And it's only nine-thirty ...

Busy day today.

Didn't start out that way - I usually get up about when Gary gets up at 5:30, but decided to sleep in. My iTouch beeped sometime during a funky dream and I decided to ignore it ... probably a notification that someone posted to me on facebook - those types of notifications had been harassing me at night.

I got up, wondered what I was going to do and the phone rang.

Lori: "Hello?"

WSD: "This is Waterside Dental, um ... did you forget your appointment?"

Lori: "Oh my gosh! What time is it? Yes ..."

WSD: "It is seven ten."

Lori: "I am SO sorry! I will be right there. I am SO SORRY!"

WSD: "How about you come in at seven thirty? That way you have a bit of time ... and, um .... you can calm down a bit."

Lori: "I will be RIGHT IN."

I was having a cavity filled supposedly at 7:00am and was not excited about it. I couldn't believe I had forgotten. My iTouch had alerted me ... if only I would have looked at it...

Ten minutes later I was at the dentist (handy ... she is close!) waiting ... being punished for being late.

Got that done and left with the entire right side of my face numb .... I was drooling and looked like a stroke victim.

Got a Sonic drink, had to repeat myself to the poor order taker ... apparently I was not pronouncing my words right. Got my drink, the person at the window seemed startled (they know me) so I explained the dentist, numb thing - they looked no less startled ...

Driving home, I looked up and the sky was beautiful! Rays of light shooting out of the clouds, so off to my favourite water spot to take some photos:

And a bonus! Um, a bird ... I forget what they are called ... a heron ... I think?

Taking photos of him though, I wondered where was his neck ... I was sure this type of bird had a cute bendy type neck.

"Where's your neck? I see you have your angry eyes on ..."

"Come on, show me your neck and I will go away"

He flew away to another spot on the lake.

"No! Not like that - the 'bendy neck thing' ... come on ..."

He decided that the other side of the lake might be more ... peaceful? Quiet?

"Oh! Come on! I can't even get a decent shot! SHOW ME YOUR NECK!"

The ducks weren't afraid of me and were waddling all around me ... I think they are used to being fed ...

And off he went again .... but to somewhere closer!

"Please, please, pretty please, show me your neck and I will leave you alone!"

"Oh!"

Snap, snap, snap went the camera ...


"Thank you!"

I turned around to find THREE SETS OF DOG WALKERS watching me.

Ooops.

I smiled.

This did not help the startled looks on their faces. I didn't even bother to explain the dentist thing ... they already thought I was the 'crazy lady yelling at the waterfowl' - now they could properly label me 'crazy stroke victim' ....

Drove home, Charlie was barking - demanding her pigs ear ... a treat that I give her when I have been gone for protecting the house from riff raff, pirates and such.

After eating it, I was sitting wondering why my computer was not booting properly and I saw her run upstairs out of the corner of my eye, then back down and a little growly communication that she wanted to go outside and over to the back door. I took one final look at my seriously messed up computer, sighed and got up to let her out.

Sitting there, patiently waiting for me to let her out, I saw that she had something in her mouth.

"Charlie, what is that?" I asked as I opened the door and she shot outside. It looked like a shoe ...

I got a side view and realized that it was the rest of a loaf of banana nut bread I had made earlier.

"What!?!"

"Charlie, get back here!"

I had grabbed my camera ... I got the villain in action. She is a 'counter shopper' and apparently this had been too close to the edge. She thinks what ever she can get is fair game. I lost count of how many sticks of butter she has eaten ...

The thing that worries me? Where had she stashed it upstairs? And how was I going to clean up the crumbs if I don't know where she hid it?

I am sure the ants will show me the way eventually ....

So, just sitting here dribbling diet coke down my chin ... still wondering ...

What am I going to do today?



Bonus video of 'guilty dog':

Random

Totally random stuff based on the photos I have taken since Monday:

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

You MIGHT think this photo was called: 'SUNRISE' or something equally obvious ...

But ... you would be wrong. It is titled: 'LORI IS AN IDIOT'.

This one: 'NEVER AGAIN'

Monday morning I headed out to take sunrise photos since it looked like it was going to be pretty and Charlie gave me that 'Please, please, please can I come?' look and it WAS a Sonic run also - so in the car she went. I had put her leash in on another day when I went to see how the sunrise was doing and it was not so hot ... and had left the leash in the car.

I made the tactical mistake of deciding to take her with me on my walk to get some photos of my favourite tree with sunrise and you have to walk behind the swimming pool to do it ...

Yeah ....

Charlie likes to pull on a leash and I KNEW this, yet I still took her. I don't know what I was thinking. I take my ginormous Canon with its telephoto lens and doesn't take very pretty sunrise photos so right there you knew my brain was not in this all the way ... and hang it around my neck, grab my small Canon and put it in my pocket. Left my Nikon in the car ... just in case ... for later .... grabbed Charlies leash and headed out.

She drug me about 50 yards down sidewalk before I got her to stop long enough for me to snap a few shots off with my small Canon with one hand. Then her brain went 'DUCKS!!!' (you can see them in the first photo) and we were off again - and off the path headed quickly down the bank to the water.

I am sure we were a lovely sight - me - a huge camera with a telephoto lens bouncing around my neck, a camera in one hand, a leash in the other and a seriously crazed dog dragging me along the grass to what looked like a soon to be very wet adventure. I got her under control before she hit the water, but not by much and told her she was grounded from EVER going out photographing with me again (duh).

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

Here is a cute froggy I saved from a certainly unpleasant 'drowning in sawdust' death. We opened the garage door and he was a hoppin' right in ... got a shot off and then started trying to wrangle a mini-frog out of the garage and out of the sawdust. Me chasing a hopping frog - trying to steer it with my outstretched hands (one with a camera in it ... of course) yelling at it to leave the premises was probably as weird a sight as Charlie dragging me down to the lake ...

Got him outside - hopefully he took a shower and got all the powder off him ...

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

And: Progress!

Gary actually (I found out later) making his last Mortise (female) and Tenon (male) joints with the jig and router:

Puzzle pieces stacking up:


One side fit together with the mortise and tenon joints:
Going away until the next project having done an excellent job:

The legs cut ... starting to look like the photo ... but 'Oh no!' A small seam! A minuscule opening between the two joints. To Gary this is UNACCEPTABLE ...

He tried to inject glue in the 'crack' with a small needle and the needle wouldn't fit it was so small, so he used glue on paper his plan to gently slid the paper in ... but the PIECE OF PAPER was too big - so not much glue in the crack - mainly on the crack. But still - into the "Wood Hospital" it went:

Now we are getting somewhere!

Starting to look like a desk!

And that's it folks ... I am plumb out of photos (yeah ... not really ....)

Well ... that was ....

... QUICK!

Apparently the job Gary was coming back to was shelved and he literally has pretty much nothing to do at work.

Nothing.

To.

Do.

Gary.

My husband.

That guy ... the one that can't sit still.

Yeah.

To put it mildly, he is a wee bit bored at work. Apparently ... it took exactly 7 days at work for him to lose his mind and on the way home ... suggest we take a vacation.

Now.

Like next Friday.

Okaaaay.

We discussed New York - I will need to get there - have to photograph the place ...

Then I heard him utter a phrase I thought would NEVER pass his lips:

"How about a cruise?"

"What?"

"A cruise ... you know, on a boat." (He really didn't say that ... but he did in my head ....)

Like I said - the man cannot sit still and being trapped on a boat is not his thang ...

I guess things can change. So I start looking for Eastern Carribean cruises that Gary won't jump off the ship on - which means lots of activities. He wanted to visit somewhere every day ... right ... like there is a cruise like that - you have to get where you are going .... and back home again .... right?

So I head off to search and fell in love with one that I thought he would never go for:

Norwegian Cruise lines has a lovely 9 night cruise:


Day 1 Miami, Fl
Day 2 At Sea
Day 3 Samana, Dominican Republic
Day 4 Tortola, British Virgin Islands
Day 5 Antigua
Day 6 Barbados
Day 7 St. Kits
Day 8 At Sea
Day 9 At Sea
Day 10 Miami, Fl


Gary's response? "There are two days at sea at the end" ... while I am just catching my breath from LOOKING at the 5 DAYS above it. "Those are to rest - I will need it".

And we were seriously going to head out on Nov 5th, but the flights weren't working out. And, well ... it seemed rushed.



YOU THINK?


So - we booked the Dec 3rd - Dec 12th cruise and the flights ... all within 3 hours from our initial discussion of maybe taking a cruise.

I really, really don't know how the man feels about it now. He was rather quick on the uptake and said that it was our '29th Anniversary Cruise' about 15 minutes after we booked everything ... like he had planned it all along. The man is good ...

But:

The man and boats has not fared well.

When 'Diana' his offshore oil platform baby was being installed in the Gulf of Mexico and he was on a boat - I distinctly remember him calling me from the boat going crazy that there was no where for him to go and all he wanted to do was make the chopper take him to shore so he could jog up and down the shoreline (they wouldn't).

I believe the Norwegian Dawn WILL have more to keep him busy (complete with a lap pool - he has been swimming laps for his upper body mobility lately ... that broken ... body ... thing) than the barge he was on back then.

He was on a boat installing ... something in Angola, but he didn't have cell phone coverage ... and people were shooting at him ... so I guess he was distracted ... I am not completely sure about how he fared on that boat. All I remember was the security detail in the chopper and him having to land on the roof of the hotel where he was not supposed to leave (which he did - and bought me a lovely nativity ...) and where he mentioned that the maître d’s carried AK-47's ...

Then there was the Hurtigruten. Literally translated as Fast Route in Norwegian. We took the cruise from the top of Norway down to ... I forget - the stop right before Bergen and it rained the entire 7 or 8 days we were on the ship ... with a mentally handicapped daughter and a rather desperate son. FUN TIMES!

So ... the fact that the man is willing to set foot on a ship tells me he is batshit crazy and I better start sleeping with one eye open ...




... oh!



Crap!



And start looking for a swimming suit .... bah!

All Things Gary ...

Yeah ... I don't sound like a stalker or anything ... but - I guess I am a stalker. I adore the man. I follow him where ever he resides. I thrill at phone calls from him (OK, I guess that is anti-stalker'ish - I would be calling him ...).

Yesterday just seemed to be lots and lots of Gary. Which is a very good thing... Really.

This morning he was pouring himself a diet coke for the road and I just about asked him if we were going to have enough diet coke until he left. We laughed about it, and he said that soon maybe I would be wishing he was leaving - but he has no idea how wonderful it is that he is home. I am just not used to it - was really, really getting used to living alone. So, just an adjustment and I am sort of slow on the uptake with changes in my life - just barely start get used to one thing and it up and changes on me ....

So without further ado, here was my day with my guy:

CHURCH

Thing are still ... off? weird? discouraging? depressing? for me since I am still wandering lost down the Rabbit Hole. I became upset at church and needed to leave since I couldn't stop crying and I was mortified. I saw Gary as I was leaving and told him I had to go. He asked "Why?" and I told him "Later" and he didn't push it. Got in the car and found something driving out of the parking lot a different way than I usually do - something I had just mentioned to Gary I wanted to find. A bush of sunflowers (I think these are sunflowers). So, I wiped my face, got my camera, parked smack dab in the road since there was ZERO shoulder, and hiked in my heels and dress down a very scary, weedy hill to the bush.

I only got honked at once - that's pretty good for blocking an entire road ...

I went home, put on my inappropriate headbanger music to drive everything from my brain, and starting doing something familiar, soothing, fairly mindless ... editing my photos:

Gary was teaching the last hour or I think he might have followed me home. But 4:01 sharp his truck pulls in the drive - a very fast exit and trip home! He came in where I had my headphones on and leaned over and smiled at me - so that he would not scare me.

I turned off my music and we talked, I cried, we talked some more. Gary asked a few questions. I answered. Gary then in his wonderful way was able to make me see that things were not a dark and dim and .... whatever - trying so desperately to pull me from that bleak, dreary foreign landscape I discuss in Falling Down. He is very good at it. By the end of our conversation we were both laughing - usual for him. A rarity for me right now.

When it comes to me and making me feel better about something .... Gary has magical powers ...


LUNCH

He set off to grill up some dinner.

Minutes later he opened the back door and yelled "Lori, grab your big camera and hurry!".

So I did. And this little guy was posing on our back fence.

Nice of Gary to know it would make my day to get photos of "The Masked Bandit":

JIGS AND JOINTS

He had been working in the garage on Saturday (yeah - when is he NOT in his shop on a Saturday? OK, scouting is now looming in the future again - so when he is off playing Scoutmaster ... but other than that?)

This is a photo of the desk he is building - probably just as is, but maybe a few changes we were discussing the other day:

Now, I know that you know that I buy things ... I am spoiled, I know it, you can tell me, and I will agree with you. If I want something ... I buy it - ie my iTouch. This is a family trait! All I had to say in my e-mail to Gary to tell him I had bought an iTouch was to just 'shout out' "Clamps" and "Routers" and "Drills" and he got the point. No e-mail back with recriminations about buying something that I TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY didn't need. We each have our weaknesses when it comes to what we feel we just cant live without!

He had recently purchased a mortise & tenon jig. Mortise & Tenon is the name of a joint in woodworking - you might know this - but I will show you since his jig rocks at doing this.

You basically have a 'male' and 'female' side (I don't know how they word things like this in woodworking, but in electronics - which I am used to this is the terminology - not trying to get nasty or anything - just the way it is ....):

These fit together like a puzzle:

His jig is making both sides (a 'jig' is a piece of equipment that you use with a router, etc to make something else - generally a particular 'cut' - like these are cuts). The jig works with a router and makes both the male part and the female part, and has surgical precision:

Here is the jig with the router sitting on top of it since it is useless without the router doing the work - it is just the thing that guides the router:

Gary is very pleased about it and it seems to be working well. So he is a happy boy. I like that - so I am happy the jig is working out.

He has started the desk and here is a side that is just put together like a puzzle - nothing else is holding it together - the final 'put together' will be with some wood glue - all with mortise & tenon joints (OK, it just occurred to me if I KNEW which was the mortise part and which was the tenon part - I wouldn't have to refer to them as male and female ... Gary will inform me after reading this and I will let you know .... I know you are dying to find out .....).

So one leg put together like a puzzle:

THE TAIL THAT WAGGED THE DOG DEFENSE

He also got a drill press in a very ass backwards way. He calls it the tail wagging the dog.

He read about a great drill press table and decided to build it. It would give him more precision because there were slide insets that you could put clamps on and guides on and a bunch of whatnot I don't really know what I am talking about ...

So - he decides to build this table. He gets so far, I walked out one night to make sure he was still alive and not bleeding on the floor from whacking off some body part and he sheepishly admitted he couldn't stop ... he had covered the top in black Formica and edged it in oak! A very pretty drill press table, indeed!

So ... he started thinking that his 20 year old drill press didn't deserve the new, fancy table, and the next thing you know - a huge drill press is at our house and we our both trying to get it out of the back of his truck ....

The beautiful drill press table (with a guide on it - the blue aluminum tracks can also have clamps slide in them and hold down what ever you are trying to drill - so a very clever design):
And what I was most impressed about the new drill press:

Cool laser cross hairs (broken up by the guide so not a complete 'X')! Ooooh. Cooool.


X-RAYS

We had visitors later that evening and they were asking Gary about his injury and he mentioned that the screws that screw the two plates into his bionic clavicle jut out a half inch from the bone and just apparently hang out in muscle and tissue. I realized right then that I had not seen those x-rays - he had them taken after I left and I had not looked at them after he moved home with them.

And what's a blog if not to share gory operation and x-ray photos of injured loved ones?

The screws do look pretty ... intense. Especially since none of this metal has set off a metal detector ... yet:

Well, and thousands of words later - that's it for Gary and my Sunday!

Hoping to find my way of of my own personal, horrific 'Wonderland' sometime soon ...

Sleep - you fickle, elusive friend ....

I've decided a picture is worth a thousand words. My 'Sleepless Lair':

Note the 3:55 (that would be am, of course) on the clock. The laptop out, because, I mean, who can do with one pimped out computer with two monitors ... jeez .... The all important surround headphones laying there on the desk whilst I take my photos with Lady Gaga screeching out since I am listening to headbanger'ish music aka depression - and don't want to wake up Gary or hurt the dogs ears. A pile of reading material to the left of my desk. Facebook online - catching up with old friends.

And on that sad note, getting a message from someone I thanked for saying something nice about my photos. He replying - being apologetic about a 32 year old prank done on me (by accident I learn tonight). This all being confessed by a person I knew hardly at all 32 years ago, who lost his wife on October 6th and takes the time to apologize for a 'superglue on a chair' prank which was not intended for anyone in particular, just the next sap to sit down in the library. I feel I am up with a crowd I don't belong to - these are people who are up for reasons other than pain .... well physical pain and it makes me sad.

Doesn't make me tired, though ...

So I stare at this:


I LIKE my clock - but I just cannot get the photo wider to make it shorter - thus not taking up so much real estate above our fireplace. I also wonder if I can pull this one off - we have a CURVE. I have to have extra to go around the sides of the gallery wrap frame (which Gary will make - this was his idea, of course, any photo of mine hanging in our house is his idea ... sweet, sweet man). I don't think I can do the math (OK, I can - I only need to worry about the overlap on a straight edge), but just might need to 'make up' parts of the photo for the upper curve because I don't think I had 2" to spare - so I sit ... and I stare at the photo - and wonder if I can pull it off.

I know what I will do next and I sigh. I realize that knowledge is power - but power that can drive someone with OCD to distraction. For a few years I have periodically complained about accidentally setting my big camera on the setting just past 'auto' called 'P' for Program - it is supposed to program the Shutter Speed and Aperture Value based on your ISO, but all I would get when I used it on accident was 'blue'ish' photos. OF COURSE I learned what it was a few years into getting my camera - which does nothing to fix all my old blue photos:


I have tried everything on them. None of them are photos that are 'life or death' needed. Like this boring photo of bear lake. Just a photo ... but the blue bugged me!

I tried filters, taking out the blue, adding red and green and yellow, even cyan ... and they never looked right.

Today I saw one in my 'trusty' Lightroom program and started thinking about it. "It has to be something with exposure." I thought. I am sure there was a flashing warning when I took these photos that it "could not automatically compute a Aperture Value and Shutter Speed based on the ISO so it was going to be crap", but I blissfully snapped away ... outside .... I realized. ALL the photos I had were outside.

There is a way to open up a .jpg file in Camera Raw in Photoshop and I thought, pull it in, and try to change the White Balance (what the camera sees as white - our eye sees something ENTIRELY different). It was not going to give me all the options for White Balance that a pure Camera Raw photo would have (tungsten, indoor, etc) but it had 'As Shot' (what my setting was), 'Auto', and 'Custom'. I clicked 'Auto' White Balance and got this:

My greens were green! My reds were red!

OH MY GOSH! EUREKA!

I had done it




Crap.




Now I need to do it to hundreds of other photos.

I can fake it in Lightroom and do it in batch but it just affixes the change in Lightroom, does not permanently change the photo and I wanted them CHANGED. So pull in each one, one at a time into Photoshop Camera Raw, change the White Balance, open in real Photoshop, and click 'save'. That is a big deal - I am covering up my original - a BIG, BIG NO NO. But these, I have decided look good enough - washed out, yes .... but I can do something about that if I feel like it:


So, I am off - to find more blue photos, chat with fellow insomniacs on facebook and try not to wake up Gary ....

JOY!!!

1) For getting the title "Barfing Photos" off y'alls blog lists

2) SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!

Went to sleep last night, discouraged, wondering how I was going to fill the next 10 hours. Tossed and turned a wee bit, made a plan to sneak out to the computer, maybe try out the new guest bed mattress, wander the house, you know - the usual insomniacs plans.

I rolled over, picked up my iTouch to play and wondered is it 1:00am, maybe (oh please let me have slept THREE WHOLE HOURS) 2:00am? I flicked it on and the numbers 6:57 came on the screen ... big as life.

Blink.

I TURNED IT OFF AND BACK ON.

SHOOK IT A LITTLE.

Damn thing is broken, I thought. And clear as day: 6:58.

I was speechless ... well, not really - what I wanted to do was wake up Gary to scream that I SLEPT THROUGH THE ENTIRE NIGHT!!! EIGHT HOURS!!! AHHHHH!!! But I let the poor man sleep.

And then a sobering thought hit me - I can't remember EVER having this happen. EVER.

IN.

MY.

LIFE.

Oh, I am sure it has - but not like this - I would have remembered the celebration and inevitable 'happy dance' ... of sleeping through the night. Oh, yes -there is a happy dance ...

Sad really ... that something so natural as sleeping can be so foreign and elusive to an entire class of people called insomniacs. Wish I wasn't one of 'em, wish I knew the secret Gary has obviously been keeping from me for YEARS on how to lay your head on the pillow and 30 seconds later snorfling like a baby, wish it was not work to fall asleep:

Lay still, think of nothing ... OK think of something so BORING it will make you fall asleep, lay still, don't think, lay still, don't think, ... for at least an hour to two hours for me to fall asleep every night - one hour is pushing it - I am generally just getting warmed up? Winding down? Two hours is what I estimate it will take me to fall asleep and since I am an avid clock watcher it's not a guess.

And two hours a night is what I get for sleep to call it a success. Sometimes I sleep for 3 whole hours and that is cause célèbre.


Yes.

Two or three hours.


Not all the time, but when I am in a lot of pain - two hours is generally the limit - so this is cause to celebrate! Since I am still stuck down the 'Rabbit Hole' things look generally bleak, the landscape is dreary and things feel painfully painful - but this is a start! This is a turning in the right direction - I can feel it ... deep down inside of me where the grey and the darkness and the clouds and the ugly can't reach -

it's a beginning....

Barfing Photos

** Editors Note ** A MERE NINE hours after posting this ... I realized that the title was not very ... well, it just sounds like something it is not. Sorry - no changies on my blog - but be forewarned - there are no photos of people barfing in this post ....



sorry about that


**************************
Just vomiting some photos out into cyberland because I am bored, and feeling very virtuous - having finished my laundry and, well, just plain got out of bed and dressed for the day ...

Went on a sunrise run yesterday (OK, we did head to Sonic between the two distinct locations the sun appears to be in the panoramas ... and by 'run' of course I mean in the car ...):

This shy little guy kept hiding from me as I was walking in the garage - filling my car up with stuff I needed to take somewhere - also yesterday - I was very ambitious .... I would see him as I was walking into the garage, grab my camera and step out of the garage and he was nowhere to be seen! I did this three times ... apparently he thought I wouldn't be stupid enough to keep trying ....

We went and got a mattress for the new bed Gary made and it was delivered today. I don't really have bedding for it - just a blanket that obviously doesn't work as a bedspread with a footboard. It matches the twin beds in Jessies room so I grabbed a couple of her shams ... and OH MY GOSH ... I know where the dog lays her filthy body .... I am off to do some more laundry ..

.... and then take a nap in this bed, because, seriously? I've never lain (layed down?) on a more comfortable mattress ...

Gary just might lose his roomie again ....

Apparently Charlie Doesn't Like Homework ...

Falling Down

Wasn't going to post today.


Nothing to say.


OK, nothing GOOD to say.


It has been one of those days ...

too much pain, too much sick, just too much ... too much

so - no writing for me. Not safe. What would I say?

Things went from bad to worse as I was trying to distract myself from the pain. I got in my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program to see if I had imported last months photos. This is that program ...

you know

the one I spent HOUR UPON HOUR tagging, labeling my photos.

It comes up and I notice that I have exactly 57,980 photos in Lightroom ...

... right as it crashes and burns before my eyes.

Like I said, it has been one of those days ... so I start it again. Lightroom has a photo selected, a bouquet of pink roses:

I want all my photos and there is a 'filter' on listing: 'logan' and 'flower' as the sorting parameters. I remember I was looking for a set of photos of some beautiful purple flowers outside a pizza joint in Logan, Utah - Frederico's Pizza.

Had been there one summer up to Bear Lake with a jaunt down to Logan - to see the old home, take pictures of Dr. Pierces Prescription barn ... the usual - and a lunch with the extended family at Frederico's. I had loved the photos and wanted to maybe use it as the wallpaper for my brand spanking new iTouch.

Strange, I thought. The pink roses were in a Marriott in Prague, nowhere NEAR Logan or Frederico's pizza.

I shrugged my shoulders and hit 'text' the indicator that I wanted to change the text in the filter.

And Lightroom crashes and burns ... again.

I discover that it ALWAYS crashes and burns when I go to use the filter.

NICE - I have 57,980 photos all in one place and I can LOOK AT THEM, but I cannot search them based on all the tags I so painstakingly labeled them with.

It is at this point I decide I need a diversion, because things were getting ... dark ... cloudier ... ugly.

I decide I am going to write today. I saw a friend of mine mentioned in Facebook that today is the National Day on Writing.

So ... what to write, what to write?

Sitting there glowering at Lightroom not working I decided to close my eyes, with my mouse firmly resting on the scroll bar, scroll a bit, veer over into the grid of photos and randomly pick one

...and write about the subject, whatever came to mind based on the photo.

Seemed a challenge

...Closed my eyes, scrolled a bit, veered my mouse over and clicked. Opened my eyes and saw:

And the first words that came to mind were: 'Falling Down'.

"No", I said out loud ... anything ... anything but that.

So I cheated and tried again:

Closed my eyes, scrolled, clicked, opened my eyes and said out loud: "Shit":

Also out loud "A freaking water FALL? Are you kidding me?"

One more try ....

Eyes closed, scroll, click, eyes open and "Damn"

"WHAT IS IT WITH WATERFALLS?"
OK, so I like water falls, but not so much that my 57,980 photos had 2/3 of its subjects as waterfalls.

Fine.

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

FALLING DOWN

Depression to me is like falling down the Rabbit Hole. I will be walking along, trip and suddenly I am falling, falling, falling - down, down ... deeper and deeper to another world. A world I despise, I world I don't belong in, a world upon which I feel I stumble upon by accident and NEVER feel as if I should be there.

It is gray, cold, dreary, lifeless, energy sapping and just not a great place to be.

I look around, wondering how to get out? Surely this is a mistake! I don't belong here - I have a wonderful life full of photos, and color, and children and the most perfect husband in the world, I DO NOT BELONG HERE.

And I see the hole I fell down. There is blue sky at the top - a long, long, very long way up a very long black hole.

How to get back up there? To my wonderful life, and wonderful house, and wonderful family and ... even wonderful dog?

The sides are slippery smooth and it is a moot point - the opening in the top of the dark, cloudy ceiling is yards and yards up with nary a ladder in sight. In fact there is NOTHING in sight. No trees, no bushes, no animals, no people, nothing. Just dark, gray ... land. A fence or two, but really nothing. And then it hits me - there is something else:

PAIN

Lots, and lots of pain. For some reason in this bleak and dreary land I can't control the pain in my body like I can on any given 'normal' day. I try,

try not to think about it

read a book

do some housework

but no, I am stuck - in a land without books and without a house or even work to do in a house - just me and the pain.

Sleep eludes me, I get sick from lack of sleep

this does not help

.
.
.

and this is where I find myself today. With my software not working, having been in too much pain for two nights to sleep, and just at my wits end with this pain, this unrelenting, unforgiving, punishing pain. In a sea of dark, gray, dreary days ...

And I realize

I've gotta get out of here!

Now!

There has to be a way!

But in my head I know, there is only one way - at least the only way I know of



and that is



TIME

Sometimes I am lost for just a few hours, most times it is days and then there was that time that was years but we don't think back to then, now do we?

So I sigh, and turn back to my computer.

I reinstall my software and click on 'repair'

I cross my fingers and start it up again. And sure enough, when I go to 'text' and enter a search parameter I get the

'Message of Death':

"A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

"No!" I yell

And then I wonder - if Windows does figure this out, how are they going to 'notify me'? Angels from on high? A guy at the door? WHAT?

And I wander the bleak gray landscape some more, without even my photos bringing color into my psyche ... even a little.

Then a little voice says - 'Why not reboot? What can it hurt?' And I say - 'You know, you are right'. I hit the reboot button and limp off to walk out some very painful knees and hips.

I come back and there is a tiny little message flashing:

"Adobe Update Ready"

Hmmmmm, I think - you know, it is called ADOBE Photoshop Lightroom - why not update what ever the hell it wants you to update?

So I click on the little blinking message and all hell breaks loose. Backups, and registry updates, and registry deletions and copies and more backups and more copies and more mucking about with the registry. I get a sinking feeling. But there is a titch of Pollyanna still in there somewhere and I click on the Lightroom icon.

It comes up.

I hold my breath. I click 'text'. Still OK. No crashing. I enter 'logan' and 'flower' (the accursed combo just to make sure) and sure enough - Lightroom finds every photo I ever took in Logan of a flower (or flowers) and sitting there in all it's glory is my purple flower:

Which brings a little color into my day! Maybe not tons, maybe not enough to find that light at the end of the tunnel, but it is a start! It just might point me in the right direction

... Right?

"Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get back up" - Chinese Proverb