"Watch your background!"

Whenever we post pictures to the blog, I always like to crop out the unattractive parts of the photos. It seems like there's always something to crop out . . . dirty dishes on the kitchen counter, raggedy underwear on the clothesline, a dog happily smeared with manure, . . . you get the idea.

Then there are the more permanent eyesores - I try to keep those out of the photos, as well. There's the shipping container we use to store tools and construction supplies. I'm glad we have the container - otherwise all of that stuff would be in our bodega/house with us - but the container itself is still fairly hideous, and it's the first thing you see when you come up onto our property. There's the pigpen, made of panels for pouring concrete. It's not attractive to look at, or to smell. At least I don't have to crop smells out of my photos! Large portions of our bodega/house are used for storage, and these areas are ugly, but I just choose not to look at those places. It works for me.

When I send Boo to take a specific photo for the blog, I'm always telling her, "Remember to watch your background!" By that I mean that she should keep the random ugly stuff out of the photo. We all ignore it so much that it's easy to forget what it looks like to others! I'll continue to try to crop out the ugliness from my photos but I thought, for the sake of honesty, I should share some of the less attractive things occasionally.

This morning I had Boo read what I've written thus far, and then I sent her out to document the current level of ugliness. Here we go:

Nice, huh? Reminds me of some hillbilly hangouts I've seen . . .

A view of the shipping container, from the other end. Delightful! I have to tell you, too, that Russell just recently tidied up this area, as the stuff had spread, as stuff will do.

The pigpen - bringing joy to ALL of your senses. LOL

Now, while the photos of miscellaneous piles of construction materials and big holes in the ground aren't attractive, they aren't UGLY to me . . . they are indications that my house is being built! So, although Boo took some pictures of them, and I'm posting them to show what things look like around here just now, I want you to know that they are kind of beautiful to me. LOL

Up to about 7' tall or so, our current house/bodega mostly looks like a house. But, since we don't have interior walls, and are using bookcases to divide the space into rooms, you can see right over the 7' of "house" to see, along the exterior walls, the part of the building that is obviously "bodega." This is the part I pretend not to see, most of the time.

And that's all I'm going to say about the ugliness. I mostly just ignore it, and look at the view whenever possible:

Ahhhhhhh - that's better!