"Conversation, verbal elation, stimulation..."

I was determined to participate in Tea and Honey Bread's Shutter Click and Chat Sunday today, but had the hardest time finding an appropriate picture.

Theme: Laughter
Task: Post a photo of yourself laughing

Although I am quite easily amused and am prone to laugh at any given moment, there wasn't one photo in my collection depicting me in the act. Then I came across the one you see here. Two of

my spoken work artist friends held a series of poetry events last spring to prepare for a trip to a

national competition. On this particular night, teams had come from New Orleans, Houston, and Shreveport to battle it out on the mic. As we normally do when in each other's presence, my guy and I were being our naturally goofy selves exchanging humor that only we'd get. Who knows what we were talking about here, but my friend caught us in the act and emailed the picture to me. Now, I feel like I'm cheating since this looks more like a broad smile than a laugh, but I'm quite sure I had cracked up either before or right after this was taken (or both). However, since I don't have a good laughing shot of myself, I'll delve even further into cheat-dom and post a pic of someone else laughing. Pictured below is my now deceased cousin who I spoke about in a previous Shutter Click and Chat post. Here we are (well, I cropped myself out of the picture) in Detroit, MI, August 2004 a year before she passed. The big tiger looking thing she's sitting on in fact is a tiger. A Detroit Tiger . Why we were doing touristy type things in Detroit, I'm not too sure. It's like a second home. My cousin lived there twice in her lifetime, I lived there once, and we were constantly going there to visit family. If I remember correctly, though, there was someone on this trip with us who wanted to go to the baseball and football stadiums, so there we are. My cousin was laughing at my mom (behind the camera) who'd almost fallen while trying to get the shot and responded with the most off the wall expression.We had such a good time on that trip! I can recall the both of us singing Jill Scott's"A Long Walk" (post title reference) several times during the drive, getting on everyone's nerves, lol! Seems like we sang the whole way up there. She was the only one out of my family and friends who loved Jill's music as much as I did (do) when the singer's first album came out in 2000. When I see/hear Jill I think of my cousin and it's a beautiful thing. Nothing sad. Only joy, every time. :-D

*********************************************************************************

Finished a new dress this morning:





The material was left over from a custom dress I did for someone. (Based on this one.)






Be aware that this lil mini number is an x-small, and I squeezed my medium-ish self into it for the sake of getting a shot to send to the person it's for. I'm not fond of photographing garments on hangers or lying flat, and since there are no models of all sizes over here just waiting to be utilized, I just make it work. Luckily no seam was popped in the process, and thankfully the first dress above turned out to be a large (perhaps x-large) as I intended for it to. :-)

Wishing everyone a blissful week.

peace.