This week was good, I had two photo shoots.

Monday, I had a shoot with a three year old who needed to get some portraits done for toddler pageants. It was interesting. She was pumped to do a shoot, until I got there. She still had fun, and I had fun. But, boy, was it ever hard to keep up slash get a good photo. I will have a few of them up by the end of the weekend.

Friday, Josette had created a few new outfits for the summer season. So I drove down to Hamilton to shoot. It was great weather, and the shoot went great! Minus the on-lookers, but that’s what happens with doing shoots on location. Some man, who looked like he was 45,  in his car took a photo of Jade modeling. Rather strange, but… such is life.

Please check out my flickr site for more photos, and check out Josette’s site too (click on her name!).

Cheers

I’m a horrible blogger slash photographer.

So an update on the Bell’s Palsy; literally in five weeks time, I was 100% better! I was completely amazed and I’m so happy for it. I read so much online when I was first diagnosed, and I worried that I’d be half paralyzed well into September. But taking the medication that the doctor gave me, steroids and antibiotics, and a combination of vitamin B12 at 500 mcg, salmon fish oil pills (4 a day), vitamin C, and drinking lots of water really helped. Relaxing was key. The hard part was trying to get out of the rut I got into of relaxing and not having the ambition to shoot at all. I have to start up again. I will start up again.

Other news, I turned 25 at the start of the month. WOO, what a milestone. :/   For my birthday though, Shawn got me a cute Boston Terrier named Baxter. I found him a week before Shawn brought him home on Kijiji. I showed it to Shawn and he was like “NO WAY WE CANT AFFORD IT!” and I was like, “okay, fine, no problem, I understand.”  Literally a week after I showed Shawn the post on Kijiji, he came home with the cute little bugger. He came from a large family, 5 kids ranging 3-12, and busy parents (obviously!). He’s calm and sleeps a lot and I feel that he’s really happy here. He does get hyper and super playful. He’s favorite thing is his tennis ball. If it squeaks, it’s crack to him! Baxter snorts when he sniffs, snores when he sleeps, he sings when you sing or play an instrument, he doesn’t bark, and gets excited  when you come home from a long day out (even if its for like 30 minutes hahaa). He loves being close to us and doesn’t like being away from us! We are taking him to doggy school and he’s getting a bit better. He does much of the things with treats, practice makes perfect and soon we’ll be able to do things without treats — I hope… he’s so picky with his treats.

Anyways, just two more months until school starts, I’m looking forward for it, yet I’m not. I don’t want the stress of the year end gallery show. But that’s still two months away before all the craziness starts. I am enjoying my summer off, and working and having some fun! Shawn and I have been living together for over a year, we’re hitting our two year anniversary in August (where we promised each other to get a DQ cake haahaa). Lots of fun things going on soon, Honda Indy, Parties, Family Get-together’s, etc. I’m looking forward for it all.

So I’m back.

It has been a long time since I have last updated the site. So many things happened. School finished up, helped out with the second year gallery, looked for other part time jobs, and that’s about it. Nothing out of the usual. OH WAIT! No, I also was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy.

Let me tell you how that happened. This happened about three weeks ago. Nicky was living with us because his landlord wouldn’t let him stay for two extra weeks without having to pay a full months rent. So, the first week went well. The second week, was starting off fine. Sunday night, the 9th of May, I made lasagna for dinner. All home made and nothing but delish! I couldn’t wait for the cheese to melt – it smelt SOO GOOD – that I had to try a hot steamy piece. Of course it was steaming hot out of the oven and the cheese burnt my tongue. The next day, I still had the fuzzy burnt tongue feeling and I thought nothing of it. Tuesday, I still had the fuzzy feeling, and I couldn’t taste the foods I was eating. Again, didn’t think much of it, I figured I burnt myself pretty bad. Wednesday – well, Wednesday, I was getting ready to run some errands, and I realized I couldn’t blink that well. I figured I might have poked my eye with the mascara brush while trying to put on makeup. But I couldn’t recall if I did or didn’t hit my eye with the mascara brush. So I’m at Winners, and I realize, I CANNOT blink  AT ALL with my right eye. It was windy and something flew into my eye. Later that evening, the boys and I go to the bar across from campus for some chicken wings. Its then that I start to really panic. I can’t smile, I can’t open my mouth big enough to not get myself all dirty with wing sauce, I can’t wink, and worse of all, I can’t taste my food. AT ALL. I’d say I lost about 50-70% of my taste buds. I was seriously worried, but the boys continued to make fun of me. Nicky said maybe I had a mini-stroke and I didn’t know about it. Thanks Nicky. :/   I thought it was stress related, and decided that I’ll sleep about 12hrs and see if I’m better in the morning.

It’s now Thursday morning, and I nothing has changed. I can’t blink, I can’t smile  - I lost all muscle in the right side of my face. So it felt. Speaking about feeling, I could feel things on my skin, so that was okay. So Shawn and I drive over to the walk in clinic and I get seated in a doctors room right away. The nurse asks for my symptoms as I’m trying not to over react and cry. The doctor came in, and he’s speaking English quickly in a thick Indian accent, so I’m only catching every other sentence through my tears (I’m also pretty sure my hearing was/is affected by Bell’s Palsy). We go through some basic reflex tests, and concussion tests (knee tests, follow my finger with your eyes, etc), then he asks me to smile big, blink, raise my eye brows, push and pull his hands with my hands, and the same thing with my feet/legs, just to make sure the paralyses was localized on one thing. He then quickly told me my diagnoses, and muttered a few other things which I caught, “You’ll be paralyzed in the rest of your body.” Or something of the sorts, and I broke down crying even more. He looked at me in confusion. What he said was, “It’s NOT like you’ll be paralyzed in the rest of your body.” I called Shawn into the room while the doctor stepped out and I told Shawn what happened. The doctor wrote on a prescription that I need an MRI and a CAT scan and told Shawn to rush down to the hospital with me to make sure its not internal to my brain.

So we get to the ER, and I check in, and wait. wait. wait.

By the time it’s my turn, I swear years have passed. I see countless nurses and each ask, poke, and prod me. Once I finally see an ER doctor, I’m hungry and tired and grumpy that it’s taken this long. The ER doctor and I do the same tests that I did earlier that day in the walk in clinic. She tells me my diagnoses again, and explains it in a calm manner, say that, I should have full recovery, but it’ll take time. She prescribes me steroids, and antibiotics, and rest. I drop by Shoppers to get them filled out and I get home where I tell Nicky about my day – who felt bad for making fun of me the night before hehe.

The ER doctor said that the sooner I started the treatment, the better my results would be. I did a TON of research on Bell’s Palsy, I’d have to say this site was the most helpful with all the facial exercises and  treatments other than prescription medication;     http://www.bellspalsy.ws/ . Check it out if you or someone you know has it. There’s a ton of research and information about it.

The ‘roids kept me up every night. It disturbed my sleeping pattern, made me moodier than ever before and dry mouthed. But I kept at it so I get full results. I also started taking vitamin B12 to help my body re-grow the damaged nerve. Once I finished the 7 days of  medication, I noticed a few things; I can close my eye more, I can smile a bit more. But I kept on doing the facial exercises and using lubricating eye drops like no ones business.

Almost four weeks after my diagnosis, I can whistle again (but not as strongly as I used to), I can sleep without an eye patch because both my eyes close now (I still use an over night lubricating ointment to keep my eye moist), I can now individually close my right eye while keeping the left one open (but that requires a LOT of concentration on my part, and I can’t fully wink the right eye like I used to with out any problems).  I think the thing that keeps me going is that I’m trying to do things I was able to do in the past with my face, So I’ll be sitting on the couch, making faces and either running towards the mirror to see if I got it right, or touching my face all over with my hands. It’s rather strange.

I have gotten better, it is NOT that noticeable, until I smile big and my face leans to the left. It has been a change to accept this, when I’m openly vain about my appearances, I did cry because symmetry is beauty, and if I’m not symmetrical, then I’m not beautiful (so I thought). It’s not life ending, thankfully, but it is annoying at times (especially when trying to eat or drink and things dribble out the side of your mouth). I’m hoping that in due time, like maybe another two months, I’ll be a-okay. It just really sucked that this happened on the eve of my 25th (which is June 8th), and me trying to get myself healthy and happy with my body and health overall. It really made me take a step back, analyze, and choose healthier and be healthier… and learning how to relax. WOW! Once work starts up in July, I’ll be sad for not having all the time in the world like I have now.

So I’m back to blogging, I’m back to shooting daily, I’m getting back to life and balance.

Cheers

What a challenge! This assignment made me sweat bullets. I’m still not 100% happy with it, I have to retouch it a bit more, but I think overall I did a good job.

Critiques are appreciated

Today in class, we had a quick fire, again.

This is my end result. The only thing I regret is the GOBO light in the background, I wish it were more even. But regardless, I like the end result in such short time.

So, I’ve been busy. That’s nothing new. And I’ve been sick, but I’m finally getting healthy! YAY!

Let’s hope that there’s some more time to do this more often

here’s the ones we missed, somewhat.

Missed Photos… Please click here

Other than being busy, life has had many downs and ups. This new life in Oakville is proving to be challenging in keeping my sanity. I’m looking forward to the summer.

i’m sorry

again

I had pink eye and a busy life

I have to set up an alarm system to remind myself :/

here are the missed ones

31

32

33

34

35

36

its been a month! yay

I really need a day to sleep in, but I don’t think that’ll be happening any time soon. so much to do, so little time

It’s almost been a month since I started this project. FUN.

This week:

Finish photoshop project

Pick out model in car photo

Catch up on digi production

Studio Food Shot

Come up with Grade 12 ENG U exam (must be unique!)

Mark essays and mark some more essays

sigh…

Model: Jade Pascual

Style/Make-up/Hair: Josette Cacnio

Photographer: Alicia Kowalski

Location: North End, Hamilton, Ontario

Preview shot of model in the car.

More will come up in the Fashion section of my Flickr. Later, when I’m less busy. Probably during my reading week.

Congratulations to Canada’s first GOLD MEDAL! YAY!