30
October
Wordless wednesday – first frost
28
October
Math IS hard
When I started my current 365, I vowed that I would be better. I didn’t mean that I would take better pictures, that the subjects of my pictures would be more interesting, or that I would really change the way that I approached the 365. What I meant was that I would be better at posting the pictures that I took in a timely manner. No more falling weeks behind for this gal.
Four months in, and I can say that I have failed miserably at this vow. Instead of falling days and weeks behind, I regularly find myself over a month behind. It’s gotten to the point where it has started to stress me out. Sure, I have been faithfully taking photos daily, and quite often have selected “the” photo for the day, but when I don’t upload them I start to worry that I somehow missed a day, or deleted a picture that I wanted to keep, and I worry.
Last night I decided to face the task head on, and upload at least some of the fifty or so pictures that had not made it to Flickr yet. I had fun looking through last seven weeks or so as I was uploading, so I decided to review some of the older photos of the collection. In doing this, I noticed that there was an error in my count, and that I had accidentally marked two shots as number eighty-five. Grumbling to myself, I went and edited the descriptions on fifty pictures, the bulk of which I had just uploaded and incorrectly captioned.
With that task done, I decided to move them all into the set (or album) that I had created when I started the project; a set that was also way out of date. It was then that I noticed that there were too many pictures in the set. I had uploaded to day 135, but the set contained 136. Now annoyed that I had made yet another error, I went to the beginning to check all of the descriptions. I had just corrected the most recent shots, so I was confident that the error must be in the earlier uploads. They were all correct and sequential, so I checked to the end and found no error. That was impossible, so I checked again with the same result. Confused, I counted all of the thumbnails in the set and still had one fewer picture than what Flickr was telling me.
I started this post ready to tell the world that Flickr can’t count either, but something made me check just one more time. I found my error pretty quickly tonight. I bet this would not happen if I uploaded daily…
UPDATE – it turns out that Flickr CANNOT add, either.
22
October
The waiting is the worst part
A few weeks back, I spent the weekend in Toronto photographing the Blissdom Canada conference as second shooter for the wonderful and talented Anna Epp. It was my second year working under Anna at this particular conference, and I really enjoyed my time there. Anna is very dedicated and professional in her work, and I love to watch and learn from her. Sadly, one of the lessons I learned was self-taught, the hard way.
The wrap-up event for Blissdom is typically a party on the Saturday night, and this year’s conference was no exception. It’s a really fun event to shoot, and this party seemed especially happy. I’d turned my camera off several times as the evening wound down, deciding that I had fulfilled my obligations, only to find more moments to capture. This was how I found myself standing on a chair to get a couple more shots of the room. When the photos were taken, I crouched down to step off the chair at the same time as the hand that was holding my camera inadvertently pressed the lens release button. I twisted to get down and the lens twisted off. It tumbled a good four feet before hitting a table leg and then the floor. I was shocked and crushed.
The lens that fell is my favourite lens, my first BIG splurge on glass. It was clearly damaged, and has since been sent off to Sony to see what, if anything can be done. While I hold my breath waiting, I continue to alternate between missing it and being so very mad at myself for allowing this to happen, even though I know it was an accident. It’s been two weeks, and now I just need to know.
14
October
Adult supervision required
This past Friday was a PD day, so the lils were hanging out at home with me. We had a lazy day planned and were getting ready to run out for groceries followed by a trip to Mud Lake when Goose came running into the kitchen complaining about her vitamin. I had given her a gummy multi-vitamin a few minutes prior, and assumed that she had lost it. Goose LOVES the vitamins, and she is constantly playing with them, trying to slow down the eating process.
When I asked if it was lost, she nodded. I admit that I was frustrated at this point, I frequently need to reinforce the need to just EAT the vitamin and not play with it, but this time I had forgotten. She nodded in answer to my question, and then I noted that she was tearing up. When she pointed to her nose and said “it hurts”, I knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix. Using the sun as my flashlight, I laid her down on the counter and looked up her nostril. Way up her nostril, in fact. I could see nothing, but noted that it was bleeding.
I sat her up and asked the questions every parent is dying to ask: are you sure it is up your nose; how big was it when it went up your nose; and just how far did you push it up your nose… She filled me in and kept complaining about it hurting, so I tried to help her get it out naturally.
Not sure how gummy this gummy was, I tried to encourage her to blow her nose. This is when Goose confirmed for me that at some point over the summer she forgot how to blow her nose! After several attempts, I made the decision to call Tele-Health, despite the fact that I knew they were just going to tell me to go to the hospital. After a short conversation that included my confession that I had smelled my daughter’s mucous and that it did indeed smell like an orange multi-vitamin, they told me to go to the ER, just in case.
At the hospital, we were checked in lightning fast, and were herded here:
It comforted me somewhat to know that there was a room for cases like ours, but I still could not wrap my head around the fact that she has done this in the first place. I was certain that we were past the age where things got jammed up noses. Well, jammed up one’s own nose.
Up until this point, Goose had been sniffling quite regularly, but I noticed then that she had stopped. She just finished telling me that it didn’t hurt any more when the doctor walked in the door. He gave her a quick examination and confirmed that the “foreign body” was no longer in her nasal passage and decreed that she was fine. She proved it by hopping off the bed and skipping out the door.
Happy that she was pain free and that we were so fast, we carried on with our day. She delighted in showing me MANY times that her nostril now stuck together, but was otherwise seemingly unscathed. We both learned a lesson on Friday. She knows that you don’t get a second vitamin if you “lose” your first in your nose, and I know that I can never, ever give her another gummy vitamin without adequate supervision.
7
October
A terrible horrible monster
There is nothing like the first few minutes with your child after you return from a trip. It’s happiness and love and filled with hugs. That’s what it was like yesterday with Woo, upon my return from Blissdom. He leapt into my arms and joyfully filled my ears with tales from the weekend. Goose, on the other hand, was a different story. She arrived in tears and clung to me. She started by telling me about the crimes that her brother had just committed by pushing her out of the way to get to me, and ended with telling me about getting lost in the tunnels.
My heart skipped a beat, and I calmed her enough to tell me about the tunnels. From what I could piece together, there is an exhibit at the Science and Technology Museum that involves some slides or tunnels and Goose was in them, alone, and got lost. She didn’t know where to go or what to do so she just stood there and cried til her brother found her. Irrational me immediately thought about what sort of person would send a four year-old girl into the tunnels, alone, crying – likely for hours and finally sending a six year old deep inside to rescue her. Willy. That terrible, horrible monster.
Rational me took over and I talked to her about how awesome it was that Woo looked out for her and how the tunnels were still such a fun place, and then waited to talk Willy about it later. Sure enough, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Goose had successfully navigated the tunnels once, she just got turned around. When Goose didn’t come out of the one slide (there were only two), Willy sent Woo down the path to the other slide while he waited at the bottom to make sure that she wasn’t alone when she did pop out.
The reality is that our lils are growing up, and we want them to be independent, so they are going to get stuck in tunnels occasionally. She was fine, and it is not likely to have any sort of lasting impression. I, on the other hand, need to make sure that it is the rational me that lets the lils go off into the tunnels of the world, knowing that they are going to get lost on occasion. Getting lost is part of it.
