and forcing them to walk with across the floor until the bones gave away and they passed out from the pain, then got them up and made them walk some more. Sometimes the girls got infections and died from this. Check out a fascinating article and gross pictures here. All for the sake of beauty. Just like braces.

Makes expanders sound not so bad, huh?

Ahhh….

The best cure for a Monday is a Tuesday. And a Coke. Today is just a better day. Not that yesterday was particularly bad, it was just a psycho Monday.

In an attempt to give to the world, as I often do, I’m going to try to make your day better by sharing a part of me. There have been requests for clogging pictures. There are SO MANY reasons why I shouldn’t share, one of them being for my poor, defenseless sister’s sake, but share I must.

Let’s start with my younger picture. There are more, mind you, but these are all I have on my computer… Stick around long enough, and I might share more someday. This one is cute. I’m young enough for this to be ok. The only thing I find disturbing is that we have no legs. Something about that makes my insides itchy, like my body is trying to turn itself inside out.

I feel the need to explain the costume. The dance was to "Second-Hand Rose" and we did it with a fake mirror…one person did actions the opposite of the other, facing each other, so we looked like mirror images until the end, when the person on the other side stepped through the mirror (it was so amazing) and we danced together. I’m pretty sure we tricked people into thinking we were one person in front of a mirror instead of two people pretending to be a mirror. One of my favorite routines ever.

Next.
Ok. This one…oh…

There is just. no. explanation. I, just, um… well… uh… gosh.

1. STILL no legs.
2. Braces and squinty eyes and claw bangs, except for one little piece poking into my eye.
3. Feathers, sequins, AND fringe. One would have been enough. But all three? And the hat? And ONE glove? I just…I…um… oh…my insides are SO itchy right now… Look away… pretend you didn’t see that, ok?

Hi. I’m WAY too old now. And besides that? Why did they pose us that way to emphasize the fact that my little sister is taller than me? Just heap on the humiliation. Notice the bangs are still there. And the sequin and fringe. The braces are gone. And still…no legs.

Ok. That’s it. I can’t take it any more. NO MORE.
I hope this little excursion into my past has been as fun for you as it was excruciating for me. My insides are so itchy right now, I hope my body doesn’t turn itself inside out. Because it feels like it just might.

You are too long.
You are mentally ill, Monday. Psycho.
Something about you is like that island on Lost… time is messed up, in slow motion, weird black smoke and polar bears coming out of nowhere.
At least that is how it feels.
Next Monday, we’re calling it Friday, even if it’s Monday.
So there. No more Mondays for me, cuz something about them is just plain wrong.
Warmly,
Shannon

So I said I wanted to write every day on the old bloggy. But did I mean every weekday? Yes, I think I did. But just in case I didn’t, I’m writing another garbage post, just to put the date on.

Oh. One super important thing. I was craving a Starbucks hot chocolate with whipped cream. But that is just too expensive. So I bought all the stuff for a hot chocolate with whipped cream at the store (and by stuff I mean hot chocolate and whipped cream) and ended up spending a lot more than the $2.15 Starbucks would’ve charged me. Mom, I’m sorry…I know the thought of spending money on that kind of junk kills you, but I have so little self-control when chocolate is involved, and for that I will blame YOU. But it’ll be worth it. I’m going to drink enough hot chocolate with whipped cream to make the size of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. I can’t wait.

I hope that post made your life a whole lot better and wasn’t a waste of your precious time to read.

Debbie was my best friend growing up. But she changed. She became Debi. And I think that was the problem, the reason we stopped being friends.

We met in the second grade when we both signed up for our first clogging class. She went to my school, but clogging is where we really became best friends. She had bright red, super-thick hair and tiny teeth. She also had freckles, but nowhere near as many as I did. She was short, like I was, and had really thin fingernails that shot straight off her fingers without curving on the sides. I remember her mom liked to snack on uncooked pieces of rice. She kept a small cup of rice in the car and I can remember her crunching them like a wolf chewing on mouse bones. Their car smelled like hamburgers. I love hamburgers.

Anyway, Debbie and I had a great time. We really loved each other. We had sleepovers almost every weekend. Debbie always had to bring extra pajamas and underpants because she had a little problem (as did I, but for different reasons which I shall not divulge in this entry). No, she didn’t wet the bed, like some people I know.

Her problem? She peed when she laughed real hard. And the girl loved to laugh. And I loved to make her laugh. It became my unconscious goal to make her wet her pants every time we were together. I can’t think of a better compliment you can give a person than to wet your pants because they are so funny. I felt like a rockstar around her. I can distinctly remember eating dinner with her family, and they were all laughing, and telling me I should write a comic strip. A comic strip? Forget that I can’t draw, and that my humor probably wasn’t comic strip material, but at the time, that made me feel SO good.

I can’t remember what I ever said that was so funny… my family never found me that funny. Not a single person in my family EVER wet their pants because they were laughing at my jokes. But hers did. I loved it. I soaked it up. Being the middle child in a family of six kids with four of my siblings louder and funnier than me, and one baby, I was pretty much telling jokes to myself at home most of the time. But the captive audience at Debby’s house…it was my overshadowed-middle-child dream come true. Plus, her house had a snow cone machine, the first cd-player I’d ever seen, a television in the kitchen, a cool older sister, and an above-ground swimming pool. A heaven, as if it had been created just for me.

One time, I felt pretty bad for making Debbie wet her pants. We were at a clogging competition, she was wearing silky pink pants (one of our clogging costumes) and the wet spot ruined her pants. She had to wear them the rest of the day…on stage, even. Not cool, not cool. But I couldn’t help it. I was just so funny. Debi? I’m really sorry about that one. I didn’t know you were, um, vulnerable that day, or I would’ve kept the funny to myself.

Anyway… from second to seventh grade we were best friends. Best. Friends. Tight. Heart necklace and all. Then came Junior High.

Junior High…that trainwreck of adolescence that our friendship couldn’t survive. Some time in seventh grade, Debbie decided to become Debi. She decided she liked boys, even began kissing them. (gross!!) And she quit clogging. Clogging was just… uncool. But the real clincher? The thing we actually fought over? She said her mom said my mom was cheap. No matter that her mom may not have said that, and that even if she had said that, it was true. It was over. Nobody calls my mom cheap. Except me… and everyone else who knows her, including check-out people in the grocery store who might have inadvertently charged her an extra dime on that gallon of milk.

Either way, it was something to fight about. A tiny issue, really, that was just easier to put into words than feeling betrayed about boys and popularity and clogging. We were able to make our beef about our moms not getting along (even though they did get along) instead of the real issue, which was that we didn’t have much in common anymore. THAT would’ve been too painful to realize at the time. When you’re little, Barbies and sparkly clothes and snow cones are enough to make a solid friendship. But in the treacherous territory of teenage turmoil, things get infinitely more complicated.

Though we were in the same school through high school, we didn’t talk much after seventh grade. And even though by high school, we were technically friends again, all of the closeness was gone. That wedge was deep, the wall was high. We both had new best friends or boyfriends and different interests, different personalities.

It makes me sad that it had to end. It was one of those magical experiences in childhood that all seem to dry up and disappear once you cross the threshold that leads you into adulthood. Just like finding out about Santa or the truth about where babies come from, they leave you different after, with no going back to who you were before you learned that lesson. Losing Debbie was a hard lesson. Inevitable, I know, but still sad.

Debbie/Debi? Thanks for laughing at me. Thanks for making me feel like a rockstar. Thanks for the snowcones and the friendship necklace. Thanks for loving me.

I’m sorry I ruined your shiny pants. And our friendship.

Stinky, tired. Must eat donuts.

Counting this as a daily blog entry, even if it’s stupid.