Ditching the floaties

When Littlest Ms. was born in 2005 there was no warning about what kind of terror she would bring to my life. Long before her first birthday I had a suspicion that she was part feline. They say cats have nine lives and she had already used almost all of hers. From tumbling down my stairs to having Little Ms. tip a marble table over missing her little head by mere inches it seemed that crisis was just a heartbeat away whenever she was in the house. She went through physical therapy as a baby and claimed a broken hand last year. A CT head scan was done after she fell and hit her head. Unexplained high fevers were common, especially on holidays or weekends.

Two years ago this child decided to sneak away from us to take a swim in the pool with her big sister. Problem: no life jacket. The lifeguard pulled her out coughing and crying. After ten minutes she was back in the pool having a great time. Unfortunately, the memory of that experience continues to haunt both me and Eris.

Bribery works. Last week the proposition was made that when she could successfully swim the width of the pool (30 feet?) by herself I would take her for a milkshake, any flavor, any place, any size. She got her milkshake tonight, chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles.

It is scary to watch her in the pool because she is still learning. Within a month I expect to see her jumping off the diving board and freaking out the lifeguards just like Little did at this same age.

Littlest Ms., congratulations on ditching the floaties!

$2.50 plus a silver dime and a coin from Qatar

Sunday services

Church was fabulous today. Zeus and I had a great time.

Sorry the rest of you missed it.

$.47

Impermanence

Impermanence is a concept that is talked about often at church. I have a pretty good grasp of this, I think. Nothing stays the same. Everything changes constantly.

The bees pollinate the flowers while they are gathering honey resulting in more flowers and fruits. The dandelion blooms, goes to seed and makes more dandelions. The tadpoles change into a frogs that eventually make more tadpoles that make more frogs.....

Impermanent. Except for the damn rain! When will it stop??????

(Sorry bleason, I wish I could send some your way.)

$.82

Note: Photos were taken on a recent Grandma Tuesday Field Trip to the Nature Center. More images posted at the Shooting Blog.

A day gone awry

Sometimes a well-planned day just doesn't work out the way you expected. For instance, I left the house this morning expecting to gather pocketfuls of coins from post-rain car washes. Instead, the ralking was a dismal failure, at least as far as coinage was concerned. All of the construction has basically shut down about half of my usual pickup areas. I was about 15 minutes behind schedule and I'm guessing that the rest of my hot spots got scooped by the guy on the bike who was watching my route two days ago. Grand total for 90 minutes of ralking, a lousy 32 cents. Note to self: set alarm for 5:30 AM. On the plus side, it was warm enough that I was able to ditch the sweat jacket and do more running than walking.

With summer finally here and our first temps in the 90s we were all looking forward to the relief of the pool. Yes, we've been a few times already but you don't fully appreciate the water until it's hot, hot, hot. So we were all very disappointed when word reached us that a pump at the pool had gone down and it would be closed for the day.

Luckily, Eris pulled out her $5 slip-n-slide from Target. The kids, including the clan from Idaho who were visiting for the day had lots of fun playing in the water for a few hours. Sitting under the large tree in her front yard and letting the little ones play to their hearts content was a fair alternative to the pool.

The last change of plans was the postponement of Little Ms.' final softball game. That left me with nothing to do tonight except edit a few photos and go to bed early. The photos are done and I'm off to work on my crossword puzzle before falling asleep. G'night!

$ .32 plus
.25 this afternoon.

Total: $.57 (still a lousy total)

Take me out to the ball game

Another sports season is winding down. For the last two months Monday and Wednesday evenings have been spent watching Little Ms. Eris play Coachpitch softball.

These six-year-olds haven't yet developed the true love of the game and often can be found sitting in the outfield filling their little pink mitts with dirt and paying no attention to the game.

But still, the games are fun to watch, each in his own way. Jr. brings his video games, Eris grades papers and Littlest, well, she just takes a nap.

$2.52 3/4 plus a small wrench and a spark plug tool

More hair, or lack of it

Okay, the post yesterday was probably boring to everyone except for three of you who are fellow camera geeks.

This one is for the rest of you who love Zeus' new hairdo and his pointy little head (his description, not mine). He loves it and after a month I am now used to it.

$2.30 (with a little help from Zeus)

Prime time

On my cameras you will almost always find a telephoto lens, one that will allow me to zoom in close or shoot wide angle. These lenses are very convenient for everyday walk-around shooting and do a nice job. Last week one of the photography forums that I read issued a challenge to put a prime lens on and learn to zoom in with your feet instead of the lens.

Prime lenses (sometimes called fixed lenses) result in a sharper focus than zooms simply because of the way they are constructed (I'll spare you the details). Depending on the lens it is sometimes possible to get very close to the subject and also to shoot in extremely low light situations.


I took this photo while at the pool this afternoon. It is closely cropped (love those 12 MP). All of those dots in the water droplets are reflections of the sun. To see the full photo go to the Shooting Blog.

$.34 (lousy day on the streets two days ago)